The Ultimate Helm (39 page)

The door had been bent and fractured inward, and she could make out the basic outline of a small ship’s bow imprinted in the door. From outside she could hear the sounds of screams and fighting. “We’re not going to get out that way,” she said out loud.

The group clambered out the hatchway and jumped off the smalljammer’s wing.

The hangar doors were made of organic material as strong as steel, but were pliable, like aluminum. The door was veined with cracks in some areas, but was primarily bent inward, and Cwelanas realized that there was no way this door was ever going to recede into the ceiling again.

“Damn it!” she said, pounding her fist against her thigh. “Damn them! Damn them all!”

Without warning, a heavy weight crashed into her from behind, sending her sprawling to the ground. She tasted dirt on her tongue and gritted her teeth. Above her, someone laughed coarsely.

She rolled over and winced in the artificial daylight from the ceiling, then a shadow eclipsed the light, and she stared into a sleek black face that was split wide with an evil yellow grin.

She scrabbled backward involuntarily until her back was pressed hard against the crumpled door. She reached for the sword at her side. Her companions stood silently only ten feet away from her, staring blankly, and she saw that they had been rendered immobile with some sort of spell.

Two eyes looked down at her, two eyes filled with black, undead fire.

“Master Coh,” she whispered.

Another neogi crept up on her other side.

“You,” she hissed. “You.”

B’Laath’a, the new master of the undead Coh, smiled.

Chapter Thirty-Four

“... The catastrophe that brought us will return to deliver us. Our mortal beings will not remember, but we shall remember in the inner cores of our hearts. The sights that await us on the other side will frighten us with all that we have ever dared to imagine....”

Miral, priestess;
Legend of the Beyond;

reign of Hawk

The enemy fire increased from all sides almost as soon as the
Spelljammer
turned and increased its speed toward the Broken Sphere. The enemies knew now just how dangerous the vessel was, and it seemed to the Cloakmaster that there was no way the fleets would ever let the
Spelljammer
survive.

They came for him, for the
Spelljammer,
in a black swarm of violence.

A small mosquito ship dove into the
Spelljammer’s
air envelope and banked in a determined suicide run toward the captain’s tower. As it swung in above the bow, between the
Spelljammer’s
long rams, the mosquito was hit by a single ballista shot from the dwarven citadel. It tumbled out of control and fell to starboard, colliding heavily into the
Spelljammer’s
hangar door.

A hurricane ship catapulted a large shot of stone and iron balls into the library tower. The upper floors disintegrated in a cloud of ancient dust and rubble, which rained upon the warriors massed atop the captain’s tower and killed one of them instantly. Then huge ballistae bolts from two shrikes and a crabship speared through the top floors of the dracon tower, and a forgotten store of smoke powder inside went up in a great gout of flame, jolting the
Spelljammer
with a resulting explosion of the surrounding phlogiston.

Bombards spun crazily atop the giff tower, and iron shot hurtled toward a dozen different ships simultaneously. A side of the crabship blew out as a shot hit it squarely in its carapace, and the ship spun into a dive toward the
Spelljammer.
What was left of the library tower and the captain’s tower was destroyed with the impact. The explosion rolled the great ship five degrees to port, and debris spewed out into the flow.

The Cloakmaster screamed, feeling the ship’s pain as buildings exploded, as it bled its life force over the fleets of its enemies. Still, there was irony in the
Spelljammer’s
injuries, for most of the damage to the ship was located on its starboard wing, and it was the coming of the Cloakmaster, upon the starboard wing, that had initiated the war in the first place.

He could feel the ship’s life force ebbing, weakening with each attack on it. He had trouble banking the ship, then steeled himself and forced the ship down and to port. The Broken Sphere was spinning in a slow, eternal rotation, and the jagged gap in the crystal sphere now lay straight ahead, the gap that the
Spelljammer
had created a thousand lifetimes ago.

The ship slowed enough to keep the enemy ships interested. Let them think we’re helpless, the Cloakmaster thought. Let them think they have us, then...

It had to be soon, Teldin knew. Time was short, and he thought fleetingly of Cwelanas and the others, trapped in the gardens with the smalljammer.

