Unfortunately, he saw, a settled stomach wasn't what he'd find in the saloon. There was only one of the. crew members there-the beholder, Beth-Abz. It was hovering beside one of the mess tables, telekinetically manipulating some food into its gaping maw. While Teldin had long ago come to consider the eye tyrant a friend, he still had difficulty watching Beth-Abz eat, particularly now, he thought. The creature's meal, a joint of meat big enough to feed a family of four, totally raw and still dripping blood, hung in the air before it.
The Cloakmaster's stomach knotted, threatening to empty itself at any moment. With a grunted greeting, he hurried aft, through the door, and out onto the cargo deck.
He breathed deeply, drawing the cool, clear air into his lungs. Thankfully, he felt his nausea subside and the cobwebs in his head start to dissolve. Damn fortunate thing Beth-Abz didn't have to eat often, he told himself with a wry smile. Even with maybe one meal like that a week, the beholder was a serious drain on the ship's provisions. Fortunate, too, that the Boundless had come equipped with a "freezebox," a magical device of arcane manufacture that kept food fresh for protracted lengths of time. Beholders were carnivorous, after all, and Beth-Abz had proven unable to stomach cooked food. If they hadn't been able to keep raw meat fresh in the freezebox, they'd have had to let the young eye tyrant off the ship long ago. Even with a good supply of food, Teldin mused, Beth-Abz probably found the proximity of the rest of the crew a real stimulus to his hunger-much the same as if the Cloakmaster were living and working in a well-stocked larder…
He shook his head. What am I doing? he asked himself. Inventing more troubles for myself? As if I don't have enough….
He looked out over the port rail. Garrash was a distant, ruddy disk about as large as an apple held at arm's length, its fire ring still clearly visible. After his frustrating conversation with Zat, Teldin had ordered the ship to stand off from the planet. Not from any fear of the great metal creatures; they seemed-well, not harmless, but not inclined to do any harm. More than a dozen of the metallic beings had congregated in the vicinity of the squid ship, seemingly fascinated by the fact that there existed one of the "tiny, scurrying things" that could actually communicate with them. The great, mirrored triangles had taken to cruising close to the Boundless for a better view… and scaring the wits out of Teldin's crew in the process. Even though he knew the beasts meant no harm, the Cloakmaster could understand his crew's reactions. Seeing another one of the things-one hundred feet long, one hundred and fifty wide-drifting in space a spear cast off the beam was enough to frighten him.
For that reason, he'd pulled the ship back to this distance. Zat and its fellows had seemed not inclined to travel so far just to satisfy their curiosity, and had returned to their normal life, which had let the crewmen return to theirs.
"Captain Teldin Moore." A voice that could have come from a clogged sewer sounded behind the Cloakmaster. He turned.
Beth-Abz had followed him out onto the deck. The beholder had swallowed its meal, but drips of blood around its thin lips still were enough to start Teldin's stomach churning again.
"Well met, Beth-Abz," the Cloakmaster said, backing off a step to stay out of range of the creature's slaughterhouse breath.
"Captain,…" the creature started, then its deep-pitched voice trailed off. There was something about the way its ten eyestalks moved that made Teldin think it was uncomfortable. What's this about? he wondered, with a chill of foreboding.
"Captain," it started again, moving closer and lowering the volume of its voice. A miasma of blood and other nauseating odors washed over Teldin, but he forced himself to stand his ground. "Captain, I have heard two of the crew talking about damage to the ship."
"The ship's damaged?" Teldin demanded.
The beholder's eyestalks weaved a complex pattern. "I am not communicating well," it said quietly. "I find my thoughts are somehow sluggish. What I mean is that they were speaking of causing damage to the ship."
Sabotage! "Who?" Teldin saw a couple of the crewman on deck glance over as they heard his barked question. He forced himself to pitch his voice lower, and repeated, "Who? Who was it?"
Beth-Abz was silent for a moment. Teldin cursed silently in frustration. He knew that the eye tyrant had a frustrating inability to easily remember human and demihuman names -probably because they didn't communicate the same information about clan and nation as did beholder names. "It was the small one," Beth-Abz said slowly, "the small one on the bridge."
