Listraeespace near Nauthe'hressishtel
Elnamerrna, adrift, weaponless
Greenmonth 26th, 2461
Anger such as he had never known welled up within Tyfelian's heart and it nearly sent him to attack "Autumn" at a dead run. He grimaced and used all of his will to restrain himself for a moment. He wished hard that Kiran were present to hold him off, keep him from switching back to the evil, cold-blooded, automatic reactions of the criminal he had been as a youth, but the paladin wasn't there. He had only his own discipline to keep him in his place long enough to speak.
For, no matter what all this meant, he had a responsibility to find out a certain item of information. It would be trivial to "Autumn," but of top importance to Tyfelian.
Something else occurred to him, as well.
"You two, also?" he asked, staring hard at Tash and Alzja. He could not believe that they had turned on him, but very little was impossible.
The two drow ladies looked puzzled for a couple seconds, then they figured it out.
"No. I swear to you, I don't know how they fooled my magic," Tash told him.
Alzja shook her head, in effect saying that she was not a traitor, either.
"Where is the real Autumn Deleskaran? Dead?" Tyfelian demanded, turning back to "Autumn." His voice cracked three times from infuriated frustration.
"Autumn's" smile returned—a smile dripping with ironic glee and malicious mischief.
Forcing the words past chuckles, "Autumn" replied, "Oh, no, no...I believe she lives on the planet Oerth, in a place called the Great Kingdom. Not that you've ever really met her." She guffawed.
Tyfelian saw through the lie. He had grown up with the type of person "Autumn" was, and knew full well how to tell a lie from the truth—only the very best drow liars had ever been able to slip one over on Tyfelian.
Indeed, by reading her various telltales, Tyfelian believed he knew the truth (though he strongly believed that the Dridercomp was giving him a helping hand). The slight, uncertain hesitation of her snickering, the tone of her voice when she noted where Autumn was allegedly from—as though simply stating a fact learned second-hand—and the barely noticeable, thoughtful, wondering look in her eyes...
Tyfelian felt certain that this spy was, to a limited extent, in the dark—just as he was.
"You have no idea whether she still lives. Not even whether such a person ever existed at all," Tyfelian muttered under his breath. "You don't even known how you yourself came to be on my ship," he marveled, watching "Autumn's" face and eyes closely.
"What?" "Autumn" asked irritably, failing to hear the words, but Tyfelian didn't respond to her.
Tyfelian then realized that it was not the Dridercomp—at least not directly—but the Elnamerrna herself who was helping him realize all this. The Silver Triop also did not know how a group of Elendran impostors might have come on board. No differently from the actual, loyal crewmembers, the Elnamerrna had also been taken completely by surprise.
That fact, itself, brought up still more questions—when the Elendran spies had gotten on board being foremost of all—but Tyfelian had no time to pursue the answers, not here and now. "Autumn" or some of her cohorts might be able to shed some light on the matter... but he knew better than to even try to get the answers out of them. Jaclyn could interrogate them telepathically—perhaps she was doing so at the moment. If not, Tyfelian doubted that he would ever get answers, for none of the spies would allow themselves to be taken alive.
Besides, he thought he could take a good guess as to when they came aboard—one of two possible times—not from intuition, but from intellect.
"But as I said, we were just leaving," "Autumn" continued, resuming her cackling. "If you let us off this ship, I'll tell the fleet to let you go. We'll need two of this ship's escape craft."
Tyfelian's swords dipped a little and he looked as if he would agree—it seemed painfully obvious that a fight between these intruders and his remaining loyal crew could destroy the ship. "Autumn" would probably renege on the deal, but the Elnamerrna could still outrun the Elendran fleet, so Tyfelian thought it might be a chance to salvage something and escape...
... but then, "Autumn" shot off her mouth again.
"Oh," she added, "The cursed renegade captain there, her wizards here, and any other drow native to this dismal place will have to come with us."
"No deal!" Tyfelian shouted. "I'll see you in the Abyss first!"
"Autumn" laughed.
"Last chance, Tyfelian, you gullible sand-brained slob," she scolded mockingly. "You and your crew could probably kill us, but this pile of junk would be blown to scrap in that fight," she smirked evilly.
"Yes, I know about the Elnamerrna's condition," "Autumn" added, suddenly serious. "You know as well as I do that the hull won't take much more. If you kill us, we'll take you right along with us! And," she went on, taking the pleasure to spell it all out, "if any of us survive, the fleet will rescue us from the drifting slag. Who'll be there to rescue you? Nauthe'hressishtel is no more."
Tyfelian finally lost control. He shouted words at "Autumn" in Drowic at the top of his lungs. None of the non-drow on the weapon deck spoke Drowic, but they all felt certain that Tyfelian's words were impolite to say the very least.
Tyfelian charged, and everyone else in the weapon deck sprang into action, too.
Tyfelian's swords blazed at "Autumn." She cast a spell and beat his attack, so when he struck her, her fire shield spell burned the half-drow about as badly as his swords hurt her.
No fool, even when enraged beyond all control, Tyfelian sheathed his swords and started throwing daggers at her as hard and fast as he could, two at a time.
"Autumn" was good; she sidestepped most of the daggers. Some of them nailed her, however, so it was with hands shaking with pain that she pulled out a wand.
She aimed it at Tyfelian and spoke its command word, blasting him with a flurry of energy arrows.
