The Ultimate Helm tcc-6 Read online

  The Ultimate Helm

  ( The Cloakmaster cycle - 6 )

  Russ T. Howard

  Russ T. Howard

  The Ultimate Helm

  Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

  The Soul that rises with its, our life’s Star,

  Hath had elsewhere its setting.

  And cometh from afar.

  Wordsworth To strive.

  To seek. To find. And not to yield.

  Tennyson

  Prologue

  “… which the Spelljammer has seen many times before in its ageless travels. It is, instead, the coming of the one called the Cloakmaster that will herald a time of darkness unparalleled by any other. According to the scrolls of the Ancient Ones, war shall be called upon all, and the Cloakmaster’s shadow will fall across the spheres. “Alas, the scrolls of the Ancient Ones were lost in the wars after the Blinding Rot, and the sinister purposes of the Cloakmaster are known no longer…”

  The journal of Sketh, beholder mage, transcribed by enslaved human scribe, Hofrom; reign of Miark.

  He stood on the upper deck of the nautiloid Julia, facing into the endless flow, where the course of his destiny had finally led him. The colors, the radiant brilliance of the phlogiston, flared against the ship's protective bubble of air and illuminated his taut features, the square jut of his lightly bearded chin, the corded muscles along his tanned arms. His long brown hair waved in a slight breeze caused by the ship's great speed through the flow. With each eruption of light, his swirling cloak changed its color, from purple, to deep blue, to crimson; and as the nautiloid sailed ever closer to its goal, the cloak grew wanner, more comfortable around his shoulders, as though it had always belonged there. Perhaps this ages-old cloak- which had been worn through the millennia by elves and orcs, reigar and wizards, had been hoarded by a golden dragon, and had been fought over in the Battle of Thrandish. where five thousand humans and unhumans had died for the control of a long-forgotten sphere-had always and ultimately been his alone to bear. The master of the cloak. Teldin Moore was sailing to his destiny. He shivered at the enormity of the sphere before him. He was here! Finally! He pulled the cloak around him, gazed out over the prow of his nautiloid, and wondered at the twists of destiny that had started him on a simple quest and had ultimately pulled him to this place, an unimaginable distance from his home on Krynn, and to an unimaginable life for a groundling farm boy. This was the Broken Sphere. Teldin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It waited for him out there, in the rainbow swirl of the flow: a glimmer of barely reflected light against the cracked, black wall of the sphere. The Spelljammer.

  He felt it singing to him, seducing him like a siren, singing a song of wonder, of endless delight and exploration. Of worlds and places uncharted, undreamed of. Of a universe all his own. Of life.

  Why me? he almost said out loud. He looked down at the bronze medallion that the beautiful kender Gaeadrelle Gold-ring had given him. She had stolen it from an ogre during an attack of the Tarantula Fleet, and had given it to Teldin to help him on his quest for the legendary Spelljammer. A gleaming disk of untold power, it now hung around his neck, and he could feel its history, its antiquity, resonating in his fingertips. Who am I to have been called out here? I only wanted answers… What is this cloak? Why can't I take the fhTng off? And what does it want with me?

  He sighed. I only wanted some answers. Now they have led me to a sphere so ancient that it has become only a myth-a legend forgotten even by the races who had lived there. Teldin sighed. Why me? He touched the disk and felt its inner warmth humming through his fingertips. To most, the bronze disk appeared to be just another artifact, a worthless ornament, scratched and dented by the blades of warriors long dead. Its face presented a complicated maze of lines and patterns, intertwined to form geometrical shapes that seemed to flicker and appear when the light fell properly upon its surface. As such, it was simple trickery, an optical illusion: jewelry, perhaps, for a child.

  But the amulet had survived for millennia. Its makers had been forgotten by all but the gods, and its inherent powers, weakened as they were by the unimaginable passage of time, were still formidable. If the amulet were clasped in the hand of a brave warrior and turned so that the light of the eternal phlogiston could shine upon it properly, its bearer could make out a secret image, a symbol that had survived the ages, perhaps the symbol of its creators: a three-pointed star, burning fiercely against the night-black maze of lines and curves and angles.

