The Fifth Dawn

CHAPTER 17

— raise her arms to protect her eyes from the glare. She tumbled backward and landed hard on her back, and something jabbed her painfully in the lower back. A yelp told her that she’d also landed on Geth, who let out a long stream of muffled invective aimed at her parentage. “Shut up, Geth,” she mumbled.

Glissa blinked against the glare that filled the air above her and hadn’t gone away. She couldn’t see a thing, in fact, not the rest of the room, not the torture table …

She did see razor grass. Lots and lots of razor grass, disappearing into infinity wherever she looked. Glissa was in the Glimmervoid. But how? She rolled over onto her belly, then pushed off the ground-

“Ow!” Glissa yelped, and jerked back, rolling into a crouch. She turned her hands palm upward and blinked, trying to focus in the sweltering glare. Her hands were green with blood welling from several fresh, thin cuts. “So it’s real,” she muttered. “How in the name of every last god in the Tangle did I get here?”

“First things first,” Geth said from the pack on her back, which must have flapped open. “Who’s attached to those boots?”

Glissa turned around, shielding her eyes against the bright sky. She followed the black boots until they met unfamiliar metallic blue armor, and on up to a familiar face.

“Glissa,” Bruenna said warmly, a soft rasp in her voice as she broke into a grin. The mage offered her a hand up, and Glissa got a good look at her friend in the bright light of the moons. All five were over the horizon, which explained the heat and glare, with the yellow, sun-like moon (or moon-like sun, if you were a leonin) directly overhead. There was a strange symmetry to the moons. The last time she’d looked the green one was the only one in the sky.

Bruenna’s voice and the weird blue armor weren’t the only things that had suddenly changed. The mage’s face was drawn and angular, more than a little careworn. A jagged white scar emerged from the collar of Bruenna’s armor and disappeared behind her left ear. As Glissa released the human’s hand she noticed Bruenna wore something that looked like a gauntlet, but with three too many fingers and an extra thumb.

The mage noticed Glissa staring at her hands and raised the bizarre gauntlet, twiddling the digits, and shrugged. “Took it off a vedalken patrol. The vedalken won’t be needing it anymore. Besides, they owed me a hand.”

“What?” Glissa managed. “Vedalken? Bruenna, what happened to you? Why did you say-how did you-some kind of teleportation spell, right?”

“Plenty has happened to me,” Bruenna replied, furtively casting a glance over her shoulder. Glissa, still half-blinded by the bright moons, tried to make out what she was looking at, but saw only what looked like a distant, blurry, dark-colored wall. “But now isn’t the time. The nim will be on patrol today.” Bruenna raised two fingers to her lips and emitted a series of short whistles and clicks that reminded Glissa of several different avian species native to the Tangle.

In response to Bruenna’s call, a pair of long necks rose cautiously over the grass, several paces away. The zauks bobbed their heads from side to side for a second then stood, smoothly rising from a sitting position with a peculiarly clumsy avian grace. The pair of flightless birds, both unsaddled, trotted over to the mage and her perplexed companion. One began to poke its beak at Geth’s pack.

“Hey! Shoo! Not food!” Geth squealed. Glissa gently nudged the zauk away and closed the pack tight. “Mank moo,” the head said.

“Bruenna, take your time. I mean, nim? We’re in the middle of the ’void, in broad daylight. We’d see them coming a mile away. What’s going on?” Glissa asked, still squinting at that black wall. No, not a wall.

The Mephidross. They were at the swamp’s edge, or close, anyway. Glissa couldn’t understand why the mage had transported her here. Taj Nar or anywhere else, except a few choice locations in the Dross or the interior, would have been better. Until she got an explanation, though, she decided to keep her mouth shut. Complaining about the exact location of her rescue seemed petty.

“What are the last things you remember?” Bruenna asked and cupped her hands into a stirrup, helping the baffled elf girl clamber onto the patient zauk’s bare back. Glissa took the reins the Neurok woman handed her and patted the zauk’s neck softly. The bird cooed and flicked its glittering silver headcrest.

“But you were just there.”

“Humor me.”

“Well, the last thing I-ow, sorry, there, fella-the last thing I remember, you shouted ‘No,’ then everything went white,” Glissa said. “In the Vault. I was trying to free you. Then I was here, getting poked by razor grass.”

“Do you remember Ellasha?” Bruenna asked.

“Of course,” Glissa said, “She-she died so that I could get to you. She held back the nim, while I-wait, you never met Ellasha.”

“You’re mistaken,” the human replied, pulling herself onto her mount with practiced ease. “Ellasha eventually fought her way through the tunnels and found me. Was able to free me, since the trap had already been sprung. But she was killed in our escape. Noble Ellasha died five years ago today.”

