The Broken Sphere

by Nigel Findley

  The Cloakmaster felt the motion of the ship change as it decelerated – from about three hundred leagues each heartbeat, to less than a spear cast – and the strange winds of wildspace filled the sails. A lot of trouble just to pass through a portal, Teldin groused to himself. The other times he’d passed through a sphere portal – except for obvious special cases such as Herdspace – the ship had done so at full spelljamming speed, without any ill effects.

  But Djan had been adamant. “The permanent portals of Heartspace aren’t like any others anywhere in the universe,” the half-elf had told him firmly. “The very fact that they’re permanent tells you that. You might be able to blow on through at full speed, and live to tell about it, but then you might find yourself thrown totally out of control, with no steering and no helm command, and no way to bring the ship back to an even keel. Hundreds of ships have died in or near Heartspace because their masters were overconfident.”

  Teldin had considered telling Djan about his own entry into the crystal sphere – in the Fool he’d come in at full speed, not knowing any of the risks – and he’d been fine. But then he’d remembered that the tiny Fool was under the control of the ultimate helm at the time, and that could well have made a difference. Rather than making an issue of it, he’d gone along with his first mate’s recommendations.

  He could see the portal ahead now. As always, he found his sense of perspective thrown off by the view. Even though he knew the inner surface of the Heartspace sphere was only a score of leagues away, the black backdrop of space looked very little different. Granted, there were no stars – his field of view encompassed only a gap between stars – but he still experienced the sense of gazing into infinity that he always felt when he looked into space. The crystal sphere showed no detail and no texture – nothing to give him any due as to its proximity or distance.

  The portal itself, now that was a different matter. It seemed to hang in space in front of the Boundless – a totally fallacious image, he knew, but one he couldn’t shake. It appeared to be a huge disk, with a diameter several times he length of the squid ship, showing the myriad curdled colors of the Flow. Outlining the disk was a shimmering margin that reminded Teldin of the heat lightning he’d sometimes seen during the summer storms in Ansalon. The portal appeared to expand slowly as the Boundless crept forward.

  “Crew down,” Julia called. “Lookout aloft.”

  Teldin watched as all but one of the ratline crew slid down ropes to the deck. The one remaining sailor – Merrienne, a young woman not yet out of her teens, with long blond hair gathered up in a bun – crawled into the crow’s nest atop the mainmast. “Portal ahead,” she sang out in a clear, ringing voice – more to confirm that she was in position, Teldin thought, than to tell anyone something they didn’t already know.

  Djan joined the Cloakmaster atop the sterncastle, swinging up the steep ladder as if he’d been born on ship. Flashing a quick smile at his captain, he positioned himself near the speaking tube. “Ready to pass the portal,” he told Teldin. “Be ready. Sometimes it can be a little rough.” As though to confirm his words, he spread his feet into a broad, stable stance and steadied himself with a hand on the mizzenmast.

  Teldin still remembered his uneventful entry into Heartspace. But, better safe than sorry, he told himself. He took a firm grip on the port rail.

  “Crew ready,” Julia ordered.

  The Boundless nosed into the portal.

  As the pointed ram of the squid ship penetrated the plane of the portal, the large vessel’s motion changed noticeably, and Teldin realized his first mate might not have been exaggerating the dangers after all. If he’d been aboard one of the small river craft he’d know as a youth, he’d have guessed the ship had been caught by an eddy of some kind. Here, without anything for there to be an eddy in, it had to be some kind of attribute of the portal itself. The hull proper entered the portal, and the sideways, twisting motion became more pronounced. Spars creaked and lines groaned as the rigging took the strain. Then the mainmast itself was through, and the canvas of the mainsail cracked like a bombard as a blast of wind struck it from an unexpected direction.

  “Look out above! It’s …” The rest of Julia’s screamed warning was drowned out by the scream of tortured wood. Instantly, Teldin snapped his head up.

  The gaff boom, mounted on the aft side of the mainmast, was angled far out – way too far out – over the starboard rail of the squid ship. The sail, still bellied out, was applying force to pivot it even farther out of line. The only things keeping the boom from being torn away altogether were its mount – a metal bolt-and-eye bracket on the mainmast – and two half-inch ropes that ran down from its tip to belaying-pin racks on the port and starboard rails.

