The Fifth Dawn

CHAPTER 11

Bruenna, Glissa, and Lyese rode golden zauks over the glittering fields of razorgrass. The leonin domesticated the large flightless birds as mounts. After years of breeding the creatures were incredibly tough, agile, fast, and most of all versatile. They could outpace a flying pteron over open ground, climb vertical cliffs with their foot-long, hooked claws, and swim a mile underwater without taking a breath. Odd, Glissa thought, that with all that, these birds still couldn’t fly.

Still, the three of them needed fast transportation that wouldn’t waste magical energy or give them away to anyone watching the skies. The zauks had been one of Raksha’s gifts. Considering the jobs he was asking them to perform for him, it was the least the Kha could do, in Glissa’s opinion.

Fortunately, Raksha Golden Cub was not the sort to do the least of anything. Though far from Taj Nar, he allowed them to choose armor, weapons, and other gear from his personal supplies. The trio had found complete sets of fine pteron-bone armor, enchanted to improve the wearer’s swordsmanship, prompting Lyese to cast her Tel-Jilad armor aside, adding she wasn’t working for Yulyn anymore. The armor was accompanied by polished helms that carried no magical enhancements, but were remarkable lightweight and exceedingly durable.

Naturally, Glissa found herself most impressed by the weapons. Silver longbows now hung from the saddles of each elf, while Bruenna had passed over the unfamiliar bow for a bandolier full of knives. Raksha had told her they had been blessed by Great Dakan himself, and could not miss their target. Lyese had been awestruck that the Kha had let her take a short sword engraved with an image of the Golden Cub and encrusted with protective crystals. Glissa reminded herself that for all her protestations, her sister was still a youth in many ways. Glissa also suspected her sister was beginning to develop a bit of a crush on the leonin Kha.

Glissa was stunned to find a flawlessly preserved elven longsword among the weaponry on hand, and Raksha had insisted she take it. He claimed it had been a gift to Great Dakan from the elves of old. Glissa didn’t bother to point out that a lot of the elves of old were still in the Tangle, they just forgot everything once in a while. The sword was perfectly balanced. Glissa even used it to disarm Raksha during a brief sparring match.

A wave of vertigo made Glissa list in her saddle, and she let out an involuntary groan as flashing lights and stabbing pain erupted in her temple. She saw shadowy shapes, Bruenna and Lyese, whirl on their mounts in alarm, but could not make out what they were saying. Her ears felt filled with quicksilver, and a dull roar was increasing in pitch somewhere in the back of her head.

Then Mirrodin was gone, and Glissa floated in a cold, empty, utterly silent void. She realized she was moving through the inky black when a tiny pinprick of light appeared up ahead. Glissa felt herself moving more quickly, and the light steadily grew, gradually gaining definition. The light became a sphere, the sphere a world, familiar features became clearer. Glissa flew through the shadows toward Mirrodin.

There were the glittering hexagonal plates that covered the Glimmervoid and provided purchase for dozens of different species of razor grass, running to the edge of jagged, rusty scabs that could only be the Oxidda mountain range, whence came Slobad and his goblin kin. The Tangle she felt in her bones before she saw it, the forests pulsing with the magical energies to which she was most closely attuned. From this distance, it looked like an especially large hunk of moss clinging to a tarnished silver ball. The Quicksilver Sea shone like a glittering mirror, reflecting the light of the moons, while the dark stain of the Mephidross seemed to devour the glow of four satellites-the green moon was absent-spewing a huge cloud of brownish-green ochre into the atmosphere. From her godlike point of view, Glissa could see that those fumes spread much farther than anyone below suspected, dissipating across the plane in a thin haze.

And they were moons, not suns. She saw that now, there could be no doubt. Four glowing balls of energy, each spinning around the hollow world that spawned them, twirling in a complicated, unpredictable dance. Mirrodin reflected and absorbed the energy the orbs projected.

She wondered if this was what it really looked like when one flew through the heavens, or if this was the best her imagination could muster. She was beginning to suspect this was more vivid hallucination than flare, for this was not a vision of the past. There were simply too many moons.

Glissa felt an unbidden urge to swoop down close to the Tangle. The forests of home rapidly grew before her into a rich carpet of green, then crystallized into the familiar verdigris foliage she’d hunted for decades. There was something there she needed to find, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Something she’d lost, or maybe something that had lost her. Or someone. She pulled her focus down and watched the world move by below her, scanning the ground. She became a moon of Mirrodin herself, soaring around and around the great metallic sphere in an expanding orbit, taking in the entire surface. And everywhere she went, everywhere she looked, whether skimming the Quicksilver Sea or knifing through the thickets of the Tangle, she noticed one thing was absent from this living metal world.

