Into The Void

by Nigel Findley

  “In other spheres, the stars are different,” Horvath continued, as he drew two more mugfuls from the barrel. “Some places, they’re like portholes in the crystal shell, letting in the light of the flow itself. In others, they’re huge, glowing beetles that wander around the inside of the shell. They’re a real sight, that I’ll tell you. And in others … Well, I’ve heard this, but I’ve never seen it. They’re great bowls of fire held aloft by huge statues of forgotten gods. At least, that’s how the stories go”

  “And you … you travel between these crystal spheres?”

  “You mean gnomes? Certainly we do, though not very often,” Horvath confirmed. “We trade, ferry passengers, but mostly just explore. That’s what we were doing when …” The navigator cleared his throat softly as he recalled his previous flight from Krynn. Horvath briefly related how a group of gnomes had made it into space decades earlier, only to be attacked by neogi and sent racing back to their home sphere and world. Only he and a handful of veterans had survived the ensuing crash to tell the tale and oversee the Unquenchable’s manufacture.

  “That’s fantastic!” Teldin sensed his new friend’s mixed emotions and changed the subject. “What exactly is the flow?”

  “The flow? Well …” The gnome paused; “Whatever I said wouldn’t be enough, and you wouldn’t believe me anyway. You’ve got to see the flow to understand it. Just wait a few days.”

  A cold fist seemed to grasp Teldin’s heart. “A few days?”

  “Well, a week, maybe.” Horvath paused and looked appraisingly at Teldin. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler. “Of course we’re leaving this sphere. I thought you knew that.”

  Teldin closed his eyes. Yes, he’d known that the gnomish vessel was going somewhere, probably another planet, but he’d assumed it was somewhere else in Krynnspace. Then he recalled other gnomes aboard ship mentioning an excursion through the flow. He was leaving his world, which was bad enough, but to be told that he was leaving everything he thought of as his universe … For a moment he almost gave in to crushing despair, but the moment passed. With an effort, he brought himself back from the brink of discouragement and forced his eyes open. He realized that the gnome was still talking.

  “Our course will take us to Devis, in a sphere called Path-space,” Horvath was saying, “then on to the Rock for a refit. He-Whose-Duties-Revolve-Around-Maintaining-And-Repairing …” He stopped short and started again. “Our shipmaster says we’re about due, particularly after that scrap with the neogi spidership. You didn’t think we’d hang around here, did you?”

  “I didn’t really think about it,” Teldin replied, trying to keep his voice steady.

  “Well, you should,” Horvath said, not unkindly. “We’re heading for the shell now. Good view on the way. We’ll be passing close to Zivilyn. What a wild planet that is: twelve moons and more colors than you’ve got names for.” The gnome set down his empty mug. “My advice to you is, don’t worry about it. Enjoy the trip and learn everything you can. Once it gets in your blood, this is the only life that makes any sense. You’ll never go back to being a dirtkicker again.” He slapped his thighs and stood. “Well, I’m on watch shortly. Why don’t you come up on deck with me? Just because I have the duty doesn’t mean I can’t talk.”

  Teldin followed the gnome up a different companionway and emerged on deck farther aft than he’d been before, just forward of the chaotic structure the gnomes called the stern-castle. He looked up and saw another gnome leaning over the sterncastle rail, looking down at them. Remembering Horvath’s comment about humans only seeing the superficial, he tried with a critical eye to make out the differences between the two gnomes. But, if he discounted the minor differences in clothing, the two looked enough alike to be mirror images.

  Horvath looked up at the other gnome and raised a hand in salute. “Greetings, Yourcaptainship, sir, Captain Wysdor, sir.” Now that Horvath was speaking to another gnome, the words flooded forth so fast that, to Teldin’s ears, they blurred inextricably together. “Wherewouldyoubewantingme?”

  Captain Wysdor pointed forward and rattled off a speech even faster than Horvath’s – so fast that Teldin could make no sense of it at all. Horvath obviously understood, however. He snapped another salute up at the captain and headed forward.

  A little belatedly, Teldin followed. “What did he say?” the former farmer asked.

