The Fifth Dawn (11 page)

Malil pressed the severed end of his hand into his wrist and whisper a few strange phrases that reminded her of the lilting tongue she’d heard among the spires of Lumengrid. Then a bluish-green glow wrapped around his wrist like a bandage for a few seconds, and dissipated just as quickly. When the spell was done, Malil’s hand appeared as good as new.

Glissa knew she was on the verge of passing out, and as soon as she lost enough blood, she would never wake up again. She dragged herself with one hand to Malil’s feet. She tried to raise a hand to grab his shin, but the metal man simply stepped back, depriving her of even that last defiant act.

“She is fading, Orland,” Malil called over his shoulder. “Be a good minion and bandage her up, won’t you?”

Glissa blinked, trying to stay awake. She pushed her fist hard into her gut, amplifying her pain but also her determination to be ready for this Orland when he came for her. She wasn’t going down without a fight, and she wasn’t going to be Memnarch’s tool. It would be better to die here than see the so-called “Guardian” take her spark and use it to spread his madness at will.

Glissa gasped as Orland rose into view at the lip of the lacuna. First, she saw the toe of a black, shiny boot. Then the vedalken swung his bulk over the edge, not unlike a door on a hinge, and he stood towering in front of her. “Vision going fast,” she muttered. “No vedalken’s that big.”

The only answer Glissa got was two vise-like hands that clamped around her shoulders. She couldn’t hold back an anguished scream as the giant vedalken jerked her to her feet. She felt warmth spread over her belly as her fist slipped from her open wound and blood began flowing freely again.

Orland didn’t say a word, but held Glissa firmly in his upper set of hands. She felt the vedalken’s second, lower set of palms press firmly against the entry and exit wounds. Without warning, something flat slithered around her abdomen, binding her wound but not so tightly that the pain made her pass out. She gazed down at her belly and saw wide, silvery cloth encasing her torso. A few spots of blood peppered the cloth, but the bandages seemed to have slowed considerably, if not stopped, the hemorrhaging. The cloth glowed with a faint blue corona.

Glissa’s head rolled back, and she stared up at Orland. The helmet that encased the vedalken’s head looked more martial than before, and a lot bigger. Slobad would have been able to tuck himself completely inside one of the helmets with ease. As her head bobbed like a child’s toy, she mumbled, “Don’t you get dizzy up there?”

The helmet cocked to one side.

No.

What the—? Unlike the voice that had taunted her while they were in the Tangle, this one was cold, mechanical, but without a hint of deception to it. Had the word come from the vedalken?

Yes.

You can hear my thoughts
, Glissa projected, still fighting the haze in her brain that threatened to consume her.

Obviously.
With that, Orland released his grip on her shoulder, and Glissa dropped to the floor like a rag doll, sending new lances of pain jabbing through her gut. The towering vedalken was already heading back out of the lacuna and into the interior.

“Better?” Malil asked innocuously, and kicked her in the side. Glissa moaned pitiably and rolled onto her stomach, hacking up clots of blood. She needed real medical attention soon, or she really was going to die. Now that she’d seen the giant vedalken, the prospect no longer seemed such a favorable option. What good would it be to stop Memnarch’s ascension through her own death, if it meant everyone on Mirrodin faced enslavement at the hands of magically mutated vedalken?

“Yes, I thought so,” Malil said, and reached down to grab Glissa’s ankle.

The elf girl put everything she had left into the kick. Her boot caught Malil squarely in the jaw. The metal man was thrown backward and tumbled over the edge of the lacuna, and disappeared.

Glissa winced and coughed as she struggled to her feet and gave chase. She tripped over her own feet when she reached the edge, and felt a fresh wave of nausea as gravity turned sideways again.

The silent vedalken assembly stood waiting. One who she thought was Orland—she hadn’t gotten a good look at him, and frankly they all looked alike to her—broke from the ring of menacing four-armed beings and lunged at Glissa. The elf girl dropped to a crouch when the vedalken was on top of her then came up leading with one shoulder and caught her attacker where his abdomen should be, using Orland’s increased weight against him. The vedalken still didn’t make a sound as he tumbled into the open lacuna.