There were no people. Every settlement, from Taj Nar to the Vault of Whispers, from Lumengrid to Viridia, was completely devoid of anything walking on two feet.

No, there was one thing. A small silver dot that ambled over the dream-Mirrodin on four legs, like a crab. Memnarch walked the surface of the metal world, and he was utterly alone.

Glissa felt a pang of sympathy, then quickly buried it. Served the twisted monster right. Alone on an empty world, with no one to worship him as a god, not even his favored vedalken. The metal monster’s face turned up to stare at her with six glittering eyes, and he opened his mouth as if screaming, yet Glissa could not hear.

The globe below her began to visibly shake, vibrating impossibly fast as Memnarch’s wail reached into the heavens, eventually striking Glissa’s keen ears. What appeared to be simple vibration from her vantage point became massive tectonic quakes on the surface as the hollow sphere began to crack. And still Memnarch screamed, as white light sliced through the widening crevices in Mirrodin’s skin, raw magic that erupted violently now.

The latticework of cracks finally gave way. The globe of Mirrodin collapsed inward in a colossal implosion, then the mana core exploded. In a conflagration of energy and power never before seen by mortal eyes that lasted no longer than a heartbeat, Mirrodin suddenly ceased to be.

“Glissa?” Lyese said, “What happened? Can you stand?”

Glissa blinked. The flare was over. She shook her head and allowed Lyese to pull her to her feet. “I’m fine.”

“Was this a ‘flare’?” Bruenna asked as she pressed a silver cloth against Glissa’s forehead. The stabbing pain that had preceded the flare disappeared instantly.

“Either that, or I’m losing my mind,” Glissa said. “But this one was strange. I’d seen other worlds before, this seemed-almost like someone was trying to give me advice.”

“Is it good advice?” Bruenna asked.

“I think so,” Glissa said. “Something along the lines of ‘keep doing what you’re doing.’ So right now, that means we help the Kha with his immediate problems, which are also our problems, and somehow we all might come out of this-whatever ‘this’ turns out to be-alive.”

“Makes sense,” Bruenna replied in a tone that indicated the matter was anything but settled, but she wasn’t going to push the point. She eyed the sky and saw the small group of skyhunters who were heading out to meet the mage at the edge of the Mephidross. “It’s time we split up if I’m going to keep my appointment.”

“You’re right,” Glissa said. “Good luck with Geth. Don’t trust him. Not even a little bit. And protect your neck at all times.”

“I can take care of myself,” Bruenna said. “And what I can’t take care of, the leonin will,” she added, nodding at the approaching riders.

“I’m sure of it,” Glissa said, though she was anything but. The flare had shaken her, but she still wasn’t sure why. The Mirrodin she had watched die had no green moon. The Mirrodin she lived on did and so far hadn’t imploded. What kind of message was that? ‘Stay the course’ had been her best guess for the others’ sake but Glissa knew that was an evasion.

Fortunately, she would have plenty of time to mull the matter over on the long ride out to the leveler cave, where they would hopefully find the Krark. “Okay, Lyese, you’re with me. Let’s go find some goblins. And remind me not to stare straight into the green moon.”

Glissa bit off a strip of dried djeeruk meat and handed the rest to Lyese. She wasn’t that hungry, and the thought of coming to Dwugget as a leonin ambassador-to say nothing of the residual effects of the powerful flare-already had blinkmoths fluttering chaotically in her abdomen. It wasn’t unlike the way she used to feel those rare times she and Kane been free of duties and studies long enough to enjoy each other’s company. Except Kane had never put her off her food.

Maybe that’s why I wanted Bruenna to do this, she thought. She’s a leader. Leaders negotiated. Negotiation was not Glissa’s style. Glissa liked problems that could be solved with a sword, or in exceptional cases, a construct-flattening explosion of magic. Still, they needed information to stop Memnarch, and the Krark seemed to know more about the inner world than anyone else on the surface, except perhaps the trolls and the vedalken. That the leonin might receive aid from the goblin cultists against the nim was secondary to Glissa, though ostensibly the main reason the Kha had sent them on this mission.

They had reined their zauks to a trot so they could eat while moving, giving the elf girl a chance to really take in the landscape of the Oxidda foothills. Their surefooted mounts easily navigated a collision of rocky outcroppings, flat, ferrous mesas, and corroded iron boulders. Here and there, magnetic energy held similar boulders floating above the ground, adding an air of unreality to the landscape.