Glissa reined her zauk to a halt.

“Five what ago today?”

The moons beat down even hotter, if that was possible, as the pair of zauks dashed on lithesome feet across the razor plains, their scaly silver legs easily deflecting the slashing grass blades. Glissa scanned the dark line of the Mephidross. “Shouldn’t we be riding away from that?” Glissa asked.

“Easier said than done,” Bruenna said sadly. “The Dross is … bigger than you remember. It has been a long five years.”

“Think you can fill me in on the way back to Taj Nar?” Glissa said. “Where’s my sister? Tell me she’s alive.”

“She is fine,” Bruenna said. “As fine as can be expected. There is much to tell, and some of it will be easier to show you. But I shall explain what I can.”

“Thanks,” Glissa said. “Let’s start with how I missed the last five years.”

“As you no doubt suspect, I was the bait in a trap set for you,” Bruenna said. “Yert used vedalken magic to carve a temporal sigil into the floor. The sigil triggered a spell that was powered by … by me.” Bruenna shuddered.

“Those tubes.”

“Yes,” Bruenna continued. “They were drawing magical energy from me into the table, which made the sigil work. Time stopped for you and Geth, and for the rest of us …” the mage shrugged.

“Life went on,” Glissa concluded. “Flare! So Yert and Memnarch were in cahoots. I thought that was who that vampire bastard was talking to. But where have I been this whole time? Just standing on that table? Was I even, you know, here? Nothing feels quite right.”

“Not surprising,” Bruenna sighed. “Nothing is. I told you how Ellasha was killed getting me out of the tunnels under the Dross. As soon as I was out, I headed for the leonin base camp. They weren’t where I left them-Yshkar had the army on the move. They were returning to Taj Nar.”

“Yes, I remember,” Glissa said. “Raksha changed his mind after we fought Dwugget’s goblins. He decided to return to the city after all. So Raksha and Lyese must have made it back all right.”

“Indeed, and their mission was quite successful, as it turned-”

A silver-blue energy bolt the color of Bruenna’s armor materialized out of nowhere and slammed into the neck of Bruenna’s zauk. The bird managed half a squawk of pained surprise before it exploded in a flash of feathers, slag, and burning avian flesh. Bruenna was blasted into the air by the shock wave, describing a lazy arc that ended when she collided with the razor grass. Hopefully her armor had protected Bruenna from the blades, because Glissa couldn’t help the human right now.

The elf girl’s zauk was terrified. Glissa struggled to calm the panicked bird, which wouldn’t stop squawking and trying to bolt, while scanning the sky for the source of the energy blast.

“Flare,” Glissa muttered as her suspicions were confirmed. “Aerophins.” At least a dozen of them, in fact. They appeared much bigger and better armed than the ones Glissa had taken out in the Tangle a few days-no, years-ago. The fiendish flying constructs bristling with blades and small, sharp claws, and each carried a ring of black cylinders mounted on the front of their glassy, globular heads.

The cylinders on the nose of the nearest ’phin crackled with blue sparks, giving the elf girl just enough warning to jerk the reins and dodge another bolt of magical energy. The shot from the ’phin’s nose-cylinders slammed into the grasslands, tearing up chunks of metal and sending a deadly hail of grass blades flying in all directions. Glissa held up her arms to protect her face, gritting her teeth as the jagged razors cut into her metallic flesh. These aerophins didn’t just look more dangerous, their energy blasts were also a great deal stronger than she’d expected.

Glissa heard her zauk emit a strangled, agonized cry. A dozen grass blades had punctured its neck and breast, and one had neatly skewered the bird’s head through the right eye and out the left ear. Before she could dismount, the bird whimpered one last time and collapsed on its side, pinning Glissa’s leg beneath its bulk.

The leg didn’t feel broken, but she was stuck. The aerophins, more than two dozen of them now, circled like carrion birds.

Glissa hadn’t traveled this far-through time, apparently, as well as around the entire plane at least twice-to die alone on the razor fields, pinned beneath a dead bird that suddenly smelled extremely pungent.

The elf girl heard a groan coming from where Bruenna had crashed to the ground. Craning her neck, Glissa could just see the Neurok. Bruenna was still alive, but grass blades had slipped through the joints in her armor at several points and appeared to hold her fast to the ground. The plants glistened red with human blood.

Glissa brought her free leg up to her chest and kicked with all her might against the twitching zauk’s back, levering it up just far enough to free her trapped limb, then scooted out of the way before the corpse rolled back to trap her a second time. “Just hold your fire a little longer,” she said softly to the circling aerophins.

