“With such minor differences,” Teldin said, “no wonder they’re mistaken for elves.”
Raven acknowledged his sarcasm with a fleeting half-smile. “Not many get close enough to get a good look at one. I have.”
Suddenly Teldin recalled the mysterious, elflike creature he had seen in the tavern back on Garden, and the terrified reaction of the drunken man who’d peered directly into the creature’s face.
“I may have run into one myself,” he said. He answered Vallus’s questions with a quick version of the story of the tavern battle and the strange, elflike creature shrouded in brown robes. “At the time, I had a strong perception that it | was no elf,” Teldin concluded.
“True seeing,” Raven mused, sliding a sidelong glance at the cloaked human. “The medallion at work?”
Her seemingly innocent question startled Teldin. He hadn’t mentioned the medallion or its powers to her; how had she learned of it? He noted the peculiar expression on her face – a smug, almost feline satisfaction – and a second shock overpowered the first. She knows, he thought dazedly. She knows that I suspect she’s carrying an ultimate helm and wearing a face that is not her own. As he stared into Raven’s gold and silver eyes, Teldin knew precisely how a mouse must feel when a cat toyed with it. He broke eye contact and drew in a long, calming breath.
“I wonder if there’s any connection between the creature you encountered on Garden and our new visitors,” Vallus said, oblivious to the exchange that had taken place.
“The cloak,” Teldin said wearily. “That always seems to be the connection.”
“Especially in this case,” Vallus agreed. “The insectare are a secretive and devious race. It’s safe to assume they crave the cloak’s power.”
Teldin sighed and reclaimed his looking tube from the elven wizard. The klicklikak was still a good distance away, but coming directly for them. “I suppose it’s also safe to assume they’ll fight?” he asked with resignation. Vallus nodded.
“I’ll alert the crew,” Raven volunteered. Reflexively Teldin caught Raven’s arm as she brushed by.
“I want you to stay out of the fight, Raven,” he said quietly. “Sound the alarm, then go directly to your quarters. Whatever happens, stay below.”
“I can handle myself,” she assured him. She patted the shoulder strap of her broadsword’s scabbard and smiled, but to Teldin’s hypersensitive eyes her smile seemed to hold secret, ironic amusement.
“Oblige me,” Teldin insisted. “I don’t want to have to order you below, but I will.”
A baffled expression crossed the moon elf’s face. Teldin wondered briefly if she might be picking up his own feelings. That certainly would account for her confusion, he thought wryly.
Despite the mysterious power Raven had just flaunted, despite whatever game she might be playing with him, Teldin was afraid for her. Just because she looked like a legendary elven warrior, it didn’t necessarily follow that she knew how to use the sword she carried. On those occasions when Teldin had used the cloak’s power to alter his own appearance, he’d kept his own voice and his own abilities.
“Now,” he repeated quietly.
“If you say so, Captain,” she replied, still looking puzzled.
As she spoke, Teldin’s vision wavered. Raven’s mismatched eyes became yellow, hooded orbs slashed by vertical pupils. In the instant before he blinked away the vision, he caught a flickering glimpse of a reptilian face. He released Raven’s arm as quickly as he would have dropped a live coal.
As soon as Raven had left the bridge, Vallus turned to Teldin. “That was well done,” the elf said somberly. “Until we know for sure who and what she is, it’s wise to keep her out of battle.”
The image of a metamorphosing dragon flashed into Teldin’s mind, and he silently agreed with Vallus. Since he didn’t care to reveal – or even examine! – his other motives for sending her away, Teldin acknowledged the elf’s praise with a curt nod and returned to their immediate problem. “How many insectare can we expect, and how do they fight?”
“Ten to twenty. They use long swords and antennae.”
“Antennae? But how —”
“Whips,” Vallus broke in grimly. “Eight-foot whips that can break an opponent’s neck in a single strike. Even if you can get close enough to lay a sword on one, its body armor is virtually impenetrable. Ten or twenty insectare could give us serious problems.”
“
If
they manage to board,” Teldin replied. “Let’s make sure they don’t.”
He hooked the brass tube back onto his belt and strode out of the bridge. As he sped down the steps to the upper deck, it occurred to him that he had never before directed a battle. The prospect was not as daunting as he would have expected. Thanks to the cloak, he’d had plenty of battle experience.