  Horvath looked puzzled for a moment, then grinned. “I’d forgotten I might need to translate,” he said. “There’s no watch this time. We took damage in the fight, and the captain needs to know how much. He told me to get Saliman and a couple of others and take the longboat to check us out from stem to stern. It shouldn’t take too long.” He took another couple of steps, then stopped again and turned back. “Would you like to come?”

  Teldin looked down at Horvath. “Come?” He tried to keep his voice flat, to hide his sudden trepidation.

  The gnome’s smile told him he hadn’t succeeded. “Certainly. You’re Honorary Captain. You’re entitled. And you’ve got a lot of questions, probably, about spelljammers, about the Unquenchable. Am I right? Well, the best way to learn is to look, as we gnomes say. Are you game? It’ll be perfectly safe, I promise you.”

  Teldin hesitated, then a broad grin spread across his face. “If this is perfectly safe, it’ll be the first safe thing I’ve done in weeks. I’m game.”

  “Good,” Horvath said briskly. He turned away and called to a young gnome who was crossing the mizzen deck. “Miggins-effivargonastro.”

  “Yo?”

  “Get Salimanaduberostrafindal and, er, Danajustiantorala and join me at the longboat.”

  The young gnome nodded and trotted down a companion-way leading belowdecks. “Come on,” Horvath said as he led Teldin forward.

  The longboat rested on blocks on the gnomish dreadnought’s mizzen deck, hard against the port rail. Two large davits were bolted securely to the deck and the rail, and heavy block-and-tackle rigs were hooked to large eyes at the longboat’s bow and stern. Teldin looked the longboat over with interest. Now here was a vessel he understood. About thirty feet long at the keel and tapered at bow and stern, it was a larger version of the small riverboats that Teldin knew from his childhood. Oarlocks were mounted on the gunwales, and two oars lay lengthwise across the thwarts that braced the hull. The only unusual feature was the enormous, broad-armed chair that was bolted securely in place in the longboat’s stern. Made from heavy, dark wood and ornately carved, the chair looked more like a throne than something appropriate to a water-going vessel, especially with the assorted bits of machinery that appeared to have been bolted to it at random.

  Horvath noted where Teldin was looking, “Minor helm,” he said as though that was sufficient answer, then he raised his voice. “Boat crew, get us ready to put out.” A number of gnomes appeared from elsewhere on deck and checked the davits’ rigging, then took up the slack on the lines. “In you get,” Horvath told Teldin as he clambered over the gunwale. “Sit up in the bow if you like. It’s a good view, and you’ll be out of the way.”

  Obediently Teldin stepped over the gunwale – easy for someone of his size – and settled onto the forward thwart. As he did so, three other gnomes arrived and climbed aboard as well.

  The youngest of the three – Miggisomething, he remembered Horvath had called him – looked at Teldin curiously, then his face crinkled in a jaunty grin, and he winked broadly. “Welcome aboard the Ship of Fools,” he said in a cheerful voice as he settled upon a thwart amidships. “You can call me Miggins.”

  The second gnome to board was a marked contrast to Miggins. He was short and squat, even shorter than Horvath, and his lined face made him look centuries older than Teldin’s new friend. Instead of the off-white shirts and leather aprons favored by most of the crew, he wore an ankle-length robe of rich burgundy, its hems embellished with finely woven gold threads. Around his neck was a thin gold chain, bearing as a pendant a rough nugget of raw gold almost as large as the gnome’s sm
all fist. A thin circlet of gold was around his brow, holding his curly gray hair away from his face. Totally disinterested, he didn’t spare Teldin a glance as he seated himself in the ornate throne and laid his hands palms-down on its broad arms.

  The third gnome was different again. She was female, apparently about the same age as Horvath. She wore the standard apron, but the cut of her clothes was different to accommodate the swell of her full bosom. She shot a glare at Teldin, and he realized he’d been staring impolitely. He looked aside quickly in embarrassment. The woman took her place on the same thwart as Miggins.

