The Broken Sphere

by Nigel Findley

  After parting with Vallus Leafbower, the bionoid Hectate, and the other members of his last crew, Teldin had looked into acquiring a private ship. At first he’d balked at the staggering prices of even the smallest spelljamming vessel. But then he’d discovered, through conversation with a minor ship broker, that money was the least of his problems. Apparently – thanks to one “Master Captain Leafbower” – Teldin had a line of credit, backed by the Imperial Fleet, sufficient to buy outright anything up to the size of a hammership, like the late Aelfred Silverhorn’s Probe, or even larger.

  A ship that size wasn’t what Teldin wanted, however. It hadn’t taken him long to spot the vessel that matched his needs perfectly. The ship broker had acted as though Teldin had taken leave of his senses when he pointed it out, but that didn’t matter. There was something about the old river trader – converted for spelljamming travel through the addition of a battered minor helm – that called to him. The ship’s background, he’d thought, was probably very much like his: spending the majority of its existence in some peaceful, bucolic – and definitely terrestrial – setting, and only lately being thrust into the confusing reality of wildspace, the Flow, and the greater universe.

  The trader was short and beamy – not more than thirty feet from prow to stern, and more than half that in width – with a single square-rigged mast. It had a single communal cabin, with a small, closed room for the helm at the stern, plus a surprisingly large cargo hold. In answer to Teldin’s question, the broker had reluctantly admitted that the ship could be handled by a single person – though at much reduced speed and maneuverability – and that had sealed the matter in the Cloakmaster’s mind.

  The deal was settled, and the next day at dawn he’d set off. With his cloak – the ultimate helm – glowing sunrise pink at his back, Teldin had listened to the water hissing from the ship’s hull as he climbed away from the harbor. A few quick experiments had confirmed that the decreases in speed and maneuverability arising from a crew of one were more than compensated for by the incredible control the cloak gave him. The ship was unarmed, but the Cloakmaster was confident he’d be able to evade all but the swiftest vessels that might come after him.

  And so he’d taken to wildspace in his own vessel – which he named the Ship of Fools, even though he now was the only fool aboard, alone and – for the first time in a long time – free.

  But I’m not really free, am I? he asked himself, stroking the smooth fabric of the cloak. Not while I’m wearing this.

  No matter how much he wanted to deny it, he was still bound, his actions constrained. He’d never been one to bow to the dictates of destiny without some kind of a struggle, and that wasn’t going to change now. But what could he do? He couldn’t remove the cloak; that was part of its magic. And even if he could, would he? Should he? There were many others in the universe who wanted to command the Spelljammer – who’d kill for the immense power it represented. Yet he found that he didn’t trust anyone who wanted to be the next captain of the Spelljammer ….

  Paladine! he cursed through clenched teeth. He hated this. Since he’d first set eyes on the triple-damned cloak, his actions had been severely limited. While he had, theoretically, freedom to choose at each decision point, he was still being forced along a particular course by his own ethical and moral outlook.

  Will I always be trapped like this? he asked himself. When do I say “consequences be damned,” and act in my own best interest? He crossed his arms before his chest, his jaw set angrily.

  And then he caught another glimpse of himself in the glass. The image brought a half smile to his lips. Tough-talking Teldin Moore, he chided himself. At least I’m not losing my sense of humor.

  *****

  He woke with a muzzy head and a foul taste in his mouth. A dull headache had taken up residence behind his right eye, and his stomach burned with acid.

  Again, he thought disgustedly. This is getting much too familiar.

  He looked at the earthenware jug on the nightstand beside his cot. He’d neglected to put the cork back in it, and the pungent aroma of sagecoarse filled the cabin. With hands that could be steadier, he restoppered the jug. The smell of the strong liquor was still in the air, of course, and continued to make his stomach churn.

  This isn’t the way it should be, he told himself.

  Not too long ago, Teldin had rather prided himself on the fact that he didn’t drink hard liquor. While sailing aboard the hammership Probe with Aelfred Silverhorn, he’d developed a taste for sagecoarse, but had felt no need to drink more than an occasional small cup. But now?