He reached out with the
Spelljammer’s
senses and willed the hangar doors to open. They worked in tandem, opening and closing together, but the damage done in the collision with the mosquito had jammed the starboard door, and neither would open.

The
Spelljammer
shook under its enemies’ attack.

She has to get free! the Cloakmaster shouted in his mind. They may be the universe’s only hope!

He concentrated. He felt tendrils of energy snake through the hull of the ship and sparkle in the nerve endings around the hangar doors, but it was no good. The damage to the hangar door was too extensive, and the starboard door would move up only a few inches.

—  Perhaps...
the
Spelljammer
started, sadly.

—
  No! I will not think that. She must be freed! She is too
...

—
Life is all important, is it not?

—
Yes. Cwelanas... Life
...

—
Yes... Then... there will come a way
.

—
Yes
.

The
Spelljammer
was being hammered on all sides. Wasps dove in for quick shots, then sped quickly out of the great ship’s way. Boulders from the catapults of an elven man-o-war ruptured the walls of the great ship’s Elven High Command. Ballistae missiles aimed for the
Spelljammer’s
eyes thunked deep into the soft grass of the landing field and into the ship’s skin. The great ship’s dwarven battery was destroyed under a catapult assault from five leaf ships.

The Cloakmaster felt the ship’s injuries as though they were his own. His view of space became momentarily blurred, indistinct. His being grew cold, and the sounds around him, of the battle, of ships exploding in the phlogiston, became muted.

Then he heard voices. They called him, beckoning, echoing softly from a distance in the white haze. He reached toward them and felt coldness chill him to his soul. He was falling, falling in a sea of blue, but the voices called....

He shook himself, and the
Spelljammer
quivered as it sailed toward the sphere.

The voices grew louder, then their speakers appeared from the mists: his father, Amdar; his grandfather; and a woman he dimly recognized from when he was a child.

—
Mother?

He held his hands up to ward them away.

—
No,
he said. They were dead – had been dead for so long now. Another voice came, a high, querulous voice with a peculiar laugh, who called to him as a friend: Emil. Emil the Fierce.

Teldin screamed to himself and shook himself out of the darkness. He reached out, feeling the energies of the flow around him, the increasing strength of the
Spelljammer.
He shook himself and flexed his hands and arms, feeling his life force flowing through him, through the
Spelljammer
, spreading warmth through their bodies. The gates to death had been opened wide, calling to him, beckoning for him. And the
Spelljammer
had almost sailed straight through.

But they were alive. And he could not let the ship die, neither it nor Cwelanas; they were not ready for that, not yet.

The only ones who would die today would be the ones who worshipped war and death.

He focused on himself, the ship, and felt the strong, distinctive life forces of CassaRoc, Estriss, Djan, and Na’Shee, of Chaladar the paladin, whose life force glowed with the white light of honor and inner strength. They were waiting in the gardens, and there, he knew, they would find their means to escape, their means to lead humanity to a universe of freedom and peace.

—
Yes,
Teldin said. —
Something must be done.

—
Yes,
the
Spelljammer
said.

They were alive. They were on course.

The gap in the Broken Sphere lay only a few short miles ahead.

The Cloakmaster gasped. The
Spelljammer
involuntarily shuddered, as though with fear.

The path toward the Broken Sphere was blocked. The jagged gap lay ahead, directly behind a twisting, squirming Shou tsunami, a mammoth elven armada, and a wolflike battlewagon of the scro.

All were converging on him, directly in the
Spelljammer’s
path.

Chapter Thirty-Five

“... It is said that the conflagration will be great, and that all who committed evil will perish in the fires of creation....”

Leoster I,
A Journey Out of the Fire;

reign of Kel the Marked

The undead Coh spread his wide mouth in a hungry smile. Bits of dead meat hung between his needlelike teeth. Droplets of bloody saliva oozed from his fangs. His master, B’Laath’a, moved behind him, leering. “Meeeaatt...” he spoke slowly at Cwelanas. “Know do I you. Cloakmeat the whore you were of. Mark of mine wear you. Meat for me, now will you be.”

