The Moons of Mirrodin (8 page)

Glissa stepped back from him, pointing the sword. “Mine’s bigger,” she said.

“I told you to put that thing away, huh?” said Slobad. “You are one crazy elf, do you know that? Lie down so I can cut your boot off and look at your leg.”

Glissa breathed easier. “I don’t know who to trust,” she said apologetically. “Just be careful. My ankle is swollen right up against the boot.”

Slobad came over with the knife, and Glissa kept her sword ready just in case. She held her mother’s ring against her chest as if clinging to the past for comfort. The goblin, however, was as skilled with the knife as he had been with his tools. He sliced right down the boot all the way to the heel, never once touching her metal skin beneath.

As Slobad pulled away the leather, Glissa could see that her ankle was swollen to more than twice its normal size, and the blades had cut into her metal shin. Green pus oozed from the wounds on either side of her leg. Slobad went to the table and brought back a metal bowl full of water. He cut a strip of leather from the furs and wetted it in the bowl, then used the wet leather to wash off the pus. The goblin then cut two more strips and tied them around Glissa’s ankle.

“That looks bad, huh?” said Slobad. “I’ve not seen a lot of elves, but I don’t think your ankle should be that color. What you think? I think you lose leg if that pus doesn’t go away.”

“Let me see what I can do,” said Glissa. She sat up against the wall, dropped her sword on her lap, and placed her hands over the wounds. She knew some healing magic, but in here she could barely feel the power from the trees. What little she could muster she sent down through her fingers, and a few green wisps of energy floated down from her hands to her injured leg. The ankle
glowed for a moment, and the swelling went down somewhat.

“That’s all I can do,” she said. “My magic can heal wounds, but that must be something else, some sort of disease.”

“Rest now,” said Slobad. “We leave in morning.”

Suddenly Glissa was suspicious again. “Why?” she asked. “I thought you said it was safe here.”

“It was until you came here, huh?” said Slobad. “I told you, broken levelers get fixed. Missing ones are replaced. Nobody ever bother Slobad during repairs, huh? I stay hidden here until repairs finished. This was the safest place on Mirrodin, huh? But you destroyed a leveler in the cavern. They will know somebody here. They will look for us. They will find Slobad and you.”

“I’m sorry,” said Glissa. “I didn’t mean to run you out of your home.”

“Slobad has no home,” said the goblin, shrugging. “Crazy elf shouldn’t worry about Slobad. Worry about saving leg, huh? Let Slobad worry about Slobad.”

“My name is Glissa,” she said. “If you help me, Slobad, I’ll give you a home in the Tangle far away from the levelers.”

“Hmmph,” said Slobad. “Big talk from crazy, one-legged elf. Sleep now. We leave before the second sun rises.”

“Sun?” asked Glissa.

“You know,” said Slobad, “round things in the sky. Four of them. They come up. They go down. Make world bright; make world dark.” The goblin waved his arms in a funny pattern around his head. “You can’t tell me you don’t know suns, huh?”

“We call them ‘moons,’ ” said Glissa. “It’s an ancient word for heavenly bodies that circle around the world. I know what a sun is. I’ve seen them in my … dreams. Suns are much brighter and hotter, I think.”

“Suns give light and heat, huh?” said Slobad. “That’s right. That’s what goblins know about suns. We have four suns. No moons. Just suns.”

“Okay,” said Glissa, not wanting to argue. “They’re suns. Now can I go to sleep?”

Slobad nodded, so Glissa lay back on the furs and closed her eyes. She had no choice but to trust the odd, fast-talking goblin. She needed rest, and she would need his help to get out of here. Even so, she pretended to sleep for some time, just in case Slobad tried to attack.

After a while, Glissa did sleep and dreamed of the levelers attacking her in the Tangle. She was surrounded and they were advancing, their blades spinning in front of them. She could see the bodies of her parents in a heap nearby. Her mother’s hand and ring were nowhere to be seen, and Lyese’s long hair had been sliced off, leaving a bloody scar across the top of her head. Tears welled up in Glissa’s eyes, and she rubbed her arm across her face to wipe them away.

