The Brothers' War

by Jeff Grubb

  Urza charged the cliff wall. Mishra shouted in panic. Tocasia suddenly remembered a prayer she had learned as a child back in temple school when temples were still fashionable in Argive. She muttered the words softly as the far wall closed on them.

  Suddenly Urza banked, bringing the prow of the craft up. He unlocked the mechanism that held the wings in position, and they automatically began to fold. Without the support, the craft plummeted. Again, the roc passed through empty space that moments ago had housed the flier. Urza dropped about fifty feet, then reengaged the wing locks. The wings spread out immediately, catching the desert air and slowing their fall. Still, they landed with an unceremonious bump on the sand. Had they landed on rock, Tocasia had no doubt they would have broken the supporting struts, not to mention a few bones.

  Urza unlatched the wing locks, and the wings folded inward again, the damaged strut sticking out at an odd angle. Tocasia was already at the hatch, scanning the skies.

  “It’ll be back,” she said, scanning the empty heavens. “Let’s not be here when it comes.”

  “Shouldn’t take off again immediately anyway,” said Urza. “It might be waiting. Besides, we need to get the strut repaired. Let’s make for that cavern entrance. Are you all right, Brother?”

  “You should care!” said Mishra hotly as Tocasia turned at the hatch, afraid the young man had been hurt. “I knew what I was doing! You didn’t need to shove yourself into things!”

  Urza blinked and scowled, his concern replaced with irritation. “You were playing its game, flying like another roc. Of course it could outfly you that way. We only lost it because I made for—”

  “Shelter now. Argument later,” Tocasia broke in sharply. “And bring the torches and water. We might be here until dark.”

  Neither brother replied, but neither argued with the old scholar. They clambered up the sandy bank behind her, breaking into a full-fledged run as the roc’s shadow passed over them.

  Tocasia was at the entrance first. She spun and scanned the heavens. Above them, the roc circled the canyon of broken machinery and wrecked buildings.

  “We’ll have to bring the catapults with us next time,” she said.

  “Or figure out a way to mount them on an ornithopter,” observed Mishra.

  “We’re going to be here for a while,” said Urza. “Should we see where this passage goes?”

  The cavern was an entranceway. The first ten feet or so were natural rock, but after that the sandstone gave way to smooth, polished granite. Tocasia ran her hands along the wall. It was constructed of separate blocks, invisible to the eye, detectable as individual stones only by touch. She whistled a low note. Even among the Thran ruins she had excavated, there was no workmanship this precise. Behind her, Mishra lit the candlewood torches. The guttering flames smoked but were better than no light at all.

  “It was fortunate you saw this opening,” said Tocasia to Urza.

  “It was obvious,” he returned, taking a torch from his brother. “The wreckage of the buildings indicated roads, all of which radiated from this spot. This is the center of the Thran’s supposed ‘secret heart.’ ”

  “The heart of the heart,” said Tocasia.

  They spoke in whispers, as if their words might wake the long dead. Tocasia tried to raise her voice to a normal level, but the very emptiness of the space defeated her.

  Mishra examined the corridor before them. “No creatures live here. Look at the dust. No footprints but our own.”

  Urza held up his torch, the light flaring from the walls. “And no bats, either. Nothing has been here for a long time.”

  Both young men looked at Tocasia. “Right then,” she said at last. “Forward. But stay together and stick to the main path.”

  There was little worry, for the few openings to either side were mere alcoves, and the cavern ran straight back into the hillside itself. They passed several sets of stairs and one or two large chambers, but nothing that would indicate any occupants, recent or otherwise. Dead crystalline plates dotted the ceiling above them, reflecting the light of the torches but providing none of their own.

  The first alcoves were empty, but as they moved forward Tocasia noticed some were filled with the remains of su-chi constructs. These were rusted relics, little better than the ones they had pulled from the dig. Several were nothing more than lower torsos, the upper halves lost to time or, perhaps, to tomb robbers. Tocasia noticed with some satisfaction that the knees of the creatures did indeed bend backward.

  They had reached another staircase leading down into the darkness when they heard it—or rather, felt it. A deep throbbing came from within the surrounding stone, as if the earth were humming some unknowable ditty. Tocasia looked at the young men. They stared at each other, and the scholar was once again reminded of the silent communication they seemed to share. Then the brothers looked back at Tocasia and nodded.

