Teldin shook his head slowly, a sad half smile on his face. On the contrary, he thought, I understand all too well… if what you're saying is the truth. He took a different tack. "What do you know about the Spelljammer?" he asked sharply.
"What any sentient in the universe knows," Beth-Abz answered. "That it is the subject of myth and legend, perhaps the largest and most powerful vessel to ply the space-ways. More powerful than the largest tyrant ship, more powerful even than nation Gurrazh-Ahr's entire fleet. Some of the false nations among those not of the true ideal covet it, I know that also."
Teldin wasn't sure he grasped the nuances of what the beholder was saying, but he thought he understood enough. "And what about nation Gurrazh-Ahr?" he asked. "And clan Beth? Do they covet it?"
"I can no longer speak for my clan or my nation," Beth-Abz said slowly, and this time the sadness in the creature's voice was unmistakable. "I no longer have clan or nation. I can speak only for myself, and I would as soon covet an entire crystal sphere as the Spelljammer, for the chances of obtaining either are nonexistent."
The Cloakmaster was silent, lost in thought. He watched his fingers stroking the heavy grain of the tabletop. Then he raised his gaze back to the beholder. "What would you say if I told you that I sought to captain the Spelljammer?" he asked quietly. He heard Julia's gasp of shock, but forced himself to ignore her.
With a chorus of clicks, all ten of Beth-Abz's eyestalks pivoted around to focus on Teldin. "I would say your insanity is even greater than mine," the creature said at once. "Yet I would also say that your destiny is your own, Captain, and the direction of your life is yours to choose." It paused. "I would also say that I would relish a chance to glimpse the Spelljammer," it finished wistfully.
Good answer, Teldin told himself. It has the ring of truth. But can I trust this thing?
Yet what good would distrusting Beth-Abz do? He remembered what he'd heard about beholders, that each of its smaller eyes could direct blasts of destruction, and that its central eye could emit a ray capable of suppressing all magical activity. If it wanted me dead, I'd be dead already, he thought again. If it wanted the cloak, it could kill me and take it off my body, and the entire crew of the Boundless couldn't stop it. Or it could simply suppress the magic of the cloak and take it from my shoulders. (Now there was a thought….)
But Beth-Abz hadn't done any of those things. What possible benefit could it gain from deceiving him? Teldin wondered.
He watched the beholder silently. All of its eyes were still fixed on him, as it watched him in return.
The creature was terrifying, its potential for destruction impossible to estimate. In form it was a monster… but, Teldin found, he wasn't thinking of it as a monster. Maybe his time with Estriss, and his exposure to other sentient races that humans might consider monsters, had burned that atavistic, instinctive reaction out of him. Beth-Abz was a thinking, feeling creature. A potential threat, yes-but also a potential ally of great power. And-who knew?-maybe a potential friend.
The Cloakmaster nodded as he made his decision. "Will you sail with me, Beth-Abz?" he asked. "Will you accept my authority as captain?"
"I have already done so." The hideous creature's response seemed guileless.
Teldin laid both hands flat on the table before him. "You are part of my crew, Beth-Abz," he said quietly. From the corner of his eye he could see Julia's look of disbelief. Yet almost at once he saw her suppress her reaction, saw her shoulders relax as she accepted his decision.
Before him, the lines of the beholder shimmered again as it began its shift back to human form.
"No," Teldin said sharply. The transformation ceased; the beholder returned to its spherical form. "No," the captain repeated, "you'll keep your true shape. I don't want any more deception on this ship. I've had enough of deception."
He turned to Julia. "Please spread the word about our… um… new crew member."
Again Julia stared at him as though he'd lost his mind. "It's going to be a hard sell, Teldin," was all she said.
He shot her a reassuring smile. "Then think of the satisfaction when you succeed."
Chapter Five
The privateer Shark hung against the psychedelic backdrop of the Flow, its helm warmed up for station-keeping and prepared for pursuit or flight. In front of the battle dolphin, the outer surface of Heartspace's crystal sphere looked like an infinite wall of mother-of-pearl. From the command deck, the permanent portal into the sphere's interior looked like a black disk limned around the edges with Saint Elmo's fire. At this distance, the portal-actually large enough to accommodate even the biggest ship-appeared about the size of a doubloon held at arm's length.