  “Strike the mainsail, now,” the Cloakmaster bellowed, “or we’ll lose the boom, maybe the mast!” Crewmen sprinted to where the main sheets were cleated off and struggled to release them against the abnormal pressures of the sail.

  A shrill scream echoed the length of the Boundless. Teldin raised his gaze higher, above the twisted bracket that supported the boom. “Paladine’s blood!” he screamed. “The lookout! Get her down!” The force generated by the flapping mainsail was being transmitted through the boom into the mainmast itself, twisting and torquing it in ways it had never been designed to resist. The mast top lashed back and forth like the end of a riding crop. To Teldin, on the deck below, it looked as though the mast were a live thing, purposefully trying to shake the shrieking Merrienne out of the crow’s nest.

  Julia saw the girl’s peril, too. “Crew aloft!” she yelled. A handful of crewmen ran to the ratlines, then stopped in bafflement. On the starboard side, the boom was already tangled in the ratlines, twisting what were usually broad rope ladders into warped renderings of spiderwebs. On the port side, the mast’s contortions were transferred directly to the ratlines, making them jerk and vibrate like the strings of a plucked lute. There was no way anyone could climb them.

  “Strike that sail!” Djan cried, echoing Teldin’s order.

  But it was too late. Even as the crew members freed the main sheet to let the mainsail flap free, the line connecting the boom to the port rail parted with a crack like a giant’s whip, With nothing to stop it, the gaff boom swung farther around, out over the starboard rail, and pivoted completely until it pointed almost dead forward.

  The mounting bracket, already hideously strained, failed. With a screech of tearing metal, the boom came loose from the mainmast and crashed to the foredeck, striking the glacis of the catapult turret.

  As the boom came free and the torque it had produced vanished, the mainmast twanged audibly, its tip flailing wildly. With a piercing scream, Merrienne was snapped out of the crow’s nest to land with a sickening thud on the main deck.

  “Strike the sails!” the Cloakmaster roared. “All of them! And bring the helm down!” As the crew leaped to obey his orders, Teldin couldn’t drag his gaze from the small, huddled figure lying on the planking, her head surrounded by a halo of fine blond hair that had been shaken free from its bun. The ship’s two healers knelt beside the woman, blocking the Cloakmaster’s view. He turned away.

  Then, suddenly, a sickening thought struck him. Julia was on the foredeck, where the boom had landed!

  Teldin almost jumped down the ladder and sprinted across the foredeck. He staved off a massive jolt of guilt as he passed Merrienne’s huddled body. The healers can do more for her than I can, he told himself. He sprinted up the portside ladder to the forecastle.

  Julia was unscathed, he saw immediately, but another crewman hadn’t been so lucky. The falling boom had bounced off the metal facing of the turret, shattering the port foredeck rail as if it were kindling. Somewhere along its path it had struck someone with the ill fortune to be standing just aft of the catapult shot hopper. Julia was kneeling beside the fallen man, her ear pressed to his chest, listening for a heartbeat.

  Teldin didn’t have to come any closer to know it was futile. The man’s left
shoulder and neck had taken the brunt of the impact, pulping the bones. The side of the man’s skull, too, looked soft, like an overripe fruit. Even though the victim’s face was distorted, Teldin recognized him easily as Allyn, the gunner’s mate. The wind-tanned old man who’d survived a career in space that was longer than Teldin’s entire life.

  For what? the captain found himself wondering. To come here, to die in the service of Teldin Moore, Cloakmaster?

  He looked up into the chaotic “sky” of the phlogiston that now surrounded the ship, tears blurring his view. Why? he silently demanded. Just what in the Abyss is it all for? One more dead – maybe two, if the healers’ expressions were any indication. And the voyage had barely begun. How many more would fall before it was all over?

  “Ship ahoy!”

  The hoarse shout cut through Teldin’s dark thoughts. He snapped his head around toward the source of the voice.

