War of the Twins (14 page)

“Drat,” said the gnome and, with a wave of his hand, he sent the chair back to wherever it had come from, and sat down, disconsolately, on Tasslehoff’s stool.

Having visited gnomes and seen their inventions before, Tasslehoff mumbled what was proper. “Quite interesting … truly an advanced design in chairs.…”

“No, it isn’t,” Gnimsh snapped, much to Tas’s amazement. “It’s a rotten design. Belonged to my wife’s first cousin. I should have known better than to think of it. But”—he sighed—“sometimes I get homesick.”

“I know,” Tas said, swallowing a sudden lump in his throat. “If-if you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing here, if you’re—uh—not dead?”

“Will you tell me what
you’re
doing here?” Gnimsh countered.

“Of course,” said Tas, then he had a sudden thought. Glancing around warily, he leaned forward. “No one
minds
, do they?” he asked in a whisper. “That we’re talking, I mean? Maybe we’re not supposed to—”

“Oh,
they
don’t care,” Gnimsh said scornfully. “As long as we leave them alone, we’re free to go around anywhere. Of course,” he added, “anywhere looks about the same as here, so there’s not much point.”

“I see,” Tas said with interest. “How do you travel?”

“With your mind. Haven’t you figured that out yet? No, probably not.” The gnome snorted. “Kender were never noted for their brains.”

“Gnomes and kender
are
related,” Tas pointed out in miffed tones.

“So I’ve heard,” Gnimsh replied skeptically, obviously not believing any of it.

Tasslehoff decided, in the interests of maintaining peace, to change the subject. “So, if I want to go somewhere, I just think of that place and I’m there?”

“Within limits, of course,” Gnimsh said. “You can’t, for example, enter any of the holy precincts where the dark clerics go—”

“Oh.” Tas sighed, that having been right up at the top of his list of tourist attractions. Then he cheered up again. “You made that chair come out of nothing and, come to think of it,
I
made this bed and this stool. If I think of something, will it just appear?”

“Try it,” Gnimsh suggested.

Tas thought of something.

Gnimsh snorted as a hatrack appeared at the end of the bed. “Now
that’s
handy.”

“I was just practicing,” Tas said in hurt tones.

“You better watch it,” the gnome said, seeing Tas’s face light up. “Sometimes things appear, but not quite the way you expected.”

“Yeah.” Tas suddenly remembered the tree and the dwarf. He shivered. “I guess you’re right. Well, at least we have each other. Someone to talk to. You can’t imagine how
boring
it was.” The kender settled back on the bed, first imagining—with caution—a pillow. “Well, go ahead. Tell me your story.”

“You start.” Gnimsh glanced at Tas out of the corner of his eye.

“No, you’re my guest.”

“I insist.”

“I
insist.”

“You. After all, I’ve been here longer.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.… Go on.”

“But—” Tas suddenly saw this was getting nowhere, and though they apparently had all eternity, he didn’t plan on spending it arguing with a gnome. Besides, there was no real reason why he
shouldn’t
tell his story. He enjoyed telling stories, anyway. So, leaning back comfortably, he told his tale. Gnimsh listened with interest, though he did rather irritate Tas by constantly interrupting and telling him to “get on with it,” just at the most exciting parts.

Finally, Tas came to his conclusion. “And so here I am. Now yours,” he said, glad to pause for breath.

“Well,” Gnimsh said hesitantly, looking around darkly as though afraid someone might be listening, “it all began years and years ago with my family’s Life Quest. You do know”—he glared at Tas—“what a Life Quest is?”

“Sure,” said Tas glibly. “My friend Gnosh had a Life Quest. Only his was dragon orbs. Each gnome has assigned to him a particular project that he must complete successfully or never get into the Afterlife.” Tas had a sudden thought. “That’s not why you’re here, is it?”

“No.” The gnome shook his wispy-haired head. “My family’s Life Quest was developing an invention that could take us from one dimensional plane of existence to another. And”—Gnimsh heaved a sigh—“mine worked.”

“It worked?” Tas said, sitting up in astonishment.