“It’s a little pointy about halfway down!” she shouted over her shoulder. She didn’t know if it was the healing properties of the bandages, or simple adrenaline, but Glissa felt reinvigorated. She clenched one hand into a fist and extended the other palm upward in invitation. “Anyone else?”

She was met with silence, both inside and outside her head. The milky fluid that filled the helmet of the nearest warrior obscured any hint of emotion or intent. If she had to read anything in their behavior, it would have been confusion. They seemed uncertain.

“Glissaaaaaa!” a familiar voice screamed from directly above. “Heeeelp!”

Glissa searched the dazzling sky above and spotted Slobad and his captor, another huge vedalken. The pair were lazily floating upward toward the center of what looked like a patched-together Panopticon.

“Flare,” she swore, and turned back to the looming vedalken, several of which were closing in slowly, obviously wary of being tossed into the pit behind Glissa. “Sorry boys, no time to play.”
Hoping they were as slow as they looked, Glissa charged between two of the towering beings.

Malil finally emerged from the lacuna behind her, and bellowed, “After her!”

Glissa wasn’t sure exactly where she was going. She couldn’t fly—not without help—and even if she could somehow bring Slobad down safely, the goblin would be in even more danger once he hit the ground. She hopped and danced around dozens of small, skittering artifact creatures that had not been here the last time. Why did Memnarch need millions of diminutive constructs? Why now?

The elf girl ducked as a heavy, three-fingered hand swiped overhead. The vedalken were right on her tail. She skidded around the wide base of a mycosynth spire and almost collided head-on with a wall of iron.

No, not a wall … a leg. Her eyes ran up the length of the flat black tower, one of four holding up the massive black ring overhead.

“Oof!” Glissa grunted as a fist connected with the small of her back, where Malil’s blade had skewered her, and she slammed face first into the massive support strut holding up one quarter of the rebuilt Panopticon. Despite the blinding pain, it was exactly where she wanted to be. She dug into the iron surface with the claws at the end of each hand, gaining solid purchase, then kicked back like an angry pack animal. She felt a satisfying crash as one foot shattered a vedalken faceplate. She scrambled hand over hand up the side of the mammoth black support strut.

Every time Glissa pulled herself up another few feet, agony pierced her abdomen, but she kept going, ignoring it. She ignored the warm blood that once again flowed from her wounds, and the greenish copper stains that seeped into her bandages. She ignored
the ominous hum of vedalken machinery kicking into gear far below, and growing closer by the second.

She craned her neck and caught sight of Slobad and his vedalken captor once again. They were hard to make out against the dazzling energy output of the core, but they were the only things moving up there. She involuntarily groaned and dug in her claws to continue her ascent when a wide shadow fell over Glissa. Keeping one set of talons firmly embedded in the metal, she slowly turned out, one hand in a fist, to see what she could see.

Malil stood before her astride one of the many varieties of vedalken hovercraft with which Glissa had grown far too familiar over the last few weeks. His arms were crossed, and his cold metal features twisted into a smile. The effort to show amusement looked ridiculously awkward on the metal man, but maybe he just hadn’t had much practice, Glissa thought deliriously. She was fading fast, again. What little blood she’d had left drained into the soaked bandages around her torso. Her grip was slipping.

“Tell Memnarch … he can find his spark somewhere else,” she said, and squinted up at the tiny dot that even now moved through the ring above and disappeared against the bright light of Mother’s Heart. “Sorry, Slobad,” she whispered and let go.

“Please, my Kha, you must hold still,” the healer insisted, “I cannot set the bandages if you keep moving. Now please, just breath as steadily as you can, and be patient. Be
my
patient, and behave.”

