"Without Elspeth I think we should stay close, don't you?"

Again the shrug.

By that time the water situation had become dire. As they drew nearer to the leaden horizon where Koth said the Vault crouched, the air had become more toxic, burning their lungs and the water was not potable in the extreme. Late afternoon found them collapsed in a high crevice. Returning to the valley long after sunset. With visions of choking Phyrexians in the backs of their minds, they prowled until Koth dropped into a low crouch behind a jagged boulder. He pointed ahead.

"Be very still," the vulshok said quietly.

Ahead the valley widened slightly and approximately thirty small treelike forms shown in the crepuscular light. They had been wrought, that much was obvious to Venser, but how long before? The whole plane had been made by the hands of Karn, and so the tree forms must be the same. From their hard boughs hung large white b.a.l.l.s that glowed with a greenish tinge.

"Gel fruit," Koth croaked, walking around the barbed boulder and toward the trees in a low crouch. "Water."

Venser was unsure if they should eat the fruit from a Mephidross gel-fruit tree, even if it had been part of the Oxidda Chain recently. It looked sick. Its form had begun to twist and effect the torturous aspect of the Mephidross. Off to the right, Venser heard the skittering of something. He crouched and ran behind Koth. Whatever had made the sound had quieted. Venser and Koth reached a scattered pile of tubing and stopped.

"Something is afoot," Venser said. "There are sounds I have not heard before."

"What do they sound like?" Koth said, his voice little more than a whisper.

"They scratch."

"Do they whine?" Koth said.

"I did not hear them make that noise. It was a dry metal noise."

Koth was silent.

"It could be blinkmoths," he said. "There are still a few around. Or ink moths, their Phyrexian version."

"I like the first one better," Venser said. He had found the metal carca.s.s of some creature with the articulated back plates of an insect. It was lifeless and limp, but he held it up, flopping before Koth's eyes.

"Could it be one of these?"

"A dung disposer?" Koth said, glancing momentarily at it. "You disgust me."

Venser dropped the small carca.s.s.

Koth hardly seemed to notice, so intently was he gazing at the tree forms and their low-hanging fruit. "The sounds are not made by a dung disposer. But something is most likely watching us at this moment. Gel fruit groves are found in some of these canyons, and they are always dangerous places, even before the Phyrexians. Whatever lives makes its way to these. Either to gain water and food or to eat what comes here to gain water and food. I generally avoid these areas, but we need what they can give."

Crouched, they watched the grove until Venser's knees burned and his stomach was wound into a knot of thirst so painful that he would have agreed to fight a legion of Phyrexians if it meant a drink at the end. He could hear Koth's stomach gurgling. But Koth did not move. A hot breeze rocked the fruits on their branches tantalizingly. Finally Venser spoke. "Let us make a move or whatever is watching us will soon hear my stomach and know our position."

"You are right," Koth said. "You go ahead. Now is the time for you teleporting."

Venser paused. "I will." He watched the trees, thinking how to move into the grove.

But Koth thought better of it. "I will have no more of this sneaking around," he said. And with that he began striding to the trees.

He stopped at the first tree and picked a head-sized fruit, which he carried back toward Venser. It happened when Koth was about halfway between Venser and the tree. A momentary whistling of wind and Koth dropped the fruit, drew his fist back, and lashed it out. Something fell from his fist and banged off the ground. There were two more whizzing sounds, Koth swung twice, and two more small forms fell clattering.

Koth seized the fruit and started walking back to the crevice. Venser blinked into being next to Koth and had to immediately duck one of the vulshok's bright fists.

"Say something next time you are to appear, young artificer."

Before Venser could reply another whizzing cut the air and he put out his hand, a blue miasma appearing around it from which only his fingers poked. The metal form flying toward them slowed and began to waver in its path, until it floated lazily past and b.u.mbled away into the dimness.

"You should see what it's seeing it its mind's eye," Venser said, nodding as the small dartlike creature moved past them. It was long and thin, with a beak pursed to a sharp needle as long as a man's arm. Fluid dripped from that sharpened tip. A finlike appendage extended out its back. "We look like tall reeds to it, and it hungers for our flesh."

