Ravnica

by Cory Herndon

  Ludmilla smiled. No one had ever done that before, she’d wager. And when the Devkarin child completed her fool’s errand and returned to the gorgon, she would make sure that Ravnica never forgot what she had wrought. Her sister’s murderer would pay for what she had done. The gorgon could not fathom why the priestess had gifted her rival with an army. The teratogens were her people. They might have forgotten that for a while, but Ludmilla would remind them.

  The only thing that disturbed Ludmilla was the absence of the angels. Even Savra had expected the gorgon’s forces to encounter the winged servants of Boros once the attack began in earnest, yet the angels’ floating sky citadel, Sunhome, had yet to appear. She eyed the brightening horizon, but still saw nothing.

  What were they planning?

  * * * * *

  So this was what it felt like to be a god.

  Once Savra had unleashed her quietmen—a force that she had been quietly accumulating for decades, mingling her forces with the Selesnya Conclave’s own servants right under the life churchers’ noses—the convocation called her to Vitu Ghazi. Not unexpectedly, she found herself snatched by Selesnyan magic and materializing inside a cocoon at the center of the convocation circle, a sacred ring set into the Unity Tree high enough to allow a full sweeping view of the city all around her but not so high as to be above the cloud cover.

  So the Selesnya Conclave was impatient. Fine. So was she. She’d already waited more than long enough.

  The thoughts of the chanting dryads and the other members of the collective sang in her mind, and she sang with them—a mournful dirge that she wove into the roots of the song the way she’d woven thousands of necrotic filaments into the very roots of Vitu Ghazi for decades. Even now, her darkness spread through their souls, and they didn’t even know it. With Savra’s help, the tree had begun to die from the inside out, but it did not stop at death—the filaments fed into the roots, took the dead wood, and infused it with Devkarin magic that had chipped steadily away at the Selesnyans’ resistance. They had granted her control of hundreds of quietmen. Her secret ally had provided her with the raw material to create even more.

  She only required one more piece—the stone the ledev child had finally recovered for her—to make her dominion over the weak-willed collective complete.

  It had been so easy to manipulate them with feigned kindness and sweet words. They wanted to welcome their Devkarin siblings back to the fold, they said. Surely she could feel the pull of Mat’selesnya in her elf blood, they insisted. Then they pleaded with her to help them keep Vitu Ghazi alive, unaware that the “disease” that plagued the Unity Tree was the work of Savra herself. Over the last few years, the Tree, slowly but surely, had become her creature. The Selesnya Conclave had thought they were fighting one kind of corruption but in their blindness lay themselves open for another. The only part she could not touch was hidden deep within the center of the titanic tree trunk, but that part too would succumb. She was sure of it.

  She’d told the dryads it was the only way. She’d told them the wojeks were rife with corruption and trotted out one of her ally’s lurkers to “prove” it. She needed the extra forces if she was to root out that corruption. If the planewide enchantment of the Guildpact was to survive, she’d told them, sacrifices would have to be made. The matka had left them enough of their vessels to keep them happy and told them not to worry. She’d do the hard work of pacifying the “corrupt” ’jeks. She discovered the pacification hadn’t been quite as much fun as destroying gorgons, but it had a certain charm. The quietmen were brutal, efficient killers that the Selesnya Conclave had never bothered to exploit, until today. And soon Savra and the Selesnya Conclave would be one and the same.

  Her hidden ally was an excellent teacher, and Savra was a fine student.

  She drew a startled breath as another rush of power surged within her. The Selesnya Conclave dryads kept feeding their power to her with their chants, their belief, and their faith. As she bathed in it all, she made it her own. Then it wasn’t just the dryads and the rest. It was all the Selesnyans, ledev, Silhana, and life cultists in Ravnica. And soon the songs of other creatures of every guild and tribe on the plane joined in—nonbelievers, perhaps, but they still heard the song. Some of them, honored nobles of the nine guilds, stood in blissful awe around the circle of dryads.

  The convocation was beginning. Their convocation, Savra’s coronation.

