The Ultimate Helm

Chapter Ten

The main level of the beholder ruins was uncommonly bright. Usually the beholders disdained such light, preferring instead the comfortable coolness of the shadows.

But, for their honored guests, they were more than willing to make an exception.

Amid the toppled columns and the ruined statuary, ShiCaga the Enchantress, chieftess of the ogre population, stood surrounded by her towering sons, HiRotu and AziKash, and ten of her misshapen ogre warriors. ShiCaga was beautiful by ogre standards, and her face was decorated with white powders and lotions that made her appear like an ugly, towering ghost.

Opposite the ogres, waiting near one of the broad staircases spiraling up to the beholder quarters, stood a dozen representatives of the minotaur race. Onehorn, their newly elected leader, snorted angrily at the head of the group. His was the mark of the broken horn; and his was the shame of murdering his own king under thrall of the beholders' hypnotic powers. The eye tyrants had released the minotaurs from their spells, knowing well that the charms would shortly wear off anyway, and that the minotaurs could not be charmed forever. A treaty, Gray Eye had decided, would keep the minotaurs on the beholders' leash and send a powerful signal to the Spelljammer's general population.

Then the minotaurs could be disposed of when the time was right.

Onehorn groused at the beholders' rule, but he also knew that a treaty would keep the minotaurs alive- long enough, at least, until they could plan a suitable revenge- and from under the eye tyrants' spells of subservience. He shuddered with anger, remembering how Breakox had been slaughtered by his own uncontrollable hand. Breakox's blood was on his hands! Now, though, the protection of the minotaurs was most important. Vengeance, he determined, would most definitely come later, but his shame would last forever.

The final group arrived through the ruins' huge doors. Each standing more than twenty feet tall, the seven hill giants stooped to enter the ruins, then stretched to their full heights inside. As they came to a stop in the center of the room, the colony of beholders, led by their ancient leader, Gray Eye, floated down through the circular entrance in the ceiling.

The beholders, surrounded by their invited guests, hovered a few feet off the floor. On a table behind them lay a long piece of parchment detailing a series of agreements.

"Welcome," Gray Eye said, "to the first treaty of the beholders, and to the beginning of the end of the neogi."

The hill giants, a family of renegades from the giant tower who felt stifled under Taja Deeplunder's rule, grunted their approval. Their substitute leader, Torg Stoneater, rested his hand on the hilt of his mammoth battle-axe. "We welcome the chance to fight with our allies, the minotaurs. The giants have been lazy for too long under the rule of Taja Deeplunder. She is more neutral in matters of war than we prefer. We crave battle. We crave the spilling of our enemies' blood."

Gray Eye watched the giant with its opaque eye. "You will have your chance soon, Stoneater. The battles have already begun across the ship, and we must strike against the neogi before the Cloakmaster brings about the Dark Times. If we hesitate, our forces will be the first to feel starvation under the rule of the humans."

The assembled forces nodded in agreement. ShiCaga of the ogres stepped forward and said, "Let's get on with it, then. Let's sign the damned thing."

Gray Eye stared at her balefully. "That, chieftess, is precisely what you shall do. You have all read the treaty." The eye tyrant asked the ogre, "Do you wish the honors?"

ShiCaga took the quill from the inkwell on the table and hurriedly signed her name. "There," she said, "now let's draw some blood."

Onehorn strode to the table and signed the treaty, then turned to Stoneater and handed him the quill. "You honor us," the minotaur said.

"Your leader was strong," Stoneater remarked. "He was originally of the hill giants, as you probably know. We respected his strength, as we respect yours." The giant cast a quick glance at the beholders. "There will be time later…" he whispered.

Onehorn nodded briskly and walked away. The giant signed the treaty, then threw the pen onto the table.

"We are done," said Gray Eye. "We are now the Beholder Alliance, and I promise you unconditional victory in our war against the neogi.

"Our resources are great, our blades are sharp, and our forces are mighty. Now… we must plan for battle. By the end of the day, our swords will be red with the cold blood of our enemies, and then our prize will be laid out before us and our forces will be unbeatable.

"The neogi will be dead. We will have nothing to fear from the Cloakmaster, and the Dark Times will never come."

Building by building, Gaye explored the great ship. Her astral body floated unseen among the humans and the dwarves, the illithids and the halflings; through the open market she went, and above, through the ship's stores, and through all the floors and rooms of Leoster's Guild tower. She passed silently through the walls of the shivak terminal and the illithid tower and stayed for a while in the Citadel of Kova and studied the actions of the dwarves.

Although she had commanded invisibility to the people of the Spelljammer, she could see her own innate energies flowing about her, permeating her being with soft, golden light. Her robes, the robes of an acolyte, whispered around her as though in a spectral wind, and the belt that was her badge of accomplishment glowed from within the ancient symbols that had been affixed there.

Her psionics training was complete. Under the tutelage of the fal One Six Nine, she had become a master of psionics, of mental powers that seemed, to some, to be magical. She had long been apart from Teldin, a man she had come to love, and then had to leave. With One Six Nine, she had decided to seek her own destiny, as had the Cloakmaster, and it was then, in her final days of training, that her psionic abilities had shown her that their destinies were intertwined, that her trial by fire would take place, not by the fal's side, but millions of miles away, on a ship called the Spelljammer, and by the side of the Cloakmaster… Where she had always wanted to be. Invisible, she saw the batde begin between the ship's elves and goblins, as an imperious elf named Carrara, who bore a shield emblazoned with an elven eagle, ran her broadsword through a goblin named Krai. Then the forces were met on both sides, and she could sense the pain and the souls as blood was spilled; she took her leave and vanished through the walls of the goblin quarters, then back, into the Spelljammer's tail.

On her journey through the ship, she saw armies readying for battle, warriors practicing sword thrusts before mirrors. In meeting halls and in taverns she heard whispers of treachery, threats of war. She overheard words of hatred and watched weapons being sharpened and prepared. Over and over she heard talk of a myth, foretelling the coming of the Cloakmaster. In the chambers of the elves, the illithids, all the longest-lived races that populated the great ship, those who remembered the last Dark Times were filled with fear, for the Dark Times meant nothing but a long period of starvation for the weak, of interminable battles over food and supplies.

It was the coming of the Cloakmaster, she knew, that would bring war once again. Soon the decks of the Spelljammer would run red as the ship's various factions killed to take the cloak before the Cloakmaster could achieve his destiny. From somewhere across the universe, she shuddered. Soon her search through the Spelljammer would be complete. The astral form of Gaeadrelle Goldring, whose body lay in a deep trance several million miles away, in Herdspace, would soon return to the Spelljammer and to Teldin Moore, to Teldin the Cloakmaster, and help guide him to his destiny… A destiny she was not sure he would survive.