Into the Void s-2

by Nigel Findley

  Into the Void

  ( Spelljammer - 2 )

  Nigel Findley

  Nigel Findley

  Into the Void

  Chapter One

  It was night, but a night such as Teldin Moore had never seen before. The sky was darker, a deep velvet blackness, and the stars brighter, more immediate, somehow closer. If he could just climb the gnomish ship's watchtower, Teldin found himself thinking, climb up to where the lookout crouched on his small platform… He might be able to touch a star, pluck it from the sky, and hold it like a gem, glittering coldly in his hand. He settled his slender, lanky frame more securely against the ship's starboard rail and leaned back farther to gaze directly upward. He brushed a lock of hair from his eyes.

  Teldin was a man of thirty-two summers, a little under six feet tall with a light build. His features were finely chiseled- handsome, he'd been told many times, but in a comfortable way, attractive rather than beautiful. His smile was warm and winning, and women were attracted by the way it made his striking, cornflower-blue eyes sparkle. His sandy hair had a strong natural curl to it, making it difficult to control unless he kept it cropped fairly close to his head. Although slender-waisted, he had shoulders that were quite broad and slim arms that were surprisingly strong, though they didn't show large muscles.

  The deck of the vessel shifted beneath his feet, strangely, not like the small river-going boats with which Teldin was familiar. It surged upward, like a thing alive, and Teldin tightened his grip on the rail. Steeling himself for the vertigo he feared-but which, surprisingly, had yet to come-he turned, looking over the rail, and down.

  Below was land, not a river or an ocean, land that spread from horizon to horizon in the light of two of Krynn's three moons, looking like a tapestry of the most intricate detail. The gnomish vessel had been climbing steadily since it had pulled away from Mount Nevermind, and already Teldin was as far above the land below as the highest mountain peak. His home-the only environment he'd ever known, or ever dreamed of knowing-was two leagues and more beneath him and receding with each passing moment.

  Sadness pierced him, a mourning for what he'd lost, what he was forsaking, perhaps forever. For a moment, he tried to pick out the familiar landmarks that had demarcated his life: the fields, the granaries, the market towns, the rivers, and the hills where tough, hardy sheep grazed, oblivious to the vessel that climbed into the sky above their heads-as oblivious as he had been, short weeks before. Part of him wanted to cling for as long as possible to the familiar, the safe.

  But what he saw wasn't safe, he remembered with a pang. Death was below him, death that had come from the same sky that now beckoned him. He wanted to weep like a child for those he knew who had died: friends from his home; the tinker gnomes who had helped him when no one else would; and, most of all, Gomja-that sometimes-buffoonish, sometimes-noble creature who had sacrificed himself so that Teldin could live. At least the giff had met his end in the way he'd always desired, in battle after defeating overwhelming odds. As the barrel-chested creature had wished, his death had meant something, and in those last moments he'd known it. Would Teldin be able to say the same when his own time came? It was a thought that had never troubled him before. What did "dying well" matter to a farm boy?

  That's all Teldin was and, until recently, all he'd really thought of being. His home had always been his land and, since his war years, he'd never wanted more. The world was large, as his grandfather had always told him, but he had little desire to see any more of it than the breadth of his family's farmlands. The thought that there were other worlds, other lands beyond the moons, had never occurred to him until the strange ship had crashed from the sky and shaken Teldin from his comfortable life.

  The rigging overhead complained quietly as a gust of night-wind rocked the ship. To stave off its chill, he pulled tighter about him the cloak he'd been given by the grievously wounded stranger-that sky-traveler, that spelljammer. Hers had been the first death-a peaceful one, as such things go, as she'd faded quietly away despite everything Teldin had tried to do to prevent it, lying there in the mangled wreckage of her ship and Teldin's home. That death wasn't the last.

  The spidership had come, a huge black shape sinking silently out of the nighttime sky. The horrors, too, had come. The smaller ones-half spider, half eel-and the larger, with their rending claws and clashing mandibles. Others had died, and their deaths had been far from peaceful.

