Free The Radiant Dragon by Elaine Cunningham Page A

careful, you know, even when the approaching ship is as small as this boat. Using a code of sorts, Trivit is telling them about our adventure, and he’s also performing advance introductions.”
    “How can you tell?” Teldin wondered.
    A series of emotions – confusion, abrupt understanding, and finally pity – chased each other across the dracon’s mobile face. “Gracious, I’ve stuck my foot in it this time, haven’t I? Being human and all, I don’t suppose you can hear the pipe,” Trivit observed with deep sympathy.
    “Hard astern,” Klemner prompted tersely, bringing the dracons back to the matter at hand. They maneuvered the longboat to the top deck, a narrow, semicircular strip that was suspended above the main deck and dotted with smaller vessels such as elven flitters. Once the longboat was secured to the walkway, the dracons grasped stout ropes and slid down to the main deck below, their muscled arms controlling their descent so that the four-footed impacts were not the thudding crashes Teldin anticipated. He followed them down the rope and looked around for the other dracons. Teldin blinked several times as his eyes adjusted to the strange, dim purple light.
    “Captain Teldin Moore, may I present to you our kaba, Netarza,” said Trivit in formal tones.
    Teldin stared in disbelief as the kaba’s figure stepped out of the violet shadows. The creature before him was an illithid.
    Roughly humanoid in size and stance, the mind flayer had a high, domed head and a lavender hide tinged with red. Four tentacles formed the lower part of its face, and its three-fingered hands ended in curving daws. The creature wore flowing, multilayered robes of deepest purple, which were richly embroidered with metallic threads at the cuffs and trailing hems.
    Well met, Teldin Moore, Netarza said at length.
    Teldin jumped, startled by the sound of the illithid’s mental voice. As low-pitched and musical as a night breeze, it was rather feminine-sounding. Teldin knew that illithids did not possess gender, but he’d thought of Estriss as male and assumed that all illithids would sound pretty much the same. He decided it would be easier to consider this one female.
    Summoning what remained of his wits, Teldin bowed. “Forgive me. Trivit and Chirp spoke of you as their clan leader, so I was expecting to meet a dracon.”
    Clan? That is a fiction to keep the lizard-centaurs happy and cooperative, Netarza said bluntly. Teldin glanced quickly at Trivit and Chirp; their green faces still held wide, expectant smiles, and Teldin realized that the illithid was directing her thoughts to his mind alone. He wondered what motive lay behind her candor.
    Chirp and Trivit are the only two dracons on board, the illithid captain continued. We hope to change that in the near future. The Nightstalker is a trade ship, Captain Moore, chosen to conceal our identity and our purpose. As you can see, we already have accumulated a variety of merchandise.
    Teldin followed the sweeping gesture of the creature’s pale purple hand. The half dozen illithids who gathered behind Netarza were the only ones of their kind in sight, yet the ship bustled with activity. With horror Teldin realized that he had come aboard a mind flayer slave ship. Chirp and Trivit were pawns; he suspected that Netarza allowed the adolescent dracons to keep their minds and memories in the hope that they might lead the illithids to the secret dracon homeworld. Teldin remembered the neogi’s claim that with the cloak they could conquer and enslave whole worlds. It seemed the neogi were not the only monsters to harbor such ambitions, and he had brought the cloak right to the illithids’ doorstep. Teldin cursed himself for coming aboard.
    The illithid’s slaves, unmistakably marked by their dull eyes and expressionless faces, went about the business of tending the ship. Elves were the most numerous slaves, which was not surprising: Teldin assumed the illithids had somehow taken