Now the levelers changed into flying beasts that buzzed around her head. She swatted at them with her sword, but they kept coming. She could hear laughing and looked over to see a robed figure where her dead parents had been just moments before. The laughing changed to screams, and Glissa saw that the figure held Kane off the ground by his neck. Kane was screaming. Glissa shouted, then saw green tendrils of energy erupt from her hands, snaking up her arms.

THE GLIMMERVOID

Glissa started awake in a cold sweat. Was that a dream or a flare? she wondered. How could it have been a flare? The events she had dreamed had never happened to her, as far as she knew. Who was that robed figure? He had been in the Tangle the night her parents died. Was he the master of the levelers? Glissa sat up and looked down at her hands but saw no green energy surrounding them.

“You’re awake, huh?” said Slobad, who was sitting at the table, eating. “Good. Can you walk? We leave soon, but Slobad can’t carry you home. Too big. No good, huh?”

Glissa looked at her leg. The swelling was almost gone, but the ankle still ached. She untied the leather bandage and saw that the copper around the wounds looked odd. It was green, but that was just molder—the process that gave Tangle trees their green coloring. All copper looked that way if not polished regularly. No, the metal itself seemed to have bubbled up around the wounds. As Glissa removed the leather strap, some of the metal flaked off, and pus oozed from the wounds again.

The elf wiped her ankle clean, wincing at the pain, then replaced the bandage. She pushed herself up and tested the ankle. It held her weight, and she could endure the pain. “I can walk,” she said.

Slobad came over and poked at the bandage with his clawed hand.

“Ow! What did you do that for?”

“You can’t walk long on that leg,” said Slobad. “I saw, huh? The metal is corroding. Infection spreading. You’ll never make it to the Tangle, huh? Too far. You need healer soon. We go to leonin.”

“Leonin?” asked Glissa. “Who is that? Is he far away?”

“Stupid elf,” said Slobad. “Do you know nothing about the world outside Tangle? The leonin are your neighbors, huh? Their tribes live in the Glimmervoid. Not far. Slobad lives on edge of Glimmervoid. It’ll take two or three rotations to walk to leonin city. We find a healer there.”

The little goblin went to his workbench and began putting tools and some of the larger scraps of metal into his pouch. “We go soon. You eat, huh?”

“Two or three rotations?” asked Glissa as she hobbled over to the table. It looked as if it might fall to pieces at any moment, but it held her weight when she leaned against it. “You call that ‘not far’? And how do you know they’ll help me? We should just go back to the Tangle. How far can it be?”

Slobad shook his head. “Stupid, crazy elf,” he muttered. Tangle is twice that far, huh? Take at least six, maybe eight rotations to get you home from here, especially with that bad leg. We have to cut leg off after four rotations, at most. If that’s what you want, we’ll go to Tangle.”

“There’s no healer closer?” asked Glissa. On the table she saw the carcasses of two small animals. They each had four tiny legs, a wiry tail, and patches of gray fur mixed with metal plates on their backs. “What about the goblins? They must be close, right?”

Slobad was searching for something on the workbench. Glissa couldn’t tell what any of the tools were for. She sliced off some meat with Slobad’s knife and ate what she could while she waited for his response. The goblin didn’t seem to understand the art of conversation. He often answered his own questions without waiting
for a response, and now he seemed to be ignoring her questions. The meat was pungent and stringy, but Glissa was famished. She cut off more meat and soon finished both animals.

“Goblins have no healers who can deal with that leg, huh?” said Slobad. The goblin had finished packing his bag and now tossed a fur over his shoulders and tied it around his neck with several strips of leather. “Elf magic only heals wounds. You said so yourself. Goblin magic hardly even do that. Elves and leonin only decent healers. You choose, huh?”

