The Maelstrom Eye tcc-3

by Roger E. Moore

  There was some sort of alarm going off, a howling collision alert. She looked up at the window and saw the yellow man-o-war coming straight for the Empress Dorianne-straight for her window, in fact.

  It didn't matter. Her lips moved. She would see her sister soon, her beloved sister, and all would be well.

  She had started to say her sister's name when the yellow man-o-war hit the bridge.

  Only Gomja and a handful of other onlookers saw the transformation as the yellow man-o-war collided with the armada's bridge. The man-o-war had looped in as if seeking refuge from its pursuers, then had dived dead-on at its prey. As the two made contact, the yellow-winged ship vanished in a glittering shower of magical lightning and fire that burst across the gigantic armada as its bridge was destroyed. The craft that was the man-o-war exited the blast and was now revealed to be a tan stone pyramid much smaller than the armada but obviously far more compact. One point on the pyramid's base had pierced the bridge, like a chisel point through the head of an insect.

  The debris from the falling armada rained down across an area a thousand feet wide, and the giff and the human were right in the middle of it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Fire fell from the sky. Teldin looked up and said, "No."

  Power surged through his body. Time slowed down. The flaming debris fell lazily now. Teldin grabbed for Gomja's free arm and heaved. The giff seemed to be unusually light, and Teldin was able to drag the blue-skinned, red-suited goliath at a respectable speed. As he did, Gomja's face slowly turned to face Teldin with a look of astonishment, one hand still pressing the bloodied bandage to his chest.

  A shadow drifted over the grass around Teldin. He looked up and saw a gigantic orange wing tumbling directly at him, magical sparks and flames pouring in rivers across its surface from where it had been torn free of the armada's hull. The wing was two hundred feet across. It fell quickly, even in slow time, and it was too big to avoid. He tried to speed up his pace, but he was still too slow. The orange wing covered the sky, seconds from striking him.

  You will fear not, said a voice in Teldin's mind. Teldin slammed into something incredibly hard that he had not seen before him just a moment earlier. Stars exploded in his vision.

  He came to on the grass, Gomja gasping for breath at his side. He thought his head was split open, judging from the pain he felt, but he had only smashed his nose. He couldn't remember how he'd gotten here. And what was Gomja doing here? What was going on? Flames roared all around.

  I owe you my apologies, said a strangely familiar voice in his head. I want you to sleep very deeply for now, both of you. You will feel no more pain. You soon will awaken and be refreshed.

  Teldin clawed at the earth to get to his knees. Darkness overtook him before he could manage to get halfway up. He never felt the ground when he hit it.

  The wreckage of the armada was stupendous. Vorr allowed himself to be impressed as the pyramid ship settled down toward the earth, casually passing over the smoldering, smoking pyre of the elven warship. There was no sign of the last man-o-war, which had broken free of combat after the armada was destroyed and had fled. Several ships were chasing it, but the man-o-war had the edge in speed. Vorr could accept its loss, given the magnitude of the victory over the other elven forces. "My general," called a scro from inside the cargo deck. Vorr turned from the doorless opening where his forces had entered the deck. He shifted his grip on the newly loaded harpoon bombard as the scro continued his message. "Usso reports that he has located the body of Teldin Moore. We will be there in a moment."

  Vorr nodded and looked out of the cargo doorway again. The pyramid ship was only a hundred feet off the ground. Thick smoke drifted past him, causing him to wrinkle his nose in disgust. He would take a long vacation after this, away from everything but clean air and pure water. Anyone who disturbed him would be ground up and eaten.

  "How are you doing, General?" Vorr stepped back from the entrance momentarily and gave a brief salute to Admiral Halker, who was walking up behind him. The toothless old scro was looking especially cheerful. "The scars giving you any trouble?" he asked.

  Vorr shrugged and gestured at his ruined face, turning to look back out of the cargo bay, the bombard held loosely in his fingers.

  "I've heard that Usso has located Teldin Moore, who is conveniently dead." The admiral positively beamed. "We should be able to gain the cloak in one more minute. Do you wish the honors?"

