The Perilous Halibut had arrived. In his momentary glimpse of it, Teldin saw that the ship was flying straight for the titan's head.
Something caught Teldin's foot and he stumbled and fell forward into the grass, knocking the wind out of him. He got to his feet, his lungs full of knives, and at that moment he heard the colossus scream. The sound was an awful, roaring cry that went on and on. When he heard it, Teldin felt a sudden pity for the creature. It sounded almost like a huge human child who had been badly hurt.
Teldin looked back as he continued to run. The giant had clapped both hands over the right side of its face and stood in place. Huge, jagged teeth showed in its loose-lipped mouth. Circling around from behind the behemoth came the Perilous Halibut. It looked different now. After a moment, Teldin realized that the ship was missing its long, drooping tail fin. "Sir! Sir! Stop!" Still clutching his pistol, Gomja was lumbering along behind Teldin. The giff was obviously winded and near collapse. The green butterfly, revealing a wingspan of fifty feet, continued to drift on behind him.
Teldin saw that the giant wasn't about to attack while it was holding its injured face. He slowed just enough to shout back. "Who's in that thing? What's going on?"
"Let… them… explain!" Gomja shouted, gasping for breath. "Let… them…"
Without warning, the green butterfly sped up, rocketing toward the running giff. With a simple twist as it flew, a movement Teldin knew could not have been accidental, the ship turned so that the lower edge of one wing swept the giffs feet out from beneath him. Gomja fell, arms flailing. The ship shot over him and came directly at Teldin.
Instinctively, Teldin threw himself to the ground. The green butterfly flew over him a moment later, the lower edges of its wings scything through the tall grass. When Teldin got to his knees, he saw that the ship had come to an abrupt halt only twenty feet in front of him. Uncertain of which way to run, Teldin got up in a crouch.
A door in the green ship opened as it hovered, revealing a small, cramped cargo bay. Two silver-armored figures stood within it, each clutching a short stick of wood in one hand that was kept pointed at Teldin.
"You can get aboard of your own will, or with our assistance," said one of the silver-armored beings with an Elvish accent. "The former would be less troublesome."
"Who are you?" Teldin shouted, still backing up. "What in the name of the gods are you doing?"
"The colossus is moving!" yelled someone farther back in the ship, in Elvish. "Take him now!"
The two silver warriors raised their wands and chanted a phrase in unison.
Teldin felt a mad rush of panic, raising his hands to shield his face.
Suddenly, time slowed down.
The cloak! he thought, then leaped to his right as fast as possible. As he moved, he had a momentary glimpse of two long gray beams of light flicker out from the wands through the spot where he'd once stood.
How in the Abyss did the elves find me? he wondered. The answer was obvious: Gomja. But how did they set that up? flow? He ran through the tall grass, which was now stiffer and more resistant to his passing. He saw the colossus to one side, in the act of taking a huge step toward him; it moved with infinite slowness now. Teldin saw Aelfred running slowly toward him in the distance, a crossbow in one hand and his red face registering his effort.
Teldin tried to think as he ran. Too much was happening all at once. He had to keep away from the giant and avoid the elves' butterfly ship at the same time. He needed a weapon, but he had nothing that would make any difference.
Gomja! Gomja had been holding a pistol, and it had not gone off when the ship had knocked him down.
Teldin ran in a wide circle, marveling that his exhaustion had been dispelled by the cloak's time-slowing effects. He raced back to where he thought the giff had fallen, the grass whipping his clothing as he went. It almost felt like running through water, though he felt he was making good headway. The green ship, he saw, had lifted away from the ground and was trying to move toward him, but he was now moving so fast that it could only track where he had last been. Teldin saw a flash of red in the grass ahead of him and tried to come to a stop, skidding clumsily through the weeds and nearly losing his balance. He had passed the prone giff.
Teldin ran back, finding Gomja sprawled in the dirt and grass in a heap, his pristine red uniform now stained with soil and sweat. Damn you, Teldin thought, you were my best friend once, you lying son of a bitch. Seeing Gomja down still brought a stab of pain to Teldin's heart, but he thrust all emotion aside. The pistol was not in sight.
