Margaret Weis - Dragon Wing

Limbeck knew at once he had taken a wrong turning. He knew he should go back, but the only place he had to go was home, and he was aware that by now word of his getting kicked out of Kicksey-Winsey school would have reached his parents. Braving the terrors of Outside was far more attractive than braving the wrath of his father, and so Limbeck, without a second thought, walked Outside, letting the door slam shut behind him.

Learning to walk in mud was an experience all in itself. On his third step, he slipped and plunked down heavily in the muck. Upon rising, he discovered that one boot was firmly mired, and it took all his strength to tug it out. Peering dimly around, Limbeck concluded that the slag heaps might provide better walking. He slogged his way through the muck and eventually reached the piles of coralite that had been tossed aside by the strong digger hands of the Kicksey-Winsey. Climbing up on the hard, pocked surface of the coralite, Limbeck was pleased to note he was right-walking was much easier up here than in the mud.

He guessed, too, that the view should be spectacular, and thought he really should see it. Pulling out his spectacles, he hooked them over his ears and gazed around.

The smokestacks and holding tanks, lightning-flinging arms and huge revolving wheels of the Kicksey-Winsey thrust up from the flat plains of Drevlin; many of them towering so far into the sky that their steaming heads were lost in the clouds. Limbeck stared at the Kicksey-Winsey in awe. One tended, when one served only one portion of the gigantic creation, to concentrate on just that one part and lose sight of the whole. The old saying about not seeing the wheel for the cogs came to Limbeck’s mind.

“Why?” he asked (which was, by the way, the very question that had caused him to be thrown out of school). “Why is the Kicksey-Winsey here? Why did the Mangers build it, then leave it? Why do the immortal Welves come and go every month and never fulfill their promise to lift us up into the shining realms above? Why? Why? Why?”

The questions beat in Limbeck’s head until either these resounding whys or the wind rushing past him or the act of staring up at the gleaming structure of the Kicksey-Winsey or all three together began to make him dizzy. Blinking, he took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. Clouds were massing on the horizon, but the Geg judged it would be some time yet before another storm swept over the land. If he went home now, a storm of a different sort would sweep over him. Limbeck decided to explore.

Fearing he might fall and break his precious spectacles, Limbeck tucked them carefully into the pocket of his shirt and began to make his way across the slag heap. Being short and stocky and deft in their movements, Gegs are remarkably surefooted. They clump across narrow catwalks built hundreds of feet above the ground without turning a hair in their beards. Gegs desiring to go from one level to another will often catch hold of the spokes of one of the huge wheels and ride it up, dangling by their hands, from the bottom to the top. Despite the fact that he couldn’t see very clearly, Limbeck soon figured out how to traverse the cracked and broken piles of coralite. He was just moving really well and making some headway when he stepped on a loose chunk that tilted and threw him sideways. After that, he had to concentrate on watching his footing, and it was undoubtedly due to this that he forgot to watch the approach of the clouds. It was only when a gust of wind nearly blew him off his feet and drops of rain splattered into his eyes that he remembered the storm.

Hastily Limbeck pulled out his spectacles, put them on, and looked around. He had traveled quite a distance without knowing it. The clouds were swooping down on him, the shelter of the Kicksey-Winsey was some distance away, and it would take him a long time to retrace his route among the broken coralite. The storms on Drevlin were fierce and dangerous. Limbeck could see blackened holes blown in the coralite from the deadly lightning strikes. If the lightning didn’t get him, there was no doubt that the giant hailstones would, and the Geg was just beginning to think that he wouldn’t have to worry about facing his father ever again when, turning completely around, he saw a large Something on the fast-darkening horizon.

Just what the Something was, he couldn’t tell from this distance (his spectacles were covered with water), but there was a chance that it might offer shelter from the storm. Keeping his spectacles on, knowing that he would need them to help locate the object, Limbeck tottered and stumbled over the slag heap.

Rain began pouring down, and Limbeck soon discovered he could see better without spectacles than he could with them, and pulled them off. The object was now nothing but a blur in front of him, but it was a blur that was rapidly growing larger, indicating he was getting nearer. Without his spectacles, Limbeck couldn’t see what it was, until he was actually standing right in front of it.

“A Welf ship!” he gasped.

Though he had never seen one, the Geg recognized the ship instantly from the descriptions given by those who had. Made of dragon skin stretched over wood, with huge wings that kept it soaring in the air, the ship was monstrous in both appearance and size. The magical power of the Welves kept it afloat, carrying them from the heavens to the lowly realm of the Gegs below. But this ship wasn’t flying or floating. It was lying on the ground, and Limbeck, staring at it nearsightedly through the driving rain, could have sworn—if such a thing were possible for a ship of the immortal Welves—that it was broken. Pieces of sharp wood jutted up at odd angles. The dragon skin was torn and rent, leaving gaping holes.

A bolt of lightning striking quite near him, and the resultant thunder, caused the Geg to remember his danger. Hurriedly he leapt into one of the holes that had been torn in the side of the ship.

A sickening smell made Limbeck gag.

“Ugh.” He grasped his nose with his hand. “It reminds me of the time the rat crawled up the chimney and died. I wonder what’s causing it.” The storm had settled in; the darkness inside the ship was intense. The lightning strikes were almost continuous, however, providing brief flashes of illuminating light before the ship was once again plunged into pitch-darkness. The light didn’t help Limbeck much. Nor did his spectacles, when he finally remembered to put them on. The interior of the ship was strange and made no sense to him. He couldn’t tell up from down or what was floor or wall. Objects were scattered about, but he didn’t know what they were or what they did and was reluctant to touch them. He had a fear, in the back of his mind, that if he bothered anything the strange craft might suddenly rise up and fly off with him. And though the thought of such an adventure was somewhat exciting, Limbeck knew that if his father had been mad before, he would positively foam at the mouth to hear that his son had in any way annoyed the Welves. Limbeck resolved to keep near the doorway, holding his nose, until the storm ended and he could find his way back to Het. But the whys and whats and wherefores that were continually plunging him into trouble in school began buzzing in his brain.

“I wonder what those are,” he muttered, staring at a number of fascinating-looking blurs lying scattered about on the floor just a few feet in front of him.

Cautiously he drew nearer. They didn’t look dangerous. In fact, they looked like . . .

“Books!” said Limbeck in astonishment. “Just like the ones the old clark used to teach me to read.”

Before Limbeck quite knew what was happening, the “why” was propelling him forward.

He was very near the objects and could see, with growing excitement, that they were books, when his foot struck against something that was soft and squishy. Leaning down, gagging at the foul smell, Limbeck waited for another lightning flash to show him the obstacle.