  Von stared down into the burning chunks of ceramiclike material that once had been one of the mightiest ships in the known spheres. He nodded, his eyes searching.

  He then caught sight of a flash of royal blue among the shattered remains of a vast orange wing, spread out across the green ground. Vorr slapped his hands together to get Halker's attention, then pointed. The old scro came forward instantly to see, standing fearlessly on the edge of the cargo doorway only a few feet from where Vorr stood. Vorr reached out to steady the admiral, but the scro saw the gesture and recoiled, stepping out of reach. "I can manage!" he snapped. "I'm not a cripple yet!"

  Vorr withdrew his hand, giving Halker a curious look before he turned his attention again to the ground. The patch of blue was definitely Teldin Moore and his cloak, sprawled on the smoking ground. Beside him lay a giff in a red military uniform. They were both badly wounded, if not already dead, judging from the amount of blood visible even from this height. Both obviously had been caught in the rain of falling debris from the armada.

  The pyramid drifted closer and closer, now only man-height off the ground. Vorr stepped up on the edge of the cargo doorway, preparing to jump down. The pyramid came to a stop a moment later. Vorr dropped over the side of the pyramid, landing crouched on his feet with the bombard held outstretched in one arm. He then straightened slowly and walked over to the pair on the ground.

  It took only a glance to see that both of them were dead. A falling armada packed a hell of a punch. The cloak on Teldin's back appeared undamaged, however. Not a scrap of dust was on it. Nice magic, Vorr thought, and he reached down for the clasp on Teldin's neck. It popped open at his touch.

  With a single motion, General Vorr pulled the blue cloak free and raised it in the gentle wind and smoke. It didn't feel any different than a regular cloak would feel. Magical things were all the same to him. A shame, really, that he couldn't just wear it himself. It would have been interesting to have commanded the Spelljammer, but it would do just as well to have Admiral Halker do it. It made for a guaranteed job for years to come, a far safer position than if the undead neogi Skarke had been in charge-or Usso, for that matter.

  Vorr looked up and saw Halker on the periphery of the cargo doorway. The old scro's face was alive with naked desire, and his arras were stretched out to Vorr as if Vorr held the scro's very existence in his hands. Vorr suddenly gave a broad grin, wadded the cloak up with one hand, and tossed it to Halker like a ball. He'd give the old coot Skarkesh's medallion when he got aboard, and cement his future.

  Halker snatched the cloak out of the air, clutching it to his chest in ecstacy. As Vorr stepped forward toward the low stone base of the floating pyramid and tossed his bombard into the cargo bay doorway, Halker made a single thumb's-up gesture into the air outside the pyramid.

  The pyramid lifted rapidly away from the ground.

  Vorr slowed his pace for a moment, stunned-then bolted for the pyramid. He leaped at the last moment, mighty hands spread out to catch any pan of the stonework and pull himself aboard. Halker! he thought. Halker, what in the-

  He missed and fell, tumbling into a pile of wreckage. As he struggled to his feet, he heard a peal of feminine laughter.

  Vorr saw Halker throw his harpoon-bombard somewhere into the wreckage, then continued to watch as the pyramid rose and became a small black square against the patchwork sky, then a square dot, then a mote that faded away as it dropped toward the horizon. For perhaps five minutes, he did nothing else. Then he uttered a word, one that could not have been understood by any liste
ner, through his tortured lips, fused together by slime and torch flame.

  "Usso."

  He turned and looked back at the bodies of Teldin Moore and his giff companion.

  They weren't there.

  Admiral Halker announced to the crew that General Vorr had wished to explore the wreckage for suitably glorious souvenirs; he would be picked up later by another ship. The scro and ogre warriors smiled and nodded, as they knew the general was just like that. No one but the helmsman noticed that there was one additional passenger aboard the pyramid as it took off, a passenger who had climbed on at the moment Vorr had jumped off, but no one was going up to ask the helmsman anything.

