The Maelstroms Eye (26 page)

"Teldin!” Gaye wheezed, trying to shove him off her chest. “Darn you!”

“Get below, now!” Teldin ordered the kender, getting up. His left shoulder blade hurt abominably; an arrow clattered to the deck as he moved. No doubt the magical cloak had kept it from punching through his ribs. He kept his cloak positioned above Gaye as she rolled over on her side, still trying to get her breath. With a dirty look up at Teldin, Gaye crept to the deck hatchway, stopping only as she was ready to descend.

“I want to stay up and watch,” she said petulantly.

“Not a chance,” Teldin said, and he pushed her head down into the ship. He flipped the hatch shut, jammed the locking bar in place, then got to his feet. Only a gnome ship would have locks on both sides of its hatchways, he noted.

“Roll her over and climb!” Gomja called as the gnomes raised their crossbows again. “Prepare to fire!”

Teldin could sec that the scorpion ship was much closer now than before, only minutes from catching up. The orcs must have put their best spellcaster on the helm, he thought grimly. The last month had been so peaceful that he’d thought they had escaped. For the hundredth time, Teldin considered asking the gnomes about their “birthday party” weapon, but discarded the notion. Any gnome-made secret weapon would be deadlier to its users than to its target. Teldin never even brought up the topic, for fear of getting Dyffed interested in testing the device, wherever it was.

“Fire!” Crossbow and ballista bolts leaped out at the scorpion ship.’ Teldin cursed himself when he realized he didn’t have a missile weapon. He had come up to the deck after he’d heard Gaye was here in the thick of the trouble, and now that she was safe he didn’t feel he could abandon Gomja and the gnomes. He hurried aft to see if a spare crossbow was available for him.

The gnomes steadily continued their loading and firing and paid no attention to Teldin as he ran up. Gomja reloaded his bow and shouted for the ship to roll over and climb again, always keeping the scorpion in view. The giff saw Teldin approach from the corner of one eye and looked around. “You shouldn’t be here, sir!” Gomja said in astonishment. “You don’t have a shield, and there’s no place to take cover!”

Teldin saw several spare light crossbows on the deck. He grabbed one and cranked it back. “My cloak’s good enough,” he said, quickly setting the bowstring and reaching for a bolt, “and I’m getting claustrophobia anyway.”

Gomja stared at him, then nodded and raised his crossbow once more at the scorpion. “As you wish, sir,” he said, sighting in with a proud grin. “My sire always said, ‘A brave heart seeks the heart of the action.’ Prepare to fire!”

Teldin raised his crossbow, stepping back to get out of the giffs way. Gomja would have preferred to use the musket strapped to the inside of his shield, or the pistols stuck in his belt, but the phlogiston’s flammable nature precluded use of any firearms.

“Fire!” Gomja shouted. Teldin concentrated, but his cloak did nothing to improve his aim or sharpen his senses. He hastily squeezed off a shot.

As he nastily reloaded, Teldin couldn’t help thinking that it was nothing short of a miracle that the supply rooms aboard the ship had turned out to be well stocked with personal weapons and ammunition, even the deck ballista, just as the galley had been overstocked with food – this despite the fact that none of the thirty-one gnomes aboard the ship remembered having stocked anything before the ship took off. All had been busy examining the ship’s hull for scratches on its paint job and talking about the “birthday party” Dyffed was fond of referring to. They were confounded when Gomja confronted them with the spare materials, which he had uncovered while making a detailed inspection of the ship just before they had entered the phlogiston.

As a result of the discovery, Ruff and Widget, the giant hamsters, had been saved from the dinner table. Gaye promised never to lock herself in a room again, and there was enough ammunition for the giff to have the gnomes practice with their crossbows for several days without threatening the whole supply. Gomja had shaken his broad head when he had told Teldin, Aelfred, and the others of the situation, putting it down to the gnomes’ ability to have their left hands not know what their right hands were doing at any given time.

“One last volley, lads!” Gomja ordered, cranking his enormous bow’s string back. A few firearms, too, had been among the supplies in storage, and Gomja had taken all of them from the moment he’d laid eyes on them. “The scorpion’s too close for us to stay in the open. We’re going to spin the ship to put the scorpion beneath us and hope we can drop something on it from the jettison before they get aboard! It’s going to be blood and fire, but they’ll not try to take us without dying for it! Are you with me?”

