They continued their march. The blinding light above their heads never moved, so it was difficult to tell how long they had been walking, but it would have been half of the day's movement of a normal sun. Finally the heat became so much that they stopped on the flat plain. Elspeth, who had the only water flask, shared what drops she had, but it was not enough. They walked again.

When Koth stopped grumbling, Venser started to worry. The ground was still flat and hot and the edges of the room were not within view.

It was Koth, still mute in the heat, who first tripped and fell slowly to his knees. He kneeled like that in the blazing heat with his hand over his eyes until Elspeth offered her hand and pulled the large vulshok to his feet. He stood wobbling for some seconds before taking a step and then another and they were on their slow way again.

"Nothing is changing," Koth said.

"Indeed," Elspeth said.

"I wouldn't say that exactly, geomancer," Venser said. He had stopped and was staring intently between his fingers in a certain direction.

"Do you detect something?" Elspeth asked.

"I am unsure. There is a dot."

"A moving dot?" Koth said.

Venser said nothing as he watched. Soon the dot became larger between Venser's fingers.

"It is moving," he said. "Toward us."

Koth leaned forward and sat down hard. "I will not move until it nears."

"What if it is Phyrexian?" Elspeth said.

"That is almost certainly what it is," Venser said. "And we are at our weakest."

Venser squinted at the moving dot. There was a snapping sound and in an instant the artificer was gone. Elspeth and Koth watched. The dot stopped. There was a tremendous screeching sound and then a bang bang and a and a clank clank. Then nothing. The dot did not move and Venser did not appear. They waited in the brightness until their heads were pounding, and then they started to walk to the dot. It took a long time to reach it. As they walked, the dot slowly got larger, until it was something larger than a galley.

It was a huge Phyrexian and its body was covered in dull pocked iron. It walked on six stubby legs with its belly raking the ground. The metal back was covered with spikes and holes. A tiny head of mostly chipped teeth popping out of a small mouth thrust out the front. Pipes connected the side and back of the head to its ma.s.sive body. Venser was not there.

The Phyrexian appeared to be asleep. Its eyes were closed and it lay on its stomach with all six of its stubby legs stretched out straight to the side.

There was another bang bang and a and a crash crash and a panel on the side of the Phyrexian popped open. Venser's head appeared. and a panel on the side of the Phyrexian popped open. Venser's head appeared.

"I believe this was a crusher," he said, struggling to get his body out of the round hole he'd opened.

"Yes," Koth said.

"It will function no more," Venser said. He threw down a wet wad of material, which splattered and clanged on the ground. It was covered in oil.

Venser tried to climb down the side of the large creature, but his oily hands lost their purchase and he began to slide. Elspeth caught him with a smile on her face.

"See," he said. "That's all it takes to loosen the mood around here."

They put their hands back over their eyes and looked at the beast.

"What is it doing in this room?" Koth said.

Venser shrugged. "Existing," Venser said. "Perhaps it could not leave the room before the Phyrexians took it over and it still cannot."

But Elspeth was not looking at the creature. She was looking back in the direction they had come from.

"I think yon creature is a friend to this one," she said. "It is advancing on us."

Koth turned. "Is there room inside this one?"

"No," Venser said. "Not for all of us and not for one of your size I would wager."

The far-off dot advanced. It moved slower than the other dot had. As it slowly neared they could make out strings. As it came still closer, they saw that the strings were actually chains.

If the first Phyrexian crusher had been large, the one approaching was very, very large. Venser took a step back and almost turned and ran. The creature lumbered forward on huge, crooked legs. It was easily as large as a small city and it dragged its inhabitants on chains behind it.

Some were alive, Venser saw, and walking slowly with the chains clipped around their necks. They were mostly humans, and in various states of phyresis. All were armed with swords.

"Moriok," Koth said. "Shadow-aligned humans."

Many were motionless bodies being dragged behind. Some were no more than rotted corpses. Venser noticed with not a little bit of unease that many of them were missing their legs. The moving city was made of dull, jagged metal, pocked and wound with sinew and with a single head the size of a dragon propped on top of its amazing bulk. The head, though small, looked all around from deep set eyes. Beside the small eyes, the rest of the s.p.a.ce on the head was dominated by a huge mouth of sharp teeth, dripping with bright red blood. Many clawed hands on thin arms hung over its side.

