The Broken Sphere (21 page)

The pass was narrowing ahead of the ship, he saw, the valley floor rising in altitude until it merged with a high rampart of mountains two leagues or so directly ahead. He was running out of time.

Teldin tried to slow the ship further, managed to bring it down to little more than a walking speed. But each second of flight, he could feel the stress increase on the keel. The cracks in the heavy wood had spread and were on the verge of fracturing the ship’s “backbone” at any instant. The
Boundless
is doomed, he recognized, no matter what I do. The only question is, can I keep
us
alive? He let the big ship descend several hundred feet for a better view of the terrain.

The walls of the valley were precipitous – forty-five degrees or even steeper, he judged – covered with a thick blanket of trees. The only places where he could see gaps in the forest were where large outcroppings of red-brown rock jutted out of the mountainsides.

The trees will tear the bottom out of the hull, he thought, probably killing us. But if I hit one of those rock outcroppings, we’re definitely dead. He smiled mirthlessly. Yet again, circumstances seemed to be conspiring to force him onto a path he hated.

“Open space ahead!” Julia screamed.

Teldin focused his enhanced perception ahead of the squid ship.

Yes, she was right. A quarter of a league ahead, the right side of the pass leveled out, forming a kind of shoulder. For some reason, no trees were growing there, revealing a verdant meadow almost a hundred yards across. The grass – or whatever it was – seemed totally flat, without even any rolls or hummocks.

Perfect. He started to turn the ship around so that its bow pointed directly toward the meadow. Simultaneously, he let the vessel’s altitude creep down, while trying to decrease the speed even further.

Almost there. Just a few more ship-lengths, and he could set the
Boundless
down. The upper branches of the tallest trees whipped the underside of the hull. Even those minor impacts sent shudders through the tortured keel that Teldin could sense plainly. Just a hundred feet more …

And there was the meadow, right below the bow. Teldin tried to bring the ship to a hover, but as he applied the reverse force, he felt the sickening crack as the keel gave way. His control started to evaporate as the ship ceased to
be
a ship, becoming instead a broken-backed wreck. With the last vestige of control, he forced the ship’s bow down so it couldn’t overshoot and plow into the trees beyond.

The ram struck first, gouging a furrow in the soft soil of the meadow. Then the tip caught against something – a buried rock, perhaps – and the ram was torn clear away.

And the hull itself was down. The impact bowled Teldin off his feet, slammed him into the forward rail of the stern-castle, his head striking something with stunning force. Blackness welled up, threatened to take him again, but he fought it back with pure force of will. Through the ringing in his ears the Cloakmaster could hear cries of fear and pain from belowdecks and around him, and the scream of tortured wood. The ship jolted and jarred, each impact sending bolts of pain through Teldin’s body.

Then it was over. The power of the cloak faded, and Teldin was completely himself again – not the ship, just a very battered and bruised human being. With, a groan, he forced himself to his feet and looked around him.

The squid ship had torn a furrow right across the soft meadow, and had come to a stop only a short dagger cast from the trees on the far side. A couple of seconds later in pushing the bow down, Teldin realized, and they’d have slammed into those heavy trunks.

Apart from the missing ram, the squid ship looked relatively undamaged from Teldin’s vantage point on the after-deck. But that was an illusion, he knew. As his enhanced perception had faded, he’d felt the keel snap, and felt the heavy planking of the lower hull stave in as though it had no more strength than an eggshell. The
Boundless
was dead, without some kind of miracle, and Teldin wasn’t expecting any miracle any time soon.

He was alive, though, as were Julia, Lucinus, and Djan. The half-elf was bleeding from a nasty gash in his left eyebrow, but didn’t seem to notice. As Lucinus and Julia – both looking battered and bruised, but not seriously injured – disentangled themselves from each other and the forward railing, Djan took up his familiar position by the speaking tube. “Report,” he called down to Blossom.

After listening for a moment, he looked up at Teldin and gave a tired smile. “Heavy damage,” he reported, “lots of minor injuries, but nothing major. Amazing.” He shook his head. “I thought we were all dead. That was the most amazing piece of ship-handling I’ve ever seen.”

