The Maelstrom Eye

Chapter Five

The door to the captain's cabin had barely closed when the argument started.

"Aelfred, you've got to get rid of Gaye."

The warrior looked up in shock. "You're kidding me."

"Tell her we're overbooked. Tell her you have an unlucky number of crew aboard. Just get her off the ship."

"Old son, you're not making any sense."

"Gaye is a kender. You don't understand what kender are like. They're pure trouble. We're just begging for-"

"Ptah's black beard, Teldin, do you hear what you're saying? You served on this ship when it was commanded by a mind flayer, and just a minute ago you asked me to hire on a gnome, but now you're having a fit over a girl who-"

"A kender! Aelfred, kender will steal you blind without even thinking about it. They're not evil-that's not what I'm saying-but they can't help themselves. They steal, they wander off and bring back trouble, they-"

"No!" shouted Aelfred. He raised a thick finger and jabbed it an inch from Teldin's nose. "You stupid son of a bitch, we are nor going to start a fight here about a kender, whatever the hells a kender is, and we aren't going to start up about this one. She was aboard just an hour when she caught two thieves trying to make off with one of our silk crates. We caught 'em both because she was so fast and quiet that she got five of us after them before the thieves had even cleared the docks. Then she fixed the rear catapult's trigger lock. And she says she can cook. There's no shame in having a woman cook aboard ship once in a while, and if she wants to do it, I'm all for it, so cut out this crap. What's eating you?"

Teldin dropped his gaze and rubbed a hand over his face. He could see it wasn't going to work. "She lied to you, Aelfred," he said, feeling tired and frustrated. "I didn't send her over here. She's just a-just a gypsy, some homeless kender I ran into in the Greater Market. I couldn't get rid of her. I'm just-"

Aelfred slammed a fist into a wall. Teldin started and looked up. "So, she lied! Who in the Nine Hells cares? I lied to get aboard my first spelljammer. I didn't know what I was in for, but I wouldn't have cared if I had, you know that. I had people after me. I can't hold it against every person who tells me a lie just to serve on a ship, as long as he or she's got skills worth having!" Aelfred paused to clear his throat, then suddenly gave Teldin a crooked smile. "If nothing else, she's a long sight better looking than you are. We've needed some color around here, and she's just in time."

Teldin frowned. "She's just a kid, Aelfred," he said, even though he wasn't quite sure of that.

Aelfred snorted and suppressed a laugh. "Gods, Teldin, there are no kids in wildspace. She can handle herself. I'm not saying that looks mean everything, but it sure brightened up my day to have her on board." He stared at Teldin hard. "You never came out with so much jettison before. Did the elves throw a hate-kender spell at you, or what?"

Teldin said nothing in return. His gaze dropped under Aelfred's own. Strangely, he found it hard to pinpoint what had set him off. He'd been angry with Gaye's intrusion, and he had never trusted the few kender he'd known. Something else was eating at him about Gaye. He couldn't say what.

"Speaking of the elves," Aelfred said, his voice growing warmer again, "how did things go? What did they have to say about your cloak?"

After a few moments, Teldin went along with the change in topic and related everything that had happened since he had left the Probe hours earlier. Aelfred whistled when he heard the news about the connection between the Spelljammer and the cloak, and he grimaced when Dyffed's passenger status was explained, but the document that Teldin produced giving them access to Imperial Fleet supplies in the Rock of Bral's warehouses made his jaw drop.

"I've never heard of the Imperial Fleet giving anyone anything if that person wasn't also in the fleet," he said, staring at the paper as if it had just given him kingship over a planet. "I can't believe they'd just do that."

"Cirathorn was going to give me some papers on their research into the Spelljammer, too, but he said they needed time to get their notes together. I don't know why I didn't trust them." After a moment, he let his breath out slowly. "No, I do know why. I have a hard time trusting people these days. It just seems like…" He ran a hand through his hair. "Every time people get a look at the cloak, things change."

Aelfred watched his friend carefully. Teldin was on the verge of saying something more, but didn't. They both knew what wasn't being said. Other faces and names joined them in the room, with memories of betrayal and blood. Teldin had given up counting those who'd died in the wake of his cloak.

