With rough chants, the liberated prisoners escorted their liberators to the central guard tower in the yard. They drove them up the stairs that ascended the tall framework of beams. The nearest prisoners used the crewmembers' own weapons against them. Those farther out wielded whatever came to hand-chains, pipes, broken bottles, splintered boards… Disarmed and shackled, Gerrard and his crew climbed the switchback stairway. Defeat replaced victory on their faces.

They staggered, one by one, through the hatchway at the top of the stairs and onto a ten-by-ten-foot covered platform above. No sooner was Gerrard through the hatch than it slammed shut, and a bar slid into place.

Though Gerrard had gotten a bloody lip for his attempts to explain, he staggered to the guard tower window for another try.

"Listen to me! Listen!" he shouted to the chanting prisoners. "We have freed you! Why do you fight us? We are the same. It doesn't matter what you once did. Even treason! Even murder! Whatever wrong landed you here, it is nothing compared to the wrongs of our true foes. I revoke your sentences! You must revoke ours! I return your freedom! Return ours! Together we will fight the true enemy. Together we will fight Phyrexia!"

As Gerrard spoke, the chanting ceased, and the crowd grew slowly quiet. By the time his last words rolled out, a fearful hush filled the courtyard.

It was so quiet, the crew could hear a single man among the prisoners when he said, "Let them out of there."

Wide-eyed nods came from the prisoners, gaping upward. One man hurried up the switchback stairs to unbar the hatch.

Gerrard smiled incredulously and turned to his comrades. "I'd never really thought of myself as an orator, but this time I… I guess I got their attention."

Sisay shook her head gravely. "You didn't," she said, pointing skyward. "Someone else did."

There, in the black belly of night, the lights of hundreds of Phyrexian ships made ghastly new constellations.

Chapter 11

The Battle of the Mori Tumulus would decide the fate of Yavimaya. Multani fought beside his people- displaced elf kings, pods of angry sprites, clans of great apes, clutches of giant spiders, and a handful of fire-eyed druids. These last ascended from the volcanic caverns that riddled the rocks beneath the vast tumulus.

Of course the Phyrexians chose to land their invasion fleet along the Mori Tumulus. It was the highest point of Yavimaya.

Its trees rose five hundred feet above their neighbors. The extensive boughs provided landing platforms for Phyrexian cruisers. From those crowns, the Phyrexians could command the canopy and seep downward to dominate the land. It was more than that, though. The Phyrexians were drawn to the Mori Tumulus because it was a scar they themselves had left on the world.

The Mori Tumulus was a break in Yavimaya's millennial bones-a wound struck by the Argoth event. The world-shattering blast Urza had unleashed to destroy the Phyrexians four millennia ago had cracked the continental shelf beneath Yavimaya. It thrust the broken halves against each other. They ground together and rose. The Mori Tumulus mounded up. It formed a threehundred' mile ridge, five hundred feet high. Magnigoths struggled to clutch the rift closed. They straddled it like massive stitches. Still, the rent widened. Once in a while the world poured forth its blood and lymph in lava and steam. Even the green might of Yavimaya could not heal it. Something seethed below.

Of course it drew Phyrexians, as an open sore draws maggots. That's why Multani feared this battle. Here Gaea was weakest of all.

Already Phyrexians had corrupted the crowns. The wound in the world below was mirrored in the treetops three thousand feet above. Here Phyrexian ships clustered, pouring spores down out of the stormy night. Leaf molds and cellulose macrophages turned once-proud heads of green into black rot. Minute mechanical caterpillars ravaged leaves. Metal bugs sank shiny feet into stalks and extracted magnesium, iron, and zinc to use in growing their razor wings. Flocks of battleflies rose to flay armor and skin and muscle from bone. Other machines-spiked treadmills fronted with bear-trap mouths-devoured whatever flesh they found, storing it away for testing inside the cruisers. Phyrexians had a damnable interest in the physiology of their foes.

Pestilence and machines and monsters drove elves from their kingdoms. They fled downward into murky, wet hollows and shelves. One part refugee camp, one part military staging grounds, the camps bustled day and night. Other sentient defenders came here too-sprites, druids, great apes, and of course giant spiders. These nimble beasts, onetime foes of their elf neighbors, allied with them now. They even offered themselves as mounts to carry elf mages into combat.

It was in a war council of such mages, held in a wide and lofty crotch of a magnigoth, that Multani took form. He assembled his body from a termite colony and the desiccated wood that made it up. His flesh literally crawled with large white bugs. He rose, twelve feet tall and ominous, in the midst of the murky circle.

The folk in the crotch of the tree startled momentarily, but they had been waiting for the forest spirit. They welcomed him, bowing. Foxfire lanterns dangled from the sleeves of the elf sorcerers, sending a green glow inward. The light shone across the swords and arrows of elf warriors and oval wings of swarming sprites. The great apes crouched beyond, blinking intelligently in the darkness. Behind it all lurked giant spiders-their multiple eyes like grapes dangling in an arbor.

"Our forces are gathered, Master Multani. We are ready," said the eldest mage, eyes glinting beneath a mantle of white hair. "What is our objective?"

Multani's voice came in the barbed whisper of thousands of termites. "The Phyrexian off-load sites. We'll slay the guards and take back the boughs."

Brow furrowing, the mage said, "It is a thing of black corruption, now. How can it be taken back?"

"Leave that to me," Multani said ominously. He melted down into the tree bough.

It was a brief council-there was no time for words.

Mages mounted their spider steeds and set off through the foliage. Their sleeve-lights slid away in the leaves. The elf archers-young folk with eyes sharp in the night-did not need them. They split up, some trooping up the boughs, others swinging from vines to adjacent trunks. The druids left with the same arcane silence as Multani himself-there one moment and gone the next. The apes outdid them all for silent grace, though. They swung through the boughs, their arms kin to the branches that carried them.

The defenders of Yavimaya rose toward its corrupt canopy. The tangle of roots below and the tangle of boughs above joined each tree to its neighbors, making Yavimaya one great organism. The forest was a thinking thing, and Multani was its conscious' ness. Rising through branches, splitting and reassembling himself, he knew the will of Yavimaya: Drive the Phyrexians back onto undead boughs, and destroy them and their ships.

Multani ascended. He felt the tickling feet of giant spiders across his back. Down their barbed legs dribbled armor spells, sent from the hands of elf mages. They gathered massive magics from the green darkness all around. Elf archers seated themselves in nearby crotches, nocking arrows and testing their aim. Great apes clambered into lofts where they could hurl themselves down on Phyrexian heads. Clouds of shimmering sprites darted through the air. They bore spears, swords, and daggers and had adopted the tactics of battleflies. They could strip a Phyrexian in moments.

The forces converged on a huge bough that teemed with Phyrexians. It was a staging ground beneath a landed cruiser. The ship was as huge and black as a thunderhead. It hung in branches that had been corrupted by Phyrexian contagions and resurrected as undead wood. A huge ramp lay open. Monsters in their hundreds coursed down. There would be no attacking them at the ship. The wood had become monstrous itself. This staging ground, though-it was living wood. The Phyrexians had not had time to corrupt it, but already they prepared contagions to pour into crevices and crotches.