The Maelstroms Eye (36 page)

“Yeah, well, we’re here,” said Aelfred. “We should be able to handle things. Dyffed will be going with us, of course. Gaye and Sylvie should stay back here. I’d better go below and tell them what’s up. Gaye won’t like it, I know.”

Teldin nodded. Gaye had something on her mind lately. She was acting strangely around him, and he couldn’t figure out what the problem was. He pushed the image of the raven-haired kender out of his mind. Her problems weren’t his concern right now.

The shore party took ten minutes to form. Aelfred and Gomja led the way from the ship onto the huge redwood trunk, using grapples and planks. The trunk wasn’t as slippery as they had feared. Walking in close order behind the front two came Dyffed and most of the other gnomes, each holding a crossbow and outfitted in armor and assorted weapons. Dyffed had put his armor on over his old clothes, making him appear in Teldin’s eyes to be an overstuffed doll. Teldin and a group of three gnomes formed a tight cluster that brought up the rear.

Teldin looked up into the mighty redwoods on the shore and felt a deep sense of unease. He glanced back at the ship and saw Gaye and a few gnomes watching them from the top deck. The ship’s cheery banners drooped in the still, warm air. He raised a hand and waved good-bye. Everyone but Gaye returned the wave; Gaye stared silently back, her expression unreadable. Maybe she was pouting because she had to stay behind. See if I care, thought Teldin, and dropped his gaze to the bulk of the ship. He wondered whether Sylvie or Loomfinger was on the helm, watching them leave. Sylvie had gotten a little more sleep and was looking much better now. Aelfred had given her the news on their current location, and she’d hardly believed a word of it.

The walk across the fallen tree was uneventful, though getting down from the thirty-foot-high trunk once the shore was reached proved difficult. Gomja managed to find a huge tangle of rotting roots and vines that served as a rope ladder, and everyone was sent down before the giff tried his luck. The vines held, but only barely.

“Thad way,” said Dyffed, pointing with a bandaged right hand. Teldin winced at the sight of the injuries the bursting of the thingfinder had caused; the gnome’s index and middle fingers were missing, and the white cloth wrapping his hand was already slightly stained with red.

Gomja took a breath and readied his two pistols. “In formation, road step,” he said in his normal, sea-deep voice. “Forward!” Everyone fell in behind him as he set off with confident strides into the dark and pathless wood.

It wasn’t long before the stench of rotting algae and wood was replaced by the smell of redwoods and earth. The ancient trees reached over their heads like the pillars of a tremendous cathedral. Shrieking birdlike cries echoed through the forest, many originating from far overhead among the distant branches. Teldin once thought he heard the skullbird again, but he saw no sign of it.

They marched for at least ten minutes before Teldin saw a gnome in the middle of the formation turn his head to the left, as if he was listening to something. The gnome poked another one beside him, whispered, and both looked to the left with wide and curious eyes. Teldin looked, too, but saw and heard nothing. Nonetheless …

Teldin clapped his hands together once, giving the signal Aelfred had arranged for stopping the column. All the gnomes halted at once, with Gomja and Aelfred doing so a moment later and looking back in confusion. The gnomes quickly looked to the left and listened with grave concentration.

“Interesting arrangement of rhythmic low-frequency noise, remarkably similar to slow bipedal ambulatory movements,” said Dyffed, cupping both hands around his big ears. “Must be a big one.”

“Then let’s keep moving,” said Aelfred, hoisting his crossbow and starting ahead again. Gomja nodded and waved the column on. For a moment, Teldin was almost glad the big giff was with them. He thought he’d understood Dyffed to say that the noises the gnomes could hear were like footsteps – big ones. If so, he wanted to keep moving as well. Gnomes heard things humans and others never would.

They proceeded on for perhaps another five minutes before one of the gnomes looked to the left, gave a wild gasp, and accidentally fired his crossbow into the air. Everyone stopped and looked.

An immense, ragged figure was now visible among the most distant of the mighty trees. It was making its way with long, slow footsteps that cracked saplings and crushed fallen logs with each step. The creature was vaguely manlike, but grotesquely thick bodied, with short, twisted legs and a flat, misshapen had. It was of astounding size, as tall and as broad across the shoulders as the main mast of the
Probe.
The cydopes Teldin remembered from the Rock of Bral would not have reached past this creature’s wide belly.

