The Broken Sphere s-5

by Nigel Findley

  Take the amulet, for example. As a matter of course, throughout the voyage, he'd been using the artifact, hoping to sense something that he recognized through the Spelljammer's strange perceptions, something that would give him a clue about the Spelljammer's location. So far he hadn't seen anything useful, but there was always the next time, wasn't there, and then the time after that? Eventually he'd have to see something that would give him some guidance.

  Why not now, for instance?

  He raised his head and looked at his two friends. Neither had moved. Both were watching him, their expressions showing how they empathized with his pain, but they respected his privacy too much to interfere.

  I have friends, he reminded himself again. And that was the most empowering thought of all. He felt new energy flow through him, felt a broad smile spread across his face. As he watched, his friends echoed that smile-a little more tentatively-though they couldn't have known what was going through his mind.

  "I'm trying the amulet again," he told them. He reached down to his belt pouch and extracted the bronze disk. The smooth metal felt heavy in his hands. Pregnant with possibilities? he wondered. He ran his thumb over the smooth surface, felt it slightly warm-from its proximity to his body heat, or for some other reason?

  Djan stirred in his chair. "Do you want privacy for that?" he asked quietly.

  Teldin considered for a moment, then shook his head. "It's not what you'd call an exciting show," he said with a grin, "but, if you don't mind, I think I'd like the company."

  He pulled his chair closer to the table and rested his forearms on the flat surface, with the amulet cupped in both hands. He stared at it intently, as though trying to memorize its texture, its color, its every feature. Simultaneously, he slowed and deepened his breathing, feeling the tension drain out of his shoulders and neck. In their own good time, he let his eyes shut. A tingling up and down his spine told him that the cloak was glowing with a bright bronze light. He felt a shift-there was no other way to describe it-inside his brain. And then his awareness seemed to blossom painlessly out through the top of his head and into the blackness of space.

  *****

  Fire!

  Fire everywhere, filling his entire perception. Surrounding the entire Spelljammer with liquid flames. Surreal flashes and bursts of yellow, green, even lightning-blue, against the red background.

  Yet the fire wasn't licking at the Spelljammer, it wasn't consuming it, or even heating the structure of the great ship. An ovoid bubble of clear, fire-free air surrounded the vessel, in much the same way as a normal ship's atmosphere envelope excluded most of the phlogiston when in the Flow. Is it flying through a sun? the Cloakmaster asked himself.

  For the briefest of instants-so fleeting that it could easily have been an illusion-Teldin felt a flash of pleasure, aesthetic pleasure from the massive vessel, as though it sensed and appreciated the beauty of this sea of fire, Teldin thought. But that didn't make sense, did it?

  And then, with shocking suddenness, the fire was gone from around the Spelljammer. Space was black and star-specked once more…

  Except dead astern. The fire was still there, a seemingly endless plane of silent yellow-red flames churning and writhing. And then, rising above the flame plane like the sun over Krynn's Great Ocean, he saw a massive disk, glowing the dull red of a dying ember….

  For a few moments, Teldin was totally disoriented. Then he realized just what it was he was seeing.

  The brick-red disk was a massive fire body, like a great, bloated sun. Even though there was nothing to give it scale, he knew-thanks to the strange perception bestowed by the amulet-that the fire world was titanic, as many times larger than the world of Krynn as the Spelljammer was larger than the Boundless. The "endless plane of flames," he saw now, was a broad ring of yellow fire that girdled the huge world around its equator. So broad was the ring that a spelljamming vessel would have taken perhaps a quarter of an hour to traverse it, and the ring itself was probably a full hour of fullspeed flight from the "surface" of the fire body. The Spelljammer, it seemed, had plunged right through that ring of fire.

  The scene was spectacular-one that couldn't exist twice in the universe, Teldin told himself. Maybe this was the opportunity he'd been waiting for, when the Spelljammer was near a recognizable world. He "looked" around, seeking more distinguishing features to eliminate the chance of error.

