though the fact that it flashed through the sky beneath the clouds went unnoticed by Teldin. Then the spark turned, suddenly shifting more in his direction.
Stars don’t dart about, Teldin realized, his curiosity suddenly piqued. The spark kept moving, jigging slightly this way, then that, like a tadpole in a stream, while all the time holding to an almost straight line toward Teldin. The more he watched, the larger and faster the light grew. Teldin thought he could almost hear a hissing noise, like a drop of water skittering in a hot skillet.
The imaginary sound grew louder, now more like a redhot stone cast in a pot, then changing again as deeper rumbles sounded beneath the popping hiss. Weak echoes came back to Teldin from the hills of his small valley. The spark had become a glowing coal surrounded by a fiery nimbus, almost the size of brilliant Solinari at full.
Teldin stood watching, waiting for the thing to change course again. It did not heed his wishes and instead bore downward, resolving into a great, dark shape, like a tapered oval, silhouetted by sparkling points and tongues of flame
Teldin abruptly realized that it was plunging straight toward where he stood dumbfounded, bucket in hand. The yeoman squinted at the thing that charged out of the sky, bright enough now to hurt his eyes. A great jutting beak and bulging, glowing eyes clearly marked it as some kind of maleficent beast. Gigantic wings, billowing with fire, flared out from the sides and trailed showers of fiery sparks. A roaring filled the air over the silent farm, like the teeth-grating scream of an enraged fiend.
“Paladine’s blood!” swore Teldin as his amazement wore off and he saw doom descending. Instinctively he threw up one arm to shield himself. The bucket dropped, and with his other hand he groped about for the hoe, a poor weapon at best. The flaming beast still bore down from the sky, relentless in its approach.
Self-preservation finally overcame inertia, and Teldin flung himself to the side, springing and stumbling to evade the creature’s charge. Leaping from the porch, his hoe in hand, Teldin hit the ground, tripped over a root, pitched forward, and rolled across the dirt yard. The goat, waiting to be milked, ran with terrified bleats as Teldin, dirt-smeared and panting, scrambled to his feet. The farmer twisted around to see if the fiery beast still pursued him.
All thoughts were shattered by a crackling screech as the monstrous, dark underbelly scraped across the field. The beast smashed into the ground, not slowing in the least for its landing. The great bulk plowed through the melons, throwing up dirt like a plow cutting a furrow. Vines and fruit were gouged away. Under its driving landing, the earth shuddered, as if the soil were struck by Reorx’s hammer itself.
The shock wave blasted Teldin with a hail of pebbles and dust. The earth heaved under his feet
In the field above, the thing from the Abyss rebounded from its initial impact until it was almost airborne again. Melon vines hung from the splintered underbelly, the plants’ roots desperately clutching to the earth as if they were trying to entwine the charging beast in their grasp. The creature’s broad beak tore through the slender trees in front of the house, shattering the trunks in grinding howls that ended in cracking explosions. As one of the flaming wings passed overhead, an arc of sparks cascaded down, and hot embers singed Teldin’s back through his wet shirt. Other coals extinguished themselves with a quick hiss in the muddied stream.
From where he lay sprawled, it looked to Teldin as if the thing, beast or whatever, might get itself airborne once more. The shape’s ponderous bulk hovered over the farmhouse’s shingled roof, struggling to break the bonds of gravity.
The illusion was shattered by a rippling series of explosions, like a giant striking stones together, from somewhere deep within the thing. The great curved shape trembled. There was another single roar, and the side burst open in a gout of flame, blasting shards across the farmyard. In the brief moment that the conflagration illuminated the sky, Teldin had the image of a great ship, some winged ocean vessel, its planking shattered and broken, hovering in the air over his house. In that same second, the burning tongue
flared toward him, washing his face in roasting heat. Jagged wooden splinters lanced the bank around Teldin while flaming embers once again rained from above.
