Nightsword

by Margaret Weis

  “Indeed,” purred Shindak with wearied overtones in his voice. “Bold words, as one might expect from a warrior race.”

  The minotaur snorted clouds through his massive snout into the cold air of the lower decks. The black eyes narrowed, the overhead shaking to his bellowing voice. “Bold enough for you, mate! I’ve had a bellyful of humanity and their high ways! You seem cozy enough with His Majesty the captain, or do you reckon his being human is more to your liking than those of us that ain’t?”

  Shindak didn’t move a muscle though his face took on an appearance that was several degrees colder than before. The silvery eyes simply stared at the minotaur for a moment, sufficient for him to establish his displeasure and very real threat toward the hulking Kheoghi.

  “We of the Tsokon-nukorai live long,” Shindak said directly and quietly, his eyes never leaving those of the minotaur before him. “Our memories live longer still within the Collective. We—more than the OomRamn, more than the Tsultak, more than the E’knari or the Uruh or the Hishawei or the Goromok—more than any other of our outcast brethren, we know the depth of what was done to us!” The elf’s blue-tinged face turned slightly upward. His silver eyes lost focus as he stared at something incredibly far away. “The fleets of the Lost Empire were young in those times. I see them as they drove through the stars as though through a dark and rippled glass. Lokan—that same Lo-han in our own coarse tongue—moved with unholy purpose through the night. Each civilization he came upon he judged by his own standard—the standard of humanity! As though humans were the perfect form! As though no other form was its equal or better! Then with his prejudice and his ego he held aloft the Nightsword and bent the quantum weather radically towards his own will. Where the inhabitants were humanoid, the Nightsword made them fully human. Where the local race was too dissimilar, the will of Lokan devolved them into unthinking beasts. That latter was the fate of most of your great empire’s conquests, Kheoghi. The former the fate of my own old worlds.”

  Kheoghi blinked. There were legends in his own culture of the Great Collapse. Lo-han the Destroyer had come with his magic and transformed armies into witless beasts. “He were a terror, that Lo-han.”

  “Yes, indeed he was,” Shindak replied patiently. “Yet do you not see, my friend, what else was lost? Entire histories vanished before him. Cultures, songs, hopes, and dreams all died before him. The converted races that fell before the will of Lokan forgot their former selves and all that they were. They became truly human. Worse than dead—they have forgotten who they truly are. Only those of us who escaped conversion remember the truth that was. Only we know the name of those that oppressed us and took from us the love of our own brothers. We cannot forget. We will never forget.”

  The minotaur seemed to shrink back, if that were possible, in the corridor, though he had not yet been completely rebuffed. “Beggin’ your pardon, Master Shindak, but the Tsokon-nukorai think too much.”

  “It is our curse,” the elf replied calmly, “but one that you will never be burdened with. If you have completed your assigned duties here, I have further tasks for you to accomplish.”

  Kheoghi pondered the elf’s words for a moment, decided that it would be too much trouble to decipher the meaning buried in the words, and concentrated on the last part of the statement. “By the captain’s word, I must be lookin’ in on that human again come another eight bells.”

  “The captain’s word means a great deal to you,” Shindak said, his voice flat and without inflection.

  “He be the captain,” Kheoghi replied simply.

  “Indeed he is.” Shindak smiled. He paused for a moment before continuing. “Perhaps you would like to join me in a ration of Sartagon grog?”

  “Sartagon grog, sire?” The hulking brute smiled at the thought of a pleasant slam at the back of his head. “ ’Twould be an honor, Master Shindak.”

  The elf had already turned and was moving down the curving corridor toward the third lower ship’s hold. “Then please come with me. There are a few things which we need to discuss.”

  Shindak pushed open a massive door that led through a main bulkhead and stood aside. Kheoghi hunched over to pass through the opening and then straightened up, relieved that the hold space afforded him the opportunity to stand up properly, which the main corridors of the ship did not.

