The Maelstrom Eye tcc-3

by Roger E. Moore

  Strangest of all, Teldin felt as if he was the ship. The ship's hull became like a second skin, though he could feel no heat or pressure from it. It was simply there, a part of him now. He wondered if he was gaining more awareness of things as he acquired experience with spelljamming.

  Business first, he thought. Aelfred had wanted to gain altitude in hopes the ship could move more quickly. Teldin focused all of his energies into going up. He felt no different sitting on the helm. His view outside, however, revealed at once that the Perilous Halibut was climbing rapidly.

  Time returned to normal again.

  For a few seconds, the room was filled with cries and struggling bodies on the floor.

  "Teldin!" Aelfred thrust his face right into Teldin's own, the pink light from Teldin's cloak reflecting on them both. "Teldin Moore, you son of a bitch, what in the Nine Hells possessed you to do that?" Aelfred shouted at the top of his lungs, his face pale with fear and rage. "Damn you for screwing around with the helm! We all could have been killed! Don't you ever think first?"

  Teldin looked at Aelfred and felt an onrush of shame. He knew he had acted too quickly and had endangered everyone, but he felt his anger spill out instead. "It was either act or stand there and listen to everyone argue," he retorted. "I apologize for the shock, but we're gaining altitude from the scro fleet. They won't catch us now. It worked!"

  Aelfred continued to stare into Teldin's face at eye level. "Wonderful, but don't ever do it again," he said. "You scared the crap out of me. The gods damn you for that."

  Teldin nodded, his face deep red. He switched to looking outside the ship. The sky above the ship was getting darker, bit by bit. How high did the air envelope extend, all the way to the sun? They'd know soon enough.

  Sylvie looked at Teldin, blinking rapidly. "You've torn the arm off the helm, but you're flying the ship."

  Teldin looked down and nodded. "The cloak must work only if there's no functioning helm on a ship," he said slowly. "That's why it wouldn't fly for me before now, and why I could fly the Probe with both helms down."

  Sylvie stared at him. "I see." She tried to rub her face, but her hands were shaking too much. Swaying from foot to foot, she turned and left the room without another word.

  Aelfred followed her to the door. "I want to talk with Teldin for a while, so go ahead. I won't wake you up again. Gaye and Loomfinger, you two can leave, too."

  "I wanted to talk with Teldin, too," said Gaye, as Loom-finger picked himself up and scuttled for the door.

  "Out," said Aelfred, jerking a thumb at the entrance. Gaye rolled her eyes and mumbled, "Darn," as she left.

  When the door closed behind everyone, Aelfred stepped back from Teldin and took a deep breath. "You've saved us again, but this time I can't think of a good excuse for it," he said in a calm but hard voice. "You took a chance and blew it, then you broke the helm and, by an incredibly stupid piece of luck, you saved us. But if anything had gone wrong-the ship rolling over, you missing the helm, whatever-we'd be at the bottom of a crater about now. For all your powers, Teldin, you still don't know dirt about spelljamming, and you'd better leave decisions on it to people who do know dirt about it. Think before you act! Do you want to kill us?"

  Teldin couldn't meet his friend's gaze. He nodded, facedown.

  Aelfred shook his head and looked away. "I almost soiled myself when you pulled Loomfinger off his seat." He shivered for a moment. "It's different in wildspace. You don't fall anywhere there if someone gets off the helm to go to the head. The ship keeps on flying. You can't do that in a gravity field." He glanced back at Teldin. "As long as you're up there, are there any signs of our followers?"

  Teldin looked, using his helm's-eye view of the outside of the ship. "None that I can see. We're not leaving the atmosphere yet. The air envelope here must be very thick. Where should we go next? The fal?"

  Aelfred nodded. "Of course. If I'm going to put my life on the line for you every few days, I want to know some of the reasons why. That slug had better have some good answers, too. I heard Dyffed knew how to get there, using some little magical box of his. Any truth to that?"

  Teldin had almost forgotten about the gnome. "He has a device that picked out the fal's location just a few moments before Gomja came up and warned us about the scro fleet. It works on mental energy in some way. I don't pretend to understand it. He may be able to set a course for us using it. He said we had to use it outside the ship on the deck, or at least I had that impression."

