The Broken Sphere s-5

by Nigel Findley

  *****

  As soon as Djan and Julia had followed him into the cabin and shut the door behind them, Teldin turned to his first mate. "Could someone tell me what in Paladine's name is going on?" he asked quietly.

  Djan pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. There was something in his expression that Teldin hadn't seen before-a tension that chilled the Cloakmaster to the bone. "I didn't send Blossom to check the keel," he said bluntly.

  "Then, why… ?" Teldin's voice trailed off. A sharp pang of suspicion stabbed his chest. He suggested softly, "So the crew wouldn't think… what?"

  "Blossom's neck was broken," Djan answered, "but not in a fall." He looked up, meeting the Cloakmaster's gaze squarely for the first time. "Somebody killed her, Teldin. Somebody-a skilled warrior, I'd say-broke her neck with his hands. Then he stuffed her in the bilges." He blinked thoughtfully. "I say 'he,' but it could just as easily have been a woman, I suppose. Breaking a neck isn't hard if you know how to go about it." He shook his head briefly, as if forcing his mind back to the subject at hand. "Somebody killed her," he repeated. "It wasn't an accident. We've got a murderer on board."

  Teldin pulled a chair over and sat down. He nodded slowly.

  "Do you have any idea who?" Julia asked. Her face was pale and drawn.

  The first mate shook his head. "It could have been just about anyone, really," he answered. "It definitely happened less than half an hour before Harriana found the body. But half an hour's a long time on a ship this size, and it doesn't take long to kill someone if you've got a mind to." He sighed. "Somebody leaves his watch station-he claims it's a lead call-or slips out of his hammock. Or, if he's off duty and awake, he just goes belowdecks. Nobody's going to question him. He finds Blossom, leads her down to the cargo hold on some pretext. He kills her-snap!-and disposes of the body. Then he just strolls back to wherever he's supposed to be and waits for the commotion to start so he can look suitably shocked and horrified."

  "Why do you think she was killed there?" Julia asked.

  Djan chuckled mirthlessly. "You try carrying Blossom more than a couple of paces," he suggested. "Anyway, the hold's the only place deserted enough to get away with it."

  "He must have known the body would be found soon enough," Teldin pointed out.

  The half-elf nodded agreement. "But he didn't need it to stay hidden for long," he explained. "Just long enough to fade back into the woodwork, so to speak."

  Teldin was silent for a few moments. A murder, he thought. That's a long step up from sabotage, isn't it? A murderer among the crew. Someone who wants to… what?

  What does he want? he asked himself. Why kill Blossom? Why kill a helmsman? And there he had his answer. If you look at it from the right standpoint, it's not that much different from sabotage. If you want to slow down a ship or cripple it, you can sabotage its rigging or you can eliminate its source of power. With Blossom dead, the Boundless had only one official helmsman left-the dwarf, Dranigor. Eliminate Dranigor, or just incapacitate him somehow, and that just leaves me. Then do something about me, and the ship's dead in space….

  "Put some kind of a guard on Dranigor,'' the Cloakmaster told Djan. "Come up with some kind of excuse." The half-elf, nodded. "I like the way you handled things back there," he added.

  Djan's lips quirked in a half smile. "I was making it up as I went along," he said, "but I had to do something. If the crew figures out we've got a murderer aboard, then everything we've done-you've done-to build morale goes out the porthole… and I think I want to get off this ship." His smile faded. The murderer knows I made it up," he went on grimly, "and he knows that you two know now as well. But I couldn't see any way of avoiding that."

  Teldin waved that aside. "I don't think that matters much," he decided. He paused. "Can we ask around-see if anyone did make a head call during the half hour in question?'"

  Djan looked doubtful. "I can try," he reflected. "I will try, but I can't be too obvious about it, or people will guess what happened."

  The Cloakmaster nodded sadly. "You're right, of course." He patted his friend on the shoulder. "Well, do what you can," he suggested, is there anyone other than the three of us that you think we can trust?"

  "Beth-Abz?" Julia proposed.