The tall, rustling razor grass of the plains was gradually giving way to hardier varieties, and clusters of silvery scrub became thicker, rustier, and more frequent the farther they went. Corroded gullies cracked the dusky ochre ground, but the zauks easily cleared them with one step even at this pace. Glissa patted the bird on the neck, and it cawed affectionately. Or hungrily. Or angrily. The elf girl really wasn’t sure.

Glissa slipped the seeksphere from a pouch on her belt and held it up to inspect the fine markings. The silver ball was no bigger than a goblin’s eye and bore tiny notches and symbols that remained fixed in position no matter which way she turned the object. Shonahn had shown her how to enchant the seeksphere to home in on a single individual, but Glissa had been called on to perform the spell herself, which consisted of simply saying the name of the person you were searching for three times while holding the ball close to one’s lips. The trick was that only someone who had seen that person could activate the device. Bruenna had one too, also enchanted by Glissa, to find Geth.

Despite Shonahn’s assurances that the seeksphere was such a simple artifact that it was virtually impossible to fool, Glissa was beginning to suspect the gadget was broken. At first, they’d seemed to be going in the right direction, but they’d veered off into the rocky foothills and now it seemed as if they were headed straight into the mountain caves ruled by the despotic goblin shaman and his fanatic followers.

“Lyese, this can’t be right,” Glissa said, waving her sister to a halt. She shook the seeksphere with frustration, but it still pointed straight into the iron peaks. “The Krark were not this far into the mountains. And the goblins that do live in the mountains aren’t friendly with the Krark or anyone else.”

“You’ve been through a lot,” Lyese said with a game attempt at maturity. “Okay, maybe that’s an understatement. But is it possible your memory might be, I don’t know, a little knocked out of alignment?”

“Don’t be-” Glissa began, but the suggestion gave her pause. Who knew what toll the last few weeks had taken on her mind? What had the flares done to her sense of self? For that matter, what had the frequent loss of blood done to her brain? “You could be right, I guess. Or maybe they just left. Or maybe … damn.”

“What?” Lyese asked.

“Or maybe I’m overlooking the obvious answer-they’ve been taken by the shaman’s followers. The mountain goblins might have attacked Dwugget’s people just out of spite.”

“You think they’re captured?”

“It’s the most logical conclusion,” Glissa replied. She cast her eyes back over the foothills to the open plains. “Those leonin had better show up soon.”

“Why?” Lyese asked.

“Because this just turned into a rescue.” She patted her saddle to reassure herself that her bow and quicksliver arrows were close at hand. “I’ll go without the leonin if I have to. You can stay here and let them know where I’ve gone.”

“No way!” Lyese objected. “I can fight just as well-okay, maybe not just as well as you, but I am Tel-Jilad Chosen, you know.”

Glissa turned her mount around to look her sister in the eye, and came face-to-face once more with the mutilation and injury Lyese had suffered. She was young, yes, but no younger than Glissa had been when she bagged her first djeeruk. And she was fairly certain that Lyese, young as she was to Glissa’s eyes, was much older than Slobad or Bruenna in actual years. What right did she have to keep her sister away from a fight? None, she knew. It was entirely selfish. She just couldn’t stand to put her sister in danger again. It wasn’t fair, but it was true.

With effort, she buried the impulse.

“Okay,” Glissa said grudgingly, “but don’t get out of my sight.”

“Touching,” a gravelly voice said. “We’ll make sure to lock you up in the same cell.” Glissa whirled and scanned the area, trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. She needn’t have bothered. In a flurry of movement, over a dozen armored, thuggish-looking goblins rose from the scattered scrub brush. Most had shortbows trained on the elves, while some brandished wicked hooked spears that Glissa knew were as deadly at a distance as they were in close combat.

“Lyese … don’t move.” Glissa said softly.

“Way ahead of you,” Lyese whispered.

“Stop this at once!” the gravelly voice bellowed, and Glissa saw a hulking human step from behind a large boulder. Glissa had never seen a human like him before. She hadn’t even know humans lived in these mountains. The man’s huge frame was clad in the robes of the priests, which covered jagged spiked armor that looked like the wearer had attached raw pieces of the mountain to his body. He wore black, irregularly shaped gauntlets covered in rough edges and what looked like dried goblin blood. Wiry scarlet hair topped his unprotected head, and the human’s eyes glittered with red fire. “Much as I would enjoy it, there is technically no need for violence. My lord wishes to speak with you, and would appreciate it if you were unarmed.”

“Your lord?” Glissa said. “New shaman in town, I suppose? What’s a human doing working for a goblin fanatic, anyway?”

