The Moons of Mirrodin

CHAPTER 18

“Is that the way out?” asked Glissa. She pointed toward the approaching goblin army.

“No,” said the stoic golem.

“Tell me about the hole later,” screamed Glissa, “and get us out of here.”

Bosh turned from the Mother’s Womb cavern and ran down the hall. Soon the hammered walls gave way to natural metal formations. Tubes ran up the walls and across the ceiling. The hammered floor continued for a while longer but eventually gave way to the rusted iron tubing that seemed to run throughout the goblin complex. The corridor had turned into a cave, and Glissa could finally see the entrance ahead. Light from the red moon washed over the floor like blood.

They emerged from the cave in the middle of a mountain range. Tubular metal formations spread out ahead of them in every direction. The mountains looked much like the furnace. Iron tubes sprang up from the ground and intertwined with one another around a central core to form metal buttes that dotted the landscape. Many of these tubular mountains were larger than Taj Nar. The ground was a twisted mass of iron tubes. A layer of rust coated everything, giving the mountains a dull red appearance.

Glissa glanced back at the entrance to see if they were being followed, but Bosh’s long legs and tireless pace had left the goblin army well behind. The mountain behind them was enormous. It dwarfed the surrounding buttes. They were about a quarter of the way up the side and yet the top was obscured from view, fading into the sky and stars above. The entire mountain was made of the same tubular metal Glissa had seen inside the caverns. In fact, all the formations around her looked like they were connected through an endless iron pipeline.

“What the flare formed all of this?” she asked out loud.

“Memnarch,” said Bosh.

“Memnarch made all of this?” asked Glissa. “The mountains, the furnace, the big, flaring hole?”

“He shaped the world to create homes for everyone.”

“What is he?” asked Glissa. “A god? A planeswalker?”

“I cannot … remember.”

“Well, don’t hurt yourself.” Glissa slapped him on the shoulder. “It will come back. Give it time. For now, tell me about that big hole-the Mother’s Womb.”

“I ascended a hole similar to the … Womb,” said Bosh. “I recall the inner world that Slobad described. I remember emerging from such a hole and seeing the stars and moon above.”

“Wait a minute. You said ‘a hole similar to that one.’ Are there others?”

“Yes,” said the golem. “I believe so.”

“How many?”

“Three,” said Bosh. “Perhaps four.”

“Do you remember anything else?” asked Glissa.

“No.”

* * * * *

Bosh ran on in silence. Glissa turned around and watched the red moon disappear behind the mountain. She examined herself in the dim light of the blue moon, the one the goblins called the Eye of Doom. The wound over her ribs had closed, but her feet had swollen in the hours since the battle on the furnace floor. She summoned mana from the distant Tangle and let it pulse in her palms. She rubbed her feet lightly with the energy. It soaked into her blistered flesh and soothed the pain. She would need new boots, but her feet would heal. She had been lucky.

Glissa glanced up at the Eye of Doom again. They must head toward the Eye next, which always seemed to hover at the horizon. Chunth said the moons were heading for a convergence. Each moon, she knew, would rise over its own land. During her time with the leonin, she had seen the yellow moon-what the leonin called a sun-rise high above Taj Nar. The red moon-Slobad’s Sky Tyrant-was almost directly overheard when they emerged from the goblins’ lair. She was sure the Eye of Doom shone most brightly over the Quicksilver Sea. That was where they would find the vedalken. That was where she would find her answers.

Eventually, Bosh slowed down. “We are near the entrance to the cult lair,” he said.

Glissa glanced about. The only light came from the distant blinkmoth stars. While her eyes were poor in pitch dark, they worked well enough in the dim twilight. She spotted a faintly illuminated rectangle outlined in a tubular outcropping.

“There,” she said, pointing to the disguised door.

Bosh pressed on a tube next to the door to open it, and they slipped inside. Glissa dropped off the golem’s shoulders and led the way through the halls. She didn’t know the layout of the lair, but she was sure she could find the inner wall that housed Slobad’s secret scrying room. She watched for duct covers. After twisting and turning through the lair she found a long hallway that had duct openings placed at regular intervals, each across from an intersecting corridor.

“This is the spot,” she said. “I don’t know how to get in there, though.”

“I can get us through the wall,” said Bosh.

“I don’t think Slobad would like that much,” said Glissa. “We’ll just wait for him.”

A portion of the wall opened up behind them, and Slobad peeked out. “You right, elf,” he said. “Secret room not very secret with hole in wall, huh?”

“Slobad!” shouted Glissa. She ran over and dropped to her knees to give the little goblin a hug. “You made it out.”

“Of course.” He pushed the elf away and brushed himself off. “Slobad always survive. It what he do best, huh? You okay?”

