“... In response, I say that the design of the Spelljammer is obviously deliberate, and that the citadel has a secret, more far-reaching purpose than man can understand. Perhaps each tower has some larger purpose than to simply house the individual races. Who can say, since only the lower floors of the Armory are ever open to us? Who can say until we gain entry into the Dark Tower?
“We may never know. The Spelljammer tends to hoard its secrets like a jealous dragon....”
Rambergius, cleric of the Tower of Thought;
reign of Coronas.
The rats were a black carpet, swarming up the tower stairs in a sea of rotted fur and gnashing yellow teeth. The stairway was hidden by their solid black mass, and they moved up the tower in an undulating wave, their ragged claws scraping the stone steps.
“Get him up!” Teldin shouted. CassaRoc and Chaladar lifted HarKenn from the stairs. “Get him inside!” he said. “It’s rats! Gods! I’ve never seen so many rats.”
Teldin backed up the stairs and rushed through the open door with the warriors. He slammed the door behind them and bolted it. Still, the gap under the door seemed too wide to him, too vulnerable; as Teldin watched, a long black snout appeared under the door. Claws and teeth ripped at the wood.
Teldin lashed out with his boot and crunched the rat’s snout under his foot. Black blood trickled from its shattered jaws. The rat was still for a moment, then twitched back to unlife and started clawing at the door in increasing fury.
“Undead,” Teldin said. “The rats are all undead.”
CassaRoc stared at him in surprise. Chaladar said, “It can be only the Fool.”
Teldin nodded unconsciously. Chaladar’s words rang true. Instinctively, he knew the paladin was right.
They were trapped in the common room. The bolted door was their only exit, and, as they watched, the gap at the bottom was gnawed larger under the fury of the rats’ yellow fangs.
CassaRoc hefted HarKenn in his arms and laid him out at one end of the bar. The guard moaned once, then fell unconscious. Blood oozed from his wounds and dripped onto the bar.
The warriors drew their swords and waited. They knew the blades were virtually helpless against the undead swarms, unless they could somehow sever the rats’ spines or chop them until they truly died; but they had no other weapons, and the rats were attacking in too large numbers.
“Fire would do it,” CassaRoc said.
“If we could have a fire in the flow. You saw what happened at the neogi tower,” Teldin said. “It would bring the tower down on us all – right where the Fool wants us.” Chaladar said, “No. I believe he wants you.”
CassaRoc nodded. “This is another assassination attempt, Teldin. He doesn’t care about us. It’s you he wants.”
“Because of the Dark Times?”
“No,” Chaladar said. “He would have no concern of the Dark Times, since he lives in darkness. He wants you for some other reason.”
Teldin placed the light rod on a table and stared down at his amulet. The rats had chewed ragged the bottom of the wooden door. “Me...”
Teldin sagged and let the amulet fall against his chest. He looked over to the rats. Their claws and teeth were flashes of dull ivory, and splinters of wood were spewed across the floor by their razorlike teeth. Then one was squealing, squirming its fat body through a chewed-out gap along the floor. It leaped straight at Teldin.
Chaladar cried out. The paladin’s sword was a silver flash as it swung down and sliced the rat in two. Its hind legs scrabbled to move forward; its jaws snapped at Teldin’s booted feet. Then it ceased, finding true death at last.
“We’re going to have to do something,” CassaRoc said.
Chaladar frowned at the oily blood smeared on his sword. From outside they could hear CassaRoc’s warriors shouting for them, warning others of the rats. CassaRoc yelled back, “We’re trapped in here! Call a mage! We need help!”
Then another rat was inside with them, and another, and another. Within minutes, the floor was strewn with the severed torsos of the black vermin, and more were streaming through the widening gap in the door.
The trio kicked and sliced their way through the rats and climbed up on the bar. Three rodents leaped up and were killed instantly by the grand knight’s swift sword. Some scrambled up the wooden bar using their sharp, dead claws, and were crunched under Teldin’s heavy boots or skewered by CassaRoc’s blade.
