The Ultimate Helm tcc-6

by Russ T. Howard

  They watched as Teldin opened his arms. The amulet glowed from within, and his chest pulsated with an inner light, casting a warm glow upon the ashen floor. He clutched his hand to the amulet. "Not now," he said. "Not now."

  Cloakmaster? Estriss inquired.

  Teldin looked up. Their eyes met, and Teldin's pain was reflected in the mind flayer's silence.

  His chest sizzled with inner fire. He looked down. The insignia, the design that was his link to the Spelljammer, was glowing again on his chest.

  The sign… Estriss said. He clasped Teldin's arm. It's calling you again. You will have to answer the Compass soon, or it will consume you. Estriss paused to catch his breath. You must follow its feelings, its strengths. It will lead you to the adytum.

  The Spelljammer shook again. Ash fell upon the party from the tower's tallest shelves.

  "The war for the Spelljammer begins in earnest now," Teldin began to rail. "Cwelanas must be rescued. And now I must answer the Spelljammer's summons. This is more than one man can do!"

  "Teldin," Djan said calmly. "This is your destiny. Like it or not, you are the Cloakmaster, and you must choose-soon."

  Teldin knew he could not abandon Cwelanas. He had come too far to lose his love, his faith, without fighting for her as hard as he could. He took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. Where is she? How do I find her?

  A voice rang in his ears, and he saw a face-a head- speaking to him tonelessly… He has taken the woman into the elven veins, and you will not find her…

  "The warrens," he said. The burning in his chest throbbed with the beating of his heart. "There is an entrance to the warrens somewhere in the Elven High Command."

  He stood and started slowly for the door. "Damn the war. Cwelanas comes first. The Spelljammer can defend itself for the moment. Cwelanas needs my help more than-"

  He spun around as though he had been kicked. His chest glowed with a hot fire, and the amulet seemed to be a brand, searing itself into his flesh. The pattern blazed through his tunic, shining with the light of an ancient, three-pointed star.

  Then he pitched forward onto the blackened floor.

  CassaRoc rolled him over. "Teldin!" he shouted. "Teldin!"

  But Teldin could hear only the call of the Spelljammer.

  The call came to him powerfully, overriding all neural synapses and conscious thought in one immeasurable burst of energy. It came to him in images and in bits of words. Sounds. Emotions. Sensations that resembled taste and touch and smell.

  Above all, there was the yearning, the need.

  — Lonely!

  He wanted to shake his head, to deny his guilt. He had not meant to ignore the call, but it was all happening so fast, and Cwelanas needed him, and he didn't know — Where are you?

  Here! he shouted in his mind. Here!

  — Come, it said, tugging at his mind, his emotions, his very being.

  Where? he implored. Where?

  In a blaze of light, it showed him.

  He stood naked in the shadow of the Spelljammer's great tail. He smelled the stench of death from the neogi tower, then saw the light from the flow play like gold fire along the towers across the Spelljammer's back. It concentrated in a yellow pinpoint within the stem of the ship's tail, above the Dark Tower. The glow pulsated like a beating heart, like the burning tattoo upon his chest, and he realized the route he must take to achieve his ultimate destiny.

  — Worthy? he felt.

  Yes, he said.

  — Need! it cried, and a part of him cried out with it.

  — Finish!

  — Complete!

  — Create…!

  His eyes blinked and adjusted to the real time inside the neogi tower. CassaRoc had slapped him. "What happened?" he wondered aloud.

  "You passed out," Djan said.

  "I know," Teldin said. "I know." He clasped Djan's arm. "Don't you understand? Now I know. I know. I know how to get to the adytum. I know what I must do."

  They helped him stand. He placed his hands upon Cassa-Roc's and Na'Shee's shoulders. "The Spelljammer is calling me. It needs me."

  He looked into their eyes, almost pleading. He did not want to go. Cwelanas was trapped in a hideaway of Coh, or the Fool, and her life depended on him.

  But the amulet-no, the ship-was calling, and part of him answered willingly, as though he belonged here. And he knew he had no choice.

  "The war is going to have to wait. I have to get to the adytum. May the gods forgive me, but I must answer the Spelljammer's summons.. now. I pray that Cwelanas will not be lost to me again."