Teldin quickly shrank his cloak down to its smallest size so it would not hamper him in battle or mark him as an immediate target. He loosened his sword in its scabbard, and as he circulated among the elven troops he was surprised at how little fear he felt at the impending battle. The swan ship had a crew of some thirty elves, each a crack sailor and fighter, and Teldin felt an unexpected twinge of excitement over the prospect of directing such a force.
Raven had spread the alarm, and the upper deck was humming with tension and activity as elves took their battle stations at the railing. Loaded crossbows lay in piles, as well as pikes to repel boarding attempts, and a small band of wizards gathered under Vallus’s direction. The tufted tail at the stern had been folded down to reveal a deadly catapult. A team of four elves busily cranked the mechanism into place and loaded the weapon. Teldin could hear whining of gears from the cargo deck below as the ballista was readied for firing. He positioned himself on the upper deck at the head of the stairs. There he had full view of the approaching foe, and his shouted commands would carry to the two lower decks as well as up to the bridge.
The wooden stairs behind him creaked in protest as the dracons lumbered up onto the deck. Both were in full battle finery: Trivit wore his practical chain mail and wielded the enormous broadsword, and Chirp sported the purple-hued leather armor and carried his ornate two-headed axe as if it were a fashion accessory. Having seen the pair in battle, Teldin was not fooled by Chirp’s frivolous appearance. The dracon brothers had proven themselves excellent fighters, but suddenly Teldin thought of a better use for their talents.
“I want you two to go below and guard Raven Stormwalker’s quarters. Whatever happens, don’t let anyone or anything get near her.” Can’t have her goaded into changing form during the battle, he added silently.
The dracons exchanged worried glances. “But she sent us up to guard
you,”
Trivit blurted out.
Chirp hissed and rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Oh, marvelous. ‘Act natural,’ she said. ‘Be discreet,’ she said. Aren’t you the very soul of discretion?” he said nastily.
“Well, I’m a bit unnerved by the dilemma in which we find ourselves. Moral dilemmas do strange things to one,” Trivit replied thoughtfully. “I’ve always wanted to experience just such a thing – for the intellectual exercise, mind you – but now I’ve thoroughly repented of my wish. Moral dilemmas are damnable nuisances.”
“Below,” Teldin ordered firmly.
The dracons responded instantly to his tone, saluting and clumping down the protesting stairs toward the moon elf’s quarters. Teldin glanced toward the starboard railing, where Vallus had gathered the ship’s battle wizards. Once Teldin had thought that six wizards was a frivolous use of crew space, but at the moment he was glad to have them.
The klicklikak had drawn close enough that details were clearly visible, and it had slowed almost to a hover. It was a relatively large ship, about one hundred feet long, and had an odd, oblong shape. Two windows shaped like bulging eyes dominated the front of the vessel, and the long streamers that had trailed along behind while the ship was in rapid motion now stuck straight up before it. The ship was covered with intersecting plate armor, and two pairs of short metal rods protruded from the bottom. Landing gear, Teldin supposed, though something about them suggested the feelers that hung down on either side of a locust’s mouth.
That’s it, he realized with a sharp feeling of distaste. The klicklikak was shaped to look like the head of an enormous grasshopper. The disembodied head seemed to possess an eery sentience, and Teldin had the uncanny sensation that the buglike eyes were watching and taunting. The insectare ship halted just out of ballista range, as if it discerned the elves’ intent.
A strange, scraping sound distracted Teldin, and he cast a sideways glance toward the source. He immediately turned and gave Hectate Kir his full attention. The half-elf labored up the stairs to the deck, half carrying and half dragging an enormous, two-headed halberd. Like the halberd Hectate had lost in the battle with the mind flayers, the weapon had blades easily two feet across and a staff fashioned from an eight-foot length of stout oak. This weapon, however, boasted a bewildering overlay of bolts and levers that marked it as a gnomish design. Om’s work again, Teldin supposed. The gods only know what “improvements” the gnome had made. ‘Whatever the case, Teldin could have no doubt about Hectate’s intent.
“Don’t you think you should sit this battle out?” Teldin asked him pointedly. The racket of Hectate’s approach had drawn the attention of the elves on deck, and all were eyeing the half-elf and his enormous weapon with astonishment and suspicion. It was not an auspicious moment to debut as a bionoid.
