Invasion

Chapter 23

This place was not fit for the elves of Llanowar. They were accustomed to colonnades of quo-sumic trees, to hanging vines in vast highways, to leaves among the clouds and days beneath the sun. This place had no trees but columns of tortured stone. It had no vines but giant blind serpents that crawled the cave floors. In place of heavens, there were groins of rock. Instead of sunlight, there was blackness. It was worse than that. Crowded here in these haunted caves, the elves knew that even now trees and vines and skies were decimated. This place might not be fit for elves, but neither was their home, anymore.

Eladamri walked among the refugee rabble. They sat shoulder to shoulder in a large, dark cavern. Liin Sivi strode in silent watchfulness behind Eladamri. She kept at bay the refugees, who teemed about him in their terror. They had feared to come here. It was a place that lived in their common mind-the Dreaming Caves, the underworld home of the dead.

True enough, since they had arrived, strange, moaning spirits seemed to flit all around them.

Eladamri was no prophet. He was a warrior. For him this was not an underworld but a bunker, not a place of the dead but of the living.

Were these the only survivors in Llanowar? Could they even be considered survivors? Perhaps a hundred had died in the palace. Perhaps a hundred more had died in the flight downward. How would these thousand die? Starvation? No, they would not last so long. They would die in a trampling stampede.

One old elf, clutching a squalling child, had summed up all their fears-"The Dreaming Caves… bring nightmares… to life!"

The refugees had brought a wealth of nightmares with them. Visions of hurtling plague bombs shone in their wide eyes. Shrieks of dying countrymen echoed through their ears. Shame at leaving their dead nobles… royal rings unclaimed on stilled fingers…

Perhaps the Dreaming Caves did have that power. Here, beneath miles of root, the air was charged with green mana. Merely breathing it induced a waking sleep. The very rock hummed in sympathy with the hearts of the people. Perhaps these caves did pluck thoughts from their mind and send them spinning through air.

One man's private terrors paraded before whole families. The very real deaths of hundreds above were recombined into the surreal deaths of hundreds of thousands below.

Refugees staggered about the caverns, wringing their hands and wailing. Others fought their comrades, thinking them ghosts. Still more fled shrieking into deeper places. They fell into nests of white serpents, which awoke to find warm meat. They dropped into wells that plunged to the boiling core of the world. They fled into the manifold stomachs of Dominaria, where she devoured her own children.

Terrors came true.

Eladamri had to stop all this. He had not saved these people yet. He had brought them out of one death and into another.

Not for long. If they could dream of horrors, they could dream of beauties.

Lifting high the lantern he had brought from above, Eladamri strode with sure and measured step among his folk. He headed for a prominence of rock on the far side of the cavern. To reach it, he would pass through the main mass of refugees. The staging was perfect, as if he had dreamed it into being. As Eladamri went, he sang an ancient ballad of the Skyshroud elves, his people on Rath:

I walk the groves of Damherung.

Below a dappled sun go I

And sing of Volrath's coming doom

Beneath a brilliant sky.

O forest, hold thy wand’ring son

Though fears assail the door.

O foliage, cloak thy ravaged one

In vestments cut for war.

The refugees did not know this hymn, but they would think they knew it. The caves carried his voice among them like a breeze that promised rain. Music swallowed remembered shrieks. Echoes became memories. They knew this hymn, and as he walked among them, they put aside jangling terrors to sing.

For what are leaves but countless blades

To fight a countless foe on high,

And what are twigs but spears arrayed

To slay the monstrous sky?

O forest, hold thy wand’ring son

Though fears assail the door.

O foliage, cloak thy ravaged one

In vestments cut for war.

The murmur of the song rose, drowning the last of the moans and shrieks. Even Liin Sivi, walking behind him, sang. Voices joined, strengthened, grew, until it seemed the throat of the world sang with them.

Though death has guile and kilting power,

Though bloodlust rules the steaming tides,

It's life that wrestles hour by hour

And finally abides.

