The Ultimate Helm

Chapter Eighteen

"Ships ahoy!"

The shout from the roof echoed down through the Tower of Thought, and Teldin thought he could hear the cry repeated loudly from the other nearby towers of the Human Collective.

He stepped out of the tower's weapons room and started up the stone stairs to the roof. Outside he found CassaRoc and Chaladar staring up into the sky. CassaRoc raised a cylindrical tube to one eye and stared through it. He squinted against the bright light of the flow. "I don't know," he said to the paladin. "Never seen their like before."

Chaladar held out his hand. "Let me see."

CassaRoc handed him the tube, rimmed in brass. Chaladar aimed and peered through it for a long time. "Vaguely Shou design, I think. The wings, or fins, are like those of dragons. I'm not sure, though. They're some of the largest vessels I've ever seen."

Teldin came up behind them. "The spyglass. Is it gnomish work?"

CassaRoc turned, surprised. "We didn't hear you come up." He nodded. "Yep. Bought it off a gnome a few years back, around Evermeet. The only thing a gnome has ever designed that has a practical use, I'd say. Well worth the silver I paid."

Teldin took the glass and hefted it. He had used one before, in another sphere. This one seemed more streamlined and advanced, a tube carved of wood, about a foot long, with glass disks affixed to both ends by rings of brass. He aimed at a distant tower and looked once, marveling at the device's seemingly magical ability to bring far objects into clear focus; then he aimed it toward the speck in the phlogiston where the two leaders had been looking.

In seconds, he spotted them. CassaRoc pointed out five other areas in the flow, where only distant specks could be seen against the swirling chaos. Teldin whistled.

In all, nineteen ships were closing on the Spelljammer. Six were deadly deathspiders and a mindspider-probably planning to rendezvous with B'Laath'a, Teldin surmised-and, far in the distance, were two incredibly huge vessels that Teldin could not identify, ships that resembled giant, finned centipedes. As they sailed, the ships' segmented hulls twisted as though worming their way through the flow. Beyond them, Teldin picked out three hammerships, an elven man-o-war, a squid ship, two nautiloids, a galleon, and three wasps.

"The deathspiders," he said. "I could be wrong, but I have a hunch that the neogi will try to take advantage of B'Laath'a, the neogi mage who assaulted Cwelanas. They'll be sure to join the neogi in their fight against us, and they'll probably try to kill me again as well." Chaladar nodded. "Vicious, evil beings." CassaRoc said, "Be sure to expect other assassination attempts, too."

"The other ships nearby," Teldin continued, "I've never seen before. They remind me of dragon ships with the colors, and the ornamentation, but much larger. And I'll tell you this.-they don't look friendly."

"They're still a few hours away. We still have time to get to the neogi and get Cwelanas back," CassaRoc said.

Teldin was silent.

Cwelanas. Yes, we will get her back.

They stared into the flow for a while, keeping track of the converging ships. Even at this great distance, they could tell that some ships were already battling among themselves. Ballistae were firing from the deathspiders, and missiles were sent hurtling into a deck of a hammership. Catapults aboard the hammership rained boulders upon the swifter deathspiders, but they turned away before they could take much damage.

Teldin looked down upon the Spelljammer with CassaRoc's gnomish spyglass. From the tower, he could see that the open market had closed, probably for fear of war, and that sporadic fighting among the races had already broken out across the ship. A better view could be had from the pinnacle of the Guild tower, Teldin knew.

"What does the watch atop the Guild tower report?" he asked.

Chaladar leaned back against the tower railing and removed his helmet. He ran his fingers through his long hair. "The fighting has increased at the neogi tower," he said. "The bastards seem to be rallying, perhaps because they know their allies are on the way. And look." Chaladar pointed down. "The neogi are starting skirmishes all over the ship. They're using their slaves and umber hulks to terrorize the humans."

The paladin replaced the helmet and looked at Teldin seriously. "We can't wait much longer. We'll have to strike soon, Cloakmaster, or we humans will be worn down. Just give me the order."

"The others will be here soon," Teldin said. He looked at Chaladar, standing tall in his gleaming armor, and CassaRoc, ready to throw his men into a good fight. He had been on the SpelljammerTor only a short time, and these men were ready to lay their lives down for him. He glanced away, at the fighting below. Somehow I have already become their leader, he thought.

And he felt, in his soul, that this was how it was supposed to be.

"Let's go down," Teldin said. They followed him to CassaRoc's common room, now clear of rat corpses, and they waited for the arrival of the allied leaders.