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  "… The call will be stronger than that of even the sirens. It will burn in the challenger's heart, answering the challenger's own need with a call of its own. " Their need, in reality, is one…"

  Bh'obb, the Mad Thinker; scribe; reign of the Two Who Are As One.

  The Spelljammer was a landscape of battle, of splattered blood and clashing steel. The beholders and their allies had commenced fighting across the mighty vessel, engaging their foes in surprise attacks that left the decks slick with fresh blood. But their enemies were faster than they, and the beholders found themselves on the defensive, slowly being beaten back by humans and unhumans alike.

  In the swirling haze of the flow, fleets had begun to close on the Spelljammer in a deadly swarm. The closest vessel, a deathspider, attacked with simultaneous firings of its forward ballistae. A rain of heavy boulders fell upon one edge of the minotaur tower, causing the starboard wall to cave in and sending a ripple of impact through the ship.

  The deathspider banked and fired a second time. The roof of the neogi tower exploded under the onslaught of stone shot, burying a dozen warriors from the Tower of Thought under a ton of rubble. The hand-drawn flag of the Cloakmaster lay torn and forgotten beneath a layer of rock and stone wall.

  Teldin and his companions knew it had started as they climbed from the hole in the library doors. The flow was peppered with the dark silhouettes of vessels creeping toward them like hungry carrion, and the sound of hand-to-hand combat echoed from every corner of the Spelljammer. The war had indeed begun.

  The weave of the amulet stung like fire through Teldin's chest. With each passing second, the pattern's energy seemed to grow hotter, more urgent, spreading deeper and deeper toward his heart. He knew he should be thinking of Cwe-lanas, held prisoner by Coh and the Fool. He knew he should be sitting at the table in the neogi tower with CassaRoc and Djan and Chaladar, drawing up detailed strategies for the war against the unhumans. He knew he had duties to protect his friends and allies.

  But the Call was upon him, buzzing in his head like a swarm of furious insects. With every step, every action, he was driven to turn and run toward the great ship's tail. The psychic pull was inexorable and could not be ignored. He needed to go now.

  "I cannot wait any longer," Teldin told the group. "It's calling me, burning inside me. You can see it for yourself." He opened his tunic. His chest glowed from within, a yellow pattern of light burning just beneath the skin. "Teldin, what of the war?" CassaRoc asked. "Damn the war! It's all because of me anyway," Teldin said. Anger shone like a light in his eyes. "If I'd gone after the adytum when I first arrived, we might not be having this war. If we leave now, the war will be over all the sooner."

  Djan folded his arms. "Agreed, my friend, but we're still going to have to deal with the war when we try to leave the tower. Where are we going to go?"

  Teldin thought back and visualized his route in his head. The sigil on his chest seemed to spark, and words and images came to him unbidden.

  "The adytum is located within the Spelljammer's tail." He grimaced in pain as the sign on his chest burned. "I must somehow get to the Elven High Command, and go from there-perhaps through the Old Elvish Academy-then into the ship's memory, then through the Dark Tower."

  "Memory? What are you talking about?" Djan asked.

  Teldin concentrated, and images came to him of a spiraled hall of stat
ues, of row upon row of miniature vessels arranged throughout the rooms. The burning in his chest became cooler, under some control.

  Teldin sighed and relaxed. The more he acknowledged the Spelljammer's call, the less pain he felt inside. "I meant the Armory," Teldin said.

  CassaRoc laughed. "Dream on, Cloakmaster. The Armory and the Dark Tower? The shivaks won't let you get into one of them, let alone both. I suggest you think of something else."

  "What else can I do?" Teldin appealed. "It's calling me. I'm not sure where I have to go, but I still have to try."

  Djan nodded. Na'Shee was already securing her weapons. CassaRoc shook his head. "All right, all right. We go out and cut through the war as quickly as possible. We make it to the Elven High Command. Then what?"

  Djan said, "The treaty with the elves. They should help us get through the tower. Surely they must know of passages connecting at least the elven towers together."

  "We can go across the battlement, for what that's worth," CassaRoc said, "and cross above the academy. We can go straight into the Armory there."

