The Maelstrom's Eye

by Roger Moore

  The other elves stared at Cirathorn in shock and disbelief. “Sir,” started one, an amber-haired male with a white mask painted on his face, “I don’t believe the orcs could possibly have the intellect to plan such undertakings as you have described. We are speaking of orcs, and they are incapable of any form of foresight and planning beyond a day’s time.”

  Cirathorn smiled grimly. “Then how have they done so well so far?” he asked. “In the old days, we would have consumed their fleet by now with but the forces we have here. Yet we harry them from hiding like guerillas, not like the lords of wildspace we imagine ourselves to be. We dare not approach them again in direct battle without an invincible edge, one that will allow us to crush them quickly and decisively. As of yet, we lack that edge. Even the firepower of this armada is not sufficient. We need something more.”

  None of the other elves spoke. Several looked away – whether in shame or thought, Cirathorn could not tell. It was obvious that no one had any new ideas.

  Cirathorn let out his breath and leaned back in his throne. “We are less than a fortnight from this crystal sphere’s portal. Teldin Moore and his ship will not likely be caught before then if he is able to use the powers of his cloak to take his ship out of harm’s way. Once beyond the portal, it is twenty-nine days, with an error of three days, to Herdspace and the falmadaraatha. We must prepare ourselves as best we can for our next meeting with these orcs, or whatever they are calling themselves these days. We shall reconvene this evening for a discussion of tactics in such an event. You will each come prepared with at least two workable tactics, one fleet tactic and one ship tactic, given the caustic knowledge in which we have bathed ourselves this day.”

  The other elves slowly came to their feet and made their way out of the room to their own chambers on a lower level of the armada. Cirathorn rubbed his eyes, feeling an ache in his head flow and ebb with each beat of his heart.

  “Are you well, my admiral?” came a silk-soft voice.

  “No.” He dropped his hands and looked at his battlewizard. “No, I am not well. Our people are not well, and our future is ill – but we have a chance, one pathway to salvation. You have been our best guide, and your direction has served us well. I must trust to the gods that it will be enough.”

  The pale battlewizard nodded but said nothing.

  “Have you heard any more from the lookouts about the signal light emitted from the gnomes’ ship?” Cirathorn asked. “Has anyone been able to translate the code?”

  Mirandel mumbled a response to the negative.

  “We will need to warn our ally with Teldin, then.” Cirathorn’s gaze ran up and down the female elf’s thin frame. “You still grieve for your sister,” he said. “Why?”

  “She and I were very close,” said the battlewizard, her voice failing. Her shoulders slumped. “Since the battle, I … I feel lost. She was my only friend when we were children. I …” Her voice trailed off as she looked at the floor, unable to speak further. She appeared to be ready to cry.

  Cirathorn frowned, sitting up. “I need you, Mirandel. Don’t leave me now to fall inside yourself. I lost six generations of my family when Aerlofalyn was taken. We are in the crucible. For all that we have lost, we will lose far more if we give in to weakness now. Be strong, my Mirandel. We will avenge your sister Yolantha and all who died with her.”

  The battlewizard nodded her head slightly, barely enough to detect. “Yes,” she whispered. “I am sorry to be so weak, my admiral, but it is hard. I miss her.”

  The admiral got up from his throne, his robes rustling, and stepped down to put a hand on the battlewizard’s warm cheek. With a careful stroke, he brushed her long white hair with his fingertips. She never looked up.

  “You are my strength,” he said softly. “You devised the plan by which we can keep a closer watch over Teldin Moore, and we were able to use that plan to warn the accursed gnomes of the orcs’ invasion. I need your brilliance in this darkness. Help me find a way to fight the orcs. Save us.”

  The battlewizard nodded after a pause. “Yes, my admiral.” Her voice was so weak that he could barely hear her.

  Cirathorn smiled. He would wear the Cloak of the First Pilot before long, of that he was certain. He would then have the Spelljammer, and theorcs across all space would feel the flaming spear of elven rage. Mirandel would come through with something clever. She would not fail him now.

  He pressed his lips to Mirandel’s smooth forehead as his arms encircled her and her thin body leaned into his for comfort. She was the best of all battlewizards, the best of all spouses, the truest of lovers. It was a shame he did not love her back, but surely she knew that and accepted it. There was no time for love now in these days of blood and war. There was time now for only vengeance.

