The Fifth Dawn

by Cory Herndon

  “Er, of course, my Kha,” Jethrar stammered.

  “The prohibition against giving weapons to field commanders arose long ago, before Great Dakan united the tribes of leonin,” Raksha said.

  “Yes, my Kha.”

  “Be quiet and listen. It started as a competition among the strongest fighters of tribes at war, who led those tribes. Our people knew the futility of waging all-out war against their own kind even before Dakan, and these leaders, these champions, settled disputes between tribes one-on-one. It saved a lot of lives.”

  “Yes, I imagine so, my Kha.”

  “Any leonin champion who accepted help from anyone in such a contest was disgraced. The fight would end immediately, and the rulebreaker would forfeit. But not only did he lose the fight, he dishonored his tribe. The only way to redeem themselves was to tear their own champion apart with their bared claws,” Raksha said. “It was a fine system. Do you understand why we tell you all this, Jethrar?”

  “To, er … educate me, my Kha?”

  “Yes …”

  “In the history of our people?”

  “Not exactly,” the Kha said, smiling. “We tell you this for two reasons: First, you must realize that some of our proud traditions have a reason very different from what you have been taught.”

  “And the second, my Kha?” Jethrar asked nervously.

  “Traditions are made to be broken,” Raksha said. “Yshkar adheres rigidly to our traditions, but if you ever see him surrounded by nim without a weapon in sight, toss him a scimitar.”

  “Thank you, my Kha,” Jethrar said. “What should I do after delivering your message, my Kha?”

  “Well, sticking that dagger into the nearest nim would be a good start,” Raksha replied. “Point the sharp end away from you.”

  “Yes sir!” Jethrar said, eyes flashing, and he turned to leave. He opened the tent flap and promptly collided with a blonde human female clad in silver and aquamarine robes. Her skin bore a metallic tinge of cerulean, and she carried an air of authority. The strange human stepped calmly into the tent as if it were her own.

  Raksha, stunned by the intrusion but not yet feeling threatened, placed a hand on his sword hilt. “Who dares enter the our presence? How did you gain entry to our camp? Are you a friend, or an enemy?” he asked.

  “A friend of a friend,” the human woman said. “I am Bruenna, I have traveled here by magical means. Glissa needs your help.”

  Raksha had not expected to hear that name again soon. Glissa had left Taj Nar a friend of the leonin, but he could not help but blame her in part for Rishan’s death. Still, the elf was courageous, and the Kha did not give his friendship lightly or retract it without an honorable reason.

  “First, tell us how you got here,” Raksha said. “Then we shall hear what you have to say.”

  “Magic. I used a teleportation spell,” the woman explained. “Your perimeter is secure, I assure you. I regret I don’t have time to greet you with the protocol due a regent of your stature, Raksha Golden Cub, Kha of Taj Nar. But my business is of the utmost—”

  With a roar, Jethrar leaped to his feet and stepped between Raksha and the newcomers, battle-scythe at the ready. “You will leave at once!” the guard bellowed. “The Kha’s presence is invio—”

  The robed woman raised a hand and traced an ornate pattern in the air. Jethrar froze in mid-sentence. Raksha opened his mouth to ask what the mage had done to his guard, when he saw that Shonahn, too, was completely still. In fact, neither she nor Jethrar appeared to be breathing. Only the human moved as she calmly advanced on the Kha.

  Raksha’s sword was in his hand in a flash, causing the robed woman to stop short. “What did you do?” he demanded.

  “Stopped time, briefly,” the mage explained. “Forgive me, but I must speak to you without interruptions.”

  “You claim to know Glissa? Why should we believe you, wizard? Why should we not cut you down where you stand?” Raksha snarled, brandishing his sword menacingly.

  The human woman stood her ground. “Bring her in,” she called over her shoulder, and the tent flap parted to reveal a young elf girl wearing a patch over one eye and an ornate slagwurm breastplate carved with intricate runes. In her arms she held a still, familiar form. The girl’s resemblance to the unconscious woman she held was unmistakeable. Sisters, Raksha guessed.

  “Glissa,” the Kha whispered. “What happened to your eye?”