  "The Armory will be well protected," Na'Shee said. "Those shivaks are hard to kill."

  "Perhaps the elves will loan us a few warriors when we get there. I think we should leave our people here, to help out the allies," Teldin said. "A small band would work better inside the towers anyway."

  CassaRoc nodded. "Just ourselves, then?"

  "Just ourselves," Teldin said, "and whoever the elves can spare."

  "And what of Cwelanas?" Na'Shee inquired suddenly. She adjusted her crossbow, a sword, a dagger, and a heavy, double-headed flail that hung from her belt. The weapon's pointed, cast-iron spheres depended from heavy chains, attached to a thick club.

  Teldin looked away. "The call is upon me. The Spelljammer is giving me no choice."

  They ran down the steps of the library toward the goblin quarters. At the corner, they saw a small amount of fighting going on toward the bow, but most of the battles were restricted to the central and aft portions of the Spelljammer, directly in their path. There the fighting was fiercer than they had imagined. Without hesitation, the group dove into the fray, their shields raised and their swords unsheathed. Within mere seconds, Teldin was attacked by one of ShiCaga's towering ogres, and together Teldin and CassaRoc felled the Unhuman, hacking at its ribs and legs. CassaRoc delivered the death blow through the ogre's heart.

  At one point, an ogre wizard leaped toward them from the shadows of the minotaur tower. A spell played like dancing light around his hands, and he pointed them toward the Cloakmaster. But Estriss, the mind flayer, shoved Teldin aside and thrust out toward the mage with the power of his mind. The wizard reeled in dim comprehension as the world went black and he crumpled to the combatants' feet under the unimaginable weight of Estriss's mind blast.

  He is big. He will survive, Estriss said to no one in particular.

  "Too bad," CassaRoc said.

  Na'Shee took the lead and plowed through the fighting, screaming a war cry with every swing of her blade. By the time the warriors passed the ruins of the beholders and the blasted neogi tower, their blades were wet with the blood of their enemies, and their hearts were cold with the fear that their comrades inside the tower were dead.

  At the Elven High Command, the guards recognized Teldin as the Cloakmaster, but raised their swords in hatred as CassaRoc shoved Estriss toward the entrance. The leader of the guard, a tall elf bearing a thick white moustache, approached the mind flayer and said haughtily, "This thing cannot enter! We are at war with its kind!"

  The doors opened, and Lothian Stardawn strode out to greet the warriors. The captain of the guard turned to him. "Lord Stardawn-"

  "Colonel Suchbench, this is a valuable ally of ours," Stardawn said. "He is illithid, yes, but he is not a servant of Tre-bek. He is of the alliance, and he is a friend of the Cloakmaster."

  The colonel brushed back his wide moustache and considered the illithid. "I don't like it, my lord, not at all, but you're in charge here. Pass, mind flayer," he said. He leaned closer and whispered, "but I'll see you dead if harm comes to any elf."

  The warriors were led to an expansive entrance chamber. The walls were hung with ornate draperies and decorated with pale, ancient statuary that reflected the history and art of the elves.

  "Cloakmaster," Lothian Stardawn said, stopping in front of Teldin. "What can the Empire of the Elves do for you?"

  "Stardawn," Teldin said, "I am being summoned by the ship-" he pulled open the top of his shirt "-and I can no longer resist. The time is now."

  Stardawn's eyes widened at the sight of the glowing pattern in the Cloakmaster's chest. For an instant, he considered that this situation might be more complex than he had thought, that perhaps this human truly was destined to be the heir to the Spelljammer's helm. Then he dismissed the idea as unbecoming for an elf of his stature.

  The Spelljammer will soon belong to the elves, to me, he mused.

  "What can we do for you?" Stardawn asked.

  "I have discerned the location of the ship's adytum," Teldin said. "The answers to my quest will be found there. I need your help in getting there."

  Stardawn's eyes narrowed. "And where is this adytum?"

  Teldin pointed with his sword. "It's hidden within the ship's tail. To get there, we need passage into the Armory, and from there into the Dark Tower. We can do this by crossing the battlement over to the Armory."

