The Moons of Mirrodin (14 page)

“Don’t they ever give up?” she gasped through deep breaths of acrid air.

“Slobad don’t know much about nim, huh?” replied the goblin. “Raksha say they mindless. Never stop before reaching goal. Never stop. Never tire, huh? Mindless.”

“If they’re mindless, how do they know where to go and who to attack?” asked Glissa. “Could someone be controlling them?”

“Raksha sometimes sees humans behind nim in battle,” said Slobad. “Don’t know if they control.” Slobad thought they just turning into nim, huh?”

“If they’re being controlled,” huffed Glissa as she ran, “they might stop if we can take out whoever is controlling them.”

“What if they not stop, huh?” asked Slobad. “What if they not controlled at all? We stop; they not stop; we die, huh?”

“It’s better than running ourselves to death.”

They had come around another chimney. Glissa stopped. She hunched down so Slobad could slip off her back. “You continue on,” she told him. “Climb a chimney for safety. I’ll let the nim pass and try to find the controller.”

Slobad looked as if he was going to argue, but Glissa cut him off. “It’s our only hope. We can’t outrun them, and we can’t run all the way to the Vault of Whispers. Now go, and make sure they follow you.”

Glissa handed Slobad his satchel and pushed him off into the Dross. He looked back at her, then shrugged before trotting off into the haze. Glissa turned and looked at the sheer side of the chimney. She pulled out her sword, made several notches, and began scaling the chimney, cutting holes for her hands and feet as she went. Fifteen feet above the swamp, she stopped and waited. She hoped the nim were as mindless as Slobad had heard. If even one turned after passing the chimney, she’d be trapped.

*   *   *   *   *

From her perch on the chimney Glissa watched Slobad. He slogged through the Dross, holding his pack over his head. The humming intensified as she clung to the chimney, and her teeth were almost vibrating in her mouth. Below, the nim poured around the chimney. Glissa watched as row after row passed beneath her. Gas from the spouts on their sides wafted up, adding to the stench of the haze. Glissa closed her eyes and concentrated to keep the bile from welling up in her throat.

Once the nim passed, she opened her eyes, checking to see how close they were getting to poor Slobad. She couldn’t see the goblin. The elf was sure he couldn’t have gotten to the next chimney already, but there was no sign of battle in the ranks of the nim. Then, in the distance, she saw ripples in the muck. Slobad emerged from beneath the Dross just ahead of the nim army. The goblin screamed and waded as fast as he could away from the nim.

Glissa couldn’t wait any longer. If she didn’t attack them now, the nim would reach Slobad and tear him apart. No one seemed to be controlling them. She would just have to fight.

“Idiots!” came a voice from behind Glissa. “She’s back here! Turn around, now!”

Glissa turned.

“I’m guessing you weren’t talking to me,” she snarled.

He was a gangly man nearly as tall as the shambling nim, and had the same dull purple skin half-covered in Dross. Like the nim, the man’s mouth was like a gash across his face, but he lacked the exoskeleton and gas spouts of the nim. His features were almost humanoid—not human but not nim … at least not yet. Glissa could see the spark of intelligence in his eyes. It looked as if she had found the controller.

“Return!” he shouted.

Glissa glanced behind her. The nim turned around and began now slogging their way back toward her.

“I know just how long it will take them to get back here,” she said. “Call them off and tell me why you’re after us if you don’t want to die.”

The man looked over her shoulder and smirked. Glissa could hear the slosh of nim behind her.

“Who sent you?” she screamed. “Tell me or die.”

“It matters not what you do to me,” he said. His speech was slurred, as if his misshapen mouth couldn’t form the words correctly. “You’re as good as dead.”

“So are you!” cried Glissa. She swung her sword with both hands. The blade caught the controller just below his shoulder, slicing through his upper arm on its way into the man’s neck. The silver blade cut through vertebrae just as easily as it had cut into the iron chimney. The controller stood for a moment, the smirk frozen on his face, before his head rolled off to the side and he crumpled into the Dross.