  The three descended toward the noise.

  Ahead there was light. No more than a gray smudge against the blackness, it slowly refined itself, growing with each passing step. There were no more su-chi alcoves now, only straight walls leading toward the goal.

  They entered a chamber as large as any they had passed through. The walls were natural, but supported with ancient steel and pillars of the same closely set blocks that Tocasia had seen earlier. The walls were littered with machines. They were clearly of Thran design but with a difference. These appeared functional. Their cogs were greased and shining, their surfaces polished and mirrorlike in their finish. It was, Tocasia thought, as if the Thran had left only moments before.

  There were lights as well. Within this chamber the ceiling-plates were alight with their own ambient glow. Small balls of radiance danced around some of the machinery, orbiting them like small, glowing moons. But this was all outdone by the large crystal in the center.

  It was a power stone, unmarred by age and unbroken by accident. Its facets were smooth and reflective, the edges sharp enough to cut the fabric of reality itself. It was about the size of two human fists. Yet it called to Tocasia’s mind the image of two hearts, for it pulsed with its own rhythm. A rainbow of colors played across it as it throbbed with life.

  The power stone was on a low platform flanked by mirrors, which in turn were attached by wires to various machines around the perimeter. The power stone might be responsible for nothing more than the lights, the archaeologist noted, or it might be a fully operational machine with a greater purpose.

  Before the power stone’s pedestal was a smooth bank of metal, shaped like an oversized, open book. Its pages were metal and glass, and the glass winked like an evil eye in the night. Never had Tocasia seen a device like this one. She realized this might have come at the end of the cycle of Thran development. Perhaps what they had been excavating so lovingly were nothing more than old scrapyards, where the ancient and unwanted remnants of the Thran’s past were discarded.

  She stared at the crystal itself, while the two young men moved ahead of her, drawn by its incandescent radiance. They stood before the open metal book, dwarfed by its size and magnificence. Their voices rattled against the walls of the cave, rebounding and gaining strength from the subliminal hum that surrounded them.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Mishra. “Look how it glows.”

  “It’s intact,” said Urza. “Think what we can learn.”

  “These markings,” said Mishra, spreading his hands out toward the metal book-glyphs. “They’re so much like the Thran writings we’ve seen, but more detailed. More advanced.”

  “Don’t touch anything!” called Urza sharply, thrusting out his own hand to intercept his brother’s. “We don’t know what they do!”

  Tocasia could not tell which brother was responsible for what happened next. She could not tell which brother touched the particular glyph, or even if either did. Later, neither brother admitted to anything, and each accused the other of causing the disaster.

  All Tocasia could say was that as Urza reached out to s
top his brother, the glow intensified, suddenly and hotly. There was an explosion, but one without sound, and the huge power stone, the heart of the heart of the secret heart, shattered in a blossom of light.

  This is what Tocasia saw.

  The power stone at the center of the room suddenly began to glow hotter, to consume itself with its own radiance. It shone as if a piece of the sun itself had been detached and set down among them. Instinctively Tocasia flung her arms up in front of her to shield her eyes, but already the two brothers were nothing more than fuzzy silhouettes against the gem’s radiance. She shouted out their names but her voice was swallowed by the explosion.

  There was an explosion, though its sound was in wavelengths that she could not hear. It resounded through the length of the caverns and rattled every bone in her body.

  There was pressure, as if a great hand was pressing down upon her, then pressing through her, leaving her standing.

  There was heat, as if she had suddenly passed through a furnace. Then the heat was gone as well.

  And finally there was a rush of air, from behind her, as if the world was straining to fill the gap of what had been lost. It was the force of the blow from behind, unanticipated and unexpected, that knocked her to her knees.

  She stumbled to her feet, her ancient joints complaining, her eyes still seared by the brilliance of the power stone’s immolation. The stone was no longer on its pedestal, and the deep humming of the cavern no longer resounded through her bones.

  Tocasia blinked back the brilliance. Slowly her sight returned, first at the perimeter of her vision, then slowly returning to the center of her eyes. She blinked back a sheen of new-sprung tears, and with it the last bits of her blindness.

  The pedestal was empty. The power stone was gone.

  Both of the young men were on the floor, but already stirring. Neither had been hurt physically by the blast as far as she could tell, but they pulled themselves up like old men, careful not to shatter their own bones by rising.

