Beyong the Moons

peephole that opened high over their heads. A pair of tiny eyes glared down through the opening.

“Youcan’tgetinbybanging. Youhavetousethedooralarm. It’s-’’

“What?” Teldin asked, unprepared for the barrage of gibberish from the muffled voice. It seemed like Common speech, but the words went by so fast.

The little face stopped and scowled. “Whatisthematter? DoyounotunderdstandCommon, whichlam-speaking? ItisCommon, anditisnotmyfaultifyouareoutsiderswhodonot. knowthatyouhavetopressthedoor-alarm”

“What?” Teldin pleaded, “Slow down!”

There was a loud sigh from overhead, then the little, bearded face began again, saying every word with exaggerated precision. “I said, you can’t get in by banging, because you have to use the door alarm, which is that little button alongside the door, and if you push it, the door might be opened if the Doormaker’s Guild says it’s all right, which it might-”

Teldin suspected that the gnome might go on talking forever, so he reached out and pressed the small, black button alongside the door. The gnome’s declaration, which definitely was still going on, was interrupted by a blaring claxon. Teldin, his finger still on the button, leaped back in terror at the thundering noise, and Gomja tensed, his huge body striking a fighting pose. Only the gnome seemed unfazed by the racket. “There, that is much better, because now I, as a member of the Doormaker’s Guild, may open the gate and . .

The little, talking face disappeared from the window. From inside came a series of rattles, groans, clanks, whistles, and wheezes. With a rattling hiss and a fitful cloud of steam that leaked from the hinges, the doors slowly swung inward. A little brown-skinned man, slightly smaller than a dwarf, stood in the center of the doorway. He wore simple tradesman’s clothes, a once-white, loose shirt and coarse pants covered with a stout leather apron. Quills, small tools, and rolled up sheets of paper poked out of every pocket and even stuck out from the wild tangles of his hair and beard.

“WhyhaveyoucometothewonderfulGreatHugeTall Mound-MadeofSeveralDifferentStrataofRock-”

What?” Teldin demanded for the third time. His spear, still in hand, swung ominously up as his exasperation increased. Gomja laid a steadying hand on his shoulder.

“Calm, sir. It’s the way gnomes speak. I’ve heard them like this before.” Teldin took a deep breath and nodded understandingly.

“-WhichOccasionallyCometotheSurfaceandFlowDownthe- SideoftheGreatHugeTallMoundthatOurAncestorsLearned-fromtheHumansWasReallyCalledMountNevermind,” finished the doorkeeper, apparently all in one huge breath. The gnome stood there panting and waiting for a response.

“Think carefully before you answer,” Teldin whispered to himself, sensing that the wrong word probably would set the doorkeeper off on an unending string of gibberish. The farmer quickly cast a cautionary look to Gomja. as if to warn the giff to keep silent while Teldin thought. Finally, he composed an answer. “I come because I was given a magical cloak and now I can’t take it off. If the gnomes can remove it, I would be glad to leave it with them and go back home to Kalaman. Please speak slowly when you answer.' Teldin braced himself for the reply.

“I always speak slowly. That is why I am the doorkeeper,” the gnome answered indignantly, his words picking up pace as he went along. Teldin held up a hand, and the gnome restrained himself. Perhaps to keep his furious mind occupied, the gnome pulled out parchment, quill, and ink from his voluminous pockets, sat in the middle of the roadway, and prepared to take notes. “Strange cloak, eh? If you want the cloak examined for weave, you’ll have to go to the Weaver’s Guild, but if the color is important, that is a problem for the Dyer’s Guild. On the other hand, if the thread is important, that would be the Weaver’s Guild again, but since you said you cannot take it off, the Jeweler’s Guild might have to be called in to look at the clasp, unless it is magical, in which case-”

“Magical, as I said before,” Teldin interrupted, seizing on something he understood in the gnome’s stream of speech.

The gnome stopped, scowled, made a note on his sheet, and looked up at Teldin again. “Magical examinations are on the fifteenth floor, but before you can go I need to know if the cloak is only apparently magical, magically powered by an outside source, or-

“Look, all I know is that it’s magical,” Teldin snapped as he rapped his spear on the pavement. The farmer held back his rapidly growing temper. He was beginning to understand why so few people had ever visited the gnomes. From behind him came Gomja’s warlike hum as he patiently waited for Teldin to finish before asking his own questions of the gnome.

