I’m not, Gird thought silently. He watched the slope above them, as it roughened into rocky outcrops of some gray stone streaked with black. Rockfolk. Elder folk, like the blackcloak, the kuaknom, he had seen. Like the treesinging elves he had not seen. Even more like the dwarves of legend, who sang gold out of the deep mountain rocks, and made jewels by squeezing rock in their hard fists. Folk created before humankind, who might see humans as he saw the Aarean magelords: intruders, dangerous, enemies.
Rocks moved, coming down the slope. He blinked warily, and they were not rocks, but small gray men. Kapristi, not men, he reminded himself. Gnomes out of fireside stories, all cautionary: what happened to the man who tried to cheat a gnome, the woman who hired a gnome to clean the chimney, the child whose goats strayed over the gnome’s boundary. As a child, he’d thought that last story silly, but back then he’d assumed that the gnome lands had a tall wall around them, that the boy must have pretended his goats got in as an excuse to climb the walls and see for himself what treasures the gnomes had.
The gnomes (he felt slightly more comfortable with his peoples’ name for them in his mind) moved with steady precision, nothing at all like men slipping and clomping down a slope. Six of them, all looking (to his eye) much alike. They loosed no shower of stones, no bits of turf, to roll before them. They had narrow clean-shaven faces (or did they not grow beards?) under close-cropped dark hair. Although they barely came up to his chest, he could not have confused them with boys—no boy moved with such economy, or had such hardness of face. They all wore gray: belted jerkins over long-sleeved shirts, narrow gray trews tucked neatly into gray boots. Jerkins and trews might have been leather; the shirts were wool.
Meanwhile, Arranha had bowed and spoken again in their angular tongue. Gird heard his own name mentioned, and glanced at Arranha, then looked back at the gnomes. The apparent leader was looking at him, a speculative look that made Gird feel like a carthorse up for sale. He could feel his ears and neck getting hot. Finally, Arranha turned to him again.
“Gird, this is Lawmaster Karik—that’s not all of his name, but that’s the polite way for a human to speak to him. I have told him about you, and he has agreed to speak with you. He has not, however, agreed to let you enter kapristi lands: he will speak with you here, across the line.”
If it had not been for Arranha’s gaze, Gird would have turned on his heel and stomped away. They didn’t trust him, that’s what it was, and he had done nothing to earn their distrust. Yet, said a voice in his mind. Arranha had told him of the Aarean nobles’ attempt to take gnomish lands; they had reason to distrust humans.
Gird choked back all he wanted to say, and bowed awkwardly at the gnomish leader.
“Lawmaster Karik—”
“Gird? You have no clan-name?”
“Dorthan Selis’s son was my father; but our clan name was lost. Our lord was Kelaive, whose subject-name I refuse.”
“Ah.” A gabble of gnomish between the leader and another of his group. Then the leader turned back to Gird. “It is that you have no master? No clan? No allegiance? You are without law?”
Gird stared. What were they driving at? He looked at Arranha, who said nothing, and wanted to smack that smug smile off the priest’s face . . . except that it wouldn’t work. He cleared his throat, and then realized that a wad of spit could be misunderstood. He swallowed it. The gnomes waited, motionless but not unattending.
“Lawmaster Karik, our lord destroyed our law.” That got attention; he could almost feel the intensity of their interest. “I came seeking law—a way to make things fair.”
“Things are fair, human farmer: it is living beings who may choose unfairness. Are you a god, to know justice and give judgment?”
Gird shook his head, hoping the gnomes had the same gesture. “No god at all, Lawmaster, but a man seeking knowledge. I know unfairness when I see it: short weight, shoddy work, carelessness that causes injury, stealing and lying—but Arranha has taught me that knowing wrong is not all I need to do right.”
“And he brought you here? Or did you seek us on your own?”
“I—he would have taught me his rules, Lawmaster. He showed me that the magelords have broken the Rules of Aare, changed their meanings . . . but I want nothing of those old rules. I want new rules, better rules, that cannot be so misunderstood.”
The Lawmaster turned to Arranha. “Here is a strange being. You told us once that the serfs had no wit for law.”
“I was wrong.” Arranha bowed, first at the Lawmaster, then at Gird. “When Gird and I first met, I thought he was a common outlaw—a rabble-rouser who wanted only vengeance for injuries done. And indeed, he had suffered injuries enough. But he has more—”
“Indeed.” The Lawmaster’s dark, enigmatic gaze returned to Gird. “And you, Gird son of Dorthan son of Selis, you must know we give nothing: that is fairness, good for good and evil for evil. What can you give, for the knowledge you seek?”
“My pledge. Arranha said you had no law between your people and ours except by steel. If our side wins, I pledge a rule of law that protects all boundaries, yours and ours, and my own strength to enforce it.”
“You could be killed in a season, and your debt to us would not be paid. Or your cause could fail, easily enough . . . though I hear you are trying to teach discipline to idle human rabble . . .”
“Not idle, Lawmaster, but by the magelords’ illwill.”
“Hmph.” The Lawmaster looked hard at Gird, then said, “Will you give the pledge of your hand and heart, to do all in your power to restore justice to these disputed lands?”
“Yes.”
“Then come over the boundary, and I will teach.”
For all that he had thought he was nervous under an open sky, Gird found that winter season mired in the gnome’s halls almost intolerable. Rock beneath his feet, rock overhead, rock walls never far away on either hand. Nothing to see but rock, however finely dressed. He saw no beauty in the austere fluting of columns, the majestic proportion of the ceremonial halls. His hosts soon knew this, and his most constant guide once sniffed, “If you want splendor, Gird, if you want stone wrought into the likeness of beasts and birds and trees, studded with shining jewels and, clad in gold and silver, if you want harp music and singing, you should have chosen our cousins. Dwarves chose splendor; they are all gold and blood, generous or deadly as the passion takes them. But you wanted law, you said, and that is what we live.”
“You do trade jewels,” Gird said. He had seen them once, laid in a precise pattern on black cloth for an apprentice to value.
“We do. We are rockfolk, after all; the rock speaks to us as trees speak to the sinyi.” The gnome sighed heavily at Gird’s blank look. “Elves, that is: the first born singers, those of silver blood. The rock is ours, and the rock returns to us in its treasures what we give of wisdom and loyalty.”
“Like cows,” Gird murmured; the gnome glared him.
“It is nothing like cows. You eat cows.”
Gird did not argue—he could not win arguments with the gnomes—but he thought it was the same. He had loved his cows, cared for them, and out of that love and care had come the bounty of milk and meat and hide.
Most of his time, especially at first, he spent with Lawmaster Karik in a quiet, brightly-lit room lined with shelves full of books—the first he’d ever seen—and scrolls.
Lawmaster Karik insisted that Gird must learn to read and write—to gnomish standards—and calculate with their figures.
“Law is too important to be left to your memory,” he said. Gird could tell that this, like most that he said, was not negotiable. “You must write it down, and in courts of law it must be there for reference. Likewise contracts: you understand the importance of honest exchange, but how can that be adjudicated if the terms of the contract are in question? It must all be written down.”