spread across the spheres like a plague.'
'I don't know about that,' Teldin said. 'The Fool was once the captain, and he was rejected for his actions against life and peace.'
'That may be true,' Djan interjected, 'but the ones who want the Spelljammer have probably never been aboard. They probably know nothing of the Spelljammer's sentience. Even the populace knows nothing of it.'
Stardawn was silent throughout the discussion, frozen with anger. He knew all he needed now. He had known for a long time, since he had bought his information from the mad arcane, that a magical item was the key to becoming the Spelljammer's captain. But the item now was Teldin's cloak, and he would let Teldin lead him to the adytum, where he then would take the cloak for himself, and take the captaincy with it.
Teldin turned away from the discussion and opened a great door. A narrow set of ten stairs led down from the Armory to the roof of the Dark Tower. He started down, then waited below for the rest of the party to file out.
Teldin took the group across the roof of the Dark Tower to stand in the shadow of the Spelljammer's mammoth tail. The ship's body was laid out before them as though they were its lords. From here they could see bodies on the decks, the rubble caused by barrages from above. Screams and angry cries came from below, and they heard the twang of coiled springs as ballistae were firecLat the vessels in the flow around the ship.
The Cloakmaster reached out and ran his hand along the tail's broad, purplish surface, searching. His hand found a point at eye level, then Teldin stepped back and motioned for the others to follow. He pointed to a mottled area on the side of the tail. 'There,' he said, and he stood facing the tail, his arms outstretched.
The amulet at his neck pulsated with crackles of electricity, then cast out a coruscating burst of energy that bathed the tail in its blinding glow. In immediate response, the mottled area of the tail changed color, transforming from a speckled purple into a swirl of red and blue. The surface then twisted impossibly, as though its very flesh were transforming into liquid. It rippled away in a miasmic whirlpool of color, exposing a shifting, formless opening. Within, a staircase twisted organically, like a vein, stretching up into the tail.
Teldin crawled into the opening, crouched inside, and looked around. He moved to let in the others, and they started slowly up the narrow, chaotic staircase in single file. The stairs were translucent, unevenly formed of a chitinous, weblike material that seemed to be one long structure spiral-ing up„through the tail. The silence inside seemed palpable, almost holy, and they went steadily up the staircase without talking, feeling the weight of their search pressing on them.
The staircase opened at a bubblelike landing, an organic ovoid deep inside the Spelljammer's skin. In the wall before them was a roughly circular object. Folds of the Spelljammer's tough flesh pressed together into a doorway that appeared more like a closed wound than an entrance.
Teldin appraised the entrance and willed instinctively. His amulet flared once and shone the sign of the Juna upon the doorway. The folds of flesh peeled back as the doorway slowly dilated open in an invitation to the Cloakmaster.
The warriors gathered behind Teldin and looked inside. The iris opened onto a short entrance hall, then the hall widened into a hollow, organic pocket, the Spelljammer's adytum. Rough-hewn light crystals embedded in the walls flickered on silently. Three rough steps led to an uneven dais, upon which sat a simple, unadorned throne made of the Spelljammer's stony flesh.
This is it, Teldin thought. This is what my quest has been about.
Teldin stared at the throne for a few seconds, then took his first, tremulous step through the opening and stopped just inside the adytum.
A great shape suddenly blocked his view of the dais, and a huge hand slammed hard against the side of his head and sent him reeling across the room.
Teldin had just enough time to sit up on one arm. His head swam from the blow and images came to him, flashes of insight that showed him what he must do. 'Stay outside!' he shouted to the others.
CassaRoc yelled at him angrily. 'You can't fight this thing alonel'
'No!' Teldin said. 'You must stay there! You won't be attacked outside the adytuml This is my fight! You can do nothing for me!'
Then the Cloakmaster was lifted high above the floor and flung across the room. He collided heavily against the throne.
His head swam under the impact, and his side flared with bright pain. He reached up for the arm of the throne and hauled himself off the floor.
