The Maelstrom Eye

chicken place, now…'

Before he was fully aware of it, Teldin was walking beside Gaye as she led the way through the Greater Market. Still talking, she headed perpendicular to Teldin's original course. What in the Dark Queen's name am I doing? he thought. I have to find the elves and see what they know about this cloak. My life and many others depend on it. If the neogi find me again, they'll cut me to pieces and pick the cloak out of the gore, and then-

Gaye abruptly turned toward him and gave him a wide, happy smile. Her eyes were like wildspace itself. 'So, are you hungry enough to try it?' she said.

Well, he reasoned, Gaye was charming, but she still seemed too young for anything other than polite company. She was very serf-possessed, but she couldn't be more than sixteen, eighteen at the most. He sighed and looked away, weighing his decision. This was an armed asteroid, and there were no neogi about. He'd been here only two hours. Another hour or two wouldn't make any difference. He hadn't eaten in almost half a day, thanks to his nerves over seeing the elves. Gaye could probably do worse in choosing a male figure to whom she could attach herself; he could at least look out for her, even if Aelfred felt the Rock was safe. Aelfred was seeing it from his own point of view, not from a teenaged girl's.

Halflings were supposed to be great cooks, too, or so he'd heard. There were no halflings on Krynn, and the halfling deckhand on the Probe wasn't trusted in the galley yet. Maybe Teldin had been missing something.

He wondered if he'd pay for this with more than money.

'Sure,' he finally said. Gaye looked ecstatic.

If I'm missing anything, he decided, it's common sense.

*****

Lunch (or had it been supper? Teldin had no sense of time on this night-sky worldlet) had been excellent. Afterward, he and Gaye had wandered through the Burrows, the surface-and-tunnel community of the local halflings, then through orderly Giff-Town, with its quaint and long-winded signs. They'd even gone into the Lesser Market, a filthy street bazaar where the silent, meaningful gazes the local men sent in Gaye's direction led Teldin to walk close beside her with one hand on his sword hilt. (So much for Aelfired's opinions of the Rock's safety, he thought in disgust.) Gaye had been oblivious to potential danger, stopping at several ramshackle tables to inspect peculiar cups, ornaments, rings, and other items.

And Gaye had never once stopped talking. She had extensive, if superficial, knowledge of numerous worlds, cities, races, and ships. So far, Teldin had heard some of Gaye's experiences with, and opinions of, gnomes ('delightful!'), elves ('nice, but a little snooty.'), dwarves ('so serious!'), wild-space ('it's big, isn't it?'), and some place called Kozakura, where she'd studied art of some kind. She'd arrived at the Rock on an aperusa ship about eight days earlier, admitting that she'd been here longer than she'd let on earlier. The aperusa men had been unbearable, she'd said, and had always tried to get her alone somewhere. Teldin felt his blood rise at that, but Gaye thought little of it, aside from saying, 'I don't know how the women put up with it.'

The details were jumbled up, but Gaye had apparently been roaming on her own for ten years or more. The issue of her exact age was becoming more confusing all the time, but Teldin wasn't ready to ask about it.

Three hours after they'd eaten, they were somewhere in the Dracon Enclave, near a semitropical grove of palm trees, sitting on the short-cropped grass. Before them was a large collection of reptilian beings of every sort, from centauroid dracons to manlike lizard men.

'I used to think that a lizard was a lizard, you know,' said Gaye, 'but then I saw that there were as many types of them as there are of people like us. I met some trogs once, not very friendly ones at that, and, wow, did they ever stink. It was incredible. Then I met dracons, saurials, sithp'k, and, of course, the wasag, like that little blue guy over there.' Gaye pointed at a halfling-sized reptilian humanoid about thirty feet away, which looked over at them with a blank expression. Teldin leaned back on the grass and looked at the wasag, which flicked a thin, forked tongue in his direction, then he looked off to his left at one of the Rock's huge hexagon-base defense towers, bristling with siege machines aimed into the starry sky. The tangerine sun hovered low over the city skyline ahead of him. Aside from the sun's presence, he had learned that night was no different from daytime on the Rock of Bral. The air envelope around the asteroid wasn't thick enough to create a colored sky, so it was always dark above. Street and shop lights kept the city lit even when the sun was shining on the Rock's other side.