Glissa jumped up onto the chimney again, grabbing the notches she had made and scrambling back up to her perch. She didn’t know what the nim would do, but if they were truly mindless, they should continue past her, following their last orders. If not, the controller was right and she was as good as dead.

Glissa tensed and waited for the front line to get to her. They didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her. Their eyes were locked forward. She worried that the nim might stop when they reached their dead master’s body, but the corpse had all but disappeared under the Dross, and the horde continued on past the chimney, trampling him deeper into the muck.

She clung to the chimney until the nim had disappeared into the swirling haze, then dropped down again and ran off to find Slobad. He was standing where he had fallen, wiping muck off his pack.

“What happened, huh?” he asked. “Where did nim go? They coming back? You kill them? Huh?”

“They’re returning,” said Glissa, “just as they were told.”

She told Slobad about the controller and about the nim’s mindless march into the haze. The goblin looked horrible. The Dross hung off him like scabby skin. As she spoke, pieces fell off and plopped into the swamp.

“What happened to you?” she asked. “Did you fall?”

Slobad gave up on cleaning his pack. “Yes,” he said. His eyes gleamed, and a smile spread across his face. “Something big under here. Big and metal. Tripped over leg or something, huh?
Fell on top. Something very big. Rolled off into Dross, huh? Think it some big machine, huh?”

“Machine? With legs? Like a leveler?” Her first instinct was to destroy it, but an idea occurred to her. “If it’s a leveler, and you can fix it, could we ride it through this?”

“Slobad can fix anything, huh?” said the goblin. “Anything. Fix Raksha’s doors. Fix cult’s boiler. Take apart leveler once—”

“Okay, okay,” said Glissa. “Let’s see what you found.” She reached beneath the Dross and felt around, then grabbed and lifted. With a huge effort, she pulled her find from the Dross. It looked like a metal boot at least two feet long from toe to heel, and it seemed to be attached to an enormous leg.

Slobad gasped, and Glissa dropped the boot. “What?” she cried. “What’s wrong?” She spun around to see if the nim were coming back, but the haze was still. When Glissa looked at Slobad, she thought the goblin was going to explode.

“What?” she asked again.

“I’ve heard stories,” said Slobad, “but never believed them. Myths. Not real. Always thought they just stories like Krark’s journey into Mother’s Womb. But we found one. We found one.” He was practically jumping out of the Dross, he was so happy.

“What?” screamed Glissa.

“Come quickly,” said Slobad. “We pull from Dross.”

Slobad slogged to the nearby chimney and opened his pack. He pulled out some leather rope and a metal tool with a series of wheels and a handle. He tried to screw one end into the chimney but couldn’t get it to go in. Glissa scanned the haze, looking for any sign of attack, but Slobad motioned for her to join him. She trudged through the muck to his side. The goblin screwed the contraption into a hole and looped the rope through the wheels. He gave one end of the rope to Glissa.

“Tie around foot,” he said. “Go, go. Hurry up, crazy elf, before nim come back.”

“Foot?” asked Glissa. She shook her head and trudged back into the Dross. She glanced around again, still wondering if the nim would ever return to look for their master, then worked on pulling the boot back up. She tied the rope around the boot, glanced around one more time, and headed back to the chimney. Slobad was trying to turn a crank, but it wouldn’t budge.

Glissa took over for him. The rope went taut as she strained at the handle. She feared the rope would break, but then the handle began turning more easily and the rope started to move. She looked back and saw a large metal object coming from the Dross. It’s a giant, thought Glissa. She could see a huge barrel chest, arms, legs, and a squat head coming toward them. As the Dross began to slip off the body, Glissa saw it was all made of metal.

“What the flare is that?” she asked.

“A golem,” said Slobad.

REAPER

Glissa hardly got any sleep that night. After hauling the massive golem into the chimney, she had trudged back through the Dross to make sure once and for all that the nim weren’t going to return. When she got back, Slobad had the golem’s chest open and had practically crawled inside. With his fire tube burning in one hand, the goblin peered into the chest cavity, making a racket with his tools.