  With an effort of will, Teldin wrenched his gaze from the ground, and turned it back to the sky above. That was where his life was now-where it had to be-away from the land that had given him birth and sheltered him for thirty years. His life would be among the stars. He shivered, but not from the cold. Perhaps seeking some kind of reassurance, he ran his hand over the coarse fabric of the cloak, no different in texture from any other traveling cloak, but somehow slightly colder than fabric had any right to be. It was a strange gift from one who knew she was dying, but an important one, if the traveler's rambling was to be believed. Teldin remembered for the hundredth-thousandth?-time the dying traveler's cryptic last words: "Take the cloak. Keep it from the neogi. Take it to the creators." The words still seemed as meaningless to him as when he'd first heard them. He shrugged, relegating the words to the back of his mind. His life up until now had been notably free of mysteries. He'd have to learn how to handle such things.

  The vessel heeled slightly as the wind blew across its beam. A chill breeze caressed Teldin's face. He drew a deep breath in through his nose, hoping to catch for one final time the familiar scents of home-mown grass, blossoms, and the rich smell of good brown earth, but he was too high. The winds here were clean and crisp-sterile, one part of his brain told him, empty of life; fresh, another part countered, new and full of promise.

  He looked down once more and gasped aloud with wonder. The view below had changed from a flat tapestry to something he could hardly have described, even to himself. The land curved away to the left and to the right in huge sweeping arcs. The table-flat land that his emotions had found so familiar had become a sphere. He knew from some schooling that the world was round, but to know it and to actually see it were two very different things. The sphere that was Krynn appeared to him in all its glory.

  The sky above-and below?-was clear, but in the distance he could see moonlight-washed banks of clouds, spread out like a ghostly landscape of the dead. He could no longer make out any landmarks, but over there… that must be the great ocean. He searched his brain vainly for the name. A huge weather system, a spiral, was motionless when viewed from this height, but the shapes of the tortured clouds still seemed to imply violent action.

  He turned to his right, to the aft of the vessel. There the distant limb of the planet seemed afire, burning gold. Then, in a silent concussion of light, the arc of the sun appeared above the edge of the world.

  Teldin turned away, wiping streaming eyes. For the first time he noticed the small figure standing at the rail next to him. The figure's head, topped by a mass of gray braids, barely came up to his waist.

  The gnome grinned up at him, teeth flashing white in the dark, wind-tanned face. "Impressive, wouldn't you say?" he asked. "Sunrise from space-one of the great gifts the universe gives to us. It's still a wonder to me, even after all these years."

  Teldin wrestled with his memory, seeking the gnome's name, and was impressed with the small man's courtesy in speaking slowly. "Yes," he said wanly, "impressive." He sighed and admitted defeat. "You are… Wysdor?"

  The gnome chuckled. "Captain Wysdor is my brother. You may call me Horvath. I am He-Who-Is-Fully-Responsible-For-And-Depended-On-With-Regard-To-Location-And-Distance…" With a visible effort, the little fellow stemmed the sudden and rapidly accelerating flow of words. He t
ook a breath to settle himself. When he spoke again, it was in the same relatively slow cadence with which he'd first addressed Teldin. "You may call me the navigator, if the oversimplification doesn't worry you."

  Teldin suppressed a grin. In his dealings with gnomes so far, it was their lack of simplification, the insistence on absolute precision at the expense of efficiency, that had worried him. "Then we haven't met?" he concluded.

  Horvath shook his head. "No, Teldin Moore of Kalaman, we haven't." He grinned. "I can't explain it, you know. Gnomes are no more alike than… than star apples and pomegranates. You big folk only see the superficialities." He reached up to pat Teldin on the upper arm. "And that's why you're lucky to have us gnomes around, aren't you? To tell you what it is you're really looking at." The gnome's smile faded. "Tell me," he said after a moment. "I don't know all the details of what brought you to us, but stories spread on board ships. In fact, ships are the best places for stories. I heard you had some… troubles? Neogi, I hear tell, even before they attacked Mount Nevermind. Now, what I'm wondering is, why? No offense intended, of course-far be it from me to insult a man's homeland-but surely the neogi can find better places to come slave-hunting than this dust ball. Why were they interested in you?"

  Teldin hesitated. He knew the answer to the gnome's question all too well, but should he tell Horvath? There might be some value in secrecy, after all.