  “This is Lyese, Tel-Jilad Chosen and Glissa’s sister,” Bruenna said, and raised her hands, palms upward. “The unconscious one is Glissa. I was able to magically retrieve her from … a perilous situation. But I am no healer. I got her out, but I don’t know if I can keep her alive.”

  Raksha sighed, and sheathed his weapon. “Very well. But you shall have to let time commence, human. The finest healer in the Glimmervoid is standing right over there, but she can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

  FAMILY MATTERS

  “Slobad!” Glissa cried, sitting bolt upright on the cot. She couldn’t see a thing, and for a moment she thought she was back in the Prison Tree. Then sensation returned in a rush, and the elf girl gasped. Someone was pressing a cool, damp cloth against her forehead, which was why she couldn’t see.

  “There, there,” a soft, purring voice whispered in her ear. The accent and dialect were leonin, and probably female, though it was difficult to be sure. Glissa felt a warm feeling of safety wash over her being as the voice began a soothing chant, and the elf girl relaxed a bit.

  “Where am I?” she asked.

  “The private quarters of the Kha,” a deep, familiar voice rumbled. The chanting leonin lifted the cool cloth from her eyes. Glissa sat on a cot made of soft djeeruk leather inside a cavernous room—no, a tent, she corrected herself when she saw one “wall” wafting in the wind. Four small firetubes lit the room, dimly illuminating three figures that jumped from their seats at a table not far away and dashed to her side. Raksha Golden Cub, wearing fresh bandages like the one around Glissa’s own wound, moved slowest of the trio, or perhaps that was his regal demeanor in action—a king. A king does not arrive anywhere first.

  Bruenna wore a look of relief, and Lyese, Glissa was somewhat relieved to see, had a grin a mile wide. Her sister’s attitude seemed to have improved since she last saw her.

  “How did I get here?” Glissa asked.

  “The connection between siblings allows many forms of magic to work over long dista—” Bruenna began but was cut off by Lyese.

  “Glissa!” gasped her sister, and she launched into a rapidfire recount of the events that had brought them all back together. “It was me! We were almost here—we had to walk after a while, Bruenna needed to regain her strength, I guess. When you were in trouble, I heard you, or felt you, or something. It’s hard to explain. Then Bruenna used me finding you to find where to focus her magic, and then she cast this teleportation thing that made all my hair stand up on end, and there you were!”

  Lyese sounded very much like the excitable youth Glissa had left behind only weeks ago. She a hand tentatively on Glissa’s shoulder. “Glissa, I’m so glad you’re okay. I’m sorry I blamed you for—I’m just sorry. It wasn’t your fault. None of it is.” Glissa gaped. Lyese hadn’t just had a change of heart, she’d had some kind of magical epiphany.

  “Among the Neurok, close family can often feel each other’s strong emotions over long distances,” Bruenna offered. “Perhaps you experienced something similar, Lyese.”

  The chanting leonin healer standing nearby had obviously not gotten to her abdominal wound yet. Glissa held her sister’s hand for a few seconds then gently pushed her away.

  “Lyese,” Glissa said, clutching her temple in one clawed hand and unable to disguise the irritation she suddenly felt welling up. A brand new headache that had set up shop in her temple didn’t help matters. “You were supposed to come straight here. What were you thinking?”

  Lyese looked as if she’d been slapped in the face.

  “I can�
��t believe you. All right, next time, I’ll just let you die,” Lyese said. “Follow your example. Won’t even try to help somebody who’s shouting in my brain.”

  Okay, maybe Glissa had misplayed this. She clenched her fists and rose from the cot, feeling her own temper rising as her health returned. “Do you really want to do this now?” Glissa asked, taking a slow step toward her sister, and before her brain thought better of it, added, “I thought we were past this. Just grow up, will you?”

  “Way ahead of you,” Lyese said bitterly. She flipped up her eyepatch, revealing an empty red pit. Glissa involuntarily gasped. “Take a good long look, sister. I grew up fast.”

  “The healer—maybe she can help,” Glissa said.

  “She tried,” Lyese said. “Nothing works. Magic cauterization or something.”

  “I spoke out of line. I’m sorry,” Glissa began. “Sorry for everything. Everything that’s happened, and my part in it. If that makes you hate me even more, fine. And I’m grateful you saved me. That was…incredibly brave. I was scared, and I had given up hope. Thank you.”

