Into The Void

by Nigel Findley

  Teldin didn’t hesitate. Since their first meeting in the officers’ saloon, he’d taken the time to work up a good background story and the answers to the questions Rianna – or anyone else – was most likely to ask him. He didn’t have to like it, and he didn’t, but he recognized it was necessary – for now, part of his mind added. “I need to meet with an arcane,” he told her smoothly. “Estriss tells me there’s likely to be one around because of the auction. You know about the auction?”

  “Yes, he told me. Why an arcane? What do you need with one of them?”

  Again Teldin had an answer ready. “That’s what I’ve been hired to do,” he said. “My principal – the one who’s paying me – needs me to pass a message on to one of the arcane, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  Rianna accepted that with a nod, and Teldin knew he’d guessed right in his prevarication. Someone whose livelihood lay in trading messages and information would consider the “mysterious employer” as a normal condition, and as a sacrosanct trust.

  As the two had spoken, the Probe had slipped lower into the atmosphere. The world below had changed, unnoticed, from a section of a sphere to a flat plane that was for the first time truly below the vessel. As the viewpoint had changed, features had expanded and retreated, to be lost by distance and curvature. The southeastern tip of the island had expanded until it filled almost the entire view beneath the Probe. It continued to expand, too, bringing home to Teldin just how fast the ship was descending. The scattered clouds that had been just streaks overlaying the distant landscape were suddenly great islands of fleecy white, fantasy landscapes that could in tales become the homes of pegasi or dragons. The ship then plunged into one of the drifting islands, and everything was white. Teldin felt moisture on his face. Tendrils of mist whipped past him.

  With breathtaking suddenness, the ship was out of the cloud and the view was clear again. They were much lower now, perhaps not much higher than the tallest mountain. The peninsula had vanished. There was just an indented coastline, roughly straight for as far as he could see in either direction.

  There was no farmland, he noticed with some surprise. Did that mean that all the food necessary to support a city was shipped in from elsewhere? It wasn’t that the region was barren; in fact, it seemed like it would make excellent farmland. Everywhere was lush and green, like the tended private parkland of a noble – except that this private park stretched from horizon to horizon. There were regions of uninterrupted greenery that could only be woods. At one point a thin line of green meandered through grasslands to reach the sea – a river lined with trees; it could be nothing else. The land was beautiful here, Teldin thought. There were much worse places for a man to settle down and make his living. Perhaps after this business with the cloak was finally concluded, he could buy himself some land here and be happy. Of course, where would he get the money? Ah, well, he told himself with a grin, burn those bridges when you come to them.

  Rianna took his shoulder and pointed. The Probe had continued its spiral approach and was now on a different heading. While he’d initially been looking to sea, Teldin was now gazing inland. He was still unsure about the scale, but he guessed that the parkland extended five miles or so from the coast. Then, suddenly, the flat landscape changed. Rising out of the plain like walls were rugged, tree-covered hills. There was no hint of foothills. It looked almost as though the hills had just been placed randomly in the midst of arable land. Okay, let’s set one down here, he could imagine one godlike workman saying to his fellow. The hills probably weren’t that tall, he thought, but the contrast with the surrounding terrain made them look much higher. What would it be like to live at the foot of one of those? he found himself wondering. Claustrophobic? Or would you eventually get used to it and just not notice anymore?

  He turned to Rianna. “Who delivered the mountains?” he asked jokingly.

  She laughed in reply. “If they want to compete in my business, I’m getting out of it.”

  The ship continued its slow spiral, dropping lower and lower with each turn. Teldin found himself looking at the coastline again, but now he was close enough to the ground to see the narrow white-sand beaches that lined the ocean. From here it looked as though the parkland came within a hundred feet or less of the water, then there was a low cliff – it was difficult to tell how high, because of the foreshortening effect of the ship’s altitude – dropping down to a narrow strand, then the ocean. From this angle it wasn’t the pure blue he’d seen from higher up; it had taken on a deep, almost metallic green and had gentle wrinkles like the marks of hammer blows on the forged steel of a plow blade. He could make out here and there the white froth of waves breaking on the sand.

