It was working. With the spanker sails catching the wind, some of the ship's downward speed was being converted into forward velocity. If the spanker sails didn't tear loose, and if the keel didn't part… Again he added a touch more forward power.

The wind was a howl around him. He knew that, with the main helm effectively inactive, the ship's atmosphere envelope would collapse if he released control. Then the speed of their flight would tear the masts away, fling everyone on deck over the stern, even peel the decks themselves away from the hull.

"One league."

We really might make it! He knew it with sudden clarity. The ship was still in a screaming dive, but it was traveling bow first now. He had control of both its attitude and its heading. He started to bleed off speed with feather-touches of reverse power. Wood ground against wood as the keel flexed. If the keel were ever going to let go, now was the time, as his attempts to decelerate effectively tried to compress the Boundless along its longitudinal axis.

But the magnificently strained keel held. The death scream of the wind faded to a faint whistle. Then it fell silent as the ship's air envelope reasserted itself over the slipstream. The ship still was at a fifteen-degree angle and he didn't think he could pull it up again without tearing the vessel in two, but at least the speed was down to manageable levels.

"Altitude," he croaked.

"Two thousand feet," he heard Blossom gasp. Then she shouted, "Mountains!"

But he'd already seen them, some of the peaks reaching several thousand feet above the deck of the squid ship. By sheer luck, he'd brought the Boundless in along the line of a steep-sided pass between the highest of the peaks. Less than a league to one side or the other of their present course, and the ship would have been smashed to splinters against the rocky slopes.

What in Paladine's name am I going to do? Teldin asked himself. The squid ship was designed solely for a water landing, but there wasn't any water for dozens of leagues, and he knew he wouldn't be able to keep the stricken ship in the air for much longer before something critical failed.

So be it, then, a ground landing it had to be. He knew all too well what it would do to the ship, but his sole concern now was the lives of his friends and his crew.

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.