The Maelstroms Eye (35 page)

*****

“Thas id!” said Dyffed through puffy lips. He pointed with one cloth-wrapped arm. “Thas the megafauna on wigde One Six Nine lives. Id sdill has ids leff foreleg ub afder all this dibe. Of course, id will dake another five hundred and sixdy years for id to —”

“Dyffed,” said Teldin. “Don’t talk.”

“Okay,” said Dyffed reluctantly, and subsided.

“Wow,” said Gaye, leaning on the ship’s railing. “An elephant unicorn. He needs a mustache like you, Teldin.”

“Idz nod a unicorn or an elephand, because idz —”

“Dyffed,” Teldin warned.

“Okay,” said the gnome with a frustrated sigh.

Teldin grimaced and looked away from the gnome’s red, blistered face. He hoped this giant slug had some healing spells on hand, not only for Dyffed but for the other injured gnomes aboard who hadn’t completely recovered from their earlier battle and from the crash into the footprint lake.

As he looked again at the approaching megafauna, Teldin wondered if he was becoming jaded after having seen the first one. Aelfred had placed Loomfinger on the now-repaired helm while the ship was still coasting through airless wildspace to allow Teldin the chance to see the creature directly from the deck; Sylvie was still asleep. This one was still a shocker: a diamond-patterned creature of black, red, and yellow that Dyffed had said stood twelve hundred miles high. It was vaguely elephantine with a rhinolike face, tiny ears, and a huge horn projecting from where a unicorn’s horn would grow. A reptilian-type tail half as long as its body hung from the rear, sweeping hundreds of miles above the ground at its lowest point.

Traveling at a much reduced speed but still covering a thousand miles of space every few minutes, the
Perilous Halibut
slowly circled the creature. The gnomes who had come up on deck to see the beast were much more talkative now than before with the first monster, and Teldin guessed that they, too, were becoming used to such marvels. We’re going to be spoiled rotten by the time this trip is over, Teldin decided. A dragon? Ho-hum. A flying castle? Booooring.

“Where’s the best place to land so we can get to the fal’s place?” Aelfred asked the half-mummified gnome.

“Idz …” Dyffed stopped and looked up at Teldin questioningly. When Teldin nodded, he continued. “Idz ride on dop of the horn there,” he said, pointing again. “Bud we can’d land on the horn. We have do land on idz head and walk up do the horn. We can go up frob there.”

Aelfred nodded and headed for the ship’s huge vertical fin. “I’ll call directions down to Loomfinger,” he told Teldin.

“We should bake sure thad … bake sure thad …” Dyffed stopped, looking puzzled.

Teldin looked down. “Make sure that what?”

The gnome rubbed the side of his head with a bandaged hand. “I forgod. Id was ride there on by bind and id fell off or sobething.”

Teldin shrugged and looked back at the megafauna. The ship’s course adjusted after Aelfred called the instructions down, and the ship made its way toward the hundred-mile-wide top of the creature’s head.

Something thumped heavily up the ladder toward the top deck. Teldin glanced at Aelfred, who nodded and looked away, busying himself with a set of mooring ropes. As Gomja’s broad hippopotamus face appeared in the hatchway, Teldin forced a smile.

Are you a traitor? he wanted to ask. What’s going on with you? I was a fool not to have seen it before.

“How do you like the view?” Teldin asked instead, waving a and at the megafauna in the distance.

You certainly changed your mind suddenly enough, back at the hospital on the morning we were leaving, Teldin thought. I told you I trusted you. I don’t understand what happened.

“Certainly a big fellow, isn’t it, sir?” Gomja said, carefully adjusting his uniform.

Teldin’s gaze flicked briefly down to the two pistols at Gomja’s belt. He felt the revelations coming faster and faster in his mind. You, not the gnomes, must havestocked the
Perilous Halibut.
You made sure you had a big supply of pistols and powder, and that there was enough provisions for all of us on war trip. You made sure the gnomes were there at the ship then the attack came. “You made sure that almost everyone in war tight little group from the
Probe
was at the
Perilous Halibut
then, too; but you couldn’t find Gaye and me before the attack came, so you had the gnomes track us down. You just not lucky there.

“Are we heading for the beast’s head?” Gomja asked, When Teldin nodded, the huge giff looked curiously at the oposed destination. “How are we going to land, sir? We have a tail fin that drops below the ship’s bottom. Is there water there?”