Undaunted, Tyfelian kept up his dagger throwing until he had only two left, his most powerfully enchanted ones. Taking a gamble that he could kill her and suffer the burning damage equal to what he'd done, Tyfelian drew his swords again and rammed one into "Autumn's" belly, the other right through her face.
He bit his lip to stifle an agonized scream as her spell burned him, but then ran on to find another enemy.
A bolt of lightning blasted by his head. It made his hair stand on end.
He heard a horrible wrenching sound behind him and leaped away from it just in time, as part of the weapon deck's outer wall and floor broke off the ship and fell away to bounce up and down through the ship's gravity line.
The lightning bolt ricocheted several times before it fizzled, blowing holes in the interior walls and ruining the portside catapult. Tyfelian ignored it...
... but "Autumn" had been right. Perhaps this fight would destroy the ship, Tyfelian realized, but he was far, far too filled with rage to stop what he was doing. Part of his mind noted the fact that the ship had started moving again, but he ignored that as well. The evil of his youth, still there at the core of his heart, buried and dampened by discipline and acquired conscience, bloomed forth. He concentrated solely on the ones who had offended him, hurt him, and his full abilities to kill focused squarely upon them and them alone.
He scooped up one of his daggers and hurled it at the wizard who had cast the lightning bolt. The wizard sidestepped it, but Tyfelian ran up to him and punched him with the hilt of a sword.
Stunned, the drow wizard slumped against the wall and fell. Tyfelian kicked his head as hard as he could, killing him. Then something slammed into him hard from behind.
He shoved it away and glanced at it. It was a dead Elendran—judging by the blotchy bruises, a volley of the energy darts from one of his wizards had probably killed him.
Tyfelian darted away.
Sildara had been cutting a bloody swath through the Elendrans, whacking her twin long swords to and fro at blinding speed, too fast for them to react. The handful of loyal gunners likewise hit the enemy hard.
Tyfelian glanced around quickly, and saw that the battle was going better than he had any right to expect, considering that the enemy outnumbered his side at least two to one and every enemy was both a warrior and a wizard.
Still, he figured that the tide would turn back—these spies knew the combat tactics of the Elnamerrna crew. If they had been on board very long at all, they had been subjected to Kiran's constant, insufferable ground fighting and battle stations drills right along with the loyal crew. Tyfelian figured on it being a long, tough fight that some of his loyal crew and new friends might not survive.
Then, however, Kiran and Menlina entered the deck with ten crewmen in tow.
Listraeespace
Elnamerrna, running, weaponless
Greenmonth 26th, 2461
Kiran and Menlina had heard it all. No one, not in the bridge nor the weapon deck, had shut off either of the voice horns.
Kiran had heard enough when Tyfelian asked "Autumn" about the real Autumn. Needing no more prodding, Kiran stood and walked over to the helm.
"Melanerra, it's past time that we go. We can't win this one." He tried to ignore a broken gasp from Menlina, though it tore his heart. "Take us away from Nauthe'hressishtel and the Elendran fleet, best possible speed. Take us out of the rocks, and go to starspeed when we clear them."
Melanerra willed the Elnamerrna into movement, but even as she did, she choked back a gasp of horror very much like Menlina's. She could see, by way of the spelljammer helm's wraparound view, what the Elendrans were doing to Nauthe'hressishtel.
More gypsy moths than she could count made pass after pass on the asteroid city. Their wizards rained destruction down in a virtual hurricane of dark elf fury. Spells that Melanerra could not name roared down the streets of faerie fire—fiery, icy, and acidic magical attacks poured forth from the Elendran vessels, to be sure, but the worst was the heavy demolition.
This came from the weapon crews. The Elendrans wasted no time shooting ballista bolts or catapult loads at a city. Instead, they dropped their gunpowder sacks in great numbers. These exploded violently the instant they hit, and the attackers knew right where to toss them. Melanerra watched, horrified, as the roof of the Temple of Eelistraee vanished in an inferno of exploding gunpowder. Only seconds later, another volley of powder sacks gutted the Temple from within.
The Svart Alfar elves fought back hard—an upward rain of ballista bolts and catapult shot showered ship-killing clouds into the Elendran fleet, and their own wizards hurled sparky and impressive attack magic into space to bring the Elendran gypsy moths down—but it was a hopeless situation. At least a couple hundred enemy vessels had issued forth from the strange dimensional doors, and more kept coming.
Worse, more often than not, the Elendran ships fell onto the asteroid city when crippled, with disastrous results. Building after building on the asteroids collapsed under the weight of plummeting gypsy moths, and Melanerra "saw" one moth crash into a flying bridge between asteroids, demolishing it and itself in a furious shower of flying debris.
Elsewhere across the asteroid city, gunpowder explosions and eye-searing magical displays reigned. Melanerra witnessed several enormous multi-colored globes of mixed energy exploding in key locations across the city, blowing asunder entire city blocks and even blasting chunks off the asteroid itself.
The human cleric wished that the Elnamerrna were farther away from Nauthe'hressishtel. Perhaps then she would not have been able to clearly see the massacre. She did not want to see it.
"Kiran, they're destroying the city... there's nothing to stop them." A tear slid down her face. "For the gods' sakes, do something!"
Kiran shook his head, believing it was far too late.