Did that mean Julia?
"And another, a larger one."
"Describe them to me," Teldin ordered.
"The smaller one…" Suddenly the beholder fell silent. One of its eyestalks had suddenly convulsed, driving directly upward from the top of the creature's body. The other nine pivoted around to stare at the wayward eye. "The smaller one… ° it started over.
The eyestalk convulsed again, another joining it in its spastic motion. The creature's loose-lipped mouth opened slightly, and a gobbet of yellow-white saliva dribbled down its lower surface to drip on the deck.
"What's the matter?" Teldin asked, suddenly alarmed.
"I feel pain," Beth-Abz said, its voice taking on a strange, bubbling tone. "Sharp pain. I feel…"
Another convulsion racked its eyestalks-all of them, this time. The creature made a sound like a cough, and saliva sprayed Teldin's jerkin, looking puslike against the black fabric.
"What is it?" Teldin asked again.
"Pain…" the beholder gurgled. Its huge central eye rolled wildly, the horizontal pupil contracting down to a black line, then suddenly expanding so large that the pale-colored iris almost vanished. It coughed again, but now green-black bile-or was it blood?-sprayed out with the spittle.
Teldin stepped back, horror and fear churning in his chest. What in the hells was happening?
Beth-Abz rocked, like a ship in heavy seas, listing one way then the other, as though it could no longer control its levitation power. The eyestalks convulsed again. The beholder crashed to the deck.
"What is it?" Teldin screamed at the stricken creatures. "What?"
The great mouth worked, made gargling sounds as Beth-Abz tried to answer. It coughed again, spewing bile and bright blood.
A brilliant green beam lashed out from one of the minor eyes, lanced out into space.
Teldin heard yells of alarm from the crewmen on deck, the thundering of running feet as they sprinted for safety. He backed off another couple of steps, wanting desperately to join them in their flight, but unable to take his eyes from the agonized creature.
Another beam-pinkish red this time-burst from another eye and persisted for a second or two as the eyestalk lashed about wildly. The beam swept through the air like a scythe, cutting into a pack of sailors struggling to get through the door into the forecastle. One of them screamed, a huge gout of blood bursting open in his back. The sailor fell, to lie still in a spreading pool of scarlet.
Now all of the thrashing, weaving secondary eyes were cutting loose with their magical powers. Beams of green, yellow, and actinic blue-white hissed through the air, striking wildly all over the ship. Teldin heard rather than saw the top of the mainmast detonate into splinters. The body of the dead sailor was struck by another beam, bright violet this time, and it was hurled into the air as though shot from a catapult. The green beam lashed out again, blasting a hole clean through the deck.
"By Paladine's blood…!" Teldin gasped.
He had to get out of here, had to get clear of the creature's magical convulsions. Its death throes? What else could they be? He turned and sprinted for the door into the stern-castle. More screams sounded in his ears, mixed with the rending of tortured wood as something forward blew apart. He grabbed the door handle and flung it open as another beam-this one as black as night-played momentarily over the planking by his head. He ducked low and flung himself through the door into the helm compartment.
There was nobody on the helm-no need for a helmsman when the ship was drifting in sp
ace-and the compartment was empty. Teldin leaped behind the heavy wooden chair that was the helm itself and crouched low.
Not a moment too soon. A green beam lanced through the forward bulkhead, exploding a man-sized area into dust before continuing straight through the rear of the hull and out into space. Even over the sound of the destruction, Teldin could hear the gargling, choking sounds of Beth-Abz's death.
Another concussive blast sounded from the deck outside, then silence.
Teldin crouched behind the helm for almost another minute before emerging into the scene of devastation that was the Boundless.
*****
The Cloakmaster knelt alongside Djan, examining Beth-Abz's corpse. The dead beholder lay on its side on the deck, looking like some kind of partially deflated kickball. Its eyestalks, which, only minutes ago, had lashed the ship with magical destruction, hung limply. The big central eye was open, the black pupil contracted so far as to be an almost invisible hairline. The area of the mouth and the deck around it were spattered with blood and bile and partially digested meat. Teldin wrinkled his nose, suppressing his nausea only through a titanic act of will. The stench was terrible.