It lumbered to a stop before the companions, and a huge rooster tail of steam shot up into the air. What flesh the being once had was long ago turned to black and metallic Phyrexian armor.

One of the giant's thin arms reached down and gave a chain a tug. The moriok attached to it struggled to stand, and when he could not, the Phyrexian lifted him by the chain as though a marionette. It dangled the struggling human into its open mouth. When the moriok's legs were kicking the creature's sharp teeth, the mouth closed with a snap snap. The moriok was without legs the next moment, screaming and flailing its arms as the blood and organs fell. The Phyrexian dropped the chain and chewed slowly as it regarded the companions.

"What's the plan?" Koth whispered.

Venser shrugged. "The head?" he said.

"Can we gain entrance to his body?" Elspeth said.

n.o.body replied. Steam shot out its back as the crusher slowly began its charge. It put its arms out and choked a cry. Creaking and whining as it started to move, the moriok stood straighter and pulled swords. Venser closed his eyes and took quick stock of his reserves of mana. Not good. He reached out with his mind to catch a fluttering tether. Once he caught one he yanked it straight and felt the cool flow of energy emptying into his skull. Elspeth drew her sword, and Koth closed his eyes and mouth and held his breath. A moment later his body and face were as red as the melted rock Venser had seen in the Oxidda Chain. The geomancer stepped into the path of the lumbering Phyrexian, whose legs were moving it, crablike, at a fairly brisk clip toward them with the moriok advancing before it.

The first moriok swung its sword at Koth. The blade of the sword caught on the vulshok's suddenly red skin and melted before the moriok's eyes. Koth reached out and burned his hand into the man's chest and the moriok fell away screaming. Koth walked closer to the Phyrexian. The great beast did not stop, but merely swatted Koth to the side with one of his pitted arms. Koth flew far to the right.

Elspeth advanced and her sword flashed and blurred as she attacked at every angle imaginable. In no time a large area of the Phyrexian was covered with deep hacks. But the juggernaut let out a horrible chuckle that sounded like someone was being drowned, before attempting to bring one large claw down on Elspeth. The white knight stepped to the side to avoid the attack. She brought her sword across and caught the Phyrexian in the wrist, hacking its claw almost off. Three other arms swept down on Elspeth, knocking her away.

The Phyrexian raised one of its clawed hands and held it above Elspeth. But Koth was there when the hand fell. He pushed, and slowly his hot skin began melting through the hand. How will that help Elspeth? Venser found himself wondering. The hand will simply fall around Koth and crush her.

Venser breathed deeply through his nose and felt his will collecting in his throbbing brain and extending out and away.

He found the Phyrexian's brain, such as it was, and followed it back until he was fairly certain he was in the motor function area, though it was hard to be sure as the being had once been a crusher. To be sure, Venser sent a reverse-impulse request through the brain. The Phyrexian crusher lurched backward, a bewildered look on its tiny face. The hand pulled away with the rest of the body.

"Well," Koth said between breaths. "That could have gone better."

The Phyrexian stopped moving backward and began advancing again. Some of the moriok dropped their swords and simply plodded next to the crusher. A couple just sat down and let the huge machine drag them. The crusher creaked as it approached.

"I do not know how to strike such a thing," Elspeth said, inspecting the edge of her sword before carefully sheathing it.

Venser could see his compatriots were tired. How long had it been since they slept more than an hour? Their water input amounted to what pools they could find collected in rust-metal divots, dripped down from the surface. Their dry tack was virtually inedible. Venser himself could lie down right there on the hot floor and sleep for three days. What he did not think he could fight right then was a ma.s.sive crushing machine that traveled with its meals shackled to it.

A cry caught Venser's ear. He turned. Behind them stood an array of Phyrexians of various shapes and sizes, but all with bodies of twisted metal and stiffened veins. There were at least one hundred of them with their claws up and their frothing mouths opening and closing soundlessly. They collected around the crusher as the huge beast navigated itself forward.

"I don't suppose," Koth said, looking from the crusher to the new arrivals, "that you can teleport us all away? Even I would not mind a good teleport right now."

