The Ultimate Helm (35 page)

Na’Shee cried, “Nooooo!” but Teldin, the Cloakmaster, the new captain of the
Spelljammer,
was no more.

The air shimmered in a corner of the
adytum.
The light seemed to dim, as though it were being muted, absorbed, and the
adytum
sparkled as the energies of a spell were dispersed. Then the Fool was revealed, standing where his powerful spells of invisibility and concealment had protected him from all notice, even from the guardian shivak and the
Spelljammer
itself. At his feet, shackled at the neck, huddled Cwelanas.

The Fool lifted a skeletal hand and pointed a bony finger at Stardawn. He took a step. Stardawn gurgled, feeling the power behind the Fool’s glaring eyes close around his neck like a vise.

“The Cloakmaster was mine, insect!” the Fool shouted. “The
Spelljammer
was to be mine! Mine alone!”

The Fool released Cwelanas’s chains and stepped toward Stardawn.
“Now, elf lord,”
he said,
“you shall pay.”

Chapter Thirty

“... Death is but a gateway. We all hold the key.

“Shall I open the doorfor you?..

Surturrus, Lord of the Tenth Pit;

reign of Noj the Heavy

Teldin floated. The universe was a sea of twilight, of grayness broken only by lightning veins of white and yellow that crackled in the distance.

His body was gone, invisible, yet he
felt.
He was cool and warm, hot and cold, real and unreal at the same time. He felt separate from himself stolen from his body, yet he was more comfortable and more complete, more whole, than he had ever felt before. He stretched out one finger and felt the universe shift around him instinctively. He opened his eyes, and suns were born. He breathed, and the flow shifted its currents around a score of spheres.

He was planets. He was stars. He was spheres, suns, systems, memories, races long dead.

He was
all.

His sight, his senses, were filled with a panoramic vista of the flow, of the oneness of each sphere with its obsidian counterparts scattered like pebbles across the universe.

He thought of himself. He felt his being pull back, into the reality of the
Spelljammer,
and his mind saw and felt the unhuman fleets converging on the
Spelljammer.
Elves, neogi, humans, giff
 –
their ships promised bloodshed and war, and the stench of death followed in their wake.

— Who?
he thought.
 — Where?

The answer rang through him with a force unimaginable, a force that had seen stars being born, seen planets die, seen whole spheres bubble into existence and slowly solidify, a thousand years witnessed within a second. It was a word, yet not a word, more a feeling that was sound and sight and touch and smell and taste, all at once.

— Here,
was the answer.

— Live.

— See.

— Feel.

— Hear.

— Die.

— Experience.

— Know.

— All.

Then:

— We are not the first.

And the universe was a sphere, a single, wondrous black jewel floating in the empty, endless wastes of the chaotic phlogiston. Alone, perhaps; at least unknown by the beings from any other sphere.

— Ouiyan.

Eighteen worlds swung in slow, graceful arcs around Aeyenna, the eternal sun. Eighteen worlds – blue, green, vibrant with a variety of life unknown today. There, among the worlds, life had evolved, reaching out from mother oceans to stare transfixed into the skies. Empires flourished and were destroyed, then were rebuilt upon ancient foundations. Myth gave way to science, then magic, and humanity learned to coexist peacefully with the animals that shared the worlds. Children swam with the great beasts of the sea; mages and scholars shared philosophies with wolves and whales.

Most unique among the worlds of Ouiyan were the
spaakiil.

Alone among all the beasts of the One Sphere, the
spaakiil
sailed through wildspace and atmospheres alike, great mantas that sang and frolicked among the stars, swam along the boundaries of magic and reality. To each world they brought wonder. To each world they brought the joys of life and diversity. To each world they brought peace. To each world they brought their songs of greeting from other worlds, and the knowledge that granted humanity the skills to break the cage of gravity and sail the first spelljammers into space.

To each world, the
spaakiil
were considered holy: gods to one world; messengers to another; brothers to a third.

To each world – except one – they were considered friends.