“I am no mere ‘human.’ I am a Vulshok high priest, elf. And the old goblin shaman is dead,” the human replied. “These creatures have been called to serve a far nobler cause. Now, if you would be so kind to step down from those remarkable birds and follow me-keep them covered, my friends-everything will be made clear to you.”

The elf girl shot her younger sister a look, and saw Lyese return a faint nod. She was thinking the same thing. This was not a friendly invitation, and if the elves were going to act, it had to be now.

“Go!” Glissa shouted, and kicked her zauk firmly in the flanks. The bird reacted as expected, and bolted toward the nearest goblin warriors. She heard a squawk as Lyese did the same, and then cries from another group of surprised goblins. Those who had held drawn arrows released them at targets that suddenly weren’t there, and ducked as projectiles from their fellows opposite clattered to the ground around them.

Two goblins went down under Glissa’s charging zauk, and she was free. Arrows whizzed past her head and one ricocheted off her helmet, but the goblins, as it turned out, were not particularly good shots. “Come on, Lyese!” she cried. She received no reply except the sound of clashing blades behind her. As Glissa’s sleek mount bird charged toward the looming mountains, the elf girl looked back over her shoulder to see what the big human was doing. This Vulshok was an unknown quantity.

The Vulshok hadn’t taken a single step, though Lyese was fighting his goblin warriors right in front of him. Lyese hadn’t gotten through the line as Glissa had, though she’d certainly put up a fight. Her sister’s sword rang as she batted back goblin spears. The human reached into his robes and produced what looked like some kind of silver mesh fabric. Before Glissa could shout a warning, the Vukshok had tossed the net over Lyese and her zauk. The bird and the elf girl quickly became entangled and fell over sideways, the panicked mount kicking wildly.

“Flare!” Glissa cursed and yanked hard on her zauk’s reins, trying to turn around. The bird’s muscular neck didn’t give an inch. “Come on, you stupid-” Glissa snarled, pulling vainly with all her might. “Stop!”

Maybe I kicked it a little too hard, Glissa thought as she fought the panicked creature. She looked back again at Lyese, who was kicking in the air as four goblin warriors dragged her out of the net. Her zauk was now motionless except for quick, shallow breaths and blood that poured from several spear wounds. So the prohibition on violence didn’t apply to their mounts.

“Halt! Whoah! Slow down, bird brain!” Glissa was almost raving now, and started pounding the zauk’s necks with her fists. This only seemed to make the bird run faster.

When she again checked on Lyese, her sister and the goblin ambush team were specks in the distance, almost lost among the rusty, rocky spires of the Oxidda Mountains. She had to do something, or she really would lose Lyese again. She didn’t even want to think what this Vulshok and his goblins would do to her little sister, especially if the “new lord” the human had mentioned was who Glissa suspected it was.

There was really only one solution, and it was going to hurt. Clutching the strap that held the longsword to her back, she let her feet slip from the stirrups and rolled backward off of the zauk’s rump.

She landed hard, but was able to flatten out and keep the sword on her back from flapping around and doing her more harm than good. She came painfully to rest against a jagged black boulder, shattering her pteron-bone helm, which saved her skull from the same fate.

Dazed and bruised all over again, Glissa sprang to her feet. Still dizzy, the elf girl drew her blade with an unsteady hand and stumbled as fast as she could back to the fight. It took her a full minute to cover the same distance that had taken the zauk seconds, a full minute Glissa had to plan what she was going to do to that Vulshok. Size wasn’t everything, and Glissa had taken down foes that large before. But by the time she reached the enclosed area where the goblins had ambushed them, there was nothing left but an dead zauk and Lyese’s helm, which still wobbled back and forth on its side. She’d missed them by moments.

The elf girl scanned her immediate surroundings looking for some sign of the goblins or her sister. It didn’t take her long to spot the band of diminutive figures surrounding the towering Vulshok as the group moved over a narrow path that cut into the mountains. They had a good head start, but they gave no indication-no quickened pace, no shout of alarm-that they had spotted her yet.

Glissa, on the other hand, had good aim. She pounced behind the dead zauk and heaved it over into its belly. She fumbled with the saddle until she freed Lyese’s longbow and arrows.

Staying low, the elf girl dashed from hiding place to hiding place, slowly gaining on the surprisingly fast-moving goblin pack. Glissa almost lost them a few times when they rounded ferrous outcroppings or passed under natural bridge formations, of which there were many. After twenty minutes she had closed within bow range. Glissa stalked the goblins and their Vulshok leader, carefully selecting a target-a fat, slow moving goblin that was conveniently bringing up the rear. Far enough from Lyese to ensure she wouldn’t accidentally be hit, close enough to Glissa for a successful shot. With a quick inhalation of held breath, the elf nocked an arrow, took aim, and let fly.

