Cory Herndon - The Fifth Dawn

“Because as it turns out, I’m not the only one Memnarch was after,” Glissa said.

Battered, cut, and bruised, Glissa stalked the floor in the dim candlelight that glittered around the silver tent. She reminded Raksha of a skyhunter. Indeed, she’d taken to the pterons readily enough when he first met the Viridian elf, though she still needed work on landings. Perhaps there would be a place for her at Taj Nar, if what she wanted him to believe was true.

It didn’t take long for Glissa to get through the rest of her tale-how she and Slobad had fared after leaving Taj Nar. Raksha was stunned. An entire world beneath his feet; a madman at the center of it all. The Kha had always considered himself well-traveled. Indeed, the historians assured him he had ranged wider and farther in his conquests and exploration than any Kha for a thousand years. Yet it seemed there was much about Mirrodin that he had never reckoned. He wondered bitterly how much of this truth Glissa now related to him had been kept back by Ushanti over the years. He and his seer would be having a long talk when he returned to Taj Nar.

If he returned to Taj Nar. Glissa’s story of her travails with Memnarch, from the Guardian’s plan to ascend to godhood to the knowledge that nothing on Mirrodin was native to the metallic plane had dashed most of the beliefs Raksha had ever held sacred. For the first time in decades, the Golden Cub began to doubt that the nim were the worst things fate had to throw at him.

They were the only two still awake-the Kha had dispatched a battered but still confident Jethrar to retrieve Yshkar from the front lines and left Shonahn to treat another wave of wounded. Bruenna and Lyese were both asleep on the far side of his spacious quarters. The pair needed the rest, and with a full company of Raksha’s personal guard standing watch outside, they finally felt safe to do so. The Kha could still clearly hear fighting far off on the razor plains.

“Shonahn knows far more than we do on the subject,” Raksha said, “But my people also have legends of a world inside the world. Dakan called it Tav Rakshan.”

“Tav Rakshan?” Glissa asked, arching one slim green eyebrow.

“Rakshan means Hall of the Eternal Sun.”

“So your name is really ‘Eternal Sun Golden Cub?’ “Glissa asked.

“Raksha is a family name. It’s literally ‘Lord of the Eternal Sun Golden Cub,’ if you must know. That is beside the point, however.”

“I wonder what elves would remember if we could?” Glissa thought out loud.

“The generational memory cleansing. You told us of this. It strikes us as rather unwise,” Raksha said. “But these troll-creatures had actual written records?”

“No, I said they used to. Chunth erased them so I-so we, the elves, wouldn’t know the truth,” Glissa said.

“You described this Chunth as an ally who fell bravely in battle,” Raksha protested. “Why did he hide the truth from you?”

“I guess he never thought someone like me would come along,” Glissa said. “By the time Chunth figured out the role Memnarch wanted me to play in his scenario, all he had time to do was save me.”

They sat silently for a moment. Glissa idly twirled a strand of rope of her black-emerald hair at the end of a claw, and seemed to become intimately intrigued with the fine decorative patterns that ringed the lightweight folding table. Raksha smoothed his whiskers with one paw and coughed.

“This lacuna…it is still there? In the Tangle?” Raksha asked and rose from his chair.

“It’s there all right.” Glissa nodded.

“That explains the new sun-”

“Moon.”

“-the new sun,” Raksha continued with mild irritation, “It’s not an omen, or a sign.”

“No,” Glissa said, “It was an eruption. I suppose you could call it part of the natural process of things. The core just couldn’t stay out of balance like that.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “The lacuna, and the new moon-”

“Sun.”

“-the big green ball in the sky are just raw energy, like the core. It’s pure mana, and it doesn’t have a conscience. But that power, in the hands of Memnarch-that could have been the end, right there. That’s your bad omen … or a warning.”

Raksha returned with two mugs of steaming oil that smelled somewhat like well-aged nush and offered one to Glissa. “Thanks,” she said, and took the heavy iron container in both hands, balancing it on her knees.

Raksha remained on his feet as habit took over and he paced the interior of his tent. “Why didn’t the explosion kill this Memnarch as well?”

“I don’t know,” Glissa said. “Protective magic? A big mirror? Dumb luck? My bad luck? How isn’t important right now, but we’ll find out. Still, at the time Slobad and I thought it had killed him. The blast flattened a few square miles of the Tangle. It killed hundreds, maybe thousands of creatures from what I could see. It did this to my hair. And the elves…” She took a deep breath, and her voice became cold. “Yulyn mentioned that dozens of elves disappeared when it happened. No elves have ever lived close to the Radix, but anyone who was in the Tangle when the lacuna blew open must be dead. It’s the only explanation.”

“But also dead are those armies of artifacts,” Raksha said. “You destroyed them. Had we not already witnessed this power of yours firsthand, we would doubt your claim.”

“The inside was crawling with them, though. Some kinds I’d never seen. Some looked like normal animals, but entirely metal. I don’t know how he’s making them, or even if he’s making them, but it looked like he had plenty of company down there. And yes, I do seem to have some kind of ability, but it doesn’t always work. It drains me.”

“What do you think might have happened to the goblin?” Raksha asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Glissa said, settling into a soft folding chair in Raksha’s tent. “He’s going to use Slobad to manipulate me. The little guy’s a hostage. And damn it, it’s working. I’m feeling pretty manipulated, but I’m still going to save him, Raksha.”

“We do not doubt it, Glissa,” Raksha replied.

The Kha was glad for this time to speak alone with Glissa. Among all these strange visitors who of late kept turning his well-ordered, albeit violent, world upside down, he trusted her the most. What’s more, he liked her, for an elf. The two of them were bound by a common enemy that had singled out each of them for death-he too had been attacked by Memnarch’s machines the night Glissa’s family was killed, though he’d heretofore thought the vedalkens were behind the plot. Yet for some reason, Memnarch and his vedalken minions had sent no more cursed artifact beasts to attack Taj Nar once the elf girl had departed. Glissa claimed it was her special power, this “spark” that Memnarch desired, that made all the difference.

Raksha didn’t like being attacked by mysterious forces he didn’t understand. But to be attacked, and somehow found not worthy of the fight, made him hate this Memnarch even more.

Glissa drew on the mug of leonin nush and stared into the sparkiron coals burning in a small pit in the center of the tent. The flammable metal, a common enough substance all over Mirrodin, crackled as a bit of oil dripped off the small game animal Raksha was preparing on a spit. The leonin Kha followed Glissa’s eyes as she watched a tiny orange spark flutter up the column of heat, through a vent, and into the night sky. In moments the cinder had joined the thousands upon thousands that filled the heavens.

“Forgive me,” Raksha’s baritone rumbled. As the drink soothed his nerves, he slipped again into a more informal tone. “The last few weeks have been hectic. Violent. I’ve lost too many men, and the leonin need to make a stand soon, before we’re fighting the nim at our front door again. I do not like being cornered. I do not like to lose warriors or friends.”