  Rianna squeezed his shoulder again and pointed forward.

  There was the city, Rauthaven, a walled port town built around the circumference of a small bay that made for a perfectly sheltered harbor. Breakwaters extended from both sides of the bay’s mouth, closing the entry into the harbor down to a narrow passage. There were watch towers at the extreme ends of the breakwaters, and Teldin imagined that in time of war chains could be drawn across the passage. The harbor itself looked packed with ships; vessels ranging from tiny fishing boats to coasters to ships-of-the-line swung at anchor, seemingly at random.

  The city itself rose up the sides of the low hills that surrounded the bay. Once more altitude made it difficult to estimate sizes, but Teldin thought that the buildings were generally small and the streets wide and spacious. The larger of those streets radiated outward and uphill from the harbor like the spokes of a wagon wheel. Narrower streets followed generally concentric curves around the harbor. Around the city’s walls, however, this sense of order broke down. The harbor was roughly circular, but the outlying regions of the city were much more irregular. For example, the city extended farther along the coast to the northwest, which put the harbor nearer the southeast end of the town. The buildings got larger as you headed northwest, until the largest of all were atop the low hill – with, no doubt, a spectacular view down into the harbor. Those would have to be the homes of the noble families, or whoever it was who governed the city, plus the richest of the merchants, Teldin thought.

  In his travels, Teldin had seen a few cities, but nothing to rival Rauthaven in beauty. Krynn cities generally looked like jumbled assortments of buildings, some stone, some wood, tossed together with no kind of overall plan. Architectural styles warred and colors dashed. Here, even though they varied in size, all of the buildings seemed to share one architectural style, leading to a sense of harmony he’d never experienced before. The colors, too, were consistent. The vast majority of the buildings had white walls, with sloping roofs of what could only be red tile. As he watched, the sun came out from behind a cloud and the city practically glowed. He felt the breath catch in his throat. Again he found himself thinking, I could live here.

  The Probe had changed course again and was now heading out to sea. This only made sense, Teldin reasoned: There was no space for the hammership to land within the harbor, and the natives might get a little nervous about a strange flying vessel heading straight for them.

  Now there was an issue. He turned to Rianna. “Are they likely to shoot at us?” he asked.

  Her reply was a chuckle. “Only if we do something untoward,” she elaborated. “Believe it or not, Rauthaven gets a considerable share of Toril’s spacefaring traffic. Mostly that’s

  because the whole of Nimbral is much more open to magic, and to things that would be too strange for the rest of Toril. It’s also got a lot to do with its sheltered harbor. Spelljamming ships are built for space, even those that can land on the water – like this one – and they don’t do well in heavy seas. So when you put one down, you want to get it into a snug harbor, and right quick, too.”

  “How are we going to land?” Teldin asked. It was interesting. In all the conversations he’d had on spelljamming with Estriss, Aelfred, and the others, this was one topic they’d never touched on.
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br />   “It depends on the harbormaster,” Rianna replied, not quite answering his question. “The lookouts will have spotted us by this time, and the harbormaster will be giving us our instructions on wind direction and speed, where we should drop anchor, that kind of thing.”

  “Give us orders? How?”

  “By flags. And —” Rianna pointed over the rail to the harbor that was now below them “— there they are.”

  Teldin leaned over the rail, but not too far. While they had been in space with, presumably, uncounted millions of miles to fall, he’d felt no sense of vertigo, but now that they were only a thousand feet up, he felt an uncomfortable stirring in the pit of his stomach.

  Rianna seemed to sense his discomfort and had the perfect cure for it. She leaned into him again so the sides of their bodies were pressed together from knee to shoulder. Teldin, not surprisingly, found he no longer noticed his vertigo. Rianna pointed again.

