Scars Of Mirrodin_ The Quest For Karn Part 16

He had later figured out that the substance was in all likelihood some of the material residue left when Yawgmoth had been vaporized after the explosion that ended the Phyrexian invasion on Dominaria.

"You coming?" Koth said.

Venser blinked out of his ruminations. He had fallen far back from the rest of the group.

"Yes," Venser said, and started walking faster.

Koth walked ahead.

"Koth," Venser said. "Why did Maalan address you as 'son of Kamath'?"

The vulshok slowed his step. "Because my sire is Kamath."

"Yes, but how did he know?"

"I am known here."

Venser remembered the expression the loxodon had on his face when he addressed Koth. He was known all right, but not honored. For some reason Venser remembered Koth's mother. Koth's people could not have understood when he disappeared. They could not have known that he had left to find help for Mirrodin. To them, Venser thought, they would have seen a coward's motive.

They walked in silence. Eventually the wall of the cavern became apparent. The crew leading them trailed ahead in a ragged line that made its way to a particular part of the wall. As they neared it, Venser could see where someone had cut a jagged hole out in the metal wall with concentrated fire. It was through that hole that they walked, ducking their heads slightly.

Behind the wall were gridworks and supports, but no Phyrexian conduit guts. A ladder extended upward, and they climbed.

Many times they found other cutout doors leading to other hot, metal rooms connected with ladders. Venser lost count as to how many. But eventually they came to a smaller room that smelled of roasted meat, singed fat, and unwashed humans. Coal fires burned near ragged shelters scattered here and there. Some shelters were made of the thorax sh.e.l.ls of large Phyrexians. Others were metallic skins stretched over a framework of the other parts of a Phyrexian. As they approached, every occupant of the small camp came out to stare as Venser, Koth, Elspeth, and the fleshling pa.s.sed.

Venser heard whispers and some hisses as Koth pa.s.sed. Eventually the loxodon stopped in front of a shelter made of only the rounded pieces of Phyrexians' belly armor that was raised off the ground slightly. An elf stuck his head out of the round hole in the side of the structure, and turned his milky white eye to them.

"Ah, yes," said Ezuri. "I recall these machine lovers. Wherever did you find them?"

The loxodon spoke up. "They were in furnace room minor wandering around."

Ezuri nodded slowly. To Venser it looked as though the elf had added a little weight onto his frame. The creases around his eyes were also not quite as deep as he remembered.

"You have prospered, Ezuri," Venser said.

The elf turned and looked him up and down. "You have not, artificer," he said. "I take it you have not found the one you seek. What was his name, Kurt, Kam?"

"Karn."

"Karn, just so," Ezuri said. In a moment the elf hopped out of the hole of his structure and stood before them in a robe of s.h.i.+mmering material that draped to his ankles.

"We have not found the golem, no," Venser said. He opened his mouth to tell the elf about Tezzeret telling them where Karn can be found, and to tell him about the fleshling, but something in the way Ezuri was staring at him made Venser close his mouth.

Ezuri's eyes moved over the rest of the companions, until it stopped on the fleshling leaning on Elspeth's shoulder.

"You are new. Who are you?"

The fleshling said nothing "Speak up," Ezuri said.

"Melira," the fleshling said softly.

Melira? Venser thought.

"The disgusting flesh of an outlander?" Ezuri said. "Yet you have the mark of a Greenshank sylvok to my eyes."

Venser said nothing. Nothing at all.

Ezuri's eye did not leave the fleshling.

"Are you still prevailing against the forces of Phyrexia?" Elspeth said.

That made Ezuri's eye move off the fleshling and rest on Elspeth. "Why, h.e.l.lo, white lady."

"So, you have vanquished the Phyrexians from the surface?" Elspeth said, repeating her original question, which she could tell was a sore spot for the elf.

"We are making headway," Ezuri said casually.