The floor was a slimy mass of dark blood, of dead and undead vermin. Teldin paused and focused, concentrating on his cloak and its powers, but its hidden energies refused to be summoned. The powers of the cloak seemed to be exhausted, and Teldin considered if its magic did not work on the undead... and if it would work on the Fool.
The undead rats came on.
Teldin said, “The cloak will not help us, and we can’t stay here and try to chop them all in half. There are just too many.” As he said this, two rats leaped onto the bar and dove for his legs. He lashed out and kicked one across the room; the other drove its fangs into his flesh, and he screamed in pain. CassaRoc reached down and tore it away, then bent it back in his bare hands until its spine snapped with a loud crack.
“We might have to make a run for it,” Teldin said.
“Where do we go then?” CassaRoc asked. “They’ll just come after you again.”
“The Fool is the one we have to stop,” Chaladar said angrily. “He is the one controlling this evil.”
The rats leaped and scrambled over each other in their frenzy to reach the Cloakmaster. The warriors lashed out with their swords and their heavy boots, but the rats swarmed from under the door with increasing ferocity, spitting chunks of wood from their bleeding mouths. Sweat ran from the warriors’ faces as they speared the vermin on their blades, and CassaRoc’s bar ran with the rats’ black blood.
Then the wooden door rocked under the impact of a great weight. Again the door shuddered in its frame. The heavy iron bolt squealed as the weight hammered the door again and again.
Then the bolt sprang out of its braces and the wooden door shot open. A wave of rats poured into the room, chattering with unnatural hunger, and, from the corridor beyond, a large black creature crawled in on eight clawed legs. Its long yellow teeth gleamed in the light, and it focused its eellike eyes on Teldin and smiled. Gray drool oozed from its lips.
“A neogi,” CassaRoc said.
“No, look!” Teldin said, pointing. “It’s the one Na’Shee shot when I crashed on board.”
The neogi hissed at Teldin, focusing its black eyes on him. A bloody crossbow bolt protruded straight through its neck.
Teldin said, “It’s undead.”
****
“Distracted are they,” said one squat lieutenant, crouching in the shadows at the bottom of the Tower of Thought.
“Undead of the rats because.”
“Guards all main level on. This way follow.”
The two furry shapes scurried up the tower’s back stairs. Their black claws clacked against the stone. Behind them, two tall, muscular shapes followed, lumbering blindly up the stairs.
On the upper level, they paused to listen through the wooden door. At the leader’s command, the tallest of the huge shapes opened the door and stepped into the dimly lit corridor.
The guards at the door stared openly and quickly whipped out their swords, but the giant intruders reached them in seconds. One guard went down from a single hammering blow to his forehead. The other managed one lunge at his grotesque attacker, then was gripped from behind. His attacker’s mandibles quickly closed on the guard’s soft neck, and he died as his blood spilled onto the floor.
The intruders opened the door to Cwelanas’s quarters. She lay in the bed, in restful sleep.
The furred black leader grinned. “Now... now, ours the shemeat is. Soon, soon, cloak perhaps ours will be.”
Silently, the unhuman intruders approached Cwelanas.
Chapter Sixteen
“... Many obstacles the Cloakmaster m
ust overcome, for enemies many he will find, chief among them the unreason and hatred that unhumans generate for all others. It is this hatred, many believe, that has created a being which leeches off the soul of the Spelljammer, whose desire is nothing less than the Spelljammer’s destruction. Revenge is its heart; evil, its soul.
“Was this evil once human? Doubtful is that, according to the legends that have circulated for years....
“But that is all we have: legends, rumors – no facts....
“Of but one thing we can be certain: great evil walks these decks...”
Prince Arastor of the Human Collective,
The White Book of Knowledge, reign of Brother Darke.
The undead neogi glared at Teldin with its black, empty eyes. Pinpricks of bright light shone from deep in its sockets – the Fool’s eyes, Teldin knew. The neogi bared its needle-sharp teeth and waded through the undead rats toward the Cloakmaster.
Teldin raised his sword. Rats snapped at his boots as he leaped from the bar, diving for the neogi.