A low sound of thunder vibrated in the earth. The colossus had taken another step. One more step, and it would be right where Teldin stood.
Teldin glanced up and saw that the green butterfly was now getting a fix on his location. It was beginning to rotate its stern toward him again. He could see that the rear door on the ship was still open, and the two silver-armored elves were still there. He looked down, sweeping the grass away with his hands as fast as he could. Then he thought to trace Gomja's footprints back to see if the pistol might be there, closer to where the green butterfly had struck the giff.
Almost immediately, he found the pistol, lying in a clump of grass.
Teldin reached down and snatched the pistol up in a blur. He raised it in the direction of the rotating green butterfly.
Without warning, time sped up again.
Teldin almost cried out in exhaustion and pain, his aim on the butterfly waving wildly as his hands shook. The cloak had cut off its power! What was wrong with it? Gods, what was wrong with the damned thing?
Someone was shouting a garbled command inside the green butterfly from between the two rearward elves. The two armored elves aimed their wands at Teldin, again chanting in unison. Teldin gripped the pistol with both hands and squeezed the trigger, just as the wands flashed together in gray light. The pistol's explosion wiped out all other sound and filled Teldin's head with a screaming whine that rang endlessly through his ears.
The gray light struck Teldin and surrounded him. In an instant, he felt his entire body stiffen, clutched in total paralysis. The wands' magic had been dead on target-and he saw that neither of the two elves in the rear of the green butterfly were injured by the pistol's bullet. Helpless, Teldin saw the two elves shout in triumph.
The green butterfly abruptly tilted forward, going into a slow roll in the air. The two elves suddenly clutched at separate sides of the door to avoid falling out. As Teldin watched in shock, his body rigid in the grip of the elves' magic, the front of the green butterfly appeared from below, upside-down, as the ship continued to roll over. The limp body of the butterfly's helmsman was visible in the center of the forward window, dangling from straps that held him into his helm chair. A splash of crimson stained the upper part of the helmsman's white shirt. His eyes were wide with surprise. The window in front of him was shattered where the pistol ball had smashed through it after passing through the elf.
The ship then made a quick turn to the right, drifting away from Teldin, before one of its wings caught the ground. The entire ship tumbled wildly as it rolled, its ceramiclike wings breaking and shattering in huge shards. The body of a silver-armored elf flew into the air.
A foot the size of a large cottage came down and slammed into the remains of the ship, crushing them flat. Teldin rolled his eyes up and saw the colossus soaring above him like a thunderhead. The giant held one huge hand to the right side of its face, from which ran rivers of pinkish fluid. Its scraggly teeth set in a grimace, the giant reached down for Teldin with its left hand.
The shadow of the Perilous Halibut passed over Teldin as the ship shot by overhead, just missing the giant's head. Teldin saw a cloud of debris fall from the ship's stern and strike the titan in its grotesquely muscled chest.
A flash of sparkling light enveloped the giant on the instant, hiding it entirely from view. A moment later, soundlessly, the giant vanished.
Later, when the paralysis spell had worn off Teldin, ev
eryone tried to sort it out as they gathered in the grass outside the Perilous Halibut. Now missing its tail fin, the ship was easily able to land on the grassy plain, though it was tilted a bit on the rough ground. Ropes had to be used to climb down from the upper deck to the ground. The loss of the tail had changed the ship's gravity plane slightly, but the ship was still airworthy, despite Dyffed's jests to the contrary long ago.
"Sylvie sent me to the jettison when we heard the giant in the woods, and we took off after you in a flash," Gaye recalled, unconsciously winding a lock of her hair around a finger as she spoke. "When the gnomes yelled to fire, I just pulled the lever, and thunk! the jettison threw everything out. Then I looked out the back and said, 'Wow! Where'd the giant go?' and that's all I know. Do you think the gods got mad at him? That happened on Krynn once, you know. The gods got mad, and boosh! They dropped a whole flaming mountain on this one really mean country, just flattening it! It was really wild! You know about that, Teldin, right? Could the gods blow up the giant just like that? Could the gods have made the jettison flatten him? What do you think, Teldin?"