  The power surged to a fevered pitch, and a thin blade of blood-red sunlight peeked through the top of the cocoon, which splayed slowly open like an enormous flower. Savra stood revealed in all her glory. The Devkarin priestess was already the queen of the Golgari and would soon declare herself guildmaster of the Selesnya—as soon as her servants retrieved the thought-stone that would allow her to become a full-fledged member of the collective. Two guilds down and eight—not seven—to go.

  She looked up at a flash of sudden movement and saw two of her flying quietmen return with their kicking, screaming cargo. They landed before Savra, the ledev struggling in their grip. The girl shouted at the quietmen, at the matka, at the assembly all around her, but only Savra heard her cries or recognized the terror in them. The rest were engulfed in the song.

  Savra strode toward the half-elf child, grabbed her by the wrist, and started to squeeze.

  The ledev screamed as the matka’s fingers dug into her flesh, but still she kept her fist closed tight. Savra’s fingers pierced skin, then veins, and bright red blood flowed out around her fingers and down both their wrists.

  “Let go,” Savra said. “It is not for you, child.”

  The ledev gasped out a curse at her.

  “Very well. We’ll do it the hard way,” Savra said. The stolen strength of old Svogthir pulsed within her. She didn’t need permission.

  With a sickening snap and a spray of warm blood, she ripped Fonn’s hand off.

  * * * * *

  The dawn sun broke over the convocation circle in the center of Vitu Ghazi as their angel-powered zeppelid emerged from the historic buildings of Centerside and into a war zone. The circle was a sacred spot: a wide, round platform grown into the trunk of the Unity Tree that was large enough to hold a small arena’s worth of people for the regular services and ceremonies the Selesnyans celebrated year-round. The red dawn merged with dazzling emerald shapes at the center of the circle of formed by the Selesnya Conclave, and a river of beings from every guild ran all the way to the Unity Tree. Ranks of ledev guardians, Silhana elves, and Selesnyan warriors stood pointing at the bright light at the center of the convocation. A host of pristine-looking quietmen floated around the circle, facing outward protectively. They parted to allow their brethren to carry a kidnapped elf into the circle, than closed ranks again.

  “She’s inside,” Jarad called. “Tell the angel to pick it up.”

  Kos called out of the open cabin door to the angel. “Feather! You’re going to have to take us through them!”

  The angel turned back and called, “My intention exactly. I suggest you return to the cockpit. This could get bumpy.”

  * * * * *

  Fonn screamed in agony and saw nothing but pain for the first few seconds. Then the Devkarin priestess shoved her over backward, and the impact with the solid wood of Vitu Ghazi cleared her vision. She closed her good hand over the stump of her wrist, trying and failing to staunch the flow of blood. She had to stop the bleeding or she was going to pass out. And if she did that here, she doubted she would ever wake up.

  The order of ledev guardians descended, it was said, from a group of ancient warrior monks that had wandered the roads of pre-Guildpact Ravnica, righting wrongs and settling injustices simply on the basis of a belief in right and wrong. Ledev training still included study in the ways of healing magic. Unlike the wojeks, the guardians of the roads needed no artificial means to staunch a wound.

  That didn’t mean it would be easy magic for Fonn to perform, especially when unconsciousness was pounding in her head, demanding entrance. She clo
sed her eyes, which could barely see anyway, and focused on the life force within the great tree. It felt odd, no doubt a result of the Devkarin priestess’s interference, as if the singers were being warped and their song falling out of tune. Fonn let the pain keep her awake and grasped onto a single, clear note amid the atonal chorus and pulled it into herself. Almost immediately the shock and pain subsided, and the arterial flow clamped shut as raw, fresh skin formed over the wound. It wouldn’t take much to reopen the injury, but for now she wouldn’t bleed to death.

  She rolled over on her back and looked at the sky, despair gripping her heart. Perhaps she should have let herself die. How could she live as a ledev guardian when the Selesnyans were preparing to accept a necromancer into their ranks?