"We have to concern ourselves with our own survival now, Melanerra," the paladin told her. "Yes, I know—normally we could take on that whole attack force and maybe win, as long as the wizards and Jaclyn were with us to protect us. Tyfelian would be bold enough to try it. Even I would take that chance, to save that city. But the weapon bays are out of action, and the Elnamerrna's in no shape for a long fight—not against more than one enemy ship."
Melanerra's fury welled up and her face reddened. Kiran could easily see that she was considering turning the ship right around to attack despite his orders.
"We can't," Kiran hissed, though twin tears slid down his own face. "Four or five solid hits, even from conventional weapons, could tear us to pieces."
Kiran knew it for a certainty, and his tone showed that.
Nevertheless, the human thought for a moment, and then touched the glass sculpture of the Elnamerrna floating beside the helm. His fingers traced down along the sides of the model to stop on the wings, and his thumbs pressed the thin pieces of glass that served as the representations of the mainsails. He spoke a command word to the item.
Then he ran to the door and hurried outside the bridge.
He ran to the crewmen manning the sails, who were already stepping away from their posts as they realized they'd been relieved.
Ghostly figures now worked the Elnamerrna's sails. Another of Tash's creations—though not a magical item conceived by her—the unseen crew would make the ship mobile at reduced maneuverability for several hours. Normally, such magical manifestations—more powerful versions of the simple unseen servant spell—would be invisible, but the interaction with the helm's magic made them shimmer into sight, off and on.
"Stay with me. Stand outside the door," Kiran ordered the five crewmen.
Kiran hurried across the bridge to its starboard door, and repeated his action on the other side, with the other five crewmen who had been at the sails there.
"Menlina," he called through the starboard door, "go through the other door and take the men around the back of the bridge. Meet up with me and five others there, and then we'll go up to the weapon deck."
He walked across as he spoke, and as Menlina walked out, he told her, "I'm going to secure the bridge as well as I can on short notice." He turned to Jaclyn and handed her a key chain.
"Lock up the bridge after we're gone. Follow us with your clairvoyance power, then teleport to the weapon deck at an opportune moment. Guards," he said to the two crewmen, "protect the helm."
Jaclyn took the keys and nodded. Kiran and Menlina left.
Kiran leaped into the fray as soon as he climbed the stairs. His Holy Avenger sword nearly cut one Elendran in half, and almost simultaneously, he belted another attacker with his shield.
Tyfelian, heartened by the appearance of his first officer, went after the enemy with more gusto. His swords ripped a bloody swath across the central aisle as he worked his way to Kiran.
Sildara set herself at Tyfelian's back, and they whirled around each other like the tips of a deadly boomerang.
However, the Elendran spies were far from finished. Another fireball exploded in the aisle, centered on Sildara, and crewmen screamed. Tyfelian glanced at himself curiously; he was relatively unhurt by the fireball, even though he stood right beside the center of the detonation. He chalked it up to another ability of the Dridercomp that he hadn't known of—indeed, he felt sure that "Autumn's" fire shield would have killed him if he hadn't been wearing the Dridercomp.
He resumed his attacks for a moment, twin long swords whipping out and back, slashing across bellies and wreaking havoc with the spies. The hyper-sharp blades and wicked points of his weapons nearly became invisible with speed as he slashed and stabbed at the enemies. Their screams filled the bay, but he did not hear them. He was half-mad with rage and, perhaps more to the point, with total disgust.
His peripheral vision, though, caught a glimpse of the Elendran who had cast the fireball. That Elendran died even as Tyfelian noticed him, due to a barrage of strange, green magic missiles that struck him out of nowhere, as far as Tyfelian could tell. He thought that they might have come from Sildara, but Tyfelian had not thought that the Listraeean captain was a wizard. Tyfelian made a mental note to ask her about it later.
He finished an opponent and looked for another. Some remained, but the floor beneath Tyfelian's feet swayed alarmingly. The upper weapon deck had had it; it would get more dangerous by the minute to stay in it.
Tyfelian ran across the aisle and attacked an Elendran who was in a one-on-one fight with Menlina. Menlina nailed him through the chest when Tyfelian's sword sent the enemy's blade flying wide.
Menlina caught him as he turned to look for more battle.
"Last one," she assured him. She was experienced enough to know the outcome before it happened; even as she spoke, the loyal crew and the wizards killed the last of the Elendran intruders.
"Quickly—drag the spies out of here," Tyfelian told them.
The victors started to, but the ceiling buckled and collapsed in five places at once—one large piece of debris fell on the ogre and nearly knocked him down.
"Kreg!" Kiran shouted.
A gaping wound had opened in Kreg's shoulder, where the falling piece of chitin had pierced his armor. Kiran murmured a healing chant on it, and then pointed to the stairway.
"Everybody out!" Tyfelian yelled.
Tyfelian managed to grab "Autumn's" belt and scoop up her magic wand, then he, too, bolted for the stairway.
Tyfelian shot out of the stairway.
Alzja cast. The sounds of structural strain from the weapon deck suddenly became muted.
"That'll hold it up there for a bit," she smirked.
Tyfelian and Kiran ran for the bridge.
Melanerra, sitting in the spelljammer helm, grimaced with agony. The damage to the weapon deck transferred to her body as waves of intense pain, and she found that she could not concentrate well enough to accelerate the Elnamerrna to starspeed.
She knew full well that that could be a serious matter.