“Only a healer would speak with such impudence,” Raksha Golden Cub snarled with a deep growl, and involuntarily sneezed. Glittering green flies buzzed about the tent, causing metallic dust to swirl in the candlelight. The sounds of battle on the plains, no more than half a mile distant, failed to penetrate the enchantments that helped maintained a calm, quiet atmosphere. Though a fighter born and bred, the leonin Kha of Taj Nar was glad for the brief respite from the howling din of war.

Of course, at the moment that respite made him Shonahn’s only patient, and his childhood nursemaid felt free to speak her mind—at least, now that the two of them were alone. Shonahn’s unusual familiarity would be a gross breach of custom, and a disrespect technically worthy of execution according to ancient law.

Still, he could no more blame Shonahn than he could ever bring himself to punish her for being honest with him. He had almost gotten himself killed.

“If we—ow—if I could … breathe steadi … ly, I wouldn’t be—” Raksha wheezed.

“Hush.” The older female placed a paw over the end of the
Golden Cub’s mouth. “Only a Kha would give his healer such grief. How long have I looked after his every cut and scrape? Some thirty years?”

“Yes,” Raksha managed. “Could you just—?”

“Haven’t I always managed to put you back together after these adventures? Remember that time you tried to grow night-blooming razor grass under your bed?” Shonahn’s light brown muzzle split into a grin that exposed only the tips of her eyeteeth. “I must have been pulling blades from your haunches for a day and a half,” she said, wrapping the last length of silver gauze around the bound wounds that cut across Raksha’s chest. The healer closed her golden eyes and purred a soft incantation, and the leonin Kha felt the bandages fixing firmly around his torso. The sharpest of the pain began to ebb away, leeching into the enchanted wrappings. He drew a breath and felt only a tingling where before the pain had been like a thousand razor cuts. The material didn’t just help with the pain, it also expanded with his diaphragm as he breathed, and remained fast against his hide, even as he slipped off the side of the bed and straightened to his full imposing height.

“The nim’s claws have proven to be quite resistant to our healing magic, my Kha,” Shonahn said, flashing teeth in an expression of frustration, “That’s why I had to rely on those stitches, by the way, and the bandages. They’re of Lumengrid manufacture, I found them on my travels. I ordered several lots for distribution to the healer’s corps while I was there. Come to think about it, they’re late. But what do you think? They work, do they not?”

“We did not need stitches … or vedalken trickery … to heal—”

“Yes, you did,” the healer interrupted, “And you must listen for a change, my Kha, to your elder. Grant me that courtesy.”

Raksha nodded.

“You were unconscious when they brought you in from the battlefield. Every binding spell I attempted simply flashed into nothing. You were bleeding to death. The nim have some enchantment—something—that I can’t counter.” She turned and busied herself with putting away her medicines. “The bandages are a stopgap measure, and will let your body heal the wound on its own. I despised turning to the slavemongers for aid, but our losses … many more warriors will die without this ‘vedalken trickery.’” She bowed her head. “My Kha, I must be blunt.”

“You usually are.”

Shonahn nodded in respect. “You must let Yshkar take command of the troops. You know he desires command, even if he won’t tell you directly.” Shonahn left her medical kit and placed a hand gently on Raksha’s shoulder. “And our people cannot afford to lose you. The bandages can only do so much.”

He thanked the gods once more that the old nurse had survived so many campaigns at his side. Her counsel, even when he didn’t agree with it, always prompted him to find a better solution on his own. The Kha doubted he’d be the leader he was if not for Shonahn, and her recent return from journeys abroad had been welcome. Though ostensibly a sabbatical, the wise old leonin had acted as an ambassador with some scattered tribes, forming trade pacts with other humans, goblins, and others that had never met a leonin before.

Still, some of her more outlandish claims were best taken with a grain of salt. In her later years, Shonahn had developed a habit of embellishing her stories for effect. Or maybe he’d just started noticing. She claimed to have seen, for example, a pit in the Oxidda Mountains that went all the way to the center of the world.