"Oh, no, id wasn'd the gods, nod ad all," interrupted Dyffed, waving a bandaged hand in dismissal. "I exabined the area and found no elebendal drace of the bonsder ad all. Id was cobplede disindegration of badder on an adobic level, exacdly the kind of thing I did by thesis on ad Lirak's Cube the year thad the dweoberfusion alchebical laboradory dook off and landed in Inediblegreensludge Bay. Thad was also the sabe year by advisor bisdook his giand habsder for his wife when he cabe hobe frob class, and the poor fellow was-"
"The thingfinder," Teldin interrupted. "Gomja threw the thingfinder in the jettison. Could that have done it?"
"The thingfinder?" Dyffed said, blinking. "Whad a sdrange idea. I forgod all aboud id. Id was durned on when I had by accidend, and there always was sobe concern aboud the resulds of a promixidy-induced feedback loop through the liddle blue widged, although I personally said the plasba flow was sdable enough do allow-"
"Was it possible that the thingfinder did it?" Teldin said, his patience gone and his voice just shy of a shout.
Dyffed appeared taken aback at Teldin's vehemence, "Well, now thad you bention id, I suppose so, bud I sdill feel-"
"Teldin!" Aelfred called. All heads turned to see the brawny blond warrior waving a hand from the ship's stern. "Gomja's coming around. You'd better get back here."
Teldin nodded and waved back once. "This isn't getting us anywhere," he said to the group. "Let's just drop it. The giant's gone, we're alive, and I've got to see a giff about a little problem and hope he's going to enlighten me. Then I'm probably going to be tempted to throw him off this damned giant animal and let him think about things for a thousand miles or so on his way down."
Teldin felt a gentle hand on his arm. He pulled away from it. "General Gomja wouldn't betray us," Gaye said softly, looking up at him with wide dark eyes. "I can't believe it. He really cares about you, Teldin. He-"
"He was feeding the elves information on us!" Teldin shouted back in a red rage. "Only the gods know how he was doing it, but he kept the elves right behind us, every step of the way, just so that they could try to kidnap me! That big son of a bitch was working for them! He's another Rianna Wyvernsbane, eager for some cash and ready to sell a friend out! I was a blind, gods-damned fool not to have seen it! Damn you, Gaye, what do you know, anyway?"
Gaye looked up at him as all the color drained from her face. Her mouth was barely open, but no words came out. She suddenly looked down and let go of her curl, her hands falling limp at her sides.
"Teldin!" Aelfred called again.
Teldin knew he had gone too far, but he was too angry to take it back or think about it. With a last look at the silent kender, he left the group and walked off through the grass. "Coming," he called to Aelfred, his voice cracking. He felt very tired. What was the point to all this? Who cared about the cloak at all? If he could have given his cloak away at that moment to just anyone, he would have done so, and gladly. He was sick of this whole quest and everyone in it. He just wanted to leave.
But first, he promised himself, he would have some answers.
Chapter Sixteen
"Ease it in," said General Votr. His face was solid, eyes focused on the flying pyramid only five hundred feet away. Only three other scro were out, two of them on the forecastle deck with the general. The general slowly drummed his thick fingers on the railing, stifling a sudden yawn. He looked away from the pyramid ship just ahead and glanced at the distant shape of the one-horned world-monster where Teldin and the gnomes had gone. He shrugged. It was an hour away, but it could wait. An interesting sphere, this was, and worthy of a closer look after the elves were crushed.
He turned to the scro to his left, the first mate of the Tarantuk's Trident. The pale-skinned scro appeared almost fat, his girth straining against his spiked black armor. The general knew that all of that "fat" was muscle. The first mate glanced back, his huge boar's tusks shining dully in the bright sunlight overhead, and he winked, Vorr gave a curt nod. The first mate looked back at the pyramid, seemingly relaxed, his hands open and hovering near the hilt of the broadsword and the handle of the axe that hung from his thick belt.
