The Moons of Mirrodin (28 page)

Glissa looked up from the book to see an alien landscape. She stood on bare metal. The ground around her was featureless: flat, smooth, and gray as far as she could see. The
Book of Krark
had disappeared from her hands, but she remained in her own metal-clad body. Huge plantlike formations of crystalline material dotted the metal plains around her. The crystal plant towers reached hundreds of feet into the air toward a huge ball of energy that dominated the sky. They glittered and reflected the light of the Heart in every direction, creating rainbows of color that swept across the sky and collided with one another
.

Glissa knew this was a flare, though she had never before recognized one while she was in it. How could this scene come from her life or from some racial memory? The elves had never been to the inner world. Or was she reliving Krak’s journey? Yet she was in her body, not some ancient elf or goblin body
.

The vision began to dissolve around her as she pondered its reality
.

“No!” she cried. The sound echoed strangely across the plains. It bounced back and forth among the crystal towers, multiplying into hundreds of noes winging their way across the inner world. The vision came back into focus as Glissa concentrated on the echoes
.

She walked among the crystal towers. They seemed to reach into the sky toward the central moon … or was it a sun? High above her, Glissa could see white specks floating in the air. Blinkmoths? She couldn’t be sure. They seemed to glow, but perhaps it was the light of the orb passing through them. The orb pulsed like a beating heart inside the breast of the world. Each pulse sent a different color cascading around the orb—blue, red, white, black, green
.

The specks began to swirl. The light pulses within the Heart cycled faster, and the tiny motes twirled faster as well. The effect was dizzying. Glissa’s knees buckled beneath her, and she fell to
the ground. She stared up at the Heart. The colored lights sped across the Heart so fast they became a blur. The cloud of white specks turned into maelstrom, twisting around and around above her like a tunnel to the Heart
.

The Heart turned bright blue for a moment at the other end of the storm, then burst in a shower of color. A blue orb of energy hurtled down the twisting tunnel like a bolt of lightning. A huge thunderclap shook the ground and tossed Glissa into the air. When she landed, the elf glanced up and screamed just before the blue ball slammed into the surface of the inner world … and her
.

*   *   *   *   *

Glissa awoke with a start. The
Book of Krark
clattered to the floor. The room was dark around her. A single fire tube burned in the far wall above the cultists. They were asleep on the floor. Glissa picked up the book and set it on the table.

She rose and walked around the room. Bosh sat in a corner, his red eyes glowing in the darkness. Glissa could see Slobad curled up on the golem’s legs. He was snoring again.

“Are you all right?” whispered Bosh.

“Yes,” she said, “but why do they always have to end with my death?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing,” said Glissa. “Just had a bad dream.”

“You should sleep,” the golem said. “I will guard until the suns set.”

Glissa chuckled. “You’ve been listening to Slobad,” she said. “The elves call them moons.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They just feel like moons to us. They never rise above the Tangle, and they give us precious little
light. A sun should burn bright above you and warm your face when you look at it.”

“You should sleep,” said the golem again. “We leave after the … moons set.”

Glissa watched the cultists sleep. Her repaired boots stood on the floor near Dwugget. She picked them up and sat at the table to put them on. Glissa glanced down at the
Book of Krark
again, then at the remaining cultists. There weren’t many of them left, but they still clung to their beliefs—even though that belief had nearly cost all their lives. These goblins gave up their former homes, their former lives, and risked everything because they believed in something larger than themselves. Could she do no less?

Something bad was happening to their world. Chunth knew it. Ushanti dreamed it. Glissa had seen glimpses of it in her own flares. She was fighting for all of them now. Whether she wanted the mantle or not, she had become the champion for the goblins as well as the trolls and elves—perhaps even for the leonin, nim, and everyone else on this world. There
was
an inner world. She knew that now. Somehow she also knew that she had to reach it to face her destiny.

Bosh had been right. She needed Slobad and the golem in this battle. The stakes were too high. It wasn’t just her against some killer. It was her battling for the future of their world. Bosh had information locked in his head about the inner world and Memnarch. She needed it to make the right choices, to avoid Ushanti’s vision. Slobad knew how to survive. He had an instinct for living, an instinct she would need in the coming days. Bosh was right. She needed them. If not for her, then for the Krark cultists, for the leonin, the elves, and the trolls.

Glissa picked up the
Book of Krark
and carried it over toward Bosh. She lay down and curled up beside the metal man, holding the book to her chest. Bosh patted her head with his newly
replaced arm. She fell asleep with the golem’s arm wrapped around her like a blanket.

*   *   *   *   *

They left after the red moon set behind the mountains. The terrain flattened somewhat as they made their way toward the Glimmervoid. Rust-colored outcroppings of metal still surrounded them, but the iron tubes no longer ran through the ground beneath their feet. Those had given way to flat metal slabs that seemed slammed together in a huge red tile mosaic. The slabs often shifted under their feet, making the descent slow and torturous. As they skirted between the rusty buttes, Glissa could see the rolling metal plains of the Glimmervoid glittering in the starlight in the distance.

Bosh and Slobad scouted ahead during the night and returned just as Glissa saw the top edge of the yellow moon between two outcroppings. The goblin and his golem led Glissa and the cultists to an abandoned cave they had found.

