"My parents?" cried the girl, putting a hand on her chest in mock surprise. "Give me some rope! I'm not a kid! I've been walking loose on deck for years! I'm just shorter than you are, that's all. C'mon, let's take a walk. I don't bite much, and I'm starving. We've got to see a bit of the Rock before you get serious. This chicken place, now…"
Before he was fully aware of it, Teldin was walking beside Gaye as she led the way through the Greater Market. Still talking, she headed perpendicular to Teldin's original course. What in the Dark Queen's name am I doing? he thought. I have to find the elves and see what they know about this cloak. My life and many others depend on it. If the neogi find me again, they'll cut me to pieces and pick the cloak out of the gore, and then-
Gaye abruptly turned toward him and gave him a wide, happy smile. Her eyes were like wildspace itself. "So, are you hungry enough to try it?" she said.
Well, he reasoned, Gaye was charming, but she still seemed too young for anything other than polite company. She was very serf-possessed, but she couldn't be more than sixteen, eighteen at the most. He sighed and looked away, weighing his decision. This was an armed asteroid, and there were no neogi about. He'd been here only two hours. Another hour or two wouldn't make any difference. He hadn't eaten in almost half a day, thanks to his nerves over seeing the elves. Gaye could probably do worse in choosing a male figure to whom she could attach herself; he could at least look out for her, even if Aelfred felt the Rock was safe. Aelfred was seeing it from his own point of view, not from a teenaged girl's.
Halflings were supposed to be great cooks, too, or so he'd heard. There were no halflings on Krynn, and the halfling deckhand on the Probe wasn't trusted in the galley yet. Maybe Teldin had been missing something.
He wondered if he'd pay for this with more than money.
"Sure," he finally said. Gaye looked ecstatic.
If I'm missing anything, he decided, it's common sense.
Lunch (or had it been supper? Teldin had no sense of time on this night-sky worldlet) had been excellent. Afterward, he and Gaye had wandered through the Burrows, the surface-and-tunnel community of the local halflings, then through orderly Giff-Town, with its quaint and long-winded signs. They'd even gone into the Lesser Market, a filthy street bazaar where the silent, meaningful gazes the local men sent in Gaye's direction led Teldin to walk close beside her with one hand on his sword hilt. (So much for Aelfired's opinions of the Rock's safety, he thought in disgust.) Gaye had been oblivious to potential danger, stopping at several ramshackle tables to inspect peculiar cups, ornaments, rings, and other items.
And Gaye had never once stopped talking. She had extensive, if superficial, knowledge of numerous worlds, cities, races, and ships. So far, Teldin had heard some of Gaye's experiences with, and opinions of, gnomes ("delightful!"), elves ("nice, but a little snooty."), dwarves ("so serious!"), wild-space ("it's big, isn't it?"), and some place called Kozakura, where she'd studied art of some kind. She'd arrived at the Rock on an aperusa ship about eight days earlier, admitting that she'd been here longer than she'd let on earlier. The aperusa men had been unbearable, she'd said, and had always tried to get her alone somewhere. Teldin felt his blood rise at that, but Gaye thought little of it, aside from saying, "I don't know how the women put up with it."
The details were jumbled up, but Gaye had apparently been roaming on her own for ten years or more. The issue of her exact age was becoming more confusing all the time, but Teldin wasn't ready to ask about it.
Three hours after they'd eaten, they were somewhere in the Dracon Enclave, near a semitropical grove of palm trees, sitting on the short-cropped grass. Before them was a large collection of reptilian beings of every sort, from centauroid dracons to manlike lizard men.
"I used to think that a lizard was a lizard, you know," said Gaye, "but then I saw that there were as many types of them as there are of people like us. I met some trogs once, not very friendly ones at that, and, wow, did they ever stink. It was incredible. Then I met dracons, saurials, sithp'k, and, of course, the wasag, like that little blue guy over there." Gaye pointed at a halfling-sized reptilian humanoid about thirty feet away, which looked over at them with a blank expression. Teldin leaned back on the grass and looked at the wasag, which flicked a thin, forked tongue in his direction, then he looked off to his left at one of the Rock's huge hexagon-base defense towers, bristling with siege machines aimed into the starry sky. The tangerine sun hovered low over the city skyline ahead of him. Aside from the sun's presence, he had learned that night was no different from daytime on the Rock of Bral. The air envelope around the asteroid wasn't thick enough to create a colored sky, so it was always dark above. Street and shop lights kept the city lit even when the sun was shining on the Rock's other side.
