"Any war. There's always a war someplace, isn't there?

Can you see the cavalry of the clouds, swooping down to destroy field and farm, town, temple, and castle alike? It would be easy, yes, very easy to fling down fire and stone on the heads of the foe. In the workshops of Mt. Nevermind there are stranger things still. Weapons that require no mag- ic power to destroy the entire world."

His morose vision quelled all conversation. Then, from above, Cupelix said, "It sounds as though you gnomes are planning to create your own race of dragons - mechanical dragons, completely obedient to their master's hand. All those things Master Sighter describes happened a thousand or more years ago, when dragons served in the great wars."

"Perhaps we shouldn't share the secret of aerial naviga- tion," Fitter said hesitantly.

"Knowledge must be shared," Stutts declared. "There is no evil in pure knowledge. It's how it's put to use that deter- mines what good or ill comes of it."

"Knowledge is power," said the dragon, catching Kitiara's eye. She buried her nose in her cup. When it was empty, she set it down on the table with a loud thump.

"We're forgetting one important thing," she said, wiping her lips on the back of her hand. "We owe a debt here. We oughtn't leave without paying it."

"Debt?" said Cutwood. "To whom?"

"Our host," Kitiara replied. "The excellent dragon, Cupe- lix." The gnomes broke into polite applause.

"Thank you, you're very kind," said the dragon.

"We would long ago have fallen into the hands of the Lunitarians, had it not been for the intervention of Cupelix,"

Kitiara went on. "Now we're safe, the flying ship is repaired, and we have a debt to pay. How shall we do it?"

"Would you care for some fresh water?" asked Rainspot.

"Kind, but unnecessary," said the dragon. "The Micones bring me water from the cavern depths."

"Do you have any machines to be repaired?" asked Flash thoughtfully.

"None whatsoever."

The remaining gnomes all tried suggestions, which the dragon politely dismissed as unneeded or inapplicable.

"What can we do?" said Wingover, frustrated.

Cupelix launched into a compressed description of his sit- uation inside the obelisk, and how he very much wanted to escape it. The gnomes just looked up at him and blinked.

"Is that all?" said Roperig.

"Nothing else?" added Birdcall by translation.

"Just this one simple task," answered the dragon.

Sturm pushed himself up to a seated position, mindful of the pressure this put on his injured leg. "Have you consid- ered, dragon, that a higher power intended for you to live out your life within these walls? Would we be committing an act of impiety by releasing you?"

"The gods raised these walls and brought these many eggs here, but in all the thousands of years I've been resident in the obelisk, no god, demigod, or spirit has deigned to reveal any such divine plan to me," said Cupelix. He shifted from one massive foot to the other. "You seem to think my being kept here like a rooster in a coop is a good thing; can you not see it as I do, that I am in fact a prisoner? Is it an evil deed to free an innocent captive?"

"What will happen to all the dragon eggs if you leave?"

asked Roperig.

"The Micones will tend them and guard the caverns for- ever. No egg will hatch without deliberate inducement. At this point, I am totally superfluous." "I say we help him," said Kitiara with conviction. She leaned forward to the table and gave each gnome a piercing look. "Who can honestly say the dragon hasn't earned our help?"

All was silent until Sturm said, "I will agree if the dragon answers one question: What will he do once he is free?"

"Revel in my liberty, of course. I shall travel thereafter, wherever the winds of heaven carry me."

Sturm folded his arms. "To Krynn?" he said sharply.

"Why not? Is there a fairer land betwixt here and the stars?"

"Dragons were driven out of Krynn long ago because their power was used to scheme and control the affairs of mortals. You cannot return to Krynn," Sturm said.

"Cupelix is not an evil dragon," Kitiara argued. "Do you think he could live so long on the moon of neutral magic and not be moderated by its influence?"

"And what if," Sturm said slowly, "Cupelix is no danger to Krynn. He is still a dragon. My ancestors fought and died to rid our world of dragons. How can I dishonor them by aid- ing a dragon - even a benign one - to return?"

Kitiara stood so suddenly that her chair fell over. "Suffer- ing gods! Who do you think you are, Sturm Brightblade?