  Fonn saw movement to the west and figured she had to be hallucinating. An angel, golden wings flaring in the first rays of dawn, smashed through the floating wall of quietmen. It wasn’t just any angel. It was Feather, unbound and flying free. Over one shoulder she improbably towed Pivlic’s crippled zeppelid. The ovoid lizard’s salmon-colored skin was peppered with dead, gray patches that would never recover. The angel released the rope as soon as the zeppelid was through the wall, and the floating lizard crashed into Vitu Ghazi’s inner trunk. It lazily floated down, gas bladders leaking like a sieve, to settle beyond the gathered crowd.

  Feather dropped the rope when she saw Fonn and swooped down to her side.

  “Your hand,” the angel said.

  “Yeah,” Fonn replied and pointed at the figure stepping into the center of the dryad ring. Their chanting continued unabated as the matka of the Devkarin pulled a simple green gemstone from the palm of Fonn’s severed hand. She tossed the grisly object aside and held the green stone aloft.

  “My love,” she said, “it is time.”

  * * * * *

  Kos leaped from the open cabin door and hit the hard wood of the convocation circle at a dead run. All around the circle, which hovered not far above Guildpact Square, beings of every race and guild watched in slack-jawed bliss that was no doubt a result of the “song” Fonn kept talking about. It was the way Selesnyans described the state of communion and collective thought that helped the Unity Tree spread the magic of the Guildpact peace, which in turn kept Ravnica functioning as a society. If you weren’t Selesnyan, it wasn’t something you usually heard as a physical sound, as he understood it. But every living thing could feel it at some unconscious level. Elves were especially sensitive to it.

  With Jarad and Biracazir on his heels—Pivlic had insisted on helping his zeppelid with its suffering before doing anything else for them—he raced toward Fonn and Feather. Fonn’s hand was missing, and the stump had been covered in a thin membrane of semi-transparent skin. He checked his belt for ’drops, but of course he’d used them long ago.

  Strangely, even though they’d just crashed a floating lizard outside the circle and now stood close to the chanting Selesnya Conclave, no one paid them any attention at all, not even the quietmen.

  “Fonn,” Kos said, nodding at where her hand had been, “what happened?”

  “That happened,” Fonn said bitterly and pointed with her remaining hand at the Devkarin priestess who stood at the center of the dryad ring. A Devkarin priestess—the Devkarin priestess, he guessed—held the stone aloft and said something Kos couldn’t hear.

  “I’ve got to stop her,” Jarad said and drew his kindjal.

  “Do you really think we’ve got enough to handle her?” Kos said. “There are only four of us, five counting the wolf, six counting the imp who won’t leave his yacht.”

  “I’ve got to try,” Jarad said. “I never did when I had the chance. But she’s my sister, and I had no idea …”

  “All right, hold on,” Kos said.

  “Kos,” Borca’s ghost said.

  “Feather, I hate to ask you this, but can you get to Sunhome? I don’t know why the angels aren’t here yet, but—”

  “I can,” Feather said, spreading her wings, “but I hesitate to let you face her alone.”

  “Kos,” Borca repeated.

  “We don’t matter right now,” Kos said. “Even if they don’t get here in time to save us, they might be able to do something about her.” Feather looked uncertain. “Feather, I’ll order you if I have to,” he added.

  “Stay alive,” Feather said. “I shall return, and it would distress me a great deal if you were slain, Kos.”

  “Kos!” Borca shouted.

  “Thanks, Feather,” Kos said and watched the angel launch herself into the rapidly darkening sky. The quietmen had taken up positions around the convocation circle, but they had left the lid off the trap—Feather just flew up and over to avoid them. In a few seconds, the fast-moving winged warrior was out of sight, but it was the sky that had his attention now. Dawn’s light disappeared as clouds roiled across the sun and lightning crashed within the swirling blackness. The sky resembled the spilled contents of a cauldron of boiling oil, unnaturally viscous and thick.

  The morning sun was gone, replaced once again by a starless, black night filled with whirling fog and terrible winged shapes that might be illusions, and might not. The shapes whirled around a new, larger vortex that formed in the center of the blackness, a whirlpool that emptied into the sky. This was, Kos guessed, the reason the quietmen had not blocked access to the sky.

