"No one's going to cut or saw anything," Kitiara said. "If this stickiness is related to my strength or Sturm's visions, then you ought to give some thought to how it works before you start hacking away on a fellow's fingers."

"Quite so," said Sighter. "Now, could it be more than coincidence that we acquire abilities connected to our life's work I Rainspot makes rain, Lady Kitiara grows mightier as a warrior - and Roperig, master of cords and knots finds himself bound by his own hands. It's as though some subtle, yet powerful, force were enhancing our natural attributes."

"Roperig can probably free himself if he wishes to," said Kitiara. "Just as Rainspot can wish for his rain."

"All I wanted to do was keep my grip when we slipped in the ditch," Roperig said glumly.

He screwed his eyes tightly shut and wished hard.

"Harder! Concentrate!" urged Sighter. Cutwood whipped out his magnifying glass and peered intently at Roperig's stuck hands. Slowly, with faint sucking sounds, his hands peeled off the cart pole.

"Ow, ow!" Roperig whimpered, waving his hands about.

"That stings!"

The cart was shoved to the top of the gully rim. The gnomes passed a water bottle around. Fitter handed it to Kitiara, who had a short swig before offering it to Sturm.

He held it a long time, staring at the ground and not drink- ing.

"Now what?" she said, taking the bottle back.

"This magic worries me. Couldn't we refuse it somehow, give it back?"

She pushed the plug back into the bottle. "Why should we? We ought to get used to it, learn to control the effect."

Kitiara flexed a hand into a fist. She could feel the strength within her, like the warmth of sweet wine in her veins. It was intoxicating, that taste of power. She looked Sturm in the eye. "If we return to Krynn penniless, weaponless, and armorless, I hope our powers remain."

"It isn't right," he said stubbornly.

"Right? This is the only right that matters!" The water bottle exploded when she crushed it in her fingers.

Little Fitter stooped to get the glazed shards. "You broke the bottle, lady," he said. "Did you cut yourself?"

She showed him her undamaged hand. "A lot of things may get broken around here before I'm through," she said angrily.

By the hour Krynn had set on the northeast horizon, the explorers were more than halfway back to the Cloudmaster.

There was nothing ahead but flat ground, rocks, and red dust. They trod on, the humans apart and silent, the gnomes once more chattering.

The pilot of the flying ship walked slower and slower, until finally he stopped.

"Move along, lad," said Sighter, pushing Wingover in the back. "Don't want to get left behind, do you?"

"It's gone," announced Wingover.

"What's gone?"

"The ship. The Cloudmaster."

"You're plain daft. We're a good eight miles away, how could you see from here?"

"I don't know, but I can see the spot clearly," said Wingover. He squinted into the distance. "There's a big rut, some skid marks, and a few broken crates lying around, but the ship is gone."

Sturm and Kitiara converged on the far-seeing gnome.

"Are you sure, Wingover?" said Sturm.

"It's gone," the gnome insisted.

Sighter and the other gnomes were loudly skeptical, but Sturm ordered them to quicken their pace. The miles rolled aside, and still Wingover said the flying ship was missing from its landing place. He described in precise detail the jet- sam left at the scene, and his certainty infected the party with apprehension. With barely a mile left to go, Kitiara could stand it no longer. She broke into a run and quickly left the rest behind.

Sturm and the gnomes plodded on. Kitiara came jogging back. "Wingover's right," she said. "The Cloudmaster is gone." The gnomes immediately surrounded Wingover and started poking his face and pulling at his eyelids. The gnome pilot slapped at the intruding fingers, while his colleagues, completely forgetting the news Kitiara had brought, tried to discover the cause of his remarkable eyesight.

"It's the Lunitari magic," Wingover said. "Leave me alone!"

"Could Stutts and company have repaired the ship them- selves and flown away?" Sturm asked.

Kitiara loosened her fur collar to let the cool air in. "There are tracks all over - little circular imprints - I think the ship was carried off."

"Carried off?" said Fitter in awe.

