"Get Aelfred?" exclaimed the gnome with mounting panic. "Why? Do you think I did something after all? It wasn't me, really. Please don't do it. Please don't get Aelfred, because I didn't do it!" He hid his face in his hands.

"What in the Abyss are you talking about?" Teldin demanded. "I just want to see Aelfred!".

Loomfinger peeked out from his fingers, then hastily grabbed for the doorknob. "No problem then! I'll be right back with Aelfred!" In a second, the gnome was gone.

*****

"Thas id!" said Dyffed through puffy lips. He pointed with one cloth-wrapped arm. "Thas the megafauna on wigde One Six Nine lives. Id sdill has ids leff foreleg ub afder all this dibe. Of course, id will dake another five hundred and sixdy years for id to-"

"Dyffed," said Teldin. "Don't talk."

"Okay," said Dyffed reluctantly, and subsided.

"Wow," said Gaye, leaning on the ship's railing. "An elephant unicorn. He needs a mustache like you, Teldin."

"Idz nod a unicorn or an elephand, because idz-"

"Dyffed," Teldin warned.

"Okay," said the gnome with a frustrated sigh.

Teldin grimaced and looked away from the gnome's red, blistered face. He hoped this giant slug had some healing spells on hand, not only for Dyffed but for the other injured gnomes aboard who hadn't completely recovered from their earlier battle and from the crash into the footprint lake.

As he looked again at the approaching megafauna, Teldin wondered if he was becoming jaded after having seen the first one. Aelfred had placed Loomfinger on the now-repaired helm while the ship was still coasting through airless wildspace to allow Teldin the chance to see the creature directly from the deck; Sylvie was still asleep. This one was still a shocker: a diamond-patterned creature of black, red, and yellow that Dyffed had said stood twelve hundred miles high. It was vaguely elephantine with a rhinolike face, tiny ears, and a huge horn projecting from where a unicorn's horn would grow. A reptilian-type tail half as long as its body hung from the rear, sweeping hundreds of miles above the ground at its lowest point.

Traveling at a much reduced speed but still covering a thousand miles of space every few minutes, the Perilous Halibut slowly circled the creature. The gnomes who had come up on deck to see the beast were much more talkative now than before with the first monster, and Teldin guessed that they, too, were becoming used to such marvels. We're going to be spoiled rotten by the time this trip is over, Teldin decided. A dragon? Ho-hum. A flying castle? Booooring.

"Where's the best place to land so we can get to the fal's place?" Aelfred asked the half-mummified gnome.

"Idz…" Dyffed stopped and looked up at Teldin questioningly. When Teldin nodded, he continued. "Idz ride on dop of the horn there," he said, pointing again. "Bud we can'd land on the horn. We have do land on idz head and walk up do the horn. We can go up frob there."

Aelfred nodded and headed for the ship's huge vertical fin. "I'll call directions down to Loomfinger," he told Teldin.

"We should bake sure thad… bake sure thad…" Dyffed stopped, looking puzzled.

Teldin looked down. "Make sure that what?"

The gnome rubbed the side of his head with a bandaged hand. "I forgod. Id was ride there on by bind and id fell off or sobething."

Teldin shrugged and looked back at the megafauna. The ship's course adjusted after Aelfred called the instructions down, and the ship made its way toward the hundred-mile-wide top of the creature's head.

Something thumped heavily up the ladder toward the top deck. Teldin glanced at Aelfred, who nodded and looked away, busying himself with a set of mooring ropes. As Gomja's broad hippopotamus face appeared in the hatchway, Teldin forced a smile.

Are you a traitor? he wanted to ask. What's going on with you? I was a fool not to have seen it before.

"How do you like the view?" Teldin asked instead, waving a and at the megafauna in the distance.

You certainly changed your mind suddenly enough, back at the hospital on the morning we were leaving, Teldin thought. I told you I trusted you. I don't understand what happened.

"Certainly a big fellow, isn't it, sir?" Gomja said, carefully adjusting his uniform.

Teldin's gaze flicked briefly down to the two pistols at Gomja's belt. He felt the revelations coming faster and faster in his mind. You, not the gnomes, must havestocked the Perilous Halibut. You made sure you had a big supply of pistols and powder, and that there was enough provisions for all of us on war trip. You made sure the gnomes were there at the ship then the attack came. "You made sure that almost everyone in war tight little group from the Probe was at the Perilous Halibut then, too; but you couldn't find Gaye and me before the attack came, so you had the gnomes track us down. You just not lucky there.

"Are we heading for the beast's head?" Gomja asked, When Teldin nodded, the huge giff looked curiously at the oposed destination. "How are we going to land, sir? We have a tail fin that drops below the ship's bottom. Is there water there?"

"We'll hover first, with Loomfinger on the helm," Aelfred said, stepping up. He was the model of a ship's captain, casualy watching the beast's head draw nearer. They were perhaps a thousand miles away, their velocity slowing as they drew loser to the top. Teldin could see immense valleys and cracks in the beast's folded hide, and in some places he thought he would see brief gleams of light that might be reflections from the sun on standing water. Maybe there would be a place to and after all, if they could be sure there would not be a repeat performance of the footprint-lake landing.

Gomja sniffed, his broad nostrils flaring. "It is not exactly proper, landing on someone's head, but…" He grinned. "Perhaps we could build a landing platform for the ship as we did when we were with the rastipedes, sir."

I'd almost forgotten about the night you were talking to yourself behind the ship, Teldin thought, looking at the giff. Aelfied thinks you were actually talking to someone with a scrying spell, someone who could hear and see you-and probably me as well, once I got close enough. All this time, I never thought about it at all.

The giff looked at Teldin and blinked. "Sir?"

"What?" said Teldin. He was suddenly aware that he was staring hard at the giff. "Sorry?"

"Is something wrong, sir?"

"No, nothing." Teldin waved the question away and looked back at the beast's head, his arms folded across his chest. The top of the creature's horn reached at least fifty miles above them, a great whorled spike of ivory and red tilted forward in the direction of the megafauna's line of travel.

Several times as they approached, Teldin had to blink, shake his head, or wipe at his eyes, trying to adjust to the immensity of the beast and the bizarre perspectives it presented. He felt more and more like a dust mote, or even one of the unbreakable and minute particles that some sages claimed made up all matter. The world-beast was everything. He was nothing. With but a few steps, this beast could span Ansalon, the continent where Teldin had been raised. It could ford the deepest seas and never know it had gotten wet.

It became apparent as they drew closer that some of the creature's diamond-pattern decoration was due to patterns of forestation on its hide. Conversation faded away on the top deck as the crew looked at tracts of woodland wilderness hundreds of miles across, spread over the world-beast's neck and head. Broad lakes appeared, as Teldin had suspected, and thin clouds and areas of low-lying fog or mist became evident.

"Id has idz own gravidy field," said Dyffed, forgetting his earlier promises. "See how the drees grow oud frob idz neck? And thad lake, on idz cheek-there, you see id. Idz nod spilling off indo space. Gravidy!"