by Cory Herndon
“But I thought—I thought we were on triage duty. He deserves a warrior’s death,” said the commander, raising the tip of his blade.
“He’s already gotten it,” Bruenna hissed. “Now please, get back on your zauk and watch my back, as you were ordered.”
Jethrar snapped to attention and did as she commanded. Bruenna had no rank in the leonin army, but she had plenty of unofficial authority.
The mage raised the tiny, almost needle-thin vial of serum so the goblin could see it. “This will make the pain go away. May your soul find rest, defender of Krark-Home.” Bruenna tipped the open vial to the fallen soldier’s cracked lips, and he swallowed the serum with a wince.
The goblin’s eyes glowed a faint silvery blue, and he visibly relaxed, drawing faint, shallow breaths. Bruenna held his small hand for maybe half a minute, keeping eye contact, until the goblin finally exhaled heavily.
The mage sighed and rose, wondering what she had been thinking coming out here. She was no healer. Death, she had seen, and up close. Her entire village, all her people, were gone. But that had been … detached. There had been nothing she could do for her fellow Neurok. The deaths of her people had been violent, but they had been quick.
This war was different, and Bruenna hated it even more. She slumped a bit in the saddle and guided her zauk to the next injured soldier, a skyhuntress who looked like she had been thrown from her mount at a great height. The emergency wing pack every skyhunter wore lay in tatters at the fallen leonin’s side, shredded and burned by aerophin energy blasts. The skyhunter was wheezing hard, and Bruenna didn’t dare move her. Most of the leonin’s bones had shattered, and broke through her skin at several points. A pool of blood spread in a halo around her body. Another one who wouldn’t make it.
The leonin looked up, pleading, and Bruenna pulled another tiny vial from her pouch. She’d never have enough serum to help them all, but the mage was determined that what she had left would go to good use. Bruenna tipped the vial into the female’s mouth. Bruenna waited with her as she had with the goblin, until the leonin breathed her last.
A zauk, not her own, squawked a warning call. Bruenna scanned the horizon and immediately saw what had frightened the big bird. A growing cloud of silver and black arose from the direction of the Mephidross. Only the yellow sun still hung in the sky, but the cloud—no, swarm, she corrected herself—passed in front of it and clearly showed the tiny outlines of thousands of winged creatures.
Bruenna’s growing despair suddenly flared into anger and hatred for their relentless attackers. Even warring ogres allowed the other side to retrieve the dead. True, they ate them, but still. The mage struggled to her feet in the heavy plate.
“Jethrar, do you see that?” Bruenna asked. With a heave she hauled herself into the saddle and drew her sword.
The commander squinted against the setting sun and his eyes widened. “How many of those things does Memnarch have?”
“Too many, my friend. Far too many. I think the Kha may have boasted too soon,” Bruenna said. When she saw that Jethrar and the other leonin continued to gawk at the approaching flock of deadly constructs, she shouted, “One of you get back to Krark-Home and warn them this isn’t over yet!”
Jethrar, jolted from shock, nodded to a lieutenant. The leonin warrior kicked his zauk in the flanks, bolting back to the last bastion of living surface dwellers.
The commander wheeled his mount around in a circle, scanning the area. “Take heed, men,” he said. “The skyhunters’ ranks are depleted, so we may not expect help from that quarter. The rest of the troops have fallen back to defend Krark-Home. Until Lieutenant Zelosh returns with reinforcements, we’re on our own. I know this was supposed to be triage duty, but we just became the vanguard.”
Bruenna shielded her eyes from the glare of the dimming sun and checked on the progress of the new wave of attackers. She could already make out familiar shapes among the aerophins and other, stranger flying constructs. Beetle shapes.
“Nim,” Bruenna whispered.
“What?” Jethrar asked, and looked in the direction Bruenna pointed.
“Those aren’t just aerophins,” the mage said. “I’m not sure why, but there are nim flying with them.”
“But Yert is dead,” Jethrar said.
“I know,” Bruenna said. “I know.” She mentally ran over the fight with Yert, and her use of the Miracore. Had she done this somehow, in an arrogant attempt to control the nim without truly understanding the nature of the ancient talisman? Had she served only to put the nim under Memnarch’s power?
Bruenna shivered.
