Surely that breeze would circle the Seed of Freyalise.
Multani followed it. Through winding ways, it went. No longer did he track a trail of blood and tears but now a breath of hope.
He reached a wide cavern. The folk there not only breathed hope. They sang it. In fire circles they gathered, singing and speaking, eating and healing. The fires were impossible. There was no fuel, no ventilation. They burned even so. The food, also, was ludicrous-groppa wine, dried apples, braid bread, honey butter, arbor grapes, onion chives, and game hens. Some circles ate lesser fare, mere trail rations, and others feasted on eel and cheese and the board of kings. It was dream food. Still, it nourished them as surely as the fires gave them warmth and light. Those who believed health were healed. Those who made themselves glad were glad.
One man had taught them to dream beauties, and they had dreamed him into glory. He was just ahead, walking among the multitude. Eladamri's hands gently lingering in theirs and awoke health.
Multani approached. Even in the enthralled throng, a man made of roots and tendrils was a strange sight. The people parted before him.
Eladamri lifted his face to behold a man with cavecricket eyes.
Multani bowed, a wry smile on lips of white moss. "Greetings, Seed of Freyalise. I bring news from the forest."
The man's eyes were changed. He was no simple elf now. He was something more. Divine forces had conspired to make him a tool, and he had at last allowed himself to become one.
"Do not tell me here, amid the throng. I would not let your news resound needlessly through these Dream Caves."
He was wise. Word of atrocities above could awake atrocities below.
Multani said simply, "You will not escape this throng, and so-" he took Eladamri's hand. Through touch, he sent his thoughts.
The palace tree is destroyed, with all who remained above. This is despite the ceaseless labors of giant spiders to contain the contagion. So too, plague ravages the trade house of Kelfae and the port of Wellspree of the]ubilar. Throughout the forest, death is rampant.
Eladamri gazed bleakly at the tendril man. This is not news. We knew all above was destroyed by the bombs.
It is worse. The first ship has landed in the ruins of Staprion Palace. The smell of oil-blood pervades the ship and its crew. They descend within the palace tree, following the route that led you here. You must take a war party up to battle them.
Yes, answered Eladamri simply.
You are their savior now. You must save them.
And I was a warrior before. I will gladly fight these monsters.
* * * * *
Gerrard led Tahngarth, Sisay, and a party of warriors down the winding heart of the tree. In one hand, he clutched a lantern and the jar that held the last of Orim's serum. In the other, he clutched a sword. Death in one hand and life in the other.
Gerrard snorted, slashing a cobweb that draped the treacherous path. He paused, peering into the gloom below.
"Someone's down there." He lifted the lantern. Its light beamed against the splintery hollow of the tree, tracing out the spiral stairs.
It showed more webs, and dead elves hanging in them. "Someone's alive down there. I can sense it."
Tahngarth stared over his shoulder and lifted an eloquent eyebrow. "You can… sense it?"
"There's a presence. A power I can't quite describe."
The minotaur rumbled quietly. "Since when have you been a mystic?"
"I sense it too," Sisay said behind him. "A fey power."
Sheathing his sword, Gerrard cupped a hand to his mouth. "We come in peace. We come with serum to stop the plague."
A voice came from below, resonant like the voice of the wood itself. "Since when do Phyrexians come in peace?"
"We are not Phyrexians."
"You smell like Phyrexians."
"It is the plague treatment," Gerrard replied. "Its immunity is derived from Phyrexian blood. We have been treated. We have brought more for you."
The voice was dubious. "We have found our own cure, one that does not make us reek of Phyrexia."
"Your forest is cured? It does not seem so to me. Do you prefer the reek of rot and death to the reek of oil-blood?"
The voice was angry. "Who are you?"
"I am Commander Gerrard Capashen of Weatherlight, here with Captain Sisay and First-Mate Tahngarth."
A laugh answered. "Oh, yes, Gerrard-the Korvecdal."
"The Korvecdal?" Gerrard laughed as well. "No, I'm no Uniter, just an honest fighting man." He took a long breath. "How did you know?"
"I know because I am the true Korvecdal, the true Uniter."
Even as the stately figure ascended into the lantern's glow, Gerrard realized. "Eladamri of the Skyshroud! What are you doing here?"