  The disk blazed in Teldin's hand. The star was a brilliant pinpoint, filled with the power and light of a million suns. He covered it with one hand and stared into the flow, where a lightning bolt erupted near the Spelljammer and flashed against its pale skin.

  He gasped involuntarily as the electric power of the amulet coursed up his arm, and the nautiloid disappeared from under his feet to send him swimming alone through the chromatic sea. His mouth hung open as his eyes, the Spelljammefs eyes, were filled with a panoramic vista of the Broken Sphere, an immense black wall extending a billion miles out of his field of vision. Inside, wisps of phlogiston spiraled into the sphere's dying sun and exploded impotently in a reduced image of the sun's nova an eon ago, when the system's shell was shattered and sent hurtling into the flow.

  Teldin shuddered. Images came unbidden to his mind: the wave of a mighty wing, the star-bright opening of a portal in a crystal shell; the immeasurable rush of phlogiston into the sphere, then into the sun. Then an immense explosion as worlds rocked, their atmospheres evaporated, their lands scorched, in a single blast of fire. And the crystal sphere blew away like an eggshell.

  He fell to his knees and released the amulet. This close to its bond mate, the power of the amulet was increased, and its images became more tangible, more visceral, affecting all of his senses. He breathed deeply, taking huge gulps of air as the terror, the remembrance of a million deaths a million years ago, flooded over him, causing him to cry out in pain. His ship sailed ever closer to the Spelljammer, an innocent murderer of worlds,

  He tasted the wind rushing over a world, a paradise of low ering trees ami mountain ranges reaching for the sky Coin nil mi r. came the name to his mind, an ocean world where saurians and great beasts swam the pure waters, making songs and sealing them in bubbles of air, bound with spells ol permanence so that their legacy would live on for their children Resancl. came another.

  He could smell meal cooking and merchants shouting, selling their wares, in the Citadel of Trekar, on an island of gold on the world of-BedevanSov.

  He was there, on-Asveleyn-as a contingent of armed men swarmed out of the hills of Stog to defeat a screaming band of ores.

  He was Jezperis, a warrior, reveling in the softness of Velina, his woman, as she lay in his arms, sweating and thrusting together under the twin moons of-Ondora.

  And then, in a searing flash of heat and pain, the worlds were killed.

  With an effort of will, Teldin suppressed a cry and pulled himself away from the memories of people long dead, long remembered in the Spelljammer's unconscious self.

  The great ship's song still sang through him, a song of blood and loneliness, of a destiny now within his reach. Their lives, like the lines woven on the amulet, were intertwined, forever linked by a pattern set into motion when the universe was young, an insignificant dream of the gods.

  It was a pattern of birth and death, of tragedy and heroism. Somehow, he knew that it was ultimately a pattern woven of magic and dreams. Of life.

  Teldin stood slowly and leaned against the forward rail of the nautiloid. He was still weak from the powerful images the Spelljammer had cast. He grasped the rail with one hand.

  The Spelljammer was but a ghostly glimmer in the dista
nce, barely visible in the swirling energies of the flow, but he could feel it and nodded to himself. Yes, this was right. He had sailed the endless sea for loo long, too far. He had battled neogi and scro, humans and shape-shifters friends and lovers had betrayed him, all for what' A piece of cloth.

  He pulled the cloak tighter around him. In response, the cloak turned a deep brown.

  "You are wearing an authentic ultimate helm." the giant, sluglike lal known as One Six Nine had told him. "You are the Cloakmaster, Teldin Moore, the future captain of the Spelljammer. You need only find your ship to claim it." An ultimate helm..