"Hey, old son," said Aelfred quietly, "We've got to use this writ before it expires on us. I've got a ton of stuff I need to get if we're going to run through this sphere. Let's sit down and make out a market list."

Teldin nodded. He was still angry, but tired now, too. "I didn't mean to get so upset about Gaye," he said suddenly. "She's probably a good kid, but she…" He fought for words, then gave up. "Just put a lock on your door."

Aelfred grinned. "I never lock any woman out." He took a light punch at Teldin's shoulder, but as he did so his grin faded and he looked away. "Speaking of which, Julia was looking for you…. She wanted to say good-bye, Teldin."

Aelfred continued as Teldin's expression slid from one of surprise to resignation to depression. "She came to me for permission to leave the crew. Said she'd gotten a commission on another ship. She left you this."

Teldin took the folded scrap of parchment offered him. He opened it to find the words "It's better this way" hastily scratched across it and few locks of coppery hair caught in the crease.

Aelfred cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable, then headed for the cabin door. There he paused. "Listen, we'll write down what supplies we need to get while we have a drink, and then we'll get our gear from the elves. It'll be like Midwinter Festival back home."

Teldin nodded mechanically. The big warrior's joking change of subject hit a raw nerve, but Teldin wasn't willing to fight about it. Thinking of Julia made him think of the traitor Rianna, since she had nearly killed both Julia and Teldin before he and Aelfred had killed her. Sometimes, when he wasn't careful, he still saw Rianna's bloodied face, her feral grin, the spear that pinned her to the deck. If he was very incautious, he remembered other things that had passed between Rianna and him, things he wished had never happened. Julia's departure had to be for the better. What kind of death would she have suffered to be his companion? he wondered. Without thinking, Teldin reached up and fingered the silver chain that held his cloak. It took time to come back to reality when that period passed.

Writing down the supply list took five tankards of ale, only one of which was Aelfred's. Teldin nodded off as he finished his last ale, and Aelfred walked him back to his cabin. The big warrior left Teldin asleep in his hammock.

Gaye was topside, talking with a deck hand about repairing a broken railing on the main deck. Aelfred motioned her over. They walked back toward the stern castle stairs, where they leaned on the railing and looked together at the flapping gullions and the empty dock to starboard.

"He's taking a rest now," said Aelfred, supporting his weight on his elbows. "Meeting the elves wore him out. Got a lot on his mind."

"I thought he did," said Gaye, chin resting on her folded hands. "He was really tense when we met. We ran around, then he had to see the elves. Is he okay?"

"Ah." Aelfred waved a hand. "Fine. Well, son of. Our second mate took off, and he was a little down about it. I think he liked her. He's also sort of worried about you."

Gaye blinked. "Oh. I thought he was angry with me." "Well, he's got this thing about-well, kender. He was afraid you might get into trouble. He says he's known kender who steal things."

Gaye chewed her lower lip. "Some do."

"That's probably it, then," Aelfred said, as if the knowledge solved everything. "Stealing things wouldn't go over well here. It would cause a lot of trouble."

"Yeah." Gaye watched a particularly large gullion wheel in flight nearby, over the docks. "I can understand that."

"That's good." Aelfred suddenly sounded much more cheerful. "Anyway, Teldin should be fine in a few hours. Didn't sleep well before we got here. Too keyed up."

"Can I stay? On the ship, I mean."

Aelfred looked into her wildspace eyes with a crooked grin. "Are you kidding?" He pulled away from the railing. "I owe you a drink. I always buy a new crewmate one free drink." He suddenly stopped and looked directly at Gaye. "Say, forgive me for asking, but just how old are you?"

Gaye looked up at him, thought carefully, then told the truth. "Forty seven."

Aelfred went limp. He stepped back, mouth open. "No." Gaye gave Aelfred a slow smile. "Yeah. Isn't it incredible?" "Damn." He stared at her for a long moment, then suddenly began laughing aloud, slapping his thighs. Other crewmen stopped working to stare at him with astonishment. When he could contain himself, he just shook his head. "Come on," he said with a wide grin, motioning her to follow him to the saloon. "You're old enough for a real drink."

"I'll be there right after I visit the head," she said brightly. Aelfred waved and headed off to get started.

She put the compass, the three coins, the earring, and the belaying pin back where she had found them-more or less- before she ran down to the saloon.