“Perfectly,” Gnimsh answered with increasing despondency.

Tasslehoff was stunned. He’d never before heard of such a thing—a gnomish invention that worked … and perfectly, too!

Gnimsh glanced at him. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I’m a failure. You don’t know the half of it. You see—
all
of my inventions work. Every one.”

Gnimsh put his head in his hands.

“How—how does that make you a failure?” Tas asked, confused.

Gnimsh raised his head, staring at him. “Well, what good is inventing something if it works? Where’s the challenge? The need for creativity? For forward thinking? What would become of progress? You know,” he said with deepening gloom, “that if I hadn’t come here, they were getting ready to exile me. They said I was a distinct threat to society. I set scientific exploration back a hundred years.”

Gnimsh’s head drooped. “That’s why I don’t mind being here. Like you, I deserve it. It’s where I’m likely to wind up anyway.”

“Where is your device?” Tas asked in sudden excitement.

“Oh,
they
took it away, of course,” Gnimsh answered, waving his hand.

“Well!”—the kender thought—“can’t you imagine one? You imagined up that chair?”

“And you saw what
it
did!” Gnimsh replied. “Likely I’d end up with my father’s invention. It took him to another plane of existence, all right. The Committee on Exploding Devices is studying it now, in fact, or at least they were when I got stuck here. What are you trying to do? Find a way out of the Abyss?”

“I have to,” Tas said resolutely. “The Queen of Darkness will win the war, otherwise, and it will all be my fault. Plus,
I’ve got some friends who are in terrible danger. Well, one of them isn’t exactly a friend, but he
is
an interesting person and, while he
did
try to kill me by making me break the magical device, I’m certain it was nothing personal. He had a good reason.…”

Tas stopped.

“That’s it!” he said, springing up off the bed. “That’s it!” he cried in such excitement that a whole forest of hatracks appeared around the bed, much to the gnome’s alarm.

Gnimsh slid off his stool, eyeing Tas warily. “What’s it?” he demanded, bumping into a hatrack.

“Look!” Tas said, fumbling with his pouches. He opened one, then another. “Here it is!” he said, holding a pouch open to show Gnimsh. But, just as the gnome was peering into it, Tas suddenly slammed it shut. “Wait!”

“What?” Gnimsh asked, startled.

“Are
they
watching?” Tas asked breathlessly. “Will they know?”

“Know what?”

“Just—will they know?”

“No, I don’t suppose so,” Gnimsh answered hesitantly. “I can’t say for sure, since I don’t know what it is they’re not supposed to know. But I do know that they’re all pretty busy, right now, from what I can tell. Waking up evil dragons and that sort of thing. Takes a lot of work.”

“Good,” Tas said grimly, sitting on the bed. “Now, look at this.” He opened his pouch and dumped out the contents. “What does that remind you of?”

“The year my mother invented the device designed to wash dishes,” the gnome said. “The kitchen was knee-deep in broken crockery. We had to—”

“No!” Tas snapped irritably. “Look, hold this piece next to this one and—”

“My dimensional traveling device!” Gnimsh gasped. “You’re right! It
did
look something like this. Mine didn’t have all these gewgaw jewels, but.… No, look. You’ve got it all wrong. I think that goes here, not there. Yes. See? And then this chain hooks on here and wraps around like so. No, that’s
not quite the way. It must go … Wait, I see. This has to fit in there first.” Sitting down on the bed, Gnimsh picked up one of the jewels and stuck it into place. “Now, I need another one of these red gizmos.” He began sorting through the jewels. “What did you do to this thing, anyway?” he muttered. “Put it into a meat grinder?”

But the gnome, absorbed in his task, completely ignored Tas’s answer. The kender, meanwhile, took advantage of the opportunity to tell his story again. Perching on the stool, Tas talked blissfully and without interruption while, totally forgetting the kender’s existence, Gnimsh began to arrange the myriad jewels and little gold and silver things and chains, stacking them into neat piles.