“I could use some new boots and a good night’s sleep,” replied Glissa. “How are Dwugget and the others?”

“Alive,” said Dwugget, coming up behind Slobad, “thanks to you, my girl.”

“Thank Slobad. He got me there. He put me back together just as he did Bosh.”

Slobad looked at Bosh. “I need to finish job. Do better work on elf, huh?”

The goblin led the golem and Glissa into the secret room and began to work on the golem’s arm. Bosh held his limb in place while Slobad climbed onto the metal man’s shoulders to work. Glissa sat across from them and pulled off the tattered remains of her boots. She set the boot sheath aside and laid out the scorched leather to see what she could salvage.

Dwugget took the leather from Glissa. “Let us help,” he said. “We repair before we leave.”

“Thank you, Dwugget,” she said. “I’m going to need them. I have a long trip ahead of me this time.”

“Where will you go?” asked Dwugget. “What great mission take you and Slobad all across Mirrodin, huh?”

Glissa almost laughed. “I plan to go to the Quicksilver Sea,” she said. “I’m going to find the person responsible for the attack last night.”

“We thought it was the goblin shamans,” said Dwugget, “come to purify the Krark cult once and for all.”

“They probably helped,” said Glissa. “But those silver beasts belonged to someone who’s been trying to kill me. I’ve seen similar creatures before.”

While Slobad fixed Bosh’s arm, Glissa told Dwugget her tale. She explained how Slobad saved her from the leveler and how they had found Bosh in the Dross. She told him of the deaths of her friends and family.

“Those deaths not etched in your metal, huh?” said Dwugget. “They not your fault. Do not blame yourself for the corrosion of others.”

Glissa nodded. “We plan to cut away the corrosion so it cannot taint our metal any longer,” she said. “That’s why we go to the Quicksilver Sea, to find the person responsible.”

“Slobad tell me your destiny has something to do with Great Shaman Krark and our Mother’s Heart,” said Dwugget.

“I don’t know,” said Glissa. “It may all be connected somehow. My shaman, a troll priest named Chunth, told me of a world within our world. He believed it was very important to my destiny. What can you tell me about the inner world that Krark found?”

“Krark keep journal during trip,” said Dwugget. “Goblin shamans destroy, but not before I copy most, huh? We call it Book of Krark. I let you read.”

“Thank you.”

Dwugget took her boots over toward the cultists, who were resting on the other side of the chamber. Glissa turned to Slobad, whose hand had disappeared into the joint between Bosh’s arm and his shoulder.

“Where can we take Dwugget’s people where they can be safe?” she asked.

“We take to leveler lair as soon as Bosh fixed,” he replied. “Should be safe there again, huh?”

“You and Bosh take them there,” said Glissa. “I’m going to the Quicksilver Sea.”

“Leveler lair not far,” said the goblin. “We all go. Slobad know way. Bosh get us there fast, huh?”

Dwugget returned with a dark leather book. The cover was curved, leather wrapped around a piece of mountain iron. Inside, leather pages were bound together by straps laced through the iron half-tube. Glissa took the book as she had seen trolls handle religious objects during ceremonies. Touching it filled her with a sense of wonder and purpose she had never before experienced.

She bowed her head to Dwugget, then turned back to Slobad. “You two are staying,” she said. “It’s not safe.”

“That why we go,” grunted Slobad, pushing against some tool inside Bosh’s shoulder. “Keep crazy elf safe.”

“You will require our assistance,” said the golem.

Bosh’s commanding voice seemed almost comical as he sat holding his own arm in his lap while Slobad perched on his back, grunting and poking inside the golem’s shoulder. Glissa wanted to argue the point. She knew it would do no good. In the end, they were as stubborn as she was. For now she began to read the Book of Krark.

The Great Mother called to me again last night. She sent me a vision of her Heart. I floated down through her Womb into an inner world. Her Heart hung low in the sky, glowing with the might of the four suns. I reached for it, but the Heart was just out of my reach. It hung there, filling the inner world with power and light. I felt warm, as if I were standing before the furnace. I felt content, like I had found my true home.

* * * * *

Glissa looked up from the book to see an alien landscape. She stood on bare metal. The ground around her was featureless: flat, smooth, and gray as far as she could see. The Book of Krark had disappeared from her hands, but she remained in her own metal-clad body. Huge plantlike formations of crystalline material dotted the metal plains around her. The crystal plant towers reached hundreds of feet into the air toward a huge ball of energy that dominated the sky. They glittered and reflected the light of the Heart in every direction, creating rainbows of color that swept across the sky and collided with one another.