O forest, hold thy wand’ring son

Though fears assail the door.

O foliage, cloak thy ravaged one

In vestments cut for war.

By the time he had reached the gnarl of stone, the whole of the cavern sang-some stridently, some quietly, some merely in gentle hums. The refugees watched this elf whom they had seen first in the treetops, whom they remembered from ages upon ages.

Eladamri lifted his face. Lantern light shone across it. He was not old for an elf, in the midst of his second century, but his profound eyes and prominent nose and jutting chin gave him the look of a sage. In the lantern glow, he seemed the only solid thing in a world of shadows. Eladamri spoke.

"Llanowar will rise again," he said simply, without preamble. The words struck the air and made swimming visions of the forest. "Green leaves grow out of black ground. Green shoots rise from charred wood. Moments of defeat are swallowed in millennia of triumph."

These words were not enough. He needed to speak not words but visions.

"I see bright birds darting among the overspreading boughs of a quo-sumic. Children swing on the vines that hang there. Red camro fruits burst from flowery folds. Morning breezes pluck dew from the leaves and carry it in cool bands of mist through the crown. From every hollow comes the sound of singing, of laughter."

A gentle murmur of merriment moved among the folk. They were gladdened by this dream tree.

"Yes," Eladamri continued, "we are there. All of us. We dwell among the clouds, friends of the sun. This day is but a sad memory. It is swallowed in lifetimes of joy. We are there, resting in the heights. Lie down, my friends. Lean your heads on the warm bark of the tree. Breathe her sweet pollen and sleep awhile."

With the rustle of ragged clothes and the murmur of weary souls, the refugees settled to ground. One by one, they sighed into sleep and dreamed of a perfect tree.

Eladamri smiled to see it. At least they could rest. At least they would cease trampling each other and rushing off into doom. "That was well done," said Liin Sivi behind him. "Someone had to do something," Eladamri breathed. "Yes," came a new voice, tremulous and panting, "someone has to do something."

Eladamri turned to see a bloodied elf emerge from a nearby tunnel. The man was a peasant, his shift charred and his shoulder blistered from burns. He had not descended with the refugees from the High Court.

Raking a breath, he said, "You must come to us. You must do the same for us! We came from the forest floor. Our village was struck. There are five hundred. You must come to help us as you helped these here."

Eladamri's eyes glinted darkly in the cavern light. This desperate man would interpret the look as mystery and power. In fact, Eladamri felt a doubt that bordered on panic. He had done what he could for these desperate folk-the work not of a savior but of a compassionate warrior. He had done no more than anyone else would have done.

Why, then, had no one else done it? "I will go see what I can do."

A light pierced the terror of the elf's face. He seemed to breathe for the first time since he had spoken. He bowed deeply. Eladamri could hear the burned skin on his shoulder crackle with the motion. The man's grateful breath quickened.

In utter darkness, even the faintest ember seems a beaming sun.

Eladamri was that faint ember. His glow had drawn nations, and as they bowed, their hopeful breath stoked the fire in him. They needed a savior. They were making a savior. He could only receive their adoration and use it to save as many as he could.

Perhaps that was all a savior ever was.

"Lead me to them," Eladamri said, catching the elf's hand and lifting him from his bow. "I will go where you lead. Take my lantern. Let it guide you."

The elf shook his head. "Keep your lantern. I want them to see you. I want them to see who I have brought." He squeezed his thanks and turned to lead Eladamri away.

Lifting his lantern, the Seed of Freyalise strode along a ledge of stone at one side of the cavern. Most of his folk slept in contented clusters. A few remained awake. They watched in quiet admiration, their eyes reflecting his light.

"They will not suffer your absence long, Eladamri," Liin Sivi said behind him. "They will come looking for you."

As he followed his guide down into a narrow shaft of slanting stone, Eladamri answered, "Let us hope we are not gone long."

"I cannot keep them back, you know," Liin Sivi said. "My toten-vec can keep back foes but not friends. That was Takara's job."