Things were becoming stranger still. The Rock had seemed large earlier, but after wandering around he had discovered that the horizon was so close that he thought he was on a mountaintop. It was hard to get used to. He suspected that the scenery could get monotonous, but at least the locals never had to worry about bad weather. And the steady stream of visitors from other worlds kept things interesting.

Gaye said something that ended in the word 'Krynn,' then stopped speaking. Teldin looked at her. She was giving him a big-eyed look, waiting for a response.

'What about Krynn?' he said.

'I asked if you were from Krynn. You said the name of the god Paladine when we met, so I assumed you were from Krynn, like me.'

Teldin's mouth fell open. 'I am from Krynn,' he said in amazement. 'I had a farm in Estwilde, south of Kalaman. You're from Krynn, too?'

'I don't believe it!' Gaye shrieked. Every reptilian being within earshot turned in their direction. 'Is this a pocket-sized universe, or what?'

Teldin was on the verge of asking her where she came from when he noticed a group of elves, probably diplomats or nobles, walking down the street toward him. He remembered something important then.

'Damn,' he said, and got to his feet. 'I've got to find the elves.' He cursed himself then for letting her hear that.

'The elves? You have to see the elves? Was that your business here? I know where they're at. You should've just asked me back at the Greater Market. They're right in the middle of the Rock, on the edge of the High City.' She pointed to Teldin's right, uphill.

Teldin belatedly realized how far they had been wandering in the last few hours. 'We've got to get going,' he said quickly. 'I mean, I've got to get going. I have to go see them by myself.' He quickly brushed off his pants. His magical cloak never got dirty or wet, so he didn't bother with it.

'Let's go, then,' Gaye said brightly. She hadn't heard his last two sentences very clearly. 'We'll go this way, around the dracons and down to the arena and up by the festival grounds. We'll reach the elven forest in a few minutes.'

'But-' Teldin started, then had to run to catch up to Gaye's quick pace. As they passed the dracons and lizard men, the reptile-folk stopped hissing and croaking at each other and gave them both cold, unblinking stares until they were well down the street. I wonder if they think we're good to eat, Teldin thought, then shoved the question aside. He let go of the brass sword hilt and focused instead on keeping up with the girl with the color-splashed dress and anthracite hair.

Gaye chatted on as they went, now talking about the lore she'd picked up about the festival grounds. Something was pulling at Teldin's memory about Gaye. Had he met her before? He doubted it. Then why did she seem familiar to him? She didn't have much of a Krynnish accent, but the way she spoke, her appearance, her fearlessness, her face-what was it? He found himself staring at her magenta kerchief, where it covered her ears.

They had just passed the Rock's arena and were heading up the boulevard past the festival grounds when Gaye, in her happy rambling, started talking about Krynn and how she'd first made her way into wildspace.

'It was really the craziest thing. I'd just finished seeing some relatives in Kendermore when this big gnomish side-wheeler came right out of the sky and crashed, just smashed itself into little-'

'No,' said Teldin, slowing abruptly and staring at Gaye with the beginnings of astonishment and horror. The childlike face. The endless talking. The nonstop traveling. The unremitting curiosity. The lack of fear. Great Paladine.

'What?' Startled, Gaye looked up at him and slowed down, too. 'What's wrong?' 'You're a kender,' he said.

Gaye's dark eyes widened to enormous size. Her mouth fell open, mocking Teldin's expression. 'Reorx's Hammer, do you really think so?' she said, stopping. 'Is that where I got these?' She reached up and pulled off her kerchief.