It was too late. The footsteps stopped right above her. Glissa heard metal scraping against metal and looked up to see the head priest standing above her. In one hand he had his ceremonial fire tube, Glissa’s sword in the other.
“You have damaged the Great Furnace,” said the shaman. “For that alone you should die, huh? Are you also the one who freed my prisoners?”
“What prisoners?” spat Glissa.
“I think you know. I’m sure it is no coincidence, huh? An intruder destroying the Great Furnace as prisoners are free? Two are connected.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” gasped Glissa. She tried to swing her leg up onto the bridge again, but the shaman swatted at her with the flat of the sword.
“Tell me where cultists are. I’ll let you live, huh?”
“Give me back my sword,” replied Glissa, “and I’ll let you live.”
“This sword?” shrieked the shaman, brandishing the weapon. “I found this on the bridge! It belongs to me now!”
“Help me up and I’ll show you where your prisoners are.”
“I have seen you fight, huh?” said the shaman. “I believe I am safer with you there. Now, you tell me what I want to know. I have upper hand here.”
“Maybe,” grunted Glissa, “but I have your foot.”
She dug her claws in with one hand and grasped the ankle of the shaman with the other. With a quick yank, she pulled the shaman’s leg over the edge. Unbalanced, he dropped unceremoniously on his back above Glissa. She yanked on his leg again and pulled him off the bridge.
The shaman swung below Glissa, upside down at the end of her arm. She held on tight but could feel her grip on both his ankle and the bridge slipping. The goblin grabbed her sword in both hands.
“You want this sword so much,” he said. “I give it to you, huh?”
“Do that and we both die.”
Glissa heard the lesser shamans scrambling above her. “Stay back or I’ll drop your chief priest into the bowls of the Mother,” she shouted.
The scrambling footsteps receded.
The shaman glared at her, a defiant look in his eyes. “Drop me, and you lose sword.”
“I don’t have time for this,” muttered Glissa.
More footsteps, heavy ones. The goblins above her screamed. One by one, they fell over the edge. Glissa saw a massive club swinging back and forth above her, knocking goblin after goblin off the bridge. She looked back down at the shaman and smiled.
“My ride is here. It’s time to go.”
The goblin shaman screamed and swung the sword at Glissa, but the elf was too fast for him. She kicked her feet at his hands and knocked the sword up into the air, then released her grip on the goblin’s ankle and grabbed the pommel as it dropped past her. The shaman fell down into the blackness, screaming and flailing his arms. A moment later, Bosh’s massive hand reached over the ledge and pulled Glissa up onto the bridge.
Bosh bent over to pick up his club. It was the golem’s other arm. He grasped his own hand in a weird handshake and stood up. “No time to finish reconstruction,” said Bosh. “You required help.”
“Thank you,” said Glissa. “Slobad make it out okay?”
The golem nodded.
“We’d better leave as well,” she said. “We can’t let him beat us there.”
* * * * *
Glissa climbed onto the golem’s shoulders. Bosh ran straight through the furnace cavern, only using the paths when he needed to cross a chasm. Any goblins who dared come near were greeted by the golem’s massive, iron arm. Bosh swung the improvised club back and forth in front of him as he ran.
Once out of the furnace room, they went through several goblin-made passageways. Glissa could see other caverns to the sides as they ran, though none as large as the furnace room. The golem stopped, and Glissa peered over his shoulder. They stood at a doorway into a cavern that dwarfed the furnace room. Glissa couldn’t see the other side or the ceiling of the huge cave, but she could see a massive hole in the center. She had been wrong. The furnace didn’t sit on top of the Mother’s Womb. It was right there in front of her.
Hundreds, even thousands, of goblin-made buildings of all sizes surrounded the hole. A small army of goblins had left the city on the edge of the Womb. They marched up the path toward the entrance, heading straight for them.
“Why have you stopped?” demanded Glissa.
“I know this place,” replied Bosh.
CHAPTER 18
“Is that the way out?” asked Glissa. She pointed toward the approaching goblin army.
“No,” said the stoic golem.
“Tell me about the hole later,” screamed Glissa, “and get us out of here.”
Bosh turned from the Mother’s Womb cavern and ran down the hall. Soon the hammered walls gave way to natural metal formations. Tubes ran up the walls and across the ceiling. The hammered floor continued for a while longer but eventually gave way to the rusted iron tubing that seemed to run throughout the goblin complex. The corridor had turned into a cave, and Glissa could finally see the entrance ahead. Light from the red moon washed over the floor like blood.
They emerged from the cave in the middle of a mountain range. Tubular metal formations spread out ahead of them in every direction. The mountains looked much like the furnace. Iron tubes sprang up from the ground and intertwined with one another around a central core to form metal buttes that dotted the landscape. Many of these tubular mountains were larger than Taj Nar. The ground was a twisted mass of iron tubes. A layer of rust coated everything, giving the mountains a dull red appearance.
Glissa glanced back at the entrance to see if they were being followed, but Bosh’s long legs and tireless pace had left the goblin army well behind. The mountain behind them was enormous. It dwarfed the surrounding buttes. They were about a quarter of the way up the side and yet the top was obscured from view, fading into the sky and stars above. The entire mountain was made of the same tubular metal Glissa had seen inside the caverns. In fact, all the formations around her looked like they were connected through an endless iron pipeline.
“What the flare formed all of this?” she asked out loud.
“Memnarch,” said Bosh.
“Memnarch made all of this?” asked Glissa. “The mountains, the furnace, the big, flaring hole?”
“He shaped the world to create homes for everyone.”
“What is he?” asked Glissa. “A god? A planeswalker?”
“I cannot … remember.”
“Well, don’t hurt yourself.” Glissa slapped him on the shoulder. “It will come back. Give it time. For now, tell me about that big hole-the Mother’s Womb.”
“I ascended a hole similar to the … Womb,” said Bosh. “I recall the inner world that Slobad described. I remember emerging from such a hole and seeing the stars and moon above.”
“Wait a minute. You said ‘a hole similar to that one.’ Are there others?”
“Yes,” said the golem. “I believe so.”
“How many?”
“Three,” said Bosh. “Perhaps four.”
“Do you remember anything else?” asked Glissa.
“No.”
* * * * *
Bosh ran on in silence. Glissa turned around and watched the red moon disappear behind the mountain. She examined herself in the dim light of the blue moon, the one the goblins called the Eye of Doom. The wound over her ribs had closed, but her feet had swollen in the hours since the battle on the furnace floor. She summoned mana from the distant Tangle and let it pulse in her palms. She rubbed her feet lightly with the energy. It soaked into her blistered flesh and soothed the pain. She would need new boots, but her feet would heal. She had been lucky.
Glissa glanced up at the Eye of Doom again. They must head toward the Eye next, which always seemed to hover at the horizon. Chunth said the moons were heading for a convergence. Each moon, she knew, would rise over its own land. During her time with the leonin, she had seen the yellow moon-what the leonin called a sun-rise high above Taj Nar. The red moon-Slobad’s Sky Tyrant-was almost directly overheard when they emerged from the goblins’ lair. She was sure the Eye of Doom shone most brightly over the Quicksilver Sea. That was where they would find the vedalken. That was where she would find her answers.