The outermost planet was unknown to the others, circling Aeyenna in an orbit so far distant that the sunlight never shone brighter than dark twilight. The eighteenth world was a cold rock, where vegetable life was limited to black scrubs and thick, dark flowers that cried plaintively as the pinpoint that was the sun teased the sky.

It was from here that evil came and spread across the sphere.

They called themselves the Sh’tarrgh, and for years, the Sh’tarrgh waged war against humanity, the Stealers of the Sun. The grotesque gray humanoids fed on the blood and fear of their chosen enemies. They attacked first the seventeenth world and spread from there to claim the sphere as their own. For years cities were leveled by their weapons of destruction, their mages of darkness. The oceans of Resanel boiled under the heat weapons of the Sh’tarrgh. The Citadel of Kiril, housing four thousand men and women, was reduced to rubble in a day. Worlds died as armies were enveloped in clouds of magic, and nothing but bones and armor were left when the clouds dispersed.

The worlds burned at the Sh’tarrgh’s departure, and the One Sphere echoed with the screams of the innocent and the dying.

The Sh’tarrgh wanted nothing but the worlds that orbited peacefully in the glow of the sun. They cared not at all for life; they simply wanted, and wanted. They wanted what before they could not have... the sacred, blessed sunlight, and their lust for power fueled their evil.

The leaders of the sphere met only days before Ouiyan was to become but a memory, a legend. The war had gone on too long, for almost a century of mindless death. Already BedevanSov and Ladria had been taken by the Sh’tarrgh, and Ondora was about to fall. Politicians and kings, wizards and priests, knew that the sphere would not hold much longer. It was decided, then, to devise a plan that could save those who were left.

Days later, magic users and kings converged secretly on Irryan, the forest moon of Colurranur, to organize one last attempt to win back their worlds.

The sky above Irryan darkened, and they knew that all was lost-— the Sh’tarrgh were attacking.

Then they looked up and rejoiced, for the sky was filled with the triangular shapes of the
spaakiil,
circling silently, filling the survivors with awe at their graceful omnipresence.

The numbers of the
spaakiil
had dwindled under the ceaseless attacks of the Sh’tarrgh; but they selflessly offered humanity one last chance to defeat the Sh’tarrgh, one last chance for life.

The humans listened to the idea of the
spaakiil,
and rejected it. No one should sacrifice so much for others, but the
spaakiil
were insistent, and the threat of the Sh’tarrgh was overwhelming.

Word was soon sent throughout the sphere to all the mages on all the worlds. On the island of Terah, in the sea of Gelaan, the
spaakiil
and wizards from all the races of Ouiyan together wove their spells. The skies swirled with dark clouds and danced with lightning. On the other side of the planet, tornadoes cut swaths across the countryside, and strange lights played in the sky.

Then it was over. A thousand mages had come to Terah, but fewer than two hundred survived the stress of what they had done.

The
spaakiil,
the wild singers of the stars, were gone.

In the sky, blotting the sun, swam a single, impossibly large
spaakiil.

No longer alive, as humans knew life, the first
Spelljammer,
Egrestarrian, swam above Colurranur, a gleaming, sprawling city spread out upon its back for the refugees of the original, forgotten Unhuman War
 –
the people who would be known in later ages as the Lovokei, the Kutalla, the Broul, and the Juna. Egrestarrian sailed to every world of the One Sphere and took on all who wished to escape the Sh’tarrgh.

Many stayed to fight, to defend their homes. Some were held prisoner by the Sh’tarrgh; others felt that escape was cowardly and simply wished to die.

The virginal ship sailed through wildspace and defended itself with its stinger, a powerful weapon of annihilation, while the humans built the first spaceborne ballistae and catapults to destroy their evil enemies.

The armadas of the Sh’tarrgh came together as the
Spelljammer
left the orbit of the innermost world, laden with the refugees and survivors of the unhuman wars. Sh’tarrgh battleships numbered six score and converged on the ship from all sides.

The
Spelljammer
was built to preserve life, and was not conceived as an offensive weapon. Its only defenses were natural: speed, maneuverability, and its magical nature. In the Sh’tarrgh Convergence
 –
an attack that lasted only seconds
 –
the people of the
Spelljammer
learned a valuable lesson: that to defend, even peaceable peoples need defensive weapons.