“If possible, sir, I will,” the half-elf replied, “but I’ve fought insectare before. My experience may prove useful.”
“You have?” Vallus asked, coming over to stand by Teldin.
“A swarm of the creatures destroyed my home and family when I was little more than a boy,” Hectate said quietly. “I know how they fight, and how they attack. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
Teldin gripped the half-elfs shoulder, accepting his offer with a mixture of gratitude and foreboding. If Hectate was willing to reveal his bionoid nature before a swan ship full of elves, the risk presented by the insectare must be serious indeed. “What do you think they are up to?” he asked the half-elf.
Hectate squinted at the monstrous insect head. “That’s not a battleship. The ballistae ports that should be around the base have been closed up. It looks as though it’s been stripped down, either for crew or cargo.”
“So?” Vallus prompted.
“I’d say the ship’s a diversion,” Hectate said. “A klicklikak is rare enough to get attention and keep it. Insectare only fight if they have to. What they’re likely to do is to —”
His last words were lost in a piercing whistle. Teldin ducked reflexively, then shot a glance in the direction of the approaching sound and saw …
Nothing.
Their invisible adversary whistled in with a rising shriek. With horror Teldin recalled the banshees of his grandfather’s tales – ghostly creatures with a keening cry. He’d seen strange things in wildspace, but so far all of them had been alive. As Teldin formed the thought, a current of air swept over them and he grabbed for the stair railing to keep his balance. Suddenly the banshee had passed, and its voice abruptly dropped in pitch to a thrumming roar. It approached and shrieked past again, and then a third time. Each cycle came in closer and lower. Just as Teldin thought he might scream aloud, a small, birdlike ship appeared from nothing but sound and air.
“A cloaking device,” Vallus said tersely. “One of ours, on a shrike ship!”
Hectate tensed as the shrike ship approached again, his brown eyes narrowing as he stared fixedly at the ship. Suddenly he grabbed Teldin’s arm and, with surprising strength, shoved him toward the steps. “Get below, sir,” he shouted.
Teldin didn’t answer, staring upward in disbelief as the small craft veered sharply from its path, making a suicidal lunge directly for the swan ship’s long, curved neck. Twin bolts of light, magic balls of incredible power, burst from the shrike ship’s forecastle and hurtled forward. The balls of force hit the bridge tower with an explosion of magical power and splintered wood. Teldin watched helplessly as the severed top half of the tower plummeted toward the deck, shattering boards and pinning several members of the elven crew. The shrike ship dove straight through the opening it had made and continued on its frenzied, circling path.
“They got the bridge,” Vallus said in disbelief.
“And the helm,” Teldin noted grimly. The ship was essentially what it appeared to be: a beheaded swan. The crew would be every bit as dead if he didn’t act quickly. Teldin doubted there would be time to get up the secondary helm before the battle began.
In response to the crisis, his cloak began to glow, its pale sunrise pink signaling its spelljamming magic. Teldin felt his awareness growing, spreading to every part of the wounded ship. He could see the elves hurrying to rescue their fellows, Deelia Snowsong bending over a wounded elf as her tiny, pale hands forced a dislocated shoulder back into place. He saw Rozloom taking refuge under a stout table in the galley. Suddenly he could feel the ship itself, as if wood and iron were no more than a continuation of his own bone and sinew. Soon he would
be
the ship, and his untended body would be exposed and vulnerable on the deck, despite the bionoid protector that now loomed over him.
. “Vallus, you’ve got to take command. I’m going to take the helm,” Teldin said in a faint, faraway voice, and he gathered up a handful of the luminous, pale fabric. “
This
helm.”
The elf shot a glance at Teldin, and his eyes widened at the sight of the glowing cloak. A mixture of comprehension and wonder suffused the wizard’s face, and he gave Teldin a quick nod. As Teldin turned to leave, he couldn’t resist adding, “Watch yourself, Vallus. Stay close to Hectate, and you’ll be safe.”
The elf’s eyebrows rose, and he turned quizzical eyes toward Hectate Kir. He recoiled in shock and horror. In the shadow of the stairwell where the half-elf had just stood was a ten-foot, muscular insect holding the halberd in a guard position as it watched the shrike ship slowly circle in for another pass. The Change had overtaken Hectate silently and instantaneously.