OGRE AND UNDER
“Let me go. We’ve got to warn them!” Glissa yanked herself free of Raksha’s grip and began to march back up the lacuna.
“I already told them,” Raksha snarled, bounding after her. “They didn’t believe me. Yshkar convinced them I was mad, and Lyese—the imposter Lyese—let them believe it.” He caught up with the fleet-footed elf girl easily, and spun her around by the shoulders. “Glissa, listen to me,” the leonin said, looking her in the eye. “Every instinct I have is telling me to do exactly what you’re doing. My heart cries out to join my people in battle. The leonin have been manipulated and tricked, thousands have died needlessly. I know all that, but still I am asking you to hear me out. After that, you can return to the surface, or meet your destiny in the interior. But know that I will go after Memnarch by myself if I must.”
“Raksha,” Glissa said, “what really happened at Taj Nar? What happened to Ly—to my sister?”
“The imposter has been there for five years,” Raksha said. “I will tell you, but not here.”
“Then where?”
“Somewhere safer,” Raksha said. “Mirrodin can’t afford to lose the Chosen One to an accidental fall or a rogue kharybdog.”
“All right, somewhere safer. Lead the way.”
The leonin guided her back up the lacuna to the surface. Strange, Glissa thought, that the open Tangle felt claustrophobic compared to the lacuna. Raksha led her a few hundred yards down a narrow game path to an ancient Tangle tree stump that had weathered and split with age, a slim crevice just wide enough for Raksha to slip through sideways. Glissa followed, more relieved than she let on to finally have found someone she truly trusted in this strange future.
The crevice opened into a small cave formed by the ancient root structure of the long-dead tree. The warm orange glow of a single coalstone lamp lit Raksha’s den, glittering on the worn silver bedroll that lay in the corner next to a pair of chairs assembled from scraps of tanglewood and wire vines. A battered iron pot hung over a fire that had been extinguished for some time. Raksha bade Glissa sit on one of the homemade seats and sparked the coalstone to life. It burned without smoke, bringing the contents of the pot to a rapid boil. The leonin poured two cups of a syrupy brew and gave one to Glissa. The elf girl tentatively sipped the hot drink, and found it was pleasantly sweet and immediately calmed her nerves. Raksha paced the small room, not meeting the elf girl’s eyes.
“Raksha, this is safe enough. You say you didn’t destroy Taj Nar, and that Lyese is a phony?” Glissa said. “Convince me.”
The leonin stopped pacing for a moment, inhaled deeply, and let out a long, sighing growl. “Your sister. The trouble began about an hour after we parted ways and you left for the Mephidross.”
Kha Raksha Golden Cub and the Tel-Jilad warrior Lyese of Viridia marched up the winding moutain path, following a bound and defeated Alderok Vektro, who stumbled drunkenly ahead. The leonin split his attention between the prisoner and the iron walls of the narrow draw. The walls rose higher the farther up the path they went, and could easily conceal another goblin ambush, or worse.
Raksha did not like the mountains in the first place, but the claustrophobic confines of this narrow mountain trail made him downright jumpy.
Fortunately, he found it helped his nerves to shove Alderok Vektro every once in a while, and the Vulshok priest seemed glad to give Raks
ha frequent opportunities to do so. Vektro would stop walking without warning, and often cocked his head as if listening for something. Not surprisingly, the Vulshok refused to tell Raksha what he was listening for no matter how the leonin tried to coerce him. The Kha knew many, many ways to coerce people, including a few he really didn’t want to use in front of the elf girl. Yet Alderok Vektro had said very little even when they removed his gag, and would give them only the sparest of directions.
As it turned out, Glissa’s insistence that Lyese accompany him had proved fortuitous. The young elf had proven a serviceable tracker, and assured the Kha that they were following fresh goblin footprints.
Raksha and Lyese had been separated from Glissa for a little over two hours when Vektro stopped in his staggering tracks yet again. Without warning, the Vulshok collapsed in a heap on the rusty iron path.
“This had better not be a trick, Vektro,” the leonin growled. Lyese and Raksha crouched over the fallen human, and with an effort they rolled the big man onto his back.