That night, Glissa read more of the
Book of Krark
. As a shaman who received visions from his deity, Krark set himself apart and made an enemy of the shaman elder, who seemed more concerned with his own power than imparting any sort of wisdom to the goblins. One passage stood out to her:

The next night, Glissa came to the passage Slobad had recited to her in the cult lair before the attack.

On the next page was a sketch showing the scene Krark described. Glissa recognized it, both from Krark’s description and from her own flare two nights before.

“Look at this, Bosh,” she said. “It’s an image of the inner world. Dwugget must have copied this from the original journal. Do you see the specks rising up from those … towers? Krark says, ‘It rained upward toward the heart from them.’ I saw these in a dream the other night. Are they blinkmoths? Chunth told me that the rain comes from the blinkmoths—the stars we see above us.”

Bosh looked at the picture in the book. His eyes narrowed, and Glissa could tell he was trying to remember anything else about his life within the inner world. His eyes opened wide as if he’d had a disturbing vision.

“Myco … mycosynth. Those are mycosynth spores, not blinkmoths. The mycosynth crystals produce spores. Blinkmoths are eternal. Mycosynth arrived later.”

“What do you mean?” asked Glissa. “Memnarch created the mycosynth but not the blinkmoths? I thought you said he made everything.”

“Memnarch shaped the world to his desires. He did not create it,” said Bosh. “Blinkmoths predate even Memnarch. Mycosynth arrived later like a plague. I believe I may have been created to battle the mycosynth infestation, but I lost the battle. That is all I remember. Everything else is blank until you and Slobad found me in the Mephidross.”

Glissa left Bosh alone with his patchwork memory and returned to the book. They were less than a night’s travel from the leveler lair, and she was almost finished with the
Book of Krark
. It read like a flare. Krark had been drawn to the Womb and the Heart as if by destiny. He entered the massive hole and walked down its length into another world, a world inside the world, that curved up and away in all directions.

Chunth was telling the truth. Krark had seen it. Bosh had lived it, and Glissa had dreamed it, but what did it all mean? If there were huge holes leading to this inner world, why had nobody but Krark ever descended? Bosh said the mycosynth were a plague, but if they were so pervasive, why had no one ever seen them in the outer world? They were pieces of a puzzle, but Glissa had no idea how to put them together.

Glissa pulled out the vial of serum. Were the answers in there? She thought about drinking the serum to gain the knowledge of whatever ancient power had created the blinkmoths. But Chunth had kept his secrets to protect the elves and the trolls from the serum. He’d died protecting his secrets—and her. She would only use the serum if she had no other options.

*   *   *   *   *

They arrived at the leveler lair well before the moons rose the next morning. Glissa and Slobad went in to investigate, while Bosh remained to guard the cultists. Slobad lit his fire tube as they entered the dark chamber that had been his home. The place had been ransacked. The table, chairs, and workbench had all been
destroyed. When Slobad checked the passage to the leveler lair, he found it blocked off.

“You were right,” said Glissa. “Whoever takes care of those monsters found your home. Aren’t you worried they’ll come back?”

“Only if some crazy elf destroys more levelers, huh?” said Slobad. “You not going to do that, huh?” He smiled.

“I was thinking about it,” said Glissa. She looked around. “There’s not much space here.”

“More chambers there and there, huh?” said Slobad, pointing to the walls on either side of the small room. He pushed the remains of his workbench out of the way and opened a panel then moved across the room and opened a second panel. “They survive.”

The other chambers were untouched, and Glissa crawled out to get the cultists. “It’s not much,” she said to Dwugget, “but you’ll be safe here. The shaman elder will never send anyone here. When this is over, maybe Slobad can clear out more chambers for you.”

“Thank you again,” said Dwugget. “You have done much for us, huh? We follow Krark and Glissa now.”

“Well, I’m not sure I’m planning to follow Krark down that hole,” she said.

“You will,” said the cult leader. “All answers are within the Mother’s Heart.”

BRUENNA

They left for the Quicksilver Sea immediately. There was still a few hours of dark before the yellow moon rose over the Glimmervoid. Slobad rode atop Bosh, and Glissa had taken her normal seat in the crook of the golem’s iron arm. They backtracked up into the mountains for a while before turning and heading in a new direction. Glissa could see the Glimmervoid off to her left through the mountains.

“We’re going to need information about the vedalken,” Glissa said to the goblin. “Do you know anything at all about the Quicksilver Sea?”

“Know that humans live on edge of sea, huh?” said Slobad. “Wizards, mostly. Have no need for goblin repairs, so Slobad leave alone. Never go back, huh?”

“Wizards?” said Glissa. “The robed figure was a wizard, but he was vedalken. At least we assume he was. At the very least, he definitely was not human—not with four arms. If these humans live near the sea, though, they may know something about the vedalken. It’s as good a place to start as any. We’ll find ourselves a wizard and ask some questions. How far is the sea?”

“Not far,” said Slobad. “Not on Bosh’s shoulders, huh? Be there one rotation, maybe less.”

*   *   *   *   *

The next day, Glissa, Slobad, and Bosh emerged from the mountains. Small outcroppings of tubular iron dotted the slope ahead of them, but beyond those lay a flat valley that led to the shores of the sea. Glissa looked up and down the mountain range. To her left, the range flattened out to meet with the Glimmervoid off near the horizon. The valley and the sea snaked in and out at the edge of the mountains. To her right, she could see that both the mountains and the sea ended abruptly in a curtain of green haze just at the limits of her vision—the Glimmervoid.