The Maelstrom's Eye

by Roger Moore

  When he was only twenty feet from the shore, Teldin remembered that the lake water was supposed to be antimagical. That meant his cloak … he stopped paddling, almost paralyzed with fear at his next thought. Would his cloak’s powers even work? It was too late now. He didn’t even want to try to take the necklace off, for fear it would fall into the lake and be lost. Slowly, he resumed his progress toward shore, his heart sinking inside him. When he was close enough, he carefully slid off the raft and stood in the algae-thick water up to his knees, pulling the raft behind him until he could lay one end of it on the sand and rock bank. That done, he rose and faced the creatures, standing erect with his hands open at his sides. Cold water dripped from his soaked trousers and spilled out of his boots.

  One of the insect-beings flipped its saber behind it, neatly dropping it into a broad sheath. It moved through the ranks of its fellow soldiers until it stood about ten feet before Teldin, looking him over with many-faceted black eyes as broad as the span of a man’s hand. The head of the insect-centaur resembled that of an ant, with two huge antennae that twisted to and fro on its head, and a pair of dark mandibles larger than any animal’s claws. It made a come-hither motion, and Teldin carefully stepped closer, away from the shoreline.

  “Ship you sail sky?” the creature asked. Its voice was not unpleasant, almost like a chirping song. It gestured with one long, clawed hand toward the Perilous Halibut.

  Teldin couldn’t be sure if the creature was really speaking the Common tongue, as it seemed to be, or if the cloak was translating its words. “Yes,” he said simply. “We came down and landed in the lake. We wish to rest.” He canceled the idea of telling the insect folk that the ship wouldn’t fly yet.

  The creature regarded the Perilous Halibut without expression. “You no sail sky now? Ship you no sail lake? Home you here find?”

  Teldin hesitated, not sure what the creature meant. “Ship fly … Our ship flies, yes. We just want to rest here, then leave. We will not bother you.” He looked in the direction of the gnomes. “Please release our crew. They meant no harm.”

  In answer, the creature called out in an incomprehensible singsong language over its shoulder. There was some motion near the gnomes, then another insect-centaur appeared from the rest, holding, a gnome aloft under the armpits. The gnome, his face as white as his beard, appeared frozen with terror, but the insect-centaur merely deposited him on the ground in the long, flat grass near Teldin. With a push from behind, the creature sent the gnome in Teldin’s direction.

  Teldin felt the urge to reach down and snatch up the gnome as he would a returned child, but he resisted it. He did crouch and force a smile as the gnome walked nervously to him, looking over his shoulders every few seconds at the insect people. “Are you hurt?” Teldin asked.

  The gnome shook his head, rubbing his chest where the insect being’s claws had held him. “Fine,” the gnome said – the shortest phrase Teldin recalled ever hearing from a gnome. He recalled this particular gnome was named Druushi.

  Teldin clasped a hand on the gnome’s shoulder with false bravado, then stood again. “Thank you for returning him,” he said, feeling only slightly more confident. “We want the rest of our crew, too. I give you our word we will not bother you. We wish only to rest, then leave and, urn, sail the sky.”

  “Trade,” said the insect being. “You trade talk. We trade crew. You trade true talk. Ship you no sail sky. Lake no sail. Home here you find?”

  “No, we are not making our home here,” Teldin said. He judged that these beings knew the lake water was antimagical, and he further had the impression that they were not evil. It was only a hunch, but he had nothing else, so he plunged ahead. “We didn’t know the lake would stop our ship from flying – sailing the sky, I mean. We had to land, and we will leave again as soon as we get our ship out of the lake.”

  The insect-centaur turned and repeated its earlier gesture. Another insect warrior left the group surrounding the remaining gnomes, another frightened gnome clutched in its clawed hands. This gnome, too, was sent on his way toward Teldin, and Druushi welcomed him briefly, if anxiously.

  That leaves four gnomes left, Teldin thought. Was he going to have to talk all the rest of them out of captivity? “I don’t know what else I can tell you,” Teldin said finally. “Will you allow us to come to shore?”

