He entered. The dwelling was exactly as he remembered it the day he left to attack the Stronghold. No one had ventured here. Wooden cups yet sat upon the table. The covers across his pallet were drawn up and ready for him to sleep. The battle plans he had made for the assault still lay in coils of bark on his desk.
"Home," Eladamri said.
Somehow it had not been real until now. This displaced forest, dying under daggers of cold, might have been some weird apparition, someone else's nightmare. Seeing his own home and all the things he alone knew made the nightmare real.
Eladamri sucked a breath. He staggered from the hollow out into the broad lap of the tree. He meant to catch his breath, but then his gaze slid across the crudest sight of all.
His daughter's bulb opened just before him. The wind muscled through the door and rifled her clothes, hanging on pegs along one wall. Frosted leaves tumbled through the window and onto her bed. She had been abducted from that very spot. An agent of Volrath's had abducted her, and Volrath himself had made her a monster. The Phyrexians had abducted Avila and killed her, and now they had abducted the whole of the Skyshroud and killed it.
Going to his knees on the foot-worn bark, Eladamri clutched his face. "Why did you bring me here, Freyalise? Why do you torment me?"
Footsteps came along the vine bridge. "Great Lord Eladamri, you have returned to us! We knew you would come. We knew that, in our moment of greatest catastrophe, you would come."
Eladamri lifted teary eyes to see who spoke to him. "Allisor." He breathed raggedly, unable to say more.
"We thought you were dead," the young lieutenant said. The skin was drawn tight across his jutting chin and prominent cheekbones, an expression that mix terror and elation. He knelt beside Eladamri and bowed his head. "That is, the others thought you were dead. No one who was trapped in the Stronghold made it out alive. But I didn't think you were dead. I knew you would survive, somehow."
More soldiers approached across the bridge. They whooped in excitement and called out to their comrades.
"He is here. The Uniter has returned!" The warriors of the Skyshroud converged on that single, ancient tree and the man who once had called it home.
Lieutenant Allisor lifted his head. His breath had condensed on his leaf-scale breastplate, and it began to freeze. "We will follow wherever you lead. We will obey your every command. Only tell us, Eladamri-what shall we do now?"
The Uniter kept his head bowed. What could they do? Move the forest, tree by tree, to some warmer place? Carry the sea in buckets down beneath the sun? He was a Uniter, not a god.
He was not a god, but he was the scion of a goddess.
Eladamri stood in the midst of the throng. Already, the aerial bridges groaned under the weight of arriving warriors. Clear eyed at last, he gazed out at the gathering might of his nation.
"Skyshroud elves, I have returned to you, yes, in our most desperate hour. I have been called the Korvecdal, the Uniter of peoples. I shall need now to become the Uniter of worlds.
"Rath is gone. Our world-the only world we've known for a thousand years-has now melded with this world. Our home is now this icy wasteland. I do not know where lie the ranges of the Kor and the Vec. I do not know where burn the forges of the Dal. I do not know if they will survive this invasion of world on world. But I know that we will survive."
Lifting his hands to the heavens and flinging back his head, Eladamri called out in a loud, clear voice, "Freyalise, Lady of Llanowar, Matron of the Steel Leaf elves, I summon thee-I, who became savior of Llanowar, I, who am called Scion of Freyalise."
She did not so much arrive but appear. First her wide, beautiful, capricious eyes hovered in the midst of the bowed multitude. Then her lips took form, smiling wryly. Flesh filled in the rest of her face and rolled down her slender neck and out into shoulders. Graceful arms formed from those shoulders and a slim torso in foliage armor. Even when her legs took shape, she did not touch ground but floated inches above the wood.
Eladamri had glimpsed her during the revels at Koilos, but now, to face her here in his dying homeland, he could not stand. He sank to his knees and bowed his head. His folk did likewise. Freyalise drifted over to him. Her hand reached gently outward and stroked his braided hair. "You have summoned me, Elfchild?"
Lifting his face, Eladamri stared at her glimmering eyes. "Yes, my lady. I have called you to collect on a debt you owe me."
A flash of pique lit the planeswalker's eyes. She seemed both angered and amused.
"What debt could I possibly owe you?"
"You needed a savior for your people of Llanowar, and you made me that savior. You made me what I was not- your scion-that your people might be saved. As you have made me your son, I claim you as my mother. As you have used me to save your people, I claim the right to use you to save mine."
"Use me?" she echoed.
He could not tell if his statement flattered or infuriated her. "Or perhaps you haven't the power…"
"Haven't the power?" she repeated irritably. "Do you know that once I cast a spell to turn back the eternal ice? Once I freed the whole world from the grip of winter?"
Eladamri smiled, knowing he had her. "Then it would be a simple thing for you to cast the same protection over this single forest."
All the amusement was gone from her features. "You presume too much, Elfchild. You are wrong to think that I would be indebted to you or to anyone. You are wrong to believe that you could use me. You are wrong to suppose that being my scion was a duty rather than a privilege."
His head bowed, Eladamri said, "Forgive me…"
She waved away the apology. "It is the eternal burden of mothers to forgive-or so I have heard. I forgive you, Elfchild, and I will grant your request."
The air was suddenly hot and wet. The frost on armor melted and ran. Ghosts of steam settled back into the water below. The furnacelike winds of Rath moved once again among the cerema trees.
"You have saved us. You have saved us all," Eladamri said.
"I have not saved you," Freyalise said, "only protected you from the ravages of this place. Those ravages include the native warriors here-Keldon warlords. The Skyshroud Forest will be forever warded against them. But that is all I can do. You still must save yourselves. If the elves of Rath have arrived here, the Phyrexian armies have arrived as well."
"Could you ward them from the forest?" Eladamri asked.
"I cannot. They made Rath. It was their world. If you would save the Skyshroud from them, you must do it yourselves-or better yet, ally with the Keldons and do it together. After all, Eladamri, you are the Uniter." She smiled at him.
Returning the look, Eladamri asked cheekily, "Why ally with Keldons when I am the friend of a planeswalker in a mechanical combat suit?"
"Because I must return to the engine," Freyalise replied. Already, she was fading from view. "I'll remain as long as I can, but Kristina and I go for a worse fight." All that remained now were her eyes and lips. "You have quite a fight before you."
Chapter 5
Sea winds hurled back Agnate's silvery hair. Waves parted around his feet and rolled in dual wakes out behind him. In one blue-skinned hand, he held his powerstone pike. In the other, he clutched a long pair of reins, woven from kelp. The reins extended taut down into the turbid sea and attached to a pair of harnesses. The greater dolphins that wore the harnesses swam in precise synchrony beneath the glinting tides. Agnate stood upon their backs. All around him, his Metathran army rode the glorious beasts. They and Gerrard's Benalish irregulars and Voda merfolk surged toward the main isle of Urborg.