  His enemies were somewhere behind him, he knew, cramped together in battleships and deathspiders, hammer-ships and armadas. The forces of the enemy, whether ores or elves or neogi, had followed him across the universe with their lust for power and destruction as motivation. Their forces were seemingly infinite, and not one of them knew a thing about the great ship that waited for him, only that, with his mysterious cloak, they could seize the most powerful weapon of all-a myth, a legend, that spanned the universe. Worlds and spheres would be the victors' spoils. Enemies would be destroyed, bred as cattle by flesh-eaters, enslaved by unhumans and humans alike,… and the second Unhuman War would last throughout eternity.

  The spheres would never know peace.

  Teldin had seen enough war. In the War of the Lance, he had seen friends killed in battle, had stepped over their broken bodies without looking back. He had seen enough hatred. He had seen enough death. His quest-one that had started out simply for knowledge- had become a quest lor his own survival, and for what he believed was important: peace throughout the spheres

  I just wanted answers, he thought to himself. But he knew, deep inside, where the soul of a farm boy still hid with fear and wonder at the sights his destiny had shown him, that here he would make his last stand. He and his enemies would meet here, for one last time. No more running, no more chasing legends. Fate had pulled him here for a reason, and if battle is what his enemies wanted, then battle is what they would receive.

  But answers would be his. He would find them here, at the Broken Sphere, where his destiny was but a glimmer in the distance.

  He found it, a dim speck against a shattered wall of blackness. He could tell neither its shape nor size, but it pulled him with the intensity of a sun, beckoning to him like a siren. His future lay there, he knew, on the decks of a myth; and he would die to keep a simple promise, made what seemed like years ago: to keep the cloak from the neogi, and to take it to the creators.

  Teldin stared into the distance. The amulet was warm against his palm, and he could feel the lines of its pattern on his fingertips.

  One simple promise, he thought. As a favor to a dying alien, 1 accepted her cloak, the ultimate helm. And it's led to all this.

  "I'm coming, Spelljammer" he said out loud. His voice was swallowed in the emptiness of the void. "I'm coming."

  The great ship, alive with wonder, swam through the Rainbow Ocean.

  The light of the flow seemed to blaze off the citadel of proud towers sprawled upon its back. It flickered across its wide, sweeping wings, scintillating up its mammoth, curled tail, and glimmered brilliantly off a statue of a golden dragon atop a central tower. Its pale underbelly oscillated with color as the energies of the phlogiston flowed around it, an endless river upon which the great ship sailed eternally.

  Its song reverberated through the flow, ringing off the crystal shell that had been the great ship's birthplace. Minutes later, a kindori, an immense space whale swimming through the void thousands of leagues away, answered with its own high song, a question wailed between the spheres. The great ship responded with a greeting, which was also a farewell, and sang softly to itself until it sensed that the kindori had swum out of range.

  The ship had sailed far on its eternal quest, ranging outward to spheres undreamed of by most spacefarers and their crews. It had sung with the jade insects that dominated the sphere they called C'T'lk'atat. It had swum with the wolf-people of Mefesk, who sailed between the worlds of Lorpulan in ships of ivory and bronze. It had watched a world die as a planet's internal fires wreaked violence upon the surface, and the web-spinners of Hsuun, and their brittle citadels of shimmering silver that stretched across the seas, died as their crystalline castles crumbled into piles of debris, then were forgotten forever beneath layers of black ash and lava.

  The peoples of C'T'lk'atat knew the ship as S'Kurl-singer beast.

  Lorpulan knew the ship as Zhalabrian, the swimmer.

  Hsuun saw the ship as the promised one, a god, Ospilia- redeemer.

  The ship had borne many names over the millennia and answered to none. Its name was known only to itself and could not be translated into such primitive concepts as letters or words. Its name was the ignition of new suns, the sound of the flow churning through the universe, of magic opening a window of possibilities, the cry of a mother looking down upon the face of her newborn child.

  Its true name was life and death and wonder and awe.

  And one name it was known as was Spelljammer.

