The Broken Sphere

by Nigel Findley

  Then, too, there was the forest itself. While speeding above the trees in the stricken squid ship, Teldin had thought they were standard deciduous trees – oaks, perhaps, or maybe larches. Now he could see that they didn’t match any tree species he was familiar with … if they could even be called trees at all, he added mentally. In fact, they looked like vastly larger versions of the “grass” plants he’d examined a few moments before. Their overall shape was reminiscent of normal trees, but that was about it. Instead of bark-covered trunks, he could see that the central member of each plant was as green as the leaves were, and much more fibrous-looking. To the touch, however, they felt rock-hard, without even the minuscule give of an old oak. If the Boundless had slammed into those trunks, he knew, the impact would have been the same as if the ship had struck a rock outcropping.

  As he let the sensations wash over him, Teldin had to admit that everything was alien: the strange, sweet-sharp scents of unfamiliar flowers carried by the breeze; the chattering of unseen creatures in the foliage; even the way the grass-tree leaves rustled and clattered as gusts of wind struck them.

  Now, why is this all hitting me so hard? Teldin asked himself. He’d been on new worlds before, worlds more different from Krynn than this place. Why was he so hypersensitive to the deviations?

  Almost the instant he posed the question, the answer came to him. The Juna, he told himself. This isn’t just another new world; this is – maybe – the home of the Juna, who might well be “the creators” he’d been seeking.

  His five companions were as edgy as he felt, Teldin could see. They had different reasons, no doubt; but still they seemed more alert, more sensitive to the slightest sensory cues, than he’d ever seen them before. When a bird – or was it a bird? – squealed in the distance, he saw them all jump, saw Dargeth bring up his sword, ready to thrust or parry. He almost told them all to relax, but then decided against it. Maybe I should be more ready for trouble, he mused, not they less.

  They reached the edge of the meadow. There was a path of some kind leading into the forest, Teldin thought. The undergrowth – plants following the same paradigm as the “grass” and the “trees” but about two feet tall – was sparser here, hinting at a trail. What creatures used it? he wondered. Animals? Or the Star Folk themselves?

  Djan signaled for a stop. He turned to Teldin. “Well, where from here?” he asked quietly. “Into the forest?”

  The Cloakmaster nodded wordlessly.

  From his expression, Teldin knew that the first mate didn’t really like, or agree with, the decision. Even before they’d left Teldin’s cabin, he’d made it clear that he considered it too much of a risk to go far from the ship until they knew more about the environment and the dangers it might contain. “On board ship we’ve got the catapult and the ballistae to protect us,” he’d pointed out. “They won’t do any good against magic – not on the scale we’ve already seen – but they’re enough to give the biggest predator something to think about.”

  But – now, as then – Teldin was convinced that they should explore. The half-elf had backed down before his captain’s orders; and, even though he still disagreed, he didn’t seem to take being overruled as a personal affront.

  Djan sighed. “Beth-Abz and Dargeth, take the lead,” he ordered. “Anson, watch our backs.”

  Teldin watched as the crewmen followed their orders, the half-orc and the disguised beholder moving forward ahead of them, the human, Anson, taking up a position behind them all. Quietly, they moved into the forest.

  Among the trees, the air was cooler – like a mid-fall day in Ansalon, Teldin thought – and slightly more humid than out in the meadow. Light lanced down through the foliage in spears of yellow-gold light, shifting at angles visible as the mini-suns sped by in the unseen sky. The sounds the group made seemed somehow hushed under the green canopy. Paradoxically, Teldin could hear his own breathing and heartbeat with preternatural clarity. A sense of peace, of belonging, enfolded him. He felt a smile spread across his face. He slowed to a stop, breathing the fresh air of the forest deep into his lungs. As he looked around him, he saw similar expressions of peace on the faces of his companions.

  All except Beth-Abz. If the eye tyrant was feeling the same sensations, it was resisting them, maintaining its alertness. Suddenly, the big figure stopped dead in its tracks, staring off into the dappled forest ahead. It signaled silently to the others, who stopped as well. “Something is up ahead,” it reported in a harsh whisper. “It comes this way.”