Although Djan's face showed his own distaste, he dipped a finger in the horrid liquid and raised it to his nose. He coughed-a tight, gagging sound-and wiped the finger clean on a cloth he pulled from his belt pouch. "Bitter almonds," the first mate said quietly. "Poison."
Teldin rose unsteadily to his feet. He looked around.
The Boundless looked as though it had been through a major action, suffering mightily under the heavy weapons of an opposing ship. The upper half of the mainmast was gone, as was much of the portside rail. The dying beholder's disintegration beam had blown half a dozen holes in the main deck and in the fore- and sterncastles. One of the stern spanker fins had been half torn away, and the mainsail was shredded, its fragments tied into complex knots, courtesy of the eye tyrant's telekinetic beam. The keel, the Cloakmaster could feel, as he extended his perception through the ultimate helm, had been cracked again-not critically, but enough to put the ship at serious risk if it had to weather any heavy maneuvering.
He sighed, shaking his head slowly. "Casualties?" he asked Djan.
The half-elf s shoulders slumped. "Four dead, not including Beth-Abz," he announced, his voice exhausted. "Six wounded, two seriously. One-Harriana-not expected to live."
Teldin felt his head bow forward as if under a crushing weight. More dead. And how many more to follow before this was all over?
He forced his depression into the deepest recesses of his mind. Deal with that later, he told himself. Right now you've got to be the captain… and be seen to be the captain. He pulled himself up to his full height.
"Start the repairs," he ordered loudly. "Prepare the bodies for burial. And whatever the wounded need, give it to them."
As crewmen scurried off to attend to their duties, the Cloakmaster turned to Djan and asked him quietly, "You're sure about the poison?"
"As sure as I can be," the first mate confirmed, his own voice barely above a whisper. "Somebody killed Beth-Abz, almost killed the Boundless as well."
"How is the ship?"
Djan shrugged. "We can sail-slowly-but we can't fight," he replied, confirming Teldin's own analysis. "Dranigor's one of the wounded, but"-he glanced at Teldin's cloak-
"but I suppose that doesn't hamper us as much as it might."
"Be thankful for small favors, you mean?" The Cloakmaster clapped his friend on the shoulder and squeezed-gaining as much reassurance from the gesture as he gave. "You're right, of course."
The half-elf lowered his voice even more, so much that Teldin had to lean forward to catch his words. "The crew knows about Beth-Abz," he said grimly. "There's no way to cover this one up. They all know he was poisoned, and they know that means one of them did it."
Teldin nodded. As with Blossom's death, the guilty party could have been anybody on board-literally anybody. Every crew member had free run of the saloon and the galley, of course, they had to be able to eat when they needed to. There wasn't a lock on the freezebox, as there might have been on some ships. Teldin had insisted on an honor system for such things, and it had worked fine. Until now, he reminded himself. Anybody could have slipped in, at any time during the voyage, and insinuated the poison into Beth-Abz's food. By unspoken consent, the meat that would be kept raw for the beholder was stored separately from the crew's provisions, so there'd been no risk that the poisoner would end up eating his own poison for dawnfry. The killer would have had to bring his or her own poison aboard, of course, possibly when the Boundless was last in port. But that wouldn't have been much of a problem. The Cloakmaster knew all too well how easy it was to buy just about anything around the docks of a major port like Starfall, and there was no way of knowing what a crew member brought aboard in his duffel, or even in his belt pouch. The only issue was the forethought and planning involved-it had been a long time since the squid ship had made landfall, but this whole thing reeked of a complex, organized plan, didn't it?
He sighed again, feeling the weight of his responsibility threatening to swamp him once more. For Djan's benefit, he tried to force a smile-but he feared as he did it that it would look more like a rictus. "Try to get us as spaceworthy as possible," he suggested.
"And then?" the half-elf asked softly.
Teldin had no answer for him but a shrug.
*****
The Cloakmaster thrashed, straining against sweat-soaked linen ropes. He moaned deep in his throat.
