escaped, probably to regroup later, but the beholders had done much of the humans' jobs for them, annihilating almost all of the neogi aboard the Spelljammer, even killing the great old master in its dank, bloody pit, along with its few premature hatchlings that had been nurtured inside its belly.
Teldin approached CassaRoc and Djan and sheathed his sword. 'She's gone,' Teldin said. 'Coh has escaped, into the warr-'
He stopped suddenly, and his friends turned to watch. A hazy light was forming beside them, glowing reddish at the borders. The men took a step back, brandishing their weapons.
A shape formed inside the light and faced Teldin. Gaye Goldring appeared before them, still weak from her encounter with the Fool and the rats.
The warriors in the neogi tower stopped to see what was happening. Teldin walked toward her.
'Gaye,' he said, unaware that her appearance was an astral projection, 'are you really here?'
1 must warn you, Teldin, she said suddenly, of the Fool and his plans for the Spelljammer. He wants nothing less than complete control. He wants you Her telepathic voice seemed to strangle, and the room became dimmer, as though the light were being absorbed.
Darkness flickered around her, and three gray shapes formed around her, swirling out from dark cyclones of smoke. The room grew cold, and the warriors covered their ears as a wind sprang from nowhere, chilling them with an unnatural wail.
The shapes floated toward Gaye, their dark arms outstretched, surrounding her. Simultaneously, another shape appeared behind her, swirling with gray smoke, howling a scream of undying pain and rage that made several warriors fall to their knees.
The humans covered their ears at the cold pain that flooded through them. Teldin immediately reached out for the kender.
At once, Gaye and the apparitions disappeared before his eyes, an expression of terror frozen on her face as the undead closed on her.
The room was silent as the screams faded around them.
'That-that was a banshee,' Djan said. 'Very, very bad.
Teldin stared at where the kender had vanished.
'Gaye,' he said softly. 'Gaye.'
Chapter Nineteen
'… And, lo, the loculus shall remain even though I be lost in the Red Chamber. My spells are powerful and will last far longer than I. The Historie will be available until the end of things, waiting for the Son of the Architects to claim it as his own…'
The secret passageway the beholders had discovered in Coh's quarters led to a concealed exit across from the hulk tower. As the humans took the neogi tower and the fighting on the Spelljammer escalated between the races, the surviving ' beholders plunged into the tunnel and made their escape. The hidden exit opened near the beholder ruins, directly across from the neogi tower.
Once the beholders were inside, the monarch, Gray Eye, called for a war conference and quickly assessed the casualties. Two beholders had fallen: one to the four neogi, captured during the escape from the attacking humans, and the other, snapped in two by the powerful jaws of the neogi great old master as it thrashed mindlessly in hatred at its attackers. One beholder had lost an eyestalk to an umber hulk, and then, in anger, had ordered the ogre allies to dismember the hulk instandy.
Gray Eye's eyestalks twitched visibly in rage. The leader's ioun stones circled him crazily, reflecting his volcanic temper. 'Our primary enemies are defeated,' Gray Eye told the survivors. 'We were victorious, and our alliance has served its urpose: to do our warring for us, with a minimum of casualties to the beholders.
'If they have not yet been defeated by the humans, they soon will be-or the survivors will live to return to their towers and lick their wounds.'
Gray Eye floated quickly from side to side across his dais, as though he were pacing in thought. His teeth gnashed in anger. Then he faced his brethren and called to his second in command. 'Blehal, go to our allies. Convince them that the war must continue, and to bring out their reserves. We will all meet here within the hour.'
'But, Lord,' Blehal said, 'who shall I tell them we are attacking?'
Gray Eye smiled cruelly. His smaller eyestalks undulated like snakes above his milky great eye. 'This war is far from over. The beholders must reign supreme, or we will be left for dead when the Dark Times arrive. The victors of this war will own the Spelljammer, and I. intend for us to become the victors. As one mighty force, our alliance will prove deadly to our most despised enemies, the elves.'
The beholders glared balefully at their leader, drinking in his murderous threats. 'Soon we will toast our victory by drinking the blood of all our enemies.' Gray Eye spun to face Blehal. 'Go! Tell them to arm themselves for war!'
Blehal bobbed once in servitude and floated out of the room, two fellow beholders following closely behind him as protection. Gray Eye dismissed the others and floated silently above his dais, his mind filled with glorious dreams of victory and conquest.
It was not simply the Dark Times, though that was an unmatched impetus for his brethren to do his bidding. His purpose was more profound, for he knew the true nature of Teldin's cloak, and he wanted it for himself. Let the Dark Times come. What will it matter? I will have all the power I will ever need to survive-to rule over the universe! The Spelljammer will be my ultimate weapon.
In the beholder ruins, Gray Eye laughed softly to himself. His enemies would soon fall, and the cloak would be his.
He could already taste the sweetness of elf flesh on his tongue.
Chapter Twenty
'… All things, in time, age. All things, in time, become corrupt. The Wanderer is timeless, yet lives still on our physical plane and is subject to both physical and magical laws. Like all things, the Wanderer must change with time, and in no place is this aging more evident than in the areas known as the Warrens. Where once, legend tells us, flowed rivers of magic, now only cold winds blow like the breath of fiends, and men who explore there seldom return…' Davibruc, cleric, whose son was lost in the warrens; reign of Bender the Weaver.
Darkness materialized around her. The warm glow that emanated from her astral body flickered on the walls around her. It was a tunnel, and Gaye felt the chill of the warrens permeate her soul.
Shapes began to form in the air around her, and the sound of the banshee's plaintive moan rang through her, filling her with a nameless dread, a loneliness that she had never known. She felt herself weaken more as the spirits became more tangible, and then the specters and the banshee had her surrounded. The fear they engendered was almost palpable, and their cloud of terror enveloped her, pulling her astral form away from Teldin just as he had reached for her.
Gaye felt the claustrophobic darkness of the warrens become solid around her. She had been transported to the warrens, where the banshee's powers would not be weakened by the light of the phlogiston. Beyond, in the darkness that owned the warrens, she caught a vague glimpse of a neogi master and its enslaved umber hulk, disappearing into the blackness. A woman screamed… then she heard the rattling laughter of the master lich.
The Fool, she thought. These are his agents… his slaves. She knew without thinking that they had been sent as the Fool's revenge.
