Nemesis

LENS

The ever-gray sky of Rath darkened from pearl to slate before the agent moved. He'd spent a day and a night in his hiding place, molded into a crevice between two large trees. His hooded shroud took on the color and texture of bark, and the special unguent on his hands and face had the same mimetic properties. While he was hidden, elves of the village had passed within arm's length of him. He could have struck them down with impunity, but such were not his orders. He had a specific target, and his new masters did not tolerate deviation. As shadows lengthened in the Skyshroud Forest, the agent stirred his stiff, aching limbs. His legs burned with the sensation of a thousand needles pricking his skin, but with his altered senses he was able to block out the discomfort, just as he disregarded any feelings of hunger, fear, or remorse.

Villagers went about their evening tasks. Greenish light from their foxfire lamps filtered down, and for a moment the agent froze, startled by his own faint shadow on the black water beneath the trees. He craned his hooded head and saw the tree dwellers pass unconcernedly over him, scaling their vine ladders and bridges with practiced ease.

The large tree house in the center of the settlement was his target. The village had been denuded of warriors by the recent attack on the Stronghold, but a lone elderly elf in snakeskin armor leaned against the doorway of the target's home.

Don't underestimate him, his master's voice whispered inside his head. What strength elves lose in age, they make up for in skill.

He gave the old guard wide berth, circling under the plank porch to the far side of the tree. The enormous swamp elm, a living pillar twenty feet wide, ran straight through the center of the house. On the trunks of their tree houses the elves cultivated a special type of gray-green lichen. It looked harmless, but when pressed, it exuded an oil that made the tree too slippery to climb. Under ordinary circumstances it was meant to keep out hostile merfolk and large predatory snakes.

Beneath his chameleon shroud, the agent wore two pairs of black cloth pads. One set had finger loops for his hands, the other, large bands to fit around his knees. The pads exuded a sticky substance developed in the evincar's own laboratory. His master assured him it would defeat the elves' lichen.

He sprang onto the trunk and stuck there like a wasp on a smear of honey. He raised his right hand and knee and heaved them upward. The pads adhered to the tree without a wobble. Soon his head was brushing the underside of the porch. The climbing pads worked just as well on smooth boards, and in moments he was on the porch.

The house was still-as it should be, for its master was away fighting the evincar. The target's shuttered window betrayed a hint of foxfire within. Was she still awake?

He inserted a finger between the shutter slats. The kidney-shaped room beyond was hewn from the living tree. There was a bed of boughs at the far end of the room, away from the only door. The target lay in the bed covered by a dappled green animal skin. By the door, a carved image of an angel held an open foxfire lamp.

The shutters were locked with a simple hook, which easily yielded to his knife blade. They swung out, and he lifted a lean leg over the sill. The figure in bed never stirred. Once in the room, he closed the shutters and went to the door. It was barred with a carved wooden beam as thick as his arm. Such primitive safety measures were useless against an agent of the evincar. He crept to the bed, removing the sticky pads from his hands as he went. The agent knelt beside the bed and studied the face of his target. She was the one, all right. How many days had he looked into her eyes and felt love? How many days did it take the evincar's minions to condition such feelings out of him?

With a sudden motion, he yanked his knife from its sheath. It wavered for a moment in the lamplight as the deepest vestiges of his old self struggled with his new loyalties. He could not… resist. The blade slid quietly into the nest of soft boughs. He took out the vial provided by the overlords and used the knife tip to pierce the wax seal on the stopper.

One drop is sufficient.

He was supposed to pour a single drop in the eye or on the lips, but he saw something that made him change his method. A feather headdress hung from a peg above the target's bed. Silently, he plucked a single blue feather from the stylish array. Not so long ago he'd worn feathers like this.

He dipped the feather into the vial and gently pulled it out. Clear liquid clung to the tip. It smelled fresh, like a field of newly mown grass.