“Fine,” said Glissa. Once again she had no choice but to trust this creature who lived by himself within the den of the world’s most dangerous … constructs. Why was he helping her? How did he know so much about the world? It seemed that people who spent all their time in little rooms knew a lot more than she did about Mirrodin. Perhaps Slobad could be useful, but she needed to know more about him and his motives.

“We’ll go see the leonin healers.”

Slobad nodded. He tossed Glissa a sword sheath. “Here, take this. I found it in blades of leveler. Maybe you can use it better than its previous owner, huh?”

Glissa grabbed the sheath. There was no belt, so she took the goblin’s knife, cut a long strip of leather, and tied the sheath around her waist. Several more strips fastened her boot back onto her leg.

“Ready.”

*   *   *   *   *

Slobad revealed another secret opening in the wall and led Glissa through a square, metal tunnel. Slobad could walk, but the elf had to either crawl or hunch over inside the tunnel. It twisted back and forth, and they passed many side tunnels as they walked. It seemed to Glissa like she crawled for an eternity. Slobad often
turned left or right at intersections but never slowed his pace. Glissa knew she could never find her way back to Slobad’s room. She had to keep following the goblin. Finally she saw light up ahead, and they emerged from the small tunnel into a larger cave.

“This way,” said Slobad as he moved toward the light streaming in through the cave entrance.

Glissa stepped outside and halted, amazed by the land around her. The ground gleamed. It was made of a silvery metal, not the moldered copper of the Tangle. The ground rolled up and down around her, making hills and valleys running as far as she could see. The cave behind her did not come from a hill, though. Rather, the structure was shaped like a mushroom. Rust-colored intertwined tubes ran up from the silver ground to a large, conical top. There were several of these outcroppings around them, and in the distance behind her, Glissa could see a large mountain with similar features jutting into the sky.

“Is that where your people live?” she asked Slobad.

“I told you, huh?” said Slobad, who was already moving down the slope. “Slobad has no people. Slobad is his own people. Goblins live in mountains leonin live in Razor Fields. Mountains up there. Razor Fields down there. We go this way, huh?”

Glissa hobbled up beside the goblin and looked at him. His eyes were narrowed, and he looked straight at the ground. He might just have been concentrating on the path, but Glissa guessed she had hit on a touchy subject.

“Why do you live alone, Slobad?” she asked.

“Long story,” said Slobad.

It was an uncharacteristically short answer. “We have three days,” she replied. “Surely that will be enough time.”

“Leave me alone, crazy elf,” said Slobad in a gruff and final tone.

“You could have left me alone back there and been perfectly happy in your little room,” said Glissa. She poked him in the
shoulder with the tip of her claws. This was getting fun. For some reason she was reminded of Kane.

“Come on,” she continued. “You brought this on yourself. You helped me and abandoned your home to take me to the leonin. You owe me.”

Slobad walked on in silence, apparently trying to wait her out.

“I’m not going to stop asking until we get to the leonin city,” she said, poking him again, “so you might as well just tell me now. Look, I never had many friends, either. There’s no shame in being alone. I find it more comforting. You don’t have to worry about anyone else and what they might do to you.”

“Elf talks too much,” grunted Slobad. Glissa thought he was going to fall silent again, but he continued after a few more steps. “You don’t know what you talk about, huh? You choose to be alone. Slobad outcast. Have no family, no friends. Slobad is cursed. That what you want to know, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” said Glissa. “Sometimes I think I’m cursed, too. I’ve always been different. I’m sort of an outcast as well. Maybe that’s why I like you, Slobad. Maybe that’s why I’m willing to trust you.”

For the rest of the day, the pair walked away from the mountains in silence, through the hills of the Glimmervoid. Glissa watched with awe as the yellow moon passed almost right over her. She could see the red, black, and blue moons as well. The red one stayed behind them all day while the blue passed off to their right. The black was farther away ahead of them, but it was still closer than she had ever seen it before.

That night, seated around a small fire, Slobad began to talk again.

“Slobad alone a long time,” he said as they chewed on some foul-smelling rodents the goblin had caught. “Too long, huh? That real curse—to live alone, apart from world.”