Things were becoming stranger still. The Rock had seemed large earlier, but after wandering around he had discovered that the horizon was so close that he thought he was on a mountaintop. It was hard to get used to. He suspected that the scenery could get monotonous, but at least the locals never had to worry about bad weather. And the steady stream of visitors from other worlds kept things interesting.
Gaye said something that ended in the word "Krynn," then stopped speaking. Teldin looked at her. She was giving him a big-eyed look, waiting for a response.
"What about Krynn?" he said.
"I asked if you were from Krynn. You said the name of the god Paladine when we met, so I assumed you were from Krynn, like me."
Teldin's mouth fell open. "I am from Krynn," he said in amazement. "I had a farm in Estwilde, south of Kalaman. You're from Krynn, too?"
"I don't believe it!" Gaye shrieked. Every reptilian being within earshot turned in their direction. "Is this a pocket-sized universe, or what?"
Teldin was on the verge of asking her where she came from when he noticed a group of elves, probably diplomats or nobles, walking down the street toward him. He remembered something important then.
"Damn," he said, and got to his feet. "I've got to find the elves." He cursed himself then for letting her hear that.
"The elves? You have to see the elves? Was that your business here? I know where they're at. You should've just asked me back at the Greater Market. They're right in the middle of the Rock, on the edge of the High City." She pointed to Teldin's right, uphill.
Teldin belatedly realized how far they had been wandering in the last few hours. "We've got to get going," he said quickly. "I mean, I've got to get going. I have to go see them by myself." He quickly brushed off his pants. His magical cloak never got dirty or wet, so he didn't bother with it.
"Let's go, then," Gaye said brightly. She hadn't heard his last two sentences very clearly. "We'll go this way, around the dracons and down to the arena and up by the festival grounds. We'll reach the elven forest in a few minutes."
"But-" Teldin started, then had to run to catch up to Gaye's quick pace. As they passed the dracons and lizard men, the reptile-folk stopped hissing and croaking at each other and gave them both cold, unblinking stares until they were well down the street. I wonder if they think we're good to eat, Teldin thought, then shoved the question aside. He let go of the brass sword hilt and focused instead on keeping up with the girl with the color-splashed dress and anthracite hair.
Gaye chatted on as they went, now talking about the lore she'd picked up about the festival grounds. Something was pulling at Teldin's memory about Gaye. Had he met her before? He doubted it. Then why did she seem familiar to him? She didn't have much of a Krynnish accent, but the way she spoke, her appearance, her fearlessness, her face-what was it? He found himself staring at her magenta kerchief, where it covered her ears.
They had just passed the Rock's arena and were heading up the boulevard past the festival grounds when Gaye, in her happy rambling, started talking about Krynn and how she'd first made her way into wildspace.
"It was really the craziest thing. I'd just finished seeing some relatives in Kendermore when this big gnomish side-wheeler came
right out of the sky and crashed, just smashed itself into little-"
"No," said Teldin, slowing abruptly and staring at Gaye with the beginnings of astonishment and horror. The childlike face. The endless talking. The nonstop traveling. The unremitting curiosity. The lack of fear. Great Paladine.
"What?" Startled, Gaye looked up at him and slowed down, too. "What's wrong?" "You're a kender," he said.
Gaye's dark eyes widened to enormous size. Her mouth fell open, mocking Teldin's expression. "Reorx's Hammer, do you really think so?" she said, stopping. "Is that where I got these?" She reached up and pulled off her kerchief.
Gaye's ears were pointed on the tops, just like the ears of all elves-and the ears of all kender. She saw his expression and grinned like a devil.