The elf got back to her feet in time to dodge another blast. This one struck the corpse of Glissa’s zauk and nearly vaporized it. Only the neatly cauterized head at the edge of a small, smoldering crater remained.

That was it. Shooting at Glissa and Bruenna was one thing, but going after their zauks was just low. “I said hold your fire!” the elf girl shouted, and whipped her arms into the sky.

She felt the spark respond to her coaxing inner call. Every time she reached within to touch the pinpoint of strange magic, it had become easier, but this felt like the entire mana core was channeling through her body. Glissa felt the spark-power surge forward like a kharybdog finally set free of its leash. A warm green glow encased the elf girl’s arms, spread wide overhead. Glissa’s spine tingled and her hair stood on end.

She brought her hands together with a clap, and a blast of crackling green fire immolated the sky and everything Glissa could see within it, one piece at a time.

The wave of emerald energy collided with the globular head of the lead aerophin, shattered it like a glass bowl, and sent sparks, flaming serum, and metal shards raining into the air. The fire leapfrogged from construct to construct with incrementally greater force and destruction. Glissa felt bitter satisfaction as each one died.

Within thirty seconds, the aerophins were gone. Glissa had annihilated the ’phins, making sure each one disintegrated, so this time there was no need to avoid any descending wreckage. Of course, last time Glissa had tried this trick the aerophins had numbered in the thousands, and this time there had been a little more than a dozen.

The ’phins were gone, but she suspected someone was going to be missing them and soon. And since Glissa was more or less a stranger in her own world at the moment, she needed Bruenna.

The human’s skin had gone from soft azure to purple-Bruenna’s mount had taken the brunt of the blast, but there had been energy to spare. In fact, the Neurok woman was still smoldering. Thousands of tiny red spots dotted her face and arms where bits of metal had pierced the skin. The fallen mage wasn’t moving.

Glissa placed an ear to Bruenna’s breast, and sighed with relief when she heard a faint heartbeat. “What do you know,” Glissa grinned as the mage’s eyes fluttered open. “You humans are tougher than I thought. Don’t talk, I’m going to do what I can, but this first part is going to hurt. I have to get you free of this grass.” Without another word, she grabbed Bruenna by her armored shoulders and pulled the mage into a sitting position, eliciting a cry of pain from the injured woman.

Still flush with the energy of the spark, Glissa easily reached out to the distant Tangle and touched the magic of the forest. It felt a little peculiar, wilder and harder to tame than before, but with a little effort, the elf girl was able to work a few healing incantations and bring Bruenna back from the brink, if not anywhere near perfect health. She was no leonin healer, but she knew plenty of quick fixes for small wounds, and she drew on all of them at once.

The human’s eyes blinked against the glare, and Glissa helpfully positioned herself between Bruenna’s eyes and the yellow moon. The elf girl held out her hand. Bruenna pulled herself up with Glissa’s help, and leaned heavily on the elf girl’s shoulder. Glissa scanned the horizon, and saw a few glittering specks of silver pass in front of the blue moon. More hunters from Memnarch, from the look of them. “Can you walk?” she asked Bruenna, and pointed at the distant flyers.

The mage squinted at the aerophins. “They’re coming from Lumengrid. We’re too close to the sea. I should never have taken us this way.”

“Your magic,” Glissa said. “Can you disappear us out of here?”

Bruenna closed her eyes for a moment. “I don’t think so,” she whispered. “Retrieving you from the interior took a lot out of me. Memnarch didn’t want to let you go. The safeguards around you were very strong.”

“But I wasn’t in the interior. I thought I was in the-” Glissa began then switched course. “Okay, tell me about it later. What about flight magic? With my leg and your-well, everything, we don’t stand a chance of outrunning more of those things. And I don’t know if I can pull off that trick again soon.”

“I think I can get us airborne, with a little boost,” Bruenna said. She reached out and took Glissa’s hands. The metal of the mage’s artificial appendage was unnaturally cold.

“A boost?” Glissa asked. “What, from me?” The idea of sharing magic with another wasn’t unknown among the Viridians. But Glissa had begun to think of herself as a focusing point, a conduit for the energy of the Tangle. She didn’t even know if she could share it with Bruenna, who was after all human. But Glissa could try.

“Yes,” Bruenna said, closing her eyes. “Just concentrate, as if you’re summoning the power for an ordinary, everyday enchantment. Don’t try too hard, just let it happen.”

Glissa closed her eyes and called the Tangle energy, which didn’t fight back this time. The elf felt the power move through her and into Bruenna through their physical connection, then it washed back over Glissa in a cool wave that felt at once alien and familiar-a blend of quicksilver and Tangle, two magical auras merging into something greater than the sum of their parts.