  Just before the wizard's last meeting with Admiral Halker, before the armada was destroyed, Usso had announced his intention to run the helm himself, freeing the war priests for other duties. Only one warrior, an ogre, happened to hear the feminine laughter coming from the direction of Admiral Halker at the cargo bay doors, but he knew that couldn't have happened. He did think it was curious that Halker appeared to be pantomiming the act of putting on a cloak when he had nothing at all in his hands. But he knew that couldn't have happened, either. He snorted and went on about his duties.

  It had been child's play to convince Vorr of Skarkesh's evil intent toward the Tarantula Fleet, requiring only charm spells on Sergeant Dlavish and a few other scro, who had never known what had hit them. Vorr hated undead of any kind, especially liches, and he had been more than willing to believe that Skarkesh would have sold out the scro after Skarkesh's heavy-handed use of Captain Geraz. Usso had no doubt that Skarkesh was not fond of scro, but she suspected that the rotting neogi gladly would have kept the scro around as its servants. Neogi were neogi, dead or alive, and they craved power over anyone that they could find. Scro were as useful as slaves as anyone else.

  It had been tricky, she admitted, and she had almost lost control of things once or twice, but she had pulled it off. The victory left her weak in the knees, but she felt an exhilaration that she couldn't believe was possible. She had the cloak to the Spelljammer. General Vorr was far behind on the top of a thousand-mile-high beast's head. Admiral Halker was under her control, charmed by her powers of fascination into crewing the working helm at the pyramid's apex, but eventually he would be dropped over the side or discarded in some other manner, once a nicer ship could be found.

  Usso looked out of the broad doorway of the pyramid's cargo bay and watched the landscape rise up to meet her with increasing speed. The pyramid was falling through wildspace toward the ground, where they would rest before leaving this sphere. Usso had ordered the rest of the crewmen to their quarters aboard the pyramid. She still wore her magical disguise as Halker; maintaining it was as effortless as it had been to appear to be an old Oriental man or any other humanlike person she chose. It was one of her innate powers as a hu hsien. A marvelous power it was, too.

  The rest of the Tarantula Fleet had been given orders by "Halker" to stay behind for a day, hunting for the last man-o-war and any other local elven ships, then to rendezvous back at Spiral. With luck, it would be months before they figured out that something had gone wrong. The scro weren't impossibly stupid, but their obedience to orders made them the perfect victims of deceptions such as this.

  Usso noticed that it would be only seconds before the air envelope around the inside of the Herdspace sphere would be contacted. The ship would slow to tactical speed, but the cargo bay would still be almost unlivable without the protective doors. Damn the scro for being efficient. She turned away from the door and wandered through the empty cargo area for one of the ladders upstairs to the helm room, then began to climb.

  Teldin hesitated as he stepped over a scorched chunk of debris. Something was moving in the smoke ahead.

  "Gomja," he whispered. "There's-"

  "I see it, sir," the giff rumbled. "It looks too big to be an elf." Teldin heard the giff fumble with his pistol, then a muttered curse as Gomja threw the weapon to the ground. "Flint's gone," he said. "Useless."

  "You've got that sword you found, right?" Teldin asked. He reached up and scratched at his nose as Gomja grunted in the affirmative. When he had awakened only minutes ago, he'd found his freshly broken nose had completely healed. The fal must have set up some sort of protective magical wall around Gomja and himself to prevent the wing of the armada from striking him. The wall had been crude, but it had worked. Perhaps he should be grateful.

  "Sir," said Gomja, stopping short behind him.

  In the thick smoke ahead stood a huge black-armored figure. It obviously had heard them coming through the debris, and it was waiting for them to approach.

  Teldin recognized the black plate-metal armor and its steel studs at once. "Scro," he whispered, drawing his short sword.

  The scro became clearer. It was gray-skinned and nearly of ogre size, as thick across its chest as a tree trunk. Its arms and legs were similarly muscled, surpassing even Gomja's bulk.

  What stopped Teldin short was the scro's face. Hideously-scarred by either fire or acid, it was barely recognizable as even remotely humanoid, except for its squashed nose and two large black eyes. It regarded Teldin and Gomja without comment. With a start, Teldin realized that the scro's mouth was blistered and burned so badly that the lips were shut.

