Still, the cold stung his skin, and it sent an icy burning down his spine all the way through his hips and into his legs. That wasn’t the most immediate problem. With a block of ice surrounding his head, he couldn’t see or breathe.
Groping around, he tried to find something he could chip away at the ice with. He found nothing and in desperation smashed his head against the floor.
Each time he made contact, the impact raced through the solid ice and vibrated through his skull. At first it hurt, but his head became numb from the cold, and after a few attempts, he couldn’t feel it any more.
His lungs began to burn, and his oxygen-starved body grew weary. Panic raced through his veins, and he smashed his face harder against the ground. Blackness filled his head, and he became dizzy.
Lifting himself to his feet, Marek jumped into the air and kicked his legs up over his head. The commander of the vedalken elite guard threw all he had into this last attempt to free himself, and the top of his head crashed down, the rest of his body behind it. The impact of the blow was enough to put a crack down the middle of the ice, and the block began to give way.
Wheeling back, he felt himself drifting off into unconsciousness as he smashed his head one more time against the ground. The ice broke away, clearing his face, and the dank air of the Dross filled his lungs.
The cloudy blackness in his head receded, and the rest of the world came back to him. The skin on his face felt burnt, and his legs were still numb from the cold running down his spine, but he could breathe, and at the moment that was all he cared about.
He lay facedown on the floor for a long while, only vaguely aware of the goings on around him. Finally, someone rolled him over, and he looked up into the face of Lord Pontifex.
“Marek. You’re alive.”
Marek could only blink and grunt.
Malil came into his view. He tapped Pontifex on the shoulder.
“We should go,” he said.
The vedalken lord looked up at something Marek couldn’t see then nodded.
“Damn. All right.”
Bending down, Pontifex wrapped his arm under Marek’s shoulders and lifted the stunned warrior to his feet.
The chamber spun, and Marek flopped his arm over Lord Pontifex’s shoulder. Looking up, he saw now what had forced the retreat. A huge ghostly blue-white creature was pounding vedalken warriors and levelers alike to pulp.
Marek rolled his head toward Pontifex. “How will we …” His voice was scratchy and hollow, and it hurt to speak. He cleared his throat. “Find her … again.”
Without looking at Marek, Malil answered his question. “Memnarch will know where she is.”
Pontifex shouldered most of Marek’s weight, and the two of them hobbled from the Vault of Whispers. Malil was close behind.
CHAPTER 21
Glissa knelt next to Al-Hayat.
The great forest beast was dying.
“Can you heal yourself?” asked Glissa.
The wolf smiled then winced in pain. “I have no more magic.”
“What can I do?”
“You can finish what we have started,” replied Al-Hayat. “You can free the rest of Mirrodin.” The wolf lay still. “Rejoice with the coming of the green moon.”
Al-Hayat closed his eyes, and his breath slipped away.
Glissa lay her hand on his fur. Large chunks of it had been cut and torn away during the fight, but she stroked it all the same.
Slobad came up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. She looked back and him.
“I could have saved him if I hadn’t fallen into that hole.”
Slobad shook his head. “Crazy elf not fall into hole, we not find giant, huh? We all be dead.”
Glissa took one last look at Al-Hayat then got to her feet. The inner sanctum of Mephidross lay silent. The Kaldra Champion had smashed his way through the ranks of levelers and vedalken and sent them running. It was true, he had saved their lives-most of them anyway. They had won this battle, but it felt more like a defeat than anything else.
Bruenna came over to the pair. “Where to now?”
Without hesitation, Glissa replied, “We have all the pieces. It’s time to meet Memnarch.”
“How do you intend to get there?” asked the wizard.
The elf shrugged. “I don’t … The only way in I know of is through the blue lacuna. Marching back out through the swamp and then into the vedalken fortress again doesn’t sound like such a good idea. I don’t think we’re in much shape to fight another battle just yet. Anybody have any other ideas?” She looked at both Bruenna and Slobad.
“I do,” said Bosh in his rumbling voice. His hands had been bandaged by the last of Bruenna’s wizards, and he stood now looking down on the other three.
“Well,” said Glissa, “let’s hear it.”
“The black lacuna is somewhere inside Mephidross. It leads into the interior as well.”
“Golem know where it is, huh?” asked the goblin.
“No,” replied the golem, “but he does.” Bosh pointed toward the far end of the room.
There, pinned under a smashed, smoking leveler, was Geth.
“Grab him,” shouted Glissa.
The pale man squealed and struggled harder to free himself, but the Kaldra Champion lifted him from under the broken construct and off the ground by the back of his robes.
“Where is the entrance to the black lacuna?” demanded the elf. With the walls to Geth’s personal chamber gone and the fog blown away, her voice echoed in the large chamber.
Geth hung silently, dangling from the fingertips of the Kaldra Champion.
Glissa walked over to stand just beneath him. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked up at the gaunt ruler of the Vault. “You can tell us, or I’ll have my friend here squeeze your head until it pops.” She shrugged. “The choice is yours.”
The Kaldra Champion grabbed the sides of Geth’s head with two fingers.
Geth batted at the Champion’s fingers with his balled up fists. “All right. All right,” he shouted. The leader of the Vault began sobbing. “I’ll tell you anything, just put me down and leave me my head.” Geth whimpered. “I’m fond of my head.”
* * * * *
Unseen by any inside the Vault of Whispers, Memnarch’s myr waited patiently in the shadows. In Panopticon, deep inside the plane, the Guardian stood inside the Eye. One of his six scrying mirrors tuned to the eyes of the myr.
“Yes, Glissa Sunseeker,” he said as he watched. “Come find Memnarch, you and your Champion.” He laughed. “Come find Memnarch.”
* * * * *
The journey down the black lacuna was much like the journey down the blue one, only this time there wasn’t an army on Glissa’s tail. Like the blue lacuna, it followed the slight curvature of the plane on its way from the surface to the interior. The first few thousand feet of their decent, the walls of the tunnel looked like burned steel. Bits of shiny silver metal shone through a patina of black charring. Down farther, the surface was covered in the same, glowing mossy substance, which lit the way toward the end of the tube.
Down and down they went, resting for a time along the way. As they got closer to the end, Glissa could feel her power growing. Mana became easier to tap the closer they came to the interior, and her healing spells became more potent. She hoped her battle magic would be more powerful as well.
The lacuna ended, and Glissa stepped into the interior of Mirrodin. It was only the second time she had been here, but now it didn’t seem so mysterious. It was familiar to her now, and somehow, it almost felt like home.
Above, the mana core cast blinding blue-white light on everything. Nothing was shaded, nothing was safe from the penetrating gaze of the hovering internal sun. But though it had been only a full moon cycle since she’d been here, the mana core looked different.
Glissa hadn’t really taken the opportunity to examine it the last time she was here. There hadn’t been time for that. Now she could see arcs of green energy leaping off the mana core’s surface. They appeared as if from nowhere, circled the core once, then dived back into its surface as if they were fish in the Quicksilver Sea. She didn’t remember seeing any such thing last time, and even as distracted as she was, she felt certain she would have remembered a jagged bolt of green mana circling the sphere.