The Ultimate Helm (34 page)

The amulet at his neck pulsated with crackles of electricity, then cast out a coruscating burst of energy that bathed the tail in its blinding glow. In immediate response, the mottled area of the tail changed color, transforming from a speckled purple into a swirl of red and blue. The surface then twisted impossibly, as though its very flesh were transforming into liquid. It rippled away in a miasmic whirlpool of color, exposing a shifting, formless opening. Within, a staircase twisted organically, like a vein, stretching up into the tail.

Teldin crawled into the opening, crouched inside, and looked around. He moved to let in the others, and they started slowly up the narrow, chaotic staircase in single file. The stairs were translucent, unevenly formed of a chitinous, weblike material that seemed to be one long structure spiraling up through the tail. The silence inside seemed palpable, almost holy, and they went steadily up the staircase without talking, feeling the weight of their search pressing on them.

The staircase opened at a bubblelike landing, an organic ovoid deep inside the
Spelljammer’s
skin. In the wall before them was a roughly circular object. Folds of the
Spelljammer’s
tough flesh pressed together into a doorway that appeared more like a closed wound than an entrance.

Teldin appraised the entrance and willed instinctively. His amulet flared once and shone the sign of the Juna upon the doorway. The folds of flesh peeled back as the doorway slowly dilated open in an invitation to the Cloakmaster.

The warriors gathered behind Teldin and looked inside. The iris opened onto a short entrance hall, then the hall widened into a hollow, organic pocket, the
Spelljammer’
s
adytum.
Rough-hewn light crystals embedded in the walls flickered on silently. Three rough steps led to an uneven dais, upon which sat a simple, unadorned throne made of the
Spelljammer’s
stony flesh.

This is it, Teldin thought. This is what my quest has been about.

Teldin stared at the throne for a few seconds, then took his first, tremulous step through the opening and stopped just inside the
adytum.

A great shape suddenly blocked his view of the dais, and a huge hand slammed hard against the side of his head and sent him reeling across the room.

Teldin had just enough time to sit up on one arm. His head swam from the blow and images came to him, flashes of insight that showed him what he must do. “Stay outside!” he shouted to the others.

CassaRoc yelled at him angrily. “You can’t fight this thing alone!”

“No!” Teldin said. “You must stay there! You won’t be attacked outside the
adytum
! This is my fight! You can do nothing for me!”

Then the Cloakmaster was lifted high above the floor and flung across the room. He collided heavily against the throne.

His head swam under the impact, and his side flared with bright pain. He reached up for the arm of the throne and hauled himself off the floor.

His eyes widened.

The guardian that lumbered toward him was the largest shivak he had seen. It had taken the form of an impossibly huge illithid. Where most mind flayers stood no more than seven feet tall, this shivak was fully fifteen. Its gray, leathery hide was stretched tight, like muscle, across its chest and down its powerful arms, and its tentacled face seemed frozen in a horrifying grimace of pure, unreasoning hatred.

This had been the last captain’s greatest fear, Teldin realized, and he wondered what form the guardian shivak would take if there were to be a captain after him.

Understanding blossomed in the Cloakmaster’s mind. This was the
Spelljammer’s
final test of worthiness. All potential captains had to defeat the guardian of the
adytum,
a monstrous shivak in the form of the previous captain’s worst fear, before they could claim the ship as their own. The last captain’s face flickered behind his eyes, and Teldin saw Jokarin the Bold battling a shivak whose form was that of a huge, misshapen beholder. He saw the moment of bonding then, when the shivak was defeated by Jokarin’s cunning use of a magical gauntlet and Jokarin took the throne. He saw Jokarin and the
Spelljammer
become, briefly, as one, and saw the seed from Jokarin’s mind enter the consciousness of the
Spelljammer
and lay dormant, waiting, for the next challenger to come.

Then Teldin had no more time to think. The shivak, all the more threatening because it attacked in silence, reached out to take him between its enormous arms. Desperately, Teldin swung out blindly with his sword. One long finger of the shivak’s right hand was severed and sent spinning to the floor.