Almost there, thought the general. Almost there. The false lich didn't seem to suspect a thing about the request for a short conference before making the dose assault on Teldin and his allies. Usso had done her work well with only hours to spare; she'd get a nice reward out of this one, even if she was a bitch otherwise. The Trident coasted toward its unknowing prey, only seconds away from the gravity plane of the deceptively small stone pyramid. The ziggurat had twice the mass of the much-larger squid ship, and a miscalculated move would smash the two ships together, leaving the squid ship sitting in front of several batteries of catapults and ballistae at dead-zero range, its ram jammed into stone.
But there would be no error. Vorr slowly took a breath through his nose, held it for a few moments, then slowly let it put through his lips. No error at all. It was good to be back at war again.
The Trident jerked and shifted. They'd hit the pyramid's gravity plane dead on.
Vorr grasped the railing with one hand and turned to the speaking tube that led to the helm. "Roll over!" he shouted. Then he threw his head back, drew a swift breath, and roared at the top of his lungs at all the universe. He felt his power go put as he screamed, unstoppable, born into fire and death.
Dozens of muffled screams answered his own, and pounding feet thundered three steps at a time up from the ship's cargo deck, where Usso had hidden the scro and ogre warriors after teleporting them in from the other ships, Howling soldiers in full battle gear, black leather gleaming, poured out from their hiding places. Weapons clanged against spiked armor; eyes glowed green with rage.
The view of the universe around the Tarantula's Trident immediately spun in a tight circle as the ship shot forward, crossing the pyramid's gravity plane and approaching from below. The ship lifted slightly to clear the edge of the bottom of the pyramid, then slid to a full stop as its hull scraped across the rough stone of the base. If there were any hatches or bay doors on the pyramid's bottom, they were jammed shut now. Screaming battle cries and curses, the scro and ogres on the main deck snatched up ropes hidden by the railings, then hurled themselves over the sides of the ship, rappelling to the stones below.
Vorr was the first one over the side, ignoring the ropes for the twenty-five-foot fall. He tumbled when he hit but was up at once, and he began waving on the horde. Tight units of ogres and scro, led by war priests, thundered on metal-shod boots for the sides of the pyramid.
"Move it! Move it!" Votr shouted, now heading for the edge himself amid the screaming mob. "Send the bastards back to the Hells! Almighty Dukagsh watches you!"
Vort knew they were already luckier than they deserved. Usso said she had found at least one scro aboard each ship who been charmed into the lich's service. The fox-woman had used up nearly all of her precious scrolls and spell
books in undoing the charms and freeing the scro from the lich's domination. It had been easy thereafter to piece together the lich's plot to spy on his scro allies and set up saboteurs in their midst, traitors who would slay the helmsmen of their own ships and send their fleet into a thousand-mile dive to the ground below. The once-charmed scro were now the most frenzied of those leading the attack, berserk in their desire for vengeance. Not even skeletons would be spared; the war priests would destroy them, rather than command them into service with their powers. Skarkesh had gone too far. Dukagsh, wherever he was, would look down and be proud this day.
Vorr gripped the stones at the edge of the pyramid's base and climbed down. Moments later, he felt a rush of nausea come and go as he crossed the pyramid's gravity plane, now greatly altered with the landing of the squid ship. He turned around on the stone wall and began climbing up the stonework of the pyramid's face, surrounded on all sides by his troops on hands and knees.
Luck was still with him: He was on a face leading to the pyramid's cargo doors. The massive, ancient bronze gates were sealed, as were the weapons' bay doors farther up the pyramid's slope. There was no point in trying to force the latter open; it would only waste time.
"Satchel!" a war priest shouted. Moments later, a scro scrambled up the slope to the bronze doors and tore off his thick backpack. The war priest began a short chant, then finished by slapping his bare right hand against the base of the doors at their separation. The wat priest then seized the backpack and jammed it against the doors. The scro in the area moved away from the doors as fast as they could go, then hunkered down, shielding their faces with their armored arms. No one stayed below the doors.
The spell, a minor fire-lighting magic, went off. A burst of flame erupted around the backpack for a moment before the smokepowder in the backpack ignited. The white-hot blast blew a fountain of rock and twisted metal into the air, with shrapnel screaming over the scro backs. With a wrenching metallic sound, one of the two cargo bay doors fell forward and blanged down the side of the pyramid, falling free to bounce through the ship's gravity plane like a flat yo-yo.
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