Getting the supplies from the Imperial Fleet two days later proved to be absurdly simple. Its crew safely aboard and ready for the journey to Ironpiece, the Probe slid backward from its dock, drew away from the end by half the ship's hundred-foot length, then dropped toward the Rock's invisible gravity plane only a few more feet below them.

"Turn us over," called Aelfred from the forecastle.

The hammership slowly began to rotate on its long axis, as if rolling over in a storm. Teldin felt a now-familiar sense of vertigo. His stomach churned, and his palms grew sweaty. Finally, he looked away from the vast stony bulk of the Rock spread out before him, letting his stomach settle as he stared out at the turning stars in the empty blackness of wildspace. That wasn't so bad. He couldn't help thinking that the Rock was flipping over, and everyone on it would be crushed.

The elven Imperial Fleet maintained storehouses for its naval ships at the sprawling naval base on the reverse side of the Rock of Bral. The Probe very slowly cruised up the side of a great rocky face from which dozens of windows and batteries of ballistae and catapults peered. Up one hundred, three hundred, maybe five hundred feet, the lip of the cliff came into view. The weapons batteries were numerous, and among them were many unfamiliar but discomforting weapons. Weapons' crewmen sullenly watched the Probe pass by, hands resting on crossbows or the release levers of loaded siege engines. There were even a few huge versions of the smokepowder pistols that the giff Gomja once had carried with him. Teldin shook off the depressing memory of Gomja's death, earned by battling neogi and umber hulks on their own ship when it crashed into a mountain lake on Krynn.

The Probe reached the cliff ledge and rose over it. Ahead was a flat plain of smooth rock marked in a grid pattern with huge white stripes and dots lights shone from tall poles on the edges of the plain. Red-brick weapons' towers abounded, far and near. Teldin saw two wasp ships, each hovering just twenty feet above the plain about fifty feet away, one to port and one to starboard.

"We have clearance," sang the lookout. Teldin glanced forward and saw a bright yellow light shining directly ahead from the base of another great cliff face, perhaps five hundred feet away. The light was directly over the rightmost one of three titanic gray doors, each capable of swallowing the Probe and a dozen like it at once.

"Slow ahead," said Aelfred. "Let's take our time." The Probe glided forward over the plain. Teldin now saw that the plain was a sort of naval landing field or dry dock. Huge wood-and-kon doors were set into the rock at various places, for purposes Teldin couldn't begin to guess at. Sealed boxes and short stacks of lumber were visible here and there across the rock flats. Even a few walking figures were visible, but for the most part the field was clear.

The monstrous gray door toward which they glided led into a dark hall illumined by hundreds of lights in its high-vaulted ceiling. Teldin saw a man carrying a box from which a red light suddenly glared toward the Probe.

"All stop!" barked Aelfred. The ship groaned slightly as it came to a halt only thirty feet from the hangar doors. A single silver-armored figure, smaller and thinner than an adult man but with a straight-backed bearing that marked him as a military officer, stood next to the doors. The figure, Teldin realized, was Admiral Cirathorn. The elf slowly waved in greeting. "Your supplies can be loaded aboard your ship using our portable cranes," he called in a pleasant voice. "All you requested is yours."

"We're grateful to you," Aelfred called back from the forecastle railing. "I'm Aelfred Silverhorn, the captain of this ship. I'm honored to meet you."

"And I, you," Cirathorn returned. "The loading should take less than an hour. I ask that you and your first mate join me for a moment."

Aelfred turned and looked at Teldin, shrugging. "I assume that's if you don't mind," he said.

"I trust you more than I do anyone else," Teldin replied. "It's your ship, and you may as well hear what I hear."

They rode to the ground in one of the ship's boats, where they had the helmsman of the tiny craft wait for them. Cirathorn greeted them with a smile that looked remarkably bloodless in the intense blue-white lights spilling from beyond the hangar door. His eyes were narrowed against the light, but they were friendly enough anyway.

"I hate to be nosy," Aelfred said after they greeted each other, "but how did you manage to get the Rock to let you store Imperial Fleet goods here?