Mindful of injury, Teldin pressed back into the stream, the warm mud squeezing up around his chest, the water running over his back. Above he could hear a wood- shearing roar as the ship lurched downward, crushing the roof of his house. The fieldstone chimney, built by his father, collapsed as the old rafters gave way without a fight. Only Grandfather’s strong log walls resisted, for a moment supporting the great weight pressing down on them. From where he lay, Teldin heard a groan of wood followed by a popping crack, the way trees sometimes froze in the worst winters. After a series of thunderous booms, a relative silence-broken only by the crash of an occasional piece of debris-was all that sounded.
Though trembling and shaken by this unexpected attack, Teldin peered over the bank, his blue eyes quickly going hard as he looked at the destruction of his home. The ship, if it was one, had finally settled to a stop, crushing the house’s entire western wall. The stone-and-mortar chimney had fallen over on the chicken coop, caving in the flimsy roof. The whitewashed logs were thrust out at terrible angles and the porch he had built was buried under the remains. Teldin could barely hear the squawks of hens, now somewhere far off in the darkness. Fires swirled and crackled through the gaping holes in the hull, like beacons set to highlight the ghastly scene.
Finally, Teldin warily raised himself out of the water, ready to bolt like one of the rabbits that sometimes crouched at the edge of his fields. Muck ran down his scratched and burned body, but the farmer was too intent on the blazing scene to notice. Cautiously, he stepped up the bank and slowly began to circle the burning wreck.
Abruptly there was a loud groan of timber, followed by a single thundering crack as the vessel’s keel split. Teldin sprang back as the shattered form lurched, then split in two, the back half settling, slightly canted on its outspread wings. The front, with its long, jutting spar, tore free and dropped onto the remains of the chicken coop, smashing it flat. Stunned hens reeled out of the wreckage and staggered throuh the rubble-strewn yard. The knifelike bow wobbled and fell over, tipping away from the wreckage of the house, and the upper decks listed toward Teldin. A short mast thrust out at him like a misguided dragonlance, wavering up and down, a tattered pennon at its tip. The few hens that remained fled, squawking in alarm. When the ship finally settled, Teldin stalked forward, his hoe clutched in both hands. He could barely make himself move, he was so tense and ready to bolt, but the need to know more drove him forward.
As he advanced slowly, weaving from side to side, Teldin studied the wreck. The main hull and most of the ship seemed to be made of wood, but sprouting from the keel of the rear section were four flaring fins, definitely not of timber. Ribbed like a trout’s fins, the strange sails were mangled badly by the crash, broken in several places when the vessel sheared through the trees. Bits of a fleshy membrane, of which only torn and burned strips remained, once joined the ribs of these wings. A similar fin rose out of the middle of the deck, its arching shape tangled in the shattered branches overhead. Trailing into the darkness at the back was something that looked like a flamboyant fish’s tail.
Teldin had never seen these things on any ship in Kalaman. He blinked, wondering if the explosion had addled his senses. The strange wings, combined with the gleaming portholes near the bow, made the vessel seem like a living creature. This was furthered by the leaping shadows of the fire, which gave the shattered hulk the image of pulsing life, as if the last breaths of the ship were being gasped away.
“By the Dark Queen of the Abyss!” Teldin swore softly under his breath, letting loose the strongest oath he had ever used. The farmer ducked down to go under the mast of the fore section when a scratching noise came from the deck. Whirling about, Teldin watched a dark, limp shape slide across the tilted foredeck, break through the railing at the edge with a wet thud, and drop behind the broken wall of the house. “A person!” Teldin blurted.
He froze in place, torn about what to do. If there were beings on board, Teldin finally realized, the gods only knew who or what they might be. Part of him suddenly wanted to flee, to get away from this monstrosity, but other parts, his curiosity and his decency, urged him forward. It was with slow steps that Teldin finally edged forward to the broken log wall. With his hoe held ready like an axe, the farmer thrust his head over.
The other side of the wall was dimly illuminated by the leaping flames that showed through the shattered porthole in the bow, but there definitely was a body crumpled atop the tumbled piles of shingles and rafters. Teldin could not tell if the body was male or female; that much it was too dark to discern. Taking up a burning brand, Teldin held the rude torch up for a closer look. The being’s frame was light and thin, like an elfs. The body was
