"The Broken Sphere" - читать интересную книгу автора (Findley Nigel)

Chapter Fifteen

Teldin Moore drove the nautiloid outward from the vicinity of Garrash, toward the boundary of the crystal sphere, at the maximum speed the ultimate helm could manage. He sat in the single human-sized chair in the captain's day room. Through the wraparound perception of the cloak he saw the crippled squid ship falling rapidly away behind them.

There'd been a couple of tense moments as the arcane's mercenary crew had filed aboard the wrecked Boundless. Even though they were unarmed and facing the weapons of Teldin's crew-and even though their employer, T'k'Ress, had specifically ordered them to go peacefully-Teldin could hardly believe it when all were aboard and he backed the nautiloid's ram out of the squid ship's hull.

For a moment, Teldin felt a twinge of guilt at marooning the arcane and its men aboard a ship that might never sail again. But the emotion was fleeting; all he had to do was remember the faces of his dead comrades-and, particularly, Julia's peaceful, bloodless countenance-and his regrets evaporated like a snowball thrown into a sun.

Through his omnipresent senses the Cloakmaster saw Djan climbing the ladder to join him in the small day room. He smiled at his friend. "How's the crew?" he asked.

"Adapting as well as can be expected," the half-elf responded. "We can maneuver, but we don't have the men to fight with this ship."

Teldin nodded. Crewing even one weapon would take too many men away from more vital duties. "We'll just have to stay out of trouble, then."

Djan nodded. He didn't say anything else immediately, but neither did he make any move to leave. On his face Teldin saw the expression that he'd come to associate with unpleasant thoughts. "Out with it," he told his friend at last.

The half-elf sighed and seated himself on the edge of the map table. "That was too easy," he said softly. "You know that, don't you?"

Teldin nodded unwillingly. He'd been thinking the same thing. The monopoly that the arcane, as a race, possessed over spelljamming technology was of almost inconceivable value. Yet T'k'Ress had given Teldin a means of finding the Spelljammer-and thus potentially destroying that centuries-old monopoly-while putting up virtually no fight. Certainly, Teldin had threatened the creature with torture and death, but even a modicum of resistance would have shown his threats to have been empty bluff.

Even if T'k'Ress had utterly believed that Teldin would kill it, surely the magnitude of the loss to its race if the monopoly were destroyed would be reason enough to sacrifice itself. And even if the creature had no loyalty to any beyond itself, it must have realized that destroying the monopoly would earn itself the eternal enmity-and probably the vengeance-of every member of its race. It just didn't make sense…

Unless the means that it gave Teldin to find the Spelljammer was flawed in some way.

He looked over at the milky glow of the modified planetary locator. The technomagical device still worked; it still showed the glowing matrix of the loomweave. There had to be something he was missing, but what?

"I know it was too easy," he said, echoing Djan's words, "but what else could I do?"

*****

Via his cloak-mediated senses Teldin could see the inner surface of the Vistaspace crystal sphere like an infinite black plane a few leagues ahead of the nautiloid. Below, in the helm compartment on the scout deck, he knew that Djan was preparing to use the passage device that T'k'Ress had left behind on the vessel. The Cloakmaster thanked the gods that they had this arcane device. Without it-and without a mage capable of opening a portal with his own magic- they'd have been trapped within Vistaspace.

"Ready to make passage." Even though the half-elf was a deck below, and pitching his voice at a conversational level, Teldin could hear him clearly, thanks to the cloak. "Flow stations. Captain?"

Teldin called down confirmation. "Open the portal."

He felt a strange shiver in the power of the ultimate helm as his friend triggered the passage device. Ahead of the nautiloid, the portal flared into being, quickly expanding to more than a bowshot in diameter. Through the lightning-limned circle Teldin could see the curdled colors of the Flow. He tapped only a fraction of the ultimate helm's power, and the spiral-hulled vessel shot through the opening into the phlogiston. As soon as they were through, the portal closed behind them.

"Passage successful," Djan called up, needlessly.