  There was something: a dark, circular area on the face of the great fire world, covering an appreciable fraction of the visible disk. A weather pattern in the fire? he wondered.

  And something else, shapes moving among the yellow flames of the fire ring. Great, angular shapes-winged forms like strange spelljamming ships built along unfamiliar configurations. Yet how could ships exist in the fire ring? he wondered. The Spelljammer had done it, but now he knew that it was only some magical attribute of the mysterious ship that had let it survive unscathed….

  The view changed again. A small, bright disk-little more than a point-of burning, blue-white light rose above one limb of the dark red world. Sunrise on a sun…

  *****

  Without warning, the strange vista collapsed in upon itself. There was a wrenching sense of discontinuity, then information from Teldin's normal senses flooded back into his mind.

  He opened his eyes and looked into the concerned faces of his two friends. Setting the amulet down on the table, he wiped pinpoints of cold sweat from his brow. His fingers were trembling, he realized, and his heart pounded as if he'd run a footrace.

  Why? he asked himself. Why did using the amulet sometimes take so much more out of him than others? Was it something to do with distance-and did that then mean the Spelljammer was a great distance away?-or was it something else? There was so much about the amulet, and its relationship with the Spelljammer and the ultimate helm, at he didn't understand.

  "Well?" Julia asked. "Anything?"

  "I think so." Teldin's voice sounded tired in his own ears. from the solicitude that showed in his friends' expressions, he guessed he looked as bad as he sounded… if not worse. "Maybe something important." He went on to de-scribe what he'd seen in as much detail as he could. "I can't imagine that there could be more than one place like that in the universe," he concluded dryly.

  "I think you're right," Djan said. His voice was quiet, but held a timbre of tightly controlled excitement. "A fire world a half day's flight in diameter, with a fire ring," he went on, ticking points off on his fingers. "A dark spot-maybe some kind of weather pattern, you think. And all orbiting a smaller, blue-white sun. I think it has to be Garrash."

  "Garrash," Teldin echoed. "You've been there?"

  "I didn't say that," the half-elf corrected. "I read about it once in the Geonomicon-that's a book describing almost a hundred of the more fascinating worlds ever discovered- but your description definitely matches what I remember."

  "Where is Garrash?" Teldin demanded. "Near here? Far?"

  "I don't remember," Djan admitted, shaking his head.

  Julia stood. "I'll bring a chart," she said, heading aft.

  She was back quickly. With Djan helping, she spread it but on the table and pored over it for a minute. Teldin felt impatience growing within him, but he knew better than to hurry the copper-haired woman.

  Finally she straightened up. "Garrash is in a crystal sphere called Vistaspace," she said, "over here." She tapped a dark circle near one side of the chart.

  "And where's Nex?" Teldin asked.

  "It's not shown on the chart, of course," she answered slowly, "but it's over here." She laid a finger on a region of the chart near the opposite edge.

  Teldin felt his face fall. "How far's that?" he asked, dreading the answer.

  "Far." It was Djan who'd replied. He craned over the table for a better look. "We can pick up a couple of phlogiston , rivers-to Pathspace, for example, and from there to Prime-space. That'll save a lot of time over the direct route…" His voice trailed off.

  "But… ?° the Cloakmaster pr
ompted.

  Djan looked up, meeting Teldin's gaze steadily. "But," he continued, "we're still talking about a total voyage of… "- he glanced questioningly at Julia, as if to confirm what he was about to say-"of thirty days, maybe thirty-five?" Julia nodded slowly in agreement.

  "And that doesn't include moving around within Vista-space once we're there," the half-elf added. "The chart says it's a big sphere. We don't know how Garrash's orbital plane is aligned, or where the planet's going to be in relation to where we enter the crystal sphere. But actually getting to the planet's going to add another… well, call it thirty days to be safe. Total voyage time…"

  "Sixty days or more," Teldin finished for him. His excitement over Djan's recognition of what he'd seen was gone, and depression threatened to wash over him again. "Two months. It's unlikely that the Spelljammer's going to be there in two months."