I've been traveling with a kender, Teldin thought with dismay. She's probably robbed me blind. His hands strayed to his belt purse, which was still strapped shut. That meant nothing, he knew; she could have gotten into it a dozen times by now. Krynnish kender were born thieves, magically descended from humans despite their superficial elven looks. Gaye's height had fooled him; most kender were willowy and only three and a half feet tall. Gaye was almost four foot six with the build of a human teenager, more muscular than he would have expected of a human girl. She could be almost any adult age. Kender lived longer than humans-and they made life hell for everyone around them, every day of their lives.
He had to ditch her before he saw the elves; they'd never let him near them if they knew anything at all about kender. She could keep the money she'd stolen from him, too. It would teach him to look before he leaped.
"Listen," he said abruptly. "I have to do some very important things, and I have to go alone, I've had a great time, and I appreciate your showing me around the Rock, but I do have to go."
"You have to go?" repeated Gaye, her grin fading somewhat. "Well, when you get back, we can-"
"I'm going to be a long time. I'm sorry. I probably won't see you again." He hated to be cruel about it, but this was best stopped now. He'd been a fool long enough.
Teldin looked up the street. The tops of some broadleaf trees in a densely forested region were now visible above the pavilions and booths at the end of the festival grounds' boulevard. It had to be the elves' forest. He turned back to Gaye and stuck out his hand. "Thanks again."
Gaye looked blankly down at his hand. She then took it in her own small hands, gently and carefully, and simply held it. Her touch was very soft and warm.
"Maybe we'll meet again anyway," she said hopefully, a trace of a smile coming back.
"Maybe," he said, and pulled away. In a million years, if I'm lucky, he added to himself.
Without a backward glance, Teldin set off for the forest. It was only with great difficulty that he could push the image of the wildspace eyes out of his mind.
Chapter Two
The first screams began at sunrise, only slightly muted as they entered through the frosted windowpanes of the old elven citadel. General Kobas Hamarka Vorr flipped a page as he finished reading another report at his oversized stone desk. He was in early today, hoping to plow through the mound of paperwork before him. The only interruption so far had been from his goblin aide, who had shuffled in bearing a wooden tray with an assortment of spiced meats, rice, fruit, and water for breakfast. The rest of the day, excluding meals, would be the usual ritual of reading, noting, signing, and moving on.
The only entertainment would be that provided by the elven prisoners, taken when their homeworld had been conquered by a humanoid naval fleet and the general's scro and ogre marines. Every hour, after the abrupt cessation of one elf's cries, a new voice would ring out its agony. This timing had proved helpful, and the general usually let the screaming set the pace of his work.
The present system of handling elven prisoners was a great improvement over the old one, the general reflected as he paused in his work. Many of the troops still preferred the dusk-to-dawn mass rituals now permitted only during religious holidays and military celebrations, when prisoners were many, but that system ate up too much time and required too many troops to manage the captives; it was simply wasteful. Now only three or four soldiers and a war priest could handle affairs, and the limited pool of subjects was stretched considerably. The timing also allowed for normal sleep, and the new ceremony still satisfied the legions. Best of all, it had a profound effect on those prisoners awaiting their turns on the red-stained granite block in the citadel's withered garden, and they offered up the most remarkable secrets in the hopes that they would be spared. That was always the most amusing part, thought the general, as he started the last of one batch of reports and took another bite of his meat and rice.
Sometimes the general would stop and listen to a particularly interesting cry a victim would make. He thought he could make out individual words in Elvish, most being pleas for mercy, but he was never sure. His hearing had only recently recovered from the day when the main gun on the Groundling Scythe had blown up in front of him during the landings on this curious little world, which the elves had named Spiral. The blast had otherwise merely bruised and cut the general in numerous places, thanks to his thick armor and innate fortitude, but it had also killed eighteen marines and his previous goblin aide, the third he had lost in only a year. Aides were damned hard to train properly, and getting along without them was inconvenient at best. He hoped the current one would last a while.
