Yet as Glissa closed the distance and she could see more clearly into the mist-filled, brightly lit green room, she became even more confused. She saw two cell doors open and facing her, empty. The torture table did indeed appear to be nothing more than a table. But the statue was no statue. It was a person.
Bruenna stood atop the table, wrapped up to her nose in corroded iron cable that held her suspended like an insect in an arachnid’s web. Hollow tubes were jammed here and there through the cable into Bruenna’s abdomen and back, with one appearing connected to the base of her skull. At first Glissa thought that the tubes were pumping necrogen into the Neurok, but as she drew nearer she saw the tubes were glowing with soft blue light.
The mage’s eyes goggled when she saw Glissa, and the elf girl could detect the faintest shaking of her friend’s head.
Glissa entered the room, keeping one eye on Bruenna and using the other to scan the torture chamber. It was smaller than she’d expected, but then torture could be a very private matter. All of the cells were empty, as were most of the shackles hung on the walls. A few of those still held the skeletons of luckless prisoners.
If this was Yert’s idea of a trap, it wasn’t a very good one. She threw stealth aside and zipped over to Bruenna, descending to stand on the table in front of the hapless mage.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” Glissa said. “Can you hear me?”
Bruenna gave the faintest of nods, and winced.
“I have to unhook you from these tubes. Can I do that without hurting you?” Glissa asked.
Bruenna began to shake her head again, wincing with each tiny movement, but refusing to stop.
“At least I can get you out of these cables. Let’s see …” Glissa said, searching for a loose end she could use to unravel Bruenna’s iron cocoon. Nothing. Whoever had wrapped Bruenna in this painful-looking cable had been thorough. “All right, if I can’t unravel it, I can cut it.”
Glissa’s sword flashed, and the two cables holding the mage upright snapped. The elf girl caught Bruenna as she fell forward, and she saw that the cable was beginning to loosen on its own. It was all one piece-that was why she couldn’t find a loose thread.
Gently, Glissa began to unwrap the Neurok mage. The nim were getting closer, but with luck she wouldn’t be here when they arrived. Bruenna gasped as Glissa pulled the thick cable away from her mouth.
“No!” Bruenna cried as soon as she’d drawn breath. Suddenly the mage disappeared in a flash of blinding azure light, forcing Glissa to-
CHAPTER 17
— raise her arms to protect her eyes from the glare. She tumbled backward and landed hard on her back, and something jabbed her painfully in the lower back. A yelp told her that she’d also landed on Geth, who let out a long stream of muffled invective aimed at her parentage. “Shut up, Geth,” she mumbled.
Glissa blinked against the glare that filled the air above her and hadn’t gone away. She couldn’t see a thing, in fact, not the rest of the room, not the torture table …
She did see razor grass. Lots and lots of razor grass, disappearing into infinity wherever she looked. Glissa was in the Glimmervoid. But how? She rolled over onto her belly, then pushed off the ground-
“Ow!” Glissa yelped, and jerked back, rolling into a crouch. She turned her hands palm upward and blinked, trying to focus in the sweltering glare. Her hands were green with blood welling from several fresh, thin cuts. “So it’s real,” she muttered. “How in the name of every last god in the Tangle did I get here?”
“First things first,” Geth said from the pack on her back, which must have flapped open. “Who’s attached to those boots?”
Glissa turned around, shielding her eyes against the bright sky. She followed the black boots until they met unfamiliar metallic blue armor, and on up to a familiar face.
“Glissa,” Bruenna said warmly, a soft rasp in her voice as she broke into a grin. The mage offered her a hand up, and Glissa got a good look at her friend in the bright light of the moons. All five were over the horizon, which explained the heat and glare, with the yellow, sun-like moon (or moon-like sun, if you were a leonin) directly overhead. There was a strange symmetry to the moons. The last time she’d looked the green one was the only one in the sky.
Bruenna’s voice and the weird blue armor weren’t the only things that had suddenly changed. The mage’s face was drawn and angular, more than a little careworn. A jagged white scar emerged from the collar of Bruenna’s armor and disappeared behind her left ear. As Glissa released the human’s hand she noticed Bruenna wore something that looked like a gauntlet, but with three too many fingers and an extra thumb.
The mage noticed Glissa staring at her hands and raised the bizarre gauntlet, twiddling the digits, and shrugged. “Took it off a vedalken patrol. The vedalken won’t be needing it anymore. Besides, they owed me a hand.”
“What?” Glissa managed. “Vedalken? Bruenna, what happened to you? Why did you say-how did you-some kind of teleportation spell, right?”
“Plenty has happened to me,” Bruenna replied, furtively casting a glance over her shoulder. Glissa, still half-blinded by the bright moons, tried to make out what she was looking at, but saw only what looked like a distant, blurry, dark-colored wall. “But now isn’t the time. The nim will be on patrol today.” Bruenna raised two fingers to her lips and emitted a series of short whistles and clicks that reminded Glissa of several different avian species native to the Tangle.
In response to Bruenna’s call, a pair of long necks rose cautiously over the grass, several paces away. The zauks bobbed their heads from side to side for a second then stood, smoothly rising from a sitting position with a peculiarly clumsy avian grace. The pair of flightless birds, both unsaddled, trotted over to the mage and her perplexed companion. One began to poke its beak at Geth’s pack.
“Hey! Shoo! Not food!” Geth squealed. Glissa gently nudged the zauk away and closed the pack tight. “Mank moo,” the head said.
“Bruenna, take your time. I mean, nim? We’re in the middle of the ’void, in broad daylight. We’d see them coming a mile away. What’s going on?” Glissa asked, still squinting at that black wall. No, not a wall.
The Mephidross. They were at the swamp’s edge, or close, anyway. Glissa couldn’t understand why the mage had transported her here. Taj Nar or anywhere else, except a few choice locations in the Dross or the interior, would have been better. Until she got an explanation, though, she decided to keep her mouth shut. Complaining about the exact location of her rescue seemed petty.
“What are the last things you remember?” Bruenna asked and cupped her hands into a stirrup, helping the baffled elf girl clamber onto the patient zauk’s bare back. Glissa took the reins the Neurok woman handed her and patted the zauk’s neck softly. The bird cooed and flicked its glittering silver headcrest.
“But you were just there.”
“Humor me.”
“Well, the last thing I-ow, sorry, there, fella-the last thing I remember, you shouted ‘No,’ then everything went white,” Glissa said. “In the Vault. I was trying to free you. Then I was here, getting poked by razor grass.”
“Do you remember Ellasha?” Bruenna asked.
“Of course,” Glissa said, “She-she died so that I could get to you. She held back the nim, while I-wait, you never met Ellasha.”
“You’re mistaken,” the human replied, pulling herself onto her mount with practiced ease. “Ellasha eventually fought her way through the tunnels and found me. Was able to free me, since the trap had already been sprung. But she was killed in our escape. Noble Ellasha died five years ago today.”