  Preoccupied as he was with the sinister darkening of the sky, Kos didn’t realize until it was too late that there was someone behind him. A pair of arms like iron wrapped him in a bear hug, pinning his limbs uselessly to his sides. He couldn’t tell who grabbed him, but whoever grabbed him was male and wore the brass wristbands of a wojek officer.

  “Hey!” Kos said, but Fonn and Jarad didn’t answer. He tried to twist in his captor’s grasp and saw they were each standing and staring at the Devkarin priestess in the center of the circle, listening to the song. They didn’t seem to notice him at all. The song had engulfed even the wolf Biracazir.

  Kos really regretted sending Feather to get help at that moment, though he knew it had been the smartest course of action. But he did have one more ally.

  “Borca!” Kos shouted. “Where are you? Who’s—ow—who’s got me?”

  “Kos, I’m no good as a second pair of eyes if you don’t listen,” Borca’s ghost said as he floated before Kos, his spectral eyebrows arched in exasperation. “It’s Commander-General Gharti. He’s looking as happy-faced as the rest of them. Kos, I think you’re the only one—well, you and me, but I don’t really count, now do I?—we’re the only ones who aren’t undergoing some kind of rapture right now.”

  “Anything else happening behind me?”

  “They’re all just staring,” Borca said. “But funny thing—you’re the only wojek here other than Gharti, Valenco, and Forenzad. And me, but we just covered that.”

  “I know Gharti’s got me,” Kos said. “What are the other two doing?”

  “Standing right behind the Devkarin and the ledev.”

  “Gharti!” Kos shouted “Snap out of it!” He twisted again in the iron grip of the commander-general, but the man was much, much stronger than he looked. Kos was helpless.

  “I really wish you were solid,” Kos said.

  “Me too. I’d still be alive,” Borca said. “But what can I do?”

  “You can—”

  Another crash of thunder and flare of lightning cut Kos off midsentence, and despite himself he returned his gaze to the sky again.

  A hooded figure in black emerged from the spiral and floated down from the vortex, its cape and robe splayed in the wind like bat wings. The figure might have been one of the quietmen but for his solid black attire, the pale, exposed lower half of his face, and the set of twin silver fangs that pierced the thin line of his black lips, visible even from Kos’s vantage point. The new arrival descend from the heavens like a dark god.

  Kos hoped he wasn’t right. He turned back to Borca’s ghost.

  “Go find the only other person who can
see you and tell him to bring that bam-stick of his,” Kos finished. “And hurry!”

  “Right,” Borca said. “Be right—gyaaaah!”

  Before Kos’s startled eyes, the descending figure raised a hand and the ghost of Borca was pulled away as if by an invisible rope. The howling specter managed to fit in an impressive string of invectives in before disappearing into the smooth bark of Vitu Ghazi, then he was gone.

  Kos’s heart fell. He hadn’t asked Borca to stick around after his death, but he’d gotten used to the idea. And just like that, he was gone.

  But at the moment, Kos had more immediate concerns, at least if he was going to avoid Borca’s fate. He craned his neck and tried to get a better look at the strange pair in the center of the convocation.

  “My love,” Savra said.

  “My liberator,” the vampire said. “It is time to meet your destiny.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Kos said, but there was no one to hear him, or if there was they couldn’t act on his words.

  “Yes, Szadek,” Savra said and raised the green stone overhead. She pressed it against her forehead, and the stone glowed brighter and brighter still, fusing with skin and bone. She released the stone, now a part of her, and spread her arms to embrace her new kin as two guilds were joined in the hive mind of the Selesnya Conclave for the first time in ten thousand years. Savra sang a single, long note that pierced the chorus that rang even in Kos’s cynical head, though he was not as blissfully happy as the gathered crowd both on the convocation circle and assembled in the streets below.

  “Well done, child,” the vampire said. “How does the power feel? Can you hear them? Can you hear the Selesnya Conclave?”

  “Yes, my love,” Savra said blissfully. “I hear them, and they are mine.”