The arrow whistled in the air, and the elf saw the fat goblin look up in surprise just before the shaft skewered him through the leg. Fatty went down, howling in pain. The remaining goblins scattered and took cover behind massive natural growth of copper ore and scatter, scraggly trees and bushes. Glissa charged, ducking the goblins’ wild return shots and a few wobbly spears with ease.

The Vulshok, however, remained perfectly still, and so did Lyese. The human had a wicked-looking dagger pressed against her sister’s throat. “Stop!” the human bellowed. “Come any closer and you’re an only child again.”

Taken by surprise, Glissa blurted, “How do you know-?”

“You’d be surprised what I know, Glissa,” the human said. “How about this one? I know what you’ve been seeing in your dreams. A world without metal. A world of flesh, and wood, and rock, and earth and bone and skin. A world where life, as they say, goes on. Something like that?”

Glissa was baffled, but tried not to let on. “No need to do anything rash,” she said. “Yes, you’re right. We can talk about it. Just let her go. If you hurt her, the next shot goes through your eye. I don’t care how big you are, you’ve got to have a brain in there somewhere.”

“No deal,” the human laughed. “I thought you were smarter than that, Glissa. You want to deal? Drop the bow and come quietly, or she dies.”

Glissa slowly released the bowstring and slipped the arrow back into the quiver. Her eyes never leaving the human’s steely gaze, she crouched slowly and set the bow on the ground.

“The sword too,” the man barked.

“You’re too far away for me too-”

“The sword. If it helps, you’ll get it back. You just can’t take it where we’re going,” the human said conversationally, though he didn’t loosen his grip on Lyese for a second. In fact, he pressed down a little on the blade, making Lyese yelp. Her feet kicked uselessly in the air.

“Okay,” Glissa said. “No problem, just relax.” The elf girl reached slowly over one shoulder to draw her sword then cautiously set it next to the bow.

She hoped the goblins would attack her now. If they thought Glissa was helpless just because she didn’t have a sword or a bow, she’d love the chance to correct them with her bare claws.

The human feinted lowering his knife a few times, probably to make sure Glissa wouldn’t jump him as soon as he did. Apparently the Vulshok knew exactly how dangerous she could be.

Finally, the massive human released Lyese and gave her a shove that sent her stumbling into Glissa, who barely managed to catch her. By the time Glissa had propped her sister up with her shoulder, the goblins again had them surrounded, arrows trained on the elves’ chests. The fat goblin wore a crude brown bandage around his leg and looked like he might fire an arrow no matter what kind of deal the Vulshok struck.

“Now ladies, please,” the human said, “It appears we have gotten off to a bad start. I had hoped we could be friends. My lord wishes it. And so I wish it.”

“You ambushed us, ‘friend.’ Who’s this lord of yours, anyway? Wouldn’t be a really ugly son of a vorrac with four legs and six eyes, would it?” Glissa was in no mood for small talk.

“I’ll be sure to put your lord’s head and your own on the same stick,” Lyese said darkly. The younger girl rubbed her throat gingerly and stared daggers as the short man.

“You are bitter. Understandable. Forgive me, I’m operating under a different set of rules these days, but sometimes I still slip. Now, come with me, won’t you?” He turned and started to walk away. Two of the spear-toting goblins ran forward and collected the elves’ weapons.

The other goblins hadn’t moved, apparently waiting to see if the elf girls were going to try anything. Glissa remained still and noted with pride that her sister didn’t move either.

“Why should we do that?” the older elf girl called after the strange human that dressed like a goblin. “Who are you supposed to be?”

“My girl, you do not know my name, but I had thought my … position would be apparent,” the man said, turning to favor them with a toothy smile. “I am call Alderok Vektro. I am the Vulshok high priest of Krark’s Prophet. My other titles include master-at-arms of the revolution, commander of the Prophet’s commandos-” he waved an arm, indicating the goblins holding them at arrowpoint-“and I believe I’ve been made chief of Oxiddagg village. Don’t worry. I’m assured it’s an entirely honorary position. The real work is done by the elders.”

“Krark’s what?” Glissa asked.

“Prophet,” Alderok Vektro replied. “Do try to keep up. Do not be alarmed. My lord tells me you are an old friend. I believe you know him as ‘Dwugget.’”