Eladamri was moving again. He knew this terrain, these very trees. He leaped from the embankment and grabbed a dangling vine. Pulling his legs up beneath him, he swung above a palisade of huge thorns. Landing on the platform of vines beyond, he rushed to an ancient cerema tree. A walkway spiraled up the huge bole. He climbed. Generations of elves had climbed this very tree. Their feet had worn dark wells in the flesh of the vine. Eladamri's own feet had helped carve out these steps.

Oh, he had hoped one day to return home to the Skyshroud but not this way, not on its last day. By evening, the forest would be dead, the sea beneath it frozen.

Eladamri reached the spreading crown of the trees. Pathways led out along the boughs and into numerous bulb dwellings. Eladamri knew the families who lived there- the sons of Dalwryri, the royal line of Gemath, the storytelling clan of Dalepoc. He could hear them in their homes, adult voices fearful and querulous, children complaining of the cold, infants crying. He would go to them, yes. He must go to them but not yet.

He ran across a vine-work bridge that led to a nexus of other paths. Elves filled the trails, some of them struggling toward their homes and families, others standing and staring at the clear, cold blue overhead. A few recognized Eladamri, their long-lost Uniter, and they called out to him. He passed them in a blur. There would be time for them. He would be the Korvecdal again in moments, but just now he was a grieving man.

Another set of paths led to the most familiar tree of all. Its shape was etched on his mind. The green ivy that clung to the bark, the bulb houses clustered to one side of the main stalk, the arching canopy above. His steps slowed, and his hands trembled as he grabbed the walkway rail. The hammering of his heart seemed to shake the bridge.

He entered. The dwelling was exactly as he remembered it the day he left to attack the Stronghold. No one had ventured here. Wooden cups yet sat upon the table. The covers across his pallet were drawn up and ready for him to sleep. The battle plans he had made for the assault still lay in coils of bark on his desk.

"Home," Eladamri said.

Somehow it had not been real until now. This displaced forest, dying under daggers of cold, might have been some weird apparition, someone else's nightmare. Seeing his own home and all the things he alone knew made the nightmare real.

Eladamri sucked a breath. He staggered from the hollow out into the broad lap of the tree. He meant to catch his breath, but then his gaze slid across the crudest sight of all.

His daughter's bulb opened just before him. The wind muscled through the door and rifled her clothes, hanging on pegs along one wall. Frosted leaves tumbled through the window and onto her bed. She had been abducted from that very spot. An agent of Volrath's had abducted her, and Volrath himself had made her a monster. The Phyrexians had abducted Avila and killed her, and now they had abducted the whole of the Skyshroud and killed it.

Going to his knees on the foot-worn bark, Eladamri clutched his face. "Why did you bring me here, Freyalise? Why do you torment me?"

Footsteps came along the vine bridge. "Great Lord Eladamri, you have returned to us! We knew you would come. We knew that, in our moment of greatest catastrophe, you would come."

Eladamri lifted teary eyes to see who spoke to him. "Allisor." He breathed raggedly, unable to say more.

"We thought you were dead," the young lieutenant said. The skin was drawn tight across his jutting chin and prominent cheekbones, an expression that mix terror and elation. He knelt beside Eladamri and bowed his head. "That is, the others thought you were dead. No one who was trapped in the Stronghold made it out alive. But I didn't think you were dead. I knew you would survive, somehow."

More soldiers approached across the bridge. They whooped in excitement and called out to their comrades.

"He is here. The Uniter has returned!" The warriors of the Skyshroud converged on that single, ancient tree and the man who once had called it home.

Lieutenant Allisor lifted his head. His breath had condensed on his leaf-scale breastplate, and it began to freeze. "We will follow wherever you lead. We will obey your every command. Only tell us, Eladamri-what shall we do now?"

The Uniter kept his head bowed. What could they do? Move the forest, tree by tree, to some warmer place? Carry the sea in buckets down beneath the sun? He was a Uniter, not a god.

He was not a god, but he was the scion of a goddess.

Eladamri stood in the midst of the throng. Already, the aerial bridges groaned under the weight of arriving warriors. Clear eyed at last, he gazed out at the gathering might of his nation.

"Skyshroud elves, I have returned to you, yes, in our most desperate hour. I have been called the Korvecdal, the Uniter of peoples. I shall need now to become the Uniter of worlds.

"Rath is gone. Our world-the only world we've known for a thousand years-has now melded with this world. Our home is now this icy wasteland. I do not know where lie the ranges of the Kor and the Vec. I do not know where burn the forges of the Dal. I do not know if they will survive this invasion of world on world. But I know that we will survive."

Lifting his hands to the heavens and flinging back his head, Eladamri called out in a loud, clear voice, "Freyalise, Lady of Llanowar, Matron of the Steel Leaf elves, I summon thee-I, who became savior of Llanowar, I, who am called Scion of Freyalise."

She did not so much arrive but appear. First her wide, beautiful, capricious eyes hovered in the midst of the bowed multitude. Then her lips took form, smiling wryly. Flesh filled in the rest of her face and rolled down her slender neck and out into shoulders. Graceful arms formed from those shoulders and a slim torso in foliage armor. Even when her legs took shape, she did not touch ground but floated inches above the wood.

Eladamri had glimpsed her during the revels at Koilos, but now, to face her here in his dying homeland, he could not stand. He sank to his knees and bowed his head. His folk did likewise. Freyalise drifted over to him. Her hand reached gently outward and stroked his braided hair. "You have summoned me, Elfchild?"

Lifting his face, Eladamri stared at her glimmering eyes. "Yes, my lady. I have called you to collect on a debt you owe me."

A flash of pique lit the planeswalker's eyes. She seemed both angered and amused.

"What debt could I possibly owe you?"

"You needed a savior for your people of Llanowar, and you made me that savior. You made me what I was not- your scion-that your people might be saved. As you have made me your son, I claim you as my mother. As you have used me to save your people, I claim the right to use you to save mine."

"Use me?" she echoed.

He could not tell if his statement flattered or infuriated her. "Or perhaps you haven't the power…"

"Haven't the power?" she repeated irritably. "Do you know that once I cast a spell to turn back the eternal ice? Once I freed the whole world from the grip of winter?"

Eladamri smiled, knowing he had her. "Then it would be a simple thing for you to cast the same protection over this single forest."

All the amusement was gone from her features. "You presume too much, Elfchild. You are wrong to think that I would be indebted to you or to anyone. You are wrong to believe that you could use me. You are wrong to suppose that being my scion was a duty rather than a privilege."

His head bowed, Eladamri said, "Forgive me…"

She waved away the apology. "It is the eternal burden of mothers to forgive-or so I have heard. I forgive you, Elfchild, and I will grant your request."

The air was suddenly hot and wet. The frost on armor melted and ran. Ghosts of steam settled back into the water below. The furnacelike winds of Rath moved once again among the cerema trees.