  As quickly as it had come, Teldin felt the sense of serenity, of belonging, evaporate. Tension once more squeezed his chest.

  “More than one of them,” Beth-Abz hissed. Beside him, the half-orc sank into a sword-fighter’s crouch, while Anson readied his sling, seating a lead ball in the leather pocket.

  Teldin took a step forward to join Beth-Abz, but Djan’s hand on his shoulder restrained him. Gently, he disengaged himself from the half-elf’s grip and moved to stand between Dargeth and the beholder. He strained his senses to the utmost.

  Yes, he could hear movement ahead, the rustle of underbrush as something – or multiple somethings, he couldn’t be sure – approached along the path. The shifting spears of light interfered with his vision, not letting him see as far as he wanted to. But then …

  There they were, strange shapes moving toward them at a slow walking pace. Teldin could feel his comrades’ tension around him and felt his own heartbeat start to race. The figures ahead weren’t humanoid – not even close – but he still couldn’t make out their true shapes. The Juna …?

  Then the creatures emerged into a broad beam of sunlight, and he could see them clearly. His breath caught in his throat, and his pulse pounded in his ears like a mighty drum.

  There were three of them, slender shapes slightly taller than Teldin’s almost-six-foot height. Each creature had a smooth cylindrical body supported by three legs arranged evenly around the bottom of the torso. The legs looked flexible, with more joints and better articulation than a human limb, and ended in broad, soft-looking feet with three long toes. From two-thirds of the way up the body sprouted three more limbs – arms, Teldin labeled them, though they seemed boneless, more like muscular tentacles. Overall, each tentacle was about six feet long. Halfway along its length, each tentacle split into three, and each of those split again into three. The nine tips, each more slender and delicate than a child’s finger, were in constant motion, writhing and twisting in complex patterns. Above each tentacle was mounted a single large eye, as big across as the span of Teldin’s palm. The eyes were all bright gold, catching and reflecting the light of the hurtling mini-suns, with black, three-lobed pupils in their centers. The creatures wore no clothes of any kind and had no hair. They were covered in smooth skin, a pale yellow-cream color, that showed a satinlike sheen in the bright light. Teldin guessed each creature weighed about as much as an adult human, if not slightly more, but they moved with a grace and delicacy that made him think they were weightless.

  The Cloakmaster gaped at them in wonder. He “heard” Estriss’s mental voice speaking in his memory, describing the mysterious creatures he’d dedicated his life to following. They had a trilateral symmetry, the mind flayer had told him. Three legs, three arms … Like a xorn or a tirapheg, but unlike both. For an instant, he remembered holding the grip of the Juna knife that Estriss had given him, recalled the feel of the strange channels and ridges against his palm. At the time he’d known the grip had been designed for manipulative organs very different from human hands. Now he looked at the weaving, nine-tipped tentacles of the creatures, felt a strange stirring of … not quite familiarity, but certainly a hint of recognition.

  Are these the Juna?

  The instant the three creatures emerged into the light, they stopped dead in their tracks. As surprised to see us as we are to see them, Teldin thought.

  Maybe they’re surprised that we survived their magical onslaught …. The Cloakmaster braced himself for some kind of ho
stile response.

  But no attack came. For a few of his racing heartbeats, he watched as the three-legged creatures remained totally still, even their tentacle tips motionless. Then the tentacles resumed their weaving. They were moving faster, he thought, jerkier, more anxiously – or was that his own mind reading an inappropriate meaning into something totally different? Slowly, almost cautiously, the creatures turned around their central axes – one third of a circle at a time, pointing one eye after another at Teldin and the others. Only when each creature had scrutinized the humans and demihumans with all three of its eyes did one of them start forward in a strange, crablike gait.

  Teldin felt Dargeth and Anson tense beside him, readying their weapons, and saw the lines of the beholder’s disguise start to shift like water. “No,” he said, his voice pitched barely above a whisper. “Let’s not do anything hasty.” Obediently, Beth-Abz resumed its disguised form, and the crewmen lowered their weapons. Still, however, the Cloakmaster could feel their tension radiating from them in waves. If I can sense it, he wondered, looking at the trilaterals, can they? And, if so, how will they interpret it?