The interior of the chimney was brighter than Glissa would have imagined. The purple energy that streamed through the walls of the chimney provided an eerie glow that illuminated the entire chamber. With light coming from all around her, Glissa cast no shadow at all inside. The structure was completely hollow except for a central tube that ran all the way to the top of the chimney. She could see no smoke, so she assumed it must travel through the tube.

Strands of the same cable she had seen connecting the various chimneys together also ran from the exterior walls to the central tube. Beads of energy ran along these cables, always going in the same direction—in toward the central shaft. As Glissa watched the strands, she saw some of the energy coursing along the walls transfer onto a cable and run across to the tube.

“I don’t think we should stay inside these chimneys too long,” she said to Slobad, but the goblin merely grunted in response.
Glissa didn’t know what these chimneys did, but they were obviously spewing something toxic into the air outside. Was Slobad right? Did the Dross itself create the nim from humans? That controller certainly wasn’t human any longer. Perhaps he never had been.

Halfway around the chimney, Glissa found a stairway cut into the exterior wall. It circled up and around the chimney. She climbed the stairs, ducking under cables periodically, and eventually came to a balcony that encircled the chimney. Holes were cut into the outside wall, and she could see out into the haze. It was growing dark, and she could barely see the outlines of the surrounding chimneys.

Glissa descended again and curled up by the door to get some sleep. It was not a restful night. Every hour or so, she awakened to the sound of the goblin swearing or a huge clatter of tools dropping. She knew that Slobad was too involved in his tinkering to notice anything important like an invading nim army, so she took these times to scout the area. She checked the windows on the balcony and patrolled the surrounding chimneys. There was no sign of activity, which bothered her more than if she had seen an approaching army. Surely the controller and his wayward nim would be missed.

In the dim light of early morning, Glissa awoke to find Slobad asleep next to the iron man. The golem’s chest cavity was closed, and Slobad had wiped most of the Dross off the golem. As much as she wanted to let her friend sleep, Glissa knew now was the best time to begin their journey. None of the moons had yet come up, and the darkness should cover their exit.

“Slobad,” she called to him. The goblin turned over and started to snore. “Slobad, wake up.” She walked over to him and kicked him in the side. “Slobad!”

The goblin sat bolt upright, clutching the fire tube in his hand. “What? What? What is it, huh?” He flipped on his fire tube and
looked all about. “What wrong, crazy elf? You not see me in dark? Go to sleep, huh? Slobad tired.”

“It’s time to go,” said Glissa. “We should keep moving. I think that old tin giant is a lost cause.”

Slobad looked at Glissa. Recognition of who she was and where they were slowly crossed his sleep-squashed face. “Yeah. We go,” he said. “If had more time, could make it work again. Pity. Great machine. Never see anything like it, huh? Pity. Need more time—”

“Sorry,” interrupted Glissa, “but we should go. You can’t fix everything.”

“Did fix everything,” said Slobad as he gathered up his tools. “Cleaned inside and out. Should work, huh? Need more time to find what Slobad missed. Must have missed something. Should work.”

“Well, it doesn’t,” said Glissa. “Now we should go before the nim come back.” She went to the entrance and looked out into the haze. She couldn’t see far, but she didn’t hear anything and the Dross around the chimney was motionless. Glissa looked back at Slobad. He was still staring at the golem as if willing it to come back to life. “Come on, Slobad,” she said. “It’s time to let go.”

“Elf not understand,” said Slobad. “The golems from before-time. The golems here before goblins or elves or anything, huh? The golem was myth, but now real. Need more time.”

Glissa came back over to the goblin and put her hand on his shoulder. “You said it yourself,” she told him. “Those were just myths and legends—stories told to children—not real. This thing is probably just some old nim construct that got lost in the Dross. Leave it, and let’s go before we’re found by another nim patrol.”