The Ultimate Helm (23 page)

At once, Gaye and the apparitions disappeared before his eyes, an expression of terror frozen on her face as the undead closed on her.

The room was silent as the screams faded around them.

“That – that was a banshee,” Djan said. “Very, very bad.”

Teldin stared at where the kender had vanished.

“Gaye,” he said softly. “Gaye.”

Chapter Nineteen

“... And, lo, the loculus shall remain even though I be lost in the Red Chamber. My spells are powerful and will last far longer than I. The Historie will be available until the end of things, waiting for the Son of the Architects to claim it as his own....”

Neridox, librarian; journal 1009;

reign of Jokarin.

The secret passageway the beholders had discovered in Coh’s quarters led to a concealed exit across from the hulk tower. As the humans took the neogi tower and the fighting on the
Spelljammer
escalated between the races, the surviving beholders plunged into the tunnel and made their escape. The hidden exit opened near the beholder ruins, directly across from the neogi tower.

Once the beholders were inside, the monarch, Gray Eye, called for a war conference and quickly assessed the casualties. Two beholders had fallen: one to the four neogi, captured during the escape from the attacking humans, and the other, snapped in two by the powerful jaws of the neogi great old master as it thrashed mindlessly in hatred at its attackers. One beholder had lost an eyestalk to an umber hulk, and then, in anger, had ordered the ogre allies to dismember the hulk instantly.

Gray Eye’s eyestalks twitched visibly in rage. The leader’s
ioun
stones circled him crazily, reflecting his volcanic temper. “Our primary enemies are defeated,” Gray Eye told the survivors. “We were victorious, and our alliance has served its purpose: to do our warring for us, with a minimum of casualties to the beholders.

“If they have not yet been defeated by the humans, they soon will be
 –
or the survivors will live to return to their towers and lick their wounds.”

Gray Eye floated quickly from side to side across his dais, as though he were pacing in thought. His teeth gnashed in anger. Then he faced his brethren and called to his second in command. “Blehal, go to our allies. Convince them that the war must continue, and to bring out their reserves. We will all meet here within the hour.”

“But, Lord,” Blehal said, “who shall I tell them we are attacking?”

Gray Eye smiled cruelly. His smaller eyestalks undulated like snakes above his milky great eye. “This war is far from over. The beholders must reign supreme, or we will be left for dead when the Dark Times arrive. The victors of this war will own the
Spelljammer,
and I intend for us to become the victors. As one mighty force, our alliance will prove deadly to our most despised enemies, the elves.”

The beholders glared balefully at their leader, drinking in his murderous threats. “Soon we will toast our victory by drinking the blood of all our enemies.” Gray Eye spun to face Blehal. “Go! Tell them to arm themselves for war!”

Blehal bobbed once in servitude and floated out of the room, two fellow beholders following closely behind him as protection. Gray Eye dismissed the others and floated silently above his dais, his mind filled with glorious dreams of victory and conquest.

It was not simply the Dark Times, though that was an unmatched impetus for his brethren to do his bidding. His purpose was more profound, for he knew the true nature of Teldin’s cloak, and he wanted it for himself. Let the Dark Times come. What will it matter? I will have all the power I will ever need to survive
 –
to rule over the universe! The
Spelljammer
will be my ultimate weapon.

In the beholder ruins, Gray Eye laughed softly to himself. His enemies would soon fall, and the cloak would be his.

He could already taste the sweetness of elf flesh on his tongue.

Chapter Twenty

“... All things, in time, age. All things, in time, become corrupt. The Wanderer is timeless, yet lives still on our physical plane and is subject to both physical and magical la ws. Like all things, the Wanderer must change with time, and in no place is this aging more evident than in the areas known as the Warrens. Where once, legend tells us, flowed rivers of magic, now only cold winds blow like the breath of fiends, and men who explore there seldom return....”

Davibruc, cleric, whose son was lost in the warrens;

reign of Bender the Weaver.

Darkness materialized around her. The warm glow that emanated from her astral body flickered on the walls around her. It was a tunnel, and Gaye felt the chill of the warrens permeate her soul.