My ancestors fought in the Dragon Wars, too. It was a dif- ferent time and different circumstances." She turned to the gnomes. "I put it to you. Shall we repay the dragon's hospi- tality with indifference? Will we fill our bellies with his food and drink, fix the ship with his help, and depart without so much as attempting to help him be free?"

She had them now. All nine little faces, paler in the short, faint days of Lunitari, were rapt with attention. Kitiara raised her hand to the silent Cupelix, who contrived to look forlorn and desolate atop his marble perch. "Put yourself in his place," she said grandly.

"Which one of us?" asked Cutwood.

"It doesn't matter - any or all of you. Think of how you'd feel, spending all your life inside this tower, unable to even walk outdoors. And consider that a dragon's life is not fifty years, or two hundred years, but twenty times two hun- dred! How would you feel, imprisoned in a lonely tower, with no one to talk to and no tools either?"

Roperig and Fitter gasped. "No tools?"

'Yes, and no wood or metal to work with. No gears or valves or pulleys."

"Horrible!" said Flash. Birdcall seconded him with a steady descending note.

"And we - you - have the chance to correct this wrong.

You have the inventive powers to devise some way to allow Cupelix to fly free. Will you do it?" she asked.

Wingover leaped to his feet. "We will! We will!" Rainspot and Fitter wept for the injustice inflicted on the dragon, while Stutts and Sighter were already bombarding each oth- er with first schemes to open the obelisk. Wingover got up on his chair and then on the table, pointing dramatically to the wingless hull of the Cloudmaster.

"To the ship!" he cried. "We must make plans!"

"Yes, yes, the tools are there," said Cutwood.

"And parchment and pencils!" "Chemicals and crucibles!"

"Rope and rigging!"

"Raisins!"

The gnomes surged away from the table, a tiny tide of boisterous idealism and ramshackle ingenuity. When the last gnome had disappeared up the ramp, Kitiara turned, smiling, to Sturm.

"Very clever," he said at last. "You did that well."

"Did what?" she replied guilelessly.

"We both know how impulsive the gnomes are. Between your passionate call for freedom and the prospect of a major engineering project, the obelisk hasn't got a chance."

"I hope you're right," said Cupelix. It was uncanny how easy it was to forget him when he stayed quiet above their line of sight. Sturm frowned. "Don't be so suspicious!" chid- ed the dragon. "If my intentions were black, do you think I would have resorted to banquets and cajoling? My Micones could have held the ship indefinitely until you agreed to help, or I could have left you to the tree-men."

"No one ever said you were evil, Cupelix," Sturm persist- ed. "Subtle, you are, and very much concerned with getting your way. If you could have gotten out of your prison by sacrificing Kit, myself, or the gnomes, I don't think you would have dallied long in giving us up."

Cupelix spread his wings and coiled his legs to spring into the air. "Be at ease, Master Brightblade. No one need be sac- rificed. We shall all see Krynn again, I promise."

Chapter 25.

Gnomeplans.

The gnomes divied into two groups. The first group, which consisted of Stutts, Flash, Wingover, Sighter, and Birdcall, was to study the problem of breaching the walls of the obelisk. The other four gnomes had as their task the safe removal of the contents of the tower, including Cupelix himself, the Cloudmaster, Sturm, and Kitiara.

The Micones returned with the night half gone, and on the dragon's orders, leveled out the dirt rampart they'd piled up some days before. Because there were more than fifty of the powerful giants at work, the land around the base of the obelisk was soon smooth and passable again. Kitiara and the Breaching Group (as they called themselves) went out- side to survey the structure.

"The walls at ground level are marble no less than eleven feet thick," Stutts reported, reading off his calculations.

"With the best steel picks and mattocks, it would take a dig- ging gang days and days to hack through all that rock."

"And furthermore," said Sighter, "my analysis of the stone shows it to be extremely hard, much harder, in fact, than regular marble. It's glazed."

"Glazed? Hmm." Kitiara looked to the obelisk's high pin- nacle. A flickering red aura wavered about the top. She reminded the gnomes of the violent discharges they'd seen when the sun came up. "All that energy, must have hard- ened the stone," she said.

Stutts reached to touch the cold stone. Between the wide courses was a band of shiny black, colder even than the scarlet marble. "Metal," he mused. "Metal for mortar."

"Really?" said Flash. "What sort of metal is it?"