  He picked up the jug and swirled it, estimating its contents by feel. About a third gone, he guessed, and it was full yesterday. Is it any wonder I feel like scavver dung?

  Even worse, this wasn’t the first time. He’d started having trouble sleeping while he was still on Radole, soon after his parting of the ways with Vallus Leafbower. Even though his body was dead tired, he’d found he couldn’t turn his mind off.” Lying in bed, he found himself replaying in his brain all the major decision points in the course that had taken him from Ansalon to here, trying to find some alternative choices that would have made things turn out better. Eventually – sometimes hours later – he’d sunk into a fitful sleep racked by nightmares. He’d awakened unrefreshed, tangled in sheets that his thrashing had turned into sweat-soaked ropes.

  He’d weathered almost a week like this, growing steadily more and more tired, his gritty-feeling eyes becoming ever more sunken. One night, in desperation, he’d bought a flask of sagecoarse from the inn where he was staying, and had used it to drink himself into oblivion. Surprisingly, he’d felt better rested the next day (even though the resulting hangover had been epic). Better yet, he’d seemed to have broken the cycle. The next several nights he’d managed to sleep without taking a drink and had thought he was over his problems.

  No such luck. The nightmares had come back, as had the hours of staring at the ceiling, second-guessing everything he’d done since leaving his farm. Again he’d had to turn to the bottle when he couldn’t handle the sleeplessness any further. By this time, he was aboard the Ship of Fools and in space. Fortunately, he’d had the forethought to include some jugs of sagecoarse among his traveling supplies.

  That had been – what? – three weeks ago now, give or take. While he’d tried to use the liquor sparingly, only when he felt he couldn’t handle the insomnia any longer, his self-control had been slowly slipping. For the last three – or was it four? or even more? – nights running, he’d hit the sagecoarse hard. He shook his head carefully, so as not to aggravate the dull ache. This isn’t the way it should be, he repeated.

  Slowly he swung himself out of bed. Not bothering to dress, he expanded the cloak to its full size and wrapped it around his body. He headed out onto the deck, stopping only at the water barrel to wash the sour, dead taste out of his mouth.

  Wildspace in this crystal sphere was cool but not cold.

  The air was brisk on his skin through his cloak and cotton undergarments. Although it made his headache spike momentarily, the relative chill seemed to clear the cobwebs from his brain, giving his thoughts more clarity. He removed the starchart from its tube and unrolled it, comparing what it showed him with what he could see over the Foots railing.

  This was the major problem with traveling alone, he admitted to himself. Even using the cloak, he could control the ship only for limited periods before he grew too exhausted to continue. At first he’d managed only four or five hours before his thoughts started to fog up and his control of the vessel started to slip. With practice, though, he’d brought himself along so he could helm the Fool at full speed – more than four times normal spelljamming speed, he guessed, even without additional crew – for more than twelve hours. In that time, he figured – based on what Sylvie, the late navigator for the Probe, had once told him – the small vessel could travel more than a hundred million leagues. A literally unimaginable distance, he thought for the thousan
dth time, particularly for a know-nothing farmer. That was a distance equivalent to traveling around Krynn’s equator more than seven thousand times in a single day. How could people ever take spelljamming travel for granted?

  Anyway, helming the ship accounted for twelve hours of every twenty-four. The rest of the day was taken up with the maintenance chores that every ship requires, with charting and checking his course, but mainly with sleep. During that time the Fool simply drifted. In wildspace, it usually – and “usually” was the key word – kept to roughly the same course it had held when under power, and maintained a decent speed. Travel in the Flow was quite another matter, there were rivers, eddies, even whirlpools, in the phlogiston that could catch the drifting ship and fling it in totally unpredictable directions. Considering, Teldin was surprised he’d ended up at the crystal sphere he’d wanted to reach.

  It had been worth the inefficiency, and the risks, however.