His eyes widened.
The guardian that lumbered toward him was the largest shivak he had seen. It had taken the form of an impossibly huge illithid. Where most mind flayers stood no more than seven feet tall, this shivak was fully fifteen. Its gray, leathery hide was stretched tight, like muscle, across its chest and down its powerful arms, and its tentacled face seemed frozen in a horrifying grimace of pure, unreasoning hatred.
This had been the last captain's greatest fear, Teldin realized, and he wondered what form the guardian shivak would take if there were to be a captain after him.
Understanding blossomed in the Cloakmaster's mind. This was the Spelljammer's final test of worthiness. All potential captains had to defeat the guardian of the adytum, a monstrous shivak in the form of the previous captain's worst fear, before they could claim the ship as their own. The last captain's face flickered behind his eyes, and Teldin saw Jokarin the Bold battling a shivak whose form was that of a huge, misshapen beholder. He saw the moment of bonding then, when the shivak was defeated by Jokarin's cunning use of a magical gauntlet and Jokarin took the throne. He saw Jokarin and the Spelljammer become, briefly, as one, and saw the seed from Jokarin's mind enter the consciousness of the Spelljammer and lay dormant, waiting, for the next challenger to come.
Then Teldin had no more time to think. The shivak, all the more threatening because it attacked in silence, reached out to take him between its enormous arms. Desperately, Teldin swung out blindly with his sword. One long finger of the shivak's right hand was severed and sent spinning to the floor.
The shivak held Teldin tightly in its iron grasp and lifted his feet from the floor. The sword dropped from his useless hand. The thing's tentacles, perhaps in a dim remembrance of a true mind flayer's need for human brains, twisted hungrily as it brought Teldin's face toward its obscene mouth.
He twisted in the shivak's arms and hammered its thick body with powerful kicks. He grunted with the effort, concentrating on coiling all his strength in his legs. He felt his feet pummel the shivak's stomach, then he managed to twist free one arm. He reached out and grabbed one tentacle from the monster's face and twisted it. The shivak stumbled in pain, then Teldin's other arm was free and he was pushing back on the shivak's head, trying to break its neck.
The thing's grip around his waist tightened. Teldin cried out, then gritted his teeth and pounded his fist repeatedly into the shivak's face. His fist sank once into its flesh as it yielded to Teldin's strength, and then he was free, dropping to the shivak's feet.
Teldin's sword was already in his hand when he leaped again; he swung it into the shivak's side. The blade thunked into the thing's leathery hide and carved a bloodless gouge into its waist. Then Teldin spun and chopped the sword into the shivak's chest and stomach. One gray tentacle went flying as Teldin's sword sliced across its face. Teldin brought his sword high and swung it down in a deadly arc, toward the shivak's heart. The thing moved in a blur and caught the blade between its huge hands. It bent back the polished steel until the sword snapped in half, then it cast the ragged metal shards to the floor and advanced on Teldin, destruction smoldering in its deep- set eyes.
In the entrance hall, Na'Shee fitted a bolt to her crossbow and took aim. CassaRoc held up his hand and pushed down the crossbow so that it pointed to the floor. 'No,' he said, 'Teldin's right. He has to defeat that thing by himself. I don't think anything we could do would help him anyway. It's his fight now.'
Stardawn overheard and smiled inwardly. The human had no chance against the shivak, anyone could see that. The monster was huge, a juggernaut of single-minded destruction. Good. He wanted this over, and the less help, the better. Then he could take the cloak from Teldin's bloody, battered body and take command of the Spelljammer himself.
The shivak walloped the Cloakmaster with a stony fist to his stomach. He flew back and hit the throne, stumbling to the floor. He pushed himself up, and the shivak halted, focusing its blank eyes at him fixedly.
Then pain was a living thing, growing like the fires of a star inside Teldin's mind, filling his sight with electric, blinding nothingness. Teldin fell to his knees, gasping. The guardian shivak was more powerful than he had known,
