Liin Sivi swam with the current and reached him. Their hands met, and they pulled each other close. The embrace took them beneath the water, but they would gladly trade air for another soul.
Something pounded against them. Eladamri looked up to see a dead colos float past. The beast’s legs had been shattered in the terrible descent. Its blood made a red veil in the water.
Gripping Liin Sivi’s hand, Eladamri stroked toward the surface. Together, they emerged. They gulped greedy breaths.
No sooner were Eladamri’s lungs full than he shouted, “Look out!” He pulled Liin Sivi aside as a huge wedge of wood shot beside her. It was the ram from a Keldon long ship.
Instead of shying back, she lunged and grabbed hold. Liin Sivi pulled him to the ram.
“It floats,” she said simply. “It floats, and it takes the beating for us.”
“Yes,” Eladamri replied. He clung to the wedge. It seemed eager to descend. Ahead, the ice cave was a swallowing gullet. “Where are we going?”
Liin Sivi shrugged. “Where everyone is going. Where the water goes.”
The heat of the upper chambers waned. Cold gripped their legs.
“No one escaped,” Eladamri said bleakly. “No one who fought escaped. Neither the living nor the dead.”
Liin Sivi turned. She wore a rueful smile. “It would be comforting to believe in Twilight, that there is a destiny for virtuous warriors.”
“Even the Keldons can’t believe in Twilight. Even Doyenne Tajamin, Keeper of the Book of Keld,” Eladamri echoed hollowly.
Sivi’s eyes were beautiful in the failing light. “Then we have the best fate of all, Eladamri, to die valiantly.”
Just ahead, the wide river reached a precipice, where it dropped into utter blackness.
Eladamri drew Liin Sivi up beside him. He stroked back the black locks of her hair. He leaned toward her and cupped her cheek in his hand. Their lips met in a single, warm kiss.
They crested the waterfall. It ripped the ram from their hands. It ripped them from each other’s arms. Then all was blackness.
* * *
—
Death was not as he had expected. He had expected torments, but there was only numbness and noise. He had expected other souls, but he was alone. The darkness was right, and the moaning—the sudden crash of huge things and the throb of his head—but the rest was wrong. Worst of all, he had expected to care, but Eladamri cared about nothing at all.
Death was easy. Life had been hard. To live in the shadow of the Stronghold, to battle Dauthi horrors, to lose a daughter and lose a world and fight for one that wasn’t even his—these were the hard things. To lie here with something dragging at his legs and something else clutching the scruff of his neck, this was easy.
Eladamri lifted his head. His hair was frozen to the ground. He pulled free and felt pain. It awoke sensations across his entire body. He struggled to sit up. His frozen tunic ripped as it yanked free of the ice. His back burned.
Chill waters lapped at his waist. Cold darkness surrounded him. Just ahead, the river roared hungrily, bearing everything away. The ice shuddered with impacts—hunks of catapult and ship and Phyrexian and Keldon.
Eladamri was not dead, but soon he would be, in utter darkness and utterly alone.
His breath caught. Liin Sivi. She had been right beside him before the waterfall. Now—he splashed his hands through the shallows, but there was no one. She must have already been dragged away. She must have been dead.
Sorrow moved through Eladamri. Liin Sivi had fought beside him since the Stronghold. She had been his strong right arm but more than that. She had been his heart. Except for her, he had been alone through it all.
A gloaming light came to the ice cave. It gilded the walls in hues of gold.
Eladamri stood. In the glow, he could make out the wide, deep flood and the high-arching vault. To his left, the waters plunged into unknown depths. To his right, the channel bored straight away into the glacier. It was from that distant place that the light shone.
Something approached, something otherworldly.
Eladamri stared in amazement.
A ship. A golden ship. Through this black underworld, a ship sailed in utter calm. Her main was full-bellied, as if she harnessed the winds of another world. Her hull breasted the waves in perfect trim. Most glorious of all, the lanterns upon her decks gleamed across a crowd of warriors—Keldons and Steel Leaf elves and Skyshroud elves…and Liin Sivi.