  Aelfred looked at Teldin with an odd expression. "Messing with the helm has addled your brain. I think you meant that Gomja found out about the scro fleet from you when he came up on deck, don't you?"

  "No," said Teldin. "He told us."

  Aelfred looked at Teldin blankly. "Now, how could that be? Gomja's been inside the ship this whole time. I assumed he'd gone up to see you and you'd warned him then, or else you'd come in yourself to tell him."

  "Wait, let me think about this," said Teldin, becoming confused. "Couldn't he have found out from Loomfinger? When he was on the helm, didn't Loomfinger see the fleet behind him and warn everyone?"

  "I wasn't here, but Loomfinger wouldn't know a fleet from a flock of gullions," Aelfred said. "He's not much more than a minor illusionist with a handful of spells, and he can barely pay enough attention to the real world to keep from getting killed on a daily basis. I guess it's possible that he could have warned Gomja. I never asked the giff how he found out about the scro. He practically dragged me out of my hammock to tell me about them. I ran to get Sylvie right after that, and Gaye showed up wondering what everyone was doing in the helm room, then you showed up, and there you are. I should ask Loomfinger, just out of curiosity, I suppose, but I don't know if it matters now. Maybe I should give him a medal."

  "We should find Dyffed first and get that thingfinder from him." Teldin tried a weak smile. "Not that I'm telling you what to do, mind you."

  Aelfred didn't smile back, but he relaxed slightly. "I'll arm wrestle you for control of the ship, if you like," he said, "then you can try to command a crew of gnomes."

  Teldin shook his head. "I'm afraid I threw my arm out when I was rowing over to the shore to meet those rastipedes," he said sorrowfully. "As soon as it's better, I'll let you know." Aelfred laughed. "That's what I like," he said, "job security. I'll go find Dyffed."

  When Aelfred had left, Teldin's smile faded. He knew that he had done a nearly disastrous thing in pulling the gnome from the helm. Now that it was all over, he couldn't believe he had done it. What if things hadn't turned out, as Aelfred had said? What had made him do it? He remembered thinking, for just a moment as he grabbed for Loomfinger, that he could do anything he wanted to with the cloak, and it would work if he tried hard enough. Had he been getting cocky, then, with his new powers? He knew he would have to use his intelligence from now on, not his ego.

  For a few minutes, Teldin concentrated on the Perilous Halibut's climb away from the ground, and toward… what? He wasn't sure. Was there a wildspace-type vacuum in the middle of this sphere? Or was there air all the way through it? He had visited several crystal spheres in the months since he'd left Krynn, and no two of them were much alike at all. This one took the prize so far, though he recalled some tales that Aelfred told of a sphere in which a gigantic tree grew, with planets nestled in its branches. He shook his head. Less than a year ago, he would have laughed. Now he believed every word of it.

  Suddenly, he thought to look down, using his helm-given view of the ship's outside. He'd been looking up and across for some time, seeing little other than blue sky, wispy clouds of every possible shape, and the huge sun overhead. The sky was still fairly clear. The view should be interesting.

  So he looked down.

  "Paladine," he breathed. "Oh, great Paladine."

  Teldin had seen worlds from space before. He'd never forgotten his first view of Krynn from orbit: the beautiful blue seas, green and brown lands, white clouds. It was one world among a multitude, b
ut it was his world. In his mind, it had become precious beyond the value of any treasure, and he loved it for all of its flaws and heartaches. It was just one little world, but he had felt a strange emotion upon seeing it as a whole for the first time.

  But Teldin had never dreamed of seeing a world that had no end, a world that got bigger the farther one traveled from it. As he looked down, Teldin could see the outlines of four mighty rivers, two mountain ranges, and two vast blue seas that rivaled the largest lakes that Krynn could offer. The view went on and on. As he looked down, he became aware that he must be hundreds of miles up now. The view extended off to his left and right to a considerable distance, though it faded into blue sky, hidden by the thickness of the atmosphere.