He brought the feather to the sleeping girl's mouth. For a reason no one will ever know, she sensed his nearness and awoke just as the elixir touched her lips.

Her eyes opened wide. The agent dropped the vial and feather and reached for his knife.

She must not scream.

No sound came from her slightly parted lips. She was dead. At the exact moment the deadly potion touched her livid lips, her life was extinguished. Her eyes, still soft with sleep, stared sightlessly at her killer. Without a shudder, he closed them.

His mission was only half done. He quickly set about finding something to hide the body in. An emerald snake hide would give him away in the dark, so he cast about for a more suitable wrap. He found a brown homespun blanket, trade goods from some Dal weaver, and flung aside the animal skin. The girl's linen shift might rustle, so he stripped it off. In death, her naked body resembled one of the evincar's statues, her pale skin translucent in the failing foxfire. The agent swallowed three times, trying to dislodge a strange lump in his throat.

Noise outside-shouts and the clamor of a crowd. Startled, he flung the blanket over the body. A gentle knock on the door thundered through the small room.

"Avila? Are you awake?" said a female voice. "Did you hear the cries? Your father returns! He'll be here shortly!"

The agent hurried to the window. His knife and the open vial of death elixir were still in the girl's bed. There was no time to retrieve them; his arms were full.

"Avila? Avila, are you all right?"

When no one answered, the woman's tread could be heard rapidly retreating. She called, "Firanu! Firanu, come quickly! Something's amiss with Avila!"

No time for stealth now. He burst through the shutters onto the porch. He ran toward the high bridge platform. Pursuers would expect him to descend to a boat, not climb higher in the trees. As he rounded the curve of the great tree, he came face to face with the elderly guard, no doubt Firanu. He was armed with a barbed snake-fang spear.

"Stand where you are, or I'll kill you," the old elf said. The agent stopped so suddenly that the blanket around his prize slipped down, revealing his burden's lolling head.

"Avila!"

The agent leaped and kicked the spear from Firanu's hand. Before the elderly elf could go for his knife, the agent lowered his head and butted him squarely in the chest. The steel skullcap he wore under his hood connected with Firanu's breastbone. With a groan, the old retainer pitched backward over the porch rail.

The sound of the crowd was getting louder. A woman appeared, a matronly elf with a strong family resemblance to the dead girl. She saw the shadowy agent, his face paint adjusted to the gray night.

She screamed, "Kidnap, kidnap! My brother's child is taken!"

She offered no resistance as he rushed by on his way to the bridge. He pounded up carved steps three and four at a time. On either side he could see the glow of lamps gathering. He ran to a swinging bridge of planks and vines. Behind him, someone shouted for help.

Elves, some armed, gathered at both ends of the bridge. One pointed at him and cried out. The agent spared them a glance and began to run in earnest.

Nothing matters but the completion of your mission. Not your life, nor the life of any who oppose you.

A spear-wielding elf appeared at the near end of the bridge. The agent dropped his prize and sprang at his new foe. Before the elf could raise his weapon, the wraithlike agent was on him, bearing him down to the plank floor of the bridge. They grappled, and the agent used his steelclad head to bludgeon his enemy into submission. Blood streamed down the agent's face, mixing with the mimetic ointment. He rolled the dead elf's body off the bridge and let it splash in the dark waters below. He picked up the fallen warrior's spear.

More torch-bearing elves filled the landings at both ends of the bridge. They were carrying whatever weapons came to hand-snake-fang maces, flails, tree-limb knobkerries-but luckily no bows. He slung the blanket-wrapped body over his shoulder. Elves filed onto the bridge.

"There he is!"

"What is it? A demon?"

"No demon-see, it bleeds!"

That brought forth calls for more of the agent's blood. He calmly positioned himself on the bridge and raised his captured spear. A thrown mace hurtled past him. He faced his nearest pursuers and bared his teeth in a snarl. Torchlight gleamed off his steel fangs. A refinement, his masters called it, pulling his natural teeth and giving him these metal spikes. Now the angry elves hesitated, transfixed by the weird apparition between them.