“Magical, unknown,” the gnome muttered under his breath as he carefully made notes. “And your large friend, who does not look like anything that lives on Krynn or that is cataloged in the records of the Zoologist’s Guild, is he part of the magic or- Gomja bristled. “I came to seek passage on a spelljammer,” the giff grumbled.

“Oh!” the gnome blurted, suddenly too stupefied to speak. “Spelljammers? Thirty- fifth floor.”

“Let’s go. I want to get this thing off:’ Teldin urged before the gnome could begin again. “By the way, what’s your name?” The farmer marched through the gate, Gomja in tow, before the doorkeeper could stop them. The little fellow scrambled to gather up his papers, then decided their entrance was as good as an invited one and motioned for them to follow him down the shadowy corridor. He scuttled forward, weaved through a tangle of rope and pulleys, ducked under a large sign labeled Very important experiment, so do not touch and plug your ears, and casually wedged his thumbs into his ears, which were buried under a thick layer of hair. Shouting, not because it was loud- since the hall was fairly quiet-but because he could not hear himself, the gnome explained, “I am not going to tell you my full name, because my friend who was the gatekeeper before me but got too old to work the levers-”

“Slow down,” Teldin admonished, trying both to listen and figure out why the warning sign was posted. He hesitantly made to follow the instructions, then stopped, unwilling to appear undignified. The gnome looked and shook his head, wiggling his fingers to show the thumbs in his ears. “Do not talk so fast!” Teldin shouted.

“Right!” The gnome nodded. Without missing a beat, the little man picked up where he had left off. “-to work the levers that open the doors told me that the last outsiders yelled at him when he tried to tell them his name, and they yelled at him again when he tried to tell them his nickname-”

Teldin shouted back, loud enough for the gnome to hear, “Get to the point!”

“I am, but you keep yelling at me!” was the gnome’s complaint. His mouth opened to continue, but a sudden screech wailed down the corridor, rapidly growing to earsplitting intensity. Teldin winced in pain and clapped his hands over his ears. Behind him, Gomja staggered backward, giant paws pressed over his head. As he reeled, the giff crashed into the tangle of pulleys, triggering the rickety movement of hawsers through the blocks. Sandbags lashed to the cables dropped and rose all around, forcing the bulky Gomja to dodge and whirl, which only plunged the giff farther into the tangle of ropes and scaffolding. The burlap weights hit the stone floor with skull-splintering thuds and spewed sand, lead shot – even feathers – thoughout the passage. Just as Teldin tried to guess how a bag of feathers could split on impact, the high- pitched squeal abruptly became a reverberating bass that rolled back toward the center of the mountain.

As the last echoes of thunder rebounded in the distance, the weights stopped falling and Teldin’s eardrums ceased throbbing. He could hear faint cheers in the distance. As he stood listening, trying to guess what madness was going on, the human realized the gnome was still talking. The doorkeeper still had his thumbs jammed firmly in his ears.

– so because of that business with the avalanche, outsiders call me Fildusmangelhors-” The gnome misinterpreted Teldin’s amazed look. “It means Gnome at the Center of Extremely Cold Solidified Water Shaped into a Large, Hard, Compact Sphere Rolling-”

“Snowball?” Teldin interrupted, rubbing his temples to make the ringing noise go away. Behind him, Gomja irritatedly batted his way through the still-swinging pulleys to rejoin them. The gnome made no indication that Gomja’s calamity had caused anything amiss.

“Right, that is what outsiders call me,” beamed the doorkeeper. “Anyway, I would plug my ears if I were you, because the Communicator’s Guild is going to test its new long-range voice improver message system-” An alarm whistle blew, but by now Teldin hardly twitched. “See, that’s the alarm whistle-”

“If the test was a loud noise, I think they already did it, Snowball,” Teldin wryly commented at a shout, incredulous that the gnome had missed the racket. “Now, please, can we get going?”

“Oh, drats! I missed it!” Snowball said, popping his thumbs out of his ears.