The Radiant Dragon

you'd be under Dagmar,' he warned.

The gypsy gave Teldin's comment a moment's lewd consideration, then he flashed a leer at the first mate. 'That will be a pleasure,' he said, and looked her over with a lingering gaze.

'It's your call,' Teldin told Dagmar with dry humor.

She seemed neither interested nor insulted by the aperusa. 'We could use a cook. You, gypsy, belay the prattle and stow your gear. Serve eveningfeast at two bells, night watch.' She turned and strode toward the ship, shouting orders to the hands as she went.

The first mate's mention of gear surprised Teldin; Rozloom had fled with nothing but the clothes on his back. Then the gypsy turned to ogle the departing Dagmar, and, for the first time, Teldin noted the large, lightweight silk sack strapped to Rozloom's back. His eyes narrowed.

'All business, that one,' Rozloom mused, unaware of Teldin's scrutiny. He chewed pensively at his mustache, then shrugged. 'Ah, well, probably she was too old, anyway.'

'Sir,' importuned the pale green dracon, his hands clasped together and his reptilian face earnest. 'If you please, I am Siripsotrivitus, and this is my brood-brother Chiripsian. Since life is short, most prefer to call us Trivit and Chirp. I beseech you to grant us safe passage to our ship.'

Not understanding, Teldin shot a glance over the rows of ships bobbing at dock. 'Which one of these is yours?'

'Surely you jest!' piped Chirp, the darker dracon. 'Our clan flies a ship too large to land at this port.'

Taking in the creatures' size, Teldin could believe that.

They easily were five feet tall at the shoulder, plus about two feet of neck and head. He couldn't imagine a ship that could hold a clan of dracons. 'Then how-'

'Chirp and I were dispatched by shuttle to acquire certain supplies.' Trivit paused, shamefaced. 'We were derelict in our duty, and our kaba-our high leader-will be most displeased. The quality of the tavern's ale was such that we lingered too long. Our shuttle doubtlessly took off at its appointed time, and it will not return until the same hour tomorrow.' The dracon leaned in confidentially. 'I fear we might have offended that, er, that round gentleman in the tavern. Staying until tomorrow could prove to be injudicious in the extreme.'

'True enough,' Teldin said, struggling to keep a straight face. He found himself warming to the earnest, comical creature.

'Our clan awaits us just outside Garden's atmosphere. I can give the coordinates to your navigator,' offered Trivit quickly.

Teldin glanced at the Valkyrie, a slender drakkar, or longship, built on Dagmar's icy homeworld, then skeptically considered the dracons. Each beast had to weigh at least a quarter ton. 'I'm not sure we can carry you, even for a relatively short distance.'

'Dagmar would know for sure,' Hectate put in.

Teldin nodded. He'd acquired Dagmar along with the drakkar, and the first mate knew the Valkyrie down to its last plank and barnacle. Teldin led the way to the ship, then sprinted up the boarding plank and caught Dagmar's arm as she rushed past.

'These dracons want passage. Their ship is orbiting Garden. Can we handle the extra weight for a couple of days?'

The. first mate studied the huge creatures, taking in their fine armor and weapons. As they awaited her decision,

Chirp shifted his weight from one massive foot to another and Trivit nibbled nervously at his claws. Finally Dagmar nodded crisply. 'The Valkyrie could use a couple of fighters. They come.' Her tone was without expression, and she strode off without a backward look at her new crewmen. Teldin and Hectate exchanged a glance and a shrug. Teldin was beginning to suspect that the brusk first mate had a soft spot for strays.

It took three extra planks and a tense half hour to maneuver the overjoyed dracons onto the Valkyrie, and during that time Teldin saw no sign of pursuit by the beholder. With a sigh of relief, he gave the order to sail.