  He sighted along her arm. At the innermost point of the harbor, directly opposite the passage through the breakwater, was another watchtower-like structure – presumably the harbormaster’s office or whatever served its function in Rauthaven. From this angle, he could easily see a tall flagpole atop the building. A string of small, brightly colored flags extended the entire length of the pole. All except the uppermost were similar to the signal flags he’d seen used in the army. In pride of place atop the string was a larger flag that bore a red device – from this height, it was impossible to make it out – on a field of green. No doubt this was the flag or ensign of the city itself.

  Teldin tried to read the message in the flags, using the code he half-remembered from his military service, but got only gibberish. They must be using a different code. The only information he could glean from the message was that the wind was blowing from the west – and this solely from the direction the flags were fluttering. “What do they say?” he asked.

  “Wind from the west, ten knots,” Rianna told him. “We’re told to identify ourselves.” She looked back over her shoulder. “Look,” she said, “we’re answering.”

  Teldin turned, too. On the main deck, several crewmen were running a string of flags up the hammership’s mainmast.

  “They say we’re the Probe” Rianna translated quickly, “registered out of the planet Parcelius.”

  Teldin looked again at the harbor below, fascinated by the efficiency of this silent conversation. As he watched, the harbormaster’s flags were brought down and another string run up the staff. He looked to Rianna for the translation.

  “We’re approved to land outside the harbor,” she told him, “and to anchor at … Well, they’re coordinates. I’d have to have a harbor chart to know what they meant.”

  Teldin turned to watch the Probe’s reply. There was none; the crewmen on the main deck just took the flag string down. There was some movement on the sterncastle, though. Two crew members were mounting a short jackstay on the aft rail. When it was secure, they trailed another, larger flag from it. Teldin recognized it to be the same design as the lowermost flag in the Probe’s recent message. He tapped Rianna on the shoulder and pointed it out, his expression questioning.

  “It’s the Parcelius ensign,” she told him. “Laws of the spaceways are like those of the sea. You always run up the ensign of your home world at the stern, or your home port if it has its own ensign. If you’re being formal, you really should run up the flag of your destination at the bow or on the mainmast, but most people aren’t too picky about that. If you do much traveling at all, your entire cargo capacity’s going to be taken up with flags,” she concluded with a chuckle.

  The hammership turned slightly more to the northeast, out over the ocean now, and continued to descend. For the first time, Teldin could see whitecaps on the waves below. The ship was only a couple of hundred feet up, he guessed. Then the big vessel maneuvered again, pointing its bow into the westering sun. It decelerated gently and swept lower still.

  Aelfred Silverhorn’s head popped into view. He climbed the ladder from the bridge below and spared the two a broad smile before he took his place at the forward rail. “Raise port and starboard fins!” he bellowed.

  On the main deck, crewmen threw their weight on lines that led out to the four triangular sails extending out and slightly down from the hammership’s hull like the fins of a shark. As they pulled, the sails folded upward until they stood vertically against the gunwales.

  “Dead slow,” Aelfred called. “Prepare for landing.”

  The Probe slowed still more and dropped lower. They were now no more than fifty feet above the wave caps, Teldin saw. Forty feet, thirty … Aelfred had ordered “dead slow” – and, compared to the hammership’s top speed, that’s how fast they were going – but watching the waves whip by underneath, Teldin realized the Probe was still moving about as fast as a running man. The sensation of riding something as big as the hammership this fast, this low, was exhilarating … and terrifying. He could easily imagine the vessel slamming into the water hard enough to snap its keel, breaking it apart into quickly sinking fragments.

  Ten feet, five … The first crest slapped against the bottom of the hull. “Brace for landing,” Aelfred called back. He was grinning from ear to ear. Teldin took a solid grip on the rail and noticed that Rianna had already done so and was braced in a wide-legged stance.

