Nigel Findley - The Broken Sphere

He looked below the ship for a flat place to land, but couldn't spot anywhere suitable. The pass was actually a V-shapeed valley, with boulders-some as large as farmhouses-around the bottom. To bring the ship down there would be to court disaster.

The pass was narrowing ahead of the ship, he saw, the valley floor rising in altitude until it merged with a high rampart of mountains two leagues or so directly ahead. He was running out of time.

Teldin tried to slow the ship further, managed to bring it down to little more than a walking speed. But each second of flight, he could feel the stress increase on the keel. The cracks in the heavy wood had spread and were on the verge of fracturing the ship's "backbone" at any instant. The Boundless is doomed, he recognized, no matter what I do. The only question is, can I keep us alive? He let the big ship descend several hundred feet for a better view of the terrain.

The walls of the valley were precipitous-forty-five degrees or even steeper, he judged-covered with a thick blanket of trees. The only places where he could see gaps in the forest were where large outcroppings of red-brown rock jutted out of the mountainsides.

The trees will tear the bottom out of the hull, he thought, probably killing us. But if I hit one of those rock outcroppings, we're definitely dead. He smiled mirthlessly. Yet again, circumstances seemed to be conspiring to force him onto a path he hated.

"Open space ahead!" Julia screamed.

Teldin focused his enhanced perception ahead of the squid ship.

Yes, she was right. A quarter of a league ahead, the right side of the pass leveled out, forming a kind of shoulder. For some reason, no trees were growing there, revealing a verdant meadow almost a hundred yards across. The grass-or whatever it was-seemed totally flat, without even any rolls or hummocks.

Perfect. He started to turn the ship around so that its bow pointed directly toward the meadow. Simultaneously, he let the vessel's altitude creep down, while trying to decrease the speed even further.

Almost there. Just a few more ship-lengths, and he could set the Boundless down. The upper branches of the tallest trees whipped the underside of the hull. Even those minor impacts sent shudders through the tortured keel that Teldin could sense plainly. Just a hundred feet more…

And there was the meadow, right below the bow. Teldin tried to bring the ship to a hover, but as he applied the reverse force, he felt the sickening crack as the keel gave way. His control started to evaporate as the ship ceased to be a ship, becoming instead a broken-backed wreck. With the last vestige of control, he forced the ship's bow down so it couldn't overshoot and plow into the trees beyond.

The ram struck first, gouging a furrow in the soft soil of the meadow. Then the tip caught against something-a buried rock, perhaps-and the ram was torn clear away.

And the hull itself was down. The impact bowled Teldin off his feet, slammed him into the forward rail of the stern-castle, his head striking something with stunning force. Blackness welled up, threatened to take him again, but he fought it back with pure force of will. Through the ringing in his ears the Cloakmaster could hear cries of fear and pain from belowdecks and around him, and the scream of tortured wood. The ship jolted and jarred, each impact sending bolts of pain through Teldin's body.

Then it was over. The power of the cloak faded, and Teldin was completely himself again-not the ship, just a very battered and bruised human being. With, a groan, he forced himself to his feet and looked around him.

The squid ship had torn a furrow right across the soft meadow, and had come to a stop only a short dagger cast from the trees on the far side. A couple of seconds later in pushing the bow down, Teldin realized, and they'd have slammed into those heavy trunks.

Apart from the missing ram, the squid ship looked relatively undamaged from Teldin's vantage point on the after-deck. But that was an illusion, he knew. As his enhanced perception had faded, he'd felt the keel snap, and felt the heavy planking of the lower hull stave in as though it had no more strength than an eggshell. The Boundless was dead, without some kind of miracle, and Teldin wasn't expecting any miracle any time soon.

He was alive, though, as were Julia, Lucinus, and Djan. The half-elf was bleeding from a nasty gash in his left eyebrow, but didn't seem to notice. As Lucinus and Julia-both looking battered and bruised, but not seriously injured-disentangled themselves from each other and the forward railing, Djan took up his familiar position by the speaking tube. "Report," he called down to Blossom.

After listening for a moment, he looked up at Teldin and gave a tired smile. "Heavy damage," he reported, "lots of minor injuries, but nothing major. Amazing." He shook his head. "I thought we were all dead. That was the most amazing piece of ship-handling I've ever seen."

Teldin looked away, embarrassed. "We should check out the damage," he said briskly, to change the subject. "Djan, Julia?"

Both officers followed the Cloakmaster down the ladder to the main deck, then down one more flight to the cargo deck. The hold was filled with acrid smoke, which was only now starting to dissipate. At least the fires were all out,

Teldin saw.

He crouched by the hole the magical bolt had smashed in the deck. Roughly circular, it was almost a man's height in diameter. As he looked down into it he could see an even larger hole in the hull planking below. He shook his head, looking up at Djan. "What was this?" he asked quietly.

The half-elf was silent for a moment. "I've never seen anything like it," he admitted at last. "The magical power involved was… well, it was staggering. Most attack spells I'm familiar with have ranges measured in hundreds of yards. What was our altitude when we were struck? Fifteen leagues? Twenty?"

"Something like that," Teldin agreed.

"Then I take back any sarcastic comments I made about the impossibility of world-altering magic," Djan announced dryly. "If your Juna were trying to convince me of their existence, I think they should consider the point made."

"Was it the Juna?" Julia asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

Teldin didn't answer immediately. What was it that the elves at the embassy on the Rock of Bral had told him? That the ruins of the "Star Folk's" works are sometimes guarded with magic so powerful and old that it's lost its meaning, and now strikes out in its madness at all who trespass? It was something like that, even though he couldn't recall the exact words. And that could well describe what had happened to the Boundless. "I don't know," he admitted. "Perhaps. Or perhaps we triggered something mindless that they left behind."

"How can we find out?" Julia pressed.

"I'd guess these Juna will make it clear to us if they actually exist," Djan answered. "Not that I'm overly enthusiastic about meeting creatures who can fire fifteen-league-long bolts and cause mini-suns to chase ships out of the sky."

Teldin shook his head impatiently. Discussions such as this weren't going to do them any good. Whether or not Nex was home to living Juna, the knowledge wouldn't be of any value unless the Cloakmaster could get off-planet again and act on the knowledge, would it? And that would require a functional ship.

"I'm going down into the bilges," he announced. "Can someone give me a light?"

*****

"Can it be fixed?" Teldin asked.

Teldin, Djan, and Julia were sitting in the Cloakmaster's cabin. Although the squid ship had come down on a fairly even keel, the cant to the deck was enough to be irritating. The small oil lamp suspended by chains from the overhead didn't hang straight, and when he leaned back in his chair, Teldin kept thinking he was on the verge of going over backward. Overhead the Cloakmaster could hear the crew moving about, working on repairing the peripheral damage that the rigging had taken. Wasted effort, he thought glumly, unless we can do something about the hull and the keel.