She lifted her lantern at the bow. Her eyes searched the darkness. She looked for him.
It could not be. This was a hallucination. No ship could sail these waters. No ship in all the world was so huge. This was a delusion, concocted by Eladamri’s mind to ease the moment he would leap into the flood.
The long ship neared. Liin Sivi’s lantern spilled its light across him. A smile lit her face. “Eladamri, you live!”
“I am not so certain,” he shouted above the roaring tide. The ship drew even with him. In moments, it would be past. “Where are you going, Liin Sivi? Where is this Golden Argosy bound?”
She hurled a shimmering line out toward him. It splashed into the water by his ankles and dragged along.
“I am going where we all are going, where the water goes.” Her eyes implored. “Join us, Eladamri. Grab the line.”
Numbly, Eladamri looked down at the snaking rope. If this were a delusion, to grab it would be to plunge into the water, to die. But if the ship before him were a true thing, to grab the line would be to live.
Either way, he would be with Liin Sivi again.
The Golden Argosy pulled away.
The tail of rope lashed past.
Eladamri lunged. He seized its slender tip. The line yanked him away from his perch and back into the hungry flood. It dragged him down to darkness.
CHAPTER 25
The End of Bargains
Commander Grizzlegom hated this fight.
His striva laid open the breast of a Phyrexian trooper. The blade severed ten ribs and wedged in the eleventh. The trooper was unconvinced of its death. Claws raked deep wounds in the minotaur’s shoulder.
Grizzlegom tilted his head and rammed a horn through the trooper’s skull. He flung the body away and yanked his striva free.
The blade would not be quick enough for the next foe. Grizzlegom’s elbow did the job. The bloodstock’s neck cracked, and it fell.
A scuta swarmed over it, lashing Grizzlegom’s hooves. He leaped on its shield and kicked through it. Vaulting from the dead monster’s back, he advanced up the volcanic slope.
Grizzlegom hated this fight. It wasn’t that he minded killing Phyrexians. That part was splendid. Hurloon’s debt of vengeance would be repaid. What he hated was fighting alongside the dead.
A ghoul advanced beside him. The flesh was gone from its fingers, leaving only bony claws. Its lips were ripped away. Yellow teeth opened wide and bit a hunk of flesh from a Phyrexian’s face.
The Phyrexian ripped an arm from the ghoul and ran scythe-tipped fingers across its belly. Desiccated organs tumbled free.
Grizzlegom ended the struggle with a chopping stroke of his striva. The blade passed through shoulder of the Phyrexian and bisected its heart. Both beasts fell in pieces at Grizzlegom’s hooves.
What honor was there in fighting alongside rot?
Above the dance of blades, Grizzlegom made out Commander Agnate, leading a charge. There was the honor. The man fought on despite the plague that ravaged him. He fought with a fury worthy of a minotaur. That was the honor in this fight. In his very flesh, Agnate rectified the living and the dead.
Next moment, Agnate fell beneath a Phyrexian swarm.
“Charge!” Grizzlegom shouted.
He drove toward the place where Agnate had fallen. He did not so much fight the Phyrexians but fought through them like a man cutting ca
ne. A forehand slice mowed the goat head from one Phyrexian. A backhand jab impaled the belly of another. While his blade cleared foes to one side, his fist dropped beasts on the other. Phyrexians had glass jaws. An uppercut to the throat of a bloodstock drove its lower fangs into its brain. A roundhouse felled an infantryman before it could bring its sword to bear. Fist and striva were less deadly than horns. With them, Grizzlegom bulled up the talus slope. One horn impaled a trooper. Grizzlegom pitched his head, hurling the body down. The other horn rammed into a huge wall of muscle.
Hauling the gory tip out, the minotaur staggered back. A gargantua loomed before him. The thing stood on a pair of huge, clawed legs. Massive arms reached for Grizzlegom. An enormous claw knocked his striva away. The other closed over him and lifted him toward a wide mouth lined with curving teeth.
Grizzlegom kicked. His hooves struck nothing. He pitched his horned head. The points flailed in air.
