The Broken Sphere

by Nigel Findley

  For the first time he saw it clearly, as it recovered from its missed pounce. It was a spider, or something very much like it, its body at least the size of Teldin’s clenched fist. Its legs scrabbled on the blanket, trying to gain better purchase for another leap. Starlight gleamed off its body as it might off a huge, dark gem.

  Teldin rolled back, trying to widen the gap between himself and the thing. Too late. Its legs were under it again, and it hurled itself right for his face.

  Without thought, Teldin flung his hands up in a warding gesture. He felt energy sear through his bones, through every fiber of his being – felt as though his eyes must be burning with the light of a blue-white sun. A sizzling, scintillating curtain of sparks burst into existence before him.

  An instant too late; the spider-thing was already past. It struck him heavily in the chest, hard enough to knock him backward. He felt claws like skewers tear at his jerkin, at the flesh of his chest, as it tried for a purchase on his body. Something that felt ice cold, then fire hot, scored the skin of his throat – not quite drawing blood, but terrifyingly close. With a gasp of panic he punched at the thing, a short-arm right jab with more power behind it than he’d ever imagined possible. The blow knocked it clear off his chest – he felt its claws tearing free from his flesh – and across the cabin, to thud into the bulkhead. He heard the clattering as it struggled to right itself and prepare for another attack.

  Teldin skittered backward, crablike, across the floor. His right hand struck something – something cylindrical: the sharkskin-wrapped grip of Julia’s short sword. He snatched it up and raised it before him, point up and blade angled across to the left to protect his face and throat. With his empty left hand he forced himself to his knees.

  The spider-thing was in the shadows again; he couldn’t see it. The first glimpse he got of it was as it hurled itself at his face once more.

  Without warning, time slowed, divided itself into distinct increments, giving him enough time to examine and evaluate each one.

  The cloak, he knew.

  His skin felt cold and the hairs on his arras and the backs of his hand could detect the minuscule air currents in the room. He could sense the weave of the jerkin he wore, and imagined he could count the tiny, needle-pointed scales of the sharkskin sword grip just by the way it felt in his hand.

  He saw the spider coming toward him, seemingly no faster than a crawl. All eight legs pointed forward, each tipped with a single straight claw. For the first time he saw its two fangs, easily an inch and a half long. It had to have been one of those that scored his throat. Was it poisonous? he wondered. Almost certainly. If that fang had penetrated a fraction of an inch deeper, I’d probably be dying right now. The whole thing, he saw now, didn’t really look like a living creature – more like a master sculptor’s representation of a spider, cunningly worked in green-black volcanic glass. It isn’t alive, he told himself. It’s some kind of artifact, magically animated. But what does that matter if it rips my throat open?

  He had plenty of time to estimate the spider’s path, and almost an eternity to bring the blade up to block it. He saw the spider slam – still in slow-motion – into the edge of the short sword, and saw one of its fangs snapped off by the impact. But he also saw the incredible ferocity with which the clawed legs scrabbled at the sword blade in the instant they were in contact.

  Then the momentum of his parry carried the sword around and knocked the spider off into another shadowed corner. This time, though, he found he could see into those shadows as if the starlight had somehow been intensified tenfold.

  One of these times it’ll get me. The thought struck with chilling clarity.

  Without even being aware that he’d made a decision, he felt his right arm flip the sword up into the air. He watched it trace a lazy arc as it rotated end over end. Almost casually, he grabbed it by the blade a third of the way down from the point, with plenty of time to make sure he didn’t slash his palm on the edge. He drew the weapon back to his ear as if for a knife throw, and snapped his forearm forward hard.

  The blade flashed in the starlight as it whirled through the air. It struck true, driving point first into the scrabbling black-glass spider.

  With a sound that was a hideous cross between the shattering of crystal and an inhuman shriek, the thing exploded into fragments.

  As though that sound had been a signal, time returned to normal. Now, the fear that the cloak had partially held at bay came crashing back in, knotting his stomach with nausea.