  It was Dargeth, the half-orc, a member of the catapult crew. He was leaning against the forward rail of the turret, pointing out into the Flow. “Ship ahoy!” he repeated. “High on the port bow.”

  Teldin’s gaze quartered the area of space Dargeth had specified. Nothing …

  Yes, there it was, a black shape against the riotous colors of the phlogiston. It was close, too – closer than a ship had any right to be without being spotted … “What’s the ship?” Teldin yelled. “And what course?”

  The answer came from the afterdeck. Djan stood braced against the mizzenmast, Teldin’s brass spyglass to his eye. “Battle dolphin,” he called back. “And it’s on an intercept course.”

  “A battle dolphin, confirmed,” Djan sang out again a moment later. “It’s maneuvering, probably trying to come in below us.”

  Even without a spyglass, Teldin could see that the half-elf was right. The black shape of the enemy ship was sinking toward the starboard rail. Soon it would be masked from view – and from weapon shot – by the squid ship’s own hull.

  “Load all weapons!” the Cloakmaster ordered. “Helm up now!”

  “It’ll take a couple of minutes to warm it up,” Julia reminded him.

  Teldin cursed under his breath, remembering his own order to bring the helm down. They didn’t have a couple of minutes. But, at least, they did have other options.

  “Get Beth-Abz up on deck,” he told Julia. Then he planted his back against the mainmast and braced his feet. With an effort, he forced his breathing to slow and his muscles to relax.

  *****

  Berglund lowered his spyglass and snorted in amazement. The mystery man had proven himself right on two counts. Here was the target squid ship, right on time – and, lo and behold, dead in space. Would wonders never cease?

  He flashed the other members of his bridge crew a predatory smile. “Bring us in,” he ordered quietly. “Below their hull, if you please.”

  “Yesss, ssir,” his first mate, an olive-scaled lizardman, hissed. Surprisingly fast for his heavy build, he hurried down the ladder to the helm compartment directly below, to convey his captain’s orders.

  “They’re not maneuvering,” Rejhan, Berglund’s second mate, told him. “Their helm must be down.”

  The pirate captain nodded his agreement. “Continue to bring us in,” he ordered. Then his smile broadened. “And … catapults away,” he added almost negligently.

  The hull of the Shark jarred beneath his feet as the vessel’s twin catapults fired.

  ****“They’re firing! Take cover!” Djan screamed from the sterncastle.

  Around him, Teldin heard the scurrying of feet as the crew took Djan’s suggestion and found shelter. He wanted to do the same thing himself, wanted to crouch behind the metal glacis of the turret.

  But saving his own life wasn’t the only thing he had to worry about at the moment. The ship and its entire crew were his responsibility. The helm was down, and the Boundless truly helpless …

  Unless he did something about it.

  The squid ship jolted hard as a catapult shot struck the low port quarter of the bow. In his peripheral vision the Cloakmaster saw the second shot hurtle by, a couple of yards away.

  “They’re reloading!” Djan called.

  Teldin took a deep breath – so deep that his chest felt as though it would burst – then let all the air spill out of his lungs. A sense of calm came down upon him, stilling the knotting fear in his belly. The sounds around him – the creak of the windlass as the weapon crew wound back the main catapult, the thunder of feet on the deck – seemed suddenly muffled, not as sharp, somehow. And yet he could hear everything, even those noises normally much too quiet for his ears to detect. He felt the presence of the cloak on his back.

  The cloak felt warm around his shoulders – not the simple, passive warmth of a garment, more like the vibrant warmth of a living thing. Even though he couldn’t see it, he knew it was starting to glow with a pink light. He felt his awareness start to blossom, to expand. I am the ship ….

  Julia grabbed his arm, and the glow – and the expanded perception associated with it – faded slightly. “Get below,” she told him. “You’re exposed out here.”

  He shook his head. “No time. I have to take over the ship now.”

  She gripped tighter. “You can do that from anywhere!” she shouted at him. “If you get yourself killed up here, what good will that do the rest of us?”

  He wanted to argue but had to accept the sense of her words. He let the awareness, the sense of the cloak’s power, slip away. Then he turned and followed her down into the forecastle.