The shivak held Teldin tightly in its iron grasp and lifted his feet from the floor. The sword dropped from his useless hand. The thing’s tentacles, perhaps in a dim remembrance of a true mind flayer’s need for human brains, twisted hungrily as it brought Teldin’s face toward its obscene mouth.

He twisted in the shivak’s arms and hammered its thick body with powerful kicks. He grunted with the effort, concentrating on coiling all his strength in his legs. He felt his feet pummel the shivak’s stomach, then he managed to twist free one arm. He reached out and grabbed one tentacle from the monster’s face and twisted it. The shivak stumbled in pain, then Teldin’s other arm was free and he was pushing back on the shivak’s head, trying to break its neck.

The thing’s grip around his waist tightened. Teldin cried out, then gritted his teeth and pounded his fist repeatedly into the shivak’s face. His fist sank once into its flesh as it yielded to Teldin’s strength, and then he was free, dropping to the shivak’s feet.

Teldin’s sword was already in his hand when he leaped again; he swung it into the shivak’s side. The blade thunked into the thing’s leathery hide and carved a bloodless gouge into its waist. Then Teldin spun and chopped the sword into the shivak’s chest and stomach. One gray tentacle went flying as Teldin’s sword sliced across its face. Teldin brought his sword high and swung it down in a deadly arc, toward the shivak’s heart. The thing moved in a blur and caught the blade between its huge hands. It bent back the polished steel until the sword snapped in half, then it cast the ragged metal shards to the floor and advanced on Teldin, destruction smoldering in its deep-set eyes.

In the entrance hall, Na’Shee fitted a bolt to her crossbow and took aim. CassaRoc held up his hand and pushed down the crossbow so that it pointed to the floor. “No,” he said, “Teldin’s right. He has to defeat that thing by himself. I don’t think anything we could do would help him anyway. It’s his fight now.”

Stardawn overheard and smiled inwardly. The human had no chance against the shivak, anyone could see that. The monster was huge, a juggernaut of single-minded destruction. Good. He wanted this over, and the less help, the better. Then he could take the cloak from Teldin’s bloody, battered body and take command of the
Spelljammer
himself.

The shivak walloped the Cloakmaster with a stony fist to his stomach. He flew back and hit the throne, stumbling to the floor. He pushed himself up, and the shivak halted, focusing its blank eyes at him fixedly.

Then pain was a living thing, growing like the fires of a star inside Teldin’s mind, filling his sight with electric, blinding nothingness. Teldin fell to his knees, gasping. The guardian shivak was more powerful than he had known, imbued not just with the form, but the magical abilities of the being it emulated. The shivak strode toward him as his mind rang with the force of an illithid mind blast, capable of crippling, even killing, normal human victims.

Through clouded vision, he saw his friends at the entrance, watching the battle with fear in their eyes. He knew that the important things – friendship, love, and life – stood before him. He forced himself to his feet and balled his fists. His pain was unimportant. It was their pain, and their possible deaths, that he had to worry about, and he stared at the monstrous shivak as it came for him, ready to depose the would-be captain.

He felt himself grow calm, felt his skin tingle with a hidden reserve of serenity, of inner strength. It was the cloak, he knew; still, it was himself also. The powers they now shared depended on determination, on a zeal for life and preservation over the forces of evil, and the cloak had become merely an amplifier of his own abilities, his own inner fires.

Perhaps that was all it had ever been.

The shivak swung a mighty fist, and Teldin ducked under the swing to deliver a rapid series of solid punches to the shivak’s torso. It brought its balled fists down on Teldin’s shoulders, and he dropped to his knees, throbbing. Impulsively, he reached out for the thing’s ankle and lifted it off the floor, then stood quickly and shoved the shivak away.

It rolled and hopped up, its speed disguised by its great bulk, and lunged for him. Teldin ran for it and jumped into the air, lashing out with all the power his legs could muster. His feet slammed into the shivak’s chest, and the monster went sprawling back into the wall.

Teldin landed on his feet. The shivak stood unsteadily, and Teldin dove in with a left-right-left series of punches to the shivak’s ugly face. He pounded his fists into the thing’s stomach repeatedly until the shivak doubled over. Then he felt his anger burning within him, his strength cording like steel, and he brought his right hand up in a dizzying blur that slammed into the shivak’s weakened jaw and knocked the thing’s feet inches off the floor.

