The little expert circled slowly around Teldin, who was perched on a small stool, pausing only to finger the cloth. “It is possible to remove any item, given the correct application of-”

“Can you remove it now?” Teldin pressed quickly. He did not want them to spend all their time working out ‘‘correct applications."

“All things must be done in their right time, since it would be a mistake to rush into something without all the facts,” Ilwar said pompously, his straight-cut beard bobbing with each word. “In this case, an examination period of at least one full lunar period will be necessary before…"

Teldin groaned as the gnomes launched into a debate about how best to proceed. In fact, they ignored him as he sat on a stool between them. Finally they agreed to keep the cloak under observation for twenty-four hours before trying anything else. The decision having been reached- without once consulting the human-the gnomes all shook hands and filed out of the room, ignoring Teldin’s protests and ushering Gomja from the room as well. When the farmer tried to follow, a small squadron of armed fellows kept him at the door. He made several vain attempts to escape, then gave up and returned to his stool. “Have a good time, Gomja!” the farmer yelled to his partner, though he suspected that was unlikely. The door clicked shut, leaving Teldin alone in the chamber, barren except for the single stool on which he sat.

The twenty-four hours were perfectly uneventful at least, though extremely frustrating and boring to spend alone. Teldin wondered what the giff might be up to, where Cwelanas was right now, and whether what was left of his farm was still there. He thought of his parents, Amdar and Sharl. When three gnomes-bearded Ilwar and two assistants, Niggil, and Broz-ftnally returned, they ushered him to a table in a nearby testing chamber and once again circled, touched, smelled, and examined. The fact that the cloak had done nothing was treated with the greatest of importance, nonaction being an event in itself.

The gnomes proceeded to poke and prod, citing these steps as necessary to remove the cloak. Ilwar sat on the floor and assiduously took notes of every test and reaction.

“And you are sure you can’t take it off?” asked Ilwar, in a remarkably short-winded question. As the group’s leader, his full, black, and square-cut beard lent a great deal of solemnity to the proceedings.

“Not since I put it on. I can’t open the clasp,” Teldin explained once again, chin propped on the table, wearily watching their shadows.

“More testing is what we need!” Niggil eagerly suggested. Niggil was a goggle-eyed fellow and had been suggesting this course of action from the start. “Puncture stress test, material resistance to temperature variability of extreme degrees, impact absorption analysis. I have all the tools right here!” the gnome rattled on excitedly. Teldin was getting used to the speed with which the gnomes spoke. He understood most of the words, though not always their meaning.

Suddenly one of the shadows on the wall waved a long, sharp-looking dagger. “See, we can puncture stress test it right here!” The shadow dagger suddenly pointed toward Teldin’s shadow back.

In an instant, Teldin was on his feet, sending Broz, the fat one, sprawling from his stool. There was a clink as the metal point of Niggil’s dagger bit stone. “Wait! Just wait right there!” Teldin bellowed, his face quivering with rage. He had been poked and jabbed enough already. The farmer wrapped the cloak tightly around himself and prowled the edges of the room, keeping Ilwar, Niggil, and Broz in sight at all times. “No more! That’s enough examining, and there will be no more testing!" As he spoke, Teldin whirled on Niggil, who was trying to creep forward with his dagger. “Just tell me this: Can you get this thing off?"

“Indubitably,” Ilwar answered gravely, scowling at the suggestion that there was something they couldn't do.

“Theoretically possible,” said Niggil.

“We could cut it off,” suggested Broz in his relatively slow, earthy drawl. The other two both turned to Broz and evaluated his proposal.

“Don’t even try!” Teldin remarked through gritted teeth.

Broz looked up in mild surprise. “Oh, I didn’t mean the cloak or the chain or the clasp,” the quiet one finally explained in a torrent of words, “since we certainly don’t want to damage these, but I have a friend in the Healer’s Guild, and he’s been working for years now on a device that should keep a person’s head perfectly functional while separated from the rest of the body, and now you’ve come along, and it’s a perfect opportunity to test his theories and see if they really work-” Broz took a deep breath while Teldin stared at him in disbelief-”then,” Broz continued, “he could begin work on learning how to reattach the head!”

“Capital idea,” applauded Niggil, “then we can do tests!’’

Without waiting for another suggestion, Teldin seized his spear, long since returned from examination by the Weapons Guild, and sprang to the door. “Snowball!” he bellowed at the portal. “Take me to Gomja now!”

“There, sir. It’s not much too look at, but the gnomes say it’ll get into the void.” High on the thirty-fifth level, Gomja pointed out a rough-hewn window to the lake below, where a ramshackle and half-built ship, another great pride of gnomish engineering, floated. Teldin and Gomja were watching the work from well above the floor of the volcano, looking down on the crater lake filled with the pale-blue waters collected from yearly snowmelt and rains.

“It’s not even finished!” Teldin protested. Teldin leaned on the windowsill and studied the craft. It didn’t look like any ship he’d ever seen, neither the Silver Spray nor even the Penumbra’s wreckage. It looked more like an immense, flat-bottomed river barge topped with a collection of buildings, catwalks, gantries, windmills, gigantic chimneys, and, amidships, a pair of waterwheels mounted on the sides. There was a semblance of order, with decks, a sterncastle, and a single small mast, but the whole thing was cloaked in jury-rigged scaffolding that obscured details. Teldin was amazed the whole thing even floated. “They’ve got a lot of work to do,” he scoffed.

“I think it is finished, sir,” Gomja cheerfully offered, gamely struggling to suppress a grin. “That’s the way the gnomes want her to look.”

“Want?” Teldin walked away from the window, shaking his head in disbelief. Barely escaping three days of “examination” and hardly recovered from a harrowing barrel ride up to the thirty-fifth level, Teldin couldn’t fathom any more wonders of gnomish tinkering. He grabbed one of the too-small chairs from a corner and sat, his long legs sprawling across the floor.

“Do you understand these gnomes?” He sighed with frustration, throwing his arms out wide. Gomja answered with a lopsided grin and a shrug, but Teldin did not see it, because his head had flopped back so he could stare at the ceiling.

Before any more could be said, the door banged open and a small herd of gnomes barged into the room, solemn Ilwar in the lead, Niggil, Broz, and Snowball following. While Ilwar managed to maintain a stately appearance, the other three reminded Teldin of chickens leaving the coop in the morning, swirling and half-flying in every direction. Naturally the gnomes were all talking at once.

Snowball was the first to make himself heard. “Since I found you, it is my pleasure to say that your cloak is-”

“Amazing,” Niggil interrupted. “Your cloak, as we have determined, is-”

“Quite amazing,” Snowball countered, glaring at the uppity Niggle, “because we are certain it is not- “From this-” Niggil cut in again.