The Maelstrom's Eye by Roger Moore

Author:Roger Moore
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781560763444
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Published: 1992-05-04T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

“The portal! It’s opening!” Gaye shouted, clutching the bow railing on the top deck of the Perilous Halibut. Ahead of her, impossibly far away but drawing nearer, was a dark gray wall that stretched from one end of the universe to the other. In the center of the wall was a burning yellow whirlpool of light whose arms rotated with agonizing slowness. At the hub of the yellow whirlpool was a sky-blue dot that grew steadily larger as the arms turned.

Gaye thought of the pupil and iris of an unspeakably mighty god, and she shivered with excitement even as she puzzled over the color beyond the portal. She was looking into the crystal sphere of Herdspace, of course – but wasn’t it always black beyond a portal, in the wildspace beyond?

“Prepare to fire!” thundered Gomja’s voice from aft. Gaye turned and saw the giff, wearing a freshly cleaned white uniform and clutching a crossbow as long as a man’s arm. Gomja had demanded the chance to fight the enemy, and Aelfred had finally agreed to stay below and handle shipboard activities there in case of boarding. The gnomes were already filling the ship with boobytraps.

With his free hand, Gomja was directing the array of crossbow-bearing gnomes who knelt along the ship’s railing or crewed the newly installed deck ballista. The gnomes wore a chaotic assortment of armor manufactured from cooking utensils, metal scraps, and ship’s supplies. The giff stood by the trailing edge of the ship’s huge vertical fin, lit all around by the infinite depths of the rainbow-hued phlogiston. The “flow” was a sky painted by a mad deity with every color a god’s palette could hold. The colors ran and blurred together in evershifting swirls larger than worlds.

Gaye never got tired of looking at the flow, even if it now held the shape of a trailing enemy ship. It was only about a mile behind now, a greenish scorpion ship with its great claws extended and open as it came on for the Perilous Halibut’s tail.

A tiny, dark shape detached itself from the upraised tail of the scorpion ship, gaining rapidly on the gnomes’ ship. “Incoming fire!” Gomja roared. “Flatten and hold fast!”

The two dozen gnomes on deck threw themselves flat as they watched the catapult shot close in – and take an increasingly obvious path to their right. As the yard-wide rock flew by at a distance of only a few hundred feet, Gaye sighed with relief, only now remembering that she hadn’t ducked, too. She heard a ragged cheer erupt from the gnomes. Several sent their crossbow bolts chasing after the stone, and a few others fired at the scorpion.

“Company, hold your fire until I give the command!” Gomja ordered. “Those dogs will get a taste of our bolts yet, but we’re going to make each shot count!”

Gaye looked ahead again. The flaming yellow whirlpool was much closer, but she couldn’t begin to estimate its distance or size even now. It was vast and painfully beautiful.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.