"Faster, Melanerra," Jaclyn ordered. "The Elendrans won't let us slip away just like that, not this time. We have to flat-out outrun them."
"I can't," the cleric replied.
Gritting her teeth, Melanerra kept the ship moving as fast as she could, but she had to wonder if the intensity of the pain might be approaching that of spelljammer shock. That would knock her unconscious for several days, and it could kill her.
Then, to her relief, she heard a loud knock on the door.
"Jaclyn! Open up!" Kiran's voice called.
Jaclyn hurried over to the door. She had been scrying the battle, so she knew it was he. She unlocked the door and let them into the bridge.
"Why did you not teleport to us to help?" Kiran asked her without preamble.
"You had matters well in hand," Jaclyn replied with her dreamy, slightly distracted smile. "But we have a more important problem—we can't go to starspeed."
"What's wrong?" Tyfelian queried of Jaclyn, but Melanerra who answered him instead.
"Pain," Melanerra told him. "I can't... the ship can't." She swallowed. "It's the upper weapon deck. I'm afraid it'll have to be rebuilt from the floor up."
Tyfelian started to go to the helm to take over, but Jaclyn stopped him.
"You shouldn't. Melanerra is a woman and can take more pain than you can. If you take the helm, it might kill you."
Tyfelian nodded, then went to his seat, beckoning the seven Listraeeans to follow. He waved them to the seats at the table. As they went to the left side of the command platform, he reached for the voice horn.
"Crow's nest, bridge."
No answer came.
"Crow's nest, bridge! Trula, pick up that voice horn!"
Still no answer came.
"Jaclyn," Tyfelian inclined his head at her.
Jaclyn closed her eyes and sent her awareness up the mainmast to find Trula.
"She's been knocked out somehow, but there's no one else there. I'll go and see to her."
Jaclyn vanished with the soft pop of teleport.
"Melanerra," Tyfelian called to her. "What are the Elendrans doing?"
"Still attacking Nauthe'hressishtel," the cleric replied, her words hissing slightly from intense pain. "No sign that they're interested in us at all."
"That won't last," Kiran murmured.
"No, but at least we have a head start," Tyfelian noted. He turned to the Listraeeans. "After the way is clear, we'll go back and look for survivors."
Menlina tried to hold back a sob, but she could not, and tears burst from her eyes. She turned away, facing the back of the bridge.
Sildara held her composure, though her lips quivered, but the five warrior-wizards hung their heads or put them down on the table, appearing broken.
Sildara shook her head. "There won't be any survivors. Those are Elendrans out there... they don't leave survivors when they attack." She paused, swallowing a lump in her throat. "The key word is leave. But this is their idea of stopping a revolt. They'll kill everyone."
Tyfelian bowed his head with sorrow; Sildara's words rang true. Attacking dark elves might take prisoners in some cases, but not this time. Undoubtedly, their assigned mission was to completely eradicate the renegade civilization.
"Tash, is there any way you can hide us, or get us to another crystal shell—anything? A wish, perhaps?"
Tash thought.
"I could wish that the spies had never been here... no, that would rewrite history. Risky to say the least." The blond drow clenched her teeth irritably. "Where's a chronomancer when you want one?"
Sildara raised an eyebrow at the word "chronomancer," wondering what it meant, but apparently, she figured it out and did not ask. She instead addressed the issue of a wish.
"In this crystal shell, that would cost you twenty-five years of your life," she pointed out, though twenty-five years amounted to little more than a pittance to any elf, even a drow.
"I'd pay that price to save your people, but it wouldn't be necessary," she said softly with a warm smile. Her hand went into a deep pocket and withdrew a double-rolled scroll, which she unrolled, to reveal a painting of an hourglass.
Sildara understood.
"That isn't a scroll at all, mmm? It's a magical item to protect you from the aging caused by a wish? In crystal shells where that happens, of course?"
"That's right," Tash said, putting it away once more. "It's nice whenever I'm in a crystal shell like that."
"Still, you might be onto something," Kiran put in. "What about wishing that all the Elendran ships were disabled?"
Tash never got a chance to answer, for multiple explosions rocked the Silver Triop. Three gypsy moths raced by in the outeye's view, against the backdrop of Listraeespace's thousands of floating boulders.
"Too late," Tyfelian grimaced.
"They came out of nowhere," Melanerra commented, frustrated. "They used starspeed to get the jump on us."
"Battle stations?" Kiran asked as Tash hurried up to the command platform.
"No point," Tyfelian said grimly. "The ship wouldn't last long enough to destroy more than a couple. And anyway, that attack was only an attention-getter, or we'd be floating in a rubble patch by now."
"Bridge, crow's nest," Jaclyn's voice called.
"Bridge, Tyfelian," the half-drow replied, grabbing the horn.
"The Elendrans are flashing a message. It reads, 'Surrender and prepare for boarding.'"
"Flash them back," Tyfelian replied, enraged anew. "Tell them to go to hell."
He started to give out attack orders, despite the ship's condition, counting on the sheer firepower of his archmage and seven other rather powerful wizards. His anger told him to do it—attack, destroy the invaders. With eight wizards and the mostly defensive abilities of a powerful psion, they could smash the Elendran fleet even from a disabled starship...
... but...
Tyfelian listened hard to his gut. The Dridercomp and the Elnamerrna both urged him to play it through, passively, and give the Elendrans what they wanted. Somehow, he knew—just knew—that the crew would not survive if he tried to fight, and they would all die uselessly.