  And with the fear came other emotions: horror, sadness, revulsion … and, most of all, guilt.

  He flung himself back to the deck beside Julia and cradled her head again. Sobs tore at his throat. Tears blinded him. Oh, by the gods, no … “What were you doing here?” he railed at her, at the gods, at his destiny. “What were you doing here?”

  He felt her stir weakly in his arms. Her eyelids flickered open. But now, he knew – somehow he knew – her eyes were sightless. “Teldin?” she whispered.

  “I’m here.”

  “Did I kill it?” When he didn’t answer, “Did I kill it?” she repeated. “I don’t remember.”

  He closed his eyes and lowered his head until his forehead rested against her cheek. “Yes.” He struggled to force the words out. “Yes, Julia, you killed it.”

  “Then you’re all right?”

  “Yes.” He thought his heart were bursting – wished it would burst. “I’m all right.”

  “I think it stung me, Teldin.” Her voice was growing weaker. “I don’t remember.”

  The Cloakmaster wanted to scream for help, call for a healer, run for help, but he couldn’t. He was rooted to this spot. Julia was dying, he knew that, fading rapidly. There wasn’t anything a healer could do for her now. He knew that, too. And he couldn’t – couldn’t – leave her, turn aside from her, in the moments she had left.

  “I heard them talking, Teldin.” He leaned forward, put his ear right to her lips. “I heard them talking about killing the captain.”

  “Who?” he whispered.

  “I heard them,” she repeated. “They said they were using an obsidian spider. I came to warn you.” Her voice was little more than the faintest of breaths now. He had to fill in the syllables he couldn’t hear.

  ” I came here,” she went on. “But the spider was already here, I saw it. And you sleeping … I couldn’t wake you. You might make noise, trigger the spider’s attack. I had to kill it.

  “And I did.” Her hand, which was gripping the haft of the crossbow bolt, trembled, the fingers seeming to search for something. Teldin took the hand – it was chill to the touch, already – and squeezed. He tried to pour his emotions through the physical contact, to tell her that way what he couldn’t with words.

  Her pale lips twitched into a faint smile. She knows, he told himself. Oh, thank the gods, she knows. Desperately he tried to force himself to believe it.

  Julia’s eyes flickered again and sought his face. He felt the faintest pressure of her fingers. “Teldin, I …” The last syllable became an extended exhalation of air as her lungs emptied. He waited for the inhalation, though he knew it would never come.

  He let the sobs come, now, the great, racking sobs that he’d been suppressing. They shook his frame, seemed about to break his ribs to fragments. He rocked forward, cradling the slight woman in his arms, his tears washing over her peaceful face.

  Chapter Twelve

  “This is how it got in,” Djan said quietly.

  Dully, Teldin looked up.

  The half-elf was standing by the starboard “eye” porthole. With a fingertip, he traced a smooth-edged hole, not much bigger than a man’s clenched fist, that had been cut in the glass crystal. Then he crossed to the corner where the short sword was driven into the decking, surrounded by the spider’s fragments. He stirred the shards with a booted toe. “A highly sophisticated magical construct,” he mused. “We’re dealing with a high level of magical power here.”

 
The Cloakmaster turned away again. What did it matter? What did anything matter? He looked down again at the still body of Julia at his feet and knelt beside her again. Djan had arranged the corpse, crossing her hands on her chest, then covering her with a blanket from Teldin’s bunk. For that he was glad. He knew all too well that if he looked at Julia’s peaceful, pale face again, he’d lose control.

  I killed her.

  His thoughts kept turning back to that hideous, unescapable fact.

  I killed her, when she was here to save my life. I distrusted her; I mentally accused and convicted her of treachery. And then I killed her. He swallowed a sob, fearing that if he let his control slip again, he’d never get it back.

  Djan came toward him and squatted down beside him.

  You didn’t do this, Teldin,” he said, his voice quiet and intense, as though he were responding to the Cloakmaster’s churning thoughts. “They did it.”

  Teldin looked up at his friend. He felt the unshed tears burning what he knew were haunted-looking eyes. “I was the one who pulled the trigger,” he croaked.