  Dappled squares of dim light illuminated the compartment from the deck grids separating the lower hold from the two immediately above it. The hold was the smallest of the three, yet even so the compartment was nearly twenty feet high. They had offloaded their latest treasures at Oombaroom Haven six days prior to encountering Flynn and their latest prize. Yet this prize had no cargo of any value to speak of, so far as the crew was concerned, and the holds had remained empty.

  An empty hold is an invitation to change, thought Kheoghi. After a quick glance around the compartment, change seemed exactly what Shindak had in mind.

  Several of Kheoghi’s fellow crewmembers lounged about the sparse room. There were Lulm, Meln, and Ogrob, the Goromok gnomes who sat against the far bulkhead with their legs crossed, as was their custom. Their three knit caps were faded by constant wear but their family colors could still be distinguished. Seven Hishawei hung from the ceiling, each insectoid exoskeletal frame hanging from the grating overhead by three appendages. The Hishawei formed cultural radials that mimicked their physical structure, Kheoghi recalled. Their bodies were designed with three sets of three radial appendages organized around the thorax, topped with a head with three eye clusters. Six of the Hishawei surrounded a seventh, larger member of their clan. Kheoghi recognized at once their “queen” in the center of the formation, although he considered the term a bit too high for a collective that consisted of only twelve beings on the ship. Things were somewhat worse, he realized, for the Uruh aboard—snake-women who usually enslaved a single male member of their kind for their own communities, but for whom none had been found on their travels thus far. Two of the Uruh were coiled in the far corner of the hold, engaged in an animated discussion, with all twelve of their arms gesturing in their excitement.

  All motion ended, however, as Shindak entered the compartment.

  “Where be the grog, Shindak?” Kheoghi turned to the elf with a scowl.

  “Hear me first, Kheoghi,” Shindak murmured, “then you’ll get both your share and mine.”

  Kheoghi snorted his disbelief as the elf turned to address the assembled crew.

  “We have labored long under the flag of Marren-kan.” Shindak spoke without preamble. He felt the need to justify neither himself nor his position to those assembled. None present looked prepared to question him. “We have banded together for our mutual protection and, need I say, profit. What else could we do, being outcast brothers of the stars? The marshlands of the Uruh have long ago been laid waste …”

  The snake-women hissed ominously their accord.

  “… The hives of the Hishawei were eons long lost mutated into hideous, weakened forms …”

  Kheoghi heard the metallic sound of the gigantic insectoids’ mandibles sliding against each other overhead.

  “… And the Goromok Caverns of Destiny are lost to their kin for all time.”

  The gnomes’ heads dropped in silent loss.

  “Even the great temple world of OomRamn-Ishka was transformed until the world was no longer recognizable to the OomRamn, who fled in the depths of their loss into the stars, bereft of their gods!”

  Kheoghi’s mane bristled at the words, the flat muzzle of his face lifting in his pride and his pain. He knew Shindak well enough to recognize that he was being manipulated by the crafty elf, but the ancestral wound ran too deep for him not to react.

  “And what is the cause? Humanity! That most hated word among the outcasts! Humans—who came into the stars with an arrogance beyond comprehension. Humans—whose ego and selfishness declared their own form to be the standard by which good would be set and judged! Humans—who in time past brought us Lokan the Reviled, Loka
n the Destroyer, Lokan the Enforcer. Their fleets crossed the stars from the rim to the core and everywhere they went that which was human survived, that which was nearly human was changed forever, and that which was not human was destroyed, obliterated, and scattered to the stellar winds. The greatness that was my people—the greatness that was each of our peoples—vanished under the cursed Nightsword of Lokan.”

  Elami, one of the Uruh in the corner, folded all three sets of her arms across her leather-vested chest and spoke up at last. “What be that to usss, Ssshindak? What care we for battlesss lossst so long afore our time?”

  Shindak’s dynamic oratory had been interrupted, yet when he turned to the snake-woman, he was smiling.

  “Why, nothing at all, Elami.”

  Kheoghi turned toward the elf, squinting his black eyes as he tried to understand.