The scenario played through Tyfelian's mind in seconds. He envisioned the battle between the Silver Triop and the Elendran invasion force. He imagined the initial attacks, one Elendran ship after another blowing up on approach, shattered by his wizards' magical spells, but more would keep coming. The Elnamerrna would break, torn to shreds by the horrible spells that the Elendran drow could use.
Tyfelian envisioned his wizards floating in space, valiantly blasting the Elendran fleet into oblivion...
... only to end up in deep space with no ship, and to die within an hour or so for lack of air.
His vision showed him a silver piece of flotsam floating by, with "Elnamerrna" painted upon it.
Who'll be there to rescue you? "Autumn's" words echoed back to him, haunting him.
"Belay that," Tyfelian said almost immediately. "We surrender, but they may not board. No protest on this, Jaclyn—that's an order. Melanerra, full stop."
Jaclyn did not respond for a moment, and Tyfelian held his breath. How long would the Elendrans wait for a reply?
Then Jaclyn took it in. "All right," she muttered angrily.
Jaclyn's voice came again.
"They're demanding the spies or their bodies. They say they'll destroy us if we refuse or if we don't have them anymore."
The demand hit a discordant note in Tyfelian's thoughts.
"Dark elves? Actually offer a choice? That doesn't make sense," he said to Kiran with a puzzled look. "Why don't they simply destroy us to find what they want?"
Kiran swallowed hard. He didn't have any answers, but he was sure that they wouldn't like whatever reason the Elendrans had.
"Tell them where the bodies are, Jaclyn," Tyfelian told her, grabbing onto the strange opportunity, "and that we can't get to them. The entire upper weapon deck is smashed."
Jaclyn worked the lantern again—Tyfelian could hear the soft clicking over the voice horn—then she waited for a reply.
After an agonizingly long moment, she got one.
"They say that they'll get them," she relayed.
Listraeespace, within debris fields near Nauthe'hressishtel
Elnamerrna, stopped and surrounded by the enemy
Greenmonth 26th, 2461
Jaclyn watched, confused, as thirty Elendran wizards flew from the gypsy moths and surrounded the Silver Triop's bow.
They cast spells, causing very loud, metallic clanking noises in the Elnamerrna's hull.
Then they cast again. Each raised a hand toward the Elnamerrna and made a lifting motion.
Jaclyn gasped.
Everyone in the bridge looked up with both astonishment and horror as the Elendran magic tore the aft section of the ceiling off the walls.
"What the hell are they doing?!" Alzja shouted.
Jaclyn watched in abject mortification, yet also with wonder, as the Elendran wizards excised the entire upper weapon deck. Broken-off hull supports, braces, latches, and a large number of the big bolts that held the ship together dropped off, along with chunks of fractured chitin and broken wood.
Everyone there scrambled for cover—under the table, up against the bulkheads, or under the protection of hastily cast spells—while Kiran grabbed his shield and lifted it over his head and Melanerra doubled over, still sitting on the helm, covering her head with her arms.
All but Tyfelian.
The half-drow just sat there, hardly moving, staring upward. He raised his arms for cover and batted fragments away with his hands, but that was all.
Jaclyn's hands clenched the rail of the crow's nest so hard her knuckles turned white and her wrist joints popped—perhaps a good thing. The Elnamerrna shook around wildly as the drow wizards did their dirty work.
The shaking was not so hard, really—not through the gravity stabilization of the spelljammer helm—but the ship rotated in very wide circles. The Elendran wizards tried to hold the ship steady, but drifting in space, that was not so easy, with nothing against which to brace the hapless Elnamerrna. The centrifugal force might have thrown Jaclyn overboard without that hard grip.
She glanced down. Her eyes nearly flew out of their sockets at the sight of the bridge—she could see the bridge, littered with fallen debris. She could easily spot Tyfelian and the others, for the aft portion of the upper weapon deck had come apart from the rest of the hull, but the forward lip of the deck would not come off so easily.
No shipwright, Jaclyn could not discern the reason for that, but she heard the Elendran wizards cursing as they kept trying to rip the deck free.
She looked up again at the sounds of their voices, so angry that her face went an ugly shade of red.
"Gods damn you!" she shouted at the Elendrans.
Melanerra felt the magically translated pain of the ship reach a searing height, but then the helm lost the ship itself and the agony went away, along with all control of the Silver Triop.
"Helm down!" she told Tyfelian, and stood from the now useless magical chair, more so she could dodge falling debris than anything else.
"Hold on!" Kiran shouted.
Without the helm to hold the ship's gravity rock-steady, the deck pitched and rolled hard beneath their feet as the attackers finally tore the upper deck completely loose and dragged it away with their magic. More bolts fell into the bridge from above, but then the rain of debris suddenly stopped.
It was not difficult to realize why—some of the bolts and hull fragments that would have fallen had become twisted into the mirror-frame, essentially stuck there. This somewhat explained the greater resistance of the forward lip of the deck to removal.
Worse, as Jaclyn could see from her lofty location, the Rada had been wise to include bracing supports in the ship's skeleton. These ran—or had run—in a half-wheel shape, like spokes, from the upper weapon deck to the huge, curved steel bars of the ship's main mirror-frame. In those positions, the supports had indirectly reinforced the ram itself, in addition to supporting the weight of the upper deck and its weapons.
