'Which one of us?' asked Cutwood.
'It doesn't matter — any or all of you. Think of how you'd feel, spending all your life inside this tower, unable to even walk outdoors. And consider that a dragon's life is not fifty years, or two hundred years, but twenty times two hun dred! How would you feel, imprisoned in a lonely tower, with no one to talk to and no tools either?'
Roperig and Fitter gasped. 'No tools?'
'Yes, and no wood or metal to work with. No gears or valves or pulleys.'
'Horrible!' said Flash. Birdcall seconded him with a steady descending note.
'And we — you — have the chance to correct this wrong.
You have the inventive powers to devise some way to allow
Cupelix to fly free. Will you do it?' she asked.
Wingover leaped to his feet. 'We will! We will!' Rainspot and Fitter wept for the injustice inflicted on the dragon, while Stutts and Sighter were already bombarding each oth er with first schemes to open the obelisk. Wingover got up on his chair and then on the table, pointing dramatically to the wingless hull of the Cloudmaster.
'To the ship!' he cried. 'We must make plans!'
'Yes, yes, the tools are there,' said Cutwood.
'And parchment and pencils!'
'Chemicals and crucibles!'
'Rope and rigging!'
'Raisins!'
The gnomes surged away from the table, a tiny tide of boisterous idealism and ramshackle ingenuity. When the last gnome had disappeared up the ramp, Kitiara turned, smiling, to Sturm.
'Very clever,' he said at last. 'You did that well.'
'Did what?' she replied guilelessly.
'We both know how impulsive the gnomes are. Between your passionate call for freedom and the prospect of a major engineering project, the obelisk hasn't got a chance.'
'I hope you're right,' said Cupelix. It was uncanny how easy it was to forget him when he stayed quiet above their line of sight. Sturm frowned. 'Don't be so suspicious!' chid ed the dragon. 'If my intentions were black, do you think I would have resorted to banquets and cajoling? My Micones could have held the ship indefinitely until you agreed to help, or I could have left you to the tree-men.'
'No one ever said you were evil, Cupelix,' Sturm persist ed. 'Subtle, you are, and very much concerned with getting your way. If you could have gotten out of your prison by sacrificing Kit, myself, or the gnomes, I don't think you would have dallied long in giving us up.'
Cupelix spread his wings and coiled his legs to spring into the air. 'Be at ease, Master Brightblade. No one need be sac rificed. We shall all see Krynn again, I promise.'
Chapter 25
The gnomes divied into two groups. The first group, which consisted of Stutts, Flash, Wingover, Sighter, and Birdcall, was to study the problem of breaching the walls of the obelisk. The other four gnomes had as their task the safe removal of the contents of the tower, including
Cupelix himself, the Cloudmaster, Sturm, and Kitiara.
The Micones returned with the night half gone, and on the dragon's orders, leveled out the dirt rampart they'd piled up some days before. Because there were more than fifty of the powerful giants at work, the land around the base of the obelisk was soon smooth and passable again. Kitiara and the Breaching Group (as they called themselves) went out side to survey the structure.
'The walls at ground level are marble no less than eleven feet thick,' Stutts reported, reading off his calculations.
'With the best steel picks and mattocks, it would take a dig ging gang days and days to hack through all that rock.'
'And furthermore,' said Sighter, 'my analysis of the stone shows it to be extremely hard, much harder, in fact, than regular marble. It's glazed.'
'Glazed? Hmm.' Kitiara looked to the obelisk's high pin nacle. A flickering red aura wavered about the top. She reminded the gnomes of the violent discharges they'd seen when the sun came up. 'All that energy, must have hard ened the stone,' she said.
Stutts reached to touch the cold stone. Between the wide courses was a band of shiny black, colder even than the scarlet marble. 'Metal,' he mused. 'Metal for mortar.'
'Really?' said Flash. 'What sort of metal is it?'
Stutts scraped at the six-inch-wide band with his thumb nail. The color did not scratch off. 'It's soft,' he said. 'Lead, perhaps?'
Sighter and Birdcall examined the mortar, too. Birdcall confirmed with a twitter that the metal was indeed lead.
'Pretty solid,' said Wingover, slapping the wall.
'I have an idea,' Kitiara announced. The gnomes looked at her as if she'd said she was growing another head. 'Well, I do. Here it is: I've seen lots of castle waills fall to besieging armies, and they are often as thick, if not as hard, as these walls. The besiegers brought them down by tunneling under the foundations and undermining the wall.'
Consternation spread on the faces in the Breaching Party.
'Why, that's bloody simple,' Stutts declared.
'Why didn't we think of that?' asked Flash.
'All we have to do is dig away the sand!' said Wingover.
They fell on their knees and crimson dirt flew. Kitiara, shaking her head, went inside to the ship. Sturm was on his feet, leaning on a crutch that Cutwood had fashioned for him. He was keeping aloof from the preparations, but he asked what the gnomes had decided to do.
'We're digging now,' Kitiara remarked. She appropriated a wrecking bar from the store of tools and returned to the frantic diggers. Sturm hobbled after her.
The gnomes carved out a crater deeper than their own height in a very short time. Below grade, the foundation of the obelisk showed no alteration from the structure above — more massive marble blocks joined with lead. Kitiara cleared them out of the hole and swung the iron bar at the stone.
'Wait,' said Wingover, 'that's solid — '
She drew the bar back in a deep arc and struck the foun dation with all her extra strength. There was a crack, like the breaking of a great tree branch, and a single chip of mar ble flew off. It landed at Sturm's feet, a lost petal from a stone rose. He stooped awkwardly to pick it up.
'Look at the bar!' said Flash.
Kitiara held up the inch-thick rod. The flat prying edge had mushroomed out from the blow, and the whole bar was bent in a graceful curve. Kitiara braced the bar against her knee and tried to straighten it, but only succeeded in bend ing it the opposite way. She tossed it aside in disgust.
'I tried to tell you,' Wingover said as Kitiara climbed out of the hole. 'The base of the tower rests on the roof of the cavern. It's solid stone.'
'There are holes through it,' said Sighter. 'The Micones' holes. We went through them ourselves, to visit the egg chamber.'
'Mining won't work,' Stutts said sadly. 'We're no more able to bore through the foundation than the upper walls.'
Kitiara clambered out of the hole and dusted off her hands and leggings. Her breath showed white in the night air. 'It's up to you gnomes now.'