"No," Venser said. Even though he did not like to admit it, there was a certain feeling rising in his throat that was telling him to flee. He could. He could teleport out of the way and keep going, keep searching for Karn. He had not asked to come to the metal place. He would have come eventually, to be sure, but in his own time, and when he was properly provisioned and ready. His situation was madness. He cast his eyes around the vast cavern. Not one obstacle to hide behind for as far as he could see, which was not far when he had to peer between his fingers to see anything.

The crusher creaked and whined its dry joints as it began to move forward faster.

Venser took a quick breath and disappeared, only to snap into existence the next instant in front of the crusher. The Phyrexian was so surprised it stopped. The chained moriok took one look at the swirls and waves of blue whirling around Venser's hands, and refused to move.

Venser swept a section of the Phyrexian's riveted plate out of the way. The metal, pliable to the artificer's mind, flowed in a graceful wave out of the path of his hand. Venser reached to his upper arms into the interior of the Phyrexian. He began rearranging. A moment later the crusher's arm impacted his side and Venser slid out over the smooth floor. He skittered to a stop at the foot of a huge Phyrexian with thick legs and a shelflike chest, skeletal arms and a head as large as its fist. Before Venser could stand, the Phyrexian seized his skull in the palm of one claw and lifted him off the ground. The creature's other hand was poised for a strike with two of its claw fingers extended to gouge into Venser's eye sockets.

Venser brushed the hand aside, but as the fingers and palm dripped back into the wrist, the tips of other claws poked out of the wrist, and another hand grew before his eyes, literally. Soon there was another claw.

Then something exceedingly odd happened. All the metal on the Phyrexian began to arc upward, as though it were dripping upside down. The dark metal of it began to dance and wind, much to the creature's amazement. Its exposed sinews and muscles looked strangely naked as its whole body began to tumble down without the metal's support. The metal of the creature's structure danced higher and higher in the air. The meat parts of the Phyrexian fell with a wet thump to the metal floor. But n.o.body was watching that. All eyes were on the metal, arcing up and down and side to side in graceful loops and peaks.

The metal turned colors as well-first red, then jet black, and then a bright, shimmering gold. Venser heard Koth's sharp intake of breath when the metal went a gla.s.sy blue. It pulled together into a square shape and fell with a hard thump on the ground next to the crumpled Phyrexian the metal had come from, who looked at it with eyeb.a.l.l.s bare and wobbly.

Then somebody was clapping. Venser turned to see a line of Phyrexians different than any he'd seen up to that point. They were twisted and small of head, with teeth coming out everywhere, and their metal parts were shiny. Their hands had small devices and long, sharp tools of chrome attached to them. And standing at the center of them was a human, or most of a human. A bright light shone at his right shoulder. Venser felt his breath catch in his throat as he recognized the metal floating in strips around that radiant shoulder. The strips extended in a fluid motion down an arm that ended in a long-fingered hand. An arm that glowed as much as the shoulder. A metal arm unlike any Venser had ever seen. And as Venser stared, his jaw slack, the being continued to clap.

Well now," the being said, in a voice that, like his arm, seemed to modulate itself slightly. "I did not expect to find you all the way over here, with these clankers, down here in the muck and the filth. By all rights they should have been sc.r.a.pped long ago."

It took a moment for Venser to find his tongue. "Where is here?"

The human chuckled. "Indeed," he said.

But the crusher and the dark Phyrexians did not see the humor in the situation. The crusher screeched as it adjusted its weight. Its tiny head looked back and forth from the being with the glowing arm to the Phyrexians that stood just behind him. The crusher's Phyrexians and moriok glanced uncertainly at the pile of flesh that had been one of their own.

The new arrival looked over the dark Phyrexians. He shook his head. "It's sometimes ridiculous what this Phyrexian taint produces. Their forms are not pleasant, not that I mind the form of a thing. I know they have no control over how they turn out, but so many of their designs have such flaws." flaws." He gestured at the menagerie. If Venser did not know better he might have thought they were laughing. If he had not known that Phyrexians lacked the sentience for humor, even such simple humor as ridicule. He gestured at the menagerie. If Venser did not know better he might have thought they were laughing. If he had not known that Phyrexians lacked the sentience for humor, even such simple humor as ridicule.

"Flaws or not, there are plenty of them," Koth said.