  He thought it through. The higher-ranking gnomes, specifically the three admirals aboard ship, knew what had brought him to Mount Nevermind, but Horvath seemed more experienced at space travel and probably would learn the truth from his own sources. Furthermore, Teldin realized he owed some kind of moral debt to these gnomes. He was certain that the neogi would come after him… which meant they'd be coming after the gnomes. What would be his ethical position if he withheld anything that could help the gnomes make it through alive?

  "They're not interested in me," he answered, "not as me, if that makes any sense. They're after my cloak."

  He saw understanding dawn in the gnome's eyes. "Ah, the cloak," Horvath breathed. "I've heard about it, of course, the Cloak-That-Adapts-In-Size-And-Will-Not-Be-Sundered-From-Its-Wearer." He reached tentatively toward the cloak. "May I?"

  Teldin paused a moment, then nodded. The diminutive figure took a corner of the cloak and rubbed the fabric between his fingers. He turned it over and looked at the delicately patterned silk lining. Holding the fabric in two hands, he tugged on it, testing the strength of the weave. Raising it to his bulbous nose, he sniffed at it audibly. It was only when he opened his mouth, apparently preparing to taste the fabric, that Teldin snatched it back from him.

  If Horvath was disappointed over being unable to complete his investigation, he didn't show it. "Hmm," he snorted. "Neogi. They're crazier than an owl at noon, that's for sure, but they don't do anything that doesn't suit their purposes-whatever those purposes are. When they want something, they go after it, come doom or destruction. And they wanted that cloak, but I wonder why?"

  That, of course, was the key question that had been gnawing at Teldin's peace of mind virtually since the outset. "I don't know," he said honestly.

  The gnome shrugged. "Well," he said thoughtfully, "I suppose we could ask the neogi…." He must have sensed Teldin's horror, because he quickly continued, "Presuming we ever see them again." He patted Teldin on the arm. "Don't worry about it now. Neogi aren't common in Krynnspace. I should know, because a few friends and I ran into-"

  "Krynnspace?" Teldin interrupted.

  The gnome casually changed the subject as he gestured around him, taking in the planet below and the stars above. "Krynnspace. All of this, everything inside this crystal sphere."

  "Crystal… ?"

  Horvath sighed. "Dirtkickers," he said resignedly. "What do they teach you in school?" He raised a bushy eyebrow ironically. "You did go to school, didn't you?"

  For a moment, Teldin was taken aback, then he saw the gnome's barely concealed smile. He grinned in return. "Of course," he shot back. "The school of the land."

  "Ah, that one," Horvath said with a chuckle. "I never graduated from that one, myself. No desire. The universe is a much bigger school. Of course, I haven't graduated from that one either, not yet, as if I ever will."

  He smacked his lips and grinned up at Teldin. "It's time for a cup. Traveling always gives me a thirst and natural history always goes better over a draft of ale, wouldn't you say?"

  Teldin followed the diminutive figure down a companion-way that led below the ship's main deck. They navigated a narrow corridor-"Watch the overhead, it's low," warned Horvath, a trifle too late-and entered a small room laid out like a cozy tavern. There were two oaken tables surrounded by stools-all built to gnomish proportions, of course-and a low bar at the far end. A brass oil lamp swung on slender chains from the wooden beams overhead, and a small window-a porthole, Teldin supposed-gave a view of the outside. Teldin looked around him, bemused. Apart from the scale of the furniture and the view outside, the room could well have been the "snug," or back room, in any one of the taverns he had known at home.

  Horvath must have noticed Teldin's expression, because he said with a smile, "Just because we travel doesn't mean we have to leave behind all the comforts of home." He walked around the bar and rapped on the end of a small barrel that was set into the wall. His grin broadened at the solid sound it made. "If there's one thing you dirtkickers do well, it's make ale." He retrieved two pewter mugs from a shelf overhead and manipulated the tap on the end of the barrel.

  Returning around the bar, he thrust a mug into Teldin's hand and settled himself comfortably on a stool. "Take a seat. School is now in session."

  Teldin hesitated, then sat on the end of the table next to the gnome. He took a draft of the nut-brown ale, savoring its richness. "Crystal spheres," he prompted.

