Chunth was telling the truth. Krark had seen it. Bosh had lived it, and Glissa had dreamed it, but what did it all mean? If there were huge holes leading to this inner world, why had nobody but Krark ever descended? Bosh said the mycosynth were a plague, but if they were so pervasive, why had no one ever seen them in the outer world? They were pieces of a puzzle, but Glissa had no idea how to put them together.
Glissa pulled out the vial of serum. Were the answers in there? She thought about drinking the serum to gain the knowledge of whatever ancient power had created the blinkmoths. But Chunth had kept his secrets to protect the elves and the trolls from the serum. He’d died protecting his secrets-and her. She would only use the serum if she had no other options.
* * * * *
They arrived at the leveler lair well before the moons rose the next morning. Glissa and Slobad went in to investigate, while Bosh remained to guard the cultists. Slobad lit his fire tube as they entered the dark chamber that had been his home. The place had been ransacked. The table, chairs, and workbench had all been destroyed. When Slobad checked the passage to the leveler lair, he found it blocked off.
“You were right,” said Glissa. “Whoever takes care of those monsters found your home. Aren’t you worried they’ll come back?”
“Only if some crazy elf destroys more levelers, huh?” said Slobad. “You not going to do that, huh?” He smiled.
“I was thinking about it,” said Glissa. She looked around. “There’s not much space here.”
“More chambers there and there, huh?” said Slobad, pointing to the walls on either side of the small room. He pushed the remains of his workbench out of the way and opened a panel then moved across the room and opened a second panel. “They survive.”
The other chambers were untouched, and Glissa crawled out to get the cultists. “It’s not much,” she said to Dwugget, “but you’ll be safe here. The shaman elder will never send anyone here. When this is over, maybe Slobad can clear out more chambers for you.”
“Thank you again,” said Dwugget. “You have done much for us, huh? We follow Krark and Glissa now.”
“Well, I’m not sure I’m planning to follow Krark down that hole,” she said.
“You will,” said the cult leader. “All answers are within the Mother’s Heart.”
CHAPTER 19
They left for the Quicksilver Sea immediately. There was still a few hours of dark before the yellow moon rose over the Glimmervoid. Slobad rode atop Bosh, and Glissa had taken her normal seat in the crook of the golem’s iron arm. They backtracked up into the mountains for a while before turning and heading in a new direction. Glissa could see the Glimmervoid off to her left through the mountains.
“We’re going to need information about the vedalken,” Glissa said to the goblin. “Do you know anything at all about the Quicksilver Sea?”
“Know that humans live on edge of sea, huh?” said Slobad. “Wizards, mostly. Have no need for goblin repairs, so Slobad leave alone. Never go back, huh?”
“Wizards?” said Glissa. “The robed figure was a wizard, but he was vedalken. At least we assume he was. At the very least, he definitely was not human-not with four arms. If these humans live near the sea, though, they may know something about the vedalken. It’s as good a place to start as any. We’ll find ourselves a wizard and ask some questions. How far is the sea?”
“Not far,” said Slobad. “Not on Bosh’s shoulders, huh? Be there one rotation, maybe less.”
* * * * *
The next day, Glissa, Slobad, and Bosh emerged from the mountains. Small outcroppings of tubular iron dotted the slope ahead of them, but beyond those lay a flat valley that led to the shores of the sea. Glissa looked up and down the mountain range. To her left, the range flattened out to meet with the Glimmervoid off near the horizon. The valley and the sea snaked in and out at the edge of the mountains. To her right, she could see that both the mountains and the sea ended abruptly in a curtain of green haze just at the limits of her vision-the Glimmervoid.
Glissa searched for signs of habitation. She didn’t know if the humans lived in the mountains, in the valley, or on the sea. She hoped they didn’t live in the Dross. Her gaze kept wandering back to the Quicksilver Sea. It glistened in the light of the moons, seeming almost alive. From her vantage point in the hills above the valley, she could see its silvery surface swirl and ripple in a hypnotizing pattern of blue, red, yellow, and black shadows.
The ripples were chaotic. As children, Glissa and Kane would toss small bits of metal in rain barrels to watch the tiny waves build and move across the surface and break against the edges. The Quicksilver Sea, though, undulated at random, as if something just below the surface, or the sea itself, were alive.
Glissa tore her gaze from the sea and concentrated on the valley. As they moved past the last of the iron formations, she saw at the edge of the sea a town of some sort. Shelters had been built in circles around a central structure much larger than the rest. A series of large planks stuck out from the shore at the edge of the town. In between these planks Glissa saw transports of some sort that must be used to cross the sea.
“There,” she said, pointing to the human town. “We’ll find our answers in that settlement.”
“You think they talk to goblin, elf, and golem?” asked Slobad. “Never see elf this far from Tangle. Nobody ever see the golem before, huh? And goblins and humans never get along, huh?”
Glissa thought about it. “You may be right,” she said. “We won’t get any answers if they think it’s for the goblins, and Bosh will just scare the flare from them.”
“We capture one?”
“No. If the humans aren’t working with the vedalken, we don’t want to alienate them. If they are, capturing one might expose us.”
“What we do, huh?”
“Glissa can impersonate a human,” said Bosh. “Just conceal her ears.”
“And her claws, huh?” added Slobad. “They scary, too.” He smiled.
Glissa stopped and looked back at her companions. “Are you serious?” she said. “I’ve never even seen a human. How can I pretend to be one?”
“You have better plan, huh?” asked Slobad. “Wait for hover birds come back and follow them?”
Glissa considered that one for a moment. “No,” she said. “Okay. We’ll try deception. It might work if I don’t stay too long. Just ask some questions and get out. I’ll need something to cover my ears. I can’t just tie a sword belt around my head.”
“Leave to me, huh?” said Slobad.
* * * * *
After the moons set, Slobad slipped into the town while Glissa and Bosh skirted around to the docks, heading for several large buildings near the ships Slobad said were used for storage. Glissa wandered around the storage shed. Several dismantled ships from the docks sat inside. Glissa didn’t know if they were being built, destroyed, or fixed. From their appearance, though, she could tell they weren’t vedalken. These ships were crude compared to the hover beasts she had fought. They looked more like something Slobad would build. The sides were hammered, and the connections were visible. The hover beasts had been sleek and self-contained.
Glissa climbed up on the deck of one of the ships. It was nothing more than leather hide stitched together and strapped across a metal-and-bone frame. Two large tubes of iron supported the leather deck. Glissa suspected these had been taken from the mountains. No wonder they don’t get along with the goblins, she thought. The humans have been stealing goblin metal.
She heard a noise and dropped to the deck, but it was just Slobad returning. The elf clambered down from the ship and took the bundle he handed her. She unwrapped the package to find a dark, hooded robe and matching blouse and boots.
“Where’d you get those?” she asked.
“Borrowed them, huh?” said the goblin, grinning.