The Moons of Mirrodin (5 page)

“Come,” he said over his shoulder to her. “We have much to talk about.”

“I’m not ready to talk just yet,” muttered Glissa under her breath. Now was her chance. She jumped to her feet and grabbed for the dagger, but the blade was not in its sheath. Of course. It was beside her bed. She stopped as the troll glanced back at her. Again she thought she could see a smile play across his face. She smiled back. She would just have to play along for now and watch for a chance to overpower her captor.

The elf entered the room and felt as if she were in another flare. The walls and floors were covered with animal skins, and the troll’s bed and chairs were made not of metal but of bone and hide. In fact, there was no metal in the entire room. Glissa lifted a skin away from the wall and was almost comforted to see the familiar green-tinged copper underneath. Runes were inscribed on the metal, much like the history inscribed on the trunk of the tree.

“I detest the metal of our world,” said the troll, “so I keep it as far from me as possible.”

Glissa dropped the skin back onto the wall when she heard metal scraping against metal again. She turned just in time to see the door close behind her.

“Sit, and I will answer your questions,” said the troll. He motioned to two chairs on either side of a table in the middle of the room. The only light came from a gelfruit set in an elaborate bone holder on the table. “My name is Chunth. I am the First One.”

“What is the ‘First One’?” asked Glissa. “Some kind of leader? I’ve never seen or heard of you before.” She began to pace back and forth past the door. “Why have you brought me here?”

Chunth sat down across from the door and folded his cloak around his body. “Yes. Leader. That is as good a word as any,” he said with that strange smile Glissa was beginning to dislike. “I stay in here, away from the metal. I rarely leave this room anymore. It is better for my health. As to why I had you brought here, I assure you, it is for your health as well.”

Glissa stopped pacing. “What do you mean, ‘for my health’? Metal cannot be bad for us. We
are
metal. Metal and flesh.”

“I said it was bad for me, not for you,” said Chunth. “Your danger comes from outside the Tangle. Please sit down. There is no way from this room.”

Glissa had pulled the hide away from the door, looking for a handle, but she couldn’t even find the door. She let the hide drop back again and turned around. “Fine,” she said, “but stop talking in riddles. Just tell me why you brought me here.”

“As you wish,” said Chunth. “We have reason to believe there will be an attempt on your life very soon, probably tonight.”

Glissa stared at him. “An … an attempt on my … By whom?”

“From outside the Tangle.”

“How can that be? There is nothing outside the Tangle but barren metal. I’ve been to the edge of the forest. I’ve seen it.”

“There is much more outside the Tangle than you know, Glissa,” said Chunth. He raised his hand. “That is not meant as a riddle but as a simple statement of fact. There is a great, dangerous world outside the Tangle, and you must believe me that someone or several someones wish you dead.”

Glissa sat down and stared hard at the inscrutable troll. “How can you know all of this if you never leave this room?” she asked.

“We are the keepers of the tales, are we not?” asked Chunth. “I have been recording the history of the Tangle since before your father’s time. While it is true that in all that time we have had little contact with the other races of Mirrodin, that does not mean they do not exist or that I do not have ways of finding out about them.”

“Then tell me, oh great holder of knowledge,” snapped Glissa, “who wants me dead?”

“That I do not know,” said Chunth. “I have been looking for that answer since the last convergence, but the information eludes me still.”

“Convergence?” asked Glissa. “What is that, and what does it have to do with me?”

“The convergence is the time of the rebuking ceremony. Every one hundred cycles, the four moons align in harmony around the world, each above its own land. During that rotation, no moon rises on the Tangle, for the Tangle has no moon. It is a day of darkness and a day of great power in the Radix. As you know, all the elves attend the ceremony in the Radix and purge their unpleasant memories.”

Glissa nodded. “What does it have to do with me?”

Chunth was silent a moment, and Glissa began to wonder if he was ever going to get to the point and whether he would ever let her from this room. Glancing around the room, she noticed something glinting in the gelfruit light. It was the pommel of a sword sticking out from under the bedcovers behind Chunth. Perhaps it was time to pace again, she thought.

The troll continued at last. “Exactly one phase of the moons before each of the last two convergences, the greatest warrior in the Tangle has been brutally killed,” he said. “We believe it will happen again. Tonight marks the beginning of the last phase before the convergence.”

Glissa was stricken speechless for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“So now I’m the greatest warrior in the Tangle?”

She rose and began to move around the room again. “You’re not serious.”

“You would never admit it,” said Chunth, “not even to yourself, but you are our greatest warrior. Perhaps the greatest warrior
the Tangle has ever seen. We have watched you. You have a destiny, my child, and I must keep you safe from the levelers tonight.”

“Levelers?” said Glissa, stopping halfway around the room. The sword was just a few more steps away. “Levelers are coming for me tonight?”

“That is how it happens,” said Chunth. “Exactly one phase before the convergence, the levelers enter the Tangle and kill our greatest warrior. But here you will be safe. The levelers will not find you.”

“What about my family?” asked Glissa. A touch of hysteria entered her voice. “The levelers want me, right? They’ll leave my parents and my sister alone, right?
Right?
”

“The levelers do not discriminate, Glissa,” Chunth replied slowly. “You know that. Their targets are normally random, but on this night, I believe they will attack your house.”

Chunth’s answer hit like a dagger in Glissa’s throat. She couldn’t speak. She could hardly breathe. She leaned against the hide-covered wall and wrapped her arms around her chest. “Why?” she asked finally in a quiet, rasping voice.

“We do not know why,” replied Chunth. “We only know it will happen tonight and that you are the target.”

Glissa straightened, rage and pain playing across her face. “No,” she said. “Why save me but leave my family to die? What are you playing at?”

“You have a destiny,” replied Chunth. “They do not.”