  "I know where I was," Horvath told him, a little aggrieved. "I'm just trying to say it simply without eliminating everything of importance."

  The gnome took another swallow of his ale and gave a satisfied sigh. "You can think of crystal spheres like bubbles-or, better, like those glass floats fishermen use to support their nets. These spheres of wildspace float in the phlogiston, what we call the flow, or the Rainbow Ocean." He held up a hand to still Teldin's incipient question. "Give me a minute. I'll tell you about the flow in good time. So, the crystal spheres are like glass floats. Each one contains a world, often more than one world, and everything in its solar system. Take Krynn-space: It contains Krynn itself, its primary-you call it the sun, but then everyone calls their primary 'the sun'-and all the other planets, Sirion, Reorx, Chislev, and Zivilyn. Other spheres contain other solar systems. Greyspace, now there's a weird one: a flat world, duster-worlds, and the sun revolving around the main planet, Oerth, rather than vice versa." Horvath shot a quick glance at Teldin. "You do know Krynn orbits your sun, don't you?"

  Teldin snorted his derision. "What about the stars?" he asked.

  "It varies from sphere to sphere. Here they're fixed to the inside of the crystal shell itself, huge, multifaceted gems-big as this ship, or bigger-and they glow like… well, like nothing you've ever seen. But they don't give off heat. In other places-"

  Teldin cut him off. "So you can touch the stars?"

  Horvath shook his head firmly. "No," he stated. "Or, to be more precise, you can touch them, but there's nothing left of you to remember the experience afterward. When I was second apprentice third assistant to the subordinate navigator, I heard a tale about the explorer Bethudniolanika-" The gnome closed his mouth with an audible snap and took a deep, calming breath. "Sorry."

  Teldin waved off the apology and shook his head with amazement. "I can't believe it," he said as he took another draft from his mug. "I mean, I do, but… go on."

  The gnome finished his ale with another long swallow. "Ah," he said, "education's thirsty work. Another?"

  Teldin drank back the last of his ale and handed the mug to Horvath with a nod of thanks. The drink was
already spreading its comforting warmth through his body. Another couple of these, and I'll be taking all this for granted, he thought.

  "In other spheres, the stars are different," Horvath continued, as he drew two more mugfuls from the barrel. "Some places, they're like portholes in the crystal shell, letting in the light of the flow itself. In others, they're huge, glowing beetles that wander around the inside of the shell. They're a real sight, that I'll tell you. And in others… Well, I've heard this, but I've never seen it. They're great bowls of fire held aloft by huge statues of forgotten gods. At least, that's how the stories go"

  "And you… you travel between these crystal spheres?" "You mean gnomes? Certainly we do, though not very often," Horvath confirmed. "We trade, ferry passengers, but mostly just explore. That's what we were doing when…" The navigator cleared his throat softly as he recalled his previous flight from Krynn. Horvath briefly related how a group of gnomes had made it into space decades earlier, only to be attacked by neogi and sent racing back to their home sphere and world. Only he and a handful of veterans had survived the ensuing crash to tell the tale and oversee the Unquenchable's manufacture.

  "That's fantastic!" Teldin sensed his new friend's mixed emotions and changed the subject. "What exactly is the flow?"

  "The flow? Well…" The gnome paused; "Whatever I said wouldn't be enough, and you wouldn't believe me anyway. You've got to see the flow to understand it. Just wait a few days."

  A cold fist seemed to grasp Teldin's heart. "A few days?" "Well, a week, maybe." Horvath paused and looked appraisingly at Teldin. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler. "Of course we're leaving this sphere. I thought you knew that."

  Teldin closed his eyes. Yes, he'd known that the gnomish vessel was going somewhere, probably another planet, but he'd assumed it was somewhere else in Krynnspace. Then he recalled other gnomes aboard ship mentioning an excursion through the flow. He was leaving his world, which was bad enough, but to be told that he was leaving everything he thought of as his universe… For a moment he almost gave in to crushing despair, but the moment passed. With an effort, he brought himself back from the brink of discouragement and forced his eyes open. He realized that the gnome was still talking.