She screamed as though the agony of killing Teldin was more than she could bear. The Cloakmaster grabbed her wrist and held her hand to her side. She screamed again and struggled hard against the guards. Na'Shee grabbed her from behind, pulling Cwelanas's shirt tightly against her body. The material stretched and exposed her flesh. The top button snapped off, pinging as it hit the floor.
Teldin, curious, stared at Cwelanas. 'Stop her,' he ordered the guards. 'Hold her still.'
The guards clutched her tightly, and slowly her fighting subsided. He came forward and lifted her tear- streaked face in his hand. 'Teldin,' she said unconsciously. She did not see him or anyone else; she was alone and adrift in the empty world of her mind. 'Teldin…'
He reached up and gently pulled aside the collar of her shirt. He took a deep breath. 'What is it?' CassaRoc asked. 'Come look.'
The warrior craned his neck forward. Above Cwelanas's right breast a spiked, colorful symbol had been tattooed. 'Recognize it?' asked CassaRoc.
Teldin nodded slowly. To the guards he said, 'Take her somewhere safe and have the healers examine her wrist.' To CassaRoc he said, 'You have a wizard? Clerics?'
He nodded. 'Leoster. We can get King Leoster to come from the Guild tower. But what is it? What does that mean?'
'She has been bewitched somehow,' Teldin said. 'She tried to kill me, but she didn't want to. Someone has forced her.' He gestured, and the guards took Cwelanas down the hall toward a cell. Teldin turned, his face grim.
'It's a mark of bondage,' the Cloakmaster said. 'I've seen something like it before… on the slaves of the neogi.'
Cwelanas was taken to a spare room, and guards were placed on her door. A healer tended her broken wrist with bandages and strong spells, while CassaRoc, in the absence of clerics who could help, sent immediately for His Royal Majesty, the Puissant and Sage Leoster IV, also known as the Silver Lion to his community in the Guild tower. 'Leoster is the best,' CassaRoc told Teldin as they closed Cwelanas in the room. 'If he cannot save her, then she cannot be saved.'
Within half an hour, Leoster came. The king of the Guild tower was little more than a frail old man whose life, like those of the Guild's other nobles, revolved around wizardry and hobbies. Leoster's was a large coin collection, which spanned the riches of the spheres.
But he was still a king and still a mage of considerable power, and CassaRoc knew that if Cwelanas could be cured of her mind control and an explanation discovered, Leoster was the wizard to do just that.
With his urns and potions, Leoster set to work. Cwelanas was pale and feverish, muttering incomprehensible sentences in her delirium, when Teldin and CassaRoc adjourned to the common room. The mage told them he needed time to work the poisons out of her. Poisons, Teldin thought. Killing.
'Everyone wants the Spelljammer*. Everyone wants this damned cloak! And everyone wants to kill me because of some ancient legend I have never even heard of!' Teldin slammed his fist on the table. CassaRoc's tankard of ale shuddered, spilling over the rim. 'When is it going to stop?'
CassaRoc blotted up the ale with a cloth. 'Calm down, Cloakmaster,' he said. 'Save your energy for your enemies.'
Teldin glared at him silently from across the table, then sat down and stared at the wall. CassaRoc quaffed his ale.
Teldin seldom became angry like this; usually he was too even tempered to explode in front of his friends, or to get carried away by strong emotion. But the anger had been building in him since they had come down to the common room, and the Cloakmaster's frustration at the attempts on his life over the past year or so- all for a gods-damned piece of cloth! — was boiling over.
'Why?' Teldin shouted. He slammed his fist down again.
'Why?'
'I don't know why!' CassaRoc shouted. 'Fear! Your enemies all want what you've got, so the Dark Times will not fall on them.'
Teldin settled back in the wooden chair and glared at the floor. 'I'm just so sick of it all,' he said to no one. 'I didn't come rushing into the flow because I wanted to. It was this!' He fingered the cloak. 'You know, it's not like I had much of a choice.' He paused and picked up a glass of cool water, drinking half of it in a single gulp. 'I've had friends betray me, friends die on me. Enemies have tried to kill me- people I didn't know and had never heard of. When is it going to stop?'
'It's not going to stop,' CassaRoc remarked. 'It's going to get worse.'
Teldin stared at him silently.
'Everybody knows you're here now. Everybody knows you're the Cloakmaster. And everybody wants your power. From what you've told me, it's been like this ever since you started your quest, and it won't end until you… well, do whatever you have to do on the Spelljammer.'
Teldin looked away. 'You're right.' he said. 'But how? What do I have to do? Is there anyone or anything that could help me, point me in the right direction? I need this quest over with. I need answers, and I need them before anyone else dies.'
'Or before you do.' CassaRoc shook his head and took a drink. Well, there is one place I can think of.'
'Where?'
CassaRoc grunted. 'The library tower. No one has been in there in my memory. There are a lot of stories built up about the place.'
'Such as?'
'Supposedly, all the accumulated journals and logs of the Spelljammer's captains and mages are collected there. They say the tower is protected, though.'
'Protected by whom?'
The warrior laughed. 'Not who. What. The story goes that Neridox, a wizard, sealed himself up in the library years ago. If anyone breaks in to plunder, Neridox's spirit is supposed to rise and attack all who enter.'
Teldin scratched his beard. 'But this is just a story, isn't it? You don't know any of this for sure?'
'Aye, just a story, but the library has remained sealed for as long as I remember. I wish there were a map we could use, instead, and follow that.'
Teldin stared off again. There was something he knew he should remember, something important…
The dream! He had dreamt in the night. Disjointed images of beings, like the Spelljammer, but much, much smaller; a burst of magic and energy; and she, Gaye Goldring, had come to him. The amulet had burned on his bare chest. She had given him a message… What was it?
The closest are not what they seem.
Cwelanas, he knew in a flash of insight. Gaye was warning me about Cwelanas.
The mark will show the trust.
Yes. Cwelanas, again, he believed. The mark proved to him that she was not acting with her own will, but was under the insidious command of the neogi. She could be trusted, he knew now, and he was instantly relieved that his love, this time, had not been misplaced.
There was a third message. What was it Gaye had said?
CassaRoc had said something about a map to follow.
Follow the woven heart.
'Follow the woven heart,' Teldin said. CassaRoc looked at him. 'Follow the woven heart,' he repeated.
'What in the hells of Areas does that mean?'
Teldin said, 'I'm not sure. I had a dream last night, before Cwelanas attacked me.'
'And?'
'I knew a kender once, long ago. She's the one who found this amulet. I dreamt about her. I think she was trying to give me a message. Two of the things she said have already come true. She tried to warn me of the attack, and she spoke of the slave tattoo. And she told me, 'Follow the woven heart.' '
CassaRoc grunted. 'Dreams can be powerful things. What do you think it means, a woven heart? Like sewing?'
Teldin shrugged. 'I don't know. The cloak, perhaps?' He ran the material through his fingers. 'I don't know all its properties. Maybe it could lead me to the ship's helm.'