  Horvath spoke up. “These are Dana, Miggins and Saliman,” he said, indicating the individuals as he named them. Teldin was glad that Horvath had abbreviated the names. “Welcome our new shipmate, Teldin Moore,” Horvath went on, “a mighty neogi-killer, I hear tell.” The woman, Dana, shot him a quick glance that mixed surprise and disbelief, then looked away again. Horvath nudged Teldin with an elbow. “Watch out for Saliman,” he said in a stage whisper, indicating with his thumb the elder gnome seated in the throne. “Give him a chance and he’ll entrap you with his rhetoric. You’ll be worshipping gnomish gods and wishing you were a gnome before he’s through with you.” He raised his voice to its normal pitch. “And you, Dana, I’ll ask you to keep your lively good humor and ready wit to yourself, or you’ll overwhelm our fine guest.” Dana snorted and shot Teldin another disgusted look.

  “Boat crew ready?” Horvath bellowed.

  “Ready,” responded one of the gnomes at the ropes.

  “Then take us out.”

  The lines complained as the boat crew took up the slack and lifted the longboat dear of the deck. The davits pivoted with a groan as they swung the vessel over the rail.

  “Lower away,” Horvath ordered. “Easy this time.”

  The boat crew let out the lines, and the longboat descended slowly. When it reached where the waterline would be on a seagoing vessel, the ropes went slack. The longboat bobbed slightly as though it were floating on the ocean. Teldin looked over the gunwales at the blackness and distant stars below and tightened his grip on the thwart.

  “Free the lines,” Horvath called … and after a moment added, “Teldin, that means you.”

  Teldin glanced back over his shoulder, then looked at the bow rigging. The lines in the block-and-tackle were slack, but the large iron hook was still engaged with the eye on the bow. With a conscious effort he loosened his grip on the thwart and started to stand. The boat swayed alarmingly.

  “Keep low!” Horvath shouted. “It’s a long way down.”

  Needing no second urging, Teldin crouched in the bow and reached upward to release the hook. The lines swung free.

  “Clear?”

  “Clear,” Teldin answered, as did Saliman from his position aft.

  “Good. Now push us off.”

  Two gnomes wielding long poles with padded ends pushed on the longboat’s hull. Slowly it moved away from the dreadnought. Even when the smaller vessel was too far away for the gnomes to keep pushing, it continued to drift slowly outward from the other ship.

  “Oars out,” Horvath said crisply. Dana and Miggins lifted the long oars, swung them outboard and mounted them firmly in the oarlocks. They held the oars as if ready for a stroke, but didn’t pull on them. “Saliman, take us out … oh, a spear cast should do it. Oars parallel to the hull, please.”

  The older gnome nodded at Horvath’s order. He closed his eyes and settled his hands more comfortably on the arms of his throne … and the longboat began to move. Slowly picking up speed, it drew farther away from the huge dreadnought. When they were about a hundred yards away, Teldin judged, Dana and Miggins changed the angle of the oars they held. The longboat maneuvered to a course parallel to that of the Unquenchable.

  Teldin watched in fascination. He knew that the main motive power for a spelljamming vessel came from the “spelljamming helm.” Somehow this device absorbed magical energy from any spellcaster who sat in it, and converted it into another form that drove the vessel. What purpose, then, did the longboat’s oars serve … or for that matter, the almost-transparent sails used by the neogi deathspiders? After a few minutes of observation, of correlating the movements of the oars with the maneuvers of the longboat, he came to a conclusion. Although the helmsman had control over the vessel’s motions, that control was only on a gross level. For finer maneuvering, the oars – and presumably the sails – were required. This conclusion still didn’t answer everything, he knew – like, what did the oars push against? – but it did allow him to start to make sense of what he was seeing.

  As the longboat maneuvered again, Teldin could see the dreadnought in all its glory … if that was the right word. He’d seen it before in the lake at Mount Nevermind, but this perspective made it look even more impressive … and even more outrageous. Its broad-beamed hull was several hundred feet long, constructed of planking for the most part but patched and reinforced here and there with large plates of metal. A little aft of amidships were the huge paddle wheels, turning slowly as though to propel the vessel across a nonexistent river. Both forecastle and sterncastle loomed huge over the deck, massive constructions of wood and metal that would surely overturn any true seagoing vessel. Even to Teldin, who admitted he knew little to nothing of ship design, the structures looked fundamentally wrong. Chaotic they seemed, as though built piecemeal by multiple crews of artificers who weren’t on speaking terms with each other.

