“Of course you don’t!” exclaimed the mage. “How could you, without understanding the Law of Gravity? The reason is simple, my stupid but loyal apprentice. The dead are buried because it is only proper that the final end of life, which is a grave undertaking, should be death, which is graver still. And what more fitting place for the dead, therefore, than the grave?
“But with all these mysteries resolved,” went on the wizard, “surely your mind has begun to grope at a related but contradictory problem. To wit, the gravitation of objects having been explained, why do certain objects rise?
“The answer to this question, Shelyid—whose discovery is also a monopoly of my genius—is to be found in the explication of the Law of Levity. What is the Law of Levity? The Law of Levity postulates that objects rise in accordance with the—”
At that moment the sorcerer’s discourse was suddenly interrupted by a loud knocking on the door of the study.
“Shelyid!” spoke Zulkeh. “Someone is at the door.”
“I know, master,” muttered Shelyid, his anxious visage peering from behind the cabinet where he had instantly retreated at the sound of knocking.
“Then answer it, dolt!”
“But, master,” whined the dwarf, “what if it’s a stranger?”
“Bah!” oathed Zulkeh. “Who else would it be, cretin? I command you, open the door!”
“Yes, master,” grumbled the runt. Shelyid inched from behind the cabinet and, apprehension writ plain upon his face, slowly approached and opened the door.
Now, the gentle reader is perhaps puzzled by the peculiar attitude evidenced by the misshapen apprentice toward this mundane task of opening a door in response to a knock. But the matter is, in truth, simple of explanation. We have already alluded most delicately to the dwarf’s unfortunate nervous condition. By his nature, Shelyid greeted all events not strictly routine as incipient calamities. The attitude, common to the general run of mankind, that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, was incomprehensible to Shelyid. In the dwarf’s mind, grass was not green to begin with. It was brown and coarse and grew only in rare clumps. Fences were not challenges to an audacious spirit, they were excellent constructs which served the salutary purpose of keeping at bay the monsters with which Shelyid’s mind peopled the universe, according to them as well the fixed and unilateral purpose of doing him harm. So, far from finding his own clump of crabgrass inadequate and longing for other pastures, the dwarf found in fences the sole complaint that they were invariably too short, too flimsy, too low and too few.
Yet the gentle reader should not conclude that this outré world view was solely the product of Shelyid’s fevered fantasies. Alas, no, the dwarf’s weltschmerz was all too well grounded in brute fact. For Shelyid, as we have explained, was cursed not simply with a grotesque nervous condition but with an equally grotesque appearance. All too often had he been mistaken, at first sight, for some strange and loathsome beast—if not a vicious carnivore then at the least some disease-ridden creature escaped from the bowels of the earth, perhaps unnatural, certainly abnormal, a suitable object for curses and blows. More than once, opening the door of their abode to a stranger, had the pitiful gnome been greeted with a gasp and a boot.
Upon this occasion, however, his luck was better.
The door open, Shelyid and his master perceived in the dim entryway a small and wiry man, well dressed and bearing an air of self-importance. This worthy stared at the apprentice for some long moments and then, wrinkling his nose, looked to the wizard.
“Is the sorcerer Zulkeh present?” he inquired.
“I am he,” spoke the mage.
“In that case, I have a message to deliver.” He reached into his cloak and brought forth a letter, sealed with wax.
“Bring me the letter, Shelyid,” spoke Zulkeh. The dwarf took the proffered missive and scurried to his master’s side. Zulkeh broke the seal and examined the contents of the letter.
“This is a summons from King Roy, King of Goimr!” he exclaimed.
“Quite so,” agreed the stranger. “You are to present yourself at the palace tomorrow morning following the eighth bell. See to it that you are prompt.” He turned to go.