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. Nobody 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 shifting 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.”
Ezuri looked shocked. “You would take her on this mad quest to find some golem?”
“Yes,” Venser said simply. How could he explain to the elf the importance of Karn? Why would he want to?
“It’s strange,” Venser continued. “But I don’t recall telling you he was a golem.”
Ezuri smiled. “I have heard the name of Karn the silver golem. Who has not?”
“Almost nobody on Mirrodin knows this name,” Venser said. “Have you maybe seen Karn, or heard a rumor about him?”
“I may have heard what one of my scouts reported to me,” Ezuri said.
“Yes?”
“They heard a being aligned with the Phyrexians say, ‘the golem cannot be trusted.’ ”
“ ‘The golem cannot be trusted’?”
“Yes.”
“Who said these words?”
“I have no way of knowing that. My scouts were slain shortly thereafter.”
“What magic allows you to hear what your scouts hear?”
Ezuri smiled. “That is for me to know.”
The golem cannot be trusted, Venser thought. Interesting.
“So,” Ezuri said. “It is settled. The flesh being will stay while you go on this fool’s errand.” The elf turned to walk away.
“Wait,” Venser said. “It is settled that the fleshling will decide to stay or come.”
“Just so,” Ezuri said. “I misspoke.”
Venser looked back to the entrance of the shelter. Inside a loxodon sat quietly waiting for the fleshling to wake. As Venser waited, his mind went back to what the elf had said. The golem cannot be trusted, he thought. That is good, he decided.
Some days later Ezuri called a settlement meeting. Venser and the others arrived and sat cross-legged on the hard, hot metal floor. At the center stood Ezuri, cleaning the bits out from under his fingernails with the tip of a slim, curved dagger.
The fleshling was sitting next to Elspeth. With Elspeth’s ministrations, the flesh of the incision site had grown back together and she was able to sit without pain. But she lacked certain organs, the white warrior had told Venser. Those could not be healed back into place. Venser found himself wondering what the Phyrexians had done with the organs they took out of the fleshling. Then he remembered the room of organs they had encountered on their trip toward the center. The small Phyrexians who had assayed them.
He thought of the carnage, of the pointless butchery, of the mountains of rotting meat and organs. Would he really go back into that?
No, it would be different the next time. If he could get a guide from the settlement, someone who knew the doors and passages, then maybe they could make a more direct route. But would Ezuri allow such a thing? Venser doubted it unless there was some arrangement that benefited him in some way.
