Eladamri's eyes seemed brighter than the lantern. "My people, just now, are safe from the plague. It is the forest that languishes."
"Then, give this serum to whatever druid or nature spirit might make use of it to heal the forest."
Suddenly, a figure took form between the two men. He was a green-man, made of splinters and vines. His eyes were a pair of seed pods, his teeth a row of mushrooms.
Other men might have shied back from the strange creature, but Gerrard himself had learned maro-sorcery from such a man.
"Master!" Gerrard said in sudden recognition. His knees buckled. His fingers went nerveless around the jar of serum. It slipped free, plunging toward the hollow of the tree.
Multani's viny arm shot out, snatching the jar from the air. "Thank you, Gerrard."
"I-I feared you… I feared you were dead," stammered Gerrard.
"I feared the same for you, many times over," Multani replied, lifting Gerrard to his feet. "It is good to know fears do not always prevail." He spread fibrous arms through the darkness. "Welcome, Gerrard and Weatherlight… Welcome to Llanowar."
Chapter 25
"Come away from Keld," Urza said, appearing suddenly out of nowhere.
Barrin did not even startle. He didn't care enough anymore to startle. He'd been crouching here beside the fjord, watching frigid water mound up with the rising tide. Foam stole tentatively across the sand bars and kissed the keels of Keldon longships. In less than an hour, the warships would stand in twenty feet of water. Then Barrin and his erstwhile foes, the Keldons-gray and massive and impatient on the docks- would ship together for more wars in Western Keld. "Come away from Keld," Urza repeated.
Barrin squinted up at him. "How dare you? You told me this battle was everything. You told me I'd just have to forget what these… what these beasts did to Rayne. So I did. I did just like you said. And now you so blithely call me away?"
Urza stared back, his eyes like twin candles. He stood on a black fist of basalt beside the fjord and seemed just another stony extrusion. Beneath woolen skies, his warrobes were dark except where snowflakes pasted themselves.
"This battle is no longer everything."
"Damn you, Urza," Barrin said bitterly.
Sea spray vaulted up behind the planeswalker. "It's the army, not the battle. That's why you had to forget about your wife. I needed this army. I need them for a better fight."
"What better fight?" Barrin asked wearily.
"Urborg."
Barrin barked a laugh. He couldn't have imagined a more ludicrous response. "Urborg? A cesspool of liches and ghosts and zombies, brimstone and malaria? Yes, oh, yes, that's a better fight."
"Urborg is key to the next phase of the Phyrexians' plan. They cannot be allowed to gain it."
Shaking his head dispiritedly, Barrin said, "Why not? Urborg deserves them. They'd probably be at home there."
"That's the reason, exactly. They would be at home," Urza replied evenly. "Koilos and Urborg. If Yawgmoth gains footholds there, he can straddle the world."
"All the better to punch him in the groin," Barrin growled. He flung a shard of basalt out to skip across the foaming flood.
"You sound angry, my friend," Urza said. He stepped down from the rock and approached. "These northern climes are wearing on you."
Barrin stood. He gazed at a gray wave that struck the pebble bank and sent rocks tumbling toward the shore.
"Benalia is lost. Zhalfir and Shiv are gone. Now Keld is falling too. I thought I could forget Rayne in war but not when war screams-'Loss! Loss! Loss!' "
The planeswalker shook his head. Icy wind tore at his ash-blond hair. "It is not all loss. Yavimaya has won. Llanowar has won-"
"Llanowar!"
"Yes. I understand that your daughter was instrumental in the victory."
"Hanna," Barrin breathed. He closed his eyes, imagining her bright smile. The face he saw, though, was that of Rayne. "I should go congratulate her."
A strange shadow passed across Urza's gemstone eyes. "Soon, my friend, but not yet. Urborg awaits us. I want you to convince the Keldons to sail to Urborg at best time and rendezvous with you there. Meanwhile, you'll be mustering the Serrans who survived the fall of Benalia. We will need their angel armies."
"Serrans and Keldons?" Barrin looked sick. "Strange alliances."
"Stranger and stranger," Urza agreed. "Dominaria will not be saved unless all Dominarians fight. I am arranging a great coalition among the many nations of the globe. Those who stand alone will fall. Those who unite will conquer."
Barrin stared appreciatively at his friend. "I never thought I'd hear Urza Planeswalker admit needing help from anyone."
Urza shrugged away the comment. "Of course, Lord Windgrace and his panther warriors will join us. I'll be bringing elf warriors from Yavimaya and helionauts from Tolaria-"
"Helionauts," Barrin interrupted. "Tolaria will be vulnerable without them."
"We all must make sacrifices," Urza said.
Barrin shrugged, staring across the rising tide. Already, two of the Keldon longships bobbed levelly on the flood. Up stout gangplanks marched Keldon warriors, crates loaded on their backs.
"All right. I'll do what you ask. The Keldons and Serrans will be there at best time. We'll fight your battle for you. We'll drive out the Phyrexians and leave the place to the liches."
"Good," Urza said simply as he began to disappear. "I'll look for you there."
Barrin flew in the midst of an angelic host. Their wings gleamed white above a pitching sea. Wind whistled from perfect pinions and set songs in the air.
This was how Serrans flew-enmeshed in music. It was why their attack squadrons were called choirs. Each creature knew her part. Each flew in precise pitch with the others. Like fish in a school, who sense the movement of the whole in pressure points along their sides, angels knew by harmonies and dissonances where they flew, how they fought, and whom they slew.
Barrin was at home among these inhuman glories. He rode ahead of them, aback a winged horse conjured from thin air. The creature seemed a thing of cloud-white and gleaming, halfway between solidity and mist. Still, it was powerful. Wings spread wide on the wind. With each surging stroke, the beast's neck bent. Its hooves churned the air as though it leaped steeples.
Of course, Barrin did not need a winged steed. He could fly with a mere thought, but he had been inspired by Teferi's phoenix flocks. There was something appealing about riding into battle on a creature of pure imagination. This horse would not tire. It would not bleed. It would not foam or spit or die-all the filthy things that true flesh had done over and over the last long weeks.
As glorious as the angel choir behind him, as magnificent as the ideal creature beneath him, Barrin could not keep his spirits from slumping. He was sick of war, sick to death of it. He didn't mind killing Phyrexians. He minded watching Phyrexians kill angels and Keldons, elves and Metathran and humans. He minded knowing that lives were mere chess pieces in a match between Urza and Yawgmoth.
Barrin was tired of being a pawn.
"There," he murmured, looking dead ahead. Though he was still a hundred miles out, a gazing enchantment brought every detail in crystalline clarity to his eyes.
Beyond the alabaster wings of his mount, Urborg loomed up out of the sea. It was a black and awful chain of islands. Dormant volcanoes hissed sulfuric steam into the air. Pestilential swamps stretched beneath forests of dead trees. The air waved with nauseous heat and rattled with a billion billion bugs. The only solid ground was muck. The only water was poisoned. The only living inhabitants were allies of, or slaves to, or prey for the unliving. Ghouls, liches, zombies, wraiths-necromantic horrors all.