  “What else were you supposed to do – supposed to think – when you saw what you did?” The half-elf shook his head impatiently. “You didn’t kill her. Do you blame a sword when it kills? No, you blame the person wielding the sword.

  “You’re the sword, Teldin,” he pressed on. “That’s the way it worked out. You may have struck the blow, but the responsibility lies with those who set things up so that you had to.”

  Teldin shook his head. The half-elf’s words were persuasive, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to absolve himself of responsibility that easily. At best, he shared responsibility with the saboteurs, the poisoners, the people who’d tried to kill him with the magical spider. But, still, it had been he who’d pulled the trigger. He remembered the small crossbow bucking in his hand, the bowstring singing its lethal song. He shuddered and closed his eyes.

  He felt a grip on his arm – tight enough to be painful. He opened his eyes again and looked into Djan’s face. He saw a new emotion there – anger.

  “No,” Djan snapped. “What’s done is done – a tragedy, a terrible tragedy – but it’s done, by the mind of Marrak! You can choose to accept that and work to find out who’s behind all of this, or you can choose to turn in on yourself, spend all your energy on punishing yourself.”

  “Maybe I deserve punishment,” Teldin mumbled.

  “Maybe you do,” the half-elf echoed, “but leave that to the gods. That’s what they’re for. Will torturing yourself solve anything? Will it tell you the names of the killers? Will it bring Julia back from the dead?”

  Teldin jerked as if stung.

  Djan’s grip on his arm slacked off. “I know it’s hard, Teldin, maybe the hardest thing you’ll ever do, but you’ve got to put it behind you, at least for now.” He smiled wryly. “If you want to torture yourself, you’ll have the rest of your life to do it … which might not be long unless we figure out what to do now.”

  “What?”

  “They tried to kill you once, my friend,” Djan stated, “whoever they are. You can bet they’ll try again, unless we think of some way of stopping them.”

  Teldin nodded slowly. Djan was right, he knew. Self-pity and self-blame weren’t any kind of answer. He’d known that all his life, and had been confused – and vaguely disgusted – when he’d seen others crippling themselves with self-blame.

  And yet it was so seductive. While he was busy blaming himself, he wouldn’t have to take action, wouldn’t have to do anything. It was a nice, safe excuse, with the added advantage of a smug sense of moral superiority. Sure I’m not doing anything, but look how guilty I feel …. Seductive, but totally pointless.

  He forced himself to his feet, driving his guilt and his sadness into the recesses of his mind. He knew all too well that he’d have to deal with them sometime, but his friend was right: now wasn’t the time for self-castigation.

  Think, he told himself.

  “Who else knows about what happened here?” he asked after a few moments. The vague outlines of an idea were taking shape.

  Djan raised his eyebrows. “Nobody,” he answered, “I heard noise and came to investigate. I don’t know if anyone else heard anything or not, but nobody else came with me.” He gestured to the closed cabin door. “When I saw what had happened, I shut the door.” He shrugged. “I don’t think anybody else knows anything happened here … apart from the murderers themselves, of course.”

  “Is Dranigor on the helm?” Teldin asked, thinking about the helmsman’s expanded perception.

  The half-elf shook his head. “Why should he be? No, he’s still resting up from his injuries.”

  The Cloakmaster nodded. He thought he had his plan. It would be difficult – not practically, but emotionally – but it might just lead the murders to show their hand and reveal their identities ….

  “What if the murderers succeeded?” he asked Djan quietly.

  *****

  While Djan went aft to spread the word of the captain’s “foul murder,” Teldin spent a few minutes in his cabin.

  The face and body he’d assumed – using the cloak’s shape-shifting powers – felt alien, his balance very different from normal. He touched the smooth skin of his cheeks and felt the tears that leaked from eyes that weren’t his.

  I’m sorry, Julia, he thought. Wherever you are, forgive me. Forgive me for taking your life, and forgive me for this deception.