The neogi snarled as Teldin fell full upon it. They went down together, into the onrush of rats. Teldin wrapped his legs around the neogi’s bulbous torso and held back its snapping face with his forearm. His sword plunged deep into its round belly. Black blood gushed from the wound.
The rats around them scratched at Teldin’s face and arms, gnashing their yellow teeth. He winced as he felt long fangs sink into his thigh, others in the back of his leg.
The neogi rolled through the rats, trying to shake Teldin off. His grip on it was tight. His sword slashed down and down, countless times into the fat, undead flesh, and the neogi still snapped at Teldin’s face and neck, seeking his warm blood. Teldin felt the sting of rat bites across his legs, across his arms, and several in his sides. His blood was warm and sticky, oozing from dozens of small wounds, and he could tell that the scent of his blood was driving the undead rats into a frenzy of hunger.
Teldin pressed hard against the neogi’s neck, bending back its head. He kicked out with his bloody legs, feeling his feet sink deep into its cold flesh. With one mighty lunge, a bone in its neck cracked, and Teldin hurled the neogi away. It fell against the wall with a wet, sickening crunch.
The Cloakmaster struggled to stand upright, panting with exhaustion. The rats scrambled up his cloak, leaping for his arms and neck. The neogi rose across from him, its head lolling on a hideously broken neck. Its black eyes watched him ferally, and with a tortured scream, the neogi leaped over the rats.
It gnashed its teeth at him in the air. Teldin swung his sword in one swift motion, and the blade sliced cleanly through the neogi’s neck. Blood twirled through the air in an arc. The undead neogi’s head dropped into the wave of rats. Its jaws snapped once, then stopped. It took a single, involuntary step forward on its sharp claws; then, as if sensing that some vital part of it was missing, the neogi body staggered, then fell over onto the floor, instantly smothered by the undead rats.
Rats were covering Teldin’s arms, his back. He tore them off with a swipe of his hand, then could feel them jumping, replacing their brothers, on his shoulders, his legs. CassaRoc screamed for him, but the rats were leaping at his face, drawing blood on his cheeks. He felt teeth at his neck and wrenched two rats away with his bloody hands.
Then a furry snout dove into his cheek. He heard the clack of teeth snapping for his eyes, and he flung himself away, squeezing his eyes tight. He stumbled onto the floor. He felt the rats scurrying beneath him, then over him, over his legs, closing their jaws in his flesh. He felt dizzy. He knew he was bleeding from countless tiny wounds, and he blindly waved his sword defiantly through the rats’ midst.
But the undead came on, seething toward him in an unstoppable mass. He jerked himself up from the floor and spun, trying to shake off the rats, squeezing them in his hands until their bones snapped beneath his fingers.
Then the room spun. His head tingled with cold: not with the power of the cloak, but from the numbness of losing blood, from the physical shock of countless wounds.
He fell to the floor as he heard his friends shouting his name. But his sight went black as the rats fell upon him, and he could hear only the snapping of their teeth.
*****
Gaye involuntarily took a step back. She could feel the immensity of the Fool’s evil wash over her in a cold black wave. Her astral body stood revealed in a pale silver light.
She could still see through the eyes of the Fool’s undead rats as they followed the Cloakmaster through the Tower of Thought. Then he ran into the common room and slammed the door on the vermin.
Darkness. Gaye shuddered and willed her own vision to return.
The undead master watched her, clucking his tongue almost in laughter. What have we here? he said. An impudent kender, who pretends command over powers she knows nothing of.
Gaye searched her memory. He was a lich, she was sure, but what kind?
They circled each other slowly, warily. She reached out with her psionic senses to test his strengths and weaknesses, feeling a tickle on her skin as she realized he was doing the same to her.
She felt the blackness that permeated each cell of his body, the corruption that had laid claim to his once-human form. She could feel the enormous powers contained within him, the absence of life, the hatred for love. She focused on the pinpricks of energy that served as his eyes. They grew in her mind, until they were blazing like suns... twin suns of cold, dark fire.