Shapes began to form in the air around her, and the sound of the banshee’s plaintive moan rang through her, filling her with a nameless dread, a loneliness that she had never known. She felt herself weaken more as the spirits became more tangible, and then the specters and the banshee had her surrounded. The fear they engendered was almost palpable, and their cloud of terror enveloped her, pulling her astral form away from Teldin just as he had reached for her.

Gaye felt the claustrophobic darkness of the warrens become solid around her. She had been transported to the warrens, where the banshee’s powers would not be weakened by the light of the phlogiston. Beyond, in the darkness that owned the warrens, she caught a vague glimpse of a neogi master and its enslaved umber hulk, disappearing into the blackness. A woman screamed... then she heard the rattling laughter of the master lich.

The Fool, she thought. These are his agents... his slaves. She knew without thinking that they had been sent as the Fool’s revenge.

The spirits numbered four. Three specters were the undead souls of humans who had been unlucky enough to explore the warrens years earlier and fall into the Fool’s lair. The banshee was the soul of a tormented, undead elf who had been cursed by his guilt at helping the Fool unwittingly destroy a sector of the Elven High Command.

The banshee wailed, and its moan echoed through the chamber. Gaye shivered uncontrollably as numbness passed through her with a ripple of unimaginable coldness. The specters reached out. One’s smoky hand touched her shoulder, another touched her head, and she was chilled, frozen immobile by their ephemeral touch.

The banshee’s wail grew louder. She felt her breath constricting, her heart beating in frantic terror in response to the spirit’s unholy wail.

Her mind raced for a strategy against the Fool’s servants. Her psionic abilities, weakened as they were from the Fool’s previous attack, seemed trivial against the spirits; nothing less than an exorcism would disperse these ethereal slaves of the Fool.

In desperation, she concentrated on warmth, on her own inner fires, to remove the paralysis the spirits had caused. Her fingers grew warm, and her hand erupted in a ball of golden energy.

The shades drew back abruptly, wailing in fear of her purifying light.

She knew she was too weak to summon again the brilliant fuiy of a nova, but perhaps there was another tactic that could save her, that would send these undead back to the Abyss.

Then she knew.

Paralyzed with fear, she focused inward. She visualized her latent energies as a flickering flame, suddenly growing in power. She imagined warmth creeping through her body, dispelling the paralysis with white heat.

The light at her fingertips was shrinking. The spirits crept closer toward Gaye, reaching for her with their spectral fingers. The banshee screamed, renewed by the encroaching darkness, and its howl was the sound of the wind singing through black trees and between tombstones, through the caverns of the dead.

Gaye swallowed her fear and sent her sight inward. She channeled her mental energies and visualized her powers in front of her, glowing beyond the surrounding circle of undead, in a tangible form outside of her body.

The spirits halted. The shimmering outline of a doorway appeared, a misty doorway through which she could pass to another world, even another ship.

But her purpose here was different, not a goal of escape, but one of defense. As the dimensional doorway materialized, which she had created as an opening to the sunlit world of Toril, the black chamber was flooded with warm daylight from Realmspace.

The banshee screamed in blazing pain. Its clawed hands of smoke went to its eyes. The spirits flickered weakly, silhouetted against the doorway, and the undead were blown away like wisps of black smoke on a torrential wind of light.

The banshee’s wail died in her ears. Gaye sagged against the wall, drained of will and energy. The doorway dissipated and left her in darkness. Her astral form began to fade away.

Her last thought before she returned, unconscious, to her body in Herdspace was, I must warn Teldin.

Then she could think no more, and the warrens once again fell into shadow.

Chapter Twenty-One

“... Most answers are hidden in the riddles of the human heart, and in the conflicts that define a man’s soul....”