The shivak collapsed. It struggled to its knees, lowering its head for a final, spiteful mind blast toward its antagonist.

The Cloakmaster felt it between them then: their energies, flickering like heat waves in the air between them, around them. The power of the cloak was
his,
and he raised his hands, feeling his skin shimmer with invisible energies, with powers unimaginable.

The shivak tensed, ready to destroy the interloper with the force of its mind; but the Cloakmaster felt the power building in the air between them, and he channeled his own energies through the cloak and cast out with his mind.

The cloak billowed out, filled with a cold breeze from arcane planes unexplored by human travelers. The lining shimmered, became a deep blue, and was. filled with specks of light whirling like galaxies deep within.

The shivak stumbled as the coldness of the ethereal planes tore from the cloak in winds and gusts that would have felled trees and toppled houses. It struggled forward, taking one uncertain step toward the Cloakmaster, then darkness flooded from the cloak, enveloping the shivak in a cyclone of night.

The shivak howled in fear as the winds of darkness raged around it. It sank to its knees and faced the Cloakmaster, holding out its hands in subservience.

Teldin felt the power building in him, through him. He screamed, feeling his need for the
Spelljammer
, the end of his quest, become real in his heart. He could not hear his cry over the wail of the cold, empty winds. At once, the stony shivak, frozen by the coldness, the soullessness of the extraplanar winds, exploded with the force of Teldin’s being. The shivak shattered into pieces, and jagged chunks of its thick hide hurtled across the
adytum
, embedding into the floor and walls.

Teldin sank to his knees, the strength flooding out of him in a wave. The shivak’s remains collapsed in upon themselves, as though being sucked away from the inside. The stony fragments of its flesh were absorbed into the floor and walls.

On the dais, two round pedestals grew out of the floor at the arms of the throne.

Silence fell within the
adytum.
CassaRoc and the others were inside, congratulating the Cloakmaster. He stood, and the cloak shrank to its normal size, draping his shoulder as though it had always belonged there.

CassaRoc indicated the throne. “I think that’s for you,” he said, smiling.

They stepped aside to let Teldin step upon the dais. He stood before the throne and stared down at it. “You better get away,” Teldin said. “I don’t know what will happen.”

They all stepped a few feet away. Stardawn, hesitating, stood directly in front of Teldin, a step ahead of the others. His hand was on the hilt of his sword.

Teldin sat in the throne. Unsure, he placed one hand on the top of one pedestal, then the other.

Instantly, he felt warm. A golden glow appeared at his hands that quickly spread throughout his body. His cloak shivered, flapped in an invisible breeze. He felt it wriggle around him, then lose its feel, its texture. It fell apart around him into thin shreds, then it disintegrated into the material of the throne. The amulet seared into Teldin’s flesh, glowing below his neck, and he felt only the peaceful glow of the bonding, the warmth of his own life force.

“Yes,”
Teldin said, and his eyes focused far away on some dreamlike vista only he could see. The bonding had begun, and he was filled with the life, the history, the song, and being of the
Spelljammer,
the herald of his destiny. “
Yes,”
he said.
“This is what it was all about.”

His eyes were filled with visions, and his mouth hung slack as his mind struggled to absorb it all. Then he suddenly focused his gaze at his friends. “
I know. Now I know. Estriss, Djan, CassaRoc... Now I know it all. Now
I 
—”

Stardawn screamed a foul curse in Elvish and leaped upon the dais. His sword flashed wickedly in the light of Teldin’s golden aura.

The others shouted and moved to intercept him, but the elf was too fast, and with a mighty lunge, he thrust his elven sword deep into Teldin’s chest.

Blood pooled around the point of the sword, embedded deep into Teldin’s heart. The Cloakmaster stood slowly and stared down at the sword in his chest. He looked then into Stardawn’s eyes and smiled.

“
You have done nothing,”
Teldin announced, his eyes misty with the
Spelljammer’s
fires.
“I am still the captain.”

And Teldin fell back onto the throne.

He sagged against the chair, his still hands upon the pedestals. His eyes flickered shut, and his head hung lifeless on his chest.