"Do you know how much that ship weighs?" said Sighter.

She put out her chin and replied, "I don't care if it's heavi- er than Mt. Nevermind. Somebody or something picked it up and carried it away."

Sturm said, "Then 'they' are very strong, or very numer- ous."

"Or both," said Kitiara grimly.

Chapter 13.

The Walking Trees.

The sun shone over the fiels of stones where the Cloudmaster had first met Lunitari. The exploration party ringed the site, gazing helplessly at the empty furrow in the ground. As Wingover had seen from eight miles away, the flying ship and the three gnomes who remained on it were gone. The landing wheels that had broken off when they struck the moon were the only part of the ship left behind. Aside from the wheels, there were two empty crates, some bean sacks, and the remnants of a campfire.

"Who could have done this?" Bellcrank asked.

Cutwood crawled about with his lens, studying tracks.

Sturm kicked through the pitiful remains of the camp and said, "At least there's no sign of bloodshed."

"Sixty," Cutwood proclaimed. He had dirt on his nose and in his beard. "At least sixty people were here. They must've carried the Cloudmaster away on their shoulders, 'cause there are no marks of the hull being dragged."

"I don't believe it," said Sighter. "Sixty humans couldn't carry the Cloudmaster away on their shoulders."

"Even if they were as strong as Lady Kitiara?" asked Roperig. That gave them all pause.

Kitiara squatted by the trail of footprints. "No human feet made these," she said. "The impressions are round, almost like the hooves of unshod horses." She noted how closely spaced they were, too. "The clumsy fools must have been treading on each others' heels! We'll have to go after them. Track them down and get the ship back."

"No question about it," said Sturm. Kitiara fished the whetstone out of her belt pouch and sat down to hone the edges of her sword. Sturm gathered the gnomes together.

"We're going after your colleagues," he announced. The gnomes set up a cheer. Sturm waved for quiet. "Because we don't know how much of a head start they had, we have to move as fast as possible. That means," he saw the anticipa- tion in their faces, "each of you can take along only what you can carry."

That threw the gnomes into a tumult of preparation and counter-preparation. Before Sturm's eyes, they tore the Four-Gnome-Power Exploratory Cart to pieces and began assembling Single-Gnome Exploration Packs, made of wooden slats and strips of canvas and blanket cloth. The packs strapped on like knapsacks, but they towered twice as high as the gnomes stood. This called for all kinds of sup- porting straps and cords and counter-load balancing. Soon each gnome staggered under a complex tent of wood and cloth, but in the end they didn't leave one bit of their beloved equipment behind.

Sturm looked them over and groaned inwardly. At this rate, they would never find the Cloudmaster, never get back to Krynn, and never find his father. He wanted to rail at the little men, but he knew it would do no good. Gnomes pro- ceed at their own rate, awkwardly and haphazardly, but they do proceed.

Sighter waddled past, scribbling his notes under a creak- ing canopy of canvas. "I'm starting a new log," he said, swaying from side to side. The top of his exploration pack just missed Sturm's nose. 'This is no longer the Lunitari Exploratory March." He walked on. Wingover puffed along behind him.

"Now we are the Lunitari Flying Ship Rescue Mission,"

Wingover said.

The trail was wide and plain, and as far as anyone could tell, no effort had been made to hide it. Either those who had captured the flying ship were not very smart, or else they thought Stutts, Birdcall, and Flash were the only crew on board.

Kitiara and Wingover moved out ahead of the rest. She tested his long-distance vision by having the gnome describe arrangements of rocks from as far away as six miles. Poor Wingover got a terrific headache, and his short legs were no match for Kitiara's long, powerful stride". She shouldered his exploratory pack (its straps were strained to the bursting point) and lifted him by the coat collar. Tucking Wingover under her arm, Kitiara took to sprinting far ahead, relying on the gnome's far-seeing to keep them from getting lost.

The trail carried on in an unswerving line due west.