  "You'll never get inside," Stardawn said. "Many of us have tried. No one is ever killed, but the guardian shivaks beat our warriors senseless, then throw them back out. You cannot defeat the shivaks. They are like…"he searched for the words "… like beings of stone."

  "That's why we need your help," Teldin said. "If you could spare some of your fighters to accompany us, perhaps we could make it past the shivaks and gain entrance to the Dark Tower."

  Stardawn considered this. "Let me take this up with the commanders," he said. "I shall return shortly. Until then… Guard!" he cried. "Bring our guests refreshment and whatever else they desire." He turned to Teldin. "Cloakmaster, please make yourself at home."

  Stardawn disappeared behind a huge tapestry hung against the far wall. There he entered a small antechamber and sat at an ancient desk decorated with silver and gold.

  He sat quietly and waited, staring blankly at the top of the desk. Time was short, he knew, if the Cloakmaster was this close to his goal. The Armory would be impassable without the elves' help, and Teldin would never achieve the captaincy. The shivaks were too strong and too numerous. Had he not tried to enter the Armory twice himself?

  No, the Cloakmaster could not proceed.

  Stardawn wasted time for several minutes, deciding what he should tell them, then strode purposefully into the audience chamber, where Teldin and his group waited. He stopped as Teldin rose from his chair.

  "I'm sorry, Cloakmaster," Stardawn said with all due reverence. "The high command has decided that the elven empire shall not assist you."

  "But what of our treaty?" CassaRoc inquired angrily. "You promised your help."

  "And the command shall help you, as it is spelled out in our agreement. The battles you anticipate are against the shivaks, and have nothing to do with protecting the elves. As such, the high command refuses to aid you. I am truly sorry, Cloakmaster."

  By this time, all in the group had risen from their chairs and were staring at Teldin. He absently toyed with his bronze amulet. " 'I'm sorry.' That's all the elves can say?"

  Stardawn was silent. If Teldin had been paying attention, he would have noticed the anger smoldering inside the elf s eyes at the human's temerity to mock an elven commander.

  Teldin said suddenly, "Then we go anyway."

  The spell was broken. Na'Shee smiled and adjusted her heavy belt, hung with weaponry. CassaRoc stood prouder and nodded once. "There we go," he said.

  "Wait," Stardawn said. "Your courage is admirable," he said quickly, "but you cannot defeat the shivaks. I've been in there myse
lf, exploring," he said quickly. "I've fought them and lost. For every man you have, two or three shivaks will appear. You have no chance."

  It was Djan's turn to speak. "We have the Cloakmaster. It is his destiny to seek the adytum. We will be victorious. We must be."

  This was not working properly, Stardawn knew. They were supposed to turn back, facing unbeatable opponents. Of course, he could let them go on and face defeat, but what if, just what if they were to beat the shivaks?

  Then the cloak would never be his. And the Spelljammer would be denied to the elves, the natural rulers of the universe, and, most importantly, to him.

  "Then," Stardawn said carefully, with just enough theatrics j to make them believe him, "the high command be damned. I will go with you. If," he added, "you'll have me."

  CassaRoc watched Teldin cautiously. The Cloakmaster smiled and looked into Stardawn's eyes. His hand was held to his chest, as though he were gaining warmth from the glowing symbol. "You are welcome to accompany us, Stardawn. We can certainly use your expertise."

  Stardawn turned. "I will prepare myself for battle," he said. "I'll return shortly."

  The group watched him go.

  "I'm not sure that elf can be trusted," CassaRoc confided.

  Teldin said slowly, "I'm sure he cannot." The pattern on his chest glowed even brighter. Teldin stared into the shadows where Stardawn had disappeared. "But this is the way it was meant to be. One of us will not return."

  The silence lay heavy in the antechamber while the warriors pondered Teldin's prediction.

  "Would you be kind enough to explain that?" CassaRoc finally asked.

  "I wish I could. Stardawn is supposed to be with us, this I know. And… we must accept the decree of fate."

  They watched him without commenting, then stood silently until Stardawn returned, well armed and suited for battle. He led them from the audience chamber to a small door off a central corridor. Other elves were busy there, hardly noticing the humans. They carried their brethren, wounded and bloody from the battles outside, on stretchers and in their arms.