Glissa knew this was a flare, though she had never before recognized one while she was in it. How could this scene come from her life or from some racial memory? The elves had never been to the inner world. Or was she reliving Krak’s journey? Yet she was in her body, not some ancient elf or goblin body.

The vision began to dissolve around her as she pondered its reality.

“No!” she cried. The sound echoed strangely across the plains. It bounced back and forth among the crystal towers, multiplying into hundreds of noes winging their way across the inner world. The vision came back into focus as Glissa concentrated on the echoes.

She walked among the crystal towers. They seemed to reach into the sky toward the central moon … or was it a sun? High above her, Glissa could see white specks floating in the air. Blinkmoths? She couldn’t be sure. They seemed to glow, but perhaps it was the light of the orb passing through them. The orb pulsed like a beating heart inside the breast of the world. Each pulse sent a different color cascading around the orb-blue, red, white, black, green.

The specks began to swirl. The light pulses within the Heart cycled faster, and the tiny motes twirled faster as well. The effect was dizzying. Glissa’s knees buckled beneath her, and she fell to the ground. She stared up at the Heart. The colored lights sped across the Heart so fast they became a blur. The cloud of white specks turned into maelstrom, twisting around and around above her like a tunnel to the Heart.

The Heart turned bright blue for a moment at the other end of the storm, then burst in a shower of color. A blue orb of energy hurtled down the twisting tunnel like a bolt of lightning. A huge thunderclap shook the ground and tossed Glissa into the air. When she landed, the elf glanced up and screamed just before the blue ball slammed into the surface of the inner world … and her.

* * * * *

Glissa awoke with a start. The Book of Krark clattered to the floor. The room was dark around her. A single fire tube burned in the far wall above the cultists. They were asleep on the floor. Glissa picked up the book and set it on the table.

She rose and walked around the room. Bosh sat in a corner, his red eyes glowing in the darkness. Glissa could see Slobad curled up on the golem’s legs. He was snoring again.

“Are you all right?” whispered Bosh.

“Yes,” she said, “but why do they always have to end with my death?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing,” said Glissa. “Just had a bad dream.”

“You should sleep,” the golem said. “I will guard until the suns set.”

Glissa chuckled. “You’ve been listening to Slobad,” she said. “The elves call them moons.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They just feel like moons to us. They never rise above the Tangle, and they give us precious little light. A sun should burn bright above you and warm your face when you look at it.”

“You should sleep,” said the golem again. “We leave after the … moons set.”

Glissa watched the cultists sleep. Her repaired boots stood on the floor near Dwugget. She picked them up and sat at the table to put them on. Glissa glanced down at the Book of Krark again, then at the remaining cultists. There weren’t many of them left, but they still clung to their beliefs-even though that belief had nearly cost all their lives. These goblins gave up their former homes, their former lives, and risked everything because they believed in something larger than themselves. Could she do no less?

Something bad was happening to their world. Chunth knew it. Ushanti dreamed it. Glissa had seen glimpses of it in her own flares. She was fighting for all of them now. Whether she wanted the mantle or not, she had become the champion for the goblins as well as the trolls and elves-perhaps even for the leonin, nim, and everyone else on this world. There was an inner world. She knew that now. Somehow she also knew that she had to reach it to face her destiny.

Bosh had been right. She needed Slobad and the golem in this battle. The stakes were too high. It wasn’t just her against some killer. It was her battling for the future of their world. Bosh had information locked in his head about the inner world and Memnarch. She needed it to make the right choices, to avoid Ushanti’s vision. Slobad knew how to survive. He had an instinct for living, an instinct she would need in the coming days. Bosh was right. She needed them. If not for her, then for the Krark cultists, for the leonin, the elves, and the trolls.

Glissa picked up the Book of Krark and carried it over toward Bosh. She lay down and curled up beside the metal man, holding the book to her chest. Bosh patted her head with his newly replaced arm. She fell asleep with the golem’s arm wrapped around her like a blanket.

* * * * *

They left after the red moon set behind the mountains. The terrain flattened somewhat as they made their way toward the Glimmervoid. Rust-colored outcroppings of metal still surrounded them, but the iron tubes no longer ran through the ground beneath their feet. Those had given way to flat metal slabs that seemed slammed together in a huge red tile mosaic. The slabs often shifted under their feet, making the descent slow and torturous. As they skirted between the rusty buttes, Glissa could see the rolling metal plains of the Glimmervoid glittering in the starlight in the distance.

Bosh and Slobad scouted ahead during the night and returned just as Glissa saw the top edge of the yellow moon between two outcroppings. The goblin and his golem led Glissa and the cultists to an abandoned cave they had found.