"It's too long a tale," said the elf. A retinue of elf warriors came behind him. "Let it simply be put that you and I have traded places. Once you were thought the Uniter and I the common hero. Now, it is as it is. Let us trust that higher powers understand this chess match."
"I don't trust any powers but my sword arm and these friends."
"Which, again, is as it should be."
"And one of those friends devised this serum," he said, holding up the jar. "It has saved the crew of my ship. It can halt the plague among your people."
Eladamri's eyes seemed brighter than the lantern. "My people, just now, are safe from the plague. It is the forest that languishes."
"Then, give this serum to whatever druid or nature spirit might make use of it to heal the forest."
Suddenly, a figure took form between the two men. He was a green-man, made of splinters and vines. His eyes were a pair of seed pods, his teeth a row of mushrooms.
Other men might have shied back from the strange creature, but Gerrard himself had learned maro-sorcery from such a man.
"Master!" Gerrard said in sudden recognition. His knees buckled. His fingers went nerveless around the jar of serum. It slipped free, plunging toward the hollow of the tree.
Multani's viny arm shot out, snatching the jar from the air. "Thank you, Gerrard."
"I-I feared you… I feared you were dead," stammered Gerrard.
"I feared the same for you, many times over," Multani replied, lifting Gerrard to his feet. "It is good to know fears do not always prevail." He spread fibrous arms through the darkness. "Welcome, Gerrard and Weatherlight… Welcome to Llanowar."
Chapter 25
The Battle of Urborg
"Come away from Keld," Urza said, appearing suddenly out of nowhere.
Barrin did not even startle. He didn't care enough anymore to startle. He'd been crouching here beside the fjord, watching frigid water mound up with the rising tide. Foam stole tentatively across the sand bars and kissed the keels of Keldon longships. In less than an hour, the warships would stand in twenty feet of water. Then Barrin and his erstwhile foes, the Keldons-gray and massive and impatient on the docks- would ship together for more wars in Western Keld. "Come away from Keld," Urza repeated.
Barrin squinted up at him. "How dare you? You told me this battle was everything. You told me I'd just have to forget what these… what these beasts did to Rayne. So I did. I did just like you said. And now you so blithely call me away?"
Urza stared back, his eyes like twin candles. He stood on a black fist of basalt beside the fjord and seemed just another stony extrusion. Beneath woolen skies, his warrobes were dark except where snowflakes pasted themselves.
"This battle is no longer everything."
"Damn you, Urza," Barrin said bitterly.
Sea spray vaulted up behind the planeswalker. "It's the army, not the battle. That's why you had to forget about your wife. I needed this army. I need them for a better fight."
"What better fight?" Barrin asked wearily.
"Urborg."
Barrin barked a laugh. He couldn't have imagined a more ludicrous response. "Urborg? A cesspool of liches and ghosts and zombies, brimstone and malaria? Yes, oh, yes, that's a better fight."
"Urborg is key to the next phase of the Phyrexians' plan. They cannot be allowed to gain it."
Shaking his head dispiritedly, Barrin said, "Why not? Urborg deserves them. They'd probably be at home there."
"That's the reason, exactly. They would be at home," Urza replied evenly. "Koilos and Urborg. If Yawgmoth gains footholds there, he can straddle the world."
"All the better to punch him in the groin," Barrin growled. He flung a shard of basalt out to skip across the foaming flood.
"You sound angry, my friend," Urza said. He stepped down from the rock and approached. "These northern climes are wearing on you."
Barrin stood. He gazed at a gray wave that struck the pebble bank and sent rocks tumbling toward the shore.
"Benalia is lost. Zhalfir and Shiv are gone. Now Keld is falling too. I thought I could forget Rayne in war but not when war screams-'Loss! Loss! Loss!' "
The planeswalker shook his head. Icy wind tore at his ash-blond hair. "It is not all loss. Yavimaya has won. Llanowar has won-"
"Llanowar!"
"Yes. I understand that your daughter was instrumental in the victory."
"Hanna," Barrin breathed. He closed his eyes, imagining her bright smile. The face he saw, though, was that of Rayne. "I should go congratulate her."