  "I know." Djan laid a hand on the Cloakmaster's shoulder, gripped hard, "I understand. It's a slim chance, I suppose… "But a slim chance is better than none," Teldin elaborated, "that's what you're saying."

  "Isn't it?" Julia asked quietly.

  The Cloakmaster was silent for a few moments, lost in his own thoughts. Then he nodded. "Yes," he said. Then, again, more firmly, "Yes, it is." He turned to Djan and drew himself up to his full height. "First mate, pass word to the helmsman and navigator. Set course for Vistaspace and Garrash."

  The half-elf snapped into a salute. "Aye, Captain."

  One advantage of the long voyage was that the crew of the Boundless Possibilities had plenty of time to conduct the repairs the ship desperately needed. In an example of the foresight that Teldin had come to expect of his first mate, before the ship had lifted from Crescent, Djan had loaded much of the cargo hold with planking of the same kiln-dried hardwood that made up the squid ship's hull. Now, with two months of sailing ahead of them, the crew was kept busy-and out of trouble, Djan had pointed out-nailing the planking into place to repair the hull breaches caused by the magical attack and the crash-landing on Nex.

  During the first couple of days in the Flow, the half-elf had gone over the ship from stem to stern, listing all the areas that needed attention. Although the crew members had groaned almost as one when they'd initially seen the first mate's task list posted in the mess, they now seemed designed to the work. In fact, Teldin mused, they seemed to relish it in a way. He thought he could understand why, he decided after some reflection. Probably the greatest danger to a crewman on a protracted voyage was boredom. With nothing to do but think, there was a real danger he'd drive himself to distraction.

  And that, Teldin told himself firmly, is just what I'm doing. As captain, there was basically nothing for him to do, nothing but think.

  Oh, he could talk to members of the crew. Beth-Abz's stores of life in a beholder tyrant ship were particularly fascinating-terrifying, in fact-giving him an insight into the strange race of eye tyrants he'd never expected to gain. But everyone except he had duties to attend to, and Teldin knew enough to realize that he couldn't expect his crew to neglect those duties just so that they could keep their captain company.

  Even Djan and Julia had their tasks-mainly supervisory, monitoring the crew's repair work, but nonetheless vital for that. They both seemed to sense their friend's growing ennui, his discomfort, and they did what they could to help lessen it. When they'd finished their duties for the day, they'd often join Teldin in his cabin for a glass of sage-coarse-the Cloakmaster was drinking a fair bit of that again-and conversation. But they'd always tire before he did, worn out by their work about the ship. He'd see them start yawning, struggling to keep their eyes open. And then he'd "release" them, let them hit their bunks for some much-needed sleep.

  And then he'd be alone again in his cabin, just him and the sagecoarse.

  Like I am now, he told himself, twenty days into the voyage, with another forty-some to go. At the moment, it seemed like an eternity.

  He'd pulled one of his cabin's chairs over to the starboard porthole, giving himself a panoramic view of the Flow surrounding the ship. A half-empty glass of sagecoarse sat on the corner of the table, within easy reach. Julia and Djan had just left, heading for their bunks. It was just after one bell in the night watch-past midnight, according to the groundling clock Teldin still preferred-but he wasn't ready for sleep yet. His thoughts were churning as though they had lives of their own. No matter how hard he tried to relax, he couldn't still them, or even ignore them. Even worse, he'd reached the point where his attempts to relax-and his anxiety over his failure-were actually fueling the tension he was trying to combat. A vicious circle, he told himself.

  It would be different if Julia were still sharing his bunk, he thought, a little sadly. They'd slept together the first couple of nights after leaving Nex, and that had dissipated most of the Cloakmaster's stress.

  Well, that wasn't exactly true. He forced himself to be honest. What had actually happened had been that Julia had taken on his stress as her own. His edginess had spread to her. While he'd been able to sleep, he'd known from her drawn, haggard appearance in the mornings that she hadn't. When he'd asked what was wrong, she'd been unwilling to tell him, apparently out of some mistaken belief that she could shelter him from some unpleasant reality. It had taken some direct questions to extract the truth.