  Djan nodded agreement. "If the beholder wanted Blossom out of the way-for whatever reason-it could have just disintegrated her, and we'd have thought she fell overboard or something." He stood. "I'll get on to things, Captain," he promised, in the meantime,… I suggest we all watch our backs."

  *****

  Djan had been as good as his word, Teldin thought five days later. He'd asked around, just as he'd said he would, trying to get a line on anyone who might have been inexplicably missing around the time of Blossom's death. But, for obvious reasons, he'd had to be very circumspect, and that had seriously limited his effectiveness.

  At first, the Cloakmaster had considered helping his friend by asking his own oblique questions, but then had discarded the idea as counterproductive. The whole purpose was to prevent anyone in the crew from attaching any significance to the questions, and-almost by definition--any queries by the captain, the master of the ship, would attract such significance. Although it galled him to sit back and let Djan do all the work, he had to admit that this was the most logical course.

  After two days, Djan had sadly admitted to Teldin that he hadn't found out anything useful. Nobody could remember seeing someone acting in a suspicious manner-but that didn't really mean much, he'd stressed, since he couldn't let anyone think that his questions were important.

  A highly skilled priest or mage would have come in really handy, Teldin told himself. He'd heard enough folk tales about powerful spellcasters being able to speak with the souls of the dead. Surely Blossom herself-her soul, wherever it happened to be at the moment-would be able to shed light on the details of her death, and even the identity of her killer. But the only person aboard of sufficient aptitude for such a task had been Blossom herself.

  Which the killer had known, he thought with grim certainty.

  In the five days since the murder, he'd found himself eyeing every crew member he encountered. Is he the one? he kept wondering. Or is it him? The knowledge that a murderer was constantly nearby had been unsettling enough, but what had made it even worse was that he had to hide his suspicions, his knowledge.

  Even without the rest of the crew knowing that Blossom had been murdered, her death had seriously weakened morale aboard the Boundless. He'd overheard muttered conversations among the crew that the squid ship was a jinxed vessel. Some crew members seemed to be linking Blossom's "accidental" death with that of Merrienne, the lookout who'd fallen to her death from the mainmast crow's nest. The crew still considered the incident with the boom, just outside the Heartspace crystal sphere, to have been an accident, not the sabotage that it actually was. That made two tragic, pointless, fluke deaths. And sailors seemed almost universally superstitious, Teldin had noticed, whether they sailed the rivers of Ansalon or the void of wildspace. A third "accidental" death, and the crew would be convinced that the Boundless was a ship of ill omen.

  Still, he couldn't let himself dwell on such things, Teldin knew. His crew depended on him-on him and his officers-more now than ever before… even though they might not be fully aware of it themselves. They were trusting him to guide them through the troubles that had beset them and might continue to do so, to protect them, even to convince them that the Boundless wasn't a jinxed ship after all. He owed them that much, he recognized-or, at least, his best efforts-and didn't feel that their expectations were in any way unreasonable. Bonds of duty go both ways, he'd frequently reminded himself. He owed his crew his best efforts.

  Yet, right or wrong, those expectations put even more pressure on him.

  At least they were now close to Garrash, looping around the vast planet in an orbit that would take them just under a week to complete. The ship's current attitude presented its starboard beam to the world, which guaranteed Te
ldin a spectacular view from his cabin's large "eye" porthole.

  From the ship's present position, Garrash was a swollen ember-red disk, not quite circular, but slightly bloated in places, as though the world's gravity was barely capable of restraining its burning atmosphere. Looping around it was the fire ring, glaring with bright yellow-red light. From this point of the ship's orbit, Teldin was looking at the fire ring from directly above, showing it as perfectly circular, concentric with the planet itself, a thin band of flames. Djan had told him it was only-only!-a quarter-hour of spelljamming flight wide, but since that was only one-fiftieth the diameter of the planet itself, in comparison it looked like little more than a line. When the Boundless had first approached Gar-rash, they'd been seeing the fire ring from edge on. Since the band was only twenty or so leagues thick, it had been invisible from any significant distance, and Teldin had feared they'd somehow come to the wrong system. Today, however, there was no doubt.