Venser leaned close for a look, and at that moment was pierced by another dart flying from behind. The pain was instantaneous and searing. So much so that Venser found he could not concentrate enough to teleport away, and a moment later felt the world fade into blackness.

When he opened his eyes again, the land of Mirrodin was moving slowly past and the heat around his face was as if he were standing near a blast furnace. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again he was slumped against the metal side of a small cave. The metal burned his back, but he could not stand, could not make his limbs cooperate with his brain's commands. The best he could manage was to slip over and fall on his side. He closed his eyes again.

When he opened his eyes for the third time he was floating again, bobbing as the land fell away behind. He found he could raise his hand and he did so. He scratched his matted hair and spoke.

"Where is my helmet?" he said.

"He lives," Koth said. Koth turned to Venser, who he had strapped to his back.

"Well," Venser croaked. "I feel just wonderful."

He felt so bad that when Koth untied him from his pack, Venser cried out. Moving his limbs felt like the worst pain imaginable. As if they were being ripped free from their joints. Koth stood him on his feet.

"There is nothing wrong with you," Koth added. "Stinger mechs like the one that found your neck offer paralysis serum, but movement does away with its effects."

Venser nodded painfully.

"So move," Koth commanded.

He took one excruciating step, and then another. It felt as though sand had found its crafty way into his joints. But soon the pain lessened and after an hour of walking in circles it felt only as though he were walking on fractured bones. Koth threw Venser his helmet and he greedily slipped it on. The familiar smell of his hair was in it and he relaxed a bit.

"Where are we?" Venser said.

Koth stepped dramatically back and extended one arm.

"Your body they will harvest," Elspeth said to Vadi, her bowl of cold soup long forgotten. "They may even keep you alive for a time, letting you heal, occasionally taking strips of your flesh and sinew for fuel or musculature. You'll begin to recognize your own body parts stretched and fused into the skeletons of your captors.

The vulshok watched Elspeth without expression.

In her mind Elspeth watched helplessly as three Phyrexians lifted a human in their meat-hook hands. The screaming...the screaming The screaming...the screaming.

"But your mind will be left to its own sad devices. They don't understand the mind or its needs. Your mind will fall away, or you will scream yourself to insanity. Be ready for this. This is the harvest you shall reap."

Vadi looked at her suspiciously. "How do you know?"

"I know," Elspeth said. "Because I survived them."

The vulshok's hand went out, but instead of touching Elspeth in consolation she took the hefty handle of a battle spear lying propped against the low table.

"I do not have their infection, if you think that," Elspeth added, noticing how the Vulshok held her spear.

"You are not auriok. You are a troublemaker and liar like that upstart Koth. Speak now or I will lay you low." The vulshok kicked her stool back and brought the head of her greatspear up so it hovered at Elspeth's throat. "You are a spy for the Hammer tribe. Speak doomsayer!"

"I wish I had a confession for you," Elspeth said. She looked down at the sharp tip of the spear. She scooted her chair forward toward the spear tip. "Knowing what I know about our mutual enemy, I wish you would end my days now."

Vadi lowered the spear, the scowl still on her face. "You are no auriok. You're no spy. You are none of these things. You are something much worse." The vulshok spat a dry splotch at Elspeth's feet. "You are a coward."

"You do not know what I know."

"You say you left your friends. You say they are better off without you. You say there is a great enemy. You say, say, say. All talk. All words. And words are wind."

"They are better off not depending on me," Elspeth said.

"So you will hide, is that it?"

Behind the vulshok loomed the tremendous mountain they had seen on the horizon. Green gas swathed it in the bright light. It appeared to be made of corroded lead.

But Venser stepped forward and brought his hands together in a surprisingly loud clap. Koth could see the shockwaves from the clap bend and distort the air, as hot gases escaping a vent, and he felt the metal in his body stiffen momentarily. Then Venser disappeared and reappeared at an outcropping not far away. He teleported back a moment later.

"Did you see it?" Venser said. "A small metal form, smooth and shiny? Does that description match anything you know?"

"Yes," Koth said in a low voice.

Venser c.o.c.ked his head at the vulshok.

"But not exactly," Koth said. "It is probably a myr. They are harmless little things," Koth p.r.o.nounced. "I mean, they are generally harmless," he said, sounding less sure.

"The question remains why is this small creature following us?"