At Teldin's signal, Om, the ship's taciturn gnome technician, fired up the machine that drove a mysterious tangle of pipes and gears attached to the oars. The machine started with a smoky belch and a long, grinding whine of protest. Om crouched beside the contraption, her small brown face wrinkled in concentration and her tiny hands flying as she wielded one gnome-sized tool after another. From time to time she stood and augmented her efforts with a well-placed kick.

Teldin watched, amused. At first he had been put off by the idea of a gnome-powered ship, but since the machine took the place of twenty oarsmen per watch, it kept the crew to a minimum. To Teldin's way of thinking, the fewer people he endangered, the better. The contraption worked quite well, thanks to the gnome who apparently devoted her life to keeping it running. Om was a rarity among tinker gnomes. For one thing, her inventions worked; for another, she never said two words when one would do the job and spoke not at all when a grunt would suffice.

Soon the oars began to move rhythmically. As the ship backed away from the dock, the dracons raised their high, fluting voices in one of the bawdiest chanteys Teldin had ever heard. He was pleased to note that the dracons were excellent sailors. Under Dagmar's instruction, they hoisted the sails with disciplined exuberance. Rozloom had retired to the galley, somewhat crestfallen from the discovery that the only women on board were Dagmar and Om.

Leaving his strange crew to their tasks, Teldin headed for the ship's stern, to the small raised room that housed the bridge. Hectate Kir was already there, bent intently over a star chart. Teldin took his place on the helm, and his cloak began to glow with the pale sunrise pink that signaled the start of its spelljamming magic.

Until just recently, Teldin was only able to use his cloak as a helm when there was no other working helm on board. With his limited crew, however, he could hardly break a helm every time he needed to move. He'd practiced until he could wield the cloak in the presence of a functional helm. He made a point of sitting in the helm at such times-no sense in advertising the fact that the spelljamming magic came, not from him, but from his cloak-yet he could do nothing to dim the cloak's magical pink glow. Teldin slid a sidelong glance toward the navigator. The half- elf took note of the cloak's latest color shift and shrugged.

Not for the first time, Teldin felt a surge of relief over Hectate's utter lack of curiosity in matters not directly relating to star charts. Hectate Kir seemed to be the only being in wildspace who had no interest in the cloak. He was a simple soul, content to do his job and mind his own business. For a moment Teldin envied the half-elf. His own average, ordinary life on Krynn seemed so distant that it well could have been a story he'd heard about another man. That life had been taken away, leaving him with a dangerous legacy and a quest that he had yet to fully comprehend. With a sigh, Teldin turned his concentration to the task at hand.

As the cloak's magic waxed, Teldin's senses expanded to encompass the ship and its surroundings. He was the ship, and at the same time he had the odd sensation that he was floating high above it, looking down over it and the dock. Teldin knew the moment the cloak helm was fully operational, for the sounds and scents of the river port were cut off abruptly as the ship became encased in its own envelope of air. It was uncanny the way all sounds of life on the asteroid-the cries of the gulls, the congenial insults exchanged by the fisherfolk on nearby boats, the faint distant bustle of market life-could be extinguished as abruptly as one might blow out a candle's flame. The sound of water lapping at the drakkar's hull was their only sensory tie to the port. At Teldin's silent command, the Valkyrie rose straight out of the river. Water rushed off the hull with a thunderous roar, and the drakkar rose into the night sky.

The archaic design of the bridge limited Teldin's natural vision, but with his expanded senses he could see the river port fall quickly away. Within moments the trade asteroid below them was an oddly shaped lump of rock, then just one of many that clung to the roots of the celestial plant known as Yggdrasil's Child. It was a bizarre construction, but Teldin did not doubt that the image in his mind mirrored the reality beneath the ship. Despite his recent travels on a dozen worlds and through the wonders of wildspace, Teldin's imagination was not capable of conjuring such a place. Garden was just the roots of the 'plant,' and it looked like a tangle of odd-shaped beads that some giant child had strung and, tired of them, flung aside. Or, perhaps, a young potato plant torn from the soil, complete with small, clinging tubers.

'I wonder where the rest of the plant is,' Teldin said idly.