The spear was useless, so he flung it at his pursuers. He grabbed one of the bridge's supporting vines and clamped down on it with his metal teeth. The cable parted with a crack. The left side of the bridge sagged. Elves began to scramble back to the platforms. The agent turned and just as efficiently bit through another cable.

The broken bridge fell. He'd judged his place perfectly. His portion of the bridge was just long enough to drag the surface of the water and stop before slamming into a tree trunk.

Clasping his burden, the agent plunged into the murky water. His shroud and body paint took on the deep color of night, and he was soon lost in darkness.

He knew it wasn't over. The elves were master hunters and trackers. By daylight they would be after him in force, and his escape portal was far enough away that day would be well underway by the time he reached it.

Failure is not an option. You will complete your mission whatever the cost.

Clasping the dead girl's waist, he swam faster.

Light dispels darkness-a fundamental principle, a law of nature, on every known world. But on the plane of Phyrexia, nature does not exist. On Phyrexia, light serves the dark, it does not rule it.

The Fourth Level of this unnatural plane was the realm of great furnaces. Here were forged many of the components of Phyrexia's living machines. Around the clock (for there is no night or day), gangs of slave gremlins fed the scrap of redundant mechanisms into the mile-high furnaces. Molten metal was drawn off, alloyed and tempered in greater automatic rolling mills, and the resulting mixtures poured, pressed, or stamped into parts for new Phyrexian machines. If the gremlins faltered, they too were recycled, their ranks constantly renewed with more expendable laborers.

Strange, then, was the mission of the gremlin Dabir. A minor gremlin of trifling wits, he was best known for his reliability and his utter subservience to his masters. His immediate overseer, the vat priest Paax, had given him an unusual task. Dabir stood for hours before a shimmering portal to another plane, impatiently awaiting the arrival of

… what was it again he was waiting for?

"A sample," Paax said.

"What sample?"

The hulking Paax extended an oiled, acid-etched arm until his black fingers were half an inch from Dabir's beaked nose. A blue spark arced from the demon's hand, and the gremlin collapsed on the greasy metal floor of the Fourth Sphere in agony.

"Ask not the will of your betters," said Paax, his voice punctuated by tinny clicks. He was bothered by a sticky breathing regulator. "Only obey."

Dabir picked himself up, fingering his throbbing nose. The smell of scorched flesh made even his feculent stomach churn.

"Dabir always obey great, wise Paax," he whined.

Paax swiveled his slender undercarriage and started away on four delicate, articulated legs. His rear mouth warned, "Be at the portal at the appointed time. Receive the sample, and deliver it to Monitor 8391 at Processing Mill 44. You know the penalty if you fail."

The vat priest maneuvered his bulky upper body around a steaming flue and was soon lost in the maze of heat exchangers and lubricant chases.

And so Dabir waited by the open portal-a glowing pane twelve inches square-for the sample. He could see through the dimensional doorway glimpses of a world far removed from the inferno he'd always known. The surface of that distant place was soil and stone, not oily metal, and living plants waved in the wind. If the gremlin got too close, the portal would shimmer, like the air near the mouths of the great furnaces. Fearful of damaging the ethereal portal, Dabir kept his distance.

He waited through an entire shift of work, rubbing his haunches when they numbed from sitting so long. He turned his back on the portal and laced his taloned fingers through his yellow-nailed toes, bored as only a vapid gremlin can be bored.

Suddenly there was a flash of blue light behind him. He spun and saw the portal had enlarged itself four times. A hooded figure was running across a plain of tall, dry grass toward the portal, pursued by a dozen flesh beings. Their mouths worked, but Dabir could not make out what they were saying. Sound did not traverse the portal.