  The Broken Sphere and the dying star inside, which had once been named Aeyenna by the eighteen worlds that had comprised the sphere of Ouiyan, were the last remnants of the Spelljammer's birth and deadly escape. Phlogiston flared briefly as it was sucked into the star's fiery depths, and the Spelljammer slowly lifted its wing to absorb the sun's weak energy through the pale skin of its underside.

  It sensed outward, through the flow. Its sphere of senses, its influence over the universe surrounding it, was subtly increasing, changing, as the man grew nearer. If it had had a mouth, it would have smiled.

  The challenger was only seconds away, as the Spelljammer measured time, and change had already begun deep inside its body. The temperature in the gardens was subtly warmer, preparing for birth. Its song was louder, stronger; it cried out to the spheres floating anchorless within the flow; it sang of its loss, its loneliness, and the destiny that soon would be attained.

  — The challenger, it sang.

  It saw him then, through the Compass: a simple man searching for answers, for completion. The Spelljammer could feel the man's muscles concealed under the helm, could feel the heat in his hands, their strength. His heart was strong, and the man's sense of self, of purpose, was a rush of heat that washed over the great ship and made it feel renewed.

  The connection with the man broke suddenly; but in that last instant-and even over the long miles the captain still had to sail-the Spelljammer knew that the challenger had mastered the Ultimate Helm. It knew that the challenger was not a raider consumed with an agenda of conquest and violence, as so many others had been, but a simple man confused by fate; a man who had braved all the odds to seek his answers, his destiny, to find them here, where they had forever been.

  The Spelljammer sang out then. It sang again to the kindori, to the stony contemplators in self-absorbed exile along the Caltassan asteroid belt, to the great dreamers lumbering slowly through the endless sea that was the void; it cried out to all who would listen with their hearts and dream at its song of wonder. The high tones of its songs rang off the spheres, recreating its long journeys through the universe. Kach planet was a line, each sphere a stanza. Suns were born and died within a sentence, and the song's last wistful notes stretched out to echo through the void, where perhaps even the challenger would hear, and perhaps understand, and feel a little bit of the Spelljammer's sadness, and the limitless joy, at his approach.

  At the consummation of their long-awaited destiny.

  For the Spelljammer knew that, with the challenger approaching, with change screaming for completion throughout its massive body, this voyage would be its last.

  It glanced at the tombstone that was the black, broken sphere, and cried out one last time, a question answered only by the silence of the long-dead, and the Spelljammer slowly banked toward the approaching nautiloid. The man had come so far, yet had one last test to complete before the grea
t ship would allow him to take its helm and lead it into its unknown future.

  Their fate lay here, forever intertwined, where the Spelljammer had been born, where millions had died. The time was now. The cycles were coming back upon themselves, forces converging, blurring the reality between past and present, and turning, perhaps, violence into life.

  The man's life song was strong and sang through his bones. The Spelljammer answered with the song of its own, and it knew that their songs must soon be sung together, forever.

  For life.

  — Are you worthy?'it sang.

  It sped toward the challenger.

  The ultimate test would now begin.

  Chapter One

  "… Newcomers to the Spelljammer are generally ignored, but for the interest of the populace. There is a noticeable difference, however, when newcomers approach bearing powerful helms. "From this we can surmise but two things: The ultimate helms borne to the Spelljammer are like no other, and somehow entice the Spelljammer into aggressive action; or that the Spelljammer, as impossible as it seems, is consciously aware that a new helmsman is approaching and wishes to dispatch him before his arrival, for reasons unknown…"

  M'ndora, elf sorceress, The Book of Lomasun; reign of Jaykel.

  The Spelljammer was huge. Even now, at a distance of a few short miles away and closing, the legendary ship blotted out Teldin Moore's view of the void and filled his mind with a sense of unreality, of wonder beyond imagining, even beyond the dreams of the gods. The towers and turrets on the great ship's back gleamed dreamlike-nothing he had ever seen or imagined had prepared him for this sight-and he thought he could barely make out tiny black dots standing and moving along railings and in windows, pointing in the nautiloid's direction.