Teldin crawled into the opening, crouched inside, and looked around. He moved to let in the others, and they started slowly up the narrow, chaotic staircase in single file. The stairs were translucent, unevenly formed of a chitinous, weblike material that seemed to be one long structure spiraling up through the tail. The silence inside seemed palpable, almost holy, and they went steadily up the staircase without talking, feeling the weight of their search pressing on them.
The staircase opened at a bubblelike landing, an organic ovoid deep inside the Spelljammer’s skin. In the wall before them was a roughly circular object. Folds of the Spelljammer’s tough flesh pressed together into a doorway that appeared more like a closed wound than an entrance.
Teldin appraised the entrance and willed instinctively. His amulet flared once and shone the sign of the Juna upon the doorway. The folds of flesh peeled back as the doorway slowly dilated open in an invitation to the Cloakmaster.
The warriors gathered behind Teldin and looked inside. The iris opened onto a short entrance hall, then the hall widened into a hollow, organic pocket, the Spelljammer’s adytum. Rough-hewn light crystals embedded in the walls flickered on silently. Three rough steps led to an uneven dais, upon which sat a simple, unadorned throne made of the Spelljammer’s stony flesh.
This is it, Teldin thought. This is what my quest has been about.
Teldin stared at the throne for a few seconds, then took his first, tremulous step through the opening and stopped just inside the adytum.
A great shape suddenly blocked his view of the dais, and a huge hand slammed hard against the side of his head and sent him reeling across the room.
Teldin had just enough time to sit up on one arm. His head swam from the blow and images came to him, flashes of insight that showed him what he must do. “Stay outside!” he shouted to the others.
CassaRoc yelled at him angrily. “You can’t fight this thing alone!”
“No!” Teldin said. “You must stay there! You won’t be attacked outside the adytum! This is my fight! You can do nothing for me!”
Then the Cloakmaster was lifted high above the floor and flung across the room. He collided heavily against the throne.
His head swam under the impact, and his side flared with bright pain. He reached up for the arm of the throne and hauled himself off the floor.
His eyes widened.
The guardian that lumbered toward him was the largest shivak he had seen. It had taken the form of an impossibly huge illithid. Where most mind flayers stood no more than seven feet tall, this shivak was fully fifteen. Its gray, leathery hide was stretched tight, like muscle, across its chest and down its powerful arms, and its tentacled face seemed frozen in a horrifying grimace of pure, unreasoning hatred.
This had been the last captain’s greatest fear, Teldin realized, and he wondered what form the guardian shivak would take if there were to be a captain after him.
Understanding blossomed in the Cloakmaster’s mind. This was the Spelljammer’s final test of worthiness. All potential captains had to defeat the guardian of the adytum, a monstrous shivak in the form of the previous captain’s worst fear, before they could claim the ship as their own. The last captain’s face flickered behind his eyes, and Teldin saw Jokarin the Bold battling a shivak whose form was that of a huge, misshapen beholder. He saw the moment of bonding then, when the shivak was defeated by Jokarin’s cunning use of a magical gauntlet and Jokarin took the throne. He saw Jokarin and the Spelljammer become, briefly, as one, and saw the seed from Jokarin’s mind enter the consciousness of the Spelljammer and lay dormant, waiting, for the next challenger to come.
Then Teldin had no more time to think. The shivak, all the more threatening because it attacked in silence, reached out to take him between its enormous arms. Desperately, Teldin swung out blindly with his sword. One long finger of the shivak’s right hand was severed and sent spinning to the floor.
The shivak held Teldin tightly in its iron grasp and lifted his feet from the floor. The sword dropped from his useless hand. The thing’s tentacles, perhaps in a dim remembrance of a true mind flayer’s need for human brains, twisted hungrily as it brought Teldin’s face toward its obscene mouth.
He twisted in the shivak’s arms and hammered its thick body with powerful kicks. He grunted with the effort, concentrating on coiling all his strength in his legs. He felt his feet pummel the shivak’s stomach, then he managed to twist free one arm. He reached out and grabbed one tentacle from the monster’s face and twisted it. The shivak stumbled in pain, then Teldin’s other arm was free and he was pushing back on the shivak’s head, trying to break its neck.