  He was talking in his sleep, she'd told him-incessantly carrying on conversations with friends and colleagues long dead, sometimes yelling out orders to avoid events that had already happened. Even though he couldn't remember them in the morning, she'd convinced him that his sleep was tormented by almost continuous nightmares.

  She'd toughed it out for almost a week-never complaining, always trying to be there for Teldin when he needed someone to talk to, or just to sit silently with him. He'd watched the toll it was taking on her, however, and that added to his stress. It hadn't taken him long to realize-and admit to himself-that it wasn't working out, that instead of diminishing his stress, the situation was guaranteeing that they were both suffering from crippling tension. When he'd quietly suggested that they sleep apart again, the copper-haired woman had tried to conceal her relief, but Teldin had seen it clearly. Over the next few days, he'd watched her return to normal as her anxiety had receded.

  During the time that Julia had been sharing his cabin, however, she'd helped him reach some important insights into the sources of his own tension. Destiny, he told himself, that's what it all comes down to. Whose destiny do I follow? My own, or the one forced upon me by the cloak?

  Or are the two really different? Maybe my destiny is-and always has been-to be the Cloakmaster, to captain the Spelljammer.

  It was those questions that were constantly churning through his mind, keeping him on edge, not letting him sleep. He'd thought he'd come to terms with them some time back, in essence deciding not to decide-withholding decision on whether to assume captaincy of the great ship until he'd actually found it. It had made sense, that course of action; what good making a decision now, when he couldn't act on it-might never be able to act on it if he didn't manage to track down the vessel? He'd thought at the time that this tactic relieved him of much of his stress in the short term.

  What it had actually done, he recognized now, was simply suppress it-drive it so deep into the recesses of his mind that he wasn't aware of it anymore. But it was still there. Julia had helped him recognize that. It bubbled to the surface in his dreams, keeping his body keyed up to a high pitch of fight-or-flight stress-incredibly self-destructive, since there was nothing that he could actually fight or flee from.

  It's almost exactly like the situation Julia was in when we were both aboard the Probe, Teldin mused. He took another swallow of sagecoarse and felt its warmth-and its temporary, sham relaxation-spread throughout his body. Which destiny should she choose? Hers, or that of another? She chose hers, and that's why she left.

  Can I make the same decision? he asked himself. Theoretically, yes. For the first time, perhaps, since he'd closed the cloak's cla
sp around his throat, he had the opportunity to be rid of it. The cloak was a magical item, after all, and didn't the beholder Beth-Abz's central eye emit a beam that suppressed magic? With the eye tyrant's help, he could finally remove the cloak. And what then? Just tossing it overboard would be easiest, letting it drift forever in the Flow. Or, if he decided to follow the long-dead reigar's injunction to keep it out of the claws of the neogi, he could destroy it-burn it on the afterdeck, perhaps, with Beth-Abz's antimagic ray to counteract any magical defenses the cloak might have.

  And then I'd be free…

  But could he actually do that? For practical reasons, probably not. Just because he'd gotten rid of the cloak wouldn't mean that his many enemies would believe he'd done so. If the foes who were tracking him found they could no longer scry on the location of the cloak, would they believe he'd destroyed it? Of course not. Consciously giving up such power would be against their nature, and of course they'd assume that Teldin viewed the universe the way they did. No, instead of concluding that Teldin had destroyed the cloak, they'd decide that he'd just found some way of suppressing its magical "signature." Further, they'd probably even intensify their attempts to find him, since wouldn't suppressing that signature hint that he'd increased his control over the cloak's many powers?

  So, to be free, he'd have to not only destroy the cloak, but inform everyone else that he'd actually done so. And convince them, too, because if they figured there was even a chance he was dissembling, they'd continue to pursue him. How could he do that?

  He couldn't, he concluded sadly. It was a paradoxical position in which he found himself. He needed the powers of the cloak to protect him against his many enemies. Destroying it wouldn't get those enemies off his trail, but it would leave him helpless against them.

  I've got no choice, after all, have I?