so resembled those of a real blacksmith at work. Nearby, a toy dog wagged its tail, its tongue moving as if panting, and a plaster witch stirred a tiny copper cauldron. Elsewhere, dancers whirled, acrobats leaped, and animals paced, in a glittering festival of copper and brass and silver and ceramics. A few devices had no recognizable form, but were unabashed machines, tossing arms and gears about in complex and fascinating patterns.
Garth had never seen so fine a display of machinery; northerners, either the humans of Skelleth or the overmen of Ordunin, had little time for such inessentials. Clockwork was used for clocks on ships, which needed accurate timekeeping for navigation, but was seldom used elsewhere.
He could not resist a broad grin as he studied the things; he hoped that no one noticed it, lest it destroy the image he had been cultivating of the implacable inhuman warrior. Anyone who saw it, though, might not recognize it for what it was; humans were not always able to identify the expressions of overmen, being distracted from the fundamental similarities by the hollow cheeks, thin lips, and noseless slit nostrils. The two species reacted somewhat differently to various situations and emotions, furthering the confusion. To the uninitiated man or woman, Garth's happy smile might appear to be a ghastly grimace; his delight in the clever toys and machines to be bitter disgust.
The shop window was not lighted, and Garth's own shadow blocked out a measure of the morning sun; he peered in, trying to make out the shapes that flopped and fluttered in the dimness at the back of the display. A brass rooster crowed, with a flapping of wings, and he marveled anew.
'Would you like to buy one, my lord?'
Startled, Garth whirled to face the owner of the pleasant little voice that had interrupted his studies. A small, whitehaired man stood in the door of the shop, squinting and blinking in the bright light of day; he smiled, revealing a jawful of randomly assorted gold and white teeth.
The overman stared at the man for a moment, then back at the window, where the swordsman's blade continued to miss the smith's broad back and swinging hammer by the breadth of a few hairs; where the yapping dog bounced merrily along and the plaster witch grinned gruesomely.
'I think I might, yes,' Garth said at last. 'Are they expensive?'
'Oh, no,' the little man replied. 'I don't need much to live on. I have a pension of sorts-I suppose you could call it a pension. Enough to make do, at any rate. But it does get so dull! So I keep making these toys, to amuse myself. The children seem to like them. Have you any children, my lord?'
'Five; two sons. They're grown, though, old enough for families of their own.'
'Grandchildren, then?'
'Not that I know of; I haven't been home lately.' He smiled wryly to himself at that.
'A pity, a pity.' The old man shook his head, looking downcast, as if it were the greatest tragedy of his life that this fine overman should have no grandchildren and should be so long away from home.
Garth's smile became a little less bitter; the man was amusing. 'Did you say that you find this village dull? What of the dragon, then? Does it not provide enough excitement for you?'
'Oh, the dragon...' The man shrugged, as if the legendary monster were beneath his notice. 'I meant that doing nothing for myself was dull, not that there had been no excitement in my life. I like to keep my hands busy when the dragon is not about, my hands and my mind.' He gestured, wiggling his fingers to show that they were still agile.
Garth decided that he liked this fellow. 'Have you children yourself?' he asked.
'Oh, all long since grown, like your own, my lord; even my grandchildren are married now, some of them.' He glanced at the shop window. 'Tell me,' he said, 'which do you like the best?'
Garth turned back and studied the collection; his gaze wandered over ships and horses, men and castles, women and machines. The swordsman had run down, frozen in midstroke with his sword thrust out before him.
'I cannot say,' Garth replied. 'I have not seen them all run. Some are not displayed to their best advantage here.'
'Come inside, then, and I will show you more closely any that interest you.' The toymaker grinned and beckoned, and Garth followed him.
The building's interior was dim and smelled strongly of metal and oil and herbs. A narrow passage led between two great tables that held the two window displays; beyond, a fair-sized room contained a fireplace and oven, a table, a few chairs, and a workbench. The last was cluttered with gears and wheels and snippets of copper, chisels and scissors and knives, powders and pastes, jars and vials, a potter's wheel, and a pedal-driven lathe. At the rear, another door stood slightly ajar.
Garth looked over the two tables; dozens of toys were displayed, perhaps a hundred or more. The toymaker wound up a spider that danced in circles as the cauldron-stirring witch ground to a halt.
Everything was a maze of arms and legs and wheels, plaster faces staring in the waxed-paper windows of wooden castles, and Garth could not imagine picking a single favorite from the muddle. He let his eyes roam, and found himself staring at a glistening copper shape that gleamed in one corner.
'What's that?' he asked, pointing. The object stood out because of its smooth, curving surface, unbroken by flailing arms or whirling gears.
The old man followed his pointing finger and fetched the object in question out into the light that poured through the window. It was a copper sea gull; two eyes of smoky quartz stared unseeingly from its tapered metal head, and its wings were polished to mirror brightness. 'Ah, my lord,' the old man said, 'you have excellent taste.'
'What does it do?' Garth asked.
'Why, what else would a bird do but fly?' He pulled a silver key from somewhere, inserted it in an opening in the mechanical gull's back, then gestured for Garth to follow him back outside. 'Let me show you.'
The overman followed and watched as the toymaker turned the key. With a small click, the key stopped; the old man pulled it out and, with a proud smile, cast the gull away.
Garth instinctively reached out to catch it, to keep its graceful curves from being scarred or broken by its fall, but it did not drop into his waiting hands. Instead, its metal wings caught the breeze and flapped once, twice, lazily, with the languid grace of a living sea gull, and it swooped away. Riding the wind, it glided upward, then looped back and circled slowly overhead. Garth gaped in astonishment.
For several long minutes the gull soared overhead, flapping smoothly now and then, gleaming golden in the morning sun; then, gradually, it settled lower and lower, until at last, with a rueful smile, the toymaker reached up and plucked it out of the sky.
Garth heard a click and a final soft whirr, and the gull was still.
Garth stared at the man with deep respect. 'It is very beautiful,' he said. 'I was not aware that such things could be built of mere metal.'
The toymaker looked down, obviously embarrassed. 'Well, actually,' he admitted, 'they can't. I cheat. It's not just clockwork.'
'It's not?'
'No. I use magic.'
'Oh,' Garth said knowingly. He had seen magic before, more of it than he liked. At least, he thought, this magic was harmless.
'I didn't originally-at least, I don't think I did. I started off using just clockwork when I was an apprentice, but I found right from the first that I could make machines that no one else could understand, things that worked when by all rights they should not have. Even when I built my clocks and toys in the usual ways, mine would run far longer and more smoothly than any of the others. I got better and better at it, too, until I was doing things that were plainly impossible to do with just clockwork. I had no idea how I did what I did back then; it simply came to me, as naturally as breathing, without my ever thinking about it. When I realized what was happening, I studied sorcery briefly; even though my teacher said I had a real talent, I didn't care for it. It seemed too dangerous, too uncertain. I went back to clockwork, but now I know a bit more about what I'm doing. I even use spells intentionally now, though I still make them up, rather than follow the old formulae. As I said, I have the knack for it. A fellow who came through here last year, fleeing from Sland, a wizard by the name of Karag, told me that it wasn't anything to be concerned about. He said that there are a lot of minor magical talents like mine scattered about; probably one of my ancestors back in the Twelfth Age, when magic was widespread, was a wizard of some sort, and I inherited a bit of his lingering power without knowing it.'