Against the combined might of the Sh’tarrgh, the
Spelljammer
was impotent. Its only hope
 –
the only hope of thousands
 –
was to escape, to explore.

Escape lay on the other side of the black, crystalline wall of the One Sphere.

The survivors knew nothing of what awaited them beyond the barrier. The
Spelljammer
knew only that escape was their only hope, and that the means to flee this sphere were inborn with the ship, a natural talent of the
spaakiil,
carried over to their legacy.

The people in the citadel waited, and Egrestarrian sang.

Its song reverberated off the sphere, and its simple beauty cast fear into the hearts of the demonic Sh’tarrgh.

Then, near Aeyenna, between the
Spelljammer
and the fleets of the Sh’tarrgh, opened a portal.

The
Spelljammer
sang. The portal widened, and the great ship sailed to freedom through the gateway, into the endless, eternal Rainbow Ocean.

But no one had ever before been outside, into the phlogiston. No one knew that if the gateway were left open too wide for too long, the phlogiston would pour inside, into wildspace, and be sucked into the sun, there to explode.

The
Spelljammer
was only minutes outside Ouiyan when the crystal shell exploded. The ship screamed and wept at the same time as it felt the worlds, the peoples, of its birth die in an all-consuming blast that cracked the crystal sphere and sent black shards hurtling into the flow.

The phlogiston’s destructive force sent the
Spelljammer
tum bling helplessly. In seconds, the surfaces of the worlds were blown to black cinders, and the peoples, along with their deadly enemies, the Sh’tarrgh, became memories, forever mourned by the
Spelljammer.

For the
Spelljammer
was created to preserve life, not destroy it.

The
Spelljammer
wept in shame for centuries. The
Spelljammer
sailed on. Children were born; families were raised; old people died. The
Spelljammer
sailed on. Communities were built. New spheres were discovered. War was started, for one insignificant reason or another.

In time, the
Spelljammer
found purpose in the tragedy that had borne it.

Untold worlds awaited the Wanderer. The One Sphere was not the only sphere, as humanity soon learned. The
Spelljammer
sailed on to explore the spheres and their worlds, to discover, to learn; and left behind a sense of wonder, a sense of purpose, of the quest that pulled humanity out of the spheres to explore....

And the
Spelljammer
sailed on.

Egrestarrian, the
Spelljammer,
died.

Drestarin, the
Spelljammer,
was born.

The
Spelljammer
died.

Wrycanion, the
Spelljammer,
sailed on.

Finally, Creannon, the
Spelljammer
of the Cloakmaster, was born, with all its precursors’ memories – and guilt – intact.

Like the blinding instant when a sun is born, all this the Cloakmaster experienced in a moment that lasted for eternity.

Teldin, at one with the
Spelljammer,
knew that time at the Broken Sphere had become dangerously short. The ferocity of the unhumans was unstoppable, and he realized instinctively that only one thing could prevent the
Spelljammer’s
own needless death and the conquest of evil throughout the spheres.

That one thing would destroy everything and everyone within range.

—  Not again,
Teldin said.

—
Verenthestae, the ship responded.
 – The circles close once again. As one dies, one is born.

—  There have been too many deaths already.

-— Murderers embrace death, worship death. Are they not one with death, as we are one with life?

— Death can be cheated.

— Destiny cannot.

— But there may be choices...

— Destiny demands fulfillment. Murder demands atonement.

— There may be a way.

— Our destiny is clear.

—  Why me?
Teldin asked.

His universe was the amulet, glowing with white heat as it was when it was forged upon an anvil at the base of the
Spelljammer’s
captain’s tower millennia ago. It blazed from within with the power of the three-pointed star, the idealized symbol that was to represent Ouiyan’s long-lost sun. The points represented the powers that created the
Spelljammer:
the merging of the
spaakiil,
of humans, and of magic. Its light, its power, represented the eternal light of hope, of life.