The Ultimate Helm (27 page)

This was not working properly, Stardawn knew. They were supposed to turn back, facing unbeatable opponents. Of course, he could let them go on and face defeat, but what if, just what if they were to beat the shivaks?

Then the cloak would never be his. And the
Spelljammer
would be denied to the elves, the natural rulers of the universe, and, most importantly, to him.

“Then,” Stardawn said carefully, with just enough theatrics to make them believe him, “the high command be damned. I will go with you. If,” he added, “you’ll have me.”

CassaRoc watched Teldin cautiously. The Cloakmaster smiled and looked into Stardawn’s eyes. His hand was held to his chest, as though he were gaining warmth from the glowing symbol. “You are welcome to accompany us, Stardawn. We can certainly use your expertise.”

Stardawn turned. “I will prepare myself for battle,” he said. “I’ll return shortly.”

The group watched him go.

“I’m not sure that elf can be trusted,” CassaRoc confided.

Teldin said slowly, “I’m sure he cannot.” The pattern on his chest glowed even brighter. Teldin stared into the shadows where Stardawn had disappeared. “But this is the way it was meant to be. One of us will not return.”

The silence lay heavy in the antechamber while the warriors pondered Teldin’s prediction.

“Would you be kind enough to explain that?” CassaRoc finally asked.

“I wish I could. Stardawn is supposed to be with us, this I know. And... we must accept the decree of fate.”

They watched him without commenting, then stood silently until Stardawn returned, well armed and suited for battle. He led them from the audience chamber to a small door off a central corridor. Other elves were busy there, hardly noticing the humans. They carried their brethren, wounded and bloody from the battles outside, on stretchers and in their arms.

Stardawn unlocked a wooden door with an ancient iron key, and the door slowly creaked open. Beyond, a staircase covered with dust led down into the darkness. “No one goes through here much,” Stardawn admitted. “I was the last that I know of, almost a year ago.”

The group entered the stairwell, and the elf closed the door. He took a light rod from a shelf. “First we go down. This leads to the lowest level, and that leads to a staircase up to the battlement. We won’t need the lights outside. Besides, from what I saw, the Armory is lit by the
Spelljammer’s
light panels. We’ll have no trouble seeing once we get inside.”

They filed down the narrow staircase and gathered at the bottom. Stardawn unlocked the door and led them into an old storage area.

“This way,” Stardawn said, and he led them between piles of dusty crates and casks of murky liquids to an ancient hidden door. He unlocked this one with another iron key and ushered them through. The chamber beyond also was used for storage, but the boxes and urns stacked across one wall seemed forgotten and were layered with a thick patina of dust. In one comer, a spiral staircase twisted up into darkness. Stardawn held up the light rod. “Not very far,” he smiled, “only twenty five floors to go.”

Teldin paused. This level, this room, of the elven command seemed familiar to him, though he had never been here. The smell of ancient dust, the feel of the wooden door, the sound of the lock being opened – I know this, he thought. He cocked his head and turned his thoughts inward. How do I know this place?

Stardawn took the first step onto the staircase, then stopped as a subtle noise echoed from somewhere behind them. As one, the warriors turned.

“Just a rat,” Stardawn said. “The ship is infested with them.”

CassaRoc said warily, “A rat? A living rat?”

“Not a rat,” Teldin insisted, “alive or dead.” He started toward the wall hidden by crates. The decapitated head’s message! he thought suddenly. He gritted his teeth. The entrance to the warrens is here!

“Help me with these crates,” he told them.

His friends shrugged and started forward. Stardawn came over, anger flaring on his pale elven face. “Why do you want to find a rat?”

“It is not a rat I seek,” the Cloakmaster said. “There is something more here. And it was no rat we heard.”

They piled the boxes against the opposite wall. Some were so old that the wood had rotted through, and they fell into dust and splinters when held too tightly. Finally, near the floor, Teldin spied what he had hoped would be here. “Yes,” he said, “it is here.”

With a flurry of energy, Teldin shoved the other crates and jars aside. He stood and stared for a moment as the others crowded around him.

The doors in the floor were wooden, sealing a circular entrance of some sort. Heavy boxes had been placed atop it some time in the dim past.