It had been almost three hours since the discovery that Cwelanas had been kidnapped by the neogi, and Teldin had used that time well.

He had been healed by King Leoster and could walk and fight very well, though he was still a little stiff. Then, together, he and CassaRoc had organized the fifty or so warriors of the Pragmatic Order of Thought into four squadrons and had armed each with two short swords, a dagger, and whatever other weapons they could carry. In addition, all the leaders of the alliance had been informed of the humans' intentions, and the giff, dwarves, and halflings had all started preparing for war. Lord Diamondtip had even come over for a short while to assure the Cloakmaster that all was going well in the giffs smoke tower.

The collective and their allies had more powerful weapons than Teldin had initially believed. The Human Collective itself had twenty ballistae ready and armed. The Chalice was ready with one armed ballista and a catapult, and their fifty fighters were more than ready to spill a little-or a lot-of neogi blood. CassaRoc's two catapults were in perfect working order, and the Guild tower was readying five ballistae and five catapults, which had been kept in storage.

Unfortunately, the halflings were armed only individually. The two dwarf communities, however, shared nine catapults and fifteen ballistae between them. The giff were extraordinarily enthusiastic about the battle and had kept their weapons in total readiness. Lord Diamondtip had even mentioned a surprise, a giff specialty, that he tiiought the Cloakmaster would appreciate.

Secretly, Teldin hoped the surprise was not very dangerous. The giff were well known on the Spelljammer for their inventiveness with explosives, but even CassaRoc and Chaladar were surprised when Diamondtip described to mem the giffs secret weapon: four bombards bound together at the pinnacle of the giff tower. Manned by eight giff, the bombards could rotate 360 degrees on a single, circular platform.

Teldin hoped the war would not get so desperate as to use the giffs guns in the phlogiston. With the giffs joy for explosives combined with the combustive nature of the flow itself, he had wondered if this war would engender an explosive force as powerful as that which had destroyed the Broken Sphere. Then Diamondtip had explained to him that the explosion could not harm the Spelljammer. "Sure, the Spelljammer would be shaken up, and the giffs tower would be taken out," Diamondtip had shrugged, "but so would the towers of many of our enemies."

"I'm relieved," Teldin had said weakly.

Although the Elven High Command contained ten ballistae, spaced throughout at various entrances in defensive positions, Teldin and the others were more concerned about the elves' promise of alliance. The elves had been informed of the upcoming attack and had been asked to join in a planning session, but Teldin was not convinced of the elves' sincerity and guessed that they probably would not show up for the meeting.

For three hours, the humans prepared their weaponry and made preliminary plans to attack the neogi. Scouts watched from the roof of the Guild tower, the tallest of the human buildings, and sent word of the battles at the neogi tower, and of the fighting breaking out across the great ship.

Diamondtip finally left to check on preparations at his own tower, and the human leaders went to CassaRoc's weapons room to double-check the armament. Then the approaching ships had been spotted by the watch, and Teldin knew mat the war would soon begin, a war he did not know how to prevent.

In the common room, Teldin and the two leaders discussed Cwelanas's kidnapping. It had all boiled down to only one conceivable possibility: neogi, probably Coh himself, had sneaked over into the Tower of Thought. The violence done to die guards indicated that large umber hulks had been with them, and they must have taken Cwelanas down the same, little-used stairway that they had sneaked up.

"Tell me more about Coh," Teldin said.

CassaRoc and Chaladar shared what little information they had that Teldin had not yet been told, of the rumored connection between Coh and the Fool, of his devoted slave, Orik, the ship's most dangerous umber hulk. Teldin knew that Cwe- lanas had told him the truth of Coh's partnership with the neogi who had brainwashed her, and he was convinced that Cwelanas was now his hostage- if not worse.

"Shemeat," the guard had spoken in the tongue of the neogi.

The sign of Coh was a series of interlocking circles, tattooed on the neogi master's forehead. When Teldin found him, the tattoo would be the first thing to be cut from Coh's body.

The layout of the neogi tower was unknown to everyone in the Human Collective. The neogi were so despised by all the races on the ship that few, other than neogi slaves, had ever been inside. Teldin decided that a swift assault upon the tower would be best, and then to swarm through the tower and take back Cwelanas as quickly as possible. Perhaps then they would find the neogi at their least defensible, when their strength was weak after the attacks by the beholders- and their Unhuman allies.

