Gripping Liin Sivi's hand, Eladamri stroked toward the surface. Together, they emerged. They gulped greedy breaths.
No sooner were Eladamri's lungs full than he shouted, "Look out!" He pulled Liin Sivi aside as a huge wedge of wood shot beside her. It was the ram from a Keldon long ship.
Instead of shying back, she lunged and grabbed hold. Liin Sivi pulled him to the ram.
"It floats," she said simply. "It floats, and it takes the beating for us."
"Yes," Eladamri replied. He clung to the wedge. It seemed eager to descend. Ahead, the ice cave was a swallowing gullet. "Where are we going?"
Liin Sivi shrugged. "Where everyone is going. Where the water goes."
The heat of the upper chambers waned. Cold gripped their legs.
"No one escaped," Eladamri said bleakly. "No one who fought escaped. Neither the living nor the dead."
Liin Sivi turned. She wore a rueful smile. "It would be comforting to believe in Twilight, that there is a destiny for virtuous warriors."
"Even the Keldons can't believe in Twilight. Even Doyenne Tajamin, Keeper of the Book of Keld," Eladamri echoed hollowly.
Sivi's eyes were beautiful in the failing light. "Then we have the best fate of all, Eladamri, to die valiantly."
Just ahead, the wide river reached a precipice, where it dropped into utter blackness.
Eladamri drew Liin Sivi up beside him. He stroked back the black locks of her hair. He leaned toward her and cupped her cheek in his hand. Their lips met in a single, warm kiss.
They crested the waterfall. It ripped the ram from their hands. It ripped them from each other's arms. Then all was blackness.
Death was not as he had expected. He had expected torments, but there was only numbness and noise. He had expected other souls, but he was alone. The darkness was right, and the moaning-the sudden crash of huge things and the throb of his head-but the rest was wrong. Worst of all, he had expected to care, but Eladamri cared about nothing at all.
Death was easy. Life had been hard. To live in the shadow of the Stronghold, to battle Dauthi horrors, to lose a daughter and lose a world and fight for one that wasn't even his-these were the hard things. To lie here with something dragging at his legs and something else clutching the scruff of his neck, this was easy.
Eladamri lifted his head. His hair was frozen to the ground. He pulled free and felt pain. It awoke sensations across his entire body. He struggled to sit up. His frozen tunic ripped as it yanked free of the ice. His back burned.
Chill waters lapped at his waist. Cold darkness surrounded him. Just ahead, the river roared hungrily, bearing everything away. The ice shuddered with impacts-hunks of catapult and ship and Phyrexian and Keldon.
Eladamri was not dead, but soon he would be, in utter darkness and utterly alone.
His breath caught. Liin Sivi. She had been right beside him before the waterfall. Now-he splashed his hands through the shallows, but there was no one. She must have already been dragged away. She must have been dead.
Sorrow moved through Eladamri. Liin Sivi had fought beside him since the Stronghold. She had been his strong right arm but more than that. She had been his heart. Except for her, he had been alone through it all.
A gloaming light came to the ice cave. It gilded the walls in hues of gold.
Eladamri stood. In the glow, he could make out the wide, deep flood and the high-arching vault. To his left, the waters plunged into unknown depths. To his right, the channel bored straight away into the glacier. It was from that distant place that the light shone.
Something approached, something otherworldly.
Eladamri stared in amazement.
A ship. A golden ship. Through this black underworld, a ship sailed in utter calm. Her main was full-bellied, as if she harnessed the winds of another world. Her hull breasted the waves in perfect trim. Most glorious of all, the lanterns upon her decks gleamed across a crowd of warriors-Keldons and Steel Leaf elves and Skyshroud elves… and Liin Sivi.
She lifted her lantern at the bow. Her eyes searched the darkness. She looked for him.
It could not be. This was a hallucination. No ship could sail these waters. No ship in all the world was so huge. This was a delusion, concocted by Eladamri's mind to ease the moment he would leap into the flood.
The long ship neared. Liin Sivi's lantern spilled its light across him. A smile lit her face. "Eladamri, you live!"
"I am not so certain," he shouted above the roaring tide. The ship drew even with him. In moments, it would be past. "Where are you going, Liin Sivi? Where is this Golden Argosy bound?"
She hurled a shimmering line out toward him. It splashed into the water by his ankles and dragged along.
"I am going where we all are going, where the water goes." Her eyes implored. "Join us, Eladamri. Grab the line."
Numbly, Eladamri looked down at the snaking rope. If this were a delusion, to grab it would be to plunge into the water, to die. But if the ship before him were a true thing, to grab the line would be to live.
Either way, he would be with Liin Sivi again.
The Golden Argosy pulled away.
The tail of rope lashed past.
Eladamri lunged. He seized its slender tip. The line yanked him away from his perch and back into the hungry flood. It dragged him down to darkness.
Chapter 25
Commander Grizzlegom hated this fight.
His striva laid open the breast of a Phyrexian trooper. The blade severed ten ribs and wedged in the eleventh. The trooper was unconvinced of its death. Claws raked deep wounds in the minotaur's shoulder.
Grizzlegom tilted his head and rammed a horn through the trooper's skull. He flung the body away and yanked his striva free.
The blade would not be quick enough for the next foe. Grizzlegom's elbow did the job. The bloodstock's neck cracked, and it fell.
A scuta swarmed over it, lashing Grizzlegom's hooves. He leaped on its shield and kicked through it. Vaulting from the dead monster's back, he advanced up the volcanic slope.
Grizzlegom hated this fight. It wasn't that he minded killing Phyrexians. That part was splendid. Hurloon's debt of vengeance would be repaid. What he hated was fighting alongside the dead.
A ghoul advanced beside him. The flesh was gone from its fingers, leaving only bony claws. Its lips were ripped away. Yellow teeth opened wide and bit a hunk of flesh from a Phyrexian's face.
The Phyrexian ripped an arm from the ghoul and ran scythe-tipped fingers across its belly. Desiccated organs tumbled free.
Grizzlegom ended the struggle with a chopping stroke of his striva. The blade passed through shoulder of the Phyrexian and bisected its heart. Both beasts fell in pieces at Grizzlegom's hooves.
What honor was there in fighting alongside rot?
Above the dance of blades, Grizzlegom made out Commander Agnate, leading a charge. There was the honor. The man fought on despite the plague that ravaged him. He fought with a fury worthy of a minotaur. That was the honor in this fight. In his very flesh, Agnate rectified the living and the dead.
Next moment, Agnate fell beneath a Phyrexian swarm.
"Charge!" Grizzlegom shouted.
He drove toward the place where Agnate had fallen. He did not so much fight the Phyrexians but fought through them like a man cutting cane. A forehand slice mowed the goat head from one Phyrexian. A backhand jab impaled the belly of another. While his blade cleared foes to one side, his fist dropped beasts on the other. Phyrexians had glass jaws. An uppercut to the throat of a bloodstock drove its lower fangs into its brain. A roundhouse felled an infantryman before it could bring its sword to bear. Fist and striva were less deadly than horns. With them, Grizzlegom bulled up the talus slope. One horn impaled a trooper. Grizzlegom pitched his head, hurling the body down. The other horn rammed into a huge wall of muscle.