Jaclyn knew little about ship construction, but even at that, she understood.
Those hull supports, well designed to dissipate the blunt-force impact that could damage the ship when she rammed, had stubbornly resisted the attempts to tear them off—especially after they had been twisted. Forcibly removing them had been far more difficult than ripping off the stern portion of the weapon deck. The process, achieved with magical force that thirty giants could never have equaled, had sent cracks splitting downward in every direction. The cargo bay door looked particularly bad.
Jaclyn looked unbelievingly into the bridge.
"Damn the Spider Queen," Tyfelian muttered, his large eyes burning into the flying Elendran wizards or the ships they'd come from—it didn't matter which. When the debris stopped falling, he gripped the arms of his chair hard to stay in it, but he was not conscious of his hands' movements.
White-hot fury emanated from the half-drow, and it burned away the last pinpoint of rational thought within his mind. The arrogant thug of the past returned, full-force, furious at the Elendrans for their offense of destroying Nauthe'hressishtel, and their attack on his dignity by tearing his ship apart.
Sildara and the other six Listraeeans looked at him in astonishment. With the unbelievably angry look on his face and his voice tone when he had damned Lolth, they did not have any idea what he was going to do.
His tone of voice was not the only thing that made his next move a total mystery. By the tone of his aura—that "glow" of charisma that many great leaders had—he seemed as if he would have called to Lolth herself and attacked her right then if he'd had the power to summon her to his spot.
But of course, he did not. His hands wrenched around the hilts of his swords when the shaking simmered down, but he could do absolutely nothing.
The flying wizards used their magic to take the wreckage apart. They then sifted it for the twenty bodies within. They found the bodies easily enough—though all of them were at least partially crushed—grabbed them, and then flew back to their waiting ships.
Jaclyn watched, hardly able to believe the incredible display of brutality.
Tyfelian slammed his fist on the arm of his chair with such force that the wood creaked in protest—and it was oak. He didn't even notice when a brace fell off the top of a banister column and struck his arm. He muttered some words in Drowic under his breath, staring straight ahead, even as the offending brace clattered on the small desk between him and Kiran, then fell off to clang on the floor.
The outeye remained, but the ceiling was gone and the walls of the bridge had been warped. The ruin of the upper parts of the ship was total.
"Those wizards are coming back," Jaclyn reported.
Tyfelian wanted to say something, but all that issued from his throat was a rather animalistic growl.
"They're attacking!" Jaclyn shouted, a prelude to the hissing explosions of fireballs.
That tore Tyfelian from his fugue and he stood up. With the ceiling gone, he didn't need the outeye to witness an Elendran wizard cast a fireball directly on the mainsail. He heard, but could not see, other fireballs detonate, as well. He started to reach for a piece of debris to throw at an attacking wizard, but then the only one he could see left.
"They've stopped," Jaclyn's voice said. "They're flying away again."
"Damage, Jaclyn?" Kiran queried. It was Tyfelian's place to ask that, but Tyfelian was beside himself, so angry he couldn't talk, indeed seemed to be about to explode like a fireball himself.
The human swallowed a lump of fury in her throat, staring at the small clot of debris that had once been a part of the Elnamerrna, and answered.
"The upper weapon deck is destroyed," she said unnecessarily. "The sails are gone, and so are most of the yardarms." She paused—watching, apparently—for a moment later she reported, "They're moving off. All of the ships are leaving."
Her breath caught.
"Tyfelian, another message. It reads, 'Thank you for your help.'"
"What?" the half-drow rasped.
"You heard me right."
Tyfelian's jaw fell wide open as he realized the enormity of what had just happened. That was why the Elendrans were going to let them live! The irony was not lost on anyone there.
A setup!
Tyfelian cast a haunted look at the seven Listraeeans—the only ones still alive, barring the unlikely event that prisoners had been taken from Nauthe'hressishtel—but he could not meet their gazes for more than a second.
He staggered backward and crashed into the mechanical clock-calendar, and then he seemed to lose all of his strength at once. His left hand clutched at the collar of the Dridercomp—the item that, with five others, had brought him here—as if it had deceived him.
"Gods forgive me!" he shouted at the absent ceiling as he crumpled to his knees and wept.
Listraeespace, debris fields near Nauthe'hressishtel
Elnamerrna, drifting, helpless
Greenmonth 26th, 2461
Kiran put his face in his hands, hardly able to believe that so horrible a thing as the destruction of an entire society had occurred and that he and his friends were partly responsible. He grasped Tyfelian's shoulders to try to calm him, but the broken half-drow didn't even respond to the touch.
Shaking his head in mystified disbelief, the paladin switched his thinking to the practical. He motioned to Sildara to get her attention, then stood beside her at the table. He pulled out a quill and a scrap of papyrus and paused to think before he started to write.
Sildara looked at him incredulously, wondering why he would want to write anything at a time like this.
"I need to get my thoughts in order, maybe figure this out," he whispered in her ear. "I'm baffled."
He swiftly worked through the sequence of events to try to find some answers. A rough chronology formed in his mind, and he began to write.
During the War—he and the others had visited Elendraspace, a previously uncharted crystal sphere dominated by drow. Within, they had fought and dodged patrols and found the hidden asteroid base of Trizfastell and his fellow renegades. There, they had worked their way through the tests and acquired the six artifacts they now carried. Then, they had not wasted much time in leaving Elendraspace—they had left right after Jaclyn got the human-sized drow chain mail that she had bribed a duergar smith to create for her.
