Roger Moore - The Maelstrom Eye

The debris from the falling armada rained down across an area a thousand feet wide, and the giff and the human were right in the middle of it.

Fire fell from the sky. Teldin looked up and said, "No."

Power surged through his body. Time slowed down. The flaming debris fell lazily now. Teldin grabbed for Gomja's free arm and heaved. The giff seemed to be unusually light, and Teldin was able to drag the blue-skinned, red-suited goliath at a respectable speed. As he did, Gomja's face slowly turned to face Teldin with a look of astonishment, one hand still pressing the bloodied bandage to his chest.

A shadow drifted over the grass around Teldin. He looked up and saw a gigantic orange wing tumbling directly at him, magical sparks and flames pouring in rivers across its surface from where it had been torn free of the armada's hull. The wing was two hundred feet across. It fell quickly, even in slow time, and it was too big to avoid. He tried to speed up his pace, but he was still too slow. The orange wing covered the sky, seconds from striking him.

You will fear not, said a voice in Teldin's mind. Teldin slammed into something incredibly hard that he had not seen before him just a moment earlier. Stars exploded in his vision.

He came to on the grass, Gomja gasping for breath at his side. He thought his head was split open, judging from the pain he felt, but he had only smashed his nose. He couldn't remember how he'd gotten here. And what was Gomja doing here? What was going on? Flames roared all around.

I owe you my apologies, said a strangely familiar voice in his head. I want you to sleep very deeply for now, both of you. You will feel no more pain. You soon will awaken and be refreshed.

Teldin clawed at the earth to get to his knees. Darkness overtook him before he could manage to get halfway up. He never felt the ground when he hit it.

The wreckage of the armada was stupendous. Vorr allowed himself to be impressed as the pyramid ship settled down toward the earth, casually passing over the smoldering, smoking pyre of the elven warship. There was no sign of the last man-o-war, which had broken free of combat after the armada was destroyed and had fled. Several ships were chasing it, but the man-o-war had the edge in speed. Vorr could accept its loss, given the magnitude of the victory over the other elven forces. "My general," called a scro from inside the cargo deck. Vorr turned from the doorless opening where his forces had entered the deck. He shifted his grip on the newly loaded harpoon bombard as the scro continued his message. "Usso reports that he has located the body of Teldin Moore. We will be there in a moment."

Vorr nodded and looked out of the cargo doorway again. The pyramid ship was only a hundred feet off the ground. Thick smoke drifted past him, causing him to wrinkle his nose in disgust. He would take a long vacation after this, away from everything but clean air and pure water. Anyone who disturbed him would be ground up and eaten.

"How are you doing, General?" Vorr stepped back from the entrance momentarily and gave a brief salute to Admiral Halker, who was walking up behind him. The toothless old scro was looking especially cheerful. "The scars giving you any trouble?" he asked.

Vorr shrugged and gestured at his ruined face, turning to look back out of the cargo bay, the bombard held loosely in his fingers.

"I've heard that Usso has located Teldin Moore, who is conveniently dead." The admiral positively beamed. "We should be able to gain the cloak in one more minute. Do you wish the honors?"

Von stared down into the burning chunks of ceramiclike material that once had been one of the mightiest ships in the known spheres. He nodded, his eyes searching.

He then caught sight of a flash of royal blue among the shattered remains of a vast orange wing, spread out across the green ground. Vorr slapped his hands together to get Halker's attention, then pointed. The old scro came forward instantly to see, standing fearlessly on the edge of the cargo doorway only a few feet from where Vorr stood. Vorr reached out to steady the admiral, but the scro saw the gesture and recoiled, stepping out of reach. "I can manage!" he snapped. "I'm not a cripple yet!"

Vorr withdrew his hand, giving Halker a curious look before he turned his attention again to the ground. The patch of blue was definitely Teldin Moore and his cloak, sprawled on the smoking ground. Beside him lay a giff in a red military uniform. They were both badly wounded, if not already dead, judging from the amount of blood visible even from this height. Both obviously had been caught in the rain of falling debris from the armada.

The pyramid drifted closer and closer, now only man-height off the ground. Vorr stepped up on the edge of the cargo doorway, preparing to jump down. The pyramid came to a stop a moment later. Vorr dropped over the side of the pyramid, landing crouched on his feet with the bombard held outstretched in one arm. He then straightened slowly and walked over to the pair on the ground.

It took only a glance to see that both of them were dead. A falling armada packed a hell of a punch. The cloak on Teldin's back appeared undamaged, however. Not a scrap of dust was on it. Nice magic, Vorr thought, and he reached down for the clasp on Teldin's neck. It popped open at his touch.

With a single motion, General Vorr pulled the blue cloak free and raised it in the gentle wind and smoke. It didn't feel any different than a regular cloak would feel. Magical things were all the same to him. A shame, really, that he couldn't just wear it himself. It would have been interesting to have commanded the Spelljammer, but it would do just as well to have Admiral Halker do it. It made for a guaranteed job for years to come, a far safer position than if the undead neogi Skarke had been in charge-or Usso, for that matter.

Vorr looked up and saw Halker on the periphery of the cargo doorway. The old scro's face was alive with naked desire, and his arras were stretched out to Vorr as if Vorr held the scro's very existence in his hands. Vorr suddenly gave a broad grin, wadded the cloak up with one hand, and tossed it to Halker like a ball. He'd give the old coot Skarkesh's medallion when he got aboard, and cement his future.

Halker snatched the cloak out of the air, clutching it to his chest in ecstacy. As Vorr stepped forward toward the low stone base of the floating pyramid and tossed his bombard into the cargo bay doorway, Halker made a single thumb's-up gesture into the air outside the pyramid.

The pyramid lifted rapidly away from the ground.

Vorr slowed his pace for a moment, stunned-then bolted for the pyramid. He leaped at the last moment, mighty hands spread out to catch any pan of the stonework and pull himself aboard. Halker! he thought. Halker, what in the-

He missed and fell, tumbling into a pile of wreckage. As he struggled to his feet, he heard a peal of feminine laughter.

Vorr saw Halker throw his harpoon-bombard somewhere into the wreckage, then continued to watch as the pyramid rose and became a small black square against the patchwork sky, then a square dot, then a mote that faded away as it dropped toward the horizon. For perhaps five minutes, he did nothing else. Then he uttered a word, one that could not have been understood by any listener, through his tortured lips, fused together by slime and torch flame.

"Usso."

He turned and looked back at the bodies of Teldin Moore and his giff companion.

They weren't there.

Admiral Halker announced to the crew that General Vorr had wished to explore the wreckage for suitably glorious souvenirs; he would be picked up later by another ship. The scro and ogre warriors smiled and nodded, as they knew the general was just like that. No one but the helmsman noticed that there was one additional passenger aboard the pyramid as it took off, a passenger who had climbed on at the moment Vorr had jumped off, but no one was going up to ask the helmsman anything.