Teldin looked away, embarrassed. “We should check out the damage,” he said briskly, to change the subject. “Djan, Julia?”

Both officers followed the Cloakmaster down the ladder to the main deck, then down one more flight to the cargo deck. The hold was filled with acrid smoke, which was only now starting to dissipate. At least the fires were all out, Teldin saw.

He crouched by the hole the magical bolt had smashed in the deck. Roughly circular, it was almost a man’s height in diameter. As he looked down into it he could see an even larger hole in the hull planking below. He shook his head, looking up at Djan. “What
was
this?” he asked quietly.

The half-elf was silent for a moment. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he admitted at last. “The magical power involved was … well, it was staggering. Most attack spells I’m familiar with have ranges measured in hundreds of yards. What was our altitude when we were struck? Fifteen leagues? Twenty?”

“Something like that,” Teldin agreed.

“Then I take back any sarcastic comments I made about the impossibility of world-altering magic,” Djan announced dryly. “If your Juna were trying to convince me of their existence, I think they should consider the point made.”

“Was it the Juna?” Julia asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

Teldin didn’t answer immediately. What was it that the elves at the embassy on the Rock of Bral had told him? That the ruins of the “Star Folk’s” works are sometimes guarded with magic so powerful and old that it’s lost its meaning, and now strikes out in its madness at all who trespass? It was something like that, even though he couldn’t recall the exact words. And that could well describe what had happened to the
Boundless.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Perhaps. Or perhaps we triggered something mindless that they left behind.”

“How can we find out?” Julia pressed.

“I’d guess these Juna will make it clear to us if they actually exist,” Djan answered. “Not that I’m overly enthusiastic about meeting creatures who can fire fifteen-league-long bolts and cause mini-suns to chase ships out of the sky.”

Teldin shook his head impatiently. Discussions such as this weren’t going to do them any good. Whether or not Nex was home to living Juna, the knowledge wouldn’t be of any value unless the Cloakmaster could get off-planet again and act on the knowledge, would it? And that would require a functional ship.

“I’m going down into the bilges,” he announced. “Can someone give me a light?”

*****

“Can it be fixed?” Teldin asked.

Teldin, Djan, and Julia were sitting in the Cloakmaster’s cabin. Although the squid ship had come down on a fairly even keel, the cant to the deck was enough to be irritating. The small oil lamp suspended by chains from the overhead didn’t hang straight, and when he leaned back in his chair, Teldin kept thinking he was on the verge of going over backward. Overhead the Cloakmaster could hear the crew moving about, working on repairing the peripheral damage that the rigging had taken. Wasted effort, he thought glumly, unless we can do something about the hull and the keel.

“The hull, yes,” Djan replied at once. “The bow took a fiend’s beating, and then there’s the hole farther aft. But still, that’s just a matter of patching and reinforcing. I think the ship’s next landing would be its last, particularly if we put down on water, but I could guarantee you the hull would handle normal flight … if that were the only problem.

“Unfortunately, it isn’t,” the half-elf continued. “You saw the keel, Teldin. It’s split right through amidships, almost split just forward of the mainmast, with cracks just about everywhere else.” He shrugged. “If the damage was localized to one spot, I’d say let’s try strapping it and take our chances. But the way it is now, the moment it’s put under any stress – like trying to take off – it’s going to shatter into half a dozen pieces.”

“Can we replace it?” Teldin asked – then instantly knew from his comrades’ expressions that it was a stupid question.

“Replacing a keel’s not much different than building an entire ship,” Julia explained gently. “It takes facilities and resources we just don’t have here.”

“The
Boundless
will never fly again,” Djan concluded. “I’d stake my name on it.”

Teldin nodded slowly. He’d suspected as much from the moment he’d lowered himself into the squid ship’s bilges. Even to his relatively inexperienced eye, the damage had seemed just too extensive. “You may as well tell the crew to lay off,” he said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “Tell them to save their energy for …” For what? he asked himself. For building another ship? Julia had as much as said that was impossible. For making a life here, then?