Hanar Pasi, paladin;

reign of Galor

Atop the neogi tower, two warriors hammered the tip of a broadsword into the roof. In the light breeze created by the
Spelljammer’s
movement through the flow, the makeshift flag that had been tied to the sword was a proud symbol of the humans’ victory over evil. The outline of the
Spelljammer
had been drawn in purple paint on a white sheet, and was centered with a crude representation of Teldin’s amulet. The designs were surrounded by stars, shooting from the amulet like
shurikens
of energy.

When their enemies had been routed, Teldin ordered the unhuman survivors to be chained and held in the prisoner’s area, and the overflow in the pit of the great old master, surrounded by armed guards. With shovels and with their bare hands, the prisoners disposed of the master’s corpse and those of its bludgeoned offspring, then were held deep within the pit for their eventual dispensation.

There was only a single neogi survivor; the others had been killed, if not by the Beholders Alliance, then in the surprise attack by the humans. About half of the minotaurs were dead, and two of the ogres had been killed defending the tower. The other unhumans had somehow escaped, fearful of the humans’ far superior numbers.

A thorough search was made of the tower, and then it was gone over a second time. The rooms of the neogi were found deserted or strewn with neogi corpses, and no other escape tunnels were apparent.

During the second search, a guard called Teldin back to Coh’s quarters. He lifted a shining shirt of chain mail and a dagger, which he had discovered in a corner. Teldin recognized them as CassaRoc entered the room. The Cloakmaster took them and tucked them in his belt. “She is without protection,” he said angrily. “Coh has her, and she can’t even defend herself.” He lashed out and kicked a piece of ornamental statuary. The grotesque sculpture bounced off the wall and crashed into pieces on the floor.

“Coh is hiding somewhere in the warrens. You’re right: he and the damned Fool are in this together somehow. And we don’t even know how to get down there.”

“Well, at least we’ve got the tower secured now,” CassaRoc said. “You know, there might be someone who can help us out with this.”

“Who?”

“Well, I’ve heard that some of our more adventurous halfling friends have ventured into the warrens. And then there’s your mind flayer friend. He knows more about this ship than most. We could call for him.”

“You won’t have to.” Na’Shee was at the door. Both Teldin and CassaRoc turned as she entered. “Estriss is here, asking to see you immediately. He almost got killed by our guards. They thought he was attacking them.”

Teldin nodded. “Send him in immediately.”

Djan came in a moment later, followed by the illithid. Estriss bore a heavy cloak, and a broadsword hung from his belt. Mind flayers usually disdained such human affectations as weapons, but Estriss had learned the ways of humans well, and those he could not fend off with his mental powers could be battled with steel. The mind flayer greeted Teldin and CassaRoc, then sat in one of the chairs that they had brought in to Master Coh’s quarters.

There is a problem,
Estriss said,
of which we must speak.

Teldin brought another chair around. “Go ahead.”

The illithids are preparing for something of which I want no part. I managed to escape the horned tower just before the attack was to begin.

“Attack?” Teldin interrupted. “What attack?”

The mind flayers and their goblin allies are attacking the elves as we speak,
Estriss said.
They have long hated the elves, and have long desired more power here on the
Spelljammer.
They have decided that the time to strike is now.

“So has every other race on board,” CassaRoc said.

Indeed.
The mind flayer leaned forward.
There could be trouble very soon,
Estriss said. His facial tentacles twitched.
That is the main reason I came over. I would have come sooner, but I could not escape the illithid tower without their notice.

They are plotting to assassinate you, Teldin.

“How?”

I do not know. The general population was not privy to Trebek’s plans
.

“When?”

Again, I do not know, but Trebek wants you and the elves dead. That way —

A cry came from inside the tower. The men stood as Na’Shee came to the doorway. “It’s the mind flayers and the elves. They’ve started fighting, too.”

CassaRoc said, “Alert our men. Have them stand ready.”

“For anything,” Teldin added.

Na’Shee nodded once, then turned as the shouting increased in the hallway. They all heard the distant sound of metal clashing with metal.

“The war is escalating rapidly, Estriss,” the Cloakmaster said. “We have trouble enough on the
Spelljammer
alone, and there is a score of ships closing on us from the flow. I need answers now.”