Captain Berglund leaned back against the aft railing, looking forward down the length of the command deck toward the shimmering portal. He pulled from his belt pouch the folded sheets of parchment he'd been given when he was ashore on Starfall. For the dozenth time since entering the Flow, he reread his orders-he still thought of them as "orders," even though it had been seven years since he'd deserted from military service.
The orders were very specific. Hold station at a specific point outside the Heartspace sphere and wait for a particular vessel to exit through the portal. Intercept said vessel and cripple it. Board and put the crew to the sword… with one exception: the captain was to be spared, no matter what it took to guarantee that. Scuttle the target and head off with all haste into the Flow for a distant crystal sphere, bringing the captain as prisoner.
Berglund stroked his beard as he thought. With the exception of sparing the captain, the orders matched his standard operating procedure. He didn't have a problem with that part of the mission at all… particularly since the nondescript human who'd hired him agreed that Berglund could keep whatever booty he could take from the vessel.
What did bother him was the amount of detail he'd been given about the target. He turned to the second page of the orders. Here was a complete rundown on his victim-a squid ship, he noted again. There was also a manifest detailing all the weapons the vessel carried, its projected time of arrival at the portal, plus an entire crew roster. Berglund simply wasn't used to having this level of intelligence on a target.
Still and all, he thought, it does make my job easier, and guarantees no surprises. You don't refuse a gift ship just because you smell dry rot, do you?
But where did that mystery man get all this information? Berglund wondered again. There was something about this that hinted to the pirate captain that he was getting into something much too big for him.
Yet the payment was big, too, wasn't it? Even if the squid ship turned out to be empty of valuables, Berglund and his crew would make more from this single operation than they'd normally make in a four-month of piracy.
He shook his head. His battle dolphin against a squid ship was normally a much closer fight than he liked. Smaller, less maneuverable, and worse-armed vessels were much more tempting targets. Even though Berglund was a good tactician, there was always the chance of losing such a well-matched battle. Yet the mystery man had said that had been taken care of, too….
A final time he read the section describing how the enemy captain was to be treated. Bound hand and foot, blind-folded, and gagged-that he could understand. But kept unconscious throughout the entire return voyage, even if that meant risking his captive's life through repeated blows to the head? There definitely was more to this mission than he knew.
Still, he supposed, he who pays the piper calls the tune. And this piper was very well paid indeed.
*****
The crew's even better than I expected, Teldin Moore thought. Although the revelation that Beth-Abz was a beholder shocked the crew members down to their very cores, their outward reactions had been calmer than the Cloakmaster would have thought possible. There'd been no hysteria, no outrage, and-Teldin's greatest unspoken fear-no hint that anyone was considering mutiny.
Certainly, the crew had treated the beholder with fear at first, shying away from i
t whenever it appeared, as though it would vaporize them at any moment. But within only a few days, their reactions had started to change. Fear had faded and quickly become respect. Crewmen still stepped well back when Beth-Abz floated across the main deck or entered the galley, but the wide eyes and grimaces of terror were gone. It hasn't killed me so far, each crew member seemed to think, so why should it now… as long as I don't give it a reason?
For the first week after the revelation, nobody had talked with the beholder, probably because they just didn't know what to say. Teldin, Julia, and Djan-who took the whole matter in stride, as if sailing with an eye tyrant were an everyday thing-had gone out of their way to be seen treating Beth-Abz no differently than the rest of the crew. They'd greeted the creature in the same way they would anyone else, and chatted idly with him whenever they happened to have similar duties.
The example hadn't been missed by the crew. At first cautiously, and then more freely, other members of the Boundless complement had taken to striking up conversations- albeit very brief ones-with the spherical creature. Teldin had known the campaign to integrate Beth-Abz with the rest of the crew was won when he'd wandered into the saloon one graveyard watch and found the beholder trading travelers' tales with a handful of off-duty sailors. When he'd heard them break into laughter together-the harsh, coughing sounds of the beholder's mirth mixing with human chuckles-he'd been amazed.