The thing’s grip around his waist tightened. Teldin cried out, then gritted his teeth and pounded his fist repeatedly into the shivak’s face. His fist sank once into its flesh as it yielded to Teldin’s strength, and then he was free, dropping to the shivak’s feet.
Teldin’s sword was already in his hand when he leaped again; he swung it into the shivak’s side. The blade thunked into the thing’s leathery hide and carved a bloodless gouge into its waist. Then Teldin spun and chopped the sword into the shivak’s chest and stomach. One gray tentacle went flying as Teldin’s sword sliced across its face. Teldin brought his sword high and swung it down in a deadly arc, toward the shivak’s heart. The thing moved in a blur and caught the blade between its huge hands. It bent back the polished steel until the sword snapped in half, then it cast the ragged metal shards to the floor and advanced on Teldin, destruction smoldering in its deep-set eyes.
In the entrance hall, Na’Shee fitted a bolt to her crossbow and took aim. CassaRoc held up his hand and pushed down the crossbow so that it pointed to the floor. “No,” he said, “Teldin’s right. He has to defeat that thing by himself. I don’t think anything we could do would help him anyway. It’s his fight now.”
Stardawn overheard and smiled inwardly. The human had no chance against the shivak, anyone could see that. The monster was huge, a juggernaut of single-minded destruction. Good. He wanted this over, and the less help, the better. Then he could take the cloak from Teldin’s bloody, battered body and take command of the Spelljammer himself.
The shivak walloped the Cloakmaster with a stony fist to his stomach. He flew back and hit the throne, stumbling to the floor. He pushed himself up, and the shivak halted, focusing its blank eyes at him fixedly.
Then pain was a living thing, growing like the fires of a star inside Teldin’s mind, filling his sight with electric, blinding nothingness. Teldin fell to his knees, gasping. The guardian shivak was more powerful than he had known, imbued not just with the form, but the magical abilities of the being it emulated. The shivak strode toward him as his mind rang with the force of an illithid mind blast, capable of crippling, even killing, normal human victims.
Through clouded vision, he saw his friends at the entrance, watching the battle with fear in their eyes. He knew that the important things – friendship, love, and life – stood before him. He forced himself to his feet and balled his fists. His pain was unimportant. It was their pain, and their possible deaths, that he had to worry about, and he stared at the monstrous shivak as it came for him, ready to depose the would-be captain.
He felt himself grow calm, felt his skin tingle with a hidden reserve of serenity, of inner strength. It was the cloak, he knew; still, it was himself also. The powers they now shared depended on determination, on a zeal for life and preservation over the forces of evil, and the cloak had become merely an amplifier of his own abilities, his own inner fires.
Perhaps that was all it had ever been.
The shivak swung a mighty fist, and Teldin ducked under the swing to deliver a rapid series of solid punches to the shivak’s torso. It brought its balled fists down on Teldin’s shoulders, and he dropped to his knees, throbbing. Impulsively, he reached out for the thing’s ankle and lifted it off the floor, then stood quickly and shoved the shivak away.
It rolled and hopped up, its speed disguised by its
great bulk, and lunged for him. Teldin ran for it and jumped into the air, lashing out with all the power his legs could muster. His feet slammed into the shivak’s chest, and the monster went sprawling back into the wall.
Teldin landed on his feet. The shivak stood unsteadily, and Teldin dove in with a left-right-left series of punches to the shivak’s ugly face. He pounded his fists into the thing’s stomach repeatedly until the shivak doubled over. Then he felt his anger burning within him, his strength cording like steel, and he brought his right hand up in a dizzying blur that slammed into the shivak’s weakened jaw and knocked the thing’s feet inches off the floor.
The shivak collapsed. It struggled to its knees, lowering its head for a final, spiteful mind blast toward its antagonist.