  *****

  “Well,” said Dyffed heartily, as he sat down to breakfast, “I have some good news and some bad news.”

  As one, Teldin, Aelfred, Sylvie, Gaye, and Gomja paused, exchanging glances. They then put down their wooden spoons and looked in the gnome’s direction. The group was packed so closely together in the ship’s narrow dining area that Teldin feared he would go mad from claustrophobia if the diet of creamed soaked grains did not kill him first. Gomja sat on the floor beside the table, unable to squeeze into one of the absurdly confining wooden seats, each mounted to the wall. Whoever was at the far end of the table was trapped there by everyone else who took a seat afterward. On this day, the eighth one out from Ironpiece, Teldin was the one who got to be trapped. The air was overly warm and stale, reinforcing his sense of confinement. His stomach was queazy and tense.

  Dressed in the same clothes he’d worn since landing on Ironpiece, Dyffed spooned large dollops of sludgy gray creamed soaked grains into his bowl, taking them from the steaming pot resting at the near end of the table. He took a deep sniff of its flavorless aroma, sighed with contentment, and took a seat next to Aelfred, who looked at Sylvie with a why-me expression and shrugged. Sylvie fought back a smile.

  “What’s the news?” said Teldin, unable to wait any longer. “Your good and bad news.”

  “Hmm?” said Dyffed absently, about to take his first bite. “Oh! Yes, of course. I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we’re about to run out of food.” With that, he began to consume huge spoonfuls of creamed soaked grains, each bite accompanied by much lip smacking and “Mmmmmm!” sounds.

  Teldin felt an irrational urge to jump on his chair, run across the tabletop, and strangle the unkempt gnome. He closed his eyes and counted to ten instead. It didn’t help.

  “I suppose that can be considered good news,” remarked Aelfred dryly. His bowl was half finished, consumed only to avoid starvation. “So, what’s the bad news?”

  Dyffed took a moment to swallow. “Ah!” he said, spitting out a few bits of cereal, “the bad news is that we won’t be able to steer or take showers.” He chuckled to himself. “That’s quite the funniest thing, really.” The gnome shoveled another spoonful of creamed soaked grains into his mouth.

  There was a fragile silence. Gomja used the break to carefully heave his enormous bulk up from the floor and help himself to his sixth bowl of gray mash this morning. Unlike everyone else but the gnomes, Gomja, a vegetarian from birth, loved creamed soaked grains (“Gnomes know how to cook!” he once had confided to Teldin).

  “Dyffed,” said Teldin, his patience virtually gone, “what are you talking about?” He was aware that everyone but the gnome was staring at him, and he tried with little success to stem his rising anger. He had spent the last eight days stumbling over gnomes in hallways, finding them repairing springs in the middle of the night under his bed, and wedging himself into impossibly small spaces that obviously had been built for gnomes and no one else. Aelfred ran things aboard the ship, directing the gnomes in their duties, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once. The gnomes were restless and ill at ease these days, and they were always in the way.

  Gaye put a hand on Teldin’s a
rm and squeezed to distract him. Teldin tried to relax, contenting himself with imagining now terrible it would be if he were to give in to his baser urges and begin throwing gnomes off the ship.

  “Well,” said Dyffed, wiping his mouth on his once-white shirt front, “once we run out of the creamed soaked grains, we shall have nothing left to feed the two giant hamsters in the hydrodynamic pumping station, and we shall be forced to eat them instead, and once we butcher them, we shall, of course, have nothing to make the water pumps operate, so our showers will stop, and we will also be unable to connect the steering gyroscope’s drive shaft to the pumping station, since our hamsters are being baked, unless we gnomes run inside the giant wheels in place of the hamsters. It’s quite simple.”

  Gomja stopped eating his cereal and wrinkled his nose in disgust at the mention of eating the giant hamsters. Gaye looked positively stricken, her mouth falling open in shock.

  “What happens when we run out of hamster meat?” asked Sylvie, clearly not looking forward to the answer.

  “Oo, wuh fine sunthun en thuh galley,” mumbled Dyffed, his mouth full again. “Don worra aboud id.”

