One plague machine dropped free of its portal and plunged straight for the rooftop.

With another snort, Liin Sivi rushed up the green slope, shield in hand. If that machine entered the throne room, thousands would die. A direct hit could tear through thick wood, but what of a glancing blow? Staring upward, she vaulted to the peak of the roof. For a moment, she lost the plunging machine in the sun. Lifting her hand to block the light, she still could not make out the death sphere. Its whine grew to a deafening shriek. Only the device's growing shadow told her she stood in the right place. She swung the shield to one side and braced on the king beam of the palace.

A clang like a giant bell sounded. Liin Sivi was crushed flat against the rooftop. The sphere cracked away, whirling to impact a nearby tree.

Rising tremulously, Liin Sivi dragged numb fingers from the shield's handles and shook them out.

Another scream mounted-another sphere plunged. Squinting up into the sky to find her target, Liin Sivi ambled toward the site. "Damned Phyrexians."

"Damned Phyrexians!" Takara hissed.

She dragged an elf away from the bloody slough where his friends lay-red gelatin and bone. The elf's own legs dribbled away to nothing. Arteries emptied behind him. His eyes rolled one last time-eyes that had seen hundreds of years of peace in Llanowar. They died seeing this.

Releasing him, Takara breathed raggedly. Her fiery hair was pasted to her forehead, and her back ached excruciatingly.

This plague was the worst she had seen, faster, more virulent than other strains. No doubt this contagion had been developed in experimentation on countless Skyshroud elves. Takara herself had been a test subject for the human plague. These tiny motes of elf-virus prickled the large, gray infection across her back.

Yes, Takara was dying of the plague. She had been dying when Eladamri and Liin Sivi had rescued her from Rath. Her companions knew but no one else. They had treated the sore every night, sterilizing it with rye spirits and soothing its ache with aloe. Still, it had spread.

When the bomb hit, Takara's first impulse had been to flee downward with the others. But why? She was doomed one way or another. Up here, she could help a few people before she was eaten away to nothing. Takara wasn't being noble. She wasn't so much saving elves as choosing her own time to go.

Scrambling across the body-strewn floor, she caught up an elf child. The little girl, perhaps no more than two, stood just beyond the shouldering multitude. She screamed. Tears streaked her white cheeks. Takara lifted the girl in her arms and held her tight, whispering comforts into her ears. She did not know this dialect of Elvish but consolation sounded the same in any language.

How like this child she had been. Her father had been a grotesque little servant of evil. Her home had been redskied Rath. She had not been alive for even two decades before she was dying of plague-a child screaming in chaos all her life.

"Take her!" Takara demanded, grabbing an elf man who pushed among the throng. "Take her!"

He began to plead, his old eyes filled with mortal fear. This was an elder elf, perhaps a millennial elf, long beyond his century of child-rearing. Still, he reached out for the girl. He cooed, patting her sobbing back. With new purpose, the old elf shoved his way into the crowd.

Through her pain, Takara smiled. If this child was her miniature likeness-screaming in chaos all her life-then saving her was as close as Takara would ever come to saving herself.

She moved back out among the wounded. Any moment another bomb would hit. Then she and everybody left in the chamber would die.

Takara realized with surprise that she would miss Eladamri and Liin Sivi. The three had made a fair team. More surprising, still, she hoped they would miss her too.

Liin Sivi was too slow to deflect the fifth plague bomb. It plunged from the heart of the sun. She knew of it only by the whistle that became a whine and a shriek. The sun was blinding. The shadow of the bomb jittered across the sloped roof. Liin Sivi flung herself beneath that shadow and braced the shield over her head.

The plague bomb struck to one side. It tore through the thatch as if it were air. It smashed the king beam. The roof slumped massively beneath Liin Sivi's feet. A thunderous boom came below, with a brittle, crackling sound. The hiss of the plague spores was unmistakable. So were the shouts of the elves.

The plague hadn't time to kill them, though. One wall of the high court caved and fell inward. A hundred tons of wood toppled in giant killing sheets. Dagger-splinters stabbed down afterward.

The roof buckled and failed. It crashed like a bellying wave.

Liin Sivi rode the green tide. She could do nothing else. Timbers crashed to the floor. Giant knots fell in blood puddings that once had been elves. White, killing spores seeped smoky through every crack. Liin Sivi fell to her knees on the shuddering thatch and braced herself.

The far wall crumpled under the roof's plunging weight. Beams roared as they tumbled over each other. In four sections, the thatch crashed to the floor of the ruined high court.

A sudden quiet filled the air. No more crashing. No more screams. Before Liin Sivi stood the tall doorway where even now the last of the refugees fled. Behind her lay the silent wreck of the high court. Not a single moan came from the tumbled ruin. All the elves had been eaten by plague. There were no humans except-

There she lay, red hair tangled amid thatch. A cracked rafter had run her through, spearing the gray rot that filled her back.

Liin Sivi bowed her head. Takara had been a worthy companion. To die this way, twice killed, in the midst of strangers… She'd chosen her time.

"Good-bye, Takara," Liin Sivi said. "You will be missed."

Another whistling shriek mounted above.

Drawing a ragged breath, Liin Sivi strode to the giant doors and entered the resinous darkness within. They made not a sound as they closed over the bright world. Liin Sivi set the bolt and descended after the refugee crews. She descended after Eladamri.

Eladamri led the refugees down the royal passage. No king had been this deep in centuries. No lamps lit the way except those torn from walls higher up. The ragged stairs, carved from dead heart-wood, spiraled down around a vast emptiness. A fall would bring death by lance-long slivers on the way down. It was a certainty… proven many times over already.

Screaming began above. The refugees knew what that meant. They pressed up miserably against the walls and waited for the body to plunge past. It did, narrowly missing an elf woman and her son. Into the dark pit the man fell. His screams grew hollow. They were interrupted by glancing impacts and ended at last by death.

"Downward," Eladamri commanded softly, leading the way.

In time he reached a region where giant webs had caught a number of the bodies. Eladamri advanced, cutting the gruesome figures free, lest their presence bring hungry spiders.

"What am I doing here?" he wondered under his breath, holding a flickering lantern high to stare at one of the bloodied victims. "Why am I leading these people?"

More screams above interrupted his thoughts. He glared up, clutching the wall. Lanterns showed the spiraling ascent. They lifted to see what came down the shaft. Voices joined themselves to the rolling scream. Something pounded one wall, ricocheted off, descended across the emptiness, and impacted the opposite wall. It struck the folk there, seemed to stick a moment on pulverized bodies, and tumbled downward again.