"The prince of this world and city was kind enough to allow the Imperial Fleet to lease a portion of this naval base," Cirathorn said. "We may store supplies, berth our lesser ships, and maintain contact with the numerous elven colonies in this sphere. In return, Prince Andru and his government benefit from our strength. Our presence brings additional trade from elves who would rather land where the fleet lands as well. If there is cause to defend this port, we aid in that defense, though we have little here on the Rock with which to fight. As the prince would say, it's the thought that counts."

"A nice arrangement," agreed Aelfred, "though I've heard a few stories about the prince that weren't too complimentary. Wasn't he involved in some way with his brother's-"

"The wise do not question their allies too deeply," interrupted Cirathorn, as if he were discussing the weather. "None of us is as others see us, and every field bears the seeds of disappointment. Prince Andru is our ally, and a good one he has been-but we have digressed from my reasons for meeting you here."

The admiral untied a leather tube from his belt and passed it to Teldin. "I believe you may find these notes of some help, limited though such may be. They are written in the common tongue of Ansalon, for your ease. This is the sum of our lore about your goal. You will find this material contradictory at best, as most of it consists of second-hand tales told around a tavern fire by those who would know the least about their subject. Nonetheless, you may find a reference or two of use."

Teldin uncapped the tube and noted that it contained many sheets of rolled papers. He recapped the tube and held it rightly rather than tying it to his own belt.

"I don't know how to thank you," Teldin said, looking with relief at the elfs angular face. "I'm afraid I didn't know whether to trust you or not. I've had a difficult time since I picked up this cloak. It's never gotten better."

"Until now, I would hope," Cirathom said. A smile brightened his pale features. He extended his right hand. Surprised, Teldin took it and gave a cautious but firm handshake. Cirathorn shook Aelfred's hand as well, then stepped back. "I am needed at a long dinner honoring Prince Andru," he said. "I am fashionably late as it is, but it would be best not to keep everyone waiting past the appetizers. Thank you again for honoring us with your presence, Teldin Moore. May the gods watch over your journey."

The two men bid the elf good-bye, then headed back for their boat. They had lifted away for their ship when the admiral reached the hangar doors. The elf turned to look back in silence, noting the billowing of the now maroon-red cloak. He walked on again only after the hammership had been loaded and had begun its slow glide back over the landing field, and the red cloak could no longer be seen.

Cirathorn's walk took him to an unlit supervisor's room. He closed the door behind him, paused in the darkness for a moment, then walked over to a writing desk and opened the lowest drawer on the right. From inside it he pulled out a key. Reaching up, he let his fingers pass along the wall until he found a nail stuck there, then moved up three hand widths from the nail to find a nearly invisible slot in the wall. He inserted the key in this and twisted.

A panel slid soundlessly aside in the wall to reveal a closet-sized room with a faintly glowing circle of amber on the floor. The admiral returned the key, then entered, closing the door behind him, and stepped into the center of the circle with the clinking of mailed boots against the stone floor.

"The embassy," he said, and vanished into thin air.

Moments later, he stopped in the doorway of his office below the embassy structure. A row of elven faces turned. His staff and officers came to their feet.

"It has been ages," he said, "since we last hunted together. Now is the time. Let us hunt."

The Rock of Bral became a giant potato again, covered with miniature streets and houses. Sunlight glinted from green copper spires and painted rooftops, all slowly receding from the Probe's bow. Gullions slowly whirled and spun over the city, becoming flecks of white against the endless starry night beyond. The potato shrank into the endless night until it was just a bright star, then shrank again until it was lost against the reaches of space.

"Learn anything from those papers the admiral gave you?" Aelfred asked at the end of the first day out, in the privacy of the officer's saloon. The captain was pleased to see that Teldin had taken only a small mug of ale; whatever had bugged him earlier no doubt had passed. It was probably Julia's leaving.

Teldin stared thoughtfully at his mug. He'd had a devil of a time with the scrolls; the writing in many places was beyond his abilities to read, and he was too proud to ask for help. Still, he had gotten the basic idea. Dyffed, the self-proclaimed expert on the Spelljammer, had added a few thoughts of his own, but surprisingly little more of use than the papers had given him. The gnome had collected only trivia on the Spelljammer, not useful facts.