“‘In the elven warrens,’ the thing told me.” Teldin glanced over his shoulder. His friends had not seen Coh’s zombie slave. “In Coh’s quarters. He had a zombie head that told me Coll had come here.”

“No one has been through this door for a long time,” Stardawn again admitted.

“No, but he is close, in a lair near here. Can you not feel his evil?” Teldin opened the doors.

The others said nothing. Chaladar grunted, for he could feel the coldness on his arms and smell it emanating from the entrance. “Aye, I feel it.”

Na’Shee shivered. Estriss said,
There is powerful magic down there.

The amulet glowed again, and Teldin felt its warmth ripple through his chest. The entrance to the warrens beckoned darkly, and he thought of Cwelanas, her soft laughter, the sadness behind her eyes.

No longer. She has been through too much.

“I’m going to get her.”

Stardawn came up beside Chaladar and asked him what all this was about. Chaladar quickly, quietly explained about Cwelanas’s kidnapping. Stardawn remained silent, but inside he felt joyous. If the Cloakmaster were to die in the warrens, then he could never make it to his precious
adytum
with his cloak.

“What are we going to do?” Stardawn asked, his tone level. “We shouldn’t leave her with the Fool...”

“Cloakmaster,” Na’Shee said, “I know you care for her, but if you find the
adytum,
there is no telling what might happen.”

“True,” Teldin said, “but the Fool still works his dark magic, and his undead still roam the ship. Maybe the
Spelljammer
can’t do anything about the Fool’s evil. Perhaps its up to me. Perhaps I have no choice.”

“Perhaps
we
have no choice,” Stardawn said. “If you go to find her, I’m coming with you.”

“As will I,” Na’Shee said.

Djan and CassaRoc agreed. Teldin pointed at the tunnel with his sword. “They’re somewhere down there, down in the warrens. Are you sure you still want to go with me?”

CassaRoc answered. “We have lights. We have weapons. What more could we ask for?”

“Less powerful enemies,” Teldin said.

“There is that,” CassaRoc conceded.

Stardawn left the room, then came back shortly with a light rod for each of them. They all stood silently, staring into the hidden entrance to the warrens.

The amulet burned against Teldin’s flesh, pulling part of him away, toward an unknown fate that had called to him from across the universe. But down there was the woman he loved. With an inner conflict that threatened to tear his psyche apart, Teldin squelched his yearning to explore the
Spelljammer
and concentrated on the hole leading into darkness.

He crouched and peered inside. His voice echoed softly through the tunnel. “Be ready for anything,” he said.

He disappeared, down into the twilight darkness that was the warrens.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“... Virtually overnight, our problem with the vermin running wild throughout the citadel has disappeared. Even our mages are hard put to explain where all the rats have gone...

Barlow, scribe of the Chalice tower;

letter to the Council, following the reign of Roman

Blehal, the beholder, approached the dais of Gray Eye, the leader of the eye tyrants. His eyestalks wavered nervously as the leader turned to face him with his clouded great eye. Gray Eye focused all his eyes on his second in command. His huge mouth curled in a grotesque grimace.

“How goes the war?” Gray Eye asked.

Blehal floated forward, casting his gaze to the floor. With the approach of the vessels that now surrounded the
Spelljammer,
skirmishes had broken out all across the vessel and the beholders were hard pressed by all the races on the ship that hated the beholders.

Blehal’s usually gruff voice seemed softer, almost in shame. “The war goes badly, lord. Even with our superior magic, the numbers are too great, and our allies are falling. The humans and the giff have joined the war, and I fear
 
—” The beholder hesitated. “I fear we will soon be defeated.”

Gray Eye laughed, the sound of bones being gnashed between his ragged teeth.
“Defeat.
You are insignificant, Blehal. You underestimate our power. The beholders will never see defeat
 –
not with the kasharin in our control.”

“The k
 –
kasharin?” Blehal stammered, barely able to believe the leader’s words.

Gray Eye faced away from him and stared off in serene contemplation. “The kasharin. Who else could bring total victory to the beholders? Who else on the
Spelljammer
has such... unimaginable power?”

Blehal floated back a few feet, shocked. His eyestalks stared at Gray Eye with horror. “But, lord, can we trust them to be released? They will kill without thinking. They will probably even try to kill us.”

