Brian Murphy - The Search For Magic

Sorter walked under it, staring up. Strange noises came from above, but he couldn’t see anyone.

“Franni?” he called.

An iron chain with links as long as his forearms dropped almost on top of him. He dived for the ground as a cast-iron hook came to a stop so close to him that it ruffled the hair on the back of his neck.

An oil-soaked and thoroughly delighted kender slid down the chain, stopping with one foot in the hook.

“Mr. Sorter?”

“Just Sorter.” The gnome crawled out from under the hook. The kender had so much grease, oil, glue, and other substances on him that he was barely recognizable. “Franni?”

“It’s good to see you!” The kender hopped off the chain. “What are you doing here?”

Sorter said with a stern glare, “I’m looking for library books.”

Franni stared innocently back. “Then you should have stayed where you were, Mr. Sorter. There were lots of books there.”

“I’m looking for three books that aren’t there,” Sorter said.

“Three books? Now there’s a coincidence.” Franni pointed to his duffel, which lay alongside one wooden leg of the Walking Sledgehammer. “I happen to have exactly three books. Do you think they’re the ones you’re looking for?”

Sorter rubbed his eyes. “That depends. Where did you get them?”

“Oh, around,” Franni said vaguely. “Nobody was reading them, and that seemed a shame. They’re really interesting. Do you know the best part? The people of the village of Mormar are supplying parts for me to build the machines in the books. I’m nearly done with this one.”

He slapped one of the tripod legs affectionately. An unattached beam slid off from the drive mechanism and slammed into the earth beside him, nearly knocking him senseless.

“Are you all right?” Sorter gasped. “Are you hurt?”

“Not yet,” Franni said, poking unhappily at the beam. “I don’t think it was supposed to do that. Do you know how these things are supposed to work?”

Sorter spoke with absolute faith. “I could build them off the plans.”

“Good! Then you can stay and help me build these machines! I’m having a bit of trouble with this one,” Franni admitted.

Sorter said flatly, “I can’t. I must take the books back to the Repository immediately. It’s my duty.”

Franni looked disappointed. Sorter stood staring up at the machine. His palms itched. Before he quite knew what he was doing, his palms had taken hold of one of the books and opened it to the plans of the Walking Sledgehammer.

“Can you tell what’s wrong?” Franni asked innocently. “The others worked fine, but this one-” He caught himself, shut his mouth tight, and kept his eyes on the gnome.

Sorter looked at mallet hanging over them, its handle as long as a mature tree trunk.

“Franni,” said Sorter uncomfortably, not wanting to hurt the kender’s feelings, “is there any chance that you’ve… er… exaggerated some of the machine’s dimensions?”

Franni stared blankly. “Dimensions? Dimensions…” He glanced at one of the books. “Oh. Right. Those little numbers beside each the sketches.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know what they meant, so I ignored them.”

“You what?” Sorter said. “Franni, you can’t ignore the numbers! Gnome designs are very complicated. They have to be executed to every specification, or they may not work. Even then,” he conceded, “sometimes there are a few problems. But if you change the dimensions, you don’t have any idea what the machine will do when you start it up.”

“But we’ll know now, won’t we, Mr. Sorter? Because you know what the numbers mean, and you can help me fix it. Toss me that thing with the propeller on the end, will you? I think it fits up here.”

Sorter thought of the Great Repository. He thought of Blastmaster, of thirty years of work going up in a moment’s spectacular explosion. Sorter picked up the propeller thing and handed it to the kender.

Construction took a month. During that time, Sorter dodged falling bricks, ducked swinging beams, and fled varying sizes of rolling objects-not always successfully. He was covered in welts, bruises, calluses, and one extremely interesting scar that ran the length of his left arm. He lost a fifth of his body weight, and his skin grew dark and weather-beaten. He was happier than he had ever been in his life.

He peered up at the Automated Siege Engine with the remarkable Catling Ballista Attachment. In just thirty days, he and the kender had raised a tower ten times the gnome’s height and seventeen times the kender’s. They had equipped the tower with three tiers of enormous bows and more than a dozen racks of pitch-dipped fire arrows. In a burst of inspiration, they had added on the Rolling Ram and the Walking Sledgehammer.

Surprisingly, it was the battering ram portion of the Siege Engine that gave them the most trouble. The governor on the engine spun out of control three times, leaving Franni and Sorter to dance frantically around trying to shut the engine down by throwing rocks at it or poking at it cautiously with sticks. Then, once that was fixed, the wheel blocks slid mysteriously out from under the undercarriage, sending the entire structure rolling downhill while they chased it. Franni enjoyed that part a lot more than Sorter did.

Now the ram stood shining in the starlight, the mallet’s steel plated head gleaming.

“Tomorrow’s the big day,” said Franni.

“It is,” Sorter said, trying to imagine it. “The whole village of Mormar is turning out to watch.”

“Think the test will go well?”

Sorter fell back on the old gnome maxim. “I can’t think of a single reason why it shouldn’t work.”

Franni said solemnly, “Then you’ll take your books and go back to the library.”

“Of course,” Sorter said slowly. “That’s my duty. I’ll miss the children, though.”

Every few days, Lila and some of the other children would run out from the town with loaves of fresh-baked bread and food. She and the children stayed as long as they dared, asking questions about the machines and climbing over them with a reckless courage that even Franni admired. Then they would run back, late for work. After the children left, Franni was always very sad-an odd thing for a kender, or so Sorter had read.

Franni rolled over on his pallet. “It’s all right that you want to go back. It was really fun at the Repository, just not as interesting as what we’ve been doing. To me, anyway,” he finished tactfully.

“To you,” Sorter echoed. “Well, our work has been interesting. To tell you the truth, I’ve enjoyed myself.”

“I’m glad,” Franni said. “I’d hate to think that I’d completely wasted your time.”

“Not a bit.” Sorter looked around with awe at the machinery the two of them had assembled. “I’ll remember this all my life.”

Franni was delighted. “You really think so?”

“I swear it. Listen, we’d better get some sleep.”

“For the big day, and for your journey home.”

“For the big day,” Sorter agreed.

Franni rolled over and fell asleep. Sorter stared into the stars, saying nothing more out loud.

The day dawned clear and warm, with next to no breeze. Sorter scanned the sky and saw no clouds at all. They couldn’t have asked for a better day.

The test was going to be conducted on a city wall and a warehouse that the people of the village of Mormar had built in the field near the machine. Flags flew atop the warehouse and battlements- the flags of Dormar and Gormar. The people of Mormar told the gnome that the flags had been placed there for a joke.

The festivities began the moment the sun rose. A band consisting of a flaternette, a floozie, a rebec, a cit-terne, a serpent, a tabor, a tambour, and three large brass instruments that sounded like extremely unhappy livestock marched into the field. The people of the village of Mormar gathered near the band but not too near. Elder Cammion stood with his people, wincing occasionally at the music.