She staggered under their fury, the boiling heat of his hatred for all life, especially for the being-ship that he once commanded and now wanted dead.
... once commanded...
In a single blaze of brilliant icefire, her mindsight was open. Their senses were linked as each reached out to assess the other’s power, and. her mind was filled with visions of the past; she saw and felt and was the Fool —
Romar
— and saw the power of the ship’s sting destroying cities and lands – Romar’s unstoppable quest for power, spreading a path of destruction across the spheres – his fall from the captaincy, and his insatiable lust for revenge – and his transformation at the hands of gods from the darkness, from outcast to master lich —
Gaye gasped. A master lich!
Then she knew everything, just as the Fool had likewise absorbed all knowledge of her newly learned psionic powers.
She knew his goals.
And he knew her limitations.
From across the chamber, he laughed at her, a rasping laugh that echoed of the grave. Nothing, he said. Your powers are nothing. You are but an insect, a speck blotting my plans for revenge. He swatted a skeletal hand in the air. Her head jerked violently to the side with the impact from an invisible hand. Her cheek glowed warm where his magic had slapped her.
She lowered her head and glowered at him from under her eyebrows. Her hands lifted into the air, her fingers jutting outward in stiff, awkward positions that reflected the strict discipline of her mind. Circles of glowing power slowly formed around her hands.
A challenge... The master lich laughed. I do so love a challenge...
There is no way I will let you kill Teldin, she replied telepathically. Bolts of blue energy erupted from her hands and hit the master lich squarely in the chest. He stumbled back and stared at her with his piercing eyes. They narrowed in focus. Without warning, a powerful force slammed into her and threw her into a wall.
She gasped for breath as her shoulders rang with the impact. The lich’s fingers glowed with yellow energy. She crossed her wrists in front of her. A flare of power flew toward her from the lich’s fingers, only to be dispersed by a sudden shield of psionic force shimmering around her like a diamond.
The Fool laughed hollowly. Good. That’s very good.
Then she was bombarded by cold winds that sang from the lich’s throat. She was pummeled by crackling balls of power that flickered soundlessly from the lich’s eyes. She was struck by bolts of black energy that seemed to absorb the light. Her psio
nic shield wavered unsteadily, shimmering dully as it was weakened by the Fool’s assault.
She raised her arms high. The air in the chamber began to swirl, forming a tornado of bones and black smoke that surrounded the Fool and sent him spinning.
Over it all, the Fool laughed.
The wind stopped upon a single gesture of his bony hand. His eyes burned red, and Gaye’s body jerked suddenly, under his mental control. He opened his arms wide for her, and she jerked forward like a puppet. Through her psionics, she felt his plans for her, the delicious taste of her death at his hands, and his scheme for her long undeath under his command.
She concentrated and bolstered her psionic strength and regained control of her fingers. “Mental discipline is enhanced by physical discipline,” the fal One Six Nine had told her. “The proper positions of your body will complement and increase the focusing of your mind.”
She crooked her fingers in complicated configurations. There! Her right arm was free.
She took another step forward, toward the Fool and his deadly embrace. She held her arm up and thrust out with her mind.
The Fool suddenly staggered back under a psionic blow that exploded against him with incredible force.
Gaye was free.
She gasped for breath. The Fool was far stronger, more practiced, than she. Gaye knew she could not stop him, not now, as weak as she was; perhaps she could stun him momentarily, just long enough to escape his lair and somehow help Teldin...
The Fool bellowed with anger. His howl echoed through the warrens like the wail of the wind. He kneeled and raised his arms high above his head and called out, Ygsykhan! Turollabak! Hear me!
Gaye focused and realized what she had to do. She drew a deep breath and tapped all the psychic energies she had left. She felt the energies swirling within her, flickering through her veins like fire.
The Fool stood up. He waved his hands above his head in an intricate pattern. Black smoke curled around his feet, spreading its deadly tendrils toward Gaye.
She screamed in her mind. The power coursed through her like holy fire, and the chamber was seared with the unyielding white light of a nova, coursing, pulsing from her flesh in a fountain of energy.
The Ultimate Helm Page 14