The gnomes, who had been peaceful maintenance workers only a month before, gave out a mighty cheer and waved their shields and crossbows in the air. Gomja gave them a wide, savage grin, his huge blue face flushed with anticipation of the coming battle. He gave a quick look at Teldin. “Last chance to get below, sir!”

“Not a chance,” Teldin answered. He thought of the days when he had been a mule skinner in the War of the Lance, a naive soldier who hunted for glory and found only death and sorrow. There was no glory even now – but there was the chance to save his friends, and he meant to pay back a part of the debt owed him by the forces that had hunted him.

Gomja nodded with satisfaction. “Prepare to fire!” he said, raising his crossbow once again.

Teldin aimed and thought he saw something coming at him from the scorpion. The object flashed by – and a moment later cracked as it broke against the deck. A half-dozen or more other missiles also slammed into the ship. A gnome to Teldin’s left gave an agonized cry and fell over the railing, gone. The other gnomes gasped in horror.

“Steady!” Gomja said in a commanding voice. “Now, fire!”

Teldin looked down the sights of his crossbow – and felt a peculiar clarity of thought. Time slowed down. It’s about time the cloak started working again! Teldin thought jubilantly.

Teldin’s senses were now sharpened to nearly unbearable levels. Suddenly he saw the scorpion ship as if it were only twenty yards away instead of hundreds. He heard odd noises, the tiny sounds of the joints in his body moving and the rush of blood in his ears. He smelled his own sweat, the unwashed bodies of the gnomes, the heavy scent of the giff, even the aroma of the wood of his crossbow. He was drowning in a torrent of sensations.

He held the crossbow steady, quickly selecting a target: an ogre crewing a ballista on the scorpion’s main deck, below the ship’s upraised tail. Teldin fixed the ogre’s face in the sights, then squeezed the trigger. The crossbow released its bolt with a lazy thump.

Time returned to normal. The flood of sensations died. Teldin lowered the crossbow and tried to see what he’d done, but the scorpion ship was too far away.

Teldin turned to say something to Gomja, but a bright light from the bow of the ship distracted him. The titanic whirlpool on the crystal sphere was right on them. The ship was flying through the center of it, into a pure blue sky.

Teldin gaped. The giff and several of the gnomes saw the sight, too, and stopped moving.

Directly ahead of the
Perilous Halibut,
in the midst of the blue sea, was a huge, bright yellowish-white star. Teldin could look at it directly for only a second before shielding his eyes. It appeared to be twice as large as other suns he had seen. At the same moment, Teldin had a peculiar feeling that everything was slowing down. He realized the ship had dropped to tactical speed. What was going on? he wondered. The ship behind them wasn’t within range to do that!

“Oh, wow!” came Gaye’s voice, directly behind Teldin. “Oh, wow, it’s beautiful!”

Teldin looked back, startled to hear her voice – and a blast of wind hit him from the bow, building rapidly in strength. Teldin staggered and crouched low, then grabbed the railing, as did almost everyone else. Bolts and weapons stacked on the deck swiftly blew away, falling behind the ship in a shower, few crossbows and shields were lost as well, but fortunately none of the gnomes. Three gnomes clung to the deck ballista. Gomja merely stood firm, hunched down a bit as the white lapels and flaps on his uniform snapped in the wind.

Teldin could hardly believe it – they’d entered an atmosphere upon entering the crystal sphere! No wonder they were at tactical speed. The ship’s speed continued to drop, allowing a degree of movement on the deck, though Teldin hardly trusted himself to stand. He looked aft again – and saw the inside of the crystal sphere they had just entered.

The scene behind them could have come straight from his homeland on Krynn. He looked down on an endless green countryside, lined with roads and checked with cultivated fields and clusters of small houses. Forests stretched away to all sides, with a few round lakes dotting the landscape.

There was no sign of the portal, however. No phlogiston. No scorpion ship. Just grassy hills and a dirt road.

Teldin gaped, unable to imagine what had happened.

People lived on the inside of the sphere itself.

“I’ve never seen anything like this.” Gaye sighed, her eyes as big as cartwheels as she clung to the low railing. She stared aft again, then gasped. “It’s a gate! Here they come!”