  On first leaving Radole, he hadn’t had any real plans. He’d just wanted to get away – away from the elves, away from the bionoid Hectate, away from everyone and everything that reminded him of the burden on his shoulders. His first couple of days in space he’d spent mired in self-pity, alternately cursing himself and the fate that had seen fit to afflict him with the ultimate helm. Eventually, he’d rid himself of these negative feelings as he’d known he would, and was able to concentrate on finding a solution, rather than just dwelling on the problem.

  If he’d hoped to come up with the answer, the one, simple key that would solve everything, he’d have been disappointed. What he did find, however, was a new way of looking at the matter. Plainly put, he didn’t have to make a decision now – at least, not the central decision, whether or not to become the Spelljammer’s next captain. Even if he were to decide – either in the affirmative or the negative – exactly how would that change things here and now? If he chose “no,” he had to learn how to be rid of the cloak, and how to keep it out of the hands of those who’d use the Spelljammer for ill. If “yes,” he had to track down the ship. Either course required that he learn a lot more than he currently knew.

  Which, of course, nicely defined his next move. He had to find out as much as he could about both the Spelljammer and the ultimate helm. The question, then, was how?

  For a while he’d considered returning to Herdspace to question One Six Nine again, but he’d eventually discarded that idea. How could he be sure the giant slug-sage was telling him the truth, and not shading his answers to manipulate Teldin into doing what the fal wanted him to do? Certainly, One Six Nine didn’t seem to have any personal interest in the cloak – and Teldin couldn’t envision the creature wearing it – but did that reflect reality, or just the Cloakmaster’s ignorance of the situation?

  The same argument held for the elves, the gnomes … and everyone else, for that matter. For all he knew, any sage he approached might have some hidden agenda concerning the ultimate helm and the Spelljammer itself. No, he had to find some totally objective, uninvolved source of information: a library – a daunting conclusion for a barely literate farmer, but one he couldn’t avoid.

  While on the Rock of Bral, Teldin had heard stories about a massive library or archive, allegedly the greatest repository of knowledge in the universe, located on a world called Crescent in the crystal sphere known as Heartspace. He’d brought the Fool in for a landing at Remagin, a small port on the world of Whyst in the same sphere as Radole, to learn more.

  Most people had heard at least something about the Great Archive on Crescent, but didn’t know where in the universe it could be found. It took Teldin almost two days to track down a sage who not only described the way to reach Heartspace, but also sold him a starchart for that distant crystal sphere. Armed with the information he needed, Teldin took to the spaceways again, setting a course for Heartspace.

  He rerolled the chart and inserted it back into its protective tube. Allowing himself a tight smile of satisfaction, he rested his hands on the rail, looking forward along the Foots course.

  Directly ahead of the small vessel was the sun of Heartspace, the fire body at the center of the crystal sphere. It was much dimmer than the sun of Krynnspace – so much so that Teldin could stare directly at it without pain – and it had a cool, brick-red color to it. From what the chart told him, the sun – predictably called “the Heart” – was more than ten times bigger than Krynn’s own sun, a bloated, tenuous thing reaching the end of its natural lifespan, destined to become a solar cinder in “only” a few more million years. At this distance, though, it looked only a little larger than the midsummer sun had from Teldin’s north field.

  He watched the sun for a few minutes, trying to detect the slight changes in size that gave the Heart – and, hence, the entire crystal sphere – its name. According to what the Whyst sage had told him, the Heart “beat” slowly, expanding and contracting by a slight but noticeable margin over a cycle of a few hours. What must it be like living here, the erstwhile farmer asked himself, under a sun that’s not a constant thing?

  If he gave himself enough time, he knew, he’d be able to see the Heart change size. But he didn’t have the patience for that, not now. According to the chart and his own admittedly inaccurate observations, he was less than a day’s travel from Crescent, with the ultimate helm powering the Fool.

  Excitement tingled in his chest. If the Great Archive was as wonderful as everyone had claimed, he should be able to find out – for himself, without any intermediary to distort the information – more about the mighty Spelljammer. Maybe he’d find what he needed to know to make the grave decision that was always weighing on him … and further, what he needed to know to actually implement the decision once he’d made it.