Like a man tossing nuts into his mouth, the gargantua hurled Grizzlegom inward. He landed atop a tongue coated in thick goo. Teeth closed in a cage around him. The tongue convulsed. The gullet opened wide. Grizzlegom slid down into a sac of hot acid. Powerful muscles clenched him. Stones battered him—a gizzard that could grind a man to meal.
Grizzlegom was no mere man. Arching his neck, he drove his horns through the stomach wall. The points shot through muscle and fat, skin and scale to jut from the thing’s belly. The stomach clenched tight. With a roar, Grizzlegom twisted his head. The horns ripped a wide hole in the thing’s gut.
He lunged toward the light. Bloody and streaming acid, his head jutted free. He drew a deep breath and fought his shoulders out. The stomach contractions only aided him. Amid a grisly cascade of gastroliths, Grizzlegom spilled upon the ground.
Breath burst from his lungs as he landed. He hadn’t the luxury of lying stunned. The gargantua tipped toward him.
Grizzlegom clambered aside. His legs barely dragged free of the gargantua’s shadow before it struck ground. The beast hit the hillside, which bounded beneath it.
Grizzlegom’s momentary triumph ended when a pair of Phyrexian troopers leaped on him. The minotaur gripped one in either hand and cracked their skulls together. Their heads shattered. Glistening-oil poured down on him. It soothed the anguish of the acid. Grizzlegom rubbed the stuff all over himself. Gripping a body in either hand, he pummeled his way to Agnate.
“Push them back!” Grizzlegom ordered. “Secure this spot!”
Minotaur troops rallied to their battle-mad commander. One returned his fallen striva.
Grizzlegom dropped one corpse and took the striva. He held the other body as a shield. “Form a wedge around me and fight forward!”
The minotaurs complied but at a distance.
Grizzlegom glanced down at himself and knew why. Mantled in Phyrexian blood and gastric acids, he was a horrid sight. His once-fine hide was now a mottled white and brown. His tremendous rack of horns had been bent downward. He had been transformed by his passage through the monster, made into a twisted thing.
Grizzlegom reached Agnate. He chopped a charging bloodstock in half and knelt.
“Drive on!” Grizzlegom shouted to his troops. “Drive on!”
They fought forward, moving the battle away from the commanders.
Grizzlegom sheathed his striva and turned Agnate over.
The Metathran’s eyes were haunted. “Tahngarth! What are you doing here?”
A sudden flush of pride moved through Grizzlegom. “I am not Tahngarth. I am Commander Grizzlegom.”
“Forgive me.” Agnate shook his head blearily. “I cannot walk. I cannot even rise.”
“Where are you wounded?”
“It is no wound, but the plague.”
“You should not have fought on, in your condition.” He took a ragged breath and was suddenly weak. His limbs convulsed, and he lost his balance. Grizzlegom slumped beside his Metathran counterpart.
“You should not have fought on in your condition, either.”
* * *
—
Commander Agnate awoke in a much different place. A tent roof swayed in dark breezes. From outside came the murmur of conversations and campfires. A soft cot held him.
A minotaur healer moved through the tent. Lantern light cast his horned shadow across the ceiling. He cleaned savage implements—even his healing methods were warlike. He had fire rods for cauterizing wounds, poison vials for killing unnatural growths, spores for inducing fever….Minotaur healers were renown for their effective but none-too-gentle methods.
“Where are we?” Agnate asked quietly. “Who won the battle?”
The healer arched an eyebrow and approached the pallet. “The stimulant has worked. I am glad you are awake, Commander.”
“I too am awake,” growled a figure on an adjacent cot. Commander Grizzlegom. “I too must know the battle’s outcome.”
“We are victorious. We have taken the first mountain of the range. Even now, we camp near its summit.” His next words told the true story. “Our forces have been met by an army equally large, led by Lich Lord Dralnu. He has taken the farther flank of the mountain, scouring it of Phyrexians.”
“Excellent,” said Agnate. “From this outpost, we can secure the rest of the range.”