The Cloakmaster felt tingles of anticipation shoot through his nerves. They were out of Vistaspace, into the infinity of the Flow. Next stop… the Broken Sphere. He shifted his gaze to the modified planetary locator, to read from its surface the condition of the loomweave, to see on what course he should set sail.

The crystal surface was blank.

He virtually leaped out of his chair and dashed across the compartment to the pedestal. Yes, the surface was totally blank. The twisting matrix of colors had vanished. Even the milky glow that he associated with the device's operation was gone. "Djan!" he yelled.

The half-elf was up the ladder and beside him in a moment. He stared down at the blank, featureless display. "Now we know why it was so easy," he said quietly.

Without turning, Teldin reached behind him and dragged over the chair. He slumped down into it. "Now we know," he echoed dully.

He felt as though he'd been plunged into a black, cloying fog of depression. Oh, logically he knew he was no worse off than before T'k'Ress and the nautiloid had put in their appearance. In fact, he was better off, because he'd rid the crew of traitors.

But it felt so much worse. He'd been almost euphoric. Finally he knew how to find the Spelljammer! That knowledge, and the hope it brought with it, had been wrested away from him by the arcane's machinations. Now we know why it was so easy, he thought again. T'k'Ress knew the planetary locator wouldn't work in the Flow…

And why should it? he realized. It was a planetary locator, after all, and you only found planets within crystal spheres.

So, what was he to do now?

Part of him wanted to turn the nautiloid around, to make best possible time to the crippled Boundless, and follow through with the threats he'd made to T'k'Ress. Part of him wanted to give up, here and now.

He shook his head. Neither option was attractive.

He glared at the inert crystal-topped pedestal. Maybe there was some way to fix it, he thought suddenly, or modify it so that it would work in the phlogiston. After all, it worked by detecting folds and wrinkles in the loomweave, and both T'k'Ress and Zat had implied that the loomweave existed in the Flow as well as within crystal spheres. Maybe if he could figure out how the device worked…

But how?

The cloak, why not? The ultimate helm gave him omnipresent vision when he used it to drive a ship. Wasn't it possible-remotely possible-that it would let him look inside this magical pedestal and see how it worked? It was worth a try.

The Cloakmaster took a slow, calming breath and let the tension flow out of his muscles like water out of a vessel. He mentally reached out to the ultimate helm and felt the artifact's power stir in response. He focused his attention on the dark pedestal of the planetary locator, trying to reach out with the cloak's arcane senses. Power glowed and throbbed around his shoulders.

Suddenly, it glowed and pulsed against his chest as well. The bronze amulet, on its chain, bloomed with energy. Although his physical senses knew the object wasn't changing size, his new nonphysical senses told him that it was swelling as it filled with power drawn from the cloak. The power of the amulet flashed brighter-invisible to his eyes, but easily discernible to his mind-and arced over to the planetary detector. To Teldin's amazement, the crystal display surface burst to life again, writhing and twisting with a colored representation of the loomweave.

The Cloakmaster turned a triumphant smile on his friend. "Djan," he said, his voice choked with conflicting emotions, "get the crew to their stations. We sail."

With an answering smile, the half-elf jumped to with a will.

*****

The Cloakmaster ran his fingers delicately over the smooth surface of the planetary locator-the sphere detector, as he'd come to think of it. The display was more complex than he'd ever seen it, more cluttered. According to the device, the Flow before the ship was filled with warps and folds in the loomweave-secondary eddies in the paramagnetic gradient, as Zat would style it. On the crystal display, the eddies appeared as knots and vortices in the dull red mesh that was the loomweave, glowing yellow with an intensity that represented their amplitude. Today, the whole display seemed to burn with yellow brilliance.

We're almost there, he told himself.

It had been a long journey from Vistaspace. At first, the Cloakmaster had wanted to drive the nautiloid-renamed the Julia-straight on, following the rippled loomweave to the Broken Sphere without any delay. Djan, however, had eventually convinced him of the need to resupply and rearm. Teldin had resented the holdup, but had to admit to the necessity. At the maximum limit of the ultimate helm's power, he'd driven the Julia through the phlogiston to the crystal sphere of Primespace, where the half-elf knew of a mercantile post near the edge of the system.