  With a final glance at the sun of Heartspace, he turned to go below deck again – to dress, and get his small vessel underway toward distant Crescent.

  Chapter Two

  I must be getting jaded, Teldin told himself. A year ago – even a few months ago – I’d have been so overwhelmed I couldn’t move. Now? I’m taking all this in stride.

  “This” was the world of Crescent, of course. As the Fool approached the small planet, it appeared to live up to its name: a bright arc of silver against the black backdrop of wildspace. At first, Teldin assumed the world appeared this way because the sun was lighting it from an angle – for the same reason that the familiar moons of Krynn showed different phases. But now, as he drew closer, he realized how appropriate the small world’s name really was.

  Crescent actually was a crescent – a curved piece of a world, like a fireapple with a huge bite taken out of it. The two pointed ends of the strange planet – the “horns,” he termed them – seemed fixed in space, as though attached to a single axis. The rest of the world rotated around that axis, as though, he realized after a moment, the arc of rock were still part of a spherical planet.

  According to his chart, the planet’s entire population was concentrated on the curved inner surface of the arc. Bringing the Fool in closer, Teldin could see why. The outer surface of Crescent was the most rugged, inhospitable-looking environment he’d ever seen – and that included hellholes such as the goblinoid planet of Armistice. The land surface was all mountains and craters, split with great cracks and fractures leagues wide, as though the world had been struck with a cosmic hammer until it had shattered. There weren’t many clouds, but those he could see were moving incredibly fast across the landscape, hinting at ship-killing winds. The Cloakmaster found himself shuddering just thinking about trying to make a landing there.

  In contrast, the inner surface was downright inviting. There were mountain ranges, certainly, large enough to be seen from space, but the individual peaks looked immeasurably older, weathered into smooth, rolling shapes quite different from the knife-edged, needle-summited monstrosities on the other side of the world. The inner surface was a land of blurred greens and browns, reminding Teldin strongly of his last view of Ansalon from space, and even of the terrain around Raut
haven and Evermeet on Toril.

  What was that? It seemed that there was some feature on the planet’s surface that looked much sharper, more vivid than the blurred surroundings. It looked like a sharp black dot ….

  It took his mind a moment to make sense of what he was seeing. The black dot wasn’t on the planet’s surface at all. It was a ship of some kind, climbing rapidly out of the atmosphere. He watched it for a few score heartbeats, expecting it to “drift” across the planet’s surface in one direction or another. But no drift was visible, as the ship expanded in his vision – no longer a dimensionless dot, but a shape with length and breadth. No drift, he told himself. That meant it was heading directly for the Fool.

  He felt warmth at his back, like the heat of the noonday sun beating down onto his shoulders. He knew that the ultimate helm was flaring with power, reacting to his thoughts and his subconscious fears. The ship – whatever it was – was coming straight toward him. While he knew the unarmed Fool could outrun and outmaneuver virtually any other ship, that advantage could help him only if he used it ….

  He frowned at the course his thoughts were taking. Paranoid, he chided himself. You’re starting to see enemies everywhere.

  The ship continued to draw nearer. Now he could make out its configuration, the angular, hunchbacked shape of a wasp. Again he felt the cloak flare to life. No wonder, he told himself. The last time I saw a wasp ship close up was when the pirates attacked the Unquenchable just off Krynn. He forced himself to release his control over the ultimate helm’s power. No, he ordered himself sharply. If I run every time a ship closes with me, I’ll never get anywhere.

  If there was ever any doubt over the wasp’s destination, it was gone now. The brutal-looking ship – painted an unrelieved, drab gray – had slowed and was edging directly toward the Fool. From this distance, about a spear cast away, Teldin could see motion on the angular vessel’s deck. Standing exposed on deck, he felt vulnerable – a single, well-aimed shot from the wasp’s heavy ballista would put an end to him, and there was little the cloak could do to save him – but he brutally suppressed those fears. He stood at the rail, feet braced, hands on his hips, and waited.