That night, Glissa read more of the Book of Krark. As a shaman who received visions from his deity, Krark set himself apart and made an enemy of the shaman elder, who seemed more concerned with his own power than imparting any sort of wisdom to the goblins. One passage stood out to her:

I have asked the shaman elder to let me enter Mother’s Womb. I told him of my visions and my desire to seek her Heart. He cursed me for spreading lies about the Mother and promised to send me to the furnace if I spoke such heresy again. He cannot see the glory of the Mother. I must make him see. I must see the Heart. She calls to me.

The next night, Glissa came to the passage Slobad had recited to her in the cult lair before the attack.

I stood in a sloping chamber with no roof, surrounded by ancient towers of coral. A giant sun hung above me, glowing like Sky Tyrant, and Bringer, and Ingle, and the Eye of Doom. I had found Mother’s Heart. The Heart beat in the sky, giving life to the world. The stars danced around the heart, happy to live in her divine glow. Her heat warmed my face and my heart. I was home.

On the next page was a sketch showing the scene Krark described. Glissa recognized it, both from Krark’s description and from her own flare two nights before.

“Look at this, Bosh,” she said. “It’s an image of the inner world. Dwugget must have copied this from the original journal. Do you see the specks rising up from those … towers? Krark says, ‘It rained upward toward the heart from them.’ I saw these in a dream the other night. Are they blinkmoths? Chunth told me that the rain comes from the blinkmoths-the stars we see above us.”

Bosh looked at the picture in the book. His eyes narrowed, and Glissa could tell he was trying to remember anything else about his life within the inner world. His eyes opened wide as if he’d had a disturbing vision.

“Myco … mycosynth. Those are mycosynth spores, not blinkmoths. The mycosynth crystals produce spores. Blinkmoths are eternal. Mycosynth arrived later.”

“What do you mean?” asked Glissa. “Memnarch created the mycosynth but not the blinkmoths? I thought you said he made everything.”

“Memnarch shaped the world to his desires. He did not create it,” said Bosh. “Blinkmoths predate even Memnarch. Mycosynth arrived later like a plague. I believe I may have been created to battle the mycosynth infestation, but I lost the battle. That is all I remember. Everything else is blank until you and Slobad found me in the Mephidross.”

Glissa left Bosh alone with his patchwork memory and returned to the book. They were less than a night’s travel from the leveler lair, and she was almost finished with the Book of Krark. It read like a flare. Krark had been drawn to the Womb and the Heart as if by destiny. He entered the massive hole and walked down its length into another world, a world inside the world, that curved up and away in all directions.

It is like being in a valley surrounded by hills that stretch up to the sky. In that sky, Mother’s Heart hangs like a single sun that never moves.

Chunth was telling the truth. Krark had seen it. Bosh had lived it, and Glissa had dreamed it, but what did it all mean? If there were huge holes leading to this inner world, why had nobody but Krark ever descended? Bosh said the mycosynth were a plague, but if they were so pervasive, why had no one ever seen them in the outer world? They were pieces of a puzzle, but Glissa had no idea how to put them together.

Glissa pulled out the vial of serum. Were the answers in there? She thought about drinking the serum to gain the knowledge of whatever ancient power had created the blinkmoths. But Chunth had kept his secrets to protect the elves and the trolls from the serum. He’d died protecting his secrets-and her. She would only use the serum if she had no other options.

* * * * *

They arrived at the leveler lair well before the moons rose the next morning. Glissa and Slobad went in to investigate, while Bosh remained to guard the cultists. Slobad lit his fire tube as they entered the dark chamber that had been his home. The place had been ransacked. The table, chairs, and workbench had all been destroyed. When Slobad checked the passage to the leveler lair, he found it blocked off.

“You were right,” said Glissa. “Whoever takes care of those monsters found your home. Aren’t you worried they’ll come back?”

“Only if some crazy elf destroys more levelers, huh?” said Slobad. “You not going to do that, huh?” He smiled.

“I was thinking about it,” said Glissa. She looked around. “There’s not much space here.”

“More chambers there and there, huh?” said Slobad, pointing to the walls on either side of the small room. He pushed the remains of his workbench out of the way and opened a panel then moved across the room and opened a second panel. “They survive.”

The other chambers were untouched, and Glissa crawled out to get the cultists. “It’s not much,” she said to Dwugget, “but you’ll be safe here. The shaman elder will never send anyone here. When this is over, maybe Slobad can clear out more chambers for you.”

“Thank you again,” said Dwugget. “You have done much for us, huh? We follow Krark and Glissa now.”

“Well, I’m not sure I’m planning to follow Krark down that hole,” she said.

“You will,” said the cult leader. “All answers are within the Mother’s Heart.”