As though she could sense his worry and mentally overhear his questions, Julia laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “We can think about all this later,” she pointed out reasonably. “You’re on Nex, where you wanted to be. Don’t you want to find out more about it before you start obsessing about getting off-planet again?”

He met her ironic smile with one of his own. “You’re right, of course,” he admitted. “Julia, Djan, would you care to join me for a little exploration?”

*****

The meadow felt springy and resilient – and undeniably, vibrantly alive – under his feet as Teldin dropped the last couple of feet from the rope ladder. How long has it been since I walked on good, honest grass? he asked himself. How long since I’ve had fertile earth under my feet, and not ship decks or paved city streets? Far, far too long. He crouched down, ran his fingers over the grass
 
…

To discover that it wasn’t grass, not as he thought of it at least: not single, narrow blades rising out of the earth. Instead, the “grass” here was composed of stalks from which sprouted a dozen tiny branches, each bearing tiny, almost circular leaves. Each plant looked, then, like a miniature tree standing about an inch tall. Still, he told himself, grass is as grass does. This is still a meadow.

He climbed back to his feet as the rest of the scouting party joined him. Julia and Djan were with him, of course, as was Beth-Abz – in human form, at the Cloakmaster’s order. They were accompanied by the half-orc Dargeth, plus another burly crewman, both armed with short swords and slings. The latter three had come along solely on Djan’s insistence. It hadn’t occurred to Teldin that they’d need any kind of defense. But of course it should have, he chided himself. Someone or something on the planet had tried – multiple times – to blast the
Boundless
out of space and kill them all, and that someone/something might try again at any moment, regardless of how peaceful this planet looked. Well, with the disguised beholder and two strong sword arms at his back, he felt as well protected as it was possible to be.

At the moment, though, it was all too easy to forget about the danger. The environment around him was so beautiful, so peaceful. At first glance, the steep-sided gorge could easily be part of a mountain range on Krynn or Toril, and the forest that enshrouded it wouldn’t look out of place on any of the other worlds Teldin had visited.

That was at first glance. On closer inspection, however, there were enough jarring elements to keep the Cloakmaster constantly aware that this world was quite different from any other he’d visited. There was the sky, first of all. The azure blue and pure-white clouds were familiar, but instead of the disk of a normal sun, the light came from half a dozen speeding mini-suns crisscrossing the sky.

Then, too, there was the forest itself. While speeding above the trees in the stricken squid ship, Teldin had thought they were standard deciduous trees – oaks, perhaps, or maybe larches. Now he could see that they didn’t match any tree species he was familiar with … if they could even be called trees at all, he added mentally. In fact, they looked like vastly larger versions of the “grass” plants he’d examined a few moments before. Their overall shape was reminiscent of normal trees, but that was about it. Instead of bark-covered trunks, he could see that the central member of each plant was as green as the leaves were, and much more fibrous-looking. To the touch, however, they felt rock-hard, without even the minuscule give of an old oak. If the
Boundless
had slammed into those trunks, he knew, the impact would have been the same as if the ship had struck a rock outcropping.

As he let the sensations wash over him, Teldin had to admit that everything was alien: the strange, sweet-sharp scents of unfamiliar flowers carried by the breeze; the chattering of unseen creatures in the foliage; even the way the grass-tree leaves rustled and clattered as gusts of wind struck them.

Now, why is this all hitting me so hard? Teldin asked himself. He’d been on new worlds before, worlds more different from Krynn than this place. Why was he so hypersensitive to the deviations?

Almost the instant he posed the question, the answer came to him. The Juna, he told himself. This isn’t just another new world; this is – maybe – the home of the Juna, who might well be “the creators” he’d been seeking.

His five companions were as edgy as he felt, Teldin could see. They had different reasons, no doubt; but still they seemed more alert, more sensitive to the slightest sensory cues, than he’d ever seen them before. When a bird – or
was
it a bird? – squealed in the distance, he saw them all jump, saw Dargeth bring up his sword, ready to thrust or parry. He almost told them all to relax, but then decided against it. Maybe I should be
more
ready for trouble, he mused, not they less.