  “The point is not whether we care or not,” Shindak continued smoothly. “The point is whether the exile governments of our respective outcast races still care—and by your own reactions to my little speech, I think you all know that they will care very deeply indeed.”

  Ogrob cocked his head to one side. “What’s the play, elf? What be you thinkin’?”

  “I think that our captain—our human captain—has stumbled upon the passage beyond the Maelstrom Wall.”

  The hold echoed with a ripple of oddly timbered laughter through its expanse.

  “Now that there’s a fantasy,” Lulm chortled to his fellow gnomes.

  “We help Shindak find Shindak’s mind,” clicked the queen Hishawei merrily. “Him lose it somewhere nearby.”

  “I be thinkin’ he’s already drunk that Sartagon grog he offered me to get me here,” bellowed Kheoghi, joining in the general revelry.

  “Have your fun,” Shindak said through an ice-cold smile. “I know differently.”

  The look on the elven face quickly silenced the crowd.

  “I have seen the map, incomplete as it is.” Shindak spoke quietly. “We sail for the core, mates. We sail to plunder the Lokan Fleet.”

  The silence of thought descended on the group. At last Kheoghi spoke up. “What be the end if we find this here Lost Fleet, Shindak?”

  “If we find it, friend Kheoghi,” Shindak replied, “then we shall most likely also find one of the most terrible tools ever devised by that cursed race of humanity. We shall most likely recover the Nightsword.”

  The elf paused, gazing into the faces of each entity in the room.

  “Mates, I do not relish the thought of putting such a dangerous power in the hands of humanity once again. More importantly, in all the nonhuman governments that remain in the galactic disk, there is no price too high to pay to keep the Nightsword out of human hands once more. You could squander a decade’s shipment of yardow and never come close to equaling the ransom such a prize would exact. There’s never been a greater treasure just waiting to be taken.”

  “There be a catch then?” Elami said, hissing.

  “Yes,” Shindak said, looking casually toward the deck. “It would seem that only the humans can actually get us there. The map is incomplete. From what I gather, only one of the humans knows the full route.”

  “So, what would you have us do?” Kheoghi asked slyly.

  “For the time being, you could join me in the galley for that Sartagon grog that I promised you. Beyond that, everyone here should be watchful and wait for word from me.” Shindak smiled enigmatically once more. “It has been a profitable endeavor but, quite soon, when the Nightsword is safely aboard, I believe the time will come for us to call into question the captaincy of our fine ship.”

  29

  Buccaneer

  The ship was hideously beautiful—or beautifully hideous, depending upon one’s point of view. The original Aendorian designs had been considerably embellished, as well as contorted, over the years by the spacers who tended her decks. Spacers of the core are renowned throughout the galactic disk as having an encyclopedic knowledge of diverse magic and crafts never to be trifled with. Individually they may be limited, but a collective crew of spacers is a formidable group. When properly selected and organized, there is rarely a situation in open space, regardless of the quantum region encountered in those wild regions, that one of their number cannot address.

  So it was with the Aendorian ship. The original totems had been embellished, added to, and restructured in such a way that their figures now addressed the needs of the various magical zones they encountered during their wild and unpredictable flight. This greatly reduced the strain on the spacers themselves, as they were able to store up different quantum zone structures in the totems themselves.

  Griffiths, of course, knew nothing of this. He simply shuddered at the sight of the tubelike corridor spiraling upward from the depths of the ship. The curved walls raged at him from a thousand silent, twisted mouths. Some were skulls of obscene creatures, angrily contorted. Others held the mere hint of unspeakable horror. Despite the images from which his mind recoiled, there was something powerful and fascinating about them.

  A shove from behind nearly knocked Griffiths to the floor.

  “Belay that lubberly gait,” rumbled the behemoth from behind. “Haul yer carcass topside and be quick about it lest I draw and quarter ye here and now!”

  Griffiths heard more than saw the steel slide from the scabbard of the beast. The image in his mind was far too graphic. He quickly climbed the spiral ramp past two additional deck openings until he emerged on the main deck of the ship.

  Griffiths once more stopped short, sucking in his breath as the scene hit him like a solid wall.