Koth turned to Venser. "How do you know it is following us?"

"I have heard it," Venser said. "In the outer dark last night."

"So have I," Koth admitted.

"I wonder," Venser said, staring out to where he'd heard the creature.

"Enough of this," Koth said. "Come, let us walk."

By nightfall of the next day the mountains had begun to fall. Koth, grumbling, walked toward where the suns seemed to go when they fell from the sky. The smell of rot was what reached them first. It was a type of rot smell Venser had not experienced before: the putrefaction of metal and meat as if from a derelict slaughterhouse.

The deeper they got into the swamps the more the mountains started to cut free from one another and slide slowly into the dark murk of the Mephidross. Koth shook his head and said that the ore had destabilized...every day the swamp and its green, necrogen fog bit deeper into the Oxidda Chain. Venser stopped to investigate how that could happen. He looked closely at the way the oil of the swamp suffused the metal of the mountains, until the great hulks of the Oxidda took on a crumbly consistency.

At one point they witnessed a mountain sliding into the swamp. The ground shook and in its immenseness a slab from a mountain creaked and suddenly fell with a great crash. Liquid from the swamp rose up in a wall many times taller than a man, and the green haze enveloped the slab.

The land began to smooth. By the second day they gained the big sky and all that lurks in that high place. Koth's eyes were always on the sky. Once he saw a dark dot moving across its open sweep. They stopped to watch, but the dot moved away.

Their boots sank deeper in the black ichor of the swamp. Caught in the lowest places, the sticky material reached to their ankles. They slept on whatever high ground they could find, and only when they were so exhausted that they could not lift their sc.u.m-covered feet. They slept where they fell, in fireless camps. In that way, they escaped detection for a time.

At the end of the second day they found a corpse of a sort laid out in a twisted pose that left it half in and half out of the murky water.

Venser turned to Koth. "Phyrexian?" Venser said.

"Nim," Koth said solemnly.

The nim looked a bit different from the others they had fought near Koth's village. It was more skeletal, for one. There was little or no meat left on its body, and the meat left was rotting off the shiny bones. Its forearm had simply rotted off, and only a stub at the elbow remained, with rags of flesh where the limb had once been. Its skull had fused onto its body and the teeth of the maw had fused and grown together into a tangled ma.s.s that looked like sharp antennae. Its limbs were longer than those of the other nims, as well.

"It walks partially on its hands," Venser said, looking up from his investigation of the creature. The artificer's eyes were shot through with red and he appeared aggravated, Koth thought. He watched his hand shake slightly. He'd seen him like that before over the last days, and the trembling always disappeared eventually. He decided to keep an eye on him.

"There is oil on it," Koth pointed out.

"Yes," Venser said absently. He stood and almost tripped.

"Are you wounded?" Koth said.

Venser smiled absently. "No, I haven't been." He looked first one way and then another. "I only need to sit down."

He found a small boulder that was out of the swampy murk, and seated himself on it. From his left sleeve he drew a small bottle filled with turquoise-colored fluid. He uncorked the bottle and took a small sip. He carefully replaced the stopper and slipped the bottle back into his sleeve.

"What is that?" Koth said.

Venser swallowed the fluid in his mouth before turning to the vulshok with a small smile.

"Nothing," he said.

Koth did not seem convinced. "Well, whatever it is there is not much of it left."

"That is true," Venser said, straightening the fabric of his sleeve over the pocket holding the small vial. "I did not have much time to pack for my journey to sunny Mirrodin."

"What if you don't get it?"

Venser stood.

"This is our way, I believe," he said, and started walking.

"So, we're done talking about whatever is in your sleeve?" Koth said.

Venser said nothing.

They moved through the wet of the Mephidross only in the daylight, and slept as little as possible. By the third day each of them was stumbling in their tracks and had to sleep. They did so under the other's close guard. They encountered in their wanderings other nim lurching and sniffing, and mostly avoided them. Once Koth found a small enclave of the wretches and tore their parts loose from their bones, which he then wished aflame and left smoldering on a high place for the entire known world to see.

Soon they made out the ghostly shapes of distant hills in the green haze. As they neared, the hills became more p.r.o.nounced and especially a hill in the middle of all the others. Its torturous aspect was clearly the focus of this derelict land, yet they made for it.