  He had to admit that the lake below him did, indeed, resemble a gigantic beast's footprint. He looked at the other lake he had seen-and saw that it, too, resembled a footprint. In fan, so did the next huge lake he saw, lying in the opposite direction on roughly a straight line with the previous two lakes. It must be true, Teldin thought, that these are footprints. Even as he thought it, part of his mind would not accept it. What in the name of all the gods in the universe could possibly be so huge as to carve out a sea with each step? He had thought he'd accepted the idea of Dyffed's "megafauna" before, but…

  Teldin's outside vision became blurred for a moment. The ship passed through a mild sort of turbulence. He look wildly around the outside of the ship. The blue sky was gone, and in its place was a patchwork sky of blues, browns, greens, and white-the full view of Herdspace.

  He slowly realized he must have left the atmosphere's upper boundary, which was fairly distinct here instead of being a gradual shift from air to vacuum as on a normal world. Why this place was different, he hadn't a clue. With the thick air gone except for the ships' own air envelope, he could now see perfectly in all directions. He could make out very few distinct features beyond a certain distance, as they were too far away, put he could see the outlines of continents that were larger than planets, and oceans that could swallow a dozen Krynns. Gone was the blackness of wildspace and the glorious constelations. Now, all he could see was sand-colored land and blue water, until it faded into the reaches of infinity.

  The Perilous Halibut was moving much faster now, he noticed, at full wildspace speed. A thousand miles flashed by with each second of travel in wildspace, he recalled Sylvie saying, and with each second, his view of the land below subtly shifted, revealing new vistas that tugged at his already overstretched imagination. Now he could see a line of footprint lakes and valleys, an unmistakable path of stupendous craters that reached off into the distance toward… toward…

  "Great gods of Krynn," Teldin breathed.

  Aelfred was busy elsewhere on the ship now, so Gaye decided it was safe to visit Teldin in the helm room. Sylvie wouldn't talk to her when the half-elf was on the helm, and Loomfinger didn't know how to explain things very well, but Teldin could tell her what it was like to be on the helm. She was dying to find out. What did it feel like? How could you see outside the ship, as she'd always heard could be done, and still see the inside of the ship? She'd had a million questions all bottled up inside her for years, and now she had someone who could tell her the answers at last.

  Gaye padded softly to the helm room door. Get a grip on yourself, she thought. Don't get too close to him too soon; men never liked that. Just take your time and get him to talk, like he was just before the splashdown in the lake. He's got so much on his mind, but maybe there's room for a little more. She thought again of his blue eyes, so much like her father's, and she shivered. It wasn't cold in the corridor.

  No one else was around the door, and she could hear nothing inside the room, so Teldin must be alone. She took a deep breath and knocked.

  No answer came. She waited, knocked again, then tried the door handle. It was unlocked, so she peeked inside.

  Teldin sat in the helm, facing the door. Maps hung on the walls around him in the small room, and low tables held stacks of papers and boob. A magical ceiling light spread soft radiance across the room, blending with the shining pink from Teldin's spelljamming cloak.

  She smiled and opened her mouth to say hi, but she saw the expression on Teldin's face and stopped. He seemed to be stunned at something he was staring at over the door. Gaye carefully looked up but saw nothing except the door frame and another map on the wall.

  She slid into the room and shut the door behind her. "Teldin?" she asked. "Are you okay?"

  His jaw worked slightly. "Yes," he said in a whisper. He never looked at her.

  "You just look strange," she said. "Is it because you're spell-jamming? Is the helm comfortable? You just have the funniest look on your face."

  Teldin tried to swallow with a dry mouth. Still he gazed into the distance at some invisible scene. "It's… you can't see it from in here. You could if you were on deck." He tried to smile. "I found one of Dyffed's megafauna. Great gods of Krynn, you can't believe this thing."

  "What? What's it look like? How big is it?" Gaye was instantly torn between rushing to the upper deck and staying with Teldin. She thought she would go nuts with indecision. "Talk to me!" she said.

