The Ultimate Helm

Chapter Thirty-Four

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 ships 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 he 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.