  Lyese eyed Glissa incredulously. “I—you’re welcome,” she said at last.

  “It was still dangerous,” Glissa added.

  “That didn’t scare me,” Lyese said.

  “No, but it should,” Glissa said. “We’re all we’ve got left, Lyese. You and me. And our friends,” she added, indicating the others in the tent. “But please, just promise me something.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t play games with your life again. Even to save me,” Glissa said.

  “I can’t do that, Glissa,” Lyese said. “And I don’t … I don’t hate you.”

  “I know,” Glissa said. “And I know you’re probably not going to listen to me. But I had to ask.”

  Lyese’s look flashed to concern. “Slobad! What happened to him?”

  “Slobad? What has become of our old friend?” Raksha interrupted, his ears pinned against his skull in a display of alarm that surprised Glissa, who had been under the impression the Kha thought of Slobad as little more than an ex-slave with keen mechanical talents. The leonin spun Lyese around by the shoulders none too gently. “Speak, elfling!”

  “Easy, your Kha-ness,” Glissa said, placing a hand on the leonin’s chest and shoving him back. Raksha was so surprised he only looked from her hand to his chest and back. “Haven’t you been listening? Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  “Strange things are indeed afoot, my Kha,” Bruenna said. “We must all remain more open-minded.”

  “You shoved me,” Raksha said.

  “She doesn’t know what happened to Slobad,” Glissa said, “So back down.”

  “You shoved me,” the Kha repeated.

  “Raksha, you can execute me later. When this is all over, you can bring me up in front of Great Dakan himself and have my entrails read for prophecies. But right now, just … lay off my sister. You’re asking the wrong elf.”

  Raksha’s ears twitched, but he muttered, “Certainly.”

  “Okay. One of the vedalken took Slobad,” Glissa said.

  “Took him? Why not just kill him?” Raksha asked.

  “Because as it turns out, I’m not the only one Memnarch was after,” Glissa said.

  Battered, cut, and bruised, Glissa stalked the floor in the dim candlelight that glittered around the silver tent. She reminded Raksha of a skyhunter. Indeed, she’d taken to the pterons readily enough when he first met the Viridian elf, though she still needed work on landings. Perhaps there would be a place for her at Taj Nar, if what she wanted him to believe was true.

  It didn’t take long for Glissa to get through the rest of her tale—how she and Slobad had fared after leaving Taj Nar. Raksha was stunned. An entire world beneath his feet; a madman at the center of it all. The Kha had always considered himself well-traveled. Indeed, the historians assured him he had ranged wider and farther in his conquests and exploration than any Kha for a thousand years. Yet it seemed there was much about Mirrodin that he had never reckoned. He wondered bitterly how much of this truth Glissa now related to him had been kept back by Ushanti over the years. He and his seer would be having a long talk when he returned to Taj Nar.

  If he returned to Taj Nar. Glissa’s story of her travails with Memnarch, from the Guardian’s plan to ascend to godhood to the knowledge that nothing on Mirrodin was native to the metallic plane had dashed most of the beliefs Raksha had ever held sacred. For the first time in decades, the Golden Cub began to doubt that the nim were the worst things fate had to throw at him.

  They were the only two still awake—the Kha had dispatched a battered but still confident Jethrar to retrieve Yshkar from the front lines and left Shonahn to treat another wave of wounded. Bruenna and Lyese were both asleep on the far side of his spacious quarters. The pair needed the rest, and with a full company of Raksha’s personal guard standing watch outside, they finally felt safe to do so. The Kha could still clearly hear fighting far off on the razor plains.

  “Shonahn knows far more than we do on the subject,” Raksha said, “But my people also have legends of a world inside the world. Dakan called it Tav Rakshan.”

  “Tav Rakshan?” Glissa asked, arching one slim green eyebrow.

  “Rakshan means Hall of the Eternal Sun.”

  “So your name is really ‘Eternal Sun Golden Cub?’ “Glissa asked.

  “Raksha is a family name. It’s literally ‘Lord of the Eternal Sun Golden Cub,’ if you must know. That is beside the point, however.”

  “I wonder what elves would remember if we could?” Glissa thought out loud.

  “The generational memory cleansing. You told us of this. It strikes us as rather unwise,” Raksha said. “But these troll-creatures had actual written records?”

