His back arched in sudden, violent pain, bending him like a bow above the bunk, and thick black smoke roiled from his mouth and nose. Teldin released his grasp, feeling the intense heat building within the man's flesh.
'Cloakmaster,' Hath said, but his voice was a hiss, the telltale rasp and the broken syntax of a neogi.
'Cloakmaster,… elf hostage have we in place you find cannot. Save you must Cwelanassss, shemeat… precious is your cloak we need. Barter no. One chance only: cloak for meat. Find us you will. Soon do, before shared meat is by brood…' Then Hath collapsed onto the bed, his eyes gray with the heat of the black fire churning out of him. The smoke stopped as suddenly as it had started. His body caved in with a sickening sigh. CassaRoc felt the guard's wrist, then jerked his hand away from the intense heat. He looked at Teldin and shook his head. Teldin stood silently, then grunted and kicked the end table across the room. CassaRoc and the others watched him, almost sharing his loss. 'Neogi bastards!' Teldin shouted.
'I recognized the voice from council meetings. That was Master Coh. He's the one that's taken her,' informed CassaRoc.
He stroked his long beard and thought about it. 'I tell you, he has something to do with the attack. Coh is a black mage. I'd wager that he and the Fool are plotting something together.'
Teldin took a deep breath. He faced CassaRoc. 'No damned neogi is going to harm Cwelanas again,' he said. He placed his hand on the hilt of his sword. 'Alert Chaladar, Leoster, and our allies. Start getting the warriors together and arm them- arm them well.
'Break out the catapults. We're getting into this war far sooner than I had intended — but I'll be damned if I let Cwelanas die under the claws of the neogi.'
Chapter Seventeen
'… Many are the servants of evil. They are drawn to the flame of goodness like moths in the dark, and their mistress is the Queen of the Abyss…'
Far beneath the inhabited citadel that stretched across the back of the Spelljammer, the being once known as Romar, who was once a captain of the great ship many years ago, sat upon his bleached throne of bones. In a globe of sight floating above the floor the Fool watched the neogi community being attacked by the beholders and their vicious allies. He watched as the neogi were chased into their tower like the sadistic cowards he knew they were.
He gestured with a skeletal hand. The globe's view shifted, and he watched as the Cloakmaster shook an enchanted human in the Tower of Thought, and the guard erupted in black flame.
'Coh.' The Fool hated the sound of that disgusting neogi name.
He should not have been surprised, but he had had no idea that Coh could possibly have been that cunning. 'He has his own agenda,' the Fool spoke to himself. 'And he has nowhere else to run but to sanctuary.' He laughed. 'Here.'
His laughter echoed off the walls. 'But I have my own sweet agenda,' he said, 'and it does not call for a further alliance with a trained neogi. The woman will be mine, whether he knows it or not, and Coh…'He giggled madly, mocking the neogi master. 'And mine will neogi master be. Coh meat will be.'
The Fool rose from his throne, laughed, and kicked out at an undead rat, laid flat on its back. The corpse bounced off the wall. The Fool was still weak from the fledgling's psionic attack, but she would not be given a second chance to defeat him at his own work.
Oh, no.
'Gaeadrelle Goldring, the kender… oh, she will die, too. Oh, yes… a glorious, painful death, one especially suited for hurting me- me! — the one true captain…'
The Fool glowered angrily and screamed to himself.
'She will return… if only to help her precious Cloakmaster… and I will be ready to taste her fear…'He pondered a moment and grinned. 'Perhaps my… servants would enjoy the taste of her soft, raw flesh… her cold terror…'
He decided. 'The kender will be dealt with. But first, the neogi.
'Then, death for all… as I take the Spelljammer to its ultimate destiny… inside the fiery depths of the Broken Sphere.'
Even in his humiliation, the Fool laughed and laughed and laughed.
The Fool knew that Death, ultimately, was a cosmic comedian. And who better to be court jester to Death than the Fool?
Chapter Eighteen
'One shall come under the auspices of shadow. One shall come to deliver the darkness. One shall come whom all have wronged. One shall come without purpose. One shall find purpose. One shall be the Redeemer. All are One.'
'Ships ahoy!'
The shout from the roof echoed down through the Tower of Thought, and Teldin thought he could hear the cry repeated loudly from the other nearby towers of the Human Collective.
He stepped out of the tower's weapons room and started up the stone stairs to the roof. Outside he found CassaRoc and Chaladar staring up into the sky. CassaRoc raised a cylindrical tube to one eye and stared through it. He squinted against the bright light of the flow. 'I don't know,' he said to the paladin. 'Never seen their like before.'
Chaladar held out his hand. 'Let me see.'
CassaRoc handed him the tube, rimmed in brass. Chaladar aimed and peered through it for a long time. 'Vaguely Shou design, I think. The wings, or fins, are like those of dragons. I'm not sure, though. They're some of the largest vessels I've ever seen.'
Teldin came up behind them. 'The spyglass. Is it gnomish work?'
CassaRoc turned, surprised. 'We didn't hear you come up.' He nodded. 'Yep. Bought it off a gnome a few years back, around Evermeet. The only thing a gnome has ever designed that has a practical use, I'd say. Well worth the silver I paid.'
Teldin took the glass and hefted it. He had used one before, in another sphere. This one seemed more streamlined and advanced, a tube carved of wood, about a foot long, with glass disks affixed to both ends by rings of brass. He aimed at a distant tower and looked once, marveling at the device's seemingly magical ability to bring far objects into clear focus; then he aimed it toward the speck in the phlogiston where the two leaders had been looking.
In seconds, he spotted them. CassaRoc pointed out five other areas in the flow, where only distant specks could be seen against the swirling chaos. Teldin whistled.
In all, nineteen ships were closing on the Spelljammer. Six were deadly deathspiders and a mindspider- probably planning to rendezvous with B'Laath'a, Teldin surmised-and, far in the distance, were two incredibly huge vessels that Teldin could not identify, ships that resembled giant, finned centipedes. As they sailed, the ships' segmented hulls twisted as though worming their way through the flow. Beyond them, Teldin picked out three hammerships, an elven man-o-war, a squid ship, two nautiloids, a galleon, and three wasps.
