Estriss was right, it turned out: Each time he used the power, it became easier. The chilled, strained feeling lessened steadily until it vanished altogether, and the residual fatigue also faded away. His control improved significantly as well. He could now change his face in two or three heartbeats, and without the total concentration the first few shifts had required.
His control now extended to more than his face. Carefully, he'd experimented with changing the appearance of his body as well. He was still cautious with this part of it. Never had he tried any major changes-like shrinking to the size of a gnome or expanding to the bulk of an umber hulk, for example-but he now regularly altered his build to match Aelfred's muscular physique or Vallus's willowy bone structure.
No matter how hard he tried, however, he couldn't affect the clothes he wore. When he took on Aelfred's physique, his jerkin almost burst at the seams; when he duplicated Vallus or Sylvie, his clothes hung on him like a tent. The only exception was the cloak itself: whatever form he took, it subtly enlarged or contracted to fit perfectly around whatever neck he happened to have at the time.
His voice was also a problem. At first he'd assumed that, when he took on Aelfred's body, the larger chest cavity would give him the same booming voice as the first mate. It didn't happen that way, however. If there was any change in his voice, it was of the utmost subtlety-and he couldn't be totally sure that even this wasn't wishful thinking. Whether he looked like Aelfred Silverhorn or Vallus Leafbower, he always sounded like Teldin Moore. The contrast was even more noticeable when he took on the form of Sylvie, the navigator, or Julia, the second mate. Although the throat and mouth were female, the voice was most definitely male. There was absolutely no way he could use the cloak's powers to impersonate another person if the "audience" had ever heard the real pet-son speak.
That was just as well, he concluded. He still felt there was something inherently wrong with taking another's form, no matter what the motive. The knowledge that it was impossible to take another's complete identity was somehow reassuring.
Chapter Nine
So the rest of the voyage passed. Fifty-three days from Krynn they reached the crystal shell that contained Realm-space. So inured to the wonders of space did Teldin find himself that he didn't feel disappointed when he learned that they'd pass through the shell during his sleep period. When he went to bed for his fifty-third night aboard the Probe, the view through the cabin's porthole was the tempestuous colors of the flow. When he woke several hours later, the cabin was dark for the first time in week and there was blackness on the other side of the port. Teldin swung himself out of his hammock and went on deck.
The sky around the hammership at first looked identical to the familiar one that he'd seen all his life: velvet blackness studded with stars shining with a light that looked somehow brittle. After a few moments, though, the familiarity slipped away. The orientation of these stars was nothing like what he was used to. There seemed many more of them, clustered into totally alien groupings. The constellations that had been his friends from childhood were nowhere to be seen, and his mind was unable to impose any order on the stars that he saw. Over to the port side, just over the rail, was something that he'd never seen before: a smoky haze, glowing faintly. When he looked at it directly, it seemed to fade away, but when he looked at it with peripheral vision, he could make out a kind of structure to it.
That structure was familiar, he realized with a mild shock. It reminded him unmistakably of the weather pattern he'd seen over Krynn as the Unquenchable pulled away from the planet. There was the same circular core, with curving arms sweeping out from it. The only thing that was missing was the sense of motion that the storm had given him. Maybe it was the black, featureless background, or the motionless stars that surrounded it. In any case, the sensation that this pattern gave him was one of limitless distance. The Probe's crew had told him that it was no more distant than the other stars, but that both the stars and this swirling shape were actually gates to another plane-the Plane of Radiance-set into the inner surface of the crystal sphere. No matter what he knew, he felt that this spiral pattern was unimaginably farther than the other points of light.
For the first time, Teldin noticed that there was someone else on the deck-someone who was watching him with an expression of mild amusement. It was Vallus Leafbower, the elven mage, one of the Probe's helmsmen. Teldin shot him a quick smile but hesitated to walk over and join him. There were two reasons for his reluctance: One was that he was enjoying the sense of solitude, of being alone beneath the unfamiliar stars; the second was the same reason he'd been avoiding the elf since the battle: Vallus obviously was a mage of significant power. As such, he might be more inclined to question Teldin about his own displays of ability. While the other crew members had avoided the topic-at least partially out of fear, Teldin guessed-Vallus wasn't likely to do the same.
Teldin's reticence turned out to be irrelevant when the elf crossed the deck and joined him.
Vallus nodded a greeting. Even when he was making efforts to be friendly, Teldin had noted, there was a sense of aloofness about the elf, a feeling that he was somehow apart from everyone and watching from some unapproachable vantage of knowledge and wisdom. There was also a strong sense of exclusivity-that was the closest word that Teldin could come up with-a sense that the elf wasn't revealing everything he knew or thought.
Perhaps it was just a consequence of the fact that he'd lived ten years or more for each year that Teldin and the others had been alive. Whatever the reason, it had a chilling effect on any sense of friendship that Teldin might otherwise feel, and made it very difficult for him to trust the elf.
Vallus spoke first. "I noticed you weren't on deck when we entered this shell," he remarked. "Unfortunate. You missed something, something that you would have found fascinating." His eyes seemed to shine with intensity. "We saw the Wanderers," he concluded in a hushed voice.
There was something portentous about the word, something that struck some kind of chord in Teldin's soul. "What ate the Wanderers?" he whispered.
"As we passed through the portal, we saw them," the elf answered, "a line of figures-a geometrically straight line,. hundreds of thousands of figures long. Perhaps millions long. They were walking on the inner surface of the crystal shell. Walking, walking endlessly. They paid us no attention."
Teldin shook his head in wonderment. "Why?" he asked. "What are they?"
The elf shrugged. "No one truly knows," he replied. "There are legends, of course. Some say their marching, and their silent chanting, are what allow spontaneous portals to open in the shell of Realmspace. According to this legend, the Wanderers are the souls of individuals who died performing evil deeds of horrific proportions. How they came to their present condition, even the legends fail to say, but they all are reputed to bear the mark of Torm, God of Guardians, on their palms." Vallus shrugged again. "Whatever their origin, or their purpose, it was a wondrous sight." He smiled wryly. "Such things make me realize how much poorer my life would have been had I never left my home world."
Teldin was silent. There was something about the image of an endless line of figures, eternally trudging around the surface of the crystal sphere, that caught his imagination. Without warning, he found his thoughts turning to his father. How small your world was, he thought, how impoverished you were by your refusal to look outward. And, he added, how bleak would my own have been if it hadn't been for the circumstances that drove me outward. For a moment, he felt almost gratitude toward the stranger who'd given him the cloak. You might have doomed me, his thoughts ran, but you also broadened my horizons in ways I could never have imagined. Even if I die soon, my life is richer for my experiences.