It was rumored that there were only fifty neogi in the tower-about forty, now, counting their losses in the skirmish that had occurred when Teldin's ship had crashed-and about thirty umber hulks and slaves. The human forces would overpower them easily-unless they were to engage other unhumans in the process of the assault. And that possibility could not lightly be ignored. The discussion was interrupted when Lord Diamondtip and the elf Lothian Stardawn finally arrived to the Tower of Thought, followed shortly thereafter by the halfling leaders, Hancherback and Kristobar, and the dwarf king, Lord Kova. With CassaRoc and Chaladar, Teldin quickly sketched out his plans to cut through the sporadic skirmishes between the collective, on the Spelljammer's port side, and the starboard communities, to eventually reach the neogi tower en masse.

It was while their plans were being laid that a newcomer appeared and inadvertently interrupted the meeting. The discussion stopped suddenly as his shadow darkened the doorway. CassaRoc's hand went to his sword, for he feared another assassination attempt on the Cloakmaster.

Teldin looked up and instantly rose from his seat. "Djan," he said warmly. Djan, the half-elf and the only other survivor of the crash of the Julia, stepped into the room. He held his left arm stiffly at his side, but he smiled as Teldin approached. His thin face had been brought back to its normal hue, and his eyes sparkled with the cold glint of steel.

"CassaRoc's healers have assured me that I am well," Djan said. "I cannot let you get into this fight alone."

"Djan," Teldin said, "I think you should wait until you're much better."

"I can't wait any longer, Teldin. I've always hated being sick. I feel totally useless in that bed." He placed his hand on Teldin's shoulder. "I did not sail across the known universe with you to stay asleep and miss the events that called us here. Besides, you need all the able men you can get."

Teldin grinned and pulled Djan around to face the assemblage at the table. "This is my first mate, late of the Julia," Teldin said. "Djan will be with us on all decisions regarding the war for the Spelljammer. We've come a long way to find the Spelljammer and discover my destiny- "

"— Our destiny," Djan said quickly.

Teldin nodded. "And Djan here deserves a lot of the credit."

Teldin made the introductions and pulled a chair over for Djan. The half-elf sat, and together the Alliance of the Cloak finalized its strategies to rescue the stolen Cwelanas.

The humans of the Tower of Thought volunteered to go first and cut a vicious swath through the fighting around the collective. In the hour that the leaders spent talking and preparing, minor assaults had broken out threefold across the ship as the neogi spread their attacks: dwarf was now battling neogi, elf was battling neogi-almost no race was spared from violence, and soon the blood of all the races would be spilled at the murderous claws of the neogi.

Teldin laced up his leather armor and slipped on his vest of mail. He had shrunk his cloak to the size of a necklace as he pulled on his armor, and he commanded it to lengthen over his shoulders, just to see how he looked. Presently, his cloak filled out, and he was the image of die valiant, broad-shouldered warrior, ready to die for a cause. He tested the feel of his sword in his hands.

Behind him, Djan and CassaRoc examined their weapons and their armor. CassaRoc's had obviously seen a lot of action. His armor was dented across his chest and scarred from many sword thrusts. Djan had borrowed light armor from CassaRoc's cache and finished tugging it over his lithe frame just as CassaRoc snapped a heavy cloak around his neck. They looked at each other in silent appraisal then turned to the Cloakmaster as though they were saying, "We're ready." Teldin turned. "Almost time," he said. Djan nodded.

Teldin concentrated. Slowly, his cloak and amulet shrank again into a thin necklace, which he covered with the collar of his shirt. Then, before his companions' staring eyes, the contours of his face shifted. His hair changed color, his shoulders widened, and his form shrank by several inches. For the charge to the neogi tower, it would not do to have the Cloakmaster be seen by all of his enemies.

"No matter how much you do that, I'm never going to get used to it," Djan said. Teldin asked, "How do I look?"

"Look for yourself," CassaRoc said. He held up a small piece of polished steel.

Teldin stared at the familiar face in the mirror. The craggy features, the angry light behind his eyes-just looking at himself made the old feelings churn inside, fear and hatred mingling with love-"You look quite good," Djan said. "Anyone in particular?" Teldin remembered the stern lessons of his father, his heavy hand, and how he had practically chased a young Teldin off the farm to find peace, the only peace he could truly find: alone, on the dangerous, bloody fields of the War of the Lance.