  "I can't be sure how big it is," Teldin said slowly. "It has a huge blue-and-red-striped body, with a long neck and a tail. I think only its legs are in the atmosphere; the rest of it rises out far beyond it. Maybe it's ten thousand miles high, I don't know. Wait-the hatches are opening on the main deck. Gnomes, some gnomes and Aelfred are coming out. Maybe they saw it through the portholes. There's Gomja, too. They're just looking at the creature. I've adjusted our course so that we can fly around it, and I've dropped our altitude a few thousand miles so that we can be on its level." His voice faded off, his vision still riveted on the sight.

  "Keep talking," said Gaye.

  Teldin licked his lips. He was aware of a pleasant scent in the air. Gaye, probably. She was wearing some kind of perfume again. "We're coming closer to the creature. It has a tremendous multicolored shadow on the ground, fuzzy. I can see a vague sort of haze around its neck and head, maybe gas or clouds. It might have its own air envelope around it, maybe its own gravity field. It would have to, wouldn't it, since it's so big. The head is very strange, like a lizard with fanlike ears. There might be gills on the side of its head, ahead of the neck. It has only one eye, very big and dark green. Some of the gnomes are waving at it, but I don't think it sees us. No one seems to be saying much. It's so big that it looks like it could walk over a planet."

  Gaye was silent, picturing the scene herself. She glanced down, lost in her reverie, and saw Teldin's left hand lying limp on the arm of the helm. After a moment, she reached out slowly and put her right hand on top of his and squeezed. His skin was very warm, almost hot. Something happened inside her when she felt his heat. He didn't pull his hand away, but he didn't return the squeeze.

  "It's beautiful," Teldin said, unaware of her. "I never dreamed it would ever be like this."

  Gaye felt her cheeks flush with a heat of her own. She couldn't look up at him. After a moment, she came to and looked around, then pulled her hand away.

  "I'll go up on deck," she said softly. "Look for me up there."

  "I will," Teldin said, still looking into space.

  Gaye closed the door and walked through the ship for the nearest ladder to the upper deck. Her heart pounded in her ears every step of the way.

  This is stupid, she thought. I can't believe I'm doing this. I've never had this happen to me. I'm falling for him. He's a human, but so was my rather. He and Mom worked out pretty well. But why this guy? Why am I breathing so fast? This is the dumbest thing I've ever done. Where is the ladder? I missed it-I have to go back two doors now. What is the matter with me? Will he see me if I'm on deck? Where will I have to stand for him to see me? Will I be able to see him, or what?

  She found the ladder and climbed through the already open hatchway. Light poured down from the great, perfect sun at the zenith. A vault of dim color arced
overhead, swirls of blue and white and dark green and tan everywhere. She stood up, looked in the direction everyone else was looking, and immediately forgot about Teldin.

  But only for a little while.

  "We should be there in less than an hour," said Aelfred in the helm room. "Dyffed got a good fix with the thingfinder on our buddy, the slug, and he just went topside to take one last look at it. I wish Sylvie was up, but the longer she sleeps now, the better off she and the rest of us will be. She should be able to use the helm now that it's fixed. We'll just take the arm off when you want to use it."

  "Speaking of Dyffed," said Teldin, "I can see him on the top deck now. Doesn't he ever change clothes?"

  Aelfred laughed. He was slowly becoming the old Aelfred Teldin knew, one less stressed than he'd been since arriving at this bizarre sphere. "I could ask Gomja to catch him and hold him down while we scrub him off, but neither of us would like to get that close to him. I'll see what I can do to suggest a change. He is getting a bit stale."

  Teldin was silent for a moment, obviously using his helm vision. "I'm trying to see what Dyffed is looking at with that thingfinder," he said. "I don't see another world-beast yet, but I probably will, soon. Did Dyffed say what the one we want look like, or do they all look the same?"

  "I had the impression from Dyffed that these monsters were unique. Half the time, though, he talks too far over my head to catch what he's saying. If he'd talk normally instead of using twelve-syllable words, maybe I'd-what's wrong?"

  Teldin's body went rigid, his fingers digging into the arms of the helm. "Aelfred, get someone on the top deck!" he said. "Dyffed's thingfinder blew up on him!"

  "Kobas," said a soft voice in the darkness of the room. General Vorr was instantly awake. His right hand strayed down to his side and tugged free his sword, oiled so that it made no sound.