"The elves wrote down everything they'd ever heard concerning the Spelljammer- rumors, tales, lies, everything," Teldin said. "None of it fits together or makes sense. People say the Spelljammer has been blown to pieces, smashed into asteroids, driven into suns, and exploded in the phlogiston, but it still reappears, looking like new. It's been commanded by elves, men, goblins, and creatures called orcs, which I assume are like the hobgoblins and goblins we have on Krynn. It's been overrun with mind flayers, undead wizards, and priests, and those things like, urn, Graffin the Gray, I think you called him-"

"Beholders," said Aelfred. His smile vanished.

"Beholders." Teldin nodded. "And a few other things that I've never heard of." He hesitated, then reached down and unstrapped the leather tube from his belt and handed it to Aelfred. "You may as well see for yourself. You're just about the last person left alive that I trust, and it's your ship."

Aelfred took the scroll case with a look of surprise, but handed it back. "I'll pass. I have more than enough to read, and you're in this up to your neck. It's better that you keep your eyes on this while I run the ship. What else?"

Teldin took a swallow of his drink first. He'd hoped that Aelfred, who was better at reading, could have told him more. "Lots of other things. Dyffed knew something about it, too. The Spelljammer looks like a gigantic manta ray with a city on its back. It moves faster than any ship that size should. It goes wherever it wants. Half the races in wildspace claim to have built it or owned it. Several legends talk about people or monsters who went on quests to command the ship. All of them failed. They missed some key or important bit of information, or they were killed by the creatures living aboard the Spelljammer itself. Some say the ship cursed them, and some say the ship ate them. It's all lunacy. It's one of the oldest elements in space mythology, Dyffed says. Of course, it would have to be the very place I have to go to get my life sorted out, assuming that we even make it there."

Aelfred reflected on this. "Are there any races who don't have a claim on the Spelljammer? Anyone who doesn't really care about it?"

Teldin laughed without humor. "Everyone cares about it. The only race that doesn't claim to have built it is the gnomes, but they'd like to take it apart just for fun."

"Ah. Speaking of which, Sylvie caught our little friend Dyffed on the forward bridge," Aelfred said, referring to the half-elven helmsman. "Dyffed was taking measurements of the helm chair and was next planning to take it apart. He had the usual idea to rebuild it better than before. I'm beginning to think that all gnomes on this ship should be locked in the hold until we reach port."

Teldin looked past the broad-shouldered captain, his gaze traveling out the huge window into the star-filled deeps. "Do you know anything about Ironpiece?"

"Sylvie and I looked it up in the boob and charts a few hours ago. It's a little world, a few hundred miles across and shaped like a coin. It's an old gnome colony with a naval base, nothing important." His grin returned. "I don't know how I feel about landing there. We may have to fight them off with pikes and knives if they try to get aboard and 'fix' things."

Teldin remembered the Krynnish gnomes of Mount Nevermind, and how one had come up with the idea of removing Teldin's head and keeping it alive in a machine as a prelude to removing his cloak. He genuinely liked gnomes and counted some of them as his friends, but they were still gnomes. "Save a boarding pike for me," he said, a trace of a smile coming back to him.

Aelfred grinned. "That's a good son," he said proudly.

A thought drifted into Teldin's mind. He wondered why he hadn't thought of it before. "Have you ever heard of anything called a falamath… well, a fal?"

Aelfred grunted, looking away at a wall. "Fal. That's the sage the elves wanted you to see, right? I thought 'Fal' was the sage's name."

"No, the sage is a fal. It's a race of some son. The fal's name is a number, One Six Nine."

The two men stared at each other in thought, resting back in their chairs.

"Sylvie might know," Aelfred said at last. "She's studied wildspace a lot more than I have-the book parts, anyway."

"Well, then," said Teldin. He took a last drink from his mug, draining it before he stood up. "Let's ask."

"We could also ask Gaye," Aelfred said. "She seems to have gotten around. Or we could try the gnomes."

"Sylvie it is, then," said Teldin, pointedly ignoring the last suggestion.

Aelfred led the way out of the saloon and down the companionway to the hatch leading down to the cargo deck, where the helm room was. Sylvie had her back to the door when the two men entered. Her slender form was bent over the chart table, a penlike implement and a drafting tool in her hands. Long silver hair spilled over her shoulders down to the map like a woodland waterfall. She wore an outfit she had picked up several worlds back, a sleeveless black blouse with a dark blue pair of billowing pants that looked almost like a dress. She had lost none of her natural grace and beauty.

