Land of Unreason by L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt Read Free Book Online Page A

forging hammers comes from
their hills, and has a droll ring to it, as though they were not working good
honest bronze but—iron."
     
                He let the last word drop
slowly; as he did so the footmen started and one of them dropped a plate.
"I still don't see—"
     
                "Why, halt 'em, thwart
'em, confound their knavery! You're mortal; plainly you can handle the
stuff."
     
                The brownie philosopher at
the other end of the table was bowing like a jack-in-the-box. Titania said:
"You have our permission. For two minutes only, though."
     
                "Gracious lord,
gracious lady," he piped. " 'Tis clear to my arts that this
changeling stands before you uncomprehending, like a bull in a buttery. What's
to do, a asks, and Your Radiance but gives him commands, when it's a sapient
babe that will see to the heart of the millstone."
     
                He bowed to Barber and
squeaked on: "These kobolds are a race that consort not with us, loving
labor like Egyptians. Yet we would not be without them, for they are natural
like ourselves, and how says Protagoras: 'All things in nature are good and
have their place; and if the least attractive be removed the lack will
ultimately be felt by all.' Which I take it to be—"
     
                "Ahem!" said
Oberon loudly.
     
                The brownie philosopher
bowed three times, hurriedly. "Now the minds of these kobold-cattle are so
fashioned that since they alone, of all Fairyland, have the power of touching
iron, they make of fashioning that metal an inordinate vainglory, preferring it
to all others—"
     
                Titania silently held up two
fingers.
     
                "Yes, gracious lady ...
And would therefore forge swords at every opportunity. Which swords, being
distributed, do set all Fairyland at the most horrid strife and variance, with
bloodletting and frequent resultant shapings—"
     
                Bang! Oberon's fist came
down. "A truce to babble! Here's the riddle: we of pure fairy blood cannot
go to the Kobold Hills, which stink of the curst metal. Thus you're our
emissary."
     
                Barber's ears had caught the
slight accent on the word "pure."
     
                "Because I'm of impure
fairy blood, I suppose?" he questioned lightly.
     
                "Wherefore else, good
Barber?"
     
                He laughed, but it died out
against the unaltered faces around him. "Who was your mother's mother,
sir?" asked Titania's clear contralto.
     
                "I ... don't
know." He had always assumed he had two grandmothers, like everyone else.
They came in pairs. But looking up family trees had always struck him as a
sport that led either to the D.A.R. or the booby hatch, places he was equally
anxious to avoid. Oberon pressed against his confusion.
     
                "There are brooks also
since the last shaping-plagued ungainly obstacles to us of the pure blood, who
must seek round by their sources or fly high above, but not for you, mortal.
Go, then, we say; be our embassy, our spy."
     
                "And if I do, can I get
back to where I came from? After all, I have work—"
     
                "Why, you unhatched
egg, you chick-cuckoo, will you bargain against the King's Radiance of
Fairyland? Go to! I'll—"
     
                The brownie philosopher was
wriggling in a perfect passion of desire for speech, but Titania signed him to
silence and Oberon, catching sight of the motion, pulled himself up short.
"Ha!" he said. "I misremember; 'tis long since we had a new
changeling. Why, good Barber, the rule of our realm touching mortals is this:
none is brought here but for some weighty enterprise. Which accomplished, he's
free to return."
     
                "And mine is to keep
your kobolds from making swords?"