Venser stepped forward before any more words could be spoken on the subject. "Ezuri," he said. "Could we stay here for a time, until we have rested?"

Ezuri glanced at Koth before curling his lip. The vulshok pretended not to notice. "All enemies of Phyrexia are welcome here," Ezuri said. "But I warn you that you may be asked to help our efforts."

"Thank you, Ezuri," Venser said.

The elf nodded. "Leaving will be your trick. But you are welcome to stay."

"Leaving will be our trick," Elspeth said.

Ezuri's eye drifted back to the fleshling before he turned and climbed back into his shelter.

The loxodon led them to another part of the settlement. He stopped at a small shelter-nothing more than a Phyrexian crusher's back panel leaned against the metal wall.

"This was a friend's place," the loxodon said. "Gone to shadow now. He had to be put away."

Elspeth wasted no time leading the fleshling into the shelter, and helping her lie down on her stomach.

"Water is found over there," the loxodon said, gesturing to an indentation in the metal where water dripped. "The latrines are over there."

Venser walked over to the water pool and took a long drink. He filled up his canteen, aware that all of the eyes of the small settlement were on him. Three children appeared at the water pool. They watched Venser from a safe distance, but eventually came closer. He smiled at them and they trailed him as he walked back to the shelter. He noticed that some of the children had dark stains blotching their metal parts. Some even had the stain on their skin parts. One girl who walked with the other children behind Venser, giggling as she copied his walk with long loping steps, had more than a dark stain on her arm. Her stain had worn away skin, and appeared to be spreading up her arm.

The children followed him all the way back to the camp. Koth stood to shoo them away, but Venser frowned. "Leave them be," he said.

Koth glared at the children before sitting down next to Venser. The little girl stuck her tongue out at Koth, and then the children began to run after one another.

"You see the dark patches," Venser said.

"Phyresis," Koth said.

"Many show the sign," Venser said.

"Yes," Koth said. "It'll take them all."

Venser suddenly understood the loxodon's cryptic words from earlier when he described the occupants of their current shelter as "gone to shadow."

From inside, Venser heard Elspeth chanting. He stood and went into the shelter, which was open on two sides. He placed his full canteen next to Elspeth and then returned to sit next to Koth.

The children, having seen where Venser went, skirted around and poked their heads into the other entrance of the shelter. They stood and watched Elspeth chant. After a time, all the children ran away but the girl with the large blotch on her arm. She inched closer and closer until she was sitting at the head of the fleshling.

Venser could not see what was happening in the shelter, but he heard Elspeth stop chanting. There was talking in the shelter.

"Why are you shunned here by these people," Venser said.

Koth said nothing at first. "For caring about Mirrodin," he said. "I disappeared, and my own tribe spoke against me. Their words echoed. Now my name draws harsh words."

"And you think you can gain their trust back by leading them against the Phyrexians?"

Koth nodded. "I know I can."

Venser heard the little girl's voice rise, as though she were telling a story.

"If I can show them that I am still a vulshok," Koth continued. "A Mirran that did not leave his mother and family to the nim and Phyrexians."

Venser forced away the images of Koth's mother in her hut. The terrible way her body jerked, controlled like a puppet by a Phyrexian. "There are other ways, you know," Venser said. "To show that you are not a coward."

The vulshok's eyes flashed at the word coward. "What would an artificer know about it?" Koth said, suddenly defensive.

"Nothing," Venser said.

They sat staring at each other. Suddenly the little girl in the shelter screamed.

Venser was up and to the entrance of the shelter in an instant. He met the girl as she virtually exploded out of the right side of the lean-to. One of the largest smiles Venser had ever seen was spread across her face. She stopped and held up her arms. The dark blotches were gone. The place where the phyresis had corrupted her flesh was nothing more than a pink patch.

Venser shook his head.

From behind, Venser felt Koth shove him out of the way. "What is all this now?"

When the vulshok saw the girl's arms, he drew back as though she were infected worse than before. "What madness is this?"