  “Can’t we find something else to eat besides hamsters?” asked Gaye, her voice breaking. She turned to Teldin and pulled on his sleeve. “Teldin, please talk to them! I know how to cook! Don’t let them do that! Do something!”

  Breakfast disintegrated shortly thereafter. Teldin retired to his room, having extracted a promise from the gnomes that they would “check the galley carefully first” before serving up hamster meat. He found out a few minutes later that Gaye had gone rearward and managed to lock herself in the hydro-dynamic pumping station with Ruff and Widget, the giant hamsters, and was refusing to let any gnome near them. He wished he had a strong drink.

  “Do you have a moment, sir?” came Gomja’s deep voice from the hallway.

  “Sure.” Teldin got to his feet from the cramped bed, his back aching, and stretched out. He opened the door and let the massive giff inside, moving to the far side of the narrow room to give Gomja a chance to sit on the edge of the bed. It was the only furniture in the room strong enough to hold the giff’s weight. Nonetheless, the bed groaned and cracked as Gomja settled his weight on it.

  “I was talking with one of the gnomes, named Loomfinger, sir,” said Gomja. “He’s turned out to be a novice mage who says he took up illusions as a hobby. I made him an assistant helmsman to Sylvie, and he’s also helping her with navigational duties. He says the trip to Herdspace will take about thirty days after we enter the phlogiston. I think we should use the time to drill the gnomes and set up a chain of command. I would be the logical choice to lead them in a fight, but I would not like to command the ship. Aelfred would be the best one for that. Having no one in charge is troublesome, and it could hurt us if the orcs catch up to us.”

  Teldin nodded briefly. “I have no problem with that. I’ve been thinking the same thing. But this is the gnomes’ ship. Maybe they’d want a say in who ran things here.”

  “Yes, sir, but I suspect they’ll go along with whomever we designate as leader. None of the gnomes on this ship have any military experience. They’re just technicians that I rounded up as soon as I heard the initial alert sirens. They’re used to being given orders, not to giving them. It’s worse than the situation at Mount Nevermind.”

  Teldin sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “If they and everyone else agree to it, it sounds fine to me. I only wish this ship was bigger. It helps to go out on deck, but then I hate to come back inside.”

  Gomja nodded sympathetically. Teldin knew his big friend was forced to sleep on the ship’s upper deck, as there was no place to put him without blocking hall traffic; the giff fit no bed aboard. Gomja also snored like a lion roaring.

  “It’s uncomfortable, I know,” said Gomja, “but we were lucky just to have gotten this far, sir. Once Aelfred and I get the gnomes organized and teach them some basic tactics and drills, we should have a chance in case the orcs attack us again and try to grapple and board us.”

  “It’s your fate to command gnomes all the rest of your life,” Teldin said, managing a grin. “I hardly envy you that.”

  Gomja smiled, too, his little ears perking up. “There are worse troops, sir,” he said. “I would be afraid to command a force of kender, for instance.”

  Teldin nodded in agreement. “Speaking of which, I’ve just heard that she’s gone and —”

  “She’s still there, sir,” Gomja finished. “I was going to ask if you can talk her out. This ship has plenty of supplies hidden in the galley. I found them not five minutes ago. Even with the creamed soaked grains gone, we have lots of food left before we’d ever have to eat a hamster.” The giff made a sour face. “I’m afraid I’m in agreement with Gaye on that, sir.”

  Teldin frowned. “That’s odd. Dyffed told us earlier that no one had gotten around to loading up the ship with food supplies, much less putting in the helm and weaponry.”

  Gomja looked at him blankly. “I hadn’t heard that, sir. I suppose that Dyffed wasn’t aware whether things had been loaded on or not. Perhaps they supplied the ship and forgot about it.” He shrugged his gigantic shoulders. “Who knows?”

  The giff got to his feet, stooping to avoid striking the ceiling. “Carry on, sir,” he said, giving a quick salute. “We’ve nothing left to do until we get to Herdspace. I’m looking forward to finding out why it’s called that. None of the gnomes know but Dyffed, and he laughs when I mention it. Oh, and don’t forget about Gaye, sir.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Teldin said, returning the salute with feeling. “I’ll see you later.”