“They can be controlled,” Gray Eye said, spinning around furiously. “They must be controlled.” He glared at Blehal, his opaque eye pulsing with rage. “The surviving beholders must be called back. Only together can we charm the kasharin into obeying us. Only with them can our victory be assured.”

He raised his voice. “Recall the beholders, Blehal! Now we prepare to destroy our enemies without quarter! And the unholy kasharin shall be our secret weapon!”

*****

On a circular platform near one of the walls of his lair, the Fool kept Cwelanas chained with heavy iron manacles, so that he could torment her at any moment he pleased.

Blood ran in small trickles down her ankles, where the Fool had ordered his undead rats to snap at her flesh. Bruises ran up and down her arms, where the undead Coh had taunted her, in the ethereal voice of the Fool, with promises of his love, and how he could not wait to take her in his claws and show her the meaning of passion.

Occasionally the lair’s carpet of black smoke curled up in wisps before her and figures took shape, almost like afterthoughts from the Fool’s diseased mind. Several times the smoke took the shape of the cloak, billowing out and waving as though it were alive, calling the Fool into its embrace. Once it formed the shape of the
Spelljammer,
towered over by the Fool’s silhouette, thrusting into the vessel with his black, serrated long sword. She wondered where the shapes came from, if they were unconscious manifestations projected by the Fool,... and if the Fool even knew they were being formed.

The Fool sat in his ivory throne of bones, his burning eyes flickering as he stared into his
orb of sight.
Occasionally a finger or arm would twitch nervously, or a low moan would escape from the Fool’s cavernous mouth.

Cwelanas watched him. One skeletal hand was wrapped protectively around his heavy amulet, and she strained her eyes to get a better look.

The amulet was ornate, made of delicate gold that curled in on itself to create patterns and shapes as the amulet was twirled in the Fool’s fingers. The crimson stone in the center seemed to burn with an inner fire. She had seen the Fool toying with the amulet once before, while he was pacing his chamber, worrying aloud that the
Spelljammer
might never be his to command, and that his plans to destroy the ship might fail. Then the Fool laughed with the false bravado of the evil dead, refusing to acknowledge such a possibility.

She was startled by a scream of both laughter and rage from the Fool as he stirred on his throne. He held the amulet of bloodfire in one hand as he rose and approached her. His eyes shone with bright, unnatural light.

“Your lover is on his way, little elf,” the Fool croaked in his dry, brittle voice. “None of your magic can save him. He is coming for you, and he will give me exactly what I want, or you – and he – will die.”

The Fool rasped an evil laugh. “You will die anyway. No matter. No matter. Your precious Cloakmaster is on his way here. And the cloak will be all mine.”

He laughed, returning to rest upon his throne. Cwelanas focused on the amulet and wondered why the Fool held the jewel so tightly when she could tell he was afraid. Perhaps, in his obsession with the
Spelljammer’s
death, he no longer controlled his subconscious, hence the shapes from his mind formed in the chamber’s dark air, he twitched nervously, and moaned unconsciously while peering into his orb.

He held the amulet and laughed and laughed.

“This is veiy good,” he said, chuckling. “He’s following my lures. He has discovered the entrance in the elven tower.

“Oh, he’s on his way. The
Spelljammer
soon will die.”

The Fool laughed. “Who is the fool now?” he cackled. “Who is the fool now?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I have had the same dream now for seven nights. In each, I walk to the head of the Spelljammer and call out into the air. The birds are singing a pretty song, even though we have no birds. My husband appeals from underneath the bow. His eyes are black.

“In my last dream, he held out a ring for me to take. I woke and found the ring on my finger.

“I am doomed.

“My husband disappeared three years ago.

“The ring will not come off....”

The Dream of the White Horse,
a tale by Anonymous;

reign of Jokarin.

The illumination from the warrior band’s light rods cast a warm glow upon the pale, purplish walls of the warrens. The walls felt spongy, almost warm to the touch, and Teldin understood why the warrens were sometimes called the veins, for they spread throughout the
Spelljammer’s
body in a series of seemingly endless tunnels, twisting as though they were meant for lifeblood to course through them.