However, Kiran remembered that they had encountered no resistance on the way out. He now felt totally sure that the Elendrans had let them go, knowing that they would eventually find Listraeespace, since they had the artifacts.
"—Seems apparent that the Elendrans let us go; no resistance met when leaving—" he jotted down.
After the War—on the way back home to Hearthspace—they had passed a rogue crystal shell. That rogue shell, or something within it, had either blocked their memories of the previous two weeks and more, or else had kept them unconscious for that long. Full inspection of the ship and crew had revealed nothing wrong after that, though Kiran strongly suspected that twenty crewmembers had been replaced with spies during that time. This despite the fact that an archmage had checked for magical disguises, using means that should have detected any magical tomfoolery.
Kiran wrote off that thought—the Elendrans had some wizards as powerful as Tash, maybe even more so. It would take a lot of time and trouble, but tricking her magic could be done.
The only other times that they could have come aboard were during the initial hiring—not believable, since they hadn't yet found the artifacts when some of those crewmen signed on—or else during the visit to Elendraspace. The latter was very unlikely too, since the general crew had not left the ship during that visit, not in large numbers. Kiran frowned, trying to remember that incident over a year back.
"Autumn, Tarrel, Kerliak, and Ursallus," he wrote, finally remembering who had accompanied Tyfelian, the others, and himself on the excursion to Trizfastell's asteroid stronghold. He knew that poor Autumn had been swapped out with a spy, but he did not know about Tarrel, Kerliak or Ursallus. He would find out if he lived long enough for it to even matter, but for now, he was left wondering, so he quickly went back to his notes.
Not long after the War ended and they had headed for home, they had discovered Listraeespace—no coincidence. That was the work of the six artifacts they had taken—it had to be. Finding the artifacts, then finding Listraeespace so shortly after the War, could not have happened accidentally.
Four days later, the Elendrans appeared and destroyed the Listraeean civilization, despite the fact that Tyfelian had somehow had foreknowledge of the attack. A good, if impromptu, defense plan had been blown away before it even started, by the actions of the spies. With so much happening inside the Elnamerrna, the ship could have accomplished nothing but its own destruction by fighting.
Sildara pulled herself together enough to read Kiran's notes, but she shook her head dejectedly.
"Too many missing elements," she stated. "There had to be so very much going on that you didn't know."
Inwardly, Kiran smiled and his torn heart warmed a bit. Against all odds, Sildara trusted him and did not believe that he and his shipmates had done any of this on purpose.
However, on the negative side of that, she was correct. There was too much missing. So much, indeed, that Kiran had to admit that he had no idea how this had happened, not exactly.
"We'll get the wizards to work on this later," he promised Sildara. "Right now, the priority is to stay alive and get out of this mess."
"It's the priority for you," Sildara stated. "We have nowhere to go—our home is gone."
"You're welcome to live with us, or we can take you somewhere you like," Kiran told her. "Don't give up on yourself."
Sildara found a tearful smile somewhere.
"And we need you now," the paladin went on. "All of you and yours. The Elnamerrna is in terrible shape and we have to start repairs, or we'll die here."
"Yes," Sildara managed to whisper, "but..." she choked, and tears flowed from her huge eyes like a waterfall.
Curious, Kiran thought. I've never seen a full-blooded drow cry before.
The paladin had seen Tyfelian cry—the half-drow was not embarrassed to shed tears in front of others—but he had never seen Tash or Alzja cry. It looked very bizarre to see honest tears on the face of a dark elf.
He reminded himself, though, that Sildara's people were not technically drow. They were Svart Alfar from the planet Midgard by ancestry, a race he had never heard of at all until Sildara had told him about them.
"But," Sildara whispered again, "right now, I need fixing."
Kiran looked at her, puzzled, but then he saw her begin to tremble, just as badly as the Elnamerrna had trembled when the evil wizards had extracted the weapon deck.
Sildara then uttered words that she had not spoken for over four hundred years, not since she had been a child. She could scarcely believe that she was saying them now, and especially, unbelievably, to a human.
"Kiran... hold me."
Though the others didn't know it, Tyfelian knelt in deep prayer.
He had been working through it, going over the events in his mind just as Kiran had, to gain control again. After that, he had started praying—to Corellon, Eelistraee, Sehanine, Labelas, Aerdrie, Solonor, even Slicktrick, Alzja's patron—in Hearthspace, the elven god of travel and adventure.
He prayed with fervor to any elven deity that he could think of, to have mercy and reverse this travesty.
No answers came to him.
Then, in the depths of his unbridled rage, he even took a shot at praying to Lolth.
That prayer, though, was hardly one of supplication.
Tyfelian reached deep into his oldest memories—he had left the drow city where he had been born when very, very young, still in training as a professional hit-man, in fact—to recall his rudimentary training in the drow religion. He prayed the words that one used in opening a prayer to Lolth, and then bluntly stated what was on his mind, attempting the very action that had crossed his mind earlier.
"Queen of Spiders, come to me. I damn you and all your works and challenge you to fight me and my comrades by yourself, you miserable coward of a black spider! If we win, you will restore the Listraeean home and all its people back to the way things were. If you win, you get to keep them forever. I defy you! Come to us and get the fate you deserve!"