A strange shadow passed across Urza's gemstone eyes. "Soon, my friend, but not yet. Urborg awaits us. I want you to convince the Keldons to sail to Urborg at best time and rendezvous with you there. Meanwhile, you'll be mustering the Serrans who survived the fall of Benalia. We will need their angel armies."
"Serrans and Keldons?" Barrin looked sick. "Strange alliances."
"Stranger and stranger," Urza agreed. "Dominaria will not be saved unless all Dominarians fight. I am arranging a great coalition among the many nations of the globe. Those who stand alone will fall. Those who unite will conquer."
Barrin stared appreciatively at his friend. "I never thought I'd hear Urza Planeswalker admit needing help from anyone."
Urza shrugged away the comment. "Of course, Lord Windgrace and his panther warriors will join us. I'll be bringing elf warriors from Yavimaya and helionauts from Tolaria-"
"Helionauts," Barrin interrupted. "Tolaria will be vulnerable without them."
"We all must make sacrifices," Urza said.
Barrin shrugged, staring across the rising tide. Already, two of the Keldon longships bobbed levelly on the flood. Up stout gangplanks marched Keldon warriors, crates loaded on their backs.
"All right. I'll do what you ask. The Keldons and Serrans will be there at best time. We'll fight your battle for you. We'll drive out the Phyrexians and leave the place to the liches."
"Good," Urza said simply as he began to disappear. "I'll look for you there."
* * * * *
Barrin flew in the midst of an angelic host. Their wings gleamed white above a pitching sea. Wind whistled from perfect pinions and set songs in the air.
This was how Serrans flew-enmeshed in music. It was why their attack squadrons were called choirs. Each creature knew her part. Each flew in precise pitch with the others. Like fish in a school, who sense the movement of the whole in pressure points along their sides, angels knew by harmonies and dissonances where they flew, how they fought, and whom they slew.
Barrin was at home among these inhuman glories. He rode ahead of them, aback a winged horse conjured from thin air. The creature seemed a thing of cloud-white and gleaming, halfway between solidity and mist. Still, it was powerful. Wings spread wide on the wind. With each surging stroke, the beast's neck bent. Its hooves churned the air as though it leaped steeples.
Of course, Barrin did not need a winged steed. He could fly with a mere thought, but he had been inspired by Teferi's phoenix flocks. There was something appealing about riding into battle on a creature of pure imagination. This horse would not tire. It would not bleed. It would not foam or spit or die-all the filthy things that true flesh had done over and over the last long weeks.
As glorious as the angel choir behind him, as magnificent as the ideal creature beneath him, Barrin could not keep his spirits from slumping. He was sick of war, sick to death of it. He didn't mind killing Phyrexians. He minded watching Phyrexians kill angels and Keldons, elves and Metathran and humans. He minded knowing that lives were mere chess pieces in a match between Urza and Yawgmoth.
Barrin was tired of being a pawn.
"There," he murmured, looking dead ahead. Though he was still a hundred miles out, a gazing enchantment brought every detail in crystalline clarity to his eyes.
Beyond the alabaster wings of his mount, Urborg loomed up out of the sea. It was a black and awful chain of islands. Dormant volcanoes hissed sulfuric steam into the air. Pestilential swamps stretched beneath forests of dead trees. The air waved with nauseous heat and rattled with a billion billion bugs. The only solid ground was muck. The only water was poisoned. The only living inhabitants were allies of, or slaves to, or prey for the unliving. Ghouls, liches, zombies, wraiths-necromantic horrors all.
That was the normal aspect of Urborg. Since Phyrexians had moved into the neighborhood, things had gone significantly downhill. Now, the skies teemed with dragon engines and undead serpents. Like devil rays, they drifted in lazy circles around the isles-guardians and watchdogs for the forces below. There were plenty of forces below. Three Phyrexian cruisers had landed. They sat atop long pylons sunk in the marshes. These were the command centers. Troop transports in their hundreds had also landed, off loading Phyrexians especially bred for swamp combat. The officers of these units rode small airship through the swamps, wedge-shaped chariots with batwing airfoils.
Despite Urza's best intentions, the Phyrexians already ruled Urborg. Now Barrin and his angels would fight demons for possession of hell.