Teldin sighed and looked away from her at the charts and maps covering the walls. He remembered walking into the chart room before the ship had arrived at the Rock of Bral, as Aelfred and Sylvie had been leaning across one of the maps. Aelfred's hand had rested across the half-elf navigator's shoulders in a way that spoke volumes for a relationship that Teldin realized he had completely missed ever since he had been brought aboard the Probe. Despite all of Aelfred's talk about the women he had known and loved, Teldin realized that Aelfred had been quite inactive in seeking the opposite sex for as long as he and Teldin had been friends-which was at least as long as Sylvie had been aboard the ship. Aelfted never spent any time in the chart room unless Sylvie was there, plotting out courses. They were rarely seen together on the ship otherwise, but Teldin knew from his own experience at dating the daughters of local fanners, back on distant Krynn, that not being seen together meant nothing.

Without a word, Aelfred stood behind Sylvie to. her right, waiting for her to finish her calculations. She made a rapid series of notes, turned her head, and saw the two of them waiting for her in the doorway.

"What's the matter?" she asked. "Admiring the view?" Teldin was suddenly aware that he and Aelfred were staring. He flushed with embarrassment and looked away.

"Hey, don't kid yourself, woman," said Aelfred in a mock-cavalier tone. "I've seen millions of better ones. Listen, we were curious if you've ever heard of a being called a fal. You read a lot about wildspace. Anything ring a bell?"

"A what?" Sylvie asked. "A fal?"

"That's the one," said Aelfred. "What about it?"

Sylvie blinked, looking at the two men as if they were small boys who had rushed in to ask what the number five was made of. Her eyes smiled even if her lips didn't. "I haven't the faintest idea," she said. "Is this something you made up? Where'd you hear about it?"

"The elves recommended that we meet a fal to learn more about Teldin's cloak," Aelfred said, his shoulders sinking. "We thought you might know about it."

The pen rotated in Sylvie's fingers. "Why not ask the elves?" she said.

"Well," started Aelfred. "We sort of-"

"I forgot," said Teldin.

The pen stopped, then began to rotate again, more slowly. The navigator nodded at this piece of news. "Well, I'm only part elf, so I'm afraid I can't help you," she said, "but you might ask the gnome, Dyffedionizer. He's an interesting little guy, if you can get him to shut up about irrelevant things. He knows a lot about wildspace. On the other hand, if I catch him taking apart the helm once more, he's going overboard."

Teldin and Aelfred bade their farewells and left Sylvie hunched over her charts. They considered their options in the hallway outside.

"Teldin, I'd sooner stick my head in a beholder's mouth than ask that gnome anything," Aelfred said. "That will be your project. You're good with gnomes. I'll ask Gaye if she knows anything. That way, we'll split our forces."

Teldin scratched his head, hearing a door open down the hall. "I can't believe I didn't ask the elves when I was there on the Rock. Sylvie must think I'm an idiot, and I am. How could I forget to ask such a simple thing?"

"Ask about what?" came an all-too-familiar voice. Teldin nearly stumbled over the waist-high Dyffed, who had appeared out of nowhere right in his path. The gnome was trying to carry a stack of boob down the corridor, but he couldn't see over the top of it. "I might be persuaded to answer a question for you, though my expertise in the medical field is necessarily limited, since I took my graduate degree from link's Cube in spelljamming theory and applications and tested out of the undergraduate courses in biology and anatomy, which were such a bore, as you can imagine, but-"

"No, no, no," Aelfred said, cutting off the gnome and trying to quickly move past him to get to the stairway leading up to the main deck. "Teldin's just trying to figure out what a fal is."