  So we've reached Garrash, he told himself. Where's the Spelljammer?

  The previous night watch, he'd used the amulet again, striving to maintain his contact with the Spelljammer for longer than he'd ever done before. For almost an hour, his senses had been united with those of the great ship. During that time, he'd seen a small, bluish fire body-presumably the primary of the system the ship was in-and countless views of the distant stars. But there'd been no glimpse of Garrash, the fire ring, or-and here he'd admitted to wild hopes-the Boundless itself in orbit around the great world.

  The star patterns hadn't been any help. Even now that they were within the Vistaspace crystal sphere, Djan and the navigator had charted only a fraction of the system's stars. The patterns he'd seen hadn't matched anything on those incomplete starcharts. But that didn't really mean much, one way or another, did it? Also, the bright blue-white sun might have been the primary of the Vistaspace system, but it might just as well have been in an entirely different sphere. At least he still hadn't seen any hint that the Spelljammer had passed through a portal into the Flow, or that it was about to do so in the near future.

  Throughout his contact, he'd also tried to connect with the mind of the mysterious ship-if it had anything resembling a mind-not just its wide-ranging suite of senses. Some tinge of emotion-or thought, even-might have given him some clue as to his quarry's location. But, though he'd sometimes felt such emotions in the past-or thought he had, he forced himself to add-nothing came through the link this time.

  After an hour he'd let the contact slip away, returning to a physical body that was panting with exertion and drenched in cold sweat. Nothing.

  Still, the Spelljammer had been here. It had passed close to Garrash itself, apparently sailing right through the fire ring. And, during its passage, the ship had sensed other vessels-if that's what they were-moving within the ring itself.

  That's the last real clue I've seen, he told himself, the best lead I've got. He sighed.

  He wrapped the cloak around his shoulders and headed aft, to where Dranigor sat on the helm. "Take us down," he ordered quietly, "closer to the ring."

  *****

  Standing on the afterdeck, Teldin imagined he could feel the heat of the fire ring on his face, just a baseless fancy, he knew. While the ring burned hot enough to ignite the squid ship like dry kindling, both Dranigor and Djan had reassured him that this heat didn't radiate far through the vacuum of wildspace. If necessary, they'd told him, he could bring the Boundless within a league of the ring without undue risk, maybe even closer.

  Let's hope it won't be necessary, he thought. Even from this distance-a league or so from the ring, a distance inconsequential in comparison to the width of the band of fire- the violence of the Garrash system was impressive, terrifying. The huge planet itself, more than an hour's full-speed flight away, filled the sky. He could see the writhing, tortured surface of the atmosphere, churning and bubbling with heat, sometimes sending out great flames and prominences that soared many thousands of leagues above the surface before falling back. The comparison with the magical bolts rising from the surface of Nex were unavoidable, and every time another prominence started to climb into the heavens, fear squeezed his heart. Would this one fall back like the others? Or would it continue out into space, questing blindly for the ship, to send it down in fiery destruction?

  He could see the great, dark circle-the weather pattern or whatever it was-near the distant limb of the planet. From this range, he could see that it wasn't black, as he'd thought initially. It was just a darker red than the rest of the world, appearing black only in comparison to the brighter fires around it. The circle-which Djan had taken to calling the Great Storm-was actually a great cone, the half-elf had explained to him, easily large enough to swallow tens of thousands of worlds the size of Krynn, extending far down into the heart of the world. The Great Storm was much colder than the rest of the flaming atmosphere, so much colder that Djan had guessed a spelljammer might be able to descend some distance into it before bursting into flames.

  The ring itself was a spectacle in its own right. From a distance it had seemed perfectly flat, but now Teldin could see that its surface churned, too, as though currents of unimaginable speed and ferocity were flowing through its liquid fire. Its light was largely yellow, but sometimes rivers or bubbles of flame burned at the surface in different colors- red, emerald green, even sometimes lightning blue. The result was an impression of barely contained violence.