  The insect being considered this. Within moments, Teldin felt a change in the atmosphere. Several of the insect beings close to the speaker lowered their bows. Moments later, large numbers of them followed suit, appearing to relax as they stood. Several even put their bows away, shoving them back into leathery sheaths strapped to their long tail sections. Teldin felt his nose twitch. He was going to sneeze.

  He fought the impulse as long as he could. “If you want to trade talk,” he said, “we can tell you some of our stories. True stories. You seem to know we can fly-sail, whatever. We can tell you where we’ve been. We can tell you about the …” He sneezed then, violently, four times in a row. Eyes watering, he forced himself to stop and looked up, then waved a hand to encompass the entire sky. “We can tell you about the universe, the worlds beyond the sky, if you let our crew go.”

  Huge black eyes gleamed as they looked Teldin over again. “You say true?” it chirped-sang.

  “On my word of honor,” Teldin answered, his nose starting to run. What in the Abyss was happening? Was he allergic to something in the air? “I say true.”

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, to Teldin’s astonishment, all of the insect folk put away their weapons and relaxed their postures. They moved away from the gnomes, who hesitantly began side-stepping toward Teldin and their two compatriots. When it was obvious the insect beings did not care, the gnomes broke into a run and collided, arms out, into drawn-out hugs with their friends. “What’s that odd smell?” he heard one of the gnomes ask another.

  Teldin felt his knees grow weak with relief. He started to say “Thank you” to the insect being when he was seized with an uncontrollable urge to sneeze. He could barely do anything else, and the sneezing went on and on.

  “You say ship crew, all good,” said the insect being, out of Teldin’s sight. “We and you pull ship. Trade talk and talk. You and crew rest.” The creature hesitated, then looked curiously at Teldin, who was also being regarded with some concern by the gnomes.

  I … I can’t … stop!” Teldin gasped, then sneezed again twice. “I … can’t... stop!”

  *****

  “Of course, I did tell you that medical matters were not in my central curriculum when I was at the university of Lirak’s Cube,” said Dyffed, examining Teldin’s red, swollen face. “I was in engineering – none of this tinkering with the insides of dead things or trying to make trees grow watermelons or crossbreeding dragons with giant hamsters. No, I had the clean feel of the slide rule, the virgin expanses of fresh paper, the thrill of multiple equations, the afterglow of a correct sum. I was young then, only fifty, young and foolish, eager to yield myself to the temptations of differential mathematics and spell-jamming theory. Some fools called it infatuation, but they wouldn’t have known verifiable ardor even if it chose to affix its incisors on their ischial tuberosities.” He sighed and looked off into space. “Ah, it was an exciting time to be alive.”

  “What’s wrong with Teldin?” Gaye asked, unable to wait any longer.

  “What? Oh.” Dyffed cleared his throat. “He’s got a runny nose and he’s sneezing a lot.”

  “Yes, we know that!” Gaye exclaimed. “But why?”

  “Beats me,” said the gnome with a shrug. “Maybe it’s something in the air.”

  “It’s the rastipedes,” said Aelfred with a smile. “I dealt with one a few years ago in Greyspace. They communicate with each other by smell. Most of us can barely detect it, but I’ll bet a year’s pay that our man Teldin is allergic to the odor. A buddy of mine had the same thing. There’s nothing you can do about it except avoid rastipedes whenever possible. Sorry about that, old son.”
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  “Teldin’s allergic to those bugs?” Gaye asked. “Thank Paladine it wasn’t kender.”

  I almost wish it had been kender, Teldin thought miserably. His sinuses were swollen far beyond normal limits, and he could barely breathe. He had never had an allergy before in his life, and he hoped he’d never get another.

  “It will pass,” Aelfred added, raising a mug of ale to his lips. “Give it a couple of days, and you’ll be fine. In the meantime, the rastipedes and our crew are building a wagon for the ship. We should have it out of the water by this evening.” He drank deeply and smacked his lips.

  “Any other news?” Teldin managed to ask, his voice now outrageously nasal. He heard Gaye giggle.

