cobwebs in his head start to dissolve. Damn fortunate thing Beth-Abz didn't have to eat often, he told himself with a wry smile. Even with maybe one meal like that a week, the beholder was a serious drain on the ship's provisions. Fortunate, too, that the
He shook his head. What am I doing? he asked himself. Inventing more troubles for myself? As if I don't have enough….
He looked out over the port rail. Garrash was a distant, ruddy disk about as large as an apple held at arm's length, its fire ring still clearly visible. After his frustrating conversation with Zat, Teldin had ordered the ship to stand off from the planet. Not from any fear of the great metal creatures; they seemed-well, not harmless, but not inclined to do any harm. More than a dozen of the metallic beings had congregated in the vicinity of the squid ship, seemingly fascinated by the fact that there existed one of the 'tiny, scurrying things' that could actually communicate with them. The great, mirrored triangles had taken to cruising close to the
For that reason, he'd pulled the ship back to this distance. Zat and its fellows had seemed not inclined to travel so far just to satisfy their curiosity, and had returned to their normal life, which had let the crewmen return to theirs.
'Captain Teldin Moore.' A voice that could have come from a clogged sewer sounded behind the Cloakmaster. He turned.
Beth-Abz had followed him out onto the deck. The beholder had swallowed its meal, but drips of blood around its thin lips still were enough to start Teldin's stomach churning again.
'Well met, Beth-Abz,' the Cloakmaster said, backing off a step to stay out of range of the creature's slaughterhouse breath.
'Captain,…' the creature started, then its deep-pitched voice trailed off. There was something about the way its ten eyestalks moved that made Teldin think it was uncomfortable. What's this about? he wondered, with a chill of foreboding.
'Captain,' it started again, moving closer and lowering the volume of its voice. A miasma of blood and other nauseating odors washed over Teldin, but he forced himself to stand his ground. 'Captain, I have heard two of the crew talking about damage to the ship.'
'The ship's damaged?' Teldin demanded.
The beholder's eyestalks weaved a complex pattern. 'I am not communicating well,' it said quietly. 'I find my thoughts are somehow sluggish. What I mean is that they were speaking of
Sabotage! 'Who?' Teldin saw a couple of the crewman on deck glance over as they heard his barked question. He forced himself to pitch his voice lower, and repeated, 'Who? Who was it?'
Beth-Abz was silent for a moment. Teldin cursed silently in frustration. He knew that the eye tyrant had a frustrating inability to easily remember human and demihuman names -probably because they didn't communicate the same information about clan and nation as did beholder names. 'It was the small one,' Beth-Abz said slowly, 'the small one on the bridge.'
Did that mean Julia?
'And another, a larger one.'
'Describe them to me,' Teldin ordered.
'The smaller one…' Suddenly the beholder fell silent. One of its eyestalks had suddenly convulsed, driving directly upward from the top of the creature's body. The other nine pivoted around to stare at the wayward eye. 'The smaller one… ° it started over.
The eyestalk convulsed again, another joining it in its spastic motion. The creature's loose-lipped mouth opened slightly, and a gobbet of yellow-white saliva dribbled down its lower surface to drip on the deck.
'What's the matter?' Teldin asked, suddenly alarmed.
'I feel pain,' Beth-Abz said, its voice taking on a strange, bubbling tone. 'Sharp pain. I feel…'
Another convulsion racked its eyestalks-all of them, this time. The creature made a sound like a cough, and saliva sprayed Teldin's jerkin, looking puslike against the black fabric.
'What is it?' Teldin asked again.
'Pain…' the beholder gurgled. Its huge central eye rolled wildly, the horizontal pupil contracting down to a black line, then suddenly expanding so large that the pale-colored iris almost vanished. It coughed again, but now green-black bile-or was it blood?-sprayed out with the spittle.
Teldin stepped back, horror and fear churning in his chest. What in the hells was happening?
Beth-Abz rocked, like a ship in heavy seas, listing one way then the other, as though it could no longer control its levitation power. The eyestalks convulsed again. The beholder crashed to the deck.
'What is it?' Teldin screamed at the stricken creatures. 'What?'
The great mouth worked, made gargling sounds as Beth-Abz tried to answer. It coughed again, spewing bile and bright blood.
A brilliant green beam lashed out from one of the minor eyes, lanced out into space.
Teldin heard yells of alarm from the crewmen on deck, the thundering of running feet as they sprinted for safety. He backed off another couple of steps, wanting desperately to join them in their flight, but unable to take his eyes from the agonized creature.
Another beam-pinkish red this time-burst from another eye and persisted for a second or two as the eyestalk lashed about wildly. The beam swept through the air like a scythe, cutting into a pack of sailors struggling to get through the door into the forecastle. One of them screamed, a huge gout of blood bursting open in his back. The sailor fell, to lie still in a spreading pool of scarlet.
Now all of the thrashing, weaving secondary eyes were cutting loose with their magical powers. Beams of green, yellow, and actinic blue-white hissed through the air, striking wildly all over the ship. Teldin heard rather than saw the top of the mainmast detonate into splinters. The body of the dead sailor was struck by another beam, bright violet this time, and it was hurled into the air as though shot from a catapult. The green beam lashed out again, blasting a hole clean through the deck.
'By Paladine's blood…!' Teldin gasped.
He had to get out of here, had to get clear of the creature's magical convulsions. Its death throes? What else could they be? He turned and sprinted for the door into the stern-castle. More screams sounded in his ears, mixed with the rending of tortured wood as something forward blew apart. He grabbed the door handle and flung it open as another beam-this one as black as night-played momentarily over the planking by his head. He ducked low and flung himself through the door into the helm compartment.
There was nobody on the helm-no need for a helmsman when the ship was drifting in space-and the compartment was empty. Teldin leaped behind the heavy wooden chair that was the helm itself and crouched low.
Not a moment too soon. A green beam lanced through the forward bulkhead, exploding a man-sized area into dust before continuing straight through the rear of the hull and out into space. Even over the sound of the destruction, Teldin could hear the gargling, choking sounds of Beth-Abz's death.
Another concussive blast sounded from the deck outside, then silence.
Teldin crouched behind the helm for almost another minute before emerging into the scene of devastation that was the
*****
The Cloakmaster knelt alongside Djan, examining Beth-Abz's corpse. The dead beholder lay on its side on the