  The ship touched down with a roar of water pounding against the hull. The deck surged hard beneath Teldin’s feet, almost breaking his grip on the rail. Curtains of spray, catching the light like countless diamonds, arched high on both sides of the vessel, then fell back with a hiss. A fine mist of chill water washed back over the forecastle. The Probe was down.

  “Helm down,” ordered the first mate.

  The hammership slowed quickly. Looking aft, Teldin could see the broad white wake that the ship had left. He walked forward to join Aelfred and looked over the bow rail.

  The hammership rode low in the water. The waterline appeared to be about level with the main deck itself, which gave the vessel very little freeboard, particularly in the bow itself. Teldin remembered Rianna’s comment: spelljamming ships are built for space. Even with his minimal knowledge of things nautical, he recognized that the slightest storm would swamp the hammership and send it to the bottom.

  Aelfred, still grinning, pounded him on the shoulder. “Exciting, eh?” he enthused. “I live for that.”

  Teldin nodded halfheartedly. “Fun,” he said without conviction.

  The motion of the ship had changed, Teldin noticed. To be precise, now the ship had motion. Except during the most drastic maneuvers, or when the ship struck something, the Probe in space had felt as solid and motionless as Krynn itself. Now, however, the big ship was rolling slightly with the waves, which were striking it abeam. This was another problem with spelljamming vessels when they were out of their true element, he realized. Their stability was dreadful.

  Something else had changed, too. For the first time, he could feel a cool, salt breeze on his face. As the Probe had soared in for its landing, the air on deck had been totally still. Now that the ship was virtually at rest, a steady wind blew across its bow from out of the west. He mentioned it to Rianna.

  “Of course,” she answered. “When the helm goes down, so does the atmosphere envelope.” His face must have shown his confusion, because she grinned. “Atmosphere envelope, that’s the bubble of air the ship takes with it into space. When the helm’s operating, the ship keeps a bubble of relatively still air around it even when it’s in the atmosphere of a world … generally speaking, of course.”

  Teldin nodded intelligently, trying to pretend that he understood even half of what Rianna was saying. Suddenly, without warning, his stomach twisted uncomfortably. What? Oh, no … He couldn’t be seasick, could he? He took a deep breath of the sharp sea air, stretching his lungs to the limit. The nausea lessened a little. He breathed again, trying to ignore the motion of the deck beneath his feet.

  Aelfred must have recognized his
plight, because the big warrior remarked, “It’s worst when we’re at rest. She’s much more stable when we’re underway.” He turned aft and bellowed, “Sea sail up.”

  Crewmen swung into the rigging and started hauling up the large sail reserved for ocean maneuvering. The big ship heeled slightly as the west wind filled the canvas. Ropes complained as the rigging took the strain and the boom swung to expose the maximum sail area. Waves slapped against the hull.

  “Hard a-port,” Aelfred ordered. “Bring us in.”

  The Probe turned its blunt bow southward, toward the port of Rauthaven.

  It was evening, and the sun had set perhaps half an hour before. The Probe swung gently at anchor – under the star now, rather than among them – in the crowded inner harbor of Rauthaven’s port. Lanterns burned at bow and stern and atop the tall mainmast. Around the ship was a swarm of other such lanterns. It was too dark to discern the shapes of the ships that bore them; all that could be seen were the points of yellow light. It was as though some god had taken a constellation from the sky and brought it down to earth, Teldin found himself thinking. He stood on the main deck, leaning on the port rail, gazing toward shore.

  Rauthaven itself was another constellation of lights: braziers to keep the city watch warm through the chill nights; open windows of cozy homes and snug taverns, spilling their welcoming light into the streets; and here and there a moving spark that had to be a lantern mounted on a carriage. From this angle, down in the harbor surrounded by the hills of the city, Teldin could make out no definite horizon, no demarcation between city and sky. The scattered lights of the city seemed to blend imperceptibly with the scattered stars. If he ignored the motion of the ship, the night wind on his face, and the smell of the sea, Teldin could almost make himself believe that he were back in space.