  He watched as the single trilateral – already he found himself considering it the leader, or at least the spokesperson – approached. It moved slower than a walking man, though Teldin couldn’t shake the feeling that it could sprint much faster if it had to. Its motions were less graceful, less sure, than it had appeared before it had sensed the presence of the strangers. Although it showed none of the emotional cues that were normal to demihumanity, Teldin strongly suspected it was anxious, if not downright fearful. He frowned slightly. That didn’t make any sense. Anxiety in the face of four humans fit his image of the Juna about as badly as … as fear did his perception of the Spelljammer, he concluded. Yet hadn’t he sometimes felt fear, when he’d eavesdropped on the great ship’s perceptions through the amulet?

  He shook his head, forcing those thoughts away from his mind. Worry about the Spelljammer later, he told himself. I’ve got enough to think about here and now.

  The trilateral stopped thirty feet away from the crewmen. While the eye itself remained motionless, Teldin could see the three-lobed pupil opening and closing in precise, almost mechanical gradations – presumably scrutinizing the two figures standing in front of the creature. After a few seconds, it edged a couple of feet closer, then stopped again. The Cloakmaster waited for almost half a minute, but the creature didn’t move again. Neither did it make a sound, or try to communicate. It just stood there, its tentacle tips writhing like baskets of snakes.

  I suppose it’s my turn, he told himself. Taking a deep breath in an effort to calm himself, he stepped forward, between Beth-Abz and Dargeth, toward the creature. Stopping twenty feet in front of the creature, he opened his hands to show them empty.

  It watched him in utter silence, its only movement the rapid opening and closing of its pupil.

  Without warning, Teldin felt a warm pulse of power from the cloak at his back. The back of his neck tingled, and the sensation – almost like a slight jolt of static electricity – spread up his spine and into his brain …

  And he could suddenly sense and interpret the trilateral’s thoughts, a confusing mix of concepts and emotions blended with symbols for which Teldin’s mind had no referents.

  This one [interest] partial crippled [surprise-pity] incomplete!

  Teldin staggered backward a step under the impact – almost painful – of the creature’s thoughts. If Estriss’s mental voice had been the “volume” of normal speech, this unexpected rush of thoughts was more like a full-throated yell. As he regained his balance, in his peripheral vision he saw Julia and Djan running to help him. He waved them back. “I’m all right,” he told them. “Everything’s okay.”

  Then he turned back to the trilateral and took another slow step toward it. “I mean you no harm,” he said calmly, trusting to the cloak to convert his words into something the creature could understand. Around his shoulders, the cloak pulsed and throbbed with power. It suddenly struck him that this was the most complex translation task to which he’d ever put the ultimate helm, and it was pushing the powerful item to its limits. “I wish to talk to you.”

  The trilateral jerked as though it had been whipped or stung. Lightning fast, it pivoted around to focus a different eye on Teldin. Its thoughts flooded out and into the Cloakmaster’s mind, filtered through the cloak to a more bearable psychic “volume.”

  This [shock] animal talks [amazement]. Yet not [disbelief] cannot be. Cannot be intelligent. Mistake [certainty].

  Teldin almost smiled. He could understand the creature’s denial all too well. Before the reigar’s ship had crashed on his farm, if some strange apparition that didn’t match his image of how an intelligent creature “should” look had spoken to him, he’d probably have denied it and dismissed it as some kind of mistake or hoax. He took another slow step forward.

  “It’s not a mistake,” he said quietly, and felt the cloak processing his meaning. “I can understand you, and I can speak. I am intelligent. Different, but still intelligent.”

  The trilateral pivoted again to give its third eye a view. It was “silent” for a long time – processing his words, Teldin thought. Then it edged a couple of steps closer.

  Not mistake [doubt-fear]? Incomplete animal [wonder] talks. Where from, incomplete animal?

