grunted their approval. Their substitute leader, Torg Stoneater, rested his hand on the hilt of his mammoth battle- axe. 'We welcome the chance to fight with our allies, the minotaurs. The giants have been lazy for too long under the rule of Taja Deeplunder. She is more neutral in matters of war than we prefer. We crave battle. We crave the spilling of our enemies' blood.'
Gray Eye watched the giant with its opaque eye. 'You will have your chance soon, Stoneater. The battles have already begun across the ship, and we must strike against the neogi before the Cloakmaster brings about the Dark Times. If we hesitate, our forces will be the first to feel starvation under the rule of the humans.'
The assembled forces nodded in agreement. ShiCaga of the ogres stepped forward and said, 'Let's get on with it, then. Let's sign the damned thing.'
Gray Eye stared at her balefully. 'That, chieftess, is precisely what you shall do. You have all read the treaty.' The eye tyrant asked the ogre, 'Do you wish the honors?'
ShiCaga took the quill from the inkwell on the table and hurriedly signed her name. 'There,' she said, 'now let's draw some blood.'
Onehorn strode to the table and signed the treaty, then turned to Stoneater and handed him the quill. 'You honor us,' the minotaur said.
'Your leader was strong,' Stoneater remarked. 'He was originally of the hill giants, as you probably know. We respected his strength, as we respect yours.' The giant cast a quick glance at the beholders. 'There will be time later…' he whispered.
Onehorn nodded briskly and walked away. The giant signed the treaty, then threw the pen onto the table.
'We are done,' said Gray Eye. 'We are now the Beholder Alliance, and I promise you unconditional victory in our war against the neogi.
'Our resources are great, our blades are sharp, and our forces are mighty. Now… we must plan for battle. By the end of the day, our swords will be red with the cold blood of our enemies, and then our prize will be laid out before us and our forces will be unbeatable.
'The neogi will be dead. We will have nothing to fear from the Cloakmaster, and the Dark Times will never come.'
Building by building, Gaye explored the great ship. Her astral body floated unseen among the humans and the dwarves, the illithids and the halflings; through the open market she went, and above, through the ship's stores, and through all the floors and rooms of Leoster's Guild tower. She passed silently through the walls of the shivak terminal and the illithid tower and stayed for a while in the Citadel of Kova and studied the actions of the dwarves.
Although she had commanded invisibility to the people of the Spelljammer, she could see her own innate energies flowing about her, permeating her being with soft, golden light. Her robes, the robes of an acolyte, whispered around her as though in a spectral wind, and the belt that was her badge of accomplishment glowed from within the ancient symbols that had been affixed there.
Her psionics training was complete. Under the tutelage of the fal One Six Nine, she had become a master of psionics, of mental powers that seemed, to some, to be magical. She had long been apart from Teldin, a man she had come to love, and then had to leave. With One Six Nine, she had decided to seek her own destiny, as had the Cloakmaster, and it was then, in her final days of training, that her psionic abilities had shown her that their destinies were intertwined, that her trial by fire would take place, not by the fal's side, but millions of miles away, on a ship called the Spelljammer, and by the side of the Cloakmaster… Where she had always wanted to be. Invisible, she saw the batde begin between the ship's elves and goblins, as an imperious elf named Carrara, who bore a shield emblazoned with an elven eagle, ran her broadsword through a goblin named Krai. Then the forces were met on both sides, and she could sense the pain and the souls as blood was spilled; she took her leave and vanished through the walls of the goblin quarters, then back, into the Spelljammer's tail.
On her journey through the ship, she saw armies readying for battle, warriors practicing sword thrusts before mirrors. In meeting halls and in taverns she heard whispers of treachery, threats of war. She overheard words of hatred and watched weapons being sharpened and prepared. Over and over she heard talk of a myth, foretelling the coming of the Cloakmaster. In the chambers of the elves, the illithids, all the longest-lived races that populated the great ship, those who remembered the last Dark Times were filled with fear, for the Dark Times meant nothing but a long period of starvation for the weak, of interminable battles over food and supplies.
It was the coming of the Cloakmaster, she knew, that would bring war once again. Soon the decks of the Spelljammer would run red as the ship's various factions killed to take the cloak before the Cloakmaster could achieve his destiny. From somewhere across the universe, she shuddered. Soon her search through the Spelljammer would be complete. The astral form of Gaeadrelle Goldring, whose body lay in a deep trance several million miles away, in Herdspace, would soon return to the Spelljammer and to Teldin Moore, to Teldin the Cloakmaster, and help guide him to his destiny… A destiny she was not sure he would survive.
Chapter Eleven
'… It is not the answers that are important. It is the quest itself that defines its own significance. It is the courage to follow the course dictated by your most secret, innermost needs, and not a course directed by your base desires or follies. When you complete a quest, you have found yourself…'
Leoster IV, king of the Guild tower, stayed with Cwelanas for more than three hours- time spent purging the noxious evils that had been twisted throughout Cwelanas's mind.
The damage to her mind was undeniably the work of a powerful neogi mage; the bright tattoo was proof enough of neogi handiwork, but its placement was unnecessary; the tattoo was nonfunctional, simply a sign of the black mage's sadistic ego and his hatred for humanity.
At first, Cwelanas was restrained to the bed with ropes, and her injured arm was strapped to her stomach. Later, Leoster kept her calm with spells and absorbed some of her pain with his own considerable empathic skills. He felt her horror blossom like a blood-red pinpoint of fire as he saw what the neogi had put Cwelanas through, as he felt her mind being raped by the neogi and twisted to murder the man she loved.
Leoster screamed out with her once, tied by her pain and fear. The guards rushed in, thinking the neogi spy had done something horrible to the old man, and they gaped at the arcane sigils drawn upon the walls in what looked like blood and chalk, at the intricate patterns etched in saltpeter and ground bones upon the floor, at the flickering balls of light floating brightly at her head and hands and feet. Leoster, drenched with sweat, seemed feral, no longer a man born of nobility, the head of a royal house. His body was taut and shivering with the strain of sucking the evils from Cwelanas's soul. He stared at the guards and shouted through bared teeth, 'Get out! Get out now, or she will be lost to us!'
The guards backed out slowly, staring at the elf's half-closed eyes, swirling inside with a pale blue mist. They closed the door behind them, and stood outside with their swords ready. Never again would they consider Leoster anything less than a true king.
Leoster came out a long time later. His face was drawn and pale, seemingly a decade older than when he had gone into her room. But he stood proudly, confident that the elf had been saved. Under his care, her seizures of murderous rage had been quelled, and he had put her under a spell of sleep, so that his magic could more easily work its way through her mind and cleanse her of all evil influence.
Teldin paced outside the door. Leoster shook his head, beaded with sweat. 'They did their work on her, I grant you, Cloakmaster. For a while there, I thought she would be lost forever.'
He looked into Teldin's face. 'Part of her didn't want to live, not after what she tried to do to you. You'll need to take care of that, I think. I've done all I can do, all anyone can do. Her elven strength helped her. If she had been human, I doubt she would have survived the neogi magic.'
He placed a hand on Teldin's shoulder. 'Now, if you love her- and if these old eyes of mine can still see right,