Sturm plodded along with the overburdened gnomes. They marched on both sides of the trail, arguing over the reasons for Wingover's gift of far-seeing. Sturm shaded his eyes from the sun and looked at the footprints. They were strikingly regular circular depressions in five distinct columns. He said to Bellcrank, "Don't these prints seem strange to you?"

"Undoubtedly, yes, Master Brightblade, as we've seen no animal life since arriving on the red moon," replied the gnome.

"Exactly! Have you noticed how very precise the foot- prints are? All of them are perfectly aligned."

"I don't follow."

"Even a gaited horse will have a little jog, a sideways motion now and then that distinguishes its track."

"A machine!" Bellcrank exclaimed. "Master Brightblade, you've done it! "Bellcrank grasped Roperig by his lapels.

"Don't you see, what else could pick up the Cloudmaster and carry it off but another machine!"

"By Reorx, I hadn't thought of that," said Roperig. Fitter rattled to Rainspot and told him Bellcrank's theory. The idea then leaped the trail to where Cutwood and Sighter were walking. Sighter pooh-poohed the notion.

"That doesn't solve a thing!" he said. "Where there's a machine, there has to be a machine-maker, yes?"

Bellcrank opened his mouth to vent his opinion, but just then Kitiara and Wingover came running at them. The war- rior woman carried the gnome under her arm like a loaf of bread. Wingover's head bounced and jiggled each time her heels struck the ground. In another situation, the image might have been comic.

Kitiara braced to a halt in front of Sturm. "There's a vil- lage up ahead," she said. She wasn't even out of breath.

"Village? What sort of village?" asked Roperig.

"A village village," said Wingover from under Kitiara's arm. "There's some kind of keep in the center of the place."

"Does the trail lead to this village?" asked Sturm.

Kitiara shook her head. "It veers off to the north, avoid- ing it completely."

"We ought to inspect this village," Cutwood called from thirty yards away. Sturm and the others looked at each oth- er, then at Cutwood.

"Can you hear what we're saying?" said Wingover in a bare whisper.

"Well certainly! Do you think I'm deaf?" Cutwood yelled back. Sighter tapped him on the shoulder.

"I can't hear them," he said. He grabbed Cutwood by the ears and turned his head from side to side, peering into the carpenter's ears. "Everything looks normal," he said. "Does my voice sound loud to you?"

"It does when you yell from an inch away!"

Sighter took Cutwood by the hand to where the others stood. "It's happened again," he reported. "Cutwood can hear normal conversation from thirty yards away, maybe more."

"Really? This calls for some tests," said Rainspot. He low- ered his pack to the ground and tried to disentangle himself from the cords and straps.

"Never mind!" Kitiara said. "What do we do about the village'?"

"How close will we have to pass if we follow the trail?"

Sturm queried.

"Spitting distance."

He squinted into the sky. "Half the day's gone. If we start now, we can be past the village before nightfall and not lose the trail." Sighter grumbled about the human's lack of scien- tific curiosity, but no gnome seriously considered going against Sturm's plan.

Sturm formed the party single file and sternly admon- ished the gnomes to keep quiet. "I feel trouble coming," he said. "A keep means a lord of some kind, and probably armed retainers. If," he added, "if this world is anything like Krynn."

Looking straight ahead, Kit said, "Are you afraid?"

"Afraid, no. Concerned, yes. Our stay here has never been more precarious. A pitched battle could destroy us even if we win."

"That's the difference between us, Sturm. You fight to pre- serve order and honor; I fight for myself. If trouble is brew- ing, the only thing to do is come out on top."

-No matter what happens to the rest of us?"

He scored a touch. Kitiara's eyes flashed. "I have never changed sides in a battle, nor betrayed a friend! The little men need our protection, and I'll shed my last drops of blood defending them. You've no right to imply otherwise!"

Sturm walked on silently for a moment, then said, "I'm sorry, Kit. It's becoming harder for me to know your mind. I think this magical strength you've gained has affected your outlook."

"My mind, you mean."

"Trust you to say it the most brutal way."

"Life is brutal, and so are facts."