He looked up from the mirror. "No one important." He led them from the room to the tower entrance. CassaRoc's warriors waited anxiously along the walls of the corridor, adjusting scabbards and cloaks, nodding as the leaders passed, and barely casting a glance at Teldin. They had been told of Teldin's planned strategy to cross the ship; despite his disguise, they recognized him by the hastily painted insignia were slung with uncanny accuracy. One struck an umber hulk just above its miniature eye and pierced its skull; the other found its target in the thick flesh of the other hulk's neck.

The hamster bared its sharpened teeth and slashed out at the misshapen giants. Blood spurted from deep gashes across the hulks' chests and dripped from the hamster's mouth.

As one, the umber hulks wavered on their flat feet. The loss of blood and the speed of Emil's poison sent them weakly to their knees. They fell to the deck, their arms and legs flailing helplessly, white foam bubbling rapidly from their gaping mouths.

Then they were still.

The warriors erupted with a cheer for their first victory of the War of the Cloakmaster. Emil waved gleefully at Teldin. "This is GhoTaa," he said, quickly, laughing. "I trained him myself."

Teldin shook his head, amazed at the little warrior's prowess, and smiled. "Good work, Emil," he shouted. "You keep surprising me."

Emil grinned broadly, and his face turned a bright red. "You should see what I can do with pigeons and weasel bats."

The hamster snorted and spat umber hulk blood onto the deck. Teldin stepped away, remembering the giant hamster that had once tried to eat him.

Emil laughed, but he and the warriors found they had no more time to congratulate themselves. The fighters of the halfling community rounded the open market and joined the human ranks.

As a combined army, they charged across the landing field at the Spelljammer's bow and passed around the council chambers, turning toward the neogi tower in the distance. The fighting had increased since their last report from the tower watch. Here on the starboard side, the skirmishes had broken out in full. The warriors ran past the bloody corpses of human and neogi alike, and helped defend several lone warriors who had been ambushed by neogi slaves and umber hulks.

They rounded the corner of the captain's tower. Teldin looked up briefly and wondered what, if anything, he could find inside to help him discover his answers. Then they were in the street between the tower and the goblin quarters.

Teldin ordered his squad to take the lead, and he and Djan sprinted for the squat neogi tower, visible in the near distance.

Something small and silver whistled through the air. The warrior to Teldin's left fell, a star of steel embedded in his head.

Then the street echoed with a high-pitched war cry, and Teldin's squad was surrounded by warriors clad from head to toe in red silk. There were about thirty of them. The remainder of CassaRoc's fighters were not far behind, but the strange combatants engaged Teldin's men immediately, baring wicked, curved blades and razor-sharp shurikens of steel. One of Teldin's warriors cried out "Shou!" then was struck down by the powerful kick of a red-garbed fighter. A single sword thrust quieted Teldin's man permanently.

Teldin knew little about the Shou, only that they were a race of oriental humans whose religious adherence to the Path made them deadly to anyone they considered an infidel. It was no wonder that they had never responded to Teldin's request of a treaty: they wanted the Spelljammer for themselves, to prove across the spheres that the holy Shou path was the true Path.

Djan quickly jumped into the fray, his sword singing through the air as he brought it down toward a Shou fighter. The shou's blade came up, and sparks flew as steel met steel.

Teldin whipped out his sword and started forward to aid his friend. Then his head buzzed with a warm feeling, a sense of urgency. Instinctively, he jerked back his head, and a shuriken whizzed just an inch past his face.

He spun around.

His antagonist wore a suit of black silk and a hood of scarlet. His sword gleamed in the chaotic light, and the man approached him cautiously. "You are the one," he said. The man's accent was strange, clipped as though the Common tongue were awkward to him. "Cloakmaster. You are not invisible to our wu jen."

Teldin knew that his disguise was then pointless. As the fighter's sword went up, Teldin took a defensive stance with his sword, and he felt his features return involuntarily to their original shapes. The Shou, he thought. They had the chance to be our allies. Now this. Just another obstacle keeping me from Cwelanas.

"Come on," Teldin said. "Let's get this over with. I have neogi to kill."

"Don't count on it," the masked fighter said, and he leaped toward Teldin, his sword a rapid blur of flashing steel.

As Djan locked into combat with his own assailant, Teldin parried and thrust up, blocking the Shou fighter's overhead thrust. The two warriors met with a ringing of steel, their blades locked together above their heads. The Shou lashed out with a foot and knocked one leg out from under Teldin. The blades disengaged. Teldin ducked under the Shou's blade and swung his sword out, to be thrust aside effortlessly. The Shou laughed.