“I fear you will be doing no such thing, Commander,” the healer said quietly. “You cannot go to battle. You will never walk again. Perhaps you will not even last the week.” His bedside manner was as brutal as his methods. The healer drew back the white linen that lay across him. Though Agnate’s chest remained broad and muscular, from the base of his ribs downward, his body was gangrenous. “Were I to amputate, not enough of you would remain to stay alive.”
Agnate’s mind returned to a former time, when another harsh healer worked over another patient….Thaddeus lay strapped to a gleaming table….His body was gone from the ribs down….
“I want to finish this campaign. I want victory at Urborg.”
The healer stared in bald dread at the ruined man. “There is something you must know about this plague. It is not Phyrexian in origin. Orim’s elixir would have prevented its spread. This is a different disease altogether, a ravenous gangrene. Its origins do not lie with Phyrexia but with Lich Lord Dralnu.”
Agnate remembered the feast in Vhelnish. He remembered the brackish basin and the lich lord laving his feet in the filthy water. He had called it an ancient rite, honoring a new ally. An ancient rite indeed—a necromantic rite.
“He is bringing you over, Agnate, making you into one of his minions,” Grizzlegom said. “Don’t you see? He has literally corrupted you. The reason your legs no longer work is that they belong to him. When at last this corruption reaches your heart, you will be his entirely. Then he will raise you, and you will dance to his bidding. Through you, he will gain your army.”
Agnate shook his head. “No. You don’t know Dralnu—”
“He is a lich lord! What is there to know?”
“He does what he does for noble warriors,” Agnate insisted. “In the absence of a deity, Lord Dralnu has become a deity—”
“Better no god than a false god.”
“And he has made an eternity for us, a heaven—”
“He has made a hell for you. He has made you his devils. Don’t you see?” Grizzlegom asked, sitting up on his cot. “You have bargained with death, but death wins every deal.”
“If you could only meet him, only speak to him, you would see his sincerity,” Agnate said.
“A man can be sincere and still be wrong, Commander. What Dralnu has done is wrong. Life and death cannot be allies. They must forever be at war. You must break this alliance, before you are destroyed.”
Agnate’s eyes traced out the seams in the canvas above. “I am already destroyed.”
The minotaur commander swung his legs from the pallet. He had been badly burned
by the gargantua’s stomach acid, but minotaur healers knew much about treating burns. Grizzlegom leveled his gaze.
“Only one question remains, Commander Agnate—to whom will you grant your army?”
“Yes,” Agnate mused. “To whom?”
“If you grant Dralnu your troops, you have given him everything. He will corrupt them as he has corrupted you. He will scour the land of Phyrexians only to claim it all as his own.”
“And if I grant my army to you,” Agnate supplied, “you will turn my men against Dralnu. You will make our men fight an army of undead.”
“Yes, but at least they will be fighting for their lives, not their deaths.”
Agnate’s face was firm. “I cannot allow you to betray this alliance.”
“How can you speak of betrayal? This whole alliance was a betrayal. You lie there, rotting from a plague given to you by your ally, and you wonder about betraying him?” Grizzlegom asked. He stood, hooves firm on the floor. “It is too late to save yourself, Agnate, but save your army.”
“Draw it up, quickly now,” Agnate said in sudden decision. “I will sign it. I will seal it. Only draw up the order, and my troops are yours.”
Grizzlegom nodded a command to the healer, who drew out quill and parchment to write up the order. Meanwhile, the minotaur commander knelt beside the bed of his comrade. He took Agnate’s hand.
“Why not convey the instructions yourself?”
“I cannot. You said it was too late to save me, but you were wrong. I do not want to rise again as a minion of Dralnu. The one condition of my order is that you make sure that does not happen.” Agnate stared piercingly at his comrade. “It will take two strokes, the first to end my life and the second to end my unlife. The twice dead cannot be raised. Only then will I be free.”
Grizzlegom’s eyes were full of dread. “Do not ask me to do this. Instead, I shall slay Dralnu myself, and you will be free.”
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