That done, she waited a polite interval before asking, “Do you play khas?”
“Khas?” The gnome’s hands slowed in their wringing. “There is a khas set here?”
“The best,” said Kalkon.
Lemborg soon admitted that, indeed, Kalkon had the finest khas set in Ansalon, so far as he knew. They started a game as Lemborg ate his way through a pouch of dried fruit he had managed to salvage from the wreckage of his ship. (“Certainly looked real, anyway,” he commented about the gargoyle statue in the middle of the dry fountain, whose grinning face had peered into his broken command window upon his landing.)
It was during their long game in Kalkon’s throne room that Lemborg began to talk. Evening fell as he described Mount Nevermind’s gnome-on-the-moons wildspace program to Kalkon in great detail, revealing how tinker-gnome colonies would be founded on every one of the wandering stars in the sky that he called planets, and how gnomes no longer had to rely on balky, unreliable magical spelljammers to enter space, now that wonderful mechanized technojammers could be used instead, assuming that no more of them blew up on ignition.
“Of course,” he went on breathlessly, “reports are constantly received at the Bureau of Colonization, Deportation, and Missing Luggage that the gnomes of Mount Nevermind have already established footholds on numerous worlds, in this sphere and others, but future models of the Spirit of Mount Nevermind will ensure that this trickle turns into a raging flood, a great storm of gnomish civilization and enlightenment that will transform the spheres. There will be steam-powered refrigerators and whoosh wagons for everyone.”
“I see,” said Kalkon, carefully scooting a blue rook along the board with a long foreclaw. She examined the hexagonal board with one eye, then nodded approval. She had not a clue as to what the gnome was talking about, but talking seemed to ease his mind.
Lemborg moved a white cavalryman only a second later. “This expansionist phase is beneficial for the gnomes as well as for the future of the spheres, of course,” he added, chewing on a dried fig. “Recent demographic statistics indicate that subterranean urban growth at Mount Nevermind is proceeding along an exponential function thanks to the development of reliable hydrodynamic aquaculture and the successful mass production of nonpoisonous artificial foodstuffs like snerg and goofunx and kwatz and-well, no, hoirk still causes twenty percent fatalities, so the bugs are not quite out of that one, but three out of four is still marvelous. The children seem to love goofunx and cannot get enough of it, though it does cause numerous cavities.” He shifted in his chair and looked up expectantly at the other player. “Remarkable to find a gold dragon so interested in applied technology.”
“Brass,” said Kalkon. She hated the way the gnome just moved pieces without thinking about it first. It was driving her crazy.
“Pardon?”
“I am a brass dragon. You thought I was a gold dragon?”
Lemborg’s mouth dropped open, and bits of chewed fig fell out. “Ah, many apologies are due,” he said with embarrassment. “Appearances were deceiving. A kingly figure, too, for a brass dragon.”
“Queenly.” The white cavalryman . . . what was the gnome planning with it? She was finding it hard to concentrate on the game. Something the gnome had said….
“Que-a female brass dragon?” The gnome was amazed.
“I am a female brass dragon.”
“Ah . . . many more apologies are due, then, but nonetheless for one so young as well as a female brass dra-”
“Old. A dragon is strongest and happiest when it grows old in its power, and I am very old. We are not like humans, who treasure only their youth.”
Lemborg thought there was something odd about the way Kalkon said that. He looked down at the blue-and-white marble playing board. He thought about his next words carefully. “Well, then, obviously life must be at its very best right now.”
Kalkon moved a claw anyway, lightly tapped a blue cleric along a row of hexes, and left it in what she knew was a bad spot. It was the only good move she could make. She suddenly lost interest in the game.