"I can't believe it," he'd told Djan the next morning, after describing what he'd experienced. "The credit's all yours for picking good spacers."
The half-elf had shaken his head. "No," he'd corrected Teldin, placing a hand on the captain's shoulder, "I think the credit's yours. They trust you, Teldin. They trust your judgment, and they want to sail with you. If a beholder in the crew's mess is acceptable to you, then it's acceptable to them."
In his familiar position on the afterdeck, Teldin shook his head. Everybody's always so keen to trust me, he thought. Sometimes I think I'm the last person they should trust… if they want to stay alive, at least. He took a deep breath and forced the thoughts from his mind. He knew all too well that they'd be back, however.
"Portal ahead, Captain." Djan's voice rang out, echoing hollowly through the speaking tube the half-elf had installed running up the mizzenmast from the helm compartment to the afterdeck. "Slowing to tactical speed."
Teldin stamped on the deck once-the agreed-upon signal for "message received and acknowledged." Then he waved to Julia, who stood on the forecastle by the mainmast.
"Crew aloft," the copper-haired second mate called. "Rig for portal passage. Flow stations. Extinguish all flames." On her order, four crewmen scurried up the ratlines, while twice as many more on the main deck hauled on lines to trim the rigging. Still others scoured the ship, putting out torches and braziers, so as not to ignite the volatile phlogiston once the ship passed through the portal.
The Cloakmaster felt the motion of the ship change as it decelerated-from about three hundred leagues each heartbeat, to less than a spear cast-and the strange winds of wildspace filled the sails. A lot of trouble just to pass through a portal, Teldin groused to himself. The other times he'd passed through a sphere portal-except for obvious special cases such as Herdspace-the ship had done so at full spelljamming speed, without any ill effects.
But Djan had been adamant. "The permanent portals of Heartspace aren't like any others anywhere in the universe," the half-elf had told him firmly. "The very fact that they're permanent tells you that. You might be able to blow on through at full speed, and live to tell about it, but then you might find yourself thrown totally out of control, with no steering and no helm command, and no way to bring the ship back to an even keel. Hundreds of ships have died in or near Heartspace because their masters were overconfident."
Teldin had considered telling Djan about his own entry into the crystal sphere-in the Fool he'd come in at full speed, not knowing any of the risks-and he'd been fine. But then he'd remembered that the tiny Fool was under the control of the ultimate helm at the time, and that could well have made a difference. Rather than making an issue of it, he'd gone along with his first mate's recommendations.
He could see the portal ahead now. As always, he found his sense of perspective thrown off by the view. Even though he knew the inner surface of the Heartspace sphere was only a score of leagues away, the black backdrop of space looked very little different. Granted, there were no stars-his field of view encompassed only a gap between stars-but he still experienced the sense of gazing into infinity that he always felt when he looked into space. The crystal sphere showed no detail and no texture-nothing to give him any due as to its proximity or distance.
The portal itself, now that was a different matter. It seemed to hang in space in front of the Boundless-a totally fallacious image, he knew, but one he couldn't shake. It appeared to be a huge disk, with a diameter several times he length of the squid ship, showing the myriad curdled colors of the Flow. Outlining the disk was a shimmering margin that reminded Teldin of the heat lightning he'd sometimes seen during the summer storms in Ansalon. The portal appeared to expand slowly as the Boundless crept forward.
"Crew down," Julia called. "Lookout aloft."
Teldin watched as all but one of the ratline crew slid down ropes to the deck. The one remaining sailor-Merrienne, a young woman not yet out of her teens, with long blond hair gathered up in a bun-crawled into the crow's nest atop the mainmast. "Portal ahead," she sang out in a clear, ringing voice-more to confirm that she was in position, Teldin thought, than to tell anyone something they didn't already know.