He knew he was asleep, knew he was dreaming, but that didn't make the dream any less horrific.
The dead Beth-Abz was hovering before him, the beholder's eyestalks limp and inert, its central eye sightless. Still it moved, tracking him with its blind eyes as he ran wildly around the deck of the Boundless. The creature's slack-lipped mouth was open, drooling blood and bile onto the deck beneath it.
And there was something stirring within that gaping mouth, something trying to free itself from the prison of the eye tyrant's body. It writhed and mewled, Coated with dark blood. As he tried to escape Beth-Abz's empty stare, Teldin couldn't see well enough to recognize just what it was that was trying to free itself and emerge into the light. But he had the unescapable feeling that he would recognize it if he only looked long enough. And that when he did recognize it, the horror would drive him insane. He moaned, running for the door leading into the forecastle, to his own cabin.
But before he could reach it, the door swung open. Someone stood there, the corpulent figure of Blossom, her head hanging unnaturally to one side. She smiled. Teldin recoiled in horror and sprinted past the beholder, heading for the door to the sterncastle.
Again the door opened before he could reach it, revealing Merrienne. Little Merrienne, the young woman who'd plunged to her death from the crow's nest as the squid ship had left Heartspace. The side of her head was slightly flattened, the skull staved in from its impact with the deck. Still she managed to bare her bloody teeth at Teldin in a warm smile…
Other figures were appearing from everywhere, climbing the ladder from belowdecks, descending from the fore- and afterdecks, even clambering over the rails from somewhere overboard. Allyn, the gunner's mate, and Vernel. Manicombe and Harriana. More-figures from deeper in the past. Dana, the gnome. Shandess, the forward gunner on the old Probe. Sylvie, the navigator, slain by an elven ballista shot in Herd-space. And still they came, all those who'd died while helping him in his quest-all those that he, in a way, had killed. They surrounded him, a ring of smiling faces atop torn or shattered bodies, pressing ever closer, forcing him nearer and nearer to the floating corpse of Beth-Abz.
He heard a sound. From deep within the body of the beholder it came, a sibilance of movement.
The thing within the eye tyrant, trying to escape?
But, no, it came from elsewhere, he recognized now. From all around him, maybe? Yet not that either. No, it came -somehow-from outside this horrible reality
altogether….
And with that, Teldin was awake. He lay motionless in his bunk, staring up into blackness, every nerve fiber tingling. By the gods, what a nightmare. He was growing all too used to night terrors, but this had been particularly…
What was that! He stiffened.
It was the noise from the dream: a faint sibilance from somewhere in the darkness around him, as of something brushing softly against the deck. A foot? That was it-stealthy movement.
Was it the saboteur, the murderer, sneaking up on him, ready to finish him off as well? He'd latched the door of his cabin, but he knew all too well how little hindrance that would prove to someone with any skill at lockpicking.
His eyes were wide open, but he could hardly see anything at all. The cabin's lantern was out, and the only illumination was faint starlight coming in through the two "eye" portholes.
He remained totally motionless, focusing all of his concentration into his eyes and ears. For a moment he considered using the cloak, borrowing the enhanced senses of the ultimate helm, but he immediately dismissed that as foolish. The moment he tried to access that power, the cloak would glow with its magical light, giving the assassin-if that's what had made the sound-a perfectly lit target at which to strike.
The sound came again. Yes, it was stealthy movement. There was no doubt any longer. Somebody was crossing the cabin-slowly, oh, so cautiously-from the door to Teldin's bunk, mounted against the forward bulkhead.
He needed a weapon. The idea flashed through his mind. The hand-crossbow…
He grunted softly, drawing the sound out into a low mumble-hoping he sounded like a sleeper disturbed by a dream. He rolled over, pulling the blanket up around his chin, simultaneously letting a hand flop down over the edge of the bunk. His fingers brushed the deck, then touched something else: the crossbow, cocked and loaded with a single bolt. One shot. It had to be sufficient-enough to either incapacitate the assassin or slow him down sufficiently for Teldin to escape or summon help. Slowly, carefully, he wrapped his hand around the small wooden stock and let his finger rest on the trigger.
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