Stutts scraped at the six-inch-wide band with his thumb- nail. The color did not scratch off. "It's soft," he said. "Lead, perhaps?"

Sighter and Birdcall examined the mortar, too. Birdcall confirmed with a twitter that the metal was indeed lead.

"Pretty solid," said Wingover, slapping the wall.

"I have an idea," Kitiara announced. The gnomes looked at her as if she'd said she was growing another head. "Well, I do. Here it is: I've seen lots of castle waills fall to besieging armies, and they are often as thick, if not as hard, as these walls. The besiegers brought them down by tunneling under the foundations and undermining the wall."

Consternation spread on the faces in the Breaching Party.

"Why, that's bloody simple," Stutts declared.

"Why didn't we think of that?" asked Flash.

"All we have to do is dig away the sand!" said Wingover.

They fell on their knees and crimson dirt flew. Kitiara, shaking her head, went inside to the ship. Sturm was on his feet, leaning on a crutch that Cutwood had fashioned for him. He was keeping aloof from the preparations, but he asked what the gnomes had decided to do.

"We're digging now," Kitiara remarked. She appropriated a wrecking bar from the store of tools and returned to the frantic diggers. Sturm hobbled after her.

The gnomes carved out a crater deeper than their own height in a very short time. Below grade, the foundation of the obelisk showed no alteration from the structure above - more massive marble blocks joined with lead. Kitiara cleared them out of the hole and swung the iron bar at the stone.

"Wait," said Wingover, "that's solid -"

She drew the bar back in a deep arc and struck the foun- dation with all her extra strength. There was a crack, like the breaking of a great tree branch, and a single chip of mar- ble flew off. It landed at Sturm's feet, a lost petal from a stone rose. He stooped awkwardly to pick it up.

"Look at the bar!" said Flash.

Kitiara held up the inch-thick rod. The flat prying edge had mushroomed out from the blow, and the whole bar was bent in a graceful curve. Kitiara braced the bar against her knee and tried to straighten it, but only succeeded in bend- ing it the opposite way. She tossed it aside in disgust.

"I tried to tell you," Wingover said as Kitiara climbed out of the hole. "The base of the tower rests on the roof of the cavern. It's solid stone."

"There are holes through it," said Sighter. "The Micones'

holes. We went through them ourselves, to visit the egg chamber."

"Mining won't work," Stutts said sadly. "We're no more able to bore through the foundation than the upper walls."

Kitiara clambered out of the hole and dusted off her hands and leggings. Her breath showed white in the night air. "It's up to you gnomes now."

The little men faced each other for a few minutes and talked in their lightning patter. Finally, Stutts poked his face out and said, "We'll have to consult with our colleagues."

"Do you have a plan?" asked Sturm. "The rudiments of one, but we need the wisdom of our fellows inside." The gnomes trooped off.

Sturm pushed the wrecking bar around with his toe.

"That much strength is hard to control, isn't it'!" When Kiti- ara didn't answer, he went on. "Are you getting stronger all the time, Kit? Is that why you move as if the world were made of glass?"

She snatched up the iron bar and, holding it in one hand, steadily bent the rod into a right angle - using only her thumb! She dropped the bar and said, "Is that what you wanted to see?"

Cupelix and the humans sat attentively on one side of the obelisk - which is to say, Sturm and Kitiara sat on crates while the dragon sat on his ledge above them. The gnomes sat on a bench facing them. Cutwood had rigged up an easel, which was shrouded with a loose cloth. Stutts stood by the easel, a long, pointed stick in his hand.

"Lady, gentleman, and beast," he began. The dragon's gusty sigh sent Stutts's beard whipping over his shoulder.

"Lady, gentleman, and dragon," Stutts said smoothly, "may I present the Obelisk Escape Auger, Mark I. He whisked the cloth away, revealing a large sheet of parchment tacked to the easel. A fantastic-looking device was drawn in brown ink. Supported by a massive timber frame was an enormous helical auger, a grossly enlarged version of the tool used by carpenters to bore holes. According to the figures on the parchment, the bit alone was fifteen feet wide, the optimum diameter, Stutts said, to allow Cupelix to pass through.

"Very ingenious," said the dragon, eyeing the peculiar cre- ation with evident skepticism. "How is it operated?"