  The Spelljammer sailed through that? Teldin found himself wondering. And what about the other shapes-ships or whatever they were-he'd seen cruising within the ring? It boggled the imagination.

  He turned away from the view, stared out into the star-specked blackness. Where are you? he asked mentally. Where?

  "Ship ahoy!" Harriana's voice echoed down from the repaired crow's nest.

  Her words jolted Teldin like an electric shock. The Spelljammer! "Where?" he yelled,

  "Low off the stern, starboard," the halfling called. "In the fire ring."

  Teldin sprinted to the aft rail on the starboard side and pivoted the ballista aside to give himself more room. He leaned over the rail, looking aft and down, past the broad spanker sail.

  Yes, there it was, a darker shape moving within the liquid fire of the ring. Was it the Spelljammer?

  No, the configuration was all wrong. No manta shape, this, but a broad-based triangle with an extended, sharp apex. As he stared in shock and amazement, the apex emerged from the ring, liquid fire dripping off it. Metal, it looked like, finest steel polished to a mirror finish.

  The rest of the-the thing-emerged into the vacuum, and he could see it clearly for the first time, a cylindrical body or hull, maybe a hundred feet long, maybe a little more, sprouting broad, knife-edged wings that spanned at least one hundred and fifty feet. The tips of the triangular wings bore sharp, forward-pointing spines or spears dozens of feet long. The whole thing seemed to be made of the same mirror-polished steel as the apex.

  A ship made completely out of steel? Capable of surviving-and keeping its crew alive-in the depths of the fire ring?

  Teldin sensed a presence next to him-Djan. "What in all the hells is it?" he whispered.

  The half-elf shook his head. His face was pale, his eyes wide with wonder, or perhaps fear. "I don't know," he answered slowly, "I've never seen, never heard of, anything like that before. I can't even guess what race could build a ship like that."

  The broad-winged metal ship moved slowly, cruising parallel to the rippled surface of the ring. Although he couldn't see any portholes-and there definitely couldn't be any open decks!-Teldin imagined he could feel the vessel's crew scrutinizing the squid ship. Then, smoothly, the metal ship's bow lifted, pointing directly toward the Boundless, and it began to accelerate.

  "Battle stations!" Djan screamed. "Man all weapons!"

  Feet pounded the decks as the crew hurried to obey. Teldin moved farther forward, getting out of the way of the gunners who began to prepare the twin ballistae.

  T
he first mate turned to Teldin. "Captain… ?"

  "Bring us around," the Cloakmaster answered after a moment's thought. "Bring the bow toward it."

  Djan paused, then nodded and relayed the order through the speaking tube to the helmsman. Teldin could understand the first mate's hesitation. Normally, aligning the bow with an approaching vessel would allow the squid ship's main weapon-its forward catapult-to come to bear, but it would limit the ship's maneuverability if it needed to escape. The half-elf had realized, however, that the Cloakmaster's unusual control over the Boundless-through the ultimate helm-would compensate for that disadvantage.

  "And get Beth-Abz up on deck," Teldin added, "just in case."

  The bearing to the knife-edged metal ship began to change as the squid ship's bow came around. As Teldin watched, the strange vessel maneuvered, too-much smoother than he'd seen any other ship change course-to keep its own bow pointing directly at the Boundless. It continued its acceleration for a few seconds, then settled down on a fast-though not incontrovertibly aggressive-approach course.

  Djan had brought the Cloakmaster's spyglass to bear on the vessel. Now he lowered it, his expression one of profound puzzlement. "No obvious weapons," he said quietly. "And no portholes, no hatches, no way of getting in or seeing out." He shook his head. I've never seen anything even vaguely like this."

  Teldin stared at the strange ship. Now no more than half a league off, it had started to decelerate again, slowing its silent approach. Its mirror finish reflected the yellow light of the fire ring and the ruddy red of the planet below. It gleamed in the firelight, occasionally flashing with almost intolerable brightness as the light reflected off facets on its surface.

  What are you? Teldin thought fiercely. What?