The Cloakmaster felt it between them then: their energies, flickering like heat waves in the air between them, around them. The power of the cloak was his, and he raised his hands, feeling his skin shimmer with invisible energies, with powers unimaginable.
The shivak tensed, ready to destroy the interloper with the force of its mind; but the Cloakmaster felt the power building in the air between them, and he channeled his own energies through the cloak and cast out with his mind.
The cloak billowed out, filled with a cold breeze from arcane planes unexplored by human travelers. The lining shimmered, became a deep blue, and was. filled with specks of light whirling like galaxies deep within.
The shivak stumbled as the coldness of the ethereal planes tore from the cloak in winds and gusts that would have felled trees and toppled houses. It struggled forward, taking one uncertain step toward the Cloakmaster, then darkness flooded from the cloak, enveloping the shivak in a cyclone of night.
The shivak howled in fear as the winds of darkness raged around it. It sank to its knees and faced the Cloakmaster, holding out its hands in subservience.
Teldin felt the power building in him, through him. He screamed, feeling his need for the Spelljammer, the end of his quest, become real in his heart. He could not hear his cry over the wail of the cold, empty winds. At once, the stony shivak, frozen by the coldness, the soullessness of the extraplanar winds, exploded with the force of Teldin’s being. The shivak shattered into pieces, and jagged chunks of its thick hide hurtled across the adytum, embedding into the floor and walls.
Teldin sank to his knees, the strength flooding out of him in a wave. The shivak’s remains collapsed in upon themselves, as though being sucked away from the inside. The stony fragments of its flesh were absorbed into the floor and walls.
On the dais, two round pedestals grew out of the floor at the arms of the throne.
Silence fell within the adytum. CassaRoc and the others were inside, congratulating the Cloakmaster. He stood, and the cloak shrank to its normal size, draping his shoulder as though it had always belonged there.
CassaRoc indicated the throne. “I think that’s for you,” he said, smiling.
They stepped aside to let Teldin step upon the dais. He stood before the throne and stared down at it. “You better get away,” Teldin said. “I don’t know what will happen.”
They all stepped a few feet away. Stardawn, hesitating, stood directly in front of Teldin, a step ahead of the others. His hand was on the hilt of his sword.
Teldin sat in the throne. Unsure, he placed one hand on the top of one pedestal, then the other.
Instantly, he felt warm. A golden glow appeared at his hands that quickly spread throughout his body. His cloak shivered, flapped in an invisible breeze. He felt it wriggle around him, then lose its feel, its texture. It fell apart around him into thin shreds, then it disintegrated into the material of the throne. The amulet seared into Teldin’s flesh, glowing below his neck, and he felt only the peaceful glow of the bonding, the warmth of his own life force.
“Yes,” Teldin said, and his eyes focused far away on some dreamlike vista only he could see. The bonding had begun, and he was filled with the life, the history, the song, and being of the Spelljammer, the herald of his destiny. “Yes,” he said. “This is what it was all about.”
His eyes were filled with visions, and his mouth hung slack as his mind struggled to absorb it all. Then he suddenly focused his gaze at his friends. “I know. Now I know. Estriss, Djan, CassaRoc... Now I know it all. Now I —”
Stardawn screamed a foul curse in Elvish and leaped upon the dais. His sword flashed wickedly in the light of Teldin’s golden aura.
The others shouted and moved to intercept him, but the elf was too fast, and with a mighty lunge, he thrust his elven sword deep into Teldin’s chest.
Blood pooled around the point of the sword, embedded deep into Teldin’s heart. The Cloakmaster stood slowly and stared down at the sword in his chest. He looked then into Stardawn’s eyes and smiled.
“You have done nothing,” Teldin announced, his eyes misty with the Spelljammer’s fires. “I am still the captain.”
And Teldin fell back onto the throne.
He sagged against the chair, his still hands upon the pedestals. His eyes flickered shut, and his head hung lifeless on his chest.
Na’Shee cried, “Nooooo!” but Teldin, the Cloakmaster, the new captain of the Spelljammer, was no more.