Both Teldin and Djan had been a little nervous about cruising up to the outpost in a nautiloid; neither knew what kind of reception illithid vessels could expect in Primespace. As it turned out, their worries were baseless. We probably could just as well have sailed up in a neogi deathspider, the Cloak-master had thought at the time, for all the attention the merchants paid to the nautiloid, and to the contrast between ship type and crew. They'd simply filled the Julia's orders of food and other supplies, accepting without question Teldin's elven letter of credit-the same letter he'd used to buy the Boundless. While the Cloakmaster had supervised stowing the merchandise, Djan had frequented the outpost's bars and hiring halls, selecting new crew members. As the new hires had trooped on board, Teldin had found himself scrutinizing each one closely, as if he could detect in their faces some sign of treachery. Foolishness, of course, he'd told himself; I didn't see anything untoward in the faces of Dargeth or Lucinus.

At the time, he hadn't fully agreed with Djan that they needed to replace the losses in the Boundless's crew. After all, he'd told himself, they'd made it to Primespace without any difficulties, hadn't they?

But when the Julia had set sail again with a crew of fifteen-enough sailors to fully man all the ship's stations- he'd had to admit that it definitely did make life easier. For one thing, among the new hires were two helmsmen to spell Teldin.

Where had T'k'Ress acquired the nautiloid? he'd wondered many times. The ship was equipped with a normal major helm, rather than with the series helm or pool helm typical of illithid vessels. Well, he'd told himself at last, I'll probably never know, and it doesn't matter anyway.

Of course, Teldin still had to use the ultimate helm, in combination with the amulet, to get the planetary locator to function, but at least now the Julia could make headway while he slept.

He was almost at the end of his journey, he told himself. It had taken them more than ninety days to get this far, but they were almost there. He glanced again at the crystal display. Yes, he thought, it can't be much longer now.

With a sigh, he released the power of the cloak and saw the crystal display fade once more to dormancy. He climbed down the ladder from the command deck to the scout deck, and from there to the bridge deck. He headed forward, out onto the broad, wraparound gallery that was the upper battle station. Here were mounted three of the Julia's ballistae-currently unmanned and unloaded, yet still looking severe and lethal silhouetted against the light of the Flow. The Cloakmaster found himself drawn to the forward rail. There he rested his forearms on its top and stared out into the phlogiston.

I've never seen anything this beautiful, he told himself.

The spiral-hulled ship was in the midst of a "pearl cluster." All around it, hanging against the phlogiston backdrop, were crystal spheres-half a dozen of them separated by distances Jess than the diameter of a single sphere. The iridescent surface of each sphere reflected curved, distorted images of other spheres-reflections of reflections of reflections, until it was almost possible to believe the "pearl cluster" was infinite in extent.

Teldin smiled, remembering his reaction-and that of everyone else aboard-when they'd first entered the cluster.

Claustrophobia, bordering on unreasoning terror, had been the order of the day. Passing between colossal crystal spheres that hung in the Void, it seemed that the titanic "pearls" had to fall sooner or later-probably sooner-crushing the infinitesimal speck that was the Julia. Crew members found it almost impossible to step out onto one of the nautiloid's open decks, and even a glance out one of the red-glass portholes would often prompt a fit of shivering. Teldin had found himself glad that the illithid-designed vessel was almost fully enclosed, sheltering its inhabitants from the terrifying spectacle.

The real problem had been the helmsmen-Corontea and Lilith, both human women. When on the helm, the wraparound perception made it impossible for them to ignore the spectacle of the pearl cluster, and the sense of calm that the magical device usually instilled was barely enough to counteract the atavistic terror.

Fortunately that had faded with time-and not that much time either. It was amazing, Teldin mused, just how adaptable humans and demihumans were. In a matter of only a couple of days, the crew had moved from uncontrollable fear of the vista to an equally uncontrollable fascination with it. Most of the off-duty crewmen spent much of their time on the various battle stations or at observation posts, staring out in wonder, and even those who were on duty kept finding excuses to frequent the same places. The Cloakmaster shook his head in wry amusement. And here I am, he reminded himself, doing exactly the same thing.