Cwelanas struggled weakly off the garden floor and yanked a short sword from her belt. She glared at the neogi defiantly with her golden elven eyes. “Did you mean for that to rhyme, or did it just work out that way?”

The grin collapsed across B’Laath’a’s eellike face. His eyes grew dark with hatred. He struggled with his syntax, each word dripping with venom. “Prepare... to... die,” he said clearly. B’Laath’a raised one claw in a gesture, and Coh lurched forward like a grotesque marionette, his lower jaw hanging loose from Teldin’s assault in the Fool’s lair.

“Can we not talk this over?” Cwelanas said, stalling. The smalljammer seemed too far for her to make a run for it, and she wasn’t sure that she alone, with just a short sword and a tiny dagger, could do much against the nastiest neogi she had ever met – much less the nastiest undead neogi.

Coh crouched for a spring, then leaped toward her, growling deep in his throat. Cwelanas was faster. She had anticipated the move and dove to the ground. Coh collapsed behind her and scrabbled quickly around, just in time to see Cwelanas leap up and run toward the relative protection of the smalljammer.

Together B’Laath’a and the undead Coh scrambled after her on their black, spidery legs. She could hear their hissing breath as the distance between them began to close. The smalljammer was still too far away, and her friends were still frozen in B’Laath’a’s spell of immobility. She glanced hurriedly out of the corner of her eye to see if – to hope that – the hangar door had somehow opened.

It had not.

B’Laath’a had been spying on Cwelanas through a servant of his own, an undead rat that he had secreted in the Fool’s lair. Coh had been under his control only seconds after being felled by the Cloakmaster, and he had waited until he knew the outcome of the Fool’s plans before he had put his own into action: to take Cwelanas again and bargain with the Cloakmaster for control of the ship.

B’Laath’a grinned wickedly. The elf had no chance.

Coh tackled her from behind. Blood pooled along her arm where his sharp claws raked her pale flesh, and her face went down into the dirt. She twisted under him, kicking up with her knee. It sank harmless into his bulbous stomach. One long leg of his slapped her across the face. His pointed claw dug a shallow gouge straight across her cheeks and nose.

Cwelanas jerked her arm free from Coh’s grasp and swung her sword toward him. At that awkward angle, the sword could do little more than chop, but the blade went into his side and took out a chunk of his painted flesh. Black blood spattered her chain mail and tunic. Coh raised his serpentine head and howled a scream of pain and infinite rage. His undead anger glimmered like crimson sparks in his black, dead eyes, and he focused on the elf with a smoldering hatred that only the undead could have for the living.

Coh’s drooling lips spread wide. His jaws stretched open, and rows of teeth glinted a diseased yellow in the
Spelljammer’s
artificial light. His head twisted slowly, almost instinctively, coiling back and preparing to strike. Then his teeth flashed and his head snapped toward her, and he plunged his needle-sharp fangs into her shoulder.

Cwelanas heard one dead fang snap off as the neogi bit through her chain mail, then her flesh seemed to rupture and catch fire, burning coldly as Coh’s neogi venom entered her bloodstream. He twisted his head and pulled her up, trying to rip out a chunk of her flesh. Blood streamed hot down her side, and she pounded her fists against his head. Dimly she noticed the slits that were his ears on the side of his head, and she hammered them repeatedly.

Coh jerked his head up, releasing her. Blood spilled over her from sixteen round puncture wounds in the flesh of her shoulder. The wounds rang with intense pain. She covered them with her hand and kicked up between the neogi’s legs.

He grunted once and shifted his weight upon her. Then Cwelanas realized she had a little room to move, and she pulled her legs up into a tight ball and flattened her feet into his chest. She braced her arms and almost screamed at the tearing fire in her shoulder, then gathered her strength and shoved. Coh went flying and tumbled to the deck more than ten feet away.

Cwelanas pushed herself off the floor and picked up her sword. She tasted her blood, dripping down her face, and her left arm dangled uselessly at her side. She could barely wiggle her fingers. Her breath came in short, ragged gasps. She knew the neogi bite injected a victim with a slowing poison, but she felt cold paralysis spreading through her side. The only answer she could come up with was that Coh’s poison was somehow changed with him when he had become undead.