Around him, Teldin's warriors were battered by the onslaught of the Shou. Djan successfully blocked the efforts of his opponent, but the contest was evenly matched between them. Despite the arrival of CassaRoc's lead warriors, the Shou fighters were expert in hand-to-hand combat and fought with a speed that Teldin found amazing. Half of his squad was already unconscious or bleeding, and the remaining Shou doubled up on his other warriors.

The leader, it appeared, had reserved Teldin for himself.

The Shou danced around Teldin with the practiced air of a panther toying with its prey. His sword flicked out to nick Teldin countless times on his cheeks and arms.

Anger built within Teldin like the white-hot flames of a gnomish furnace. His companions were falling around him, even as more of CassaRoc's warriors arrived.

He felt the familiar, cold-hot tingle of energy surround him like an enveloping blanket. Time seemed to slow; the fighter swung his sword with ever-decreasing speed, until it seemed to almost stop just a few inches from Teldin's face.

Then Teldin swung up with his sword. A shower of sparks erupted from the weapons' impact, then Teldin kicked out and sent the Shou fighter sprawling across the deck.

Slowly, the fighter sprang up, fury glinting in his dark eyes.

The cloak whipped around Teldin like a thing alive. The fighter pounced, his hands and feet cocked in positions of attack.

Then Teldin screamed inside. The cloak spread out, and whirling shurikens of pure energy shot out from the coruscating lining of the cloak. One star impaled the Shou in the palm of a hand; another burned deep into a thigh. The shurikens found their targets all across the fighter's body, in his torso, his arms. Wherever they hit, his flesh and clothes burned with the white heat of a sun.

The final shuriken shot out from the cloak like a blazing comet. The Shou assassin went down, a burning crater of smoking, cauterized flesh centered in his forehead. His eyes stared blankly into the endless flow. The energy of the cloak's shurikens faded into wisps of white smoke.

The remaining Shou fighters paused in midattack as their leader dropped stone dead to the deck. With renewed energy, CassaRoc's men pressed the attack and quickly felled half of them. Djan's opponent fell as a misplaced sword thrust was knocked aside by Djan's practiced block and the sharp point of Djan's blade tasted for the first time the blood of the Shou. Within a minute, the other Shou backed away individually, then decided to make an escape for the comparative safety between the close towers of the citadel region.

In retreat, the Shou threw their remaining shurikens at Teldin and his men and called out with angry, impotent threats of revenge. The humans' shields effortlessly knocked away the razor-sharp weapons. A dozen bolts shot from the warriors' crossbows, mostly missing their targets as the Shou wove singly through the buildings and disappeared. Two Shou were dropped with clean shots by a pair of Hancherback's halflings.

The alliance warriors quickly assessed themselves, then started again for the neogi tower. Only a handful of men were lost in the skirmish with the Shou, and Teldin knew-as did CassaRoc the Mighty-that before the war was over, much more Shou blood would be spilled, if not to gain the Spelljammer, then in simple revenge for the ambush upon Teldin and the loss of CassaRoc's men.

At the entrance to the neogi tower, the humans quickly dispatched the small squad of minotaurs left behind to secure the doors. Then the entrance was pummeled by CassaRoc's heavy battering ram. With a splintering groan, the doors broke open to reveal the darkness inside the neogi tower.

The fighting became furious as the humans swarmed inside and pressed their foes. The towering ogres inside the entrance chamber numbered about five, the minotaurs about ten. The butchered corpses of neogi and umber hulks littered the floor, together in death with the less numerous corpses of their enemies. Behind them, directing the fighting throughout the building, were five angry beholders. At sight of the assembled humans, the beholders floated quickly through the inner door and disappeared into the central corridor.

The entrance chamber was taken quickly, as the enemies were dispatched simply by the human alliance's strong numbers. Teldin pressed the attack into the tower's central hallway and ordered squads into each of the tower's six other chambers. "Find the elf!" Teldin shouted. "Bring her to me!"

The grimy walls, already dark with the spattering of neogi blood, became redder as the humans sliced into the battle between their enemies. Neogi blood pooled innocently with minotaur and ogre, and, inevitably, human.

Teldin crashed into the tower's most opulent chamber, Coh's study, by kicking open the door with his powerful legs. Inside, four neogi were torturing a beholder, one of the eye tyrants that had fled when the humans attacked the tower.

