An instant later, dozens of the multilegged horrors crashed out of the woods, rushing down the slope at the startled gnomes with long bows drawn and curved swords raised.
Bony hands seized the gilded frame of the mirror, lifting it swiftly out of its cradle.
"Accursed you will be!" shrieked an inhuman voice. "Accursed by all the powers of darkness forever you will be!" The bony hands raised the heavy mirror over the lich's skull and shook it, then-carefully-placed it back on its stand.
General Vorr drew in a breath of foul air, held it for a moment, then released it while inspecting a clawed fingernail. He had been listening to the lich rave for the last ten minutes, its odor of decay growing ever worse, and he was getting bored. The lich's initial news about the fate of the scorpion and its crew was bad enough; he couldn't afford to lose another ship without good cause. The possibility that Usso had been killed in the crash bothered him only in that it would be difficult at this date to replace her with someone equally capable as a spell-caster, even if she was a traitorous slut. Her information-gathering talents-among others-would be missed if she hadn't teleported out in time.
Vorr ignored the lich's ranting as he glanced around the small stone chamber again and stood near the open archway where he'd entered. The room was not large but was mildly impressive, if one liked ancient tombs. General Vorr didn't care for tombs, himself-unless they were for his enemies.
"Teldin Moore where is? Answer! Answer your master now, or to the burning planes of the Abyss and rotting shall you go!" The lich uttered another string of curses in a foreign language, then waved its arms in impotent fury.
Vorr swallowed a yawn.
The lich regarded the looking glass for a few moments, then turned away, muttering. "Gone he is! A power of the cloak this might be? An act by live meat this might be?" It shook its head, thinking furiously. "Not possible it is. Weak and simple his mind is, this live meat Teldin, and not for the tinkering with artifacts was it made." The lich paused as it turned, considering the objects that lay upon its rickety workbench. It looked up then and seemed to see the general for the first time.
"I take it you can't find Teldin Moore as you once said you could," Vorr said dryly.
The animated skeleton waved a bony hand in Vorr's direction as if dismissing him. "The gnomes' ship vanished it has, gone," it said. "Cloaked the cloak is-but what this could do? Wildspace this could not do. Metals thick as a lordserv-as an umber hulk this could not do. A crystal sphere this could not do." It pondered, staring at the faded paintings on a nearby wall with empty eye sockets.
The answer came easily for the general, but he resisted saying it aloud as even his answer didn't explain everything. Since Vorr knew he was himself completely antimagical at birth, a sort of antimagical field suggested itself as the cause of Teldin's disappearance. Could some antimagical device or creature have affected the gnomish ship? It would have to be a remarkable effect, given the size of the ship. The only other alternative was to assume that the gnomes' ship had disintegrated on impact, and Teldin was dead. This was reasonable enough, but the general knew enough not to jump to conclusions. What was the truth?
Vorr stared at the preoccupied lich and once again hated the thought that he needed to keep this reeking abomination alive-well, unharmed was a better word-for the time being. It was still of some value in leading them all to Teldin Moore- and the Spelljammer's cloak.
It dawned on the general that if the lich was no longer able to find Teldin, there was no reason to keep it… unharmed. The corners of his mouth crept upward. He would give it a little mote time to find Teldin-but only a little. He was interested in finding out what sort of being it really was before he broke it into vase-sized pieces.
"I later with you will speak," said the lich, turning away toward a dusty shelf of scrolls and papers. It began sorting through the papers and paid no further attention to Vorr.
The general nodded solemnly, as if the lich could still see him. His almost-smile was gone. "We will await your word," he said smoothly. Then he left, walking through the stone archway and down the broad corridor toward the ship docks. He passed rows of skeletal soldiers, his face registering his disgust as he looked down their crooked lines. The skeletons were nothing more than bones made mobile with a necromancer's spell, as mindless as the true dead could be. A force of scro could make short work of the pyramid's entire force, with the exception of the lich itself-but the general could dispose of that problem. The umber hulks would be tough to crack, too, but not impossible.
This thought kept him happy as he swiftly descended several ladders and stairs, eventually coming to the flying pyramid's cargo deck, an open area of ancient stonework with faded pictograms adorning the cracked walls. A spell on one far wall cast dim yellow light across the bay, illuminating a pile of stones, scraps of old wood, and a few scattered bones.
Vorr's squid ship was drifting in space only a few feet from one open cargo-bay door. A boarding rope tied around a thick pillar led out to the ship, and Vorr walked up to it and caught the rope without breaking stride. He swung hand over hand out through the cargo-bay doors, out across the abyss of space. If he fell, it was of no consequence, as he would only hit the pyramid ship's gravity plane and bounce. For a few moments, though, he imagined that if he let go, he'd fall forever toward the stars, never reaching them. It was a pleasant sensation.
"General aboard!" shouted an armored scro as Vorr appreached. Every scro on the deck snapped to attention and saluted, black-gloved fists up, the tarantula emblem facing out. Vorr swung over the squid ship's railing and dropped onto the forecastle deck with a heavy thump. It was pleasant to smell clean air again. "Ship away!" another scro called, casting off the boarding rope, and the stars turned around the squid ship as it pulled away from the flying pyramid.
Vorr trotted down the stairs to the main deck, then turned and went through the door to the galley and his own offices beyond. Scro eating their meals in the galley leaped to their feet as he entered, but he bypassed them, opening his office door and closing it behind him after he entered.
"You missed a rotten fight," came a familiar but subdued voice from the floor mat where Vorr slept.
"A pity," Vorr said. He glanced at Usso, who sat in the corner with her legs drawn up to her chin, then he took a seat at a heavy wooden desk and picked up a feathered pen. "Was this the fight in which you lost control of your ship when it was battered by a gnomish one, and you teleported away but left the crew behind to die?"
"That was the one," she said. Her voice lacked its usual liveliness, an indicator that she was depressed or upset. "How did you know? Could the lich see it all?"
"If Skarkesh can track Teldin Moore by his cloak, I imagine he can track more than that if he wants to," Vorr replied. He scribbled a few notes to himself on a sheet of paper. "He informed me of the ship and crew's fate, then tried to contact Teldin again, just to prove to me he could do it, but he couldn't find Teldin." Notes finished, Vorr turned on his stool to face the beautiful Oriental woman in the corner. "It was as if Teldin Moore's ship had vanished, he said. I thought of an antimagic field. Would that block our bone man's ability to spy on Teldin?"
The woman's face twisted with hurt and anger. "Kobas, you bastard, I almost died! The port wall of the helm room was broken through, and I was almost caught in the helm when the whole damned wall fell on it. All you can talk about is that filthy cloak! You don't give a rotting damn about me!"