Several of the tall beings, clad in painted hides and feathers, nocked arrows and loosed them at the fleeing figure. Three arrows struck and bounced off. A fourth found a chink in the agent's armor and buried half its length in his back. He staggered, and for the first time Dabir recognized the hooded figure bore a weighty bundle over his left shoulder.

"Hurry! Come!" Dabir shouted uselessly. He cared nothing about the wounded agent, fearing instead his own punishment if the agent failed to reach the portal. More arrows flashed. A second broadhead found its mark, and the shrouded figure fell, pitching his burden to the ground.

Dabir wet himself in terror. He thrust his long arms into the vibrant portal. A teasing sensation, not unpleasant, played over his oily skin. The precious sample was just beyond his grasping claws. Galvanized by visions of his own lengthy and painful death, Dabir shoved his head through the dimensional window.

He felt cool air, free of oil or soot. Then came the shouts of the hunters. An indefinite light from above dazzled the gremlin's eyes. He reached out for the clothwrapped bundle. His movements seemed slow, as if he were swimming through thick oil instead of fresh, open air.

His fingers felt oddly numb, and the sensation was spreading up his arms. Desperately, the gremlin snagged the edge of the wrapping. With a tremendous heave of his long legs, Dabir pulled himself and the bundle back through the portal. Both landed with a thump on the gritty metal plates of the Fourth Sphere.

The portal began to dwindle. The wounded agent raised a hand, either in a final plea or in final salute. Dabir watched six tall beings surround the fallen figure. They had spears. Shafts rose and fell in pitiless repetition as the portal shrank to a few inches, then winked out.

Dabir bobbed up on his knees. He sat in the shadows cast by the eternal glare of the furnaces, biting his own hands to restore feeling to them. His normally glossy black skin had turned ash gray on those parts of his body he'd stuck through the portal. The numbness slowly faded, but his color did not return.

A whiff of something delectable teased his formidable nose. Inserting it in a hole in the tattered blanket, he sniffed. The ugly white thing inside smelled like the air on the other side of the portal. No oil, no soot, no tang of acid aerosols… he replaced his nose with his tongue and gave the sample a quick lick. Flesh, newly dead and still sweet. The Phyrexian agent had died to deliver a corpse.

Dabir delivered the body to Monitor 8391 as ordered and departed to other tasks. Monitor 8391 ran a laboratory for the analysis of organic specimens. The Monitor put the slender corpse on his examining table. A chemical spray removed the creature's hair. The Phyrexian precisely measured every critical dimension of the body with calipers, then carefully laid a square of flowsheet over the corpse's head. At the Monitor's command, the tiny machines in the flowsheet crawled over the cold skin, conforming themselves to every contour. When they were done, he had a perfect mold of the dead girl's face.

Monitor 8391 passed on the corpse to the Necrometric Unit 725 for further processing. Body fluids were drained. The blood was contaminated by poison and therefore useless. A substitute would have to be used. The flesh was carefully stripped off and sent to culture vats so the corpse's tissues could be preserved for eventual reuse. The sterilized, polished bones were sent back to the Monitor, who applied his meticulous skills to them once more, measuring them to the finest calibration of his instruments. These figures were forwarded to the engine controlling the mighty apparatus of Processing Mill 44.

The rollers and stamping presses of the factory began to churn. Bars of duralumin and steel were fed into the machinery, which formed a hard, metal skeleton identical to the one measured by the Monitor. Each bone was copied, right down to the individual metacarpals of the hands and phalanges of the feet. The girl had once broken her right arm, and the calcified break was mirrored in the new duralumin humerus.

Jointed and joined, the sparkling new skeleton was sealed in a sterile copper shell to shield it from the everpresent oil rain of the Fourth Sphere. Gremlins loaded the shell into a pneumatic tube and sent it whistling away to the culture vats. Organs and tissues were re-fitted to the gleaming bones, along with certain mechanical improvements added by Phyrexian engineers. The crude and wasteful processes of eating and sleeping were eliminated by filling the body's veins with Phyrexian glistening oil in lieu of ordinary blood. The new body would have six times the speed and strength of the purely organic creature it was based on. It would be resistant to heat and cold, and its senses would surpass those of any elf or human. As a final touch, the mold made by Monitor 8391 was used to restore the old face to the new creation.