“Well, my destiny includes my parents,” spat Glissa and dived toward the bed.

Chunth rose and turned to cut her off, Glissa but rolled past him and came up behind, pulling the sword out from the bedcovers as she stood. She pushed the tip of the sword up under Chunth’s flat nose, snarling, “If you want to see another convergence, old one, you’ll open that door and call your guards back in here.”

Chunth made no resistance. The two walked to the hidden door, and Glissa watched as the troll lifted back the hide, reached in, and with a grunt of distaste pulled down on a small extrusion of metal. The door unseated itself and began to move slowly inward. Glissa stepped behind the door, keeping the sword pressed hard just under Chunth’s ribs.

“Call them,” she hissed at him, “but remember, I’m the greatest warrior in the Tangle and I have a sword just inches from your heart.”

Chunth called out, “Sentinels. Come take our guest to her quarters.”

Glissa pushed a little harder on the sword. “Now move back and let them come into the room,” she said.

The trolls arrived and Chunth waved them into his quarters. As soon as the fourth one passed the door, Glissa shoved the old troll into the others. The five trolls crashed to the floor, flattening the chairs and table, and sending the gelfruit globe flying up into the air. The globe splattered on top of Chunth’s head, plunging the room into near darkness. Glissa turned to the door and smashed the sword pommel down onto the metal Chunth had pushed to open the door. It broke off and clattered to the floor.

The elf flitted through the door, but one of the sentinels grabbed her ankle as she passed the mass of troll bodies on the floor. Glissa pulled back, but the troll had a strong grip and she lost her balance, sprawling to the floor. She kicked out with her free leg and slammed it into the sentinel’s sloping forehead. He grunted but held on. The other trolls were crawling from the pile. She kicked again, harder, into the troll’s upturned face and heard something crack. The troll yelped and grabbed at his nose with both hands. Glissa was free.

She scrambled to her feet and ran from the room, pulling the door closed behind her. A large hand shot through the narrowing opening. Glissa pulled as hard as she could, but the troll was
stronger and the door began to open. Without thinking, Glissa shoved the sword through the widening crack. She heard a yelp, and the hand was gone. She slammed the door and turned toward the tunnel.

Glissa counted the steps as she ran, and stopped when she got to 139. That was the number she had counted on the way up to Chunth’s room. She looked at the wall beside her and ran her hand over the metal, searching for an extrusion like the one in Chunth’s room.

After an agonizingly long minute, the elf felt something irregular on the wall near the lower step. She pulled down, and a doorway formed and began to open, scraping against the metal step. Glissa didn’t wait for the door to open all the way. She squeezed through and ran back out into the Tangle.

I know this place, thought Glissa as she came from the Tree of Tales onto a small terrace. It was a dead end, the same dead end where they had cornered the vorrac earlier that day, which now seemed an age previous. Glissa ran over to the place from which she and Kane had jumped down and was about to pull herself up when a horrible sound filled her ears. A horn was blaring in the Tangle—the horn of warning. The levelers had entered the Tangle!

THE LEVELERS

Glissa froze, one hand on the ledge above her, the other still holding the sword she had stolen from Chunth. She waited for what seemed an eternity for the responding horn, hoping that the first horn had been a mistake or a trick of the wind. She was terrified of the levelers. They had tormented her dreams since childhood. Her father assured her over and over that the family was safe in their home, so high in the trees and so close to the Radix. Nevertheless Glissa woke screaming any time the horn of warning invaded her dreams.

Now that fear paralyzed her. She knew they were coming for her this time. Chunth had said as much. But they wouldn’t find her hiding in her bed, shivering under the vorrac hides. They would find only Father, Mother, and Lyese.

She wasn’t far from her father’s tree, but there was no easy route between the two trees. Earlier that day, it had taken her and Kane at least five minutes to work their way down to the vorrac carcass. She didn’t have that kind of time. Her family needed her now, yet she couldn’t move.

A second horn blared. In her mind, Glissa could see the gleaming levelers scrambling up the Tangle tree toward her father’s house, just as they had in her childhood nightmares. But this was real and she was no scared little girl. Glissa forced the fear from her legs and allowed her warrior instinct to take control. Dropping
back down onto the terrace, the elf broke into a run. As she approached the spot where she had caught the vorrac, she took three long strides and launched her body off the terrace.

Glissa ran through the air, her legs pumping furiously as she arced up and away from the terrace. Thirty feet out she passed the level of the dead-end terrace and began to fall through the Tangle, edging ever farther away from the Tree of Tales. As she fell, the elf warrior twirled the sword around and brought it over her head, point forward. She clutched the pommel. Arching her back and spreading her legs to slow her descent, Glissa fell toward a terrace on a nearby tree.

The swordpoint struck the trunk of the Tangle tree and dug into the metal. As her body whipped around, Glissa brought her legs in to absorb the impact. Her feet slammed into the tree, and she bounced, but the sword held, cutting a jagged line down the trunk as she continued to fall toward the terrace. Glissa marveled at how easily the sword cut through the Tangle tree metal. She’d expected it would slow her fall, but the terrace was coming up fast. Far too fast.

She kicked at the tree hard with both feet, pulled the sword free, and flipped into the air again as she passed a spire. Catching the spire in one hand, she rotated around it once, hung for a moment, then released to fall the last twenty feet. She rolled and came up running. She had cut precious time from her journey but was still two trees from home.

The next jump was far easier. She had made this leap a hundred times. When she came to the end of the terrace, she sprang out as before, but at the top of her arc she kicked her legs back and flew facedown for a moment before tucking in her head, legs, and arms and rolling slowly head over heels toward the oncoming terrace. She would hit on her shoulders and roll with the blow, but she hadn’t counted on the sword.