“Wizard,” Glandurg called, “what about me?”
“Oh, the web will dissolve in six or eight hours,” Wiz told him. “I’m
sorry, but I can’t get rid of it before that.”
Besides, he thought as Glandurg’s curses died behind him, I’m not sure how
far I trust you.
“Well, that’s one less problem anyway,” Wiz said as he walked into the
Mousehole’s lounge. Aelric and the other programmers were nowhere to be
seen, but Bal-Simba and Moira were there.
Bal-Simba looked up at him quizzically.
“The dwarves,” Wiz said, plopping down on a sofa. “I just got them off my
back.”
“They are here?” Moira demanded.
Wiz nodded. “Their leader just tried to jump me. He ran right into my
protection spell and before I’d let him go I made him promise he wouldn’t
try to kill me any more. At least,” he amended, “not until this business
with Craig and Mikey is finished.”
“You made a deal with a dwarf,” Moira said slowly.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Sparrow,” Bal-Simba said slowly, “what precisely did the dwarf swear to?”
“He promised he wouldn’t kill me until this business is over.”
“Can you remember his exact words?”
“Yeah. He said, ‘I will not slay you until your battle with your
adversaries is over.’ Well, that’s pretty close anyway.”
Moira moaned.
“Is something wrong?”
Bal-Simba put a huge hand on Wiz’s shoulder. “Sparrow, there are scant
dealings between mortals and dwarves, but this much we have learned. A
dwarf keeps only his exact, literal word. They are slippery as river eels
and will wiggle through any least little hole left in an agreement.”
“There’s a hole in this one?” Wiz asked in a sinking voice.
“Sparrow, how many dwarves are we dealing with?”
“About a doz . . . oh,” Wiz said in a small voice. “And he promised only
for himself.”
The black wizard nodded. “He only swore that he himself would not kill
you. He did not even promise he would not help the others.”
“Oh,” Wiz said again.
It was almost nightfall by the time Glandurg’s followers found him. The
wait had done nothing to improve his temper.
“What happened to you?” Gimli asked in awe at the sight of his leader
hanging enmeshed in sticky ropes.
“Never mind that, get me down!”
“He tried the Sparrow alone, he did,” Ragnar told Gimli. “I recognize the
signs.”
“Now,” the red-faced Glandurg ground out, “now I shall have him.”
“Looks as if he had you,” Ragnar observed. “Trussed you up like a spider
to a fly.”
“Just cut me down,” Glandurg growled.
The dwarves set about it, but it was a sticky, tedious business. While
they hacked and sawed Glandurg fumed and muttered.
“I will have his heart’s blood.”
“Can’t very well do that,” Thorfin said from the tree limb where he was
cutting away at one of the last strands of the web. “You said you swore an
oath you wouldn’t harm him until after he’s completed his own quest.”
“I swore so long as the moon was in the sky,” Glandurg amended.
Ragnar gaped. “He let you get away with that?”
“I am cleverer than any mortal wizard,” Glandurg said smugly. “It was the
first oath I offered and he took it.”
Thorfin looked up at the darkening sky where a sliver of waning moon hung
high. “And the moon has, what, eight, nine more days? Then it will be the
dark of the moon and it will be gone completely.” While he was looking up
his knife severed the strand and Glandurg fell heavily to earth.
The dwarf rose and brushed off the last clinging bits of web. “Mark you, I
shall use the time well. I have sent to my uncle the king for a thing
which will finish this Sparrow once and for all.”
And maybe this time he’ll let me have it, Glandurg thought to himself.
Tosig Longbeard, king of the Mid-Northeastern Dwarves of the Southern
Forest Range, fidgeted uneasily on his alabaster throne and waited for his
visitor to get down to business. The smoky torches flared in their wall
sockets, throwing distorted shadows dancing over the carved and inlaid
walls of his audience chamber, but there were none but himself and his