The lifeless body was placed in another copper capsule and routed downward to the Sixth Sphere, where it would await the attention of the Inner Circle member, Abcal-dro, servant of the Dark Lord of Phyrexia himself.

She awoke standing in a domed, circular room. It was cold. She looked down at her bare arms and legs, flecked with goose pimples. A moment's concentration dispelled them as heat coursed through her veins.

How strange it was, this shell of flesh. Strange and yet familiar. She stood easily, testing the articulation of her hands, arms, and legs. Breath plumed from her nose in soft wisps. All parts worked. All systems were in order.

The chill walls were blue glass, polished and seamless. Without effort, she calculated the height of the dome at 16.39 feet. She walked slowly toward the only other object in the room, a five-foot-high chrome tripod, above which floated a small black sphere four inches in diameter.

Some things she knew, others she didn't. She knew she was alive and on Phyrexia. She knew the periodic table of the elements, the expansion rate of live steam in a turbine, and the speed at which flowstone multiplied under optimum conditions. She knew where to strike a human body to cause the most damage, but she could also set a broken leg with her bare hands. She did not know her own name.

"That has not been decided yet," said a calm, genderless voice.

She darted away from the hovering sphere and crouched near the wall. It wasn't fear that made her crouch. Fear was not in her design. Her posture was defensive, a position from which to strike at the unseen speaker.

"I am Abcal-dro, your master. Stand up."

She obeyed.

"Speak. You have the means," said the voice.

"Who am I?"

"You are called 'Belbe.'" The name had two syllables, bell-be.

"What does it mean?"

"It derives from the ancient Thran language, be'el-be. It means 'a lens.'"

She went to the gleaming tripod in the center of the room. "Lens. A device that focuses to a point or spreads apart rays of light or other forms of energy," she recited.

"Correct."

Belbe looked at her hands. "Do I focus light?"

"In your case, the name is metaphorical. As you are going among flesh beings, you are therefore expected to have a name."

"Where am I going?"

"The plane of Rath."

She closed her eyes and thought. "Rath. An artificial world, created by our supreme master, composed of flowstone nanomachines, inhabiting its own plane at coordinates-"

"Stop." The command was mildly expressed, but absolute. Belbe not only ceased speaking, she ceased moving at all,

"Learn not to speak what you're thinking. By so doing, you give away too much and bore your listeners."

Belbe remained immobile, like a statue of flesh and metal.

"Speak," commanded Abcal-dro.

"I do only your will, Great One."

A strange, liquid, bubbling laughter filled the dome. It subsided to a sigh. "Listen well, Belbe. You are going to Rath soon, as our emissary to that world. Our lens, one might say. The time approaches when Rath will be in congruence with Dominaria, the prime plane of our ancestors. When the conjunction of planes occurs, all that is on Rath will be on Dominaria-"

"And all that is on Dominaria will be on Rath."

A pause. "True." Cold clutched at her fabricated heart. Even the mildest pique of the high priest raked her entrails like a razor blade of ice.

"You were made to resemble the inhabitants of Rath, not your masters on Phyrexia. In fact, the native environment of Phyrexia is inimical to your existence, which is why you must be kept in this environmental chamber until your departure. You are as much like them as we could make you, and that is an important parameter in your mission.

"The governor of Rath has abandoned his post for the sake of personal vengeance. His dereliction is contrary to our purpose, and it will not be tolerated. A new evincar must be found to take his place. You will choose the new evincar for us. Since natural selection is the best scalpel for dividing the weak from the strong, allow the candidates to struggle among themselves until one of the specimens establishes himself as the superior candidate. You will observe this struggle for us. You may choose-" more bubbling laughter rippled through the chamber, "-we give you leave to participate in the competition as you see fit.