Teldin was a blur as he raced between the neogi, lashing out with his sharp sword to cleanly slice through their bony legs, to skewer one neogi through its round belly. The anger was hot in him, and his sword cut through the reptiles with unseen ferocity. Within minutes, three neogi lay dead in pools of their own black blood. The fourth huddled against the wall, blood oozing from twenty shallow wounds across its squat body, one segmented leg dangling helplessly by a shred. The tortured beholder lay dead on the floor, its great eye staring emptily up at its withered eyestalks.

The Cloakmaster's sword sliced through the air in front of the neogi. The eellike head snapped back in fear. "Coh," Teldin said. "I want him. Where is he?"

The hostage shot a furtive glance to a large, ornate box resting on a stone pedestal. The neogi began to laugh. "Coh is here not, meat. Shemeat you want taken is. Never will find her you, unless cloak is With a scream of rage, Teldin's sword plunged into the neogi's black neck. It's pointed tongue quivered as the beast gurgled in death and fell limply to the blood-stained floor.

Teldin examined the beholder the neogi had killed. Its huge eye was glazed over in death, and behind it was an open trapdoor. The Cloakmaster put it together instantly: the other beholders had used the trapdoor to escape-the same secret door Coh had used to smuggle Cwelanas secretly away. He slammed the trapdoor shut and spun around. Perhaps Coh used it to escape, too, he thought.

Teldin turned and walked over to the decorated box. Its edges were trimmed with gold, and its handle was studded with sapphires. He reached for the hinged door on the front and opened it.

He stepped back, his mouth open in horror.

The head that watched him had once been that of a human. The gray skin was stretched across its skull like ancient parchment, and, as Teldin watched, the sunken eyes blinked open. It saw Teldin and spoke to him with a soft voice tinged with both regret and ancient anger.

"I serve he whom you seek. He has taken the woman into the elven veins, and you will not find her."

"The veins," Teldin said. "You mean the warrens?"

"Give him the cloak, or all you love will die."

Teldin raised his sword. "Why does he want it so? If he gains the cloak, then everyone will die during the Dark Times."

"You are just as much a fool as my master predicted. This has nothing to do with the Dark Times. The cloak is the key! The cloak is what drew mage B'Laath'a to the Wanderer!

"The cloak is power incarnate! It is the Spelljammer itself! The Fool has promised-"

"The Fool?" Teldin shouted. "Coh is in with the Fool? Where is Cwelanas? Tell me!"

The gray head turned its eyes away, realizing it had already given away too much.

Teldin shouted once again for answers, but the head would not speak. He screamed in rage. His sword flashed, and he thrust the blade through the zombie's mouth so hard that the steel splintered through the back of the box. The zombie's dead eyes rolled up into its sockets. Then Teldin turned and strode out of the room.

The tower was theirs. As Teldin had defeated the cowering neogi in Coh's chambers, CassaRoc's warriors and the halfling fighters had overwhelmed the combined forces of the Beholder Alliance. Most of their enemies had escaped, probably to regroup later, but the beholders had done much of the humans' jobs for them, annihilating almost all of the neogi aboard the Spelljammer, even killing the great old master in its dank, bloody pit, along with its few premature hatchlings that had been nurtured inside its belly.

Teldin approached CassaRoc and Djan and sheathed his sword. "She's gone," Teldin said. "Coh has escaped, into the warr-"

He stopped suddenly, and his friends turned to watch. A hazy light was forming beside them, glowing reddish at the borders. The men took a step back, brandishing their weapons.

A shape formed inside the light and faced Teldin. Gaye Goldring appeared before them, still weak from her encounter with the Fool and the rats.

The warriors in the neogi tower stopped to see what was happening. Teldin walked toward her.

"Gaye," he said, unaware that her appearance was an astral projection, "are you really here?"

1 must warn you, Teldin, she said suddenly, of the Fool and his plans for the Spelljammer. He wants nothing less than complete control. He wants you Her telepathic voice seemed to strangle, and the room became dimmer, as though the light were being absorbed.

Darkness flickered around her, and three gray shapes formed around her, swirling out from dark cyclones of smoke. The room grew cold, and the warriors covered their ears as a wind sprang from nowhere, chilling them with an unnatural wail.

The shapes floated toward Gaye, their dark arms outstretched, surrounding her. Simultaneously, another shape appeared behind her, swirling with gray smoke, howling a scream of undying pain and rage that made several warriors fall to their knees.

The humans covered their ears at the cold pain that flooded through them. Teldin immediately reached out for the kender.

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."