  He straightened his spine, brushed his short, copper hair back from his face, and opened the door. “Julia” walked out into the saloon, carefully shutting and locking the door of the captain’s cabin.

  There was a handful of crewmen in the saloon, standing around uncomfortably in silence, as though they didn’t know how to react or where to go. When they saw Julia emerge, they dropped their gazes and looked away – looked anywhere but at the petite woman. Nobody stopped Teldin as he crossed the saloon. Nobody spoke to him – which was just as well, since if he’d been forced to speak, the deception would have come to an end instantly. He hoped that, if anyone did try to talk to him, he could just pretend to be too overcome with emotion to speak. Everyone on board knew about the on-again-off-again relationship between the captain and the second mate, and would presumably expect Julia to take her erstwhile lover’s death hard.

  The entire ship felt heavy and somber, Teldin thought as he emerged onto the main deck. Or was that just his own emotions coloring his perception? No, he decided after a moment, the sense of depression was real enough. The ship had lost its captain – or so the crew thought – and that was a major tragedy. Julia’s lips quirked in an ironic smile. I’m one of the few people who know how people react after he’s died, he told himself.

  There were a dozen crewmen on the main deck and the fore – and sterncastles, working to repair the damage inflicted by the beholder’s death spasms. Actually, at the moment they weren’t working, just standing around as though they didn’t know what to do, as though waiting for orders from their dead captain to get back to their lives. As he crossed to the ladder leading belowdecks, Teldin observed them from his peripheral vision, watching for some inappropriate reaction – a sense of satisfaction, perhaps. He knew Djan was already belowdecks, moving among the crew, looking for the same kind of thing, waiting for the murderers to take the next step in their plan.

  Suddenly he heard a yell from belowdecks. “Fire in the hold!” From another part of the ship, a hoarse scream sounded, followed by the crash of footsteps. He sprinted down the ladder, almost falling as he forgot to compensate for Julia’s shorter legs. The air was acrid with smoke, which drifted forward from the cargo hold. He ran aft.

  The fire was small, a pile of oil-soaked rags burning next to one of the holes the dying beholder had blown in the portside hull. Most of the smoke from the blaze was pouring out through the hull breach, instead of fouling the air of the hold. Crewmen had responded instantly to the warning shout, and three sailors were already
throwing buckets of sand on the fire. As Teldin watched, the small fire was extinguished. He heard more commotion in the area of the crew compartments and ran forward.

  There was a small knot of crewmen in front of the door to the forward sleeping compartment. One of them – Anson, Teldin saw – clutched a nasty gash in his left forearm, blood seeping between the fingers of his right hand.

  “What in the hells is happening?” It was Djan, pushing his way through the crowd.

  It was the wounded Anson who answered, his voice rough with pain. “They’re in there,” he gasped. “They killed Dranigor.”

  The last helmsman, Teldin thought. With Dranigor, Blossom, and (presumably) the Cloakmaster eliminated, the Boundless should be dead in space.

  “Who?” Djan demanded.

  “Dargeth and Lucinus.”

  Teldin closed his eyes and swayed as the world seemed to spin around him. Dargeth, who’d claimed that Julia had worked with him on the forward catapult – probably just to sew dissension and suspicion, he recognized now, a psychological analogue of physical sabotage to the ship. And Lucinus, who’d reinforced it by contradicting Julia’s claim that she’d never touched the catapult. He ground his teeth together, struggling to bottle up the scream that threatened to tear from his throat. Paladine’s blood, I’ll kill them …

  “Tell me what happened,” Djan ordered.

  “They came in, swords drawn,” Anson replied, “ordered us all out of there. We were unarmed. What could we do?”

  The half-elf pointed at the man’s wound. “You tried to do something.”

  Anson grimaced. “For all the good it did. Before Dargeth shut the door, I saw Lucinus kill Dranigor in his hammock, just slash his throat open. Then they shut the door and secured it.”

  “Why?” Djan asked. “They’re planning to just hole up in there? What are they …” The look of shock on the half-elf’s face told Teldin he’d come to the same conclusion that the Cloakmaster had reached.