  The scro made a muffled sound, then breathed heavily for a moment. With a slow, steady motion, it raised its left arm, revealing a large, three-tined fork of black metal. This the scro brought to its mouth and made a quick slashing motion. Blood and pus ran down the scro's jaw to drip from its chin.

  "Teldin Moore," the scro croaked hoarsely in the Common tongue. "I certainly hope that is really you. I've looked forward to meeting you."

  "Sir!" Gomja's hammy hand clamped down on Teldin's shoulder. "Get back. You don't have the experience or the strength to deal with an opponent like this one."

  "We can take it together," said Teldin. He knew Gomja was right, but he knew of no way to get out of this now. "You go right. I'll go left."

  "You're being foolish, sir," Gomja muttered back, taking a step past Teldin toward the scro. "This is the sort of fight I've been hoping to have for months. A worthy opponent is-"

  The scro moved rapidly at Gomja before either Teldin or the giff were fully prepared for it. Gomja jerked his sword up and struck down. At the same moment, the scro whirled on one foot, catching the sword in the black fork and coming to stand side by side with the giff, pulling Gomja's sword arm around in an arc. Reversing the arc, the scro flung the entrapped sword back up over Gomja's head, tearing it out of the surprised giff s grasp. The scro's right knee came up at the same moment and smashed into Gomja's midsection with a loud thump. The giff gasped aloud, staggering back to get his balance. The scro whirled, reversing its grip on its black fork, and brought the butt end down on Gomja's broad, thick forehead with an audible crack.

  Gomja dropped like a lead weight and did not get up. The scro gazed down at its foe, then turned and looked down at Teldin. Its mouth bled freely, splattering droplets of blood across the front of its black steel armor.

  "I seem to have been the victim of some magical hoax," said the scro, spitting blood carelessly as it spoke. "I thought I had found you dead and taken your cloak. I see that I was wrong, but I can fix that. It's your turn now. Give me a real fight."

  Teldin backed up. Gomja was breathing, but he was out cold. Teldin's foot caught on a piece of metal and he stumbled, catching himself at the last moment. He swallowed and looked around. Only smoke and wreckage were visible.

  "A fight," said the scro. "Use your cloak."

  The cloak! Teldin stopped and concentrated, raising his left hand and pointing his index finger at the scro's head. Power suddenly rushed through his body, setting the hairs on his neck and arms on end.

  "Here's a fight for you!" Teldin shouted.

  A brilliant stream of magical bolts flew from his fingers and struck the scro in the face. The burst lasted for several seconds, sending dozens of fie
ry projectiles at his foe. The energy stream ended abruptly.

  The scro appeared completely unaffected.

  "Try again," said the scro.

  Teldin caught a hint of something in the scro's voice, and he realized it was useless. The scro must be resistant to magic in some manner, probably because of a magical item it wore. Using the cloak was not the answer.

  But if it wasn't the answer, what was?

  The scro took another step toward Teldin. '"You killed Gargon, my bodyguard, on Ironpiece," it said. "He was a good soldier. He is going to be hell to replace."

  Teldin had no idea what the scro was talking about. Did he mean the ogre who had tried to kill Gaye? Teldin glanced behind him and continued backing up, avoiding the debris.

  "I'm disappointed," said the scro. "I had expected better. Word of your abilities has long preceded you. I was counting on a fight with an opponent equal to me."

  Equal to you, Teldin thought. Equal to you.

  Teldin came to a stop. He adjusted his grip on his sword. He had one trick left. It was all he could think of.

  "If you wanted your equal," said Teldin, "then why didn't you say so?"

  He concentrated on the scro, taking in his opponent's size and musculature. Once he had it fixed in his mind, he focused on his cloak and opened himself to its powers.

  For a moment he noticed no change, then felt a rushing of energy through his body that dwarfed everything he had previously felt when using the cloak. He felt his clothing grow tight across his chest and thighs, binding and pulling over his neck and upper arms. He seemed to be getting taller. Fabric ripped and split down his left and right sides. His belt tightened until he thought he would be crushed, then snapped apart and fell away. The sword in his hand seemed to shrink until it was merely of dagger size.