Eladamri abjured the company to banish doubt and embrace hope. He sang a cycle of elven songs. His folk joined him, all but the ever-watchful Liin Sivi.

Gerrard and Weatherlight's command crew meanwhile traded stories of their travels-of Hanna steering the ship past the Rathi slivers, of her heroism inside the Stronghold, of her encyclopedic understanding of Weatherlight, of her pinpoint navigation, her shy wit, her laughter. They spoke of courage, strength, and wisdom, not illness or death.

At last, the way opened. Eladamri's songs grew only louder as he progressed beneath a series of ribbed archways and down into the Dreaming Caves. Beautiful visions flowed from the singers' mouths and coiled in air around them.

Eladamri lifted his lantern. The light reached out across the cavern and splashed tepidly over a figure below.

Multani had formed himself into a great, woody altar, cradling the sick woman. Hanna seemed a figure laid on a pyre. It was clear she had not healed a whit.

Gerrard stopped in his tracks, panting. He closed his eyes and stooped, setting hands on his knees as if he had been struck in the belly.

Eladamri approached. "You must bring her back, Gerrard. Bring her into our minds-whole and healthy and happy."

Breath hitching in him, Gerrard stood. A manic light came to his face. He smiled a cheerless smile. He raised the wick of his lantern so that his face glared brilliantly.

"Have I told you, Eladamri, of the woman I love?"

An approving look came into the elf's eyes. "No. Not nearly enough. Tell me about her."

"She has the most beautiful hair," Gerrard said, blinking. "The color of wheat-spun gold. She doesn't ever do anything with it. She just pins it back out of her way. She doesn't have to do anything with it-"

"She puts grease in it," Squee blurted.

Gerrard laughed, a little too harshly. "Yes, bearing grease and engine oil and soot from a coal box-this is her makeup kit. She always looks great." Images of Hanna formed in the air-her smile, her glad eyes, her lithe figure kneeling beside some hunk of hardware.

"Yes," Eladamri said. "I see her. Tell me more."

Gerrard grasped Eladamri's shoulders and said fervently. "Did I tell you she saved my life on Mercadia? She pretended to be an elevator mechanic. Dressed up in Mercadian laborer's clothes. She tried to make herself look fat and grubby, but she's too tall, too statuesque, and even with grease and soot she's about the cleanest looking creature in the multiverse."

Before Tahngarth's eyes swam visions of that bright day, Hanna and Squee and the boy Atalla plotting to free the captives.

"More. Tell us more," Eladamri insisted.

"She sabotaged that cage pretty well. She shut it down for a week. Fact was, next time we left the city, we flew out on wings of cloth, like angels…" Gerrard gagged on his words. He reached out to his comrades. "She's the smartest one on board, don't you think?-trained on Tolaria. Hanna's dad is the Mage Master Barrin, but she outstrips him in artifact knowledge. Remember her rebuilding the engine in Mercadia? Remember her threading the needle over Benalia? Remember?"

Visions swam brightly before the eyes of the comrades.

"Come!" Gerrard said. "See for yourselves. Look on her perfect skin, her blushing cheeks-the sweetest smile you ever saw. Come over here, let me show you. So thin and strong, perfect health! Let me introduce you."

Dragging at Eladamri, Gerrard led the group rapidly, excitedly to the place where Hanna lay. The swarming visions followed them. Airy spirits encircled the woman, caressing her. They seemed at first to be holy raiments and then to be healthy flesh. The mists wrapped her atrophied muscles and filled them out. Belief cloaked her gaunt frame in strength. The grim set of her teeth became a smile, the sunken sockets became bright blue eyes. It was the old

Hanna-strong and glad and whole.

"Do you see?" Gerrard shouted. "Do you see?"

"Yes!" Eladamri replied. "I see!"

Gerrard slid his hands under Hanna and lifted her. "Do you see!"

The glamour did not come with her. The delusion of health peeled away from her skin. Misty muscle dissipated to gaunt infirmity. The eyes that had seemed open were closed now, had never opened. Her loveliness was a skull.

"Oh!" Gerrard said in sudden shock. "Oh!"

Eladamri clasped his arm. "It's all right. It's all right."

"No, it's not all right! Nothing is all right!"

"You did all you could," Eladamri soothed. "Our belief can't heal her-I realize that now. It is only her belief that could heal her. If she could awaken from this coma, she could save herself. Otherwise… You did all you could."

"Oh!" Gerrard repeated, falling to his knees. He looked up piteously at his comrades. "She is so light!"

Chapter 28

Thaddeus awoke, pinioned beneath the spider woman Tsabo Tavoc. Her compound eyes gleamed like twin gemstones in her pallid face. Her mouth segments twitched in concentration as she stared down at him. The massive weight of her body pressed on him in eight spike-tipped feet. Above her head, a smooth rock ceiling gleamed with myriad lanterns. They sent tendrils of smoke up across the wall to gather and coil in the vault. The swirling soot made a black halo above the spider woman's head.

"He awakens," she said in Phyrexian.

From birth, Thaddeus had learned languages both human and inhuman. He was fluent in Thrannish and so could parse out Phyrexian.

A seeming smile formed across the segments of Tsabo Tavoc's mouth. She withdrew slightly from him. Her fingertips were gory. A scalpel in her hand ran with blood. The red stuff steamed in the cold, wet air of the cave.

Again came her buggy voice. "How admirable."

The Phyrexian commander gathered her legs beneath her and shifted away. Her horrible weight remained on him. Only then did he realize it was not she who held him down. Spikes did. Driven through wrists and ankles, shoulders and hips, they pinned him to an examination table.

Thaddeus bucked on the steely block. Joints pried hopelessly against the heads of the spikes. None budged.

Thaddeus hissed. He should have been able to rip the spikes out. His arms were somehow unresponsive. An aching weakness filled his chest. Lifting his head, Thaddeus glimpsed the reason.

His blue flesh lay open to red innards. From the notch in his throat to the ring processes of his pelvis, he had been sliced open. Each layer of living flesh-skin and muscle and tendon-had been meticulously flayed back one by one. Pins identified important structures. Similar tags rested on his organs. Numbered slips of paper clung to his liver, his spleen, pancreas, stomach, viscera. Tsabo Tavoc had even sawn away one after another of his ribs, revealing gray lungs and flailing heart.

"Do you see how quickly he discerns his condition?" Tsabo Tavoc asked, her voice buzzing. She approached. The gory scalpel twirled deftly in her grasp. "Awake but moments, and he understands what we are doing here, understands he will never again be whole. He will die, and he knows it. See how quickly he calms? Truly, he is the pinnacle of humanity."

Thaddeus tried to respond. All that emerged was a red spray across his throat. He could produce no sound, could feel no breath between his lips.

Tsabo Tavoc loomed up above him. "Are you missing something?" she asked, holding up a larynx. "Quite a costly contrivance, this. A descended voice-box allows you to speak, but at risk of choking. It is too bad your master felt so tied to human physiology, retaining such weaknesses as this. Of course, you needn't worry about choking anymore."

Approving hisses rose from figures packed around the edges of the cavern.