The morning sun's red light was supplemented by magical light globes set up around the room, and the general had no trouble reading. The air was still cool, not yet up to the dry oven heat that would come in the afternoon. The food was well prepared, and the water cold and fresh. It must have been the tedium of the reports, then, that caused General Vorr to let a page drop from his fingers to the desktop. He rubbed his bald gray pumpkin head with both huge hands, his eyes closed. It was hard to concentrate, and he wasn't sure what was bothering him. He'd gotten used to the low ceilings in the elven buildings, barely two feet above his eight-foot frame, and Spiral's sun didn't bother his eyes the way the brighter stars did. He paid no mind to extreme temperature changes. Even his steel-banded, black-trimmed armor was as comfortable as leisure clothes could hope to be.
It couldn't be a lack of exercise, either. Despite the end of direct combat action in these last few weeks, the general was careful to maintain his Herculean musculature with heavy lifting and stretching exercises every other day. His pale-gray skin had a healthy shine, and none of his many old injuries were bothersome these days.
Something was wrong. After a moment, the general knew what it was, and he knew also that there was no immediate cure for it. He sighed and looked down at his paper-strewn desk, noting the heavy, red-iron tarantula paperweight his troops had cast for him, then the thick mithril-steel globe the elves had long ago made of Spiral, showing the strange, winding rivers that flowed from its polar seas to its equatorial ocean and back. He felt no inspiration there, and that was the trouble. Spiral was already conquered.
Looking up, the general found himself staring at the immense clawed hands mounted to either side of the oaken double doors of his expansive office. The green, four-fingered husks went well against the white walls, mute testimony to the broken might of the elven ground forces. The zwarth that had once wielded those claws had been a real titan, a thirty-five-foot undead insectoid monster crewed by eight elves. General Vorr wished again that he had seen the expressions on those elves' faces when the zwarth had bounded out from ambush and fired its rapid spray of magic missiles directly at him while he was directing the landings on Spiral. By the Tomb of Dukagsh, that had been a fight, a damned good fight. Cutting the hands off the smoking green wreck afterward had been especially satisfying. Sometimes those elves knew a good trick or two, for all the good it did them in the long run.
General Vorr sat back, listening to the hoarse, distant cries of the fifth prisoner of the day. The garden ceremonies were good, but they were losing their morale value. This group
of elves had been only farmers, after all, not warriors captured in battle. The last of the fighting for Spiral had been too long ago. Little Spiral's orange sun now rose and set across a world controlled by the Tarantula Fleet's ground and wildspace forces. With the local military ground into blood and bones, the troops lacked an appropriate outlet for their aggressions. Hunting down elven refugees in the deep caverns and mountains was a job for orcs and goblins, not highly trained marines like the general's black-armored scro and ogres.
We came here to kill elves, the general thought darkly, not to settle down, play games, and squabble among ourselves. Somewhere in this vast crystal sphere there were more elves, possibly even elements of the Imperial Fleet, but hunting for them would stretch the resources of the Tarantula Fleet too far until the scro had time to build more ships on Spiral. This was the third sphere the general had seen since the War of Revenge had begun, and the once-mighty fleet had been reduced by over two-thirds in constant, glorious, challenging, savage, righteous battle. All of the beautiful mantis ships were destroyed; hastily repaired derelicts and hijacked ships had been pressed into service. They had to rest or perish.
That was the whole problem, of course. General Vorr hated just sitting here, knowing his troops were rotting from within. We should be back in wildspace again, he thought. We've been grounded for five hands of days now, and the reports are filling with summary executions for fighting among the troops. That energy should be directed at the Imperial Fleet, not at fellow soldiers. It was the accursed politics behind it all, of course.
The general's eyes wandered around the room, taking in the crude array of tribal, religious, and unit banners crowding the walls to either side of the doors, past the zwarth's claws. The Tarantula Fleet admiral's policy of letting common orcs into the ground legions only fed the problem. Orcs had boundless hatred for elves, but they also had equally violent hatreds for almost every other sort of humanoid, including orcs of rival tribes and cults and even the ore-descended scro. Other humanoids were like that, but few as much as the orcs.
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