"No magic," Sturm said stubbornly. His whole leg was achingly numb. It was cold, very cold. The dragon's broad brass face swooped down close to his.

"No magic, even if it means your life?" said the polished reptilian voice.

"No magic," Sturm insisted.

Rainspot turned Sturm's face away and put a bitter tasting root in his mouth. The gnome said, "Chew, please."

Confident that he was in the thoroughly non-magical care of the gnomes, Sturm did as he was told. Numbness spread through his body.

He didn't fall asleep. Sturm quite distinctly heard the gnomes consulting over his wound, heard rather than felt the glass spear tip being removed from his flesh, heard the dragon offering advice on how best to close the gaping hole.

Then he was lying on his stomach, the numbness gone.

Sturm's leg throbbed unmercifully. He lifted himself up on his hands.

"If you say 'where am I?' I'll hit you," said Kitiara genially.

"What happened?" he said.

"You were injured," said Sighter, who was squatting near

Sturm's head.

"That I recall well. Who repelled the tree-folk?"

"I wish I could say that I did," Kitiara said.

"We did it," Stutts declared, coming up behind Sighter.

Cupelix rumbled something that Sturm couldn't make out.

Stutts blanched and said, "With help from the dragon, that is."

"We adapted a gnomeflinger design," Wingover said. He knelt alongside Stutts and peeked over Sighter's shoulder.

"We used Cutwood's pants, filled with dirt, as a test subject for flinging. Birdcall suggested hurling the pants at the Luni tarians, but that would have sufficed for only one shot -"

"So me and Roperig gave up ours," said Fitter, who squirmed into view. His striped long johns were eloquent proof of the truth of his statement. "We filled 'em with dirt and tied 'em to the throwing arms -"

"- and used the gear system to pummel the enemy off the wall," Roperig finished for his apprentice.

"Very clever," Sturm admitted. "But why should fiercely angry tree-folk flee when thumped with a few pairs of pants? Why didn't they swarm all over you?"

"That was my doing," said Cupelix modestly. "I wove a spell of illusion over the gnomes and their machine. The

Lunitarians saw a huge, flame-breathing red dragon attack ing them, its terrible claws snatching them one by one from the rampart. The physical effect, combined with the vivid illusion, was quite effective. The tree-men have fled."

"What's to prevent them from recovering their nerve and coming back?" said Kitiara.

"At sunset, I shall send the Micones to harry them back to their village once and for all."

Their story told, the gnomes dispersed. Sturm called

Stutts back to him.

"Yes?" said the senior gnome.

"Have you inspected the repairs on the Cloudmaster?"

"Not yet."

"Urge your colleagues forward, my friend. We must be off this world soon," said Sturm.

Stutts stroked his short, silky beard. "What's the hurry?

The new engine components ought to be tested first."

Sturm lowered his voice. "The dragon may believe the tree-men will not come back, but I don't want to take the chance of being besieged in here again. Besides Cupelix will -" He closed his mouth when he saw Kitiara coming.

"We'll speak later," Sturm finished. Stutts nodded and strolled back to the Cloudmaster, his thumbs hooked in his vest pockets. Kitiara paid no attention to his exaggerated nonchalance.

Kitiara dropped down beside Sturm. "Does it hurt much'"

"Only when I dance," he said uncharacteristically.

She snorted. 'You'll live," she said. She poked around the bandaged area and added, "Probably won't even have a limp. What made you charge into those tree-men? You weren't carrying a shield or wearing leg armor."

"I saw you go down," he said. "I was going to help you."

Kitiara was silent for a moment. "Thank you."

Sturm gingerly eased himself onto his good side and sat up. "That's better! I was getting a headache lying like that."

'You know what the most unforgivable thing is, don't you? That you and I, two fighters soundly trained in the warrior arts, should fall to a bunch of savages and be saved by a band of nutty gnomes using pants full of dirt as flails!"

Kitiara started to laugh. All the tensions and suspicions sur faced and flew away in her laughter. Tears welled in her eyes, and she couldn't stop.

"Little Fitter's pants," Sturm said, feeling the guffaws building deep inside. "Little Fitter's pants disguised as the claws of a red dragon!" Kitiara nodded helplessly, her face contorted with hysterical mirth. Great rolling laughs boomed out of Sturm. His shaking jounced painfully his tightly wrapped wound, but he couldn't stop. When he tried to speak, all he could gasp was "Trouser Flail!" before erupt ing into fresh gales.

Kitiara leaned against him, forcing herself to breathe in the too-short intervals between new merry convulsions.

Her head rested on Sturm's shoulder; she draped an arm around his neck.

Above them, Cupelix perched in a shadowed corner of the tower, a shaft of amber sunlight falling across the enfolding tips of his leathery wings. Illuminated from behind, the brass dragon's skin shone like gold.

Despite his earlier protests, when Kitiara had brought

Sturm a bowl of venison stew that Cupelix had made, he ate without a second glance. There was something more; he accepted her offer to make a backres out of her fur cloak and blanket. Ordinarily, Sturm would have stoically reject ed such treatment.

The gnomes ate heartily, as usual, under the gentle glow of the four Micones who remained behind when the bulk of them went out to chase the Lunitarians away. The ants hung overhead by their forelegs like grotesque paper lanterns, the ominous barbed stingers the only threatening aspect of their otherwise benign posture.

"The new parts showed no sign of cracking or fatigue,"

Flash said, ladling gravy over his roast. "If we can get a decent charge of lightning, I don't see why we couldn't fly home right away." He tried to set the metal ladle back in its bowl, but it clung to his magnetic hands. Cutwood plucked it off for him.

"You know," Sighter said, stirring his pudding idly, "with the proper angle of flight, we could very likely fly from here to one of the other moons." This option was greeted with thunderous silence. "Solinari or the dark moon. What do you think?"

Birdcall answered for all of them. He put two fingers to his lips and made a very rude noise.

Sighter grumbled, "No need to be insulting."

"The important thing is to return to Mt. Nevermind and announce our success," said Stutts. "Aerial navigation is now a fact, and the gnomish people must not delay in exploring all the possibilities it presents."

Sturm, reclining on the floor by the dinner table, spoke up: "What possibilities do you foresee?"

"Exploring and mapping can be done easily from the air.

These would be a boon to navigation. All the heavy work of transport now done by ships could be more efficiently done in the skies. I can see a time when great aerial galleons, with six or eight pairs of wings, ply trade routes in the clouds, bringing goods to and from every corner of Krynn…"

Stutts got quite lost in the grandness of his conception.

"Then there's war," said Sighter ominously.

"What war?" asked Kitiara.

"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."