Alderok Vektro’s glassy eyes stared up at the sky. His mouth was wrenched open in a grinning rictus, and his tongue lolled out, swollen and dry. Bright red blood trickled from the human’s nose, ears, and mouth.
“Correct us if we are wrong,” Raksha said, “but this human appears to be dead.”
Lyese patted Vektro’s lifeless form, and Raksha did likewise. There wasn’t a mark on the dead priest that they couldn’t account for, and certainly no arrows or other projectiles had struck him.
“Raksha, I think he just…died,” Lyese finally admitted.
“Do humans do that often?” the Kha asked. “Perhaps because of the stress of capture?” It wasn’t that far-fetched. In his youth, he’d spent many a season capturing live animals to be slaughtered for royal feasts. For special occasions, the leonin would forgo typical prey animals for more dangerous game. But he’d learned that many of the strongest natural predators went catatonic when locked in a cage, unable to hunt, run, or roam their territory.
“Humans aren’t that different, as far as I know,” Lyese replied. “Not this different. But sometimes people just die.”
“They certainly do, but the timing is suspicious in the extreme. It must be foul play,” Raksha whispered. “Keep your voice down.” He scanned the high walls of the draw again, but could spot no movement. The shadows in the craggy ironstone cliffs could be hiding almost anything, even from his sharp feline eyes.
“What should we do?” Lyese asked. “Head back? Or should we try to find this Dwugget on our own? Vektro wasn’t a very good guide, anyway. I think I can follow these tracks to—”
A thunderous crash erupted from high above, cutting the elf girl short. The pair stood and craned their necks upward at the sound. “What was that?” Raksha asked and drew his longknife, Vektro suddenly forgotten.
His answer came in the form of a gigantic humanoid figure that leaped from the walls above and crashed onto the narrow trail several yards ahead. The ogre’s feet, each one half as big as the leonin monarch, fractured the path beneath and knocked Raksha and Lyese onto their backs. The hulking monster was the color of rusted ironstone and stood almost twenty feet high, wearing a loincloth made of dried goblin skins tied crudely together. Wiry, tangled hair covered the creature’s head and arms but couldn’t hide a complex network of scars. The ogre drew a deep breath with a rush of wind, then its toothy mouth split open to release a deafening roar that forced Raksha and Lyese to cover their ears.
With a slow, deliberate movement, the misshapen creature reached out with a simian arm and wrenched a tree stump from the ground. As easily as Raksha might pick up a sword, the ogre raised the stump overhead like a club.
“Raksha,” Lyese said as they helped each other stand, “I think maybe we should get back to Taj Nar. Right now.”
“Perhaps a new plan is called for,” he agreed.
Raksha grabbed the elf girl by the arm and began to back away from the ogre. Sudden movements might have made the creature charge. Instead of pursuing them, it slammed the tree stump club into Alderok Vektro’s corpse and flattened the dead Vulshok to a pulp with one strike. The ogre raised its heavy head to glare at them, and there was little doubt about the target of its next strike. Raksha’s instincts finally overcame his resolve, and the pair broke into a dead run back down the path.
They shouldn’t have bothered. The gigantic ogre caught up to them with only three steps. It tossed the stump club aside and easily scooped each of them up in a massive hamfist. The ogre was displaying remarkable restraint, Raksha noted as he wriggled in vain to break free. It could have squeezed him into jelly if it wanted to, but the monster exerted only enough pressure to keep them restrained.
The ogre held Lyese up to its scarred, pitted face and sniffed her gingerly. The elf girl screamed, twisting in the creature’s grip. Then the ogre did the very last thing Raksha would have expected. The gaping maw it wore for a mouth broke into a wide smile, and it burst into mad, thundering laughter.
“Raksha, what’s it doing?” Lyese shouted.
“How should we know?” the leonin bellowed.
He hadn’t expected an answer—ogres weren’t known for their eloquence—but the monster spoke. Its voice was a deep rumble that sounded like crumbling ironstone grating on copper ore, with something else—a quality at once familiar and chilling—running underneath.
“Quiet,” the ogre said, and knocked Raksha’s head against the elf girl’s. Everything went black.
“Now hold on,” Glissa interrupted. “You said Lyese was dead.”
“Who’s telling this story?” Raksha said.
“All right then, I’m listening,” Glissa sighed. “None of this is remotely like the story I got at Krark-Home.”