He drew a deep breath and held it. He ran a quick inventory of his feelings. There were wonder, certainly, and anticipation. But mixed with those emotions was a strong sense of satisfaction.

I'm near, he told himself firmly, near the end of the voyage. Near the end of the quest' Who knew? Even though he wasn't there yet, he had to give himself credit for getting this far. And, even if he were to die tomorrow, he had to admit that it might be worth it just to have seen the pearl cluster from the inside.

He looked around him, for a moment extending the cloak's enhanced perception. This was, truly, a place scaled for the gods. It was easy to forget just how large the "pearls" were, to forget that they were whole crystal spheres that would take a spelljammer months to cross, separated by distances that could be crossed only in days of full-speed travel. In a place such as this, faced with this kind of spectacle, how could anyone consider himself-or his actions-to be significant in the grand scheme? Everyone should see this once in his life, he told himself, just to put it all in perspective.

He felt a presence beside him and glanced to his right. Djan was leaning on the rail with him, an innocent smile of wonder on his face as the half-elf stared out at the vista, it's worth it," his friend said softly, "if only for this."

Teldin Moore nodded his agreement.

*****

Journey's end, the Cloakmaster told himself.

The pearl cluster was twenty-three days behind the Julia-still clearly visible, of course, though now the crystal sphere really did look no larger than pearls. As Teldin's will brought the magical trine-cloak, amulet, and locator-to life, the crystal display was a riot of yellow, so brilliant in places that it burned almost white. This region of the Flow literally churned with folds and ripples in the loomweave- like the echoes of a mighty explosion, Teldin thought, still ringing through the fabric of the universe.

He was here at last, at the center of all, between the pearl clusters. According to the myths of a dozen peoples, this was where the universe as he knew it had begun, millennia upon millennia ago. The One Egg. The Cosmic Egg. The Broken Sphere.

It actually existed, he told himself for the thousandth time. And if the myths were right about that, were they right about other things as well? That this was the origin of everything? And that this was the origin of the Spelljammer?

The shards of the Broken Sphere hung in the phlogiston around the nautiloid. Huge-unimaginably huge-jagged-edged fragments of crystal, they reflected the turbulent light of the Flow.

It was almost impossible to estimate their size. The smallest was probably thousands of leagues across, Teldin guessed, while the largest was maybe millions. To the naked eye, they seemed motionless against the phlogiston backdrop, but Djan had told him that measurements showed they were actually tumbling slowly, taking decades or centuries to complete a single rotation.

When the Cloakmaster had imagined the shards of the Broken Sphere, he'd pictured them as night black on one side, pearllike on the other. In fact, however, he was wrong on both counts. Both surfaces of the shards resembled frosted glass, or-a better description-a mirror covered with steam or mist. They reflected light, but images in them were blurred, indistinct, not sharp-edged at all.

Were they always like this? he wondered. When the crystal sphere was intact, was its interior frosted, reflecting the light of its sun? Or was this some consequence of the shattering- of the hatching of the Cosmic Egg?

And that thought raised the central question: just what had caused the One Egg to "hatch," the crystal sphere to break? What unimaginable force could have burst it asunder?

He leaned against the rail of the upper battle station, staring at the shards. Conflicting emotions warred in his chest. Sadness-that was definitely part of his emotional landscape. A sense of total and utter devastation. This had once been an intact sphere, like the one enclosing Krynn, his home. When it shattered, everything within it must have been destroyed. Here, floating in the midst of the largest graveyard that the mind could conceive, how could anyone not feel sadness?

Yet, too, there was a sense of hope, of newness-of creation, or perhaps rebirth. The Cloakmaster didn't know quite where these emotions came from, but they were impossible to ignore. Perhaps they were right, he mused, all of them: Zat, the People, those who wrote the books in the Great Archive. Perhaps the Broken Sphere is the Cosmic Egg, the origin of all.