“We’ll hover first, with Loomfinger on the helm,” Aelfred said, stepping up. He was the model of a ship’s captain, casualy watching the beast’s head draw nearer. They were perhaps a thousand miles away, their velocity slowing as they drew loser to the top. Teldin could see immense valleys and cracks in the beast’s folded hide, and in some places he thought he would see brief gleams of light that might be reflections from the sun on standing water. Maybe there would be a place to and after all, if they could be sure there would not be a repeat performance of the footprint-lake landing.

Gomja sniffed, his broad nostrils flaring. “It is not exactly proper, landing on someone’s head, but …” He grinned. “Perhaps we could build a landing platform for the ship as we did when we were with the rastipedes, sir.”

I’d almost forgotten about the night you were talking to yourself behind the ship, Teldin thought, looking at the giff. Aelfied thinks you were actually talking to someone with a scrying spell, someone who could hear and see you – and probably me as well, once I got close enough. All this time, I never thought about it at all.

The giff looked at Teldin and blinked. “Sir?”

“What?” said Teldin. He was suddenly aware that he was staring hard at the giff. “Sorry?”

“Is something wrong, sir?”

“No, nothing.” Teldin waved the question away and looked back at the beast’s head, his arms folded across his chest. The top of the creature’s horn reached at least fifty miles above them, a great whorled spike of ivory and red tilted forward in the direction of the megafauna’s line of travel.

Several times as they approached, Teldin had to blink, shake his head, or wipe at his eyes, trying to adjust to the immensity of the beast and the bizarre perspectives it presented. He felt more and more like a dust mote, or even one of the unbreakable and minute particles that some sages claimed made up all matter. The world-beast was everything. He was nothing. With but a few steps, this beast could span Ansalon, the continent where Teldin had been raised. It could ford the deepest seas and never know it had gotten wet.

It became apparent as they drew closer that some of the creature’s diamond-pattern decoration was due to patterns of forestation on its hide. Conversation faded away on the top deck as the crew looked at tracts of woodland wilderness hundreds of miles across, spread over the world-beast’s neck and head. Broad lakes appeared, as Teldin had suspected, and thin clouds and areas of low-lying fog or mist became evident.

“Id has idz own gravidy field,” said Dyffed, forgetting his earlier promises. “See how the drees grow oud frob idz neck? And thad lake, on idz cheek – there, you see id. Idz nod spilling off indo space. Gravidy!”

Teldin felt overwhelmed. “Does this thing have a name?”

“Oh, of course id does. The fal knows id. I think id goes like … like this.” The gnome hummed to himself, then started to sing a scalelike melody entirely out of tune.

“Dyffed,” said Teldin.

“You asked!”

Teldin looked back at the megafauna, ending the conversation. “I suppose we should get as close to the horn as we can, as long as we don’t have to walk farther than a few miles. How about that lake, over there?” He looked questioningly at Aelfred, who nodded agreement and walked back for the speaking tube.

“It wouldn’t hurt to find something farther from those trees, sir,” Gomja offered. “We haven’t any idea if this creature is inhabited.”

Teldin wrestled with the idea, not knowing if Gomja had something unpleasant in mind. “I think I’d rather keep out of sight, in case the scro are following us” he finally said. “The closer to those trees we can set this down, the better the cover we’ll have from aerial fly-bys.”

Gomja looked uncomfortable. “Yes, sir, but I think we’re in less danger from the scro than the native wildlife. The last forest we found had those rastipedes, and —”

“Damn it!” Teldin bit off the rest of his response, forcing himself to relax. “Gomja,” he finally said, “thanks, but no. We’ll put it down there, by those big redwoods.”

Gomja looked thunderstruck at Teldin’s outburst. His broad mouth slowly fell open. “Well …” he said uncertainly. “I’m with Teldin,” Aelfred said. He raised a muscular arm and pointed. “There are a few places where trees have fallen into the lake, and if we set down next to those trunks, the scro will have a hell of a time trying to separate the ship from the rotting trunks. I doubt that anything big enough to worry about will have made it this far up into the sky. Twelve hundred miles is a long way up.”

Teldin found his hands had balled up into fists. He forced himself to relax. He looked around and caught Gomja staring down at the lake, fingering some of the medals on his chest. Teldin fought the urge to ask Gomja where he’d purchased them. It would serve nothing to cause trouble now. They had some distance to go yet, and Gomja might prove to be dangerous.