  He stood near the center of the vessel. Behind him was a large superstructure with elegant railings attached to what he assumed was the main mast of the ship: a massive wooden trunk rising up into a succession of yardarms, platforms, and rigging overhead. The deck under his feet was formed of carefully coopered wooden planks, each fitted tightly into a pattern. Upon this open expanse of decking was mounted a number of stiles and winches, as well as several additional hatches leading belowdecks. All the deck was held within the fingers of the ship’s five prows, each of which arched high overhead until they nearly touched the rigging of the ship.

  Yet it was the crew crowding the deck that made him stop short. It was an insane mixture of the sublime and the horrific. A small group of multiple-breasted snake-women wearing light leather tunics were in the rigging, their tails curled around the line as they hauled themselves aloft with their strong, broad hands and arms. Below them a mixed group of what he was sure were gnomes, dwarves, and willowy elves was fussing over a series of what looked for all the world like cannons mounted through gunports below the side rail. Several more brutish beasts like the one that had brought him up from belowdecks—minotaurs, he decided to label them—were putting their backs to a windlass that was hauling a large platform higher up on the mast. Now and then a fairy or two would dart among the crowd, each pursuing a special purpose of their own. Several more elves, tall and regal in their features with delicately pointed ears, were working the lines of a boom that needed to be shifted. All was proceeding on deck with purpose and organization, yet Griffiths remained stunned at the bizarre and eclectic collection before him.

  Another painful jab to his lower back shook Griffiths painfully from his stupor. He glanced back sharply at the minotaur, whose brutish face only scowled in response. It looked for all the world as though the beast would just as soon be given an excuse for eating Griffiths on the spot. Instead, he gestured toward an ornate doorway accessing one of the five bow forecastles. Griffiths turned and began picking his way across the deck toward the opening.

  It was true, he thought, he really had not seen much of the galaxy. Still, everywhere he had gone there had been a predominance of humanity. Sure, there were the occasional oddities wherever you went but truly alien life had been a rare thing. In all his travels, he had never yet seen such a massed collection of xenoforms. He had even wondered from time to time if nonhuman cr
eatures could get along at all. Yet here they were, going through their tasks as though they were of one mind. Why hadn’t he encountered more such wonder and diversity? Why did it frighten him?

  He soon made his way to the door, his minotaur handler behind him at every step. Griffiths reached for the door latch, but the hulking brute immediately slapped his hand away. To Griffiths’s utter shock, the beast knocked quietly at the door and spoke in most respectful tones. “Cap’n! Beggin’ yer pardon, but the gentleman you requested be here to see you.”

  “Enter,” came the terse, muffled reply.

  The beast moved forward, gave Griffiths one last warning eye, and then opened the door wide. The cool darkness of the portal beckoned him onward. He wondered what new horror awaited him next. Whatever it was, he knew that the lark he thought he had started on Avadon had somehow gone terribly wrong. Adventure had called him but had failed to tell him the price. Now he knew that such dreams are never bargains, and it looked to him as though it were time to pay the devil his due.

  * * *

  The Cabin was Illuminated by the thousands of stars streaming light through the twin bay windows that were fitted into either side of the hull. Everything smelled of old wood and sweat. The ceiling was oppressively low, much of its original meager height further reduced by the massive beams that crossed the overhead of the compartment. Ornate brass lanterns hung down, their crystal globes adding their light to the room as they swung slightly from side to side. Below these squatted a massive desk, the surface showing signs of a fine polish now long since dulled by time and use. Its carved features were grotesque in the extreme—foul, obscene, and repulsive. A series of small windowpanes formed a great curve along the back wall. The stars were grouped unnaturally close to Griffiths’s eye as they shined brightly beyond.

  Between the ancient, foul repugnance of the desk and the glorious vista of creation beyond … stood Evon Flynn. His back was to the magnificence, its grandeur lost on him. Instead, he was hunched intently over the evil desktop, his hands set wide on its surface. Before him was spread the same chart they had made at the cartographer’s not so long and a lifetime ago.