  When the giff was gone, Teldin considered lying down again for a few moments more, but decided not to bother. His back was killing him, and he couldn’t rest with Gaye all stirred up. He straightened his clothes and prepared to leave for the besieged kender.

  It wasn’t until he was going to see Gaye that Teldin though about Gomja’s comment about the alert on Ironpiece. Hadn’t the first siren been one that only the gnomes could hear? Yet Gomja had said he’d begun rounding up gnomes at that time. The giff had never displayed any ability to hear the high-pitched sounds gnomes could detect, but maybe he could anyway. Maybe the gnomes had heard the first siren and had told him about it. It was only a mildly interesting thought, and Teldin decided he would ask Gomja about it the following day. He promptly forgot all about it.

  Thirty-four days passed. Gaye cooked. The gnomes trained. Everyone waited.

  And the scro caught up with them.

  Chapter Eleven

  “The portal! It’s opening!” Gaye shouted, clutching the bow railing on the top deck of the Perilous Halibut. Ahead of her, impossibly far away but drawing nearer, was a dark gray wall that stretched from one end of the universe to the other. In the center of the wall was a burning yellow whirlpool of light whose arms rotated with agonizing slowness. At the hub of the yellow whirlpool was a sky-blue dot that grew steadily larger as the arms turned.

  Gaye thought of the pupil and iris of an unspeakably mighty god, and she shivered with excitement even as she puzzled over the color beyond the portal. She was looking into the crystal sphere of Herdspace, of course – but wasn’t it always black beyond a portal, in the wildspace beyond?

  “Prepare to fire!” thundered Gomja’s voice from aft. Gaye turned and saw the giff, wearing a freshly cleaned white uniform and clutching a crossbow as long as a man’s arm. Gomja had demanded the chance to fight the enemy, and Aelfred had finally agreed to stay below and handle shipboard activities there in case of boarding. The gnomes were already filling the ship with boobytraps.

  With his free hand, Gomja was directing the array of crossbow-bearing gnomes who knelt along the ship’s railing or crewed the newly installed deck ballista. The gnomes wore a chaotic assortment of armor manufactured from cooking utensils, metal scraps, and ship’s supplies. The giff stood by the trailing edge of the ship’s huge vertical fin, lit all around by the infinite dep
ths of the rainbow-hued phlogiston. The “flow” was a sky painted by a mad deity with every color a god’s palette could hold. The colors ran and blurred together in evershifting swirls larger than worlds.

  Gaye never got tired of looking at the flow, even if it now held the shape of a trailing enemy ship. It was only about a mile behind now, a greenish scorpion ship with its great claws extended and open as it came on for the Perilous Halibut’s tail.

  A tiny, dark shape detached itself from the upraised tail of the scorpion ship, gaining rapidly on the gnomes’ ship. “Incoming fire!” Gomja roared. “Flatten and hold fast!”

  The two dozen gnomes on deck threw themselves flat as they watched the catapult shot close in – and take an increasingly obvious path to their right. As the yard-wide rock flew by at a distance of only a few hundred feet, Gaye sighed with relief, only now remembering that she hadn’t ducked, too. She heard a ragged cheer erupt from the gnomes. Several sent their crossbow bolts chasing after the stone, and a few others fired at the scorpion.

  “Company, hold your fire until I give the command!” Gomja ordered. “Those dogs will get a taste of our bolts yet, but we’re going to make each shot count!”

  Gaye looked ahead again. The flaming yellow whirlpool was much closer, but she couldn’t begin to estimate its distance or size even now. It was vast and painfully beautiful. The blue pupil continued to grow. No stars were visible beyond. How bizarre, she thought. Dyffed had said that Herdspace was different from other crystal spheres, and he’d tried to explain how, but she’d never caught on to the specifics of his unbearably detailed lecture. Herdspace was a sphere with no planets – she had caught that part, and Dyffed’s reference to everything living on the inside of a gigantic bubble, but the concept hadn’t quite jelled yet in her mind as to what he had meant by that. The gnome also kept talking about a something-something “mega-fawn” on which the fal, One Six Nine, was said to live. Gaye pushed it out of her mind as she watched the yellow whirlpool’s blue center open. She’d have to see it to understand it.