"Downward," Eladamri commanded softly, leading the way.
In time he reached a region where giant webs had caught a number of the bodies. Eladamri advanced, cutting the gruesome figures free, lest their presence bring hungry spiders.
"What am I doing here?" he wondered under his breath, holding a flickering lantern high to stare at one of the bloodied victims. "Why am I leading these people?"
More screams above interrupted his thoughts. He glared up, clutching the wall. Lanterns showed the spiraling ascent. They lifted to see what came down the shaft. Voices joined themselves to the rolling scream. Something pounded one wall, ricocheted off, descended across the emptiness, and impacted the opposite wall. It struck the folk there, seemed to stick a moment on pulverized bodies, and tumbled downward again.
"A plague bomb!" Eladamri hissed in dread realization.
Once it came to a stop, its panels would open and spew contagion. It would contaminate them all and even the caves below, where they had hoped to shelter. All was lost, unless the contagion could be contained…
Dropping his lantern to the stair, Eladamri swung his sword along the stairway. The blade cut through fat cobwebs. He gathered them in a net in his free hand. Once there were enough strands, he sheathed his sword and experimentally spread the web. His timing would have to be perfect.
If only he were the perfect man he was believed to be.
The plague pod bounded down, followed by a flurry of tumbling bodies.
Eladamri gritted his teeth and flung the net outward. It enveloped the globe. Its sticky bands wrapped around the spore panels in the side of it. The sphere tore past. Eladamri released it, though the clinging strands yanked jealously at his hand. He hunkered down to keep from getting hurled into the void. The racing ball almost ripped his hand off before the strands tore free. Beyond the edge of the stair, Eladamri glimpsed the ball as it plunged away through webs and darkness.
Perhaps the strands would hold. Perhaps the spores would not emerge. Eladamri had done all he could, and it would have to be enough.
Bodies fell past in a wet, conglomerate paste.
Eladamri snatched up his lantern and picked his way farther down the spiraling stair. "What am I doing here?"
Multani moved through Llanowar, awakening great tree spiders. Their webs would save the wood. Their webs and the ingenuity of this Eladamri. There was more to this elf than the man himself realized.
As Multani rushed from tree to tree, mustering the defenders of Llanowar, he felt new power surge into him. It was Molimo. In his reticent and reluctant way, the spirit of Llanowar lent his strength to this foreign spirit. Multani smiled with mushroom teeth. The forest needed champions, mortal and immortal, and it was making them-Eladamri and Multani both.
Chapter 19
"There it is, see?" said the blind seer somewhat absurdly. He jabbed a withered old finger beyond the prow rail. Wind tore at his white hair and old robes. "Llanowar." "Yes," Gerrard responded grimly. The vast forest spread in all directions beneath Weatherlight's bow. Llanowar's once-green crown was black with Phyrexian corruption. Spidery figures moved en masse through the great canopy. Above, in blue air and white cloud, huge black shapes clustered. From them dropped thousands of bombs. There were no aerial defenders here. With impunity, the monsters rained plague down on the forest.
Gerrard leaned to the prow speaking tube. "Battle stations, everyone. Signal the fleet. Prepare to engage those… whatever those ships are."
Turning to the blind seer, Gerrard said, "Thanks for the tip. With Benalia fallen, Llanowar especially will need our help."
"Help them, and help yourself," the old man said cryptically from the shadows of his broad hat.
Gerrard's brow furrowed. "We could have been here hours sooner if we'd been able to find you. Where were you?"
"I live half in truth, half in dream," the man replied evenly. "When I cannot be found in the one, I can be found in the other."
Gerrard sighed, shaking his head as he strode toward the port-side ray cannon. "You've wasted time."
The seer took a deep breath and murmured, "I never waste time."
Gerrard strapped himself into his gunner's harness. He powered up the machine and turned it through all three axes. Across the forecastle, Tahngarth did likewise. The two amidships gunners climbed into position. Crew scrambled across the decks and up into the bridge.
Turning in his traces, Gerrard glanced toward the bridge. He saw a familiar figure clamber into the navigator's seat.
"What the…!" he hissed, flipping open the speaking tube. "Hanna! What are you doing in there?"
"My job." Her response came curtly through the tube. "You've called battle stations, Commander."
"You can't navigate in your condition."
"Take us up, Sisay!" Hanna called suddenly. "Those aren't ships!"
Gerrard turned about, seeing the black, hovering mass in the clouds. No, they weren't ships. They were nothing at all, holes opening and closing in the sky.
Weatherlight pitched backward and rose. The clustered shapes shrank to a long, thin horizontal line. They seemed the surfaces of lakes, seen on edge for a moment as the ship emerged from below. Weatherlight soared higher. Beneath her, the line spread out into a cluster of shifting shapes.
"What are they?" Gerrard asked.
"Portals," Hanna shot back. "Small portals. Thousands of them. They are weak, not like the ones we've seen before. Each creates a mild spacio-temporal distortion. Together, the effect is massive."
Weatherlight vaulted up over the portals. From above, they did not seem so much holes in the fabric of reality as blurred areas, like the wavering of heat energy off gray coals. Beneath those shimmering spots, mechanical spheres hurtled down. They gave out long screams on their descent to the canopy. There, they crashed and spewed disease payloads.
Hanna's voice came again. "They each can transport perhaps a few hundred pounds of material before shutting down. Together, they'll destroy the forest with plague."
That word on her lips made Gerrard angry. He drew a breath and gritted his teeth. "Signal the fleet. Open fire!"
His own gun was the first to bark. Crimson energy burst from the steaming muzzle, as bright as heart-blood and as hot as lava. Gaseous plasma surged out to smash against the field of scintillating spheres. It engulfed a dozen of the small portals and ripped through the spaces between them.
Fire spoke also from Tahngarth's gun, the two cannons amidships, the belly gun, and Squee's artillery at the tail. Lines of power streamed down from Weatherlight, The surges were joined by the multifarious attacks of her armada. Hoppers sent orange fire, helionauts blue. Plasma bolts, lightning blasts, disruption fields-energy poured down on the portals.
Gerrard gave a whoop, unloading shot after shot. It felt good to be fighting again, blazing through the invaders.
"It's no good, Commander," shouted Hanna over the speaking tube. "The portals don't exist on this side. We can't destroy them from above. We'd have to fly below and risk plague contamination. Up here, we're just destroying the forest."
Standing in his traces, Gerrard peered down over the rail. The flack of their shot ate through the canopy, vaporizing wood and setting the forest ablaze.