  *****

  The squid ship still hadn’t moved, Berglund saw. It still just hung there against the backdrop of the Flow, like a strangely shaped fruit ripe for the picking. He turned to his second mate.

  “Rejhan, bring us in along their axis, full on the bow,” he ordered.

  The dark-haired man looked aghast. “On the bow …?” he echoed. “But … but captain, all they have to do is roll and we’re in their main catapult’s field of fire, at point-blank range.”

  “Follow my orders,” Berglund said, his voice deceptively calm.

  Rejhan blanched even more and jumped to obey.

  Berglund smiled. But behind that smile, he was doubting. Am I depending too much on the mystery man’s promises? he asked himself. The next two minutes would tell.

  *****

  Teldin hurried into his cabin, flung himself into a chair, and tried to recapture the sense of calm. To his surprise, it returned almost at once. Again he felt his perception, his awareness, expand beyond the physical limits of his body, until it encompassed the whole ship. Again, he was the ship: he could feel its every plank, its every dowel. Its keel was his spine, its thwarts his ribs, its hull his skin, and its sheets and lines his muscles. He could sense the minor damage inflicted on the hull by the enemy’s catapult shot, and the torn and twisted rigging, as a strange tingling, a kind of pain-yet-not-pain. The cabin brightened as the cloak began to glow with a rosy pink light.

  With his expanded perception, he could see the approaching enemy clearly, even though he was inside the ship, and the other vessel was screened by the squid ship’s own bow. The adversary was close enough now for him to make out details without the benefit of a spyglass.

  A dolphin, Djan had called it, and the name was appropriate. It was a smooth-lined ship reminiscent of a huge fish – maybe a jumping trout, Teldin thought – with its horizontal fluked tail raised higher than the main body. A turret atop the tail contained one catapult – heavy or medium, he couldn’t be sure – while another catapult was mounted on the main deck just forward of the mast. The whole vessel, painted a misty blue-gray, was as long as the squid ship and slightly broader, hinting at a greater tonnage. The battle dolphin was coming in slowly, though Teldin had the unmistakable feeling it could move fast enough when necessary.

  There was something about the ship’s approach that bothered Teldin. It took him a moment to realize what it was.

  “They’re coming in wrong,” t
he Cloakmaster said to Julia, who was standing in the cabin doorway. In his own ears, his voice sounded emotionless, detached. “It’s as if they’re daring us to roll and use our catapult. What do they know that we don’t?”

  Julia opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak Teldin’s answer came from the deck above him. A crash and screams of fright came from the forward turret. The Cloakmaster’s perception instantly focused on the foredeck.

  The catapult had torn itself apart, he saw at once. As the crew had been winding back the shaft, one of the thick skeins of hemp fiber that provided the weapon’s power had torn. The unbalanced force had wrenched the shaft to one side, tearing it loose from one of the bearings. A man in the weapon crew had been struck by the shaft and seemed to have a broken arm. The others were unharmed, he was glad to see.

  But the catapult – the squid ship’s only forward-firing weapon – had been rendered useless.

  How did the enemy captain know …?

  *****

  The Sharks second mate lowered his spyglass and shot a sidelong glance at Berglund. “Their catapult’s down, Captain,” he said.

  Berglund just nodded. “Clear their decks, Rejhan,” he ordered simply.

  The second mate jumped to relay the order, but the unasked question still echoed in his head: How had the captain known …?

  *****

  “Firing again!”

  Teldin could hear Djan’s voice twice – once, muffled, through his own ears; and once, clear as crystal, via his expanded perception. Even against the distracting background of the flow, he could track the enemy’s catapult shots coming in. This time they weren’t single stones, but clusters of pebbles. This “grape shot” couldn’t harm a ship’s hull or rigging, but was absolute murder on an exposed crew. He tried to call out a warning, but was a moment too late.

  The tiny stones rattled off the foredeck over Teldin’s head, sounding like a sudden lashing of hail. His ears were filled with screams. All over the ship he saw crewmen stagger and fall as the tiny stones tore into their flesh. Djan’s forearm was laid open to the bone, but he kept his position by the speaking tube.