‘What do youmean by paths and nodes.’ asked Aquitain.
‘Well a path orpathway is a physical connection between the gates leading to twodifferent worlds. When you entered here you came in the Mudrun gateonto path 1, while it was connected to Moonmist. We have eightpaths. That makes us a Niner.’
‘Er .. I’m notsure I know what you’re talking about?’
‘Didn’t theyteach you anything about gate worlds when you were in wizardschool?’ asked Asterix.
‘No.’ repliedAquitain.
‘Damn stupidthe educators these days.’ said Asterix.
‘Let me think.This is how it was first explained to me.’
‘Imagine ourgate world is a shaped like a ball. Now imagine inside the ball wasa box, where the eight corners of the box touched the inside of theball. We’ll call them nodes. Now there’s a bit of space betweeneach of the six outer faces of the box and the inside of the ball,right. We’ll call them path areas. This gate world would be calleda Sevener. It’s got six path areas and a living area inside thebox.’
‘Well our gateworld is a Niner. It’s got eight path areas and a living areainside an eight-sided box. You’re in the box now.’
Asterix thenteleported them to the middle of the town’s main street.
The whole placelooked like a giant cave. There was a huge moon-like disc in thecenter of the cave ceiling giving off a yellow light. Down bothsides of the street were shops. All empty. It was a ghost town. Hewalked down the main street and looked down the street to theright. The buildings were all smaller. It looked like the streetthat he had seen when he had visited the gnomes’ town withChantalot. In fact, if the lighting were different he could almostvisualize the gnomes walking in the street.
‘Can you changethe lighting?’ asked Aquitain.
‘Yes, we canhave a blue sky with a sort of sunrise and sunset if you want.Currently we have a day period and a night period. Nothingexciting. This is day.’
‘What happenedto all the people?’ asked Aquitain.
‘Dunno. It’sbeen like this ever since I’ve been here.’
‘How long haveyou been here?’
‘A bloody longtime!’ he replied. ‘Occasionally someone like yourself comes butnot for long. It drives them nuts.’
‘Why hasn’t itdriven you mad?’ asked Aquitain.
‘I’m a gnomeengineer. I don’t mind the quiet and like the work. It’sinteresting maintaining a whole world you know. There’s alwayssomething to do.’
‘Why hasn’t shegot more people to live here?
‘Dunno.’replied Asterix with a smile. ‘Maybe they’re too tempting. Shemight eat them.’
‘Are there anyshops with magic foundries here?’
‘Yeah.’ repliedAsterix. ‘There’s an area where there are several shops thatprobably used to make and sell magic items. I’ll show you.
They walked fora couple of minutes then came to a cluster of magic shops. Somestill had signs up. Aquitain entered and checked through all ofthem. There was a wealth of equipment and several magic foundries.There were even boxes and jars of magic ingredients and in somecases quite rare ones at that.
He finallydecided on Widdershank’s Magic Supplies, on the corner of the mainstreet. That’s where he would stay. It had a similar layout to hisfamily’s shop back at Panmagica. It brought back fond memories. Ifonly there were people here, this would be a wonderful place tolive. It obviously had a dark secret. Maybe after he sorted out theproblems on Mudrun and Moonmist he would find out what it was.
‘I like ithere. Can you clean up this place up while I’m away?’
‘I’ll put it onthe list but it’ll probably be a year or two till I work my waydown to it.’ replied Asterix.
‘Oh. Well don’tworry about it. I’ll look after it. Maybe I could borrow one of theconstructs?’
‘You can havethe whole damn lot if you like. I’ve never used them.’
‘What! Havethey been maintained?’ asked Aquitain.
‘Nope. Neverseen them move since I’ve been here. I don’t like them things. Gotno souls. I won’t use em.’
‘Can I seethem?’ asked Aquitain.
Aquitain wasamazed. He had grown up around constructs. He had played with themand used them for all sorts of repetitive and heavy work since hewas a child. To have six of them sitting here unused for decadeswas crazy!
They walkeddown the main street then off to a side street and there they were.Two giant iron constructs shaped like Newmans but standing fourtimes the height of a Newman all covered in fine rust. There weretwo large stone constructs shaped vaguely like Newmans, standingthree times the height of a Newman but one was bent over at anangle. Finally there were two smaller ones made of brass abouttwice the height of a Newman.
‘I call thisplace the street of statues.’ said Asterix.
‘Where are thecontrol bracelets?’
‘Possibly inthe armoury.’ replied Asterix.
‘Take methere.’ said Aquitain feeling rather excited as theyteleported.
The armoury wasobviously out of bounds to whoever lived here originally as it waslocated in the ceiling of this place, in one of the corners. Theyappeared in a large room. Along both sides of the wall were racksof weapons and armour, enough to equip a small army. At the end ofthe room was a door with no handle or keyhole. Asterix looked at itfor a minute then said a word and it opened.
‘This one’s gota magic lock on it. Resets itself after a couple of minutes. Gotstuck in here for a while the first time until I realized I couldteleport out.’ said Asterix. ‘This is where some of the qualitystuff is.’
Aquitain wasamazed. The whole room was full of magic weapons, armour andvarious other items, but no rings, necklaces or bracelets. Dozensof pieces worth a fortune lay around collecting dust. He feltguilty just being there. It was a hoard a great dragon would beproud to own. As a gatekeeper he could probably use anything herehe liked. Then again what use was any of it to a Llanllean? Theydidn’t make suits of armour for spiders although there were somesets small enough to fit a gnome. He wandered around picking upbits and pieces. Some needed repair but he couldn’t find anybracelets.
Suddenly,Llanlorian appeared with a smile on her face.
‘So you’vefound the goodies have you? I wondered how long it would take.’
‘I was actuallylooking for the construct control bracelets.’ said Aquitain.
‘The constructslook like they need to be both maintained and