  “We came here from Heartspace,” Teldin explained. “You might call it something else, of course. We followed the river in the phlogiston …”

  A rush of thoughts cut him off. Incomplete animal [bafflement] nonsense no meaning. Talk mistake [doubt] after all?

  The cloak wasn’t capable of handling complex subjects, Teldin decided. Quickly – before the trilateral decided his incompletely translated words were just mindless babble after all – he rephrased his answer. “This world is in a crystal sphere,” he explained. “Outside the crystal sphere is what we call the phlogiston, or the Flow. We came here from another crystal sphere, one with more worlds inside it.”

  No meaning [confusion] yet form of meaning. The creature’s thoughts came slower, as though it were puzzling over Teldin’s communication. Crystal sphere [frustration] no referent, phlogiston no referent. Incomplete animal [curiosity] incomplete thoughts? World beyond world [perplexity] meaningless. And then, with a sudden blast of mental speech that almost staggered him again, the Cloakmaster felt its comprehension.

  Incomplete animals [shock] from above suns? [stupefaction] Words mean this, meaning complete after all. Yet what beyond suns [awe]? Nothing beyond suns [anxiety] nothing beyond world. Nothing [fear] but time ancient time before People [terror-shock] before people were Others [panic] can incomplete animals be Others be incomplete [disgust-denial] no no [shock] impossible mistake …

  Discrete thoughts faded into a kind of “mental white noise,” blurring into a mishmash of symbols for which Teldin had no referents, no basis for understanding. There was no mistaking the emotional content, however – profound shock, mixed with fear and a kind of panicked doubt.

  Without changing its orientation, the creature strode quickly away from Teldin – one of the advantages of trilateral symmetry, he thought – and joined its comrades. Over the intervening distance, he could sense their rapid mental conversation – or argument, maybe – even though the cloak was incapable of distinguishing individual thoughts or concepts.

  He felt a presence at his side and turned to see Julia standing next to him. Her eyes were fixed on the three trilaterals. “What in the hells was that all about?” she asked in a whisper. “What are those things?”

  Teldin didn’t answer at once. That was the question, wasn’t it: what were the trilaterals?

  Were these the Juna?

  No. They couldn’t be. Could they?

  Even though they definitely matched Estriss’s description, he couldn’t bring himself to believe that these creatures were the all-powerful Juna – the race that had left artifacts behind them on a hundred worlds, possibly
including both the ultimate helm and the Spelljammer itself. Hadn’t the Juna been traveling the seas of the phlogiston millions of years ago? Hadn’t they roamed the universe before humans and illithids – even before the thri-kreen that Estriss had talked about – had ventured into the void?

  Yet the trilateral hadn’t understood anything that Teldin had “said” about crystal spheres, or the phlogiston, or other worlds, had it? And that couldn’t have been just a translation problem. Eventually the creature had grasped that Teldin meant he’d come from “beyond the suns,” and that had disturbed it profoundly, almost as if …

  Almost as if the sphere surrounding the planet was forbidden territory from both directions – from the Flow coming in, and from the planet going out. Almost as if Teldin and the others had become objects of fear because they’d come from the taboo region. No, these couldn’t be the planet-shaping, sphere-altering Juna.

  But then, what were they?

  “I don’t know,” he replied to Julia’s question.

  Could the Juna have devolved? The thought struck him suddenly. Could they have somehow slipped backward, forgotten what they used to know, lost their powers? Could they have become marooned here on this single planet, cut off from the universe that had once been their playground – marooned for so long that their racial memory didn’t contain any trace of what they’d once been? That would certainly explain why the Star Folk had vanished from the ken of all other races: they’d just turned in on themselves, somehow, leaving only artifacts behind.

  He shook his head. It couldn’t have been like that, he told himself. That was too sad an ending to the glorious story of the Juna. Leaving this universe for another plane of existence, as many rumors told – now that was a fitting conclusion. But to sink back into obscurity, to become savages again – at least, in comparison with their greatest achievements – was just too ignoble. Even worse, what did that say about humankind and the other demihumans – even long-lived elvenkind? That they, too, could lose everything they’d gained, including even the memory of those gains? It was a chilling, depressing thought ….