Venser went into the small shelter. Even in the low light, he could see Elspeth staring down at the fleshling, who was lying on her stomach, with her cheek resting on her forearm. Elspeth looked up at him as he entered. The expression on the white warrior's face was impossible for Venser to read: a combination of absolute wonder and shock.

"What just happened?" Venser said.

"I'm still not completely sure," Elspeth whispered, her eyes still on the fleshling. Venser looked too. She was lying with her head turned. Her blue eyes were wet, and she regarded them calmly from the ground.

"She began to glow," Elspeth said.

"Glow?"

"The girl was telling us about her parents dying, and the flesh Mirran began to glow from her eyes."

"The fleshling?" Venser said. He felt strange calling the woman 'the fleshling' but he would have felt stranger calling her Melira, for some reason.

"This human woman," Elspeth said, gesturing to the fleshling, "began to glow from the eyes. Her eyes filled the room with light. It was bright for a time and then the girl screamed."

"And the little girl was healed?"

"The phyresis disappeared. Before our eyes."

"It can't be," Venser said. n.o.body had ever been able to cure phyresis, and many great healers had tried, and on many different planes. It was the most virulent contagion known to any plane anywhere, and it was spreading. If it was true, then the fleshling could stop the spread. And suddenly Venser began to understand why Tezzeret had insisted that they take the fleshling with them. He understood Tezzeret calling her 'a gift.'

But he doubted very much that she was able to cure when he gave her to them. And Elspeth had mentioned her eyes glowing. Hadn't her eyes started glowing after their last teleport? Then it struck him. The blinkmoths. It must have been the blinkmoths that imparted in her the capacity to share her natural ability with others. He did not know that for sure, but it stood to reason.

Later that day, there was a line outside the small shelter. Every person in the settlement with the beginnings of phyresis was queued and waiting patiently, and some not so patiently. Some of the vulshok were s.h.i.+fting their weight from leg to leg and exhaling in exasperation.

Koth stood next to the tent, keeping a close eye on all that entered, lest one be an agent for the Phyrexians. To his general amazement, many of the people waiting in line smiled at him. Some even congratulated him on his return to Mirrodin. It was quite a different reception than he had gotten even hours before.

"They saw you and Elspeth leading the fleshling into camp," Venser said to Koth's bewildered expression. "You are the reason they are being cured."

Ezuri appeared early the next morning, though he showed no taint of phyresis. He stood in front of the shelter smiling beatifically, as though the cure was facilitated by him and him alone.

Venser stayed near the entrance of the shelter. He had quickly come to understand that the fleshling's cure had its drawbacks, especially to the fleshling.

It had happened the first time by accident. But every time after took tremendous amounts of concentration on her part. She was recuperating from the injury on her back, and yet spent all her waking hours focusing most of her energies on curing every stranger that walked in the door.

Ezuri had been the first to suggest that they find a way to bottle the fleshling's cure. Venser was sure that the elf wanted a bottle for himself from which he could dispense doses at will. For the right price, of course.

Ezuri could not figure out a way to bottle the cure, and the fleshling, Venser knew, would never have consented even if he had.

"She will heal any who come to her," Venser had said to Ezuri. The elf had not liked it, as Venser knew he wouldn't, but what could he do?

The fleshling healed all who came to her, and ended her days exhausted.

The line's end was in sight when Ezuri walked to where Venser stood, almost knocking over a sylvok who did not move out of his way fast enough.

"Well," Ezuri said. "The new day has turned out to be a good day."

"Yes," Venser agreed.

"Will you stay here with us?"

"No," Venser said. "We will continue our search."

But Ezuri's eyes were not on Venser as he spoke. They had strayed to the darkened entrance of the shelter, and the fleshling within. "And that amazing creature? Will she stay?"

"She will be healed soon, Elspeth tells me. She can decide if she wants to join our search or stay here."