More than Barrin and his angels…
He glimpsed eight huge rags of sail stretched on the wind. Keldon longships. They tore parallel lines through an angry sea. Reaching full out, they seemed to plan a ramming attack on the main isle itself. Knowing Keldons, it was a surety. They would drive their ships up as far as they would go, perhaps a thousand yards into the salt marshes, ram whatever Phyrexian landing craft they could find, clamber up on the decks, and kill, kill, kill.
Oh, yes, the Keldons would have a grand time today.
Above them, seeming almost their reflection in the sky, soared a squadron of airships-Tolarian helionauts. Each looked like a galleon, its fore and mid decks encased in a dome of glass and steel. From the center of the aft deck rose a mechanical arm topped in whirling blades. Defensive spines bristled at prow, gunwales, and stern. Three pulser guns pivoted fore and aft, but the true weapon of the ship was the whirling blades.
Those blades proved themselves now. Darting down with the speed of eagles, Tolarian helionauts swarmed the island.
Dragon engines rose to do battle. Skulls craned backward to belch flame. Mechanical claws raked out. Tails scourged the air. On leather wings, Phyrexian dragon engines leaped into the sky and bathed their foes in a river of fire.
The helionauts plunged into the blazing flood. Flames licked across polished metal. Fire left a blush of steam in windscreens. Tolarian pilots rubbed away the condensation and shot through the flame. Pulsers spat streams of disruption fire. The charges jagged across the sky to impact dragon engines. Blue energy sparked and danced across their metal frames. It held them in a paralyzing grip, just long enough for the blades to come to bear.
With spinning scythes, helionauts sliced through dragon engines. Wings were sheered from the beasts. Heads chopped free. Even ribs ground to shards and dust. Hunks of dragon engine fell from the air.
It was not as easy as that, though. From a volcanic vent below, more dragon engines arrived like shooting steam. These were larger beasts. The others had been only keeneyed sentries. These dragon engines were decked for war. They jetted into the sky straight beneath the helionauts. Wings surged once last and folded beneath wicked shoulders. Dragons rammed helionaut
hulls.
Planished metal buckled. Joints failed. Great holes gouged in the sides of the ships. Out spilled crews and ruined mechanisms. One craft was struck so hard it bounced upward and chewed the belly out of another. They both plunged from the sky. A third helionaut began spinning drunkenly beneath its whirling scythes. It veered like a gyro and dropped, destroying a dragon engine on its way to ground.
The remaining helionauts filled the air with pulser blasts. Charges chased dragon engines through the sky. Power lay hold of them, paralyzed for a moment. Before the ships could tear them apart, though, other dragon engines attacked. Helionauts hailed down.
Barrin suddenly regretted the gazing enchantment. What was the good of seeing a battle that was still miles away?
Then everything changed. Dragon engines tore each other apart.
Barrin blinked, wondering what he saw. Suddenly, he knew.
Down upon the Phyrexian dragon engines soared real dragons- Rhammidarigaaz and his dragon nations. The ancient Shivan wyrm led four other dragon lords, one for each of the colors of magic. They flew wing and wing, onetime foes turned stolid allies. In the wake of these five great dragons flew whole serpentine nations. They poured from the sky as the Phyrexians had geysered from the ground.
Darigaaz flew in the vanguard. Fireballs rolled from his claws and baked dragon engines. Lava spouted from his throat and melted them in midair. To his one side flew the green dragon lord, trailing spores. They clumped onto Phyrexian engines and grew rampantly, cracking their joints. The white lord of dragons followed. It only flew, its pure wings cleaving through Phyrexians like light through nightmares. The blue dragon lord meanwhile sent spells out to rip the air from under scabrous wings. The black dragon and his folk, though, were fiercest of all. They smashed atop their evil brethren and ripped them apart with bare claws. Hunks of dragon engine fell to crash spectacularly in the swamps.
More things crashed in the swamps. Keldon longships- dagger-like with their mainsails reefed and outriggers cut loose-glided with surreal speed through the salt marshes. Rams split dead trees in their path. Keldon great swords clove Phyrexian troopers clawing to board. Arrows poured out from the decks, from this distance seeming ripples spreading from the prow.
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