"Only one task must remain inviolate. Under no circumstance is the conjunction of Rath and Dominaria to be altered, delayed, or interfered with-by anyone. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Great One."

"You may encounter certain beings who, by an accident of breeding, have the power to pass from plane to plane. These planeswalkers may attempt to thwart our plans to overlay Dominaria. You will not let them interfere. Your own life means nothing compared to the success of our plan. Is that clear?"

She bowed with all the grace of her copied body. "It is, master."

"Approach the sphere."

Belbe closed within arm's length of the black orb. It floated a scant inch above the polished tripod. The ball's surface was smooth, yet did not reflect her face as she gazed at it.

"Stand still."

Belbe locked her legs in place. The sphere silently rose and came to her. It touched her at the base of her throat, and for an instant she felt nothing. The sphere melted into her flesh without breaking the skin or causing any bleeding. Pressure built inside her chest, pushing on her newly-placed organs. She gasped with newfound pain.

"This is our 'lens.' It will be the connection from you to us."

"What is this feeling?" she whispered.

"It is called pain. As it is part of mortal existence, you must learn to recognize it. To rule creatures of flesh, you must make pain your ally. Use it whenever you can, Belbe. It is the foundation of power."

Her mock-blood roared in her ears. She feared her heart would rupture, her lungs collapse. Belbe's vision filmed with gray, and her breath caught in her throat. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Her knees buckled.

Stand!

The voice of Abcal-dro was no longer in her ears, but inside her head. Despite intense pain, Belbe kept her feet. She staggered against the tripod, blinking through the haze of her suffering. The tripod abruptly vanished, and she stumbled forward, blind and gasping. Something warm ran down her lip.

The eye is now in place. You will soon adjust to its presence. She heard the words, but behind them there was something else. Behind the cool voice and godly demeanor of the high priest, Belbe sensed this:

Sweet, sweet the hall of flesh! The song of blood, what ancient joy! Too long have I slept-why, in this shell I can walk a thousand worlds, renew the sensations of lost millennia! It is mine, it is mine. Who is better than I? I take them all in my hands, caress them or crush them. My little puppet, my lens. Shrink from nothing, please your maker Belbe struck herself in the face with her open hand, twice, three times. The thin, shrieking voice submerged in the throb of her raging pulse. She wiped glistening oil from her lip. Slowly the room came back into focus. It seemed so empty without the orb and tripod.

She became aware of being watched. She saw in her mind an image of herself, standing naked under the cold glass dome. The lens was working-she was seeing herself as Abcaldro saw her.

This frail creature was her? Standing erect on two thin legs, Belbe was the color of fresh parchment, slightly flushed from her exertions. A spray of pale blue freckles dotted her face and shoulders. Her hair, an unruly shock of brown, began at a peak in the center of her forehead and arched back over her high, pointed ears. Along her arms, legs, buttocks, and back were matte black lines in geometric patterns, like tattoos, but in fact were strips of reinforcing carbon fiber. Her face was angular, her chin sharp. Thin white scars remained where her flesh had been reattached to her metallic skeleton.

She raised her eyes to the apex of the vault. The azure glass gradually became transparent, and Belbe saw her hidden master peering down at her from outside the dome.

The room was 29.5 feet in diameter-she knew because her master knew it. Pressing against the clear shell was a mass of translucent tissue. Pulsing black veins, distended with the same glistening oil that filled her blood vessels, lined the shapeless body. Dozens of pseudopods as thick as her waist gripped the base of the dome. Drops of thick blue slime clung to the dome.

Rhythmically twitching green bladders and complex multilobed organs were visible through the dirty gray protoplasm. At the very peak of the dome was Abcal-dro's true eye: a swirling green and black iris fifteen inches wide, a trio of red-rimmed pupils in the center,

"Is this how you see me?" asked the high priest. She nodded once, slowly. "How does my appearance strike you?"