Teldin looked back and saw, for the briefest moment, a huge, circular opening into the phlogiston around the scorpion ship. Then the gateway vanished, and the scorpion ship was driving up from the ground to catch them in the air.

Not only did people live on the inside of this crystal sphere, Teldin realized, but they would never be disturbed by entering vessels. The ships must have been gated past the crystal sphere and directly inside it. But then how did anyone ever get out of this sphere?

“Shields up, if you’ve got them!” Gomja bellowed. “Helm, turn us over!”

Teldin thrust all other questions aside. “Get back below!” he said, suddenly realizing Gaye’s danger. “How’d you get up here, anyway?” He reached out to grab her and force her back below, noticing an open hatchway in the vertical “shark’s fin” of the ship. So that was it.

Gaye squirmed out of his reach and ran against the wind toward the bow. Teldin started to give chase, then gave up. If she wanted to stay outside and get shot, it wasn’t his problem.

He looked back just as the black ship began rotating. Suddenly he saw the tail catapult on the scorpion fire again. The rock it hurled was right on target.

“Flatten!” Gomja cried, ignoring his own advice. “Hang on to the railing!”

The
Perilous Halibut
continued to rotate. Teldin threw himself flat again, eyes fixed on the rock as it came at him – and flew by to the left by a matter of twenty feet at most. Teldin felt his stomach churn with terror.

“Jettison!” Gomja shouted. “Jettison away!”

There was a deep thumping sound that ran throughout the ship, and a spray of metallic shards and debris was launched from the rear port of the ship, spreading out in a glittering cloud as it flew toward the scorpion. Teldin noticed no major change to the orcish ship itself as the jettison struck home; the scorpion was now close enough that he could see the shrapnel bounce off its hull. He saw no casualties being taken by the shot, however. Then the scorpion vanished below the deck’s “horizon,” hidden by the
Perilous Halibut’s
own mass in case theorcs fired again.

“Stand by to repel boarders!” Gomja was now reloading his huge crossbow. A few of the gnomes managed to load their crossbows while clinging to the railing at the same time. “On my command, when we rotate the ship again, fire at the enemy crew, then draw your weapons and fight as we come alongside! Cut all ropes launched over to us! Use your size against your foe! Take no prisoners!”

Teldin tried to ready his own crossbow, but he had no bolts left near him; they’d all been blown away. He waited in a half crouch with his long cloak flapping around him. The twenty or so gnomes were obviously nervous and afraid, but they clutched their weapons and stole glances at the resolute figure of the giff as he towered over them, crossbow at the ready in one hand and long sword drawn in the other.

“Helm!” Gomja cried. “Rotate and pull alongside the scorpion before our gravity fields match up!”

There was silence then, except for the roaring wind. The few gnomes who had managed to hold on to their crossbows rested them against the railing and aimed them in different directions, unsure of which direction the ship would rotate. Teldin had the presence of mind to look for Gaye, and he saw her on the bow, clutching the railing there. He saw, too, that she held a short pole in one hand. The stick was as long as she was tall. Now, where did she get
that
? She hadn’t even been able to say how she’d hidden the thingfinder on her person weeks ago, on Ironpiece. That was a kender for you.

The ship rotated counterclockwise. The scorpion would come up on Teldin’s side. He dropped the useless crossbow and freed one hand from the railing. His cloak once had enabled him to cast a curtain of energy before him that protected him during a fight. He had an inspiration, and now wanted to see if the cloak could turn that energy into a weapon. Could he fire magical missiles or bolts from his fingertips? No other weapon was left to him. If the cloak couldn’t obey his commands, he’d be dead very soon. He concentrated on the image of a magical bolt of energy, keeping his fingers extended.

The scorpion ship came up into view. Its deck was full of black-armored figures with long poles in their hands. Some had ropes. Some had crossbows themselves, but the high wind made it difficult to aim them. Draped over the side railing was the body of an ogre, an arrow protruding from its forehead. I did that, thought Teldin.

“Fire!” Gomja roared, his crossbow snapping loudly.

One of the orcs dropped when Gomja fired. Another fell with a gnome’s bolt in him. The orcs fired back, and two gnomes were hit; one fell from the ship and vanished. Teldin concentrated as hard as he could, putting his whole mind in his fingertips. Just like hitting the ogre, he thought.