No answer came to that prayer, either—fortunately for Tyfelian and the Elnamerrna crew! The lot of them were powerful, certainly—far beyond normal mortal limits, all of them considered—but in terms of combat ability, they could never have destroyed the avatar of a deity. Not even with the abilities of the Elendran artifacts could they have accomplished that kind of victory. With great good fortune, they might have caused the Spider Queen some minor discomfort before she crushed them all, but the outcome would never be in doubt.
The half-drow knew all this intellectually, but he had lost all control of his rage and didn't care. Tyfelian gave up finally; his failure almost made him give in to despair. He faded into sleep for a few minutes, unmoving, then he stirred and rose from his knees.
He glanced all about quickly to assure himself that Lolth had not responded to his blasphemous prayer to her—he couldn't now believe he had done that! Nor did his mind, working with some rationality again, understand why he had done it. Lolth had no reason that he knew of to respond to, or even answer him.
He nearly panicked, for he could easily imagine Lolth's avatar in battle and therefore he knew that he and the others were as good as dead if Lolth responded. As his level-headedness slowly returned, however, he realized that she would not—there was nothing for her to gain by sending an avatar. She wanted them to live—so they could be horrified by their foul, if unintentional, work—else the gypsy moths would have destroyed them instead of turning away.
Tyfelian pulled himself together and looked around, taking stock of his situation. He noticed that Kiran had wrapped Sildara in a tight hug. She was sobbing like a child on his shoulder.
Tash had leaned against the starboard door—the left side of it, anyway, as it had been broken in several places when the Elendrans removed the weapon deck—and stood there, head bowed, waging her own internal war and trying to come to terms with what had happened.
Alzja sat at Tash's navigation station, staring blankly upward through the missing ceiling at the stars and flying boulders of Listraeespace, looking shocked and stunned beyond measure.
"I always wanted to see that look on Alzja's face," Tyfelian thought, "but right now, it doesn't do anything for me at all."
Jalaysa had crumpled in a weeping heap against the spelljammer helm, likewise lost in bewilderment and disbelief.
Menlina and the five Listraeean warrior-wizards looked at nothing with empty expressions, shaken to their very cores. One warrior-wizard—Tyfelian thought he remembered his name as Chalizon—had managed to put his chin on a shaking fist, but the others hunched over the table, unmoving.
The two guards had moved together to the front of the bridge, at the edge of the outeye. They talked together quietly; both believed that they were doomed. Melanerra was murmuring quiet words of encouragement to them, but they clearly didn't believe a word she said.
Calmer now, Tyfelian sat down in his chair to think. He looked without much hope at the damage done to the ship, wondering if they could make the Silver Triop spaceworthy again, or at least able to move.
The half-drow was no more an expert than Jaclyn was, but by the looks of the damage, and the fact that the spelljammer helm had lost its link to the ship, he thought it was probably hopeless.
"In a dock, maybe...here, adrift...no way in creation," he thought.
Then everything stopped—the sounds of various people sobbing, the conversation of the guards, the creaking of the hull—all sound ceased.
Tyfelian frowned, but he had no time to try to figure it out, for a voice intruded into his mind.
"There was a reason for this, you know."
"What? Who is speaking?" Tyfelian mind-thought back to the intruder.
Terrible, lilting laughter filled the half-drow's mind, and he knew, to his complete mortification, that Lolth had heard his challenge after all.
"You have no idea how well you have served me, mortal," the Spider Queen said in Tyfelian's mind. "But it was another who set the Elendrans aboard your Elnamerrna,not me."
"You weren't sorry to see it happen," Tyfelian accused.
That laughter came again, and Tyfelian winced.
"Be that as it may, I did not expect to find the Listraeeans for a long, long time to come," Lolth told him.
"Still, you may prove useful even now, mortal. You will find that your archmage cannot wishyou out of this situation, not in this place. It is mine now.
"But your situation is not so dire. Get out if you can," she snarled. "If not..." the laughter burned Tyfelian's mind once more, hurting his head.
"If you cannot leave this place by way of your own ingenuity, pray to me again. I do owe you a favor."
"I will never ask for anything from you," Tyfelian thought-snarled at the goddess. He knew better—for no deal, no exchange of favors, with typical drow or their goddess could ever be quite what it seemed. It wouldn't be as simple and clear-cut as Lolth had made it sound.
Never would it be that easy. Tyfelian didn't need the intuition enhancement of the Dridercomp to realize that Lolth would probably desire that he kill Sildara and her comrades... and she would find some clever way to force him to do it, too. Lolth would desire a sacrifice from him before allowing him to call in his favor.
Lolth knew his thoughts. As a goddess, she could of course read Tyfelian like a book if she had her attention directly on him. The interactions between the Elendran artifacts blocked telepathy to a certain extent, but to a deity that was laughable resistance.
"To keep your new friends, you must be inventive and creative in escaping your dilemma," Lolth tittered at him scornfully. "You have done a great service for me and may still have more potential. We are even, and more, for your destruction of the Skyshaft District of Tatissadane four years ago.
"But not all of them are dead, and I enjoy clean kills best. If you will kill those seven, I would be happy to rescue you, your crew, and your ship—all you have to do is ask. Pray to me again if you cannot find your own way."
With a final, hideous laugh, the Spider Queen was gone.