"My master is beautiful," she said. "Such power and efficiency must be beautiful."

The Phyrexian's liquid laughter resumed as the dome went opaque again. "One last warning, little one. On Rath you will be on your own. Though backed by the power and authority of the Dark Lord, you will succeed or fail by your own efforts."

"I will not fail, great one."

"See that you don't. It is time to leave."

The seamless floor split apart, revealing dark descending steps. Humid, sulfurous air wafted up from the hole. Unhesitatingly, Belbe went down the steps to a wide, noisome corridor where four priests in full regalia stood waiting for her. Behind them was a full entourage of lesser constructs and functionaries, and lastly a gang of gremlins bearing her new wardrobe-robes of woven chrome and onyx brocades, headdresses of flash-formed obsidian. To the rear were the bearers of her arms and armor. Each piece had been forged in the Fourth Sphere from Monitor 8391's original specifications, resulting in perfectly tailored armor that would fit no one but Belbe.

The suit was made of black diamond, the hardest substance on Phyrexia. It was so hard in fact, it had to be shaped and cut with fluoric acid, since no tools existed that could cut the plates. The acid treatment left the armor matte black, as dead a color as the lens now embedded in Belbe's chest.

She coughed and felt the first drops of sweat form under her arms. The priests bowed as Belbe passed. She thought it odd the exalted clerics of Phyrexia should bow to her, a newly made creature more flesh than metal, but then she heard a whisper deep inside saying my lens, my eye…

Their obeisance made sense. It was not her they were bowing to, it was their master.

"Monsters."

The room was crowded with elf warriors, stained with sweat, smoke, and the blood of battle. They had not assembled here to fight, but to mourn. Their chieftain's daughter was gone, her fate unknown.

Eladamri knelt by Avila's empty bed. "Monsters," he said again. "I knew the evincar was vicious and unnatural, but I didn't think he would stoop to this!"

"The fiend responsible will be found, we swear it," said Gallan, Eladamri's lieutenant. The warriors around him grunted in agreement.

Eladamri put his hand on the boughs where his daughter had lain. This treachery soured his success at the Stronghold. His warriors had confronted Volrath and his warlord, Greven il-Vec, and survived-a victory as signal as any ever recorded on Rath. Now this.

He withdrew his aching hand, bruised by recent combat. The motion stirred the soft boughs, revealing the soft glint of snake bone.

"What's this?"

The agent's knife had fallen to the bottom of the bed. Beside it was a small glass vial, still upright, and a single blue feather.

"I know this weapon." It was plainly of elven make, the garnet pommel bearing the intricate engraving of Skyshroud artisans.

"Gallan, whose knife is this?" Eladamri asked sharply.

His lieutenant held the blade close. In the poor light it wasn't easy to see.

"The emblem is of the clan of Carodonal."

"Yes." Eladamri stood. "Tenesi."

It was too awful to believe, but it was the evincar's style all right. Avila's own fiance. He was lost in a skirmish twenty nights past.

"I'd hoped he'd found death rather than capture, but…" Eladamri made a fist around the tiny glass vial.

"What's that?" asked Gallan.

"Something for our healers to study, I think. Now, my brothers, don't dwell on what's happened! Volrath thinks he can frighten me into inaction by taking my child. This will never happen.

"From this moment, I count Avila among the dead. Let her name be added to the roll of warriors who've died to make our land free."

He fixed the narrow blue feather to the brow of his helmet. It would be his talisman during the coming fight for freedom.

The next day, the hunting party returned with the agent's body, tied hand and foot on a pole like a trophy snake. Though he had been altered with many Phyrexian implants, including a control rod in place of his spine, every elf in the village recognized him as Tenesi, once the finest hunter in the Skyshroud Forest, and the betrothed of the lost Avila.