Eladamri's breath caught. The bombing of the palace had been chaos-the flight downward, the terror of collective nightmare… He had forgotten about his companion. "She didn't-"

"No," Liin Sivi replied simply.

Eladamri steadied himself, setting a feverish hand on cold stone. The rock drank his heat. Before him, the passage descended to deep darkness. Chill air crowded past from spaces below. It seemed Dominaria was breathing. It seemed her breath was cold.

"Just a little farther," the elf assured. He was small and surefooted, like a cave cricket.

Eladamri and Liin Sivi picked their way across a rubble field where hunks of stone had calved from the encroaching ceiling. Beyond, the passage squared up, seeming almost a mine hewn from rock. Eladamri's footsteps echoed in whispers all around him. At the end of the corridor, the elf stood before a vast cavern. Eladamri's lantern barely shone in the blackness.

He stared at the lantern. Its wick was little more than a nub. Reaching to the neck of his robe, Eladamri grabbed the collar and hauled hard. The fabric ripped easily free. He opened the lantern, lit the strip of material, and fed it down into the wick slot. The collar filled with oil. Fire flared. Eladamri closed the panel and lifted a blazing lantern.

Its light shone out over a cavern filled with crouching figures. Their eyes gleamed. They looked not to the light but to the light-bringer.

"Let's go down to them," Eladamri said. "Yes," the elf said, scrambling down the slope. As Eladamri descended, Liin Sivi spoke, "We should go back." "I cannot go back," Eladamri said. "They have glimpsed hope. It would kill them for me to leave."

"You cannot just sing to these people and make pretty speeches. Look at them, Eladamri. Look at them."

He did. His heart went cold in his chest. It was not merely darkness that swathed them. It was death. They were rotting. Their flesh boiled off their bones. Teeth showed through rags of lip. Eyes wept in lidless sockets. Breath raked into and out of riddled windpipes. Shoulder bones showed white through sloughing flesh. "They are still alive," Eladamri said.

"But for how long?" Liin Sivi replied, clasping his shoulder. "You cannot save them."

Eyes hardening, Eladamri pulled away from her. "These are the Dreaming Caves. I cannot save these folk, but their dreams can."

He descended the final pitch of the hillside and was among them.

Eladamri lifted his lantern, peering in gladness across the hordes.

"Behold, children of Staprion-dread has fallen from the skies, but hope rises from the world. Gaea has not forgotten you. Freyalise has sent me to you. She wants you to rise, whole, into the light. Come to me, brothers and sisters. Come. Believe. Be healed. We will rise. We will save our homeland. Come!"

Liin Sivi stood on the slope, her hands sweating on the hilt of her toten-vec. She would not cut down allies, certainly not plague victims. She could only watch as they surrounded Eladamri, pressing on him, swallowing him in their rot. In moments, he was gone. Even the light of his lantern was eclipsed in that clamor of heads and hands.

There was only darkness now, darkness and death and the wails of the dying.

Suddenly, the lantern beamed forth again. It rose, clutched in a healthy hand. Its rays spilled out over more healthy flesh. Where there had been scaly heads and skeletal arms now there were flowing locks and young muscle. Where there had been rot there was now vitality. It was as though light itself healed them-rebuilding bodies, renewing spirits.

At the center of that glow was Eladamri. His robes seemed lit from within.

Hands reached for him, touched him, and came away whole.

Liin Sivi released her weapon. She rubbed fists in her eyes. Was this another delusion of the Dreaming Caves?

Waves of power, of belief, swept in visible rings from Eladamri.

This was no dream. This was truth.

Mouth agape, Liin Sivi dropped to her knees.

Eladamri sang gladly to his people:

Though death has guile and killing power,

Though bloodlust rules the steaming tides,

It's life that wrestles hour by hour

And finally abides.

O forest, hold thy wand'ring son

Though fears assail the door.

O foliage, cloak thy ravaged one

In vestments cut for war.