  “They’re giving us a map of the area,” said Aelfred. “It should give us a start on finding what we came here for.”

  The fal, Teldin thought, rubbing his face. He tried to picture a giant black slug that could talk, but it wasn’t possible. He’d almost forgotten about the fal in the last few days since the – what were they again? – since the scro’s ship began trailing them.

  “Here he comes,” said Gaye, “and he’s got a map!”

  Teldin’s eyes watered again as the rastipede jogged up on its eight legs, moving more rapidly than seemed possible for its size. The creature did indeed have a large rolled-up sheet of paper in its claws, which it presented to Aelfred and Gaye. “Teldin sick?” asked the insect being.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Aelfred, unrolling the map. “Where are we now on this?”

  The rastipede turned its attention to the map, trotting over to stand behind the big, blond warrior. A clawed green finger reached down and pointed to a spot on the map that Teldin could not see from where he sat. “We here.”

  “There?” asked Aelfred, surprise in his voice. “What’s this in the center, then?”

  “Lake,” said the rastipede, looking up from the map to point toward the shore where the other insect folk and the gnomes were laboring.

  Gaye gasped, and Teldin could see her eyes widen as she peered at the sheet of paper. “Isn’t that weird? Dyffed, look at this! Isn’t that bizarre?”

  Teldin could stand it no longer. He got up from the rock and tried to get into the crowd, even as his nose stopped up completely as he approached the insect being. “What’s going on?” he wheezed, hating the sound of his voice.

  Aelfred managed to lower the top end of the map. Teldin looked down. A large blue footprint appeared to take up most of the center of the map. Teldin blinked, his teary vision clearing for a moment, and he saw the rastipede’s claw pointing steadily to a forested spot on the leading edge of one of the footprint’s four thick toes.

  Aelfred looked up at the lake, then down at the map. He snorted and smiled. “Mother Nature having one of its jokes,” he said. “Looks like something stepped there, doesn’t it?”

  “Something did step there,” said Dyffed, peering at the map through his gold-rimmed spectacles. “Quadrupedal megafauna. One of the bigger ones, I’d say.”

  There was a short silence.

  “Dyffed,” said Aelfred conversationally, “that lake is about a hundred and twenty miles long.”

  The gnome merely nodded. “I’d say a hundred and thirty, myself, a third the she of Ironpiece. Just a rough guess, of course. We can make more accurate measurements when we’re airborne again.”

  The silence returned. Aelfred lowered the map and looked off into the distance, in the direction the leading edge of the footprint indicated. “Then how big …?” he started to say, but his voice trailed away. Teldin and Gaye followed his gaze, looking over the treetops and into the infinite blue beyond.

  “We’ll know soon enough,” Dyffed said cheerfully, still looking at the map. “One Six Nine lives on top of one.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Within a few hours, Teldin’s allergy had begun to clear up. His head felt less likely to burst, and he could go for almost twenty minutes before sneezing. The frustration of it was still torture, but he felt he could command at least a shred of dignity when he walked about, as long as he kept upwind of the rastipedes.

  He also learned from Sylvie and the now-friendly rastipedes that the antimagical effects of the lake water apparently extended for a few feet around the lake itself. The leader of the armed rastipedes, he recalled, had been careful to motion Teldin away from the water when he came ashore, no doubt so that its own spell for translating languages would function.

  By the time Teldin thought to see if his cloak’s powers had been negated by the lake water, the necklace part had dried off and was working normally. Given the presence of the rastipedes, Teldin put off any further test of lake-water effects on the cloak until later.

  “We’ve just about got the ship in position,” Aelfred said, sitting down beside Teldin on a fallen tree near the edge of the forest. The big warrior held a wooden cup full of ale, fresh from the ship’s stores. “Those rastipedes are damn good engineers. Between them and the gnomes, they had some weird crane-and-pulley system set up and going in about three hours. They hauled the ship right out of the water like it was a toy. Amazing what you can do without magic.” He took a swallow from his cup, then offered it to Teldin.

  “No, thank,” Teldin said. “I’ve had more than my share already.” He sniffed and rubbed his stuffed-up nose. “Medicinal purposes, of course.”