Bruenna flung her head back and pushed away from Glissa, her body glowing blue-white. Glissa herself no longer felt drained, and when she looked down at her body she saw it was giving on a faint green glow of its own.

The mage clapped her hands together and then swung them wide. Glissa once again felt the soles of her feet leave the ground and grinned.

“Time to go. Follow me,” Bruenna said, immediately taking to the air. As Glissa launched into the sky behind her, the mage called over her shoulder, “And do not go near Taj Nar, even if we get separated.”

“Why not?” Glissa asked. She glanced back over her shoulder. The aerophins were receding, but she didn’t think that meant they’d given up. She and Bruenna were simply flying more quickly than they’d been walking. Still, it gave them a head start and offered the elf a moment to collect her bearings and catch her breath. Flying was more relaxing than it looked, when you weren’t fighting for your life at the same time.

As they rose higher and more of the landscape opened up below her, Glissa noted something strange-here and there, the plains were dotted with thin, silver spires. These enormous needles rose eighty, maybe a hundred feet in the air.

“Bruenna, what are those things?” she asked as they flew past.

“No one’s sure,” Bruenna confessed. “They appear overnight, and we stopped investigating them after a while. They’re completely inert, as near as I can tell. Possibly some kind of mutated strain of razor grass.”

“You don’t sound like you believe that,” Glissa said.

“No, I don’t,” Bruenna said. “I think there is only one logical explanation.”

“Memnarch?” Glissa asked.

“That’s what I fear,” Bruenna said. “But whatever they are, for now they’re only a hazard to low-flying elves. Watch for them when we get closer to home. We’re going to need to drop our altitude soon.”

“Where are we going?”

“Taj Nar hasn’t been safe for many cycles,” Bruenna said without further explanation. “We’re headed to Krark-Home. It’s-”

“In the Oxidda Mountains?” Glissa remarked. “Underground? Somewhere near a big furnace, and a hole in the ground the size of that red moon?”

“Er, yes,” Bruenna said. “I’m sorry, Glissa. You have been gone so long, I’ve forgotten what you know and what you don’t. It took so long to even find you.”

“But you didn’t give up,” Glissa said. “Thank you, Bruenna.”

“You’re quite welcome, and forgive me if I repeat what you know. Trust me, things will be much clearer once we get to the mountains.”

Already Glissa could see the angular peaks of the Oxidda range coming over the horizon ahead. She was glad to have something else to focus on.

“I am not a leader,” Bruenna continued, “Not anymore. My people are long gone. I have not seen another Neurok in years. I have to assume they’re dead, or worse. Now I just do what I can for the Kha and her highness. So far, we’ve kept the nim from taking the mountains, but how long I can’t say. Yert’s had five years to spread the Dross, and the larger it gets, the greater his power to coordinate the nim grows. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s also Malil and the vedalken.”

“I saw vedalken in the interior, when we went down the lacuna hunting for Memnarch.”

“I believe they returned to Lumengrid after Memnarch had his way with them. He reshaped them into killing machines, Glissa,” Bruenna said. “They lead the construct beasts in endless attacks against our defensive positions, and they’re chipping away at us faster than the nim. Some of them have taken to patrolling alone, too.”

“Why not turn the nim and the vedalken against each other?” Glissa asked, but feared she knew the answer.

“Lumengrid and the Guardian apparently have maintained some kind of truce with Yert,” Bruenna replied. “There’s a loose border running between the Dross and the sea, but it’s remained stable for the last few years. And there’s something else that suggests an alliance-the vedalken and nim often attack us on two fronts simultaneously. That’s happened too many times to be a coincidence. And of course, there’s the temporal sigil. That’s vedalken magic. Yert couldn’t have done it alone. As for why Yert has yet to spread the Dross to cover the plains, let alone the Tangle, that’s still a mystery. I believe Memnarch is holding Yert back for some reason. I just haven’t figured out why yet.”

“Yert’s a fool,” Geth’s head interrupted. “Just look at that swamp! The necrogen! If I had access to that kind of power-”

“But you don’t, so if you don’t want me to stick you on the top of one of those spires, you’ll butt out,” Glissa snapped. “I’m almost afraid to ask,” she continued, turning back to Bruenna, “But do we have a plan? Did you just miss me?”

“We all thought you were lost after months passed without word,” Bruenna said. “It took me years to identify the sigil that had frozen you, and you were taken almost immediately. After what we had seen that day, I had to assume the worst-that Memnarch had you, or you were dead. And there was no way to get back into the interior to find you, with the war.”