The being moved its strange eyes, blue as water, to Koth. He looked him over from foot to spiked hair. "You work with ore, vulshok, no?"

Koth nodded. "I have that honor."

"You have that honor," the being repeated.

The Phyrexian crusher lurched forward suddenly. The sound was so loud that Venser felt like moving the hand he had over his eyes to his ear. The being with the moving metal arm turned to the crusher. "I did tell you," he said.

He sniffed and raised both of his arms. After a series of motions with his hands, the Phyrexian's arms and legs were gone-the metal that had once been its legs and arms floated in a ball before the Phyrexian's face. The creature with the glowing arm turned back to Koth. The ball rearranged itself into a throne of sorts and came to rest on the metal floor. Two blue chrome Phyrexians rushed forward and moved the large seat behind the being. Without looking he sat down. The crusher looked on soundlessly.

"Do you work for your ore?" the being said to Koth.

"Our mother provides us with her blood."

"Your mother?"

Koth nodded.

Venser shifted his weight. To say the vulshok was impressed with the being was a great overstatement. Venser could tell by his friend's expression that Koth thought the being nothing more than another Phyrexian.

"My mother is dead," the being said.

Koth seemed not to have heard this. "And what are you then?" Koth said.

"Unfortunately, there are still parts of me that are human," the human said. He extended his metal arm and moved it before his eyes. "I am Tezzeret. I have lived in filth and muck. I have lived in palaces. I prefer palaces."

"You are one of the ethersworn," Elspeth said. "I would know your flash anywhere."

The being almost smiled. "Ah, a good knight of Bant. What foolishness. This is a little homecoming of a sort."

"So you are one of these ethersworn?" Venser said.

"No. All hands are raised against me, except those that work for me."

"How do you bear no blemish of the Phyrexian taint?" Elspeth said. "You clearly bed with these abominations. Do they possess etherium?"

Tezzeret's eyes stayed on Elspeth. The white warrior stared back. Venser could tell without a doubt what Elspeth thought about the being-enemy.

Tezzeret seemed to read Elspeth's mind. "I am not your enemy. I am not Phyrexian. I have come to help you, actually."

"Phyrexian's are not our only enemies," Elspeth said.

Tezzeret nodded. He looked back at his chrome Phyrexians. Following an unseen command, his chrome troops leaped on the dark Phyrexians and began savagely tearing at them with their claws. There were more dark Phyrexians, but they were no match for the smaller troops, who moved faster and struck with arms that morphed from claws to needles and then to bludgeons in the blink of an eye. One of the shiny Phyrexian's claws shot out of its wrists and flew through the air attached with a chain. Venser watched as that Phyrexian's claw knocked another Phyrexian's head clean off its shoulders. The tortured snarls and rattle of the Phyrexians fighting reminded Venser of gnarl beasts, but with armor on. It was over when the last black Phyrexian lowered its spear-shaped head and charged at a chrome beast, which stood still and let the spear pierce its chest. Then it began tearing chunks of sinew and metal out of the other's back and neck. Soon there was nothing left of the dark Phyrexian except for its head impaled in the other's chrome chest.

"You have something," Tezzeret said to the chrome Phyrexian with the head through its chest. "Just here." He made a sweeping motion, as though gesturing to a stain on a shirt after a meal. The chrome Phyrexian c.o.c.ked its head at Tezzeret, the bladed head jutting out of its chest. Tezzeret turned back to the compatriots and shook his head.

"You can't do anything with them," he said. "That one will need work. Now then, did that gain your trust?" Tezzeret looked from one to the other of them. "No," he said. "I can see it did not. What about you, artificer? Do you trust me some now?"

"I wish you would simply tell us what you want us to do," Venser said.

Tezzeret paused a moment. "Well, at least there is a glimmer of life somewhere down here. What makes you think you can help me?"

"Otherwise you would not be here showing off to us."

"I simply want to give you a gift."

"Don't think so," Koth said.

"Nonetheless," Tezzeret said. "You must come with me and my a.s.sistants to get this gift-I cannot hold it any longer."

Elspeth went to Venser's side. Her metal brow plate dinged into his helmet as she leaned as close as possible. "This feels foul," she said.

"Where do you want us to go?" Venser said.