The air shimmered in a corner of the adytum. The light seemed to dim, as though it were being muted, absorbed, and the adytum sparkled as the energies of a spell were dispersed. Then the Fool was revealed, standing where his powerful spells of invisibility and concealment had protected him from all notice, even from the guardian shivak and the Spelljammer itself. At his feet, shackled at the neck, huddled Cwelanas.
The Fool lifted a skeletal hand and pointed a bony finger at Stardawn. He took a step. Stardawn gurgled, feeling the power behind the Fool’s glaring eyes close around his neck like a vise.
“The Cloakmaster was mine, insect!” the Fool shouted. “The Spelljammer was to be mine! Mine alone!”
The Fool released Cwelanas’s chains and stepped toward Stardawn. “Now, elf lord,” he said, “you shall pay.”
Chapter Thirty
“... Death is but a gateway. We all hold the key.
“Shall I open the doorfor you?..
Surturrus, Lord of the Tenth Pit;
reign of Noj the Heavy
Teldin floated. The universe was a sea of twilight, of grayness broken only by lightning veins of white and yellow that crackled in the distance.
His body was gone, invisible, yet he felt. He was cool and warm, hot and cold, real and unreal at the same time. He felt separate from himself stolen from his body, yet he was more comfortable and more complete, more whole, than he had ever felt before. He stretched out one finger and felt the universe shift around him instinctively. He opened his eyes, and suns were born. He breathed, and the flow shifted its currents around a score of spheres.
He was planets. He was stars. He was spheres, suns, systems, memories, races long dead.
He was all.
His sight, his senses, were filled with a panoramic vista of the flow, of the oneness of each sphere with its obsidian counterparts scattered like pebbles across the universe.
He thought of himself. He felt his being pull back, into the reality of the Spelljammer, and his mind saw and felt the unhuman fleets converging on the Spelljammer. Elves, neogi, humans, giff – their ships promised bloodshed and war, and the stench of death followed in their wake.
— Who? he thought. — Where?
The answer rang through him with a force unimaginable, a force that had seen stars being born, seen planets die, seen whole spheres bubble into existence and slowly solidify, a thousand years witnessed within a second. It was a word, yet not a word, more a feeling that was sound and sight and touch and smell and taste, all at once.
— Here, was the answer.
— Live.
— See.
— Feel.
— Hear.
— Die.
— Experience.
— Know.
— All.
; Then:
— We are not the first.
And the universe was a sphere, a single, wondrous black jewel floating in the empty, endless wastes of the chaotic phlogiston. Alone, perhaps; at least unknown by the beings from any other sphere.
— Ouiyan.
Eighteen worlds swung in slow, graceful arcs around Aeyenna, the eternal sun. Eighteen worlds – blue, green, vibrant with a variety of life unknown today. There, among the worlds, life had evolved, reaching out from mother oceans to stare transfixed into the skies. Empires flourished and were destroyed, then were rebuilt upon ancient foundations. Myth gave way to science, then magic, and humanity learned to coexist peacefully with the animals that shared the worlds. Children swam with the great beasts of the sea; mages and scholars shared philosophies with wolves and whales.
Most unique among the worlds of Ouiyan were the spaakiil.
Alone among all the beasts of the One Sphere, the spaakiil sailed through wildspace and atmospheres alike, great mantas that sang and frolicked among the stars, swam along the boundaries of magic and reality. To each world they brought wonder. To each world they brought the joys of life and diversity. To each world they brought peace. To each world they brought their songs of greeting from other worlds, and the knowledge that granted humanity the skills to break the cage of gravity and sail the first spelljammers into space.
To each world, the spaakiil were considered holy: gods to one world; messengers to another; brothers to a third.
To each world – except one – they were considered friends.
The outermost planet was unknown to the others, circling Aeyenna in an orbit so far distant that the sunlight never shone brighter than dark twilight. The eighteenth world was a cold rock, where vegetable life was limited to black scrubs and thick, dark flowers that cried plaintively as the pinpoint that was the sun teased the sky.
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