Djan joined the Cloakmaster atop the sterncastle, swinging up the steep ladder as if he'd been born on ship. Flashing a quick smile at his captain, he positioned himself near the speaking tube. "Ready to pass the portal," he told Teldin. "Be ready. Sometimes it can be a little rough." As though to confirm his words, he spread his feet into a broad, stable stance and steadied himself with a hand on the mizzenmast.
Teldin still remembered his uneventful entry into Heart-space. But, better safe than sorry, he told himself. He took a firm grip on the port rail.
"Crew ready," Julia ordered.
The Boundless nosed into the portal.
As the pointed ram of the squid ship penetrated the plane of the portal, the large vessel's motion changed noticeably, and Teldin realized his first mate might not have been exaggerating the dangers after all. If he'd been aboard one of the small river craft he'd know as a youth, he'd have guessed the ship had been caught by an eddy of some kind. Here, without anything for there to be an eddy in, it had to be some kind of attribute of the portal itself. The hull proper entered the portal, and the sideways, twisting motion became more pronounced. Spars creaked and lines groaned as the rigging took the strain. Then the mainmast itself was through, and the canvas of the mainsail cracked like a bombard as a blast of wind struck it from an unexpected direction.
"Look out above! It's…" The rest of Julia's screamed warning was drowned out by the scream of tortured wood. Instantly, Teldin snapped his head up.
The gaff boom, mounted on the aft side of the mainmast, was angled far out-way too far out-over the starboard rail of the squid ship. The sail, still bellied out, was applying force to pivot it even farther out of line. The only things keeping the boom from being torn away altogether were its mount-a metal bolt-and-eye bracket on the mainmast-and two half-inch ropes that ran down from its tip to belaying-pin racks on the port and starboard rails.
"Strike the mainsail, now," the Cloakmaster bellowed, "or we'll lose the boom, maybe the mast!" Crewmen sprinted to where the main sheets were cleated off and struggled to release them against the abnormal pressures of the sail.
A shrill scream echoed the length of the Boundless. Teldin raised his gaze higher, above the twisted bracket that supported the boom. "Paladine's blood!" he screamed. "The lookout! Get her down!" The force generated by the flapping mainsail was being transmitted through the boom into the mainmast itself, twisting
and torquing it in ways it had never been designed to resist. The mast top lashed back and forth like the end of a riding crop. To Teldin, on the deck below, it looked as though the mast were a live thing, purposefully trying to shake the shrieking Merrienne out of the crow's nest.
Julia saw the girl's peril, too. "Crew aloft!" she yelled. A handful of crewmen ran to the ratlines, then stopped in bafflement. On the starboard side, the boom was already tangled in the ratlines, twisting what were usually broad rope ladders into warped renderings of spiderwebs. On the port side, the mast's contortions were transferred directly to the ratlines, making them jerk and vibrate like the strings of a plucked lute. There was no way anyone could climb them.
"Strike that sail!" Djan cried, echoing Teldin's order.
But it was too late. Even as the crew members freed the main sheet to let the mainsail flap free, the line connecting the boom to the port rail parted with a crack like a giant's whip, With nothing to stop it, the gaff boom swung farther around, out over the starboard rail, and pivoted completely until it pointed almost dead forward.
The mounting bracket, already hideously strained, failed. With a screech of tearing metal, the boom came loose from the mainmast and crashed to the foredeck, striking the glacis of the catapult turret.
As the boom came free and the torque it had produced vanished, the mainmast twanged audibly, its tip flailing wildly. With a piercing scream, Merrienne was snapped out of the crow's nest to land with a sickening thud on the main deck.
"Strike the sails!" the Cloakmaster roared. "All of them! And bring the helm down!" As the crew leaped to obey his orders, Teldin couldn't drag his gaze from the small, huddled figure lying on the planking, her head surrounded by a halo of fine blond hair that had been shaken free from its bun. The ship's two healers knelt beside the woman, blocking the Cloakmaster's view. He turned away.
Then, suddenly, a sickening thought struck him. Julia was on the foredeck, where the boom had landed!
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