A skullbird’s high-pitched screech rang through the forest, as if offering encouragement and directions. Within moments, the titanic creature caught sight of the party. It started to smile. It took a house-spanning step forward.

“Run for it!” shouted Aelfred.

“Prepare to fire!” roared Gomja, raising his pistols.

“The hell we’ll fight!” Aelfred shouted back. “That thing could break our ship in half!”

The gnomes were paralyzed with anxiety and fear, unsure of which commander to obey. The oncoming monster made the choice for them by stopping to seize a young redwood in its hands. The tree was every inch of one hundred feet high, but the giant merely wrapped his gargantuan hands around it and tugged once on the trunk. With an awful groaning and snapping, the tree tore free of the earth, trailing its broken roots. With a crooked-toothed leer, the colossus shook the tree briefly, snapping off its upper branches, then slowly advanced on the party again. It clutched the tree like a spear.

“Perhaps we should find more defensible ground,” said Gomja thoughtfully, lowering his pistols. “Then we can —”

“Run for the horn!” Aelfred shouted. The gnomes took this as their signal, and they instantly broke formation, running pell-mell through the redwoods as fast as their short legs could carry them. Aelfred took the lead, Gomja stayed in the middle, and Teldin brought up the rear.

Teldin fought the urge to run at full speed, knowing that the gnomes could not possibly catch up to him if he did. He forced himself into a jog, but the cold hand of panic urged him on as the rumbling thunder of the humanoid colossus came on behind him. Some of the gnomes dropped or threw away their weapons to speed their flight, but Teldin held his as tightly as he could. Aelfred and Gomja did the same.

The long, regular thunder behind them grew steadily louder, mixed with the cracking of branches and the calls of frightened animals. Teldin risked a glance behind him as he can, seeing that the human mountain was slowed by the narrow spacing of the redwoods. The giant’s tree-sized spear snagged and caught other trees, tearing out house-sized chunks of bark. Teldin guessed the creature was only a fifth of a mile behind them and gaining.

Ahead, Teldin saw what appeared to be a break in the forest leading to open air. He took another look behind and saw that none of the gnomes had fallen down – a miracle if there ever was one. The giant was now closer still, each stride sweeping over the forest floor with ponderous ease.

Teldin looked ahead again. Aelfred and two unusually quick gnomes had broken out of the tree line into the open space. Moments later, the rest of the gnomes and Gomja poured out of the forest behind them, with Teldin at the rear. The titanic humanoid was only five hundred feet back and still gaining with each earth-shaking step.

For some reason, Teldin noticed, the huge giff was slowing down now and looking up into the sky, as if searching for something. Teldin had no time to find out what it was. He knew the whole group had but seconds left before the monstrous creature was upon them. Far ahead, across a long stretch of bumpy ground, Teldin noticed a vast, whorled spire, which he recognized as the megafauna’s horn. Somewhere at the top of the horn was the fal, but the horn itself was still several miles away. There was no way to get to it in time to escape the colossus.

Teldin slowed down and shouted out at the top of his lungs. “Split up and run for the horn! It can’t catch us all!”

The gnomes paid no attention to him, as they were already running off in different directions in their awful panic. Teldin turned around, facing back toward the forest. As he did, the colossus broke through the tree line and strode out into the open with broad, slow steps that shook the ground at Teldin’s feet. The behemoth’s monstrous spear was clutched tightly in its wagon-sized fists. It was perhaps three hundred feet away.

“Teldin!” The roaring voice was Gomja’s. He turned and saw the giff motioning for Teldin to run to him. The giff was off to one side, maybe two hundred feet away.

Something moved in the sky behind the giff. To Teldin’s astonishment, the object appeared to be a large green butterfly, swooping down toward the tall grass of the field. He recognized it as a small spelljamming ship of some kind. Something about it looked familiar.

“Run, sir!” Gomja roared out, pointing to the green butterfly behind him as it approached and slowed down to hover in the air, a man’s height above the ground. “Run for that ship!”

Teldin stared in amazement, then looked behind him and saw the humanoid giant was moving again – toward him. It was raising its tree-trunk spear. The giant’s two huge, dark eyes squinted beneath beetled brows, sizing Teldin up and appearing to mark him as a worthy target.

Teldin backpedaled, forgetting about Gomja and the green ship. Maybe if I move fast to one side just as he’s thrusting down, he thought, I can get out of the way. He looks too slow to do any harm. I can’t outrun him, but I can sure dance around him.