Long minutes passed as the
Perilous Halibut
drifted down in silence toward the forest. The megafauna’s head, seen from so dose, had now become simply a mountaintop. It could even be mistaken for a small asteroid, thought Teldin, recalling the Rock of Bral. In any event, he had to admire Loomfinger’s skill on the helm. For a gnome, he was doing a masterful job.

“This water isn’t antimagical, is it?” asked Aelfred suddenly, peering over the railing. Teldin froze, having forgotten to ask and fearing that he had doomed the ship from his inattention.

“Oh, no, idz perfedly safe,” the gnome said cheerily. “My ships always landed nearer the horn, bud this is fine. We should have a nice walk frob here.”

Teldin questioned the nice walk. It was becoming obvious that the redwoods were far larger than he’d first guessed. Some appeared to reach many hundreds of feet up, and they were crowded together so closely as to produce considerable darkness within them. Teldin stepped back from the railing, prepared to help Aelfred with the mooring lines.

Gomja drew his pistol so quickly that Teldin had no time to prepare himself for it. He flung himself back, raising his hands to shield his face as the grim-faced giff aimed and fired.

In the next instant in which he could think rationally, Teldin saw that the giff was aiming away from him, at something below, near the tree line. He looked, hearing the gnomes cry out in fear at the same moment, and saw a huge oil-black bird sail out of the woods, then dip a wing and sail around and back into the darkness. As it went, Teldin distinctly heard a drawn-out, warbling screech issue from the creature and echo in the forest before it vanished.

“Skullbird,” said Aelfred. “Gomja, give me a pistol.”

The giff was already pulling another pistol from his belt. “I have more experience with these, I believe. I’ve fought skullbirds before, too, and I know where they are vulnerable. Let me handle this.”

Aelfred swore and looked around. “Give me that crossbow,” he ordered a nearby gnome. He took the proffered weapon, cocked it back with one jerk of his arm, and loaded it with a razor-headed bolt. Teldin suddenly realized he would need a crossbow himself, but he saw no others available.

“All hands!” Gomja bawled at the shocked gnomes. “Arm yourselves immediately! I want a full-time guard on deck, eight troops, with stockpiled missiles! Move!” The gnomes scattered in haste, several climbing down hatchways and shouting to other gnomes below them. Within a minute, supplies of crossbows, armor, and weapons began pouring out in bucket-brigade fashion from the interior of the ship, until the top deck was awash in stacks of bolts, throwing axes, daggers, and other items.

The ship, now only fifty feet above the water’s surface, slowly turned so that it was parallel with a particularly huge fallen redwood in the water. Slowly, then, it sank toward the water’s surface.

“We could stand to get a little closer to shore,” Aelfred muttered. “That tree isn’t a dock, and it’s probably slick. It will make for bad shooting if that skullbird comes back. I hope it wasn’t gathering friends.”

“What will it do?” Teldin asked in a low voice. He had finished cocking and loading his own crossbow.

Aelfred grinned. “Whatever it damn well wants. Those things are purest evil. Did you ever hear any tales about them?” Teldin shook his head, no. “Good,” said Aelfred, his voice barely audible. “We’re actually in luck that these gnomes aren’t experienced sailors. The rumors about skullbirds are all bad ones, and morale always takes a blow when one appears. They’re harbingers of bad luck. If they roost on your ship, it means your vessel will be destroyed. Besides, they’re not particular about what they eat, and they can pick a man off the deck as easily as anything, then carry him off and eat him in midair. I hate the bastards. At least scawers don’t know good from evil. Skullbirds know they’re evil, and they love it.”

The water below them was twenty feet away, then ten, then five. The ship splashed gently down, huge ripples rolling away through the algae-choked water. Odd, thought Teldin, how the lake had looked much more inviting from far above.

“Shore party!” shouted Gomja. “I want ten volunteers! The rest stay with the ship!” He looked hesitantly at Teldin, his pistols lowering until they pointed down at the steel deck. “We ate about five miles from the base of the horn, sir. May I accompany you to meet the fal?”

Teldin glanced at Aelfted.

“You’d better come with us,” said Aelfred easily. “You can keep an eye out for flying friends while we see the fal. I don’t trust the wildlife here.”

The look of satisfaction and joy on Gomja’s face would have been heartwarming if Teldin had trusted him at all. “I’ve been looking forward to a little action,” commented the giff, easing his grip on his pistols, “but I’m still not convinced that this is the best place for us to land.”