"What? A fal? A falmadaraatha?" called the voice behind the stack of books in excitement. "Oh, well, beyond the usual, I'm afraid I don't know a lot about them, as I missed that course at Lirak's Cube, too, though my colleagues and I at the Ironpiece naval… ah, um, yacht club, yes, that was it, yacht club, my colleagues and I used to go off to talk with one of them, old One Six Nine, yes, the one the admiral mentioned when we were at the Rock-a fine old fellow, that One Six Nine-many times in the last six decades. Um, I meant that we'd gone to see him many times in the last six decades, not that One Six Nine has been a fine fellow only within the last six decades, which would be amusing, see, since they do live so long, the fal do, about two hundred decades, give or take a few centuries, of course, and One Six Nine-I believe my colleagues at the naval-I mean yacht club-call him 'Thirteen Squared' as sort of an inside joke, you see-anyway, One Six Nine has been a fine fellow for much longer than that." The stack of books turned uncertainly to face a point directly between Teldin and Aelfred, who had stopped short in the companionway. "You did get the joke about 'Thirteen Squared,' didn't you? So many people don't, and that's quite sad, really, but that's what you get when funding for mathematics is cut in favor of things like 'Introductory Troll Slaying' or 'Treasure Appreciation' or some other rot."

"So what is a falama-a fal?" Teldin asked. He already had a mental image of an elflike being with a wrinkled face and a cluttered office, or perhaps a superhuman sage like the cold, all-knowing scribe Astinus, whom Teldin had met once on his homeworld of Krynn.

"Oh! Well, a fal is… I say, Teldin, you said you were a farmer once, from Krynnspace, correct?"

Teldin nodded, then realized the gnome couldn't see him through his stack of books. "Yes," he added hastily.

"Well, you've seen garden slugs, true? Little tiny black squishy things that get on your tomatoes and on your boots and have no function in life except to emit slime?"

Aghast, Teldin felt his image of a race of reasonably humanlike sages crumble.

"Well," continued Dyffed jovially, as a book on top of his stack started to slide toward his head, "a fal is pretty much like a slug, except, of course, for having two mouths and sensory antennae and those marvelous eyestalks and a most remarkable petrophagic capability. Bright and pleasant fellows, too, the fal are, especially old One Six Nine. Did I mention that?" "A slug," said Aelfred. He stared at the gnome as if Dyffed had grown eyestalks himself. "The elves want you to talk to a slug? I guess I've heard stranger things." The way Aelfred said that made it clear that he had never heard anything stranger in his life.

The whole idea was so ludicrous that Teldin found he was unable to grasp it. "How will we keep from stepping on him and smashing him?" he asked, thinking that things could not possibly get to be more unbelievable.

"Step on him? Step on him?" The gnome was suddenly seized by a fit of laughter that was cut short only when the topmost books slid off his stack and struck him on the top of his bald head. The whole stack spilled across the floor immediately after that. Teldin and Aelfred helped the gnome pick up his books, though the gnome had trouble picking them up himself because he was unable to stop laughing.

"My, my, I really am going to have to remember that one. That was very good, just excellent!" Dyffed gasped, wiping away the tears. "When I get to Ironpiece, I'm going straight to Admiral Maxineutonarisprago to tell him, and the old boy will simply rupture himself."

"What's so funny?" Teldin asked, dreading the answer.

"Oh, you know that-no, wait, of course you don't know, you couldn't, which makes it all the funnier, you see, because a fal would just barely fit into the cargo hold on this ship, with no room left over for its luggage, if it had any to carry with it. Not to mention any of our luggage. Stepping on it and smashing it-now, that was quite the runniest thing." The gnome sat on the floor and wiped his eyes again. He occasionally chuckled or shook his head in amazement.

Teldin sat back on his heels. The Prate's cargo hold, he recalled, was about sixty feet long and a quarter of that wide. "A giant slug," he said dully.

"I guess it makes as much sense as anything that's happened to us since you came aboard, Teldin," Aelfred said, picking up the last book and setting it on the gnome's stack. He got to his feet and ran a hand through his dose-cropped curls. "Well, fine, we eventually have to look for a giant slug. I'm tempted to go back to the saloon and think about this for a while, but I'd never come out again-not under my own power, anyway."

Teldin had nothing to add as he came to his feet. In the months since the reigar's ship had crashed on his house, he had managed with some success to keep his head above water as he learned more and more about the grand design of the cosmos. Once in a while he had to tread water harder than usual. This time, he felt he'd gone under.

"I'll be in my cabin," he said at last. "I've got some reading to do." He started upstairs with Aelfred, leaving the gnome struggling with the stack of books below.

"It could have been worse, old son," said Aelfred sagely, dapping a thick hand on Teldin's shoulder. "The fal could have been another gnome."