Free The Ultimate Helm by Russ T. Howard Page B

their names. His doubts slowly drowned in an overwhelming sea of friendship.
    Through it all, no one noticed a small, dark shape crawling on the floor, poking its black, furred snout from around the bar. No one noticed its faint sweet smell, the stench of something long dead.
    And no one noticed its white, burning eyes.
    *****
    There was no warmth, no friendship, in the oppressive silence that lay deep within the secret warrens that veined the mighty Spelljammer. The dark world hidden beneath the citadel, the tunnels that stretched mazelike from tip to tip throughout the Spelljammer’s body, were cold and reeked with the stench of ancient evil. Only the dead and the undead walked in the warrens. Silence was spoken here, broken only by the shudder of a death rattle, the screams of souls, the whisper of black winds from the worlds beyond the grave.
    The tunnels wove unevenly through the Spelljammer , ending at only a few points with concealed entrances at the lowest levels of the citadel. Where the living made their homes above, in chambers of light and air, surrounded by mementoes of their accomplishments and the items they needed to live happily among their brothers, the undead of the warrens lay quietly in nests of dry straw, moldy furs, and torn tapestries. Their existence was one of unquiet hatred, existing against their wills between the planes of light and dark, in lairs where the endless warrens intersected or widened enough to afford room for nests.
    The dead enjoy their own company.
    In one dark, secret lair, hidden deep within the ship so that even the Spelljammer’s magic could not detect his evil, exiled to a chamber carpeted with spongy layers of black mold, hung with fineries of moss and green fungi, and furnished with the bones of the long dead, the Fool watched.
    His eye sockets were black pits of darkness burning deep inside with bright pinpoints of silver light. He watched through the eyes of his undead vermin as the warriors far above, in the Tower of Thought, surrounded the Cloakmaster and accepted him as one of them.
    The Fool rose from his throne, a bleached chair formed from the spines of orcs and the skulls of elves, and he paced the chamber. Where he walked, cold black smoke rose from his footprints.
    His gray skin was shrunken, pulled tightly, like parchment, across his undead bones. His eyes glared fiercely, and his skull-like face was contorted in an eternal rictus of hatred. His long, skeletal fingers absently rubbed the length of a crimson amulet at his neck, and the long, rectangular crystal swirled with an unnatural, inner fire.
    Long ago his name had been Romar. Now he was simply the Fool. A library of legends had grown around him over the decades. Some believed he was merely a zombie. Some believed he was a skeletal worm that fed on the heart of the Spelljammer. Others believed he was the Spelljammer’s secret captain. Few had ever seen him; most believed he was a myth, a shadow creature used to scare children.
    But the few who had had dealings with the Fool were never the same again. Master Coh believed the Fool was an ally  – Hah! The neogi had much to learn, and would learn it soon. The Fool brooked friendship with no one and was ally only to the dark gods. Coh was not a master, but a puppet.
    The Fool laughed. He was not called “the Fool” because he was stupid, like his “allies,” but because he had fooled everyone  – even the Spelljammer itself  – about his secret existence within the ship’s warrens.
    But things, the Fool foretold, will soon change.
    Through the eyes of his undead rat, he could see the contemptible respect on the human warriors’ faces, the sickening strength with which the Cloakmaster carried himself – oh, the arrogance of this human pest! – and the Fool whispered to himself of the things he would do to Teldin Moore, Teldin Cloakmaster, of how delicious it would be to command this mortal’s undead body like a marionette, once the cloak and the