Whether or not that was true, whether the Broken Sphere was a beginning or an ending, one thing was undeniable: it was beautiful, wondrous, awe-inspiring. His eyes suddenly burned with unshed tears, and grief tore at his throat. Julia should be here to see this, not just the ship that bore her name.

"Ship ahoy!" The call from the starboard lookout, stationed in the observation gallery where Teldin had captured T'k'Ress, echoed through the ship.

The Cloakmaster swallowed hard and rubbed roughly at his eyes with the back of a hand. He hurried around the battle station until he could see the observation gallery, level with his own position. "Where?" he called.

"Low on the starboard bow," the lookout replied, pointing.

Teldin looked to where the man indicated, below the plane of the Julia, to the right of its twisted ram. Yes, there it was, a black shape against the swirls of the phlogiston. A smooth, curvilinear shape-gracefully downswept wings, a tail that arched up and over the flat dorsal surface…

The Spelljammer!

As realization struck him, Teldin Moore felt the cloak around his shoulders flare to life. Brilliance washed around him, a hard, brittle nimbus of blue-white light he'd never seen before. The amulet, suspended around his neck on its chain, throbbed and pulsed against his chest. For an instant, unbidden, an image of the Julia itself-distant and tiny against the crystal shards-filled his mind. He knew that he was seeing himself, through the perceptions of the Spelljammer. Then the image was gone.

Supernally heightened perception lingered, however. He drew a breath and felt the air chill his throat and his chest. He felt the oxygen absorb across the membranes of his lungs and spread into his bloodstream. The palms of his hands could feel the grain of the wooden rail that he grasped, could sense every detail of its fibrous structure.

He could sense every element of his own structure as well-every muscle fiber, every nerve. His skin was unnaturally sensitive, feeling the complexity of the fabric's weave as his clothes brushed against it.

"Teldin, what… ?"

He turned slowly to see Djan skid to a halt on the battle station.

It was as if he'd opened his eyes for the first time, the Cloakmaster thought, was truly seeing for the first time. He could see every detail of his friend-every hair on the half-elf s head, every pore in his skin, as a distinct element. And more: it was as if he could see deep within him as well, down into his soul. Djan's emotions washed over him, became one with his own…

Then it was over. The transcendence, the epiphany, could only have lasted a few moments, but, subjectively, it could have lasted for years, a lifetime, an eternity. The blue-white nimbus faded, as did the Cloakmaster's hyperacute senses, but the calmness-the sense of centeredness, of peace, remained.

He smiled at Djan, a smile of wonder. He pointed forward and down. "It's there," he said quietly, calmly. "The Spelljammer. I've found it at last."

The half-elf dashed to the rail and stared in the direction that Teldin had indicated. A smile spread across his face-a tentative smile, though. With the last remnant of his enhanced perception, the Cloakmaster sensed his friend's mixed wonder and trepidation.

"I see it," Djan confirmed. "What do you want to do?"

"Bring us closer," Teldin said simply. "Close with the Spelljammer."

As Djan sprinted into the ship to relay the order, the Cloakmaster turned back to stare at the object of his quest.

The great manta ship had already maneuvered, he saw at once. Rather than viewing it from the side and slightly above, he now looked full onto the Spelljammer's bow. The mysterious vessel was closing with him.

Sudden fear jabbed at his heart and throat. It was closing fast-already traveling faster than any vessel had a right to, and still accelerating. Against the chaotic backdrop of the Flow, the dark shape swelled alarmingly.

An attack run! With horrible clarity, he knew: the Spelljammer was attacking the nautiloid.

Why? He wore the ultimate helm, didn't he?

But, then, weren't there other ultimate helms in the universe, other contenders for the great ship?

What if someone else had reached the Spelljammer first, had taken control of it? And what if the new captain's first priority was to eliminate all potential rivals-among them Teldin Moore?

"Battle stations!" His scream was so loud that it tore his throat. He was unable to wrench his gaze from the onrushing world-sized vessel.

"Evasive action!" he ordered, but he knew it was already too late.