All the while Tas was talking, though, he was watching Gnimsh, hope filling his heart. Of course, he thought with a pang, he
had
prayed to Fizban, and there was every possibility that, if Gnimsh got this device working, it might whisk them onto a moon or turn them both into chickens or something. But, Tas decided, he’d just have to take that chance. After all, he’d promised he’d try to straighten things out, and though finding a failed gnome wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind, it was better than sitting around, waiting to die.

Gnimsh, meanwhile, had imagined up a piece of slate and a bit of chalk and was sketching diagrams, muttering, “Slide jewel A into golden gizmo B—”

wretched place, my brother,” Raistlin remarked softly as he slowly and stiffly dismounted from his horse.

“We’ve stayed in worse,” Caramon commented, helping Lady Crysania from her mount. “It’s warm and dry inside, which makes it one hundred times better than out here. Besides,” he added gruffly, glancing at his brother, who had collapsed against the side of his horse, coughing and shivering, “we none of us can ride farther without rest. I’ll see to the horses. You two go on in.”

Crysania, huddled in her sodden cloak, stood in the foot-deep mud and stared dully at the inn. It was, as Raistlin said, a wretched place.

What the name might have been, no one knew, for no sign hung above the door. The only thing, in fact, that marked it as an inn at all was a crudely lettered slate stuck in the broken front window that read, “WayFarrers WelCum”. The stone building itself was old and sturdily constructed. But the roof was falling in, though attempts had been made, here and
there, to patch it with thatch. One window was broken. An old felt hat covered it, supposedly to keep out the rain. The yard was nothing but mud and a few bedraggled weeds.

Raistlin had gone ahead. Now he stood in the open doorway, looking back at Crysania. Light glowed from inside, and the smell of wood smoke promised a fire. As Raistlin’s face hardened into an expression of impatience, a gust of wind blew back the hood of Crysania’s cloak, driving the slashing rain into her face. With a sigh, she slogged through the mud to reach the front door.

“Welcome, master. Welcome, missus.”

Crysania started at the voice that came from beside her—she had not seen anyone when she entered. Turning, she saw an ill-favored man huddling in the shadows behind the door, just as it slammed shut.

“A raw day, master,” the man said, rubbing his hands together in a servile manner. That, a grease-stained apron, and a torn rag thrown over his arm marked him as the innkeeper. Glancing around the filthy, shabby inn, Crysania thought it appropriate enough. The man drew nearer to them, still rubbing his hands, until he was so close to Crysania that she could smell the foul odor of his beery breath. Covering her face with her cloak, she drew away from him. He seemed to grin at this, a drunken grin that might have appeared foolish had it not been for the cunning expression in his squinty eyes.

Looking at him, Crysania felt for a moment that she would almost prefer to go back out into the storm. But Raistlin, with only a sharp, penetrating glance at the innkeeper, said coldly, “A table near the fire.”

“Aye, master, aye. A table near the fire, aye. Good on such a wicked day as this be. Come, master, missus, this way.” Bobbing and bowing in a fawning manner that was, once again, belied by the look in his eyes, the man shuffled sideways across the floor, never taking his gaze from them, herding them toward a dirty table.

“A wizard be ye, master?” asked the innkeeper, reaching out a hand to touch Raistlin’s black robes but withdrawing it immediately at the mage’s piercing glance. “One of the Black
’uns too. It’s been a long while since we’ve seen the like, that it has,” he continued. Raistlin did not answer. Overcome by another fit of coughing, he leaned heavily upon his staff. Crysania helped him to a chair near the fire. Sinking down into it, he huddled gratefully toward the warmth.

“Hot water,” ordered Crysania, untying her wet cloak.

“What be the matter with ’im?” the innkeeper asked suspiciously, drawing back. “Not the burning fever, is it? Cause if it is, ye can go back out—”

“No,” Crysania snapped, throwing off her cloak. “His illness is his own, of no harm to others.” Leaning down near the mage, she glanced back up at the innkeeper. “I asked for hot water,” she said peremptorily.

“Aye.” His lip curled. He no longer rubbed his hands but shoved them beneath the greasy apron before he shuffled off.