  “No, I said they used to. Chunth erased them so I—so we, the elves, wouldn’t know the truth,” Glissa said.

  “You described this Chunth as an ally who fell bravely in battle,” Raksha protested. “Why did he hide the truth from you?”

  “I guess he never thought someone like me would come along,” Glissa said. “By the time Chunth figured out the role Memnarch wanted me to play in his scenario, all he had time to do was save me.”

  They sat silently for a moment. Glissa idly twirled a strand of rope of her black-emerald hair at the end of a claw, and seemed to become intimately intrigued with the fine decorative patterns that ringed the lightweight folding table. Raksha smoothed his whiskers with one paw and coughed.

  “This lacuna…it is still there? In the Tangle?” Raksha asked and rose from his chair.

  “It’s there all right.” Glissa nodded.

  “That explains the new sun—”

  “Moon.”

  “—the new sun,” Raksha continued with mild irritation, “It’s not an omen, or a sign.”

  “No,” Glissa said, “It was an eruption. I suppose you could call it part of the natural process of things. The core just couldn’t stay out of balance like that.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “The lacuna, and the new moon—”

  “Sun.”

  “—the big green ball in the sky are just raw energy, like the core. It’s pure mana, and it doesn’t have a conscience. But that power, in the hands of Memnarch—that could have been the end, right there. That’s your bad omen … or a warning.”

  Raksha returned with two mugs of steaming oil that smelled somewhat like well-aged nush and offered one to Glissa. “Thanks,” she said, and took the heavy iron container in both hands, balancing it on her knees.

  Raksha remained on his feet as habit took over and he paced the interior of his tent. “Why didn’t the explosion kill this Memnarch as well?”

  “I don’t know,” Glissa said. “Protective magic? A big mirror? Dumb luck? My bad luck? How isn’t important right now, but we’ll find out. Still, at the time Slobad and I thought it had killed him. The blast flattened a few square miles of the Tangle. It killed hundreds, maybe thousands of creatures from what I could
see. It did this to my hair. And the elves…” She took a deep breath, and her voice became cold. “Yulyn mentioned that dozens of elves disappeared when it happened. No elves have ever lived close to the Radix, but anyone who was in the Tangle when the lacuna blew open must be dead. It’s the only explanation.”

  “But also dead are those armies of artifacts,” Raksha said. “You destroyed them. Had we not already witnessed this power of yours firsthand, we would doubt your claim.”

  “The inside was crawling with them, though. Some kinds I’d never seen. Some looked like normal animals, but entirely metal. I don’t know how he’s making them, or even if he’s making them, but it looked like he had plenty of company down there. And yes, I do seem to have some kind of ability, but it doesn’t always work. It drains me.”

  “What do you think might have happened to the goblin?” Raksha asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Glissa said, settling into a soft folding chair in Raksha’s tent. “He’s going to use Slobad to manipulate me. The little guy’s a hostage. And damn it, it’s working. I’m feeling pretty manipulated, but I’m still going to save him, Raksha.”

  “We do not doubt it, Glissa,” Raksha replied.

  The Kha was glad for this time to speak alone with Glissa. Among all these strange visitors who of late kept turning his well-ordered, albeit violent, world upside down, he trusted her the most. What’s more, he liked her, for an elf. The two of them were bound by a common enemy that had singled out each of them for death—he too had been attacked by Memnarch’s machines the night Glissa’s family was killed, though he’d heretofore thought the vedalkens were behind the plot. Yet for some reason, Memnarch and his vedalken minions had sent no more cursed artifact beasts to attack Taj Nar once the elf girl had departed. Glissa claimed it was her special power, this “spark” that Memnarch desired, that made all the difference.

  Raksha didn’t like being attacked by mysterious forces he didn’t understand. But to be attacked, and somehow found not worthy of the fight, made him hate this Memnarch even more.

  Glissa drew on the mug of leonin nush and stared into the sparkiron coals burning in a small pit in the center of the tent. The flammable metal, a common enough substance all over Mirrodin, crackled as a bit of oil dripped off the small game animal Raksha was preparing on a spit. The leonin Kha followed Glissa’s eyes as she watched a tiny orange spark flutter up the column of heat, through a vent, and into the night sky. In moments the cinder had joined the thousands upon thousands that filled the heavens.