“If we float down how do we know there are passages like this one branching off from the stem?” It was Elspeth who spoke.
“We don’t,” Venser said. “But it would stand to reason that …”
“This is foolishness,” Koth said.
“I agree,” said Elspeth. “We could fall forever.”
“This branch is here,” Venser said. “We saw others branching off from the column. There must be other branches.”
“But we have no reason to believe that they are hollow,” Koth said.
Venser took off his helmet. “Have you ever read the Chronicles of Arrival? It has some good thoughts on the uncertainness of life. One of its revelations is this: ‘No one has promised us a tomorrow.’ ”
Koth pushed his chest out. “Are you accusing me of cravenness?”
“Not at all,” Venser said. “I’m accusing you of bad logic … and that’s worse.”
“I’ll give you logic,” Koth said. A large flame leaped from his right fist. Venser was near the edge of the huge shaft. Koth reached out with his huge flaming hand and tried to seize Venser’s shoulder. The artificer whispered a word and appeared with a sudden strobe of light behind Koth. With one finger Venser pushed the geomancer, who tripped forward and fell headfirst over the edge of the shaft. As he fell his whole body sputtered and burst into flame and the slits along his ribs yawned wide and red. But Koth did not fall far before his body seemed to stop in midair. Then he began to fall as slowly as a leaf falling from a tree in fall. His breeches bagged up as he executed a flip.
“This is amazing,” Koth yelled.
Elspeth looked back along the tube they had just traveled. “Hush, dolt,” she said.
Venser turned to her. “You are next, my lady,” Venser said. He slipped his helmet back on and smiled at her. A strange sight, Elspeth thought. A man in a helmet smiling at her. Men in helmets were usually trying to kill her. “I do not think this is wise,” she said, stepping to the edge. She undid the buckle holding her sword around her waist. Then she slipped the belt over her shoulder and fastened the buckle again. She stepped to the edge and then back again.
“I am not overly fond of heights,” she said.
“I can’t tell,” Venser said.
Koth did another flip and giggled.
“I think the problem here will not be falling too fast,” Venser said. “But rather too slowly. We have to get to Karn before the Phyrexians control the whole plane. It might be too late by that point.”
Elspeth closed her eyes and stepped off … and floated. Venser followed her. Without a sound the guide followed.
Elspeth floated lazily downward, with her white tunic billowing around her. It felt wonderful and she did not ever want to stop. If there are other columns will they also have this feature?
“I don’t know,” Venser said.
Elspeth stared at Venser. “Did you just listen to the thoughts in my head?”
“Of course not,” Venser said.
They floated slowly downward for very long. Soon they were tired of floating and lay motionless in the air. Venser watched as cavelike openings passed in the blue light of his wisps.
“How far will we go?” Koth said.
“Do you have a suggestion?”
Koth shrugged and floated away.
Chapter 15
Venser might have fallen asleep. Sometimes he heard strange sounds, and once even music, hypnotic and repeating. At another point it was screams-hundreds of beings screaming all at one time. Still they floated. Elspeth woke, fell asleep, and woke again. Cave openings passed in the blue shadows. At one, Koth insisted that they leave the shaft, and using his hands he brought himself close to the cave mouth. But after seeing something in the cave he became very quiet and did not mention leaving again.
It was hard to know how deep they were in Mirrodin. Venser had stopped caring. Eventually the guide floated up next to Venser and pointed. “It will have to be there,” he said.
Koth paddled up beside him, as did Elspeth. A cave was passing, dark and small. No more than a tube hole.
“Why that one?”
“We are as deep as we should go,” Venser said.
“I for one am ready to leave this place,” Elspeth said. “It feels as death might. This is a sensation I am not overly interested in.”
Koth grunted. “I agree with the white one.”
“Yes,” Venser said. “Death no, squeezing down this tube, yes.”
Venser paddled to the hole. It took longer than he had thought it would, and by the time he was near his arms were tired. The side of the shaft moved past faster than he’d expected.
“Are you all ready?” Venser said. “The side here is moving fast. We’ll have to not miss the hole or I don’t know how you’ll follow. Who wants to go first?”
“I will,” Elspeth said. “I have no fear of this hole … as long as it leads me to more Phyrexians to slaughter.” She stroked closer to the wall of the shaft, which really was moving past at a fairly quick clip. Koth stroked over so he was above Elspeth, and touching the wall as he slipped downward. Venser aligned behind them both.
Elspeth caught the hole’s rim and amidst her clattering armor, she thrust into it as deep as her mid-section. She struggled for a moment as the current of the shaft caught her legs and pulled them downward. Then she was wriggling through with only her feet extending out of the hole. Then her feet were gone.
Koth did not have quite so easy a time. He could not dive as deeply into the hole. And for a desperate couple of moments, he was grasping the inside of the tube while his waist and lower body dangled out and were pulled down. The geomancer heated his hands until his fingers sunk into the wall of the tube as though it were warm butter. With a good handhold, he was able to haul himself up and into the hole. The metal walls of the hole were still hot as Venser threaded into it. He burned the palm of his right hand and cursed under his breath as he scraped his right knee on one of the five rough divots Koth’s fingers had made in the cooling metal.
The tube they found themselves in was very tight indeed. Koth had to fight a growing impulse to push outward. There was no light and any attempt at light, Venser knew, would only illuminate the area between each of them and not pass ahead. So they crawled. The tube seemed to stay fairly level and the crawling was not especially difficult. Then they started to slide a bit. At first nobody was sure if they were sliding down or up. Venser concluded that the tube was angling downward, but he could not really tell.
They turned a tight corner and Venser heard a whoosh and Koth was no longer crawling in front of him. Venser carefully crawled forward and felt a pull and then he was yanked by Koth’s suction … traveling suddenly fast enough to feel the slight imperfections of the tube banging into his elbows and knees.
It continued, the downward slide, until suddenly they shot out of the slide and into the air. Venser knew only that there was darkness one moment and light the next, coupled with the feeling of falling. He was able to see the floor for one split second before the plummet. He breathed the mana stream extending from his head into him and a moment later he felt the familiar explosion in his skull and teleported, appearing in a squat on the level floor.
Koth, Elspeth, and the guide did not have as easy a time. The white warrior executed a flip and went skittering across the shiny floor on her rump. Koth tucked his shoulder and hit the ground with the tremendous clatter of metal on metal. He left a long scrape in the floor.
“That could have gone better,” Koth said, testing the rotation of his shoulder in its joint as he stood.
The guide stood and bent his neck side to side.
Elspeth was sitting on the floor, legs splayed. She was staring at the room they had jettisoned into. Other tubes met in the room and at the far end others left in the same way. But in the middle was another huge room. The metal walls, roof, and floor were shiny. The light came in organic patches that clung in irregular shapes to the walls.