Cory Herndon - The Fifth Dawn

When she was finished, Slobad whistled. “Wow, we sure did a lot, huh?” he whispered.

Lendano was the first judge to speak. “A very interesting tale, Glissa. Tell me, these soul traps you spoke of…you said they were scattered throughout the inside of the world?” Glissa heard Yulyn snort when the elder elf made reference to Mirrodin being hollow.

“Yes, elder,” Glissa replied. “I think they … keep us here. In this world. All of us. We don’t belong here. I’ve had visions-”

“Don’t belong here? What is that supposed to mean?” Yulyn interrupted. “We are the Viridian elves, we live in peace with the Tangle. Where do you suggest ‘we’ belong?”

“No, everyone. Every person on this world,” Glissa said. She raised one hand and pinched her own forearm. “You see me as you see yourselves. Flesh and metal. Metal and flesh. But the metal came later.”

“How do you know this?” asked the Sylvok judge.

Glissa muttered something unintelligible.

“Please repeat that?” the judge prodded.

“I said, a troll told me.”

“That would be this ‘Bosh’ you spoke of?” the judge replied.

“No, Bosh was a golem. A very old golem. I’m talking about Chunth,” Glissa said. She placed special emphasis on that name of the troll. He was a legend among his own people, and a folk story among elf children. Most elves didn’t believe the so-called “First One” even existed. She didn’t know about the Sylvok.

But Chunth was dead, betrayed by a fellow troll who was working for Memnarch. She would have given anything to have the wise old shaman at her side right now, explaining everything to this silly tribunal.

“I have heard enough,” Lendano said. “And I do not believe we will be learning any more about the night in question. I am ready to vote, and as is my right, I urge you both to vote with common sense.”

“Are you passing judgment already, Lendano?” Yulyn asked, still calm but more threatening than ever in his ice-cold way. “Have you given up all pretense of observing our laws? This trial is-”

“This trial is a needless distraction, Yulyn. Did you not listen to a word Glissa has said?” Lendano interrupted, sternness creeping into his mellifluous voice. “We have assembled a capital tribunal for the first time in hundreds of years, at a time when our people are disappearing. And this Memnarch may still be a threat. We are wasting valuable time. It is also my opinion that we will be less safe, perhaps even enslaved like the humans, if we do not take Glissa’s words of warning to heart.”

“Disappearing? Is that why the place is so empty?” Glissa asked, procedure be damned.

“The accused-”

“Shut up, Yulyn,” Lendano interjected. “We do not know why, but we believe it is tied to the new moon. Most of the disappearances took place at that exact time.”

“Most?” Glissa asked, the urgency of the trial fading as her curiosity grew. “How long have people been disappearing?”

“Since you left,” Lendano replied. “Glissa, Lyese, I have known you and your family for centuries. I know that your sister is not capable of what you accuse, Lyese.”

“But the goblin-”

“I have allowed this to go on long enough,” Lendano said.

“You allowed? The law allowed!” Yulyn objected.

“No!” Lyese screamed. Without a word, she hauled off and slapped Glissa in the face. The older elf girl was so surprised that she stumbled over backwards and landed on her rump. Glissa placed one hand where Lyese had struck her. Without warning, Lyese leaped on Glissa again, hands now balled into fists that pounded Glissa’s chest. The accused felt herself starting to lose consciousness, but she couldn’t strike Lyese.

“Get off her!” Slobad wailed. Lyese’s weight left Glissa’s chest as the goblin caught Glissa’s sister in a flying tackle. Slobad had gotten free on his own and blown the element of surprise. But Glissa wasn’t complaining.

She looked for an opening, some way off the terrace. Then a rolling ball of elf and goblin slammed into her legs, sending all three of them tumbling to the forest floor.

Glissa sat up, rubbing her temple. A knot of scrub brush had broken their fall. Above, she could still hear confusion reigning at the disrupted trial.

“Slobad, where’s Lyese? Is she okay?” She crawled over to where the goblin was hunched over her sister’s unmoving form.

“Breathing okay. Not dead,” Slobad assured her. “But we’re gonna be if we stay here, huh?”

“You’re not going anywhere,” said a familiar voice, and Glissa felt a pair of meaty hands clamp onto her arms.

“Banryk?” Glissa said.

“Going to beg me for your life? Make it worth my while,” Banryk growled.

Glissa snapped her head back and heard a sickening crunch followed by the sound of Banryk crumpling to the ground, unconscious.

“Wish I could do that,” Slobad said.

“I wish I could stop,” Glissa said, clutching the back of her aching skull. “He’ll be all right.”

“Gonna need a new nose though, huh?”

“I hope he does,” Glissa said. She returned to Lyese.

Glissa saw the outlines of a youth she knew, and the eyepatch and cropped haircut of an adult she’d just met. Her sister was breathing softly, and was probably safer than Glissa was for now.

“Okay, Slobad. Let’s get out of here before the rest of them make it down the tree.”

“I would, but there’s one problem, huh?”

“What? Is it Yulyn? I don’t see anyth-” Glissa stopped when she heard the sound of hundreds of flapping metal wings, buzzing like giant flies and growing louder by the second. The last time she’d heard that sound had been on the ramparts of Taj Nar.

“Nope. We got company. Not just elves, huh?” Slobad said. “Have to talk to sister elf later. Ol’ crab-legs not want to stay dead.”

Bruenna spared a glance over one shoulder. The aerophins were gaining on her, in seconds they’d be close enough not to miss. She pulled hard on the steering controls of her stolen vedalken combat flyer and forced the limber, lightweight vehicle into a steep dive as another bolt of blue fire lanced overhead.

She couldn’t keep this up. Eventually, the aerophins would land a shot, and she wasn’t sure if she could still summon the energy for flying magic. That’s why she’d taken this craft in the first place. She had to reach the Tangle soon, or she was doomed. If the ’phins didn’t get her, the fall would.

Or the crash, if she didn’t pull out of this dive. Bruenna’s golden tresses whipped back into her face as she leaned hard on the stick, turning the dive into a roll and leveling off much closer to the ground. She was at the edge of the Tangle. If she could get below the tree canopy she’d have cover from the energy blasts, but sacrifice speed. With luck, any aerophins that followed would have the same difficulty. Bruenna poured on as much power as she dared and entered the forest.

Even with the wind whipping past her ears, she heard the swarm of aerophins enter the Tangle behind her. It sounded like all of them had given chase. “Very well,” Bruenna muttered. “Have it your way.”

The magical energies of the Tangle felt strange and wild to the mage from the Quicksilver Sea, and she had trouble shaping the power to her purposes, to say nothing of the fact that she had to control the flyer at the same time.

The flyer had not been easy to come by. The levelers that attacked her village had been only the first wave. The vedalkens personally led the second, riding flyers like this one and, at the rear, this fleet of damnable aerophins.

Bruenna hadn’t even had time to mourn the dead. She had to survive long enough to find Glissa and warn her of the vedalken resurgence. She decided to risk slowing down a bit, and concentrated on her home, feeling the distant lines of power sending her what she needed. The familiar mana let her tame the wild magic of the forest.