“It was within Krark-Home that I awoke,” Raksha said. “It was very different then.”
“Raksha,” Lyese said. “Raaaaksha.”
The Kha felt something scratching at the top of his head and realized it was a set of elven claws. He opened his eyes and saw the elf girl courched over him, her hand atop his head and—
“Are you scratching our ears?” the leonin demanded as he brushed the elf girl’s hand away.
“I was trying to wake you up,” Lyese replied. “You’ve been out for a while. We’re safe now.”
“Yes, safe, huh?” a gravelly voice broke in, and Raksha blinked to take in his surroundings. He was inside a large underground room with walls cut from the same ironstone they had been hiking through for most of the day. They had to be inside the mountain.
A tiny, wrinkled goblin in rust-red priest’s robes very similar in cut and design to what Vektro had worn stood next to a smoldering brazier near the center of the room. Rickety copper shelves lined one wall, filled with bottles, beakers, tubes, and several thick, weathered books that looked very old. A heavy iron door hung in an ill-fitting frame on the opposite wall. He could see no one else in the room. He smelled the tang of incense and the unmistakeable odor of goblin, but only a lingering trace of ogre. The creature was nowhere to be seen.
The leonin sat up and growled. His longknife was still tucked securely in his belt, and he was not bound or restrained in any way, so he decided to take a diplomatic approach.
“Dwugget, we presume?” Raksha asked. “Where are we?”
“Yes, that’s me, huh?” the old goblin said. “Dwugget of the Krark.” He looked distinctly uncomfortable, but gave the leonin a quick, nervous bow. Nervous, no doubt, because of the goblin’s proximity to a fully conscious leonin warrior.
“Raksha,” Lyese said, interjecting herself between the two, “They’re going to help. We’ve been talking.”
“You have been talking?” Raksha snarled. “On what authority do you, an elf, negotiate for the leonin people?”
Lyese looked like she’d been slapped. “On the authority that I was the only one awake? That I was the one that woke up and surprised that ogre with a knife to the palm that made it drop us? Maybe the authority gr
anted to me by dragging your unconscious carcass all the way to this cave and finding the goblins, who were able to chase off the ogre, which chased me all the way up this damned mountain?”
“Please, no fighting, huh?” Dwugget interrupted before Raksha could respond. “All friends now. Kha, we talk, you and Dwugget, huh? Give you all the details?”
The leonin composed himself and returned to the elf girl, his ear pointed forward in embarrassment. “We apologize, Lyese,” Raksha said. “We are grateful to be alive, and thank you for opening the negotiations.” He bowed deeply, which he did only rarely, and returned to the goblin, who shifted from foot to foot. Raksha supposed he would be nervous too, in Dwugget’s place. “Dwugget, your people attacked us. Is that how you negotiate?”
“Mistake, huh?” Dwugget said. “Have to defend my people.”
Raksha appraised the little creature before him. The leonin had been raised to think of goblins as inferior beings. Even Slobad, though a friend, had really been little more than a slave. But he could understand this goblin. He was a leader, like Raksha. Of course he had sent guards to meet them. What would the leonin have done if he had encountered a gang of well-armed goblins trying to enter Taj Nar?
“Dwugget of the Krark,” Raksha said, “is there a place we three negotiators may go to work out the details?”
Dwugget led Raksha and Lyese to a door the leonin had not noticed before. They followed the goblin through a short tunnel lit with flame-tubes. “We go eat, and talk, huh?” Dwugget said. “Food and negotiation.”
The meal, as it turned out, took longer than the negotiations themselves. Raksha had been out for almost a day and a half, and he was impressed to see how well Lyese had done in the interim. The Krark would prove to be valuable allies, now that the initial confusion was cleared up. He had seen them fight, and knew the goblins were fiercer than he’d once believed.
They spent one more night in Krark-Home. Dwugget threw a banquet in their honor, which included as entertainment his own account of the tale of Krark, the legendary goblin hero who long ago discovered the world was hollow—a tale that had originally spurred Glissa to seek out Memnarch in the core. Raksha was struck by the story’s similarity, at points, to the myths and legends surrounding Great Dakan, his own leonin ancestor and the first to unite the leonin under a single Kha.