Fate apparently decided to test that theory. The giant thrust with the log, seemingly in slow motion. Teldin bolted, not waiting to see if the giant’s aim was true. There was a rush of wind, then an earth-shaking crash as the spear slammed into the ground to Teldin’s left. The tree trunk sank more than twenty feet into the earth, flinging a fountain of soil and stone into the air. Teldin threw his hands in front of his face and dropped the crossbow, almost stumbling over it as he ran.

A long shadow passed over him. He heard the sudden whistling of wind from a large, fast-moving object, and he dived to the ground to roll and escape it. Could the giant have thrown something else – at him, too? He didn’t want to wait and find out.

“Sir!” Gomja bawled again. “This way!”

Teldin scrambled to his feet and looked back. The giff ran toward him, his huge girth swaying. Gomja waved a pistol in one hand, heedless of the colossus’s presence. “Go to the ship!” he bellowed urgently. “They want to help you! Go to the ship!” The green butterfly came on behind him, trailing by a dozen yards.

The colossus roared, its booming voice almost deafening Teldin as it washed out all other sounds. A long shadow passed over the ground near him again – this time heading for the giant. Teldin began running from the giant again, but had enough time to look back once over his shoulder.

The
Perilous Halibut
had arrived. In his momentary glimpse of it, Teldin saw that the ship was flying straight for the titan’s head.

Something caught Teldin’s foot and he stumbled and fell forward into the grass, knocking the wind out of him. He got to his feet, his lungs full of knives, and at that moment he heard the colossus scream. The sound was an awful, roaring cry that went on and on. When he heard it, Teldin felt a sudden pity for the creature. It sounded almost like a huge human child who had been badly hurt.

Teldin looked back as he continued to run. The giant had clapped both hands over the right side of its face and stood in place. Huge, jagged teeth showed in its loose-lipped mouth. Circling around from behind the behemoth came the
Perilous Halibut.
It looked different now. After a moment, Teldin realized that the ship was missing its long, drooping tail fin. “Sir! Sir! Stop!” Still clutching his pistol, Gomja was lumbering along behind Teldin. The giff was obviously winded and near collapse. The green butterfly, revealing a wingspan of fifty feet, continued to drift on behind him.

Teldin saw that the giant wasn’t about to attack while it was holding its injured face. He slowed just enough to shout back. “Who’s in that thing? What’s going on?”

“Let … them … explain!” Gomja shouted, gasping for breath. “Let … them …”

Without warning, the green butterfly sped up, rocketing toward the running giff. With a simple twist as it flew, a movement Teldin knew could not have been accidental, the ship turned so that the lower edge of one wing swept the giffs feet out from beneath him. Gomja fell, arms flailing. The ship shot over him and came directly at Teldin.

Instinctively, Teldin threw himself to the ground. The green butterfly flew over him a moment later, the lower edges of its wings scything through the tall grass. When Teldin got to his knees, he saw that the ship had come to an abrupt halt only twenty feet in front of him. Uncertain of which way to run, Teldin got up in a crouch.

A door in the green ship opened as it hovered, revealing a small, cramped cargo bay. Two silver-armored figures stood within it, each clutching a short stick of wood in one hand that was kept pointed at Teldin.

“You can get aboard of your own will, or with our assistance,” said one of the silver-armored beings with an Elvish accent. “The former would be less troublesome.”

“Who are you?” Teldin shouted, still backing up. “What in the name of the gods are you doing?”

“The colossus is moving!” yelled someone farther back in the ship, in Elvish. “Take him now!”

The two silver warriors raised their wands and chanted a phrase in unison.

Teldin felt a mad rush of panic, raising his hands to shield his face.

Suddenly, time slowed down.

The cloak! he thought, then leaped to his right as fast as possible. As he moved, he had a momentary glimpse of two long gray beams of light flicker out from the wands through the spot where he’d once stood.

How in the Abyss did the elves find me? he wondered. The answer was obvious: Gomja. But how did they set
that
up? flow? He ran through the tall grass, which was now stiffer and more resistant to his passing. He saw the colossus to one side, in the act of taking a huge step toward him; it moved with infinite slowness now. Teldin saw Aelfred running slowly toward him in the distance, a crossbow in one hand and his red face registering his effort.