  Signs of battle were everywhere. The hull was marked and cracked here and there where it had been struck by catapult missiles, and splintered pieces of wood hung by fraying ropes from the rigging. To Teldin’s unpracticed eye, the ship looked somewhat mauled but still “spaceworthy.”

  Horvath ordered course changes as he continued his inspection of the ship. As the longboat cruised on, Teldin felt his gaze drawn once more to the world they were leaving behind them.

  Krynn was now a full sphere, half in sunlight, half in darkness. The day side had taken on a brilliant blue color, mottled over much of its surface with abstract patterns of white. The night side was dark, but not pitch black, and once he saw a flash of dim, cold radiance that could only have been the light of one of the moons reflecting off some body of water. It looked so beautiful and serene. How could this … this work of art, be a world where conflict had killed so many? he wondered.

  Light caught Teldin’s eye from an unexpected direction then. The brilliance of the sun reflected off a metal plate on the Unquenchable’s hull. Had the longboat changed course again?

  No, it was the dreadnought itself that had maneuvered. As he matched, the massive vessel completed a turn. Its course was no longer parallel with that of the longboat, and the sidewheeler was picking up speed.

  Teldin looked back. Horvath’s eyes, too, were locked on the Unquenchable. “What’s happening?” the human asked the gnome.

  “Don’t know,” Horvath replied shortly, then snapped, “Saliman. Get us up to speed. Oars —” he gestured his confusion “— follow that dreadnought!”

  The longboat surged and began to accelerate, but Teldin knew it would never catch the Unquenchable if the larger vessel maintained its present speed. Teldin shifted his position on the thwart, and his foot struck something that rolled on the planking with a metallic sound. He reached down into the scuppers and extracted a brass tube almost as long as his forearm. Although it was rare on Krynn, Teldin recognized the object immediately: a sailor’s glass. He raised it to his eye and pointed the tube at the receding ship.

  The dreadnought seemed to leap closer. Through the glass he could easily see the commotion on deck. Gnomes were running everywhere, swarming into the rigging.

  “Ship ho!” The voice was Miggins’s, booming from the midships thwart. The gnome was pointing generally forward and upward. “High on the port bow,” he called, “ahead of the ‘quenchable!”

  There was a cold prickling on Teldin’s brow, and the flat, coppery taste of fear was in his mouth. He straine
d to make out the ship, bringing the glass around in the direction in which the gnome was pointing, but could see nothing against the blackness of space. You don’t need to, his fear told him, you know what it looks like: a black spider, coming to kill you.

  “Can you make it out?” Horvath asked.

  “Is it neogi?” It took Teldin a moment to realize it was his own voice that had asked that.

  In answer, the younger gnome reached forward and snatched the glass from Teldin’s hands. “No, not neogi,” Mig-gins replied after a dozen heartbeats, “not a deathspider. Wasp. No, three wasps.”

  Relief washed over Teldin like a wave. For the first time, he realized that his forearms were knotted from the death grip he had on the gunwale. With a conscious effort, he opened his hands and flexed them to restore the circulation in his fingers.

  Once again he looked up into space in the direction that Mig-gins had indicated. He could see the ships – still too distant for him to pick out details, but recognizable as shapes totally different from the neogi spiderships he’d imagined. He sighed and smiled at Horvath.

  “Any colors?” Horvath asked.

  “None,” Miggins answered, then immediately corrected himself. “Hoisting a flag now. Black field …” The young gnome’s voice took on a harsher edge. “… red device. It’s the neogi skull.”

  Teldin felt the sudden tension amid the rest of the crew. “What’s happening?” he demanded. “You said they’re not neogi.”

  “No, they’re not neogi,” Horvath confirmed flatly. “The neogi skull flag is universal. They’re pirates.”

  Chapter Two

  Teldin stated at the three ships closing rapidly with the dreadnought and spreading out into a line-abreast formation. In the harsh sunlight he could make out their angular, somehow brutal configuration. They seemed so small in contrast to the bulk of the dreadnought.