Nigel Findley
Into the Void
Chapter One
It was night, but a night such as Teldin Moore had never seen before. The sky was darker, a deep velvet blackness, and the stars brighter, more immediate, somehow closer. If he could just climb the gnomish ship's watchtower, Teldin found himself thinking, climb up to where the lookout crouched on his small platform… He might be able to touch a star, pluck it from the sky, and hold it like a gem, glittering coldly in his hand. He settled his slender, lanky frame more securely against the ship's starboard rail and leaned back farther to gaze directly upward. He brushed a lock of hair from his eyes.
Teldin was a man of thirty-two summers, a little under six feet tall with a light build. His features were finely chiseled- handsome, he'd been told many times, but in a comfortable way, attractive rather than beautiful. His smile was warm and winning, and women were attracted by the way it made his striking, cornflower-blue eyes sparkle. His sandy hair had a strong natural curl to it, making it difficult to control unless he kept it cropped fairly close to his head. Although slender-waisted, he had shoulders that were quite broad and slim arms that were surprisingly strong, though they didn't show large muscles.
The deck of the vessel shifted beneath his feet,
Below was land, not a river or an ocean,
Sadness pierced him, a mourning for what he'd lost, what he was forsaking, perhaps forever. For a moment, he tried to pick out the familiar landmarks that had demarcated his life: the fields, the granaries, the market towns, the rivers, and the hills where tough, hardy sheep grazed, oblivious to the vessel that climbed into the sky above their heads-as oblivious as he had been, short weeks before. Part of him wanted to cling for as long as possible to the familiar, the safe.
But what he saw wasn't safe, he remembered with a pang. Death was below him, death that had come from the same sky that now beckoned him. He wanted to weep like a child for those he knew who had died: friends from his home; the tinker gnomes who had helped him when no one else would; and, most of all, Gomja-that sometimes-buffoonish, sometimes-noble creature who had sacrificed himself so that Teldin could live. At least the giff had met his end in the way he'd always desired, in battle after defeating overwhelming odds. As the barrel- chested creature had wished, his death had
That's all Teldin was and, until recently, all he'd really thought of being. His home had always been his land and, since his war years, he'd never wanted more. The world was large, as his grandfather had always told him, but he had little desire to see any more of it than the breadth of his family's farmlands. The thought that there were
The rigging overhead complained quietly as a gust of night-wind rocked the ship. To stave off its chill, he pulled tighter about him the cloak he'd been given by the grievously wounded stranger-that sky-traveler, that
The spidership had come, a huge black shape sinking silently out of the nighttime sky. The
With an effort of will, Teldin wrenched his gaze from the ground, and turned it back to the sky above.
The vessel heeled slightly as the wind blew across its beam. A chill breeze caressed Teldin's face. He drew a deep breath in through his nose, hoping to catch for one final time the familiar scents of home-mown grass, blossoms, and the rich smell of good brown earth, but he was too high. The winds here were clean and crisp-sterile, one part of his brain told him, empty of life; fresh, another part countered, new and full of promise.
He looked down once more and gasped aloud with wonder. The view below had changed from a flat tapestry to something he could hardly have described, even to himself. The land curved away to the left and to the right in huge sweeping arcs. The table-flat land that his emotions had found so familiar had become a sphere. He knew from some schooling that the world was round, but to know it and to actually see it were two very different things. The sphere that was Krynn appeared to him in all its glory.
The sky above-and below?-was clear, but in the distance he could see moonlight-washed banks of clouds, spread out like a ghostly landscape of the dead. He could no longer make out any landmarks, but over there… that must be the great ocean. He searched his brain vainly for the name. A huge weather system, a spiral, was motionless when viewed from this height, but the shapes of the tortured clouds still seemed to imply violent action.
He turned to his right, to the aft of the vessel. There the distant limb of the planet seemed afire, burning gold. Then, in a silent concussion of light, the arc of the sun appeared above the edge of the world.
Teldin turned away, wiping streaming eyes. For the first time he noticed the small figure standing at the rail next to him. The figure's head, topped by a mass of gray braids, barely came up to his waist.
The gnome grinned up at him, teeth flashing white in the dark, wind-tanned face. 'Impressive, wouldn't you say?' he asked. 'Sunrise from space-one of the great gifts the universe gives to us. It's still a wonder to me, even after all these years.'
Teldin wrestled with his memory, seeking the gnome's name, and was impressed with the small man's courtesy in speaking slowly. 'Yes,' he said wanly, 'impressive.' He sighed and admitted defeat. 'You are… Wysdor?'
The gnome chuckled. 'Captain Wysdor is my brother. You may call me Horvath. I am He-Who-Is-Fully- Responsible-For-And-Depended-On-With-Regard-To-Location-And-Distance…' With a visible effort, the little fellow stemmed the sudden and rapidly accelerating flow of words. He took a breath to settle himself. When he spoke again, it was in the same relatively slow cadence with which he'd first addressed Teldin. 'You may call me the navigator, if the oversimplification doesn't worry you.'
Teldin suppressed a grin. In his dealings with gnomes so far, it was their
Horvath shook his head. 'No, Teldin Moore of Kalaman, we haven't.' He grinned. 'I can't explain it, you know.