  Aelfred gave his friend a lopsided grin. “You’ve saved our lives several times running now, and the gods reward you with this. There’s no justice.” He turned around, hearing footsteps from behind them. “Come on over,” he called. Teldin turned just as Sylvie walked up and casually sat on the log beside Aelfred.

  “You get some rest?” Aelfred asked, nudging the half-elf gently in the side. “You’ve stayed up too long already.”

  Sylvie elbowed Aelfred back, though more sharply. “I can’t get to sleep now,” she said glumly. “Sunset and night can’t be possible in this sphere because the land area is exposed to overhead sunlight all the time. I can’t find a place that’s dark enough to sleep. Someone did a bad design job when this sphere was being made.” She poked at the leaves on the ground with the toes of her soft shoes. “I’m in a bad mood. Just ignore me.”

  Aelfred laughed, but Teldin stared at Sylvie in astonishment at her revelation that night wasn’t possible here. He’d been wondering for some time now when the huge sun was going to drop toward the horizon; he now felt intensely foolish for not having realized that “sunset” was out of the question. How did the natives get along without night? This was the strangest world he had seen since entering wildspace.

  “Lady, you can be as mean as you want, and I promise not to pay any attention to you at all,” said Aelfred, grinning from ear to ear. He began to stroke Sylvie’s back with his right hand. After a moment, she closed her eyes and visibly relaxed. “Besides, some people do manage to get to sleep here. The rastipedes live underground, for instance. They sleep in shifts, so two-thirds of their colony is always awake. I was talking with their leader a while ago – he has no name, as we know it, since their language is based in part on smell – and he told me about their life here. They’re descended from a spelljammer crew. Their ship landed in the lake just like ours did, but their ship broke up on landing, so they just stayed on. They run the forest and most of the land on this side of the lake. One of them could give an ogre a fit. Teldin did us a real favor in talking things out with them, even if our buddy the giff wanted to charge them.” Aelfred reached over and gave Teldin another punch to the shoulder.

  “You know,” said Sylvie slowly, “I was thinking earlier that there was something odd about the horizon, where the view was clear through the trees. The earth and sky fade together in a blur, with the land reaching slightly up into the sky. Then it hit me that I was seeing the curvature of the inside of the crystal sphere.”

  Sylvie suddenly turned around to face both Aelfred and Teldin. “Did either of you think about how big this place is?” she asked. “Seriou
sly, I mean. Do you know how huge this place really is?”

  “Looked damn big to me,” Aelfred said, “but Dyffed told me a few weeks ago in the phlogiston that Herdspace wasn’t the biggest crystal sphere there was.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Sylvie said, brushing her long silver hair back over her pointed ears. “This crystal sphere could be half the size of any major one, but it would still have more living space inside it than a million planets. Think about it: We’re living on the inside of a crystal sphere, which is maybe a million times bigger than a world. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  Teldin thought about it and shivered slightly. The idea was almost too crazy to believe. He realized that he could not picture how truly big a single world was, much less imagine the size of the inside of a crystal sphere. “Then what’s beyond the atmosphere?” he said, pointing up at the sky.

  Sylvie looked up for a moment, shading her eyes and squinting against the glare. “There could be some planets orbiting the sun, but I don’t see any of them. Dyffed said there weren’t any there, anyway. Maybe the air envelope on the inside of this sphere extends all the way up to the sun, though – blue sky everywhere you go, and clouds a thousand miles high. I don’t know.”

  Teldin saw Sylvie frown as she stared straight up. “That’s odd,” she whispered. “Is the sun getting darker?”

  Teldin and Aelfred immediately leaned back and looked up. Teldin thought he had noticed a slight dimming in the light, but he had put it down as a visual quirk.

  “Damn,” said Aelfred. “It is getting darker. I can tell now. Gods of Toril, what’s going on here?”

  Teldin heard a sudden increase in the volume of the gnomes’ distant conversation. Several were calling to each other about the sun going out. They sounded quite panicked. He hardly blamed them.