"Teldin," Cwelanas said, looking at the wound in his chest, "are you…?"
He nodded. "I am one with the Spelljammer now. I am not as I was before. I know what has to be done. I know how our destinies have been intertwined. I know what our purpose is."
"Your quest, then?" CassaRoc inquired. "You have found your answers?"
Teldin nodded. " To questions 1 never knew existed."
Cwelanas went to him and stared into his glowing eyes. "Is it you? Is it really you, Teldin? Or is it the Spelljammer?"
As she watched, the glow in his eyes faded, and his eyes returned to normal. He smiled down at her. "It is I, Cwelanas. It's still me."
Djan said, "Now what? What happens next?"
"The Spelljammer is being surrounded by the fleets of our enemies. Even though they are also fighting among themselves, their forces are great and we may not survive their attack." The Cloakmaster paused. "In fact, I'm sure of it."
"You couldn't have become captain of the ship just to see it destroyed," CassaRoc said. "There must be a reason."
"Oh, there is," The Cloakmaster said, "but it's far more complicated than that. Soon the Spelljammer will be no longer-at least, not as we know it. We are giving you a chance to live."
"Oh, no," CassaRoc said loudly. "We didn't come all this way to see you sacrifice yourself to save us. No, we're staying with you."
"You have it wrong," the Cloakmaster said. "There will be no sacrifice, CassaRoc, not really. Things simply will be… very different. You have to trust me."
"What's going to happen?" Na'Shee asked.
Teldin placed his hands on Cwelanas's arms. "I have bonded with the ship. We are one. The Spelljammer's life cycle is beginning anew, and in the gardens you will find the only means to your survival. By the time you get there, a smalljammer will have been created.
"There is time enough to create only a single ship. It is essential that you escape on board the smalljammer. You must protect it at all costs. It may be this universe's only chance to create life
… if this Unhuman War is lost."
"Create life?" Cwelanas said. "Teldin, I don't want to leave you. I can't just-"
"Cwelanas," Teldin said softly, "in time, you will understand. You and the smalljammer have a purpose, a common destiny. I give the ship to you. You must sail to freedom, to life."
The Cloakmaster reached into his belt and held out the shirt of chain mail that he had found in the neogi tower. "Your mail," he said. "With the Spelljammer's help, I have granted your mail the power of an ultimate helm and more. Wear this. Take the smalljammer and sail to safety. It is your only hope."
Cwelanas took the mail from the Cloakmaster's hands. Instantly, she felt the amulet's power surge through her, through the mail.
"Is this how it felt to you?" she asked.
"Yes. You now bear the smalljammers ultimate helm." Her mouth hung open. "You are now the First Pilot of your smalljammer," Teldin said, "and you must go where the winds of destiny take you."
And you, Teldin? Estriss inquired. What will happen to you?
"My destiny has been written. I brought to the Spelljammer the Cloak of the First Pilot. I am the Spelljammer's last."
"I don't understand what that means," Djan said.
"You must go. I have a duty to perform, one that has waited for a thousand centuries. You… you must live."
Teldin placed his hands around Gaye's astral form, and she glowed fiercer, more brightly than ever before. "I will need your help," he said.
"Does it have to happen this way?" Cwelanas asked. Her eyes pleaded with him. "Teldin, we need you. I need you."
"You know what you must do," the Cloakmaster said gently. " Verenthestae."
She nodded reluctantly. "But you…?"
The Cloakmaster looked up and smiled at each of his friends in turn. "You have all been great friends. Djan, Chaladar, Na'Shee, go in peace, and learn. CassaRoc, be well. You are a great warrior for good, though you may not know it. And Estriss… may you find your answers, as I have found mine."
He looked down into Cwelanas's eyes. Slowly he bent to kiss her. Their lips met. Cwelanas tasted her own tears on her tongue. She knew it was the last kiss that she and Teldin would share.
The Cloakmaster pulled away and stepped onto the dais. "Go now. Live." He lifted Stardawn's body with one hand and threw it to them. "Cast it from the roof of the Armory. Let the races know that the new captain has come." He sat upon the throne.
Gaye floated over to wait beside the Cloakmaster's shoulder. The warriors filed slowly out of the chamber, Stardawn's body hefted over CassaRoc's shoulder, and they disappeared down the entrance hall. Cwelanas was the last to go. She nodded once, wept silently, then ran from the room.
Behind her, in the adytum, the eyes of the Cloakmaster glowed with an inner light, and the mark of the Compass burned fiercely inside his flesh. The opening to the chamber closed in upon itself.
— We are done, he said, and his body slowly began to fade away.
— My friends will survive. Many humans will be saved.
— That is good.
— Gaye will help.
— That is good.
— But the unhumans…
— Perhaps… that is also good.
— But we were destined to preserve, not destroy.
— The children of the Sh'tarrgh are the antithesis of life. To preserve, we must destroy.
Teldin thought quietly, then decided.
— That is good.
Gaye began to fade, following the Cloakmaster's unspoken commands. In a few moments, the only thing left in the adytum was the captain's throne. Smoke curled up from the back of the chair, where the pattern of the Compass had been seared into the stone.
Chapter Thirty-Two
"… The One Egg shattered from the inside, and its shell was cast out upon the flow like seeds in the wind. "Only one thing survived, that which bears its curse even today, and will one day be punished for its sins against the gods and man…"
The flow was a battleground, a sea of fighting.
Ships swooped past the Spelljammer, grappled together in their thick ropes and firing ballistae at each other mercilessly. A hammership banked just outside the Spelljammer's air envelope and fired its catapults toward the ship. Most of the boulders missed completely, passing harmlessly though the air bubble to fall toward the Broken Sphere on the other side of the ship, but one load of boulders hurtled toward the Spelljammer and thundered into the Elven High Command, sending heavy chunks of stone to the deck far below. The top floors of the command stood shattered, like a broken chimney, and the golden dragon standard that had flown at the pinnacle of the tower lay in a hundred twisted pieces across the roofs of the dwarven citadel and the Communal Church of Wildspace. Rubble littered the streets, and the elves unlucky enough to have been stationed on the roof fell to their deaths and splattered on the deck.
The warring between the races had stopped suddenly, as soon as the intercepting ships had begun firing at the Spelljammer. The warring factions on the ship had realized that the Spelljammer needed to be defended. The fighters had all disengaged and raced to their respective communities, where weapons such as catapults and ballistae were armed and readied for retaliation against the newcomers from the flow.
The streets of the Spelljammer lay empty, save for debris and the bodies of the dead and slowly dying. Blood was spattered on the walls of the ship's towers and collected in wide puddles in the uneven streets. The warring now went on high above the towers and would soon be joined by the natural defenses of the legendary Spelljammer.
Deep within the entity, the Cloakmaster felt all and saw all through the Spelljammer's, magical senses. It was as though his arms were the Spelljammer's wings; his feet, its tail; its eyes, his eyes. As they slowly circled the Broken Sphere and swept aside the debris of broken ships, he felt splintered wood and cracked shell brush harmlessly along his wings like minuscule insects. He shuddered as the giff's bombard rang out upon the Spelljammer's back. He blinked as a wasp ship exploded in front of his eyes. He felt warmth as the peoples spread out across his back came together in his defense, almost becoming one with the purpose of the ship.