"Wait!" said Ruggedo. "I want to hear him."
The robed and crowned gnome, evidently King Kaliko, had just launched into a speech. To Shea it sounded like a thousand other soporific political speeches that he had heard or read:
"... We must seize the moment ... Productivity must rise ... Family discipline; should be tightened ... We must be alert against foreign influences, especially of the subversive' plots of the skulking Ruggedo ... We must rid ourselves of bureaucratic waste ... Beware those who plot against us ... My reign has brought prosperity, despite the damage by my foolish predecessor and the grumbles of malcontents ..."
Another gnome, in gnomish working clothes, pushed through the attendants on the balcony. "Your Majesty! I have news of moment!"
The newcomer looked like the jailer whom Ruggedo had stunned, although Shea did not know gnomes well enough to tell one clearly from another. Kaliko turned upon the newcomer, shouting:
"What mean you, knave, interrupting my speech?"
"But, sire, this is important! Surfacers have invaded—"
Kaliko roared: "Here, I decide what is important! Take him away!
Shea glanced at Ruggedo, or at least at what he thought were Ruggedo's eyeballs. Ruggedo was muttering and, from the jiggle of the eyeballs, dancing about in a rising paroxysm of rage. Then Ruggedo's beret came off in the gnome's hand.
Before Shea could interfere, Ruggedo hurled the tarncap to the floor and dashed into the chamber. He ran a few steps along the wall, past some of the golden and silver doors, until he came to a plinth, on which stood a statue of a gnome in combat with a monster. With a muscle-cracking effort, Ruggedo tipped over the statue, which crashed to the floor. The old gnome vaulted atop the plinth, waved his bill above his head, and screamed:
"Gnomes! I am Ruggedo the Rough, your rightful king! Rally to me against that pompous fool of a usurper!"
For a few seconds, silence fell. A stout gnome clashed to the plinth and knelt, crying:
"Hail, King Ruggedo! It is I, former chancellor Shoofenwaller! Hail to our true and rightful king!"
The audience burst into a roar of talk, questions, and argument. Kaliko yelled from the balcony and Ruggedo shouted from his plinth, but their words were lost in the din. Calls to arms resounded.
More and more gnomes clustered round Ruggedo's plinth. The gnomes had at first been unarmed, but now weapons began to gleam. Steel clanged and wounded gnomes screamed.
"Come on, Oznev," said Shea, pulling the prince after him. The hall of assembly, he thought, was near enough to the western entrance to enable them to find their way out without Ruggedo.
"Wait!" said Oznev's voice. "A prince should stand by his comrades! I must help Ruggedo in his fight for the throne!"
The prince wrenched loose and pulled off his tarncap. As he raised his arm to throw it away as Ruggedo had done, Shea, who had half drawn his sword, whipped out the weapon and smote Oznev on the head with the pommel.
The prince collapsed. Shea sheathed his blade, snatched up the discarded tarncap, and jammed it down on Oznev's head. Then he picked up the stripling and slung him over one shoulder. This took all of Shea's strength, because Shea was of no more than average size. He could not have done it if Oznev had been as big as, say, Walter Bayard.
Inside the chamber, partisans of Kaliko and Ruggedo coalesced into discrete masses. Other gnomes passed among them, handing out weapons. A roar of combat drowned all other sounds. Shea stumbled over a gnome's head, which rolled, trickling blood, out of the hall of assembly and into the corridor.
Shea limped and staggered along the tunnel, away from the hall. His battered knee hurt like blazes.
Then a figure popped out of a side tunnel. As it neared, Shea saw, by the light of the luminous gems, a human being in gnomish costume.
"Halt!" shouted this one. "I see your eyeballs! You cannot escape!"
The man advanced, swinging a sword right and left, high and low, to keep anyone from slipping past him.
He was a huge man with long arms, so that he covered the entire tunnel with his sweeps. Closer he came.
"One of Ozma's tricks!" roared the man. "Well, she can't fool Dranol Drabbo! Have at you, spook!"
Another step would bring the man within swords length of Shea, who let the limp Prince Oznev slide to the floor. He had not completely drawn his own sword when Drabbo aimed a slash that, had it gotten home, would have sent Shea's head rolling like that of the gnome.
Shea did a quick squat. The sword whistled over his head, sending his tarncap flying.
"I knew it! yelled Dranol Drabbo, making a running attack. Shea parried and backed, backed and parried. Dranol Drabbo was a stout fighter and a skilled cut-and-thrust swordsman, who wielded a long, heavy blade as easily as if it had been a flyswatter. In parrying one mighty downward cut, Shea's sword, on which he had lavished such care, broke off a hand's breadth from the hilt.
Dranol Drabbo threw himself forward in a lunge. His point struck Shea's chest, and the force of the blow knocked Shea off his feet. His mailshirt, however, kept the point from piercing his skin.
Shea scrambled up, reaching for his bowie knife. But Dranol Drabbo was hopping about, clawing at something invisible that clung to his back.
Shea sprang forward and whacked Dranol Drabbo's skull thrice with the flat of his oversized, machete-like knife. Dranol Drabbo sank to a sitting position, not completely unconscious.
"Good!" cried Oznev's voice as the prince untangled himself from Dranol Drabbo. "I couldn't desert you in a fight, either. Here's your cap."
"Just a second," said Shea. Reaching down Dranol Drabbo's back, he sawed through the man's belt with his knife.
"Okay," he said. "Now run for it!"
Soon they reached the western entrance, with Shea limping heavily. A glance back showed Dranol Drabbo, small in the distance, staggering to his feet. When the man started in pursuit, his breeches fell down, and Drabbo went to hands and knees. His roars of frustration echoed down the tunnel.
"My head aches like fury," said Oznev. "What hit me?"
"The force of destiny," said Shea. "Why didn't you kill him?"
"Wasn't necessary, and experience teaches that today's friend may be tomorrow's foe and vice versa. Waste not, want not."
Shea hobbled along the trail. They had not gone a hundred paces outside the caves when Shea felt the now familiar symptoms of magical teleportation—the fading of the scene, the misty whirl of colored dots ...
"Well!" said Queen Ozma when she and King Evardo had embraced their son. "You, Sir Harold, appear to have had a time of it!"
"Your Majesty is a mistress of understatement," said Shea, handing over the two surviving berets. "Hi, Walter! Who won?"
"Ruggedo," said Bayard. "At least, just after the Queen actuated her Belt to fetch you, we saw Kaliko and his chancellor pop out the western entrance, in flight with a few followers."
"Demonstrating," said Shea, "that gnomes show no more wisdom in picking leaders than we mundanes."
"Oh, dear!" said Ozma. "I'm sure old Rug will start plotting to conquer us again."
"He told me," said Shea, "that this time he was really determined to reform. Whether he'll succeed, your guess is as good as mine. But permit me to suggest that Your Majesties hire someone to keep him under constant surveillance in your magical picture."
Evardo: "Sir Harold, we are greatly in your debt. We should like to honor you with a fine banquet in celebration. Oz is renowned for its parties."
Shea gave; his courtliest bow. "I appreciate the courtesy, Your Majesty. But back home my wife is about to give birth. So, if you will forgive me ..."
"I see," said Evardo. "In other words, you would prefer to be sent home forthwith, as soon as your hurts have been mended. It shall be as you wish. Do you also speak for Doctor Bayard and his—ah—wife?'