  Then she noticed that the power stone was not gone. It had been split in two, and each of the brothers held half in his left hand.

  More of the lights came on in the cavern, and she heard the tramp of metal feet against stone.

  * * *

  —

  This is what Urza saw.

  He was reaching out to stop Mishra but was too late. There was a brilliant flash that consumed them both. His last clear vision was of his brother’s face, his expression surprised, his beard surrounding an open mouth. Shouting a curse or a warning? Urza could not hear him, and suddenly he was surrounded by the whiteness of the blast.

  Then he was somewhere else.

  He was floating; flying over a landscape that he had never seen before. The earth beneath him was made of cables of corroded metal, crossed and recrossed against themselves until they formed a thick woven mat. Huge gears broke through the metal landscape, turning slowly and straining against the surrounding cables. Copper-colored snakes moved among the mat, but Urza saw that they were instead more cables, blindly seeking their path through the morass of woven wires. There were other great circular plates, gears turned sideways, as thick as Urza was tall and coated with a thick patina of corrosion.

  Urza noticed that the entire landscape was undulating slightly, like a living thing, from the motion of cogs and wheels beneath. Hills formed around him, moving slowly, pushing the corroded gears relentlessly to his right. In that direction—west he thought, though in this shifting world it was difficult to be sure—there was a reddish glow.

  Urza landed on one of the gears, and it carried him along as it moved. The mat of copper-colored cables snaked around him but did not touch him. The landscape seemed to boil with metal snakes.

  There was a storm ahead, ebon clouds building against the darker surrounding. Blue lightning arched between the clouds, giving them definition.

  A wave of rain swept over the land. It tasted of oil, but it passed quickly as the shifting hills pushed Urza along. Warm steam leaked from beneath the cables, and there was a brief, grinding noise. Then it too ceased.

  Before Urza a great tower erupted in the landscape, ripping metal cables and gears as it did so. It was made of thick plates of heavy metal held together by man-sized bolts, and covered with angular runes. It pistoned upward, and the gear upon which Urza stood rose and orbited it as it shot up above the undulating hills. Then the tower retracted into the earth as quickly as it had appeared, and the heaving landscape carried Urza forward.

  There was the sharp sound of insect wings, a thousand in number. The noise was all around, but the creatures were invisible to his eyes. Then this sound faded as well.

  Now Urza saw he was no longer alone. There were other beings standing on another moving disk, one larger than his own. These others were carefully building as they were carried along. They looked humanoid, dressed in radiant white robes from head to toe. Their faces were covered by white masks and their heads by white hoods. Urza concentrated, but they grew no more distinct. All he could see was that they were building something.

  For the first time Urza became aware that he was dreaming. He should be in a cavern with his brother and Mistress Tocasia, he realized. He held out his hands and counted his fingers. He had always heard that one should do this to determine if one was dreaming. He got the right number of fingers (at least what he thought was the right number), but his flesh was translucent. He judged the experiment inconclusive.

  The figures in white were moving more quickly now, and he saw they were assembling pieces of a large device made of bronze. It looked like one of the metal spiders at the foot of the cliff, back in the waking world, where he had left the ornithopter. This device though was no wrecked artifact of another age. It towered over the white figures. If the dream spider was the same size as the wreckage they had seen, Urza determined, then the figures were only slightly shorter than the average human.

  The dream spider was tall and made of thick plates of bronze-colored metal. Blue-white lightning sparked at the device’s joints, and it was held together by bolts as thick as Urza’s forearm. The device had no head, but from the center of its back rose a large prominence topped by a cylinder. Urza thought of the catapults back in his own world, and recognized the cylinder as a weapon.

  Looking at the dream spider Urza saw not only its form but its function. He saw the pylonlike legs and knew how they had been fastened together and how they would therefore have to move. He saw the prominence atop the creature’s back and knew it had to be fitted to allow it to spin in any direction. He understood the heavy mass of overlapping plates that formed the creature’s armor and knew how much power was needed to move a mass of that size.

  The figures in white were talking to each other now. They had seen Urza but evidently did not know what to do about the interloper. Suddenly Urza felt something heavy in his chest, pulsing like a second heart. He looked down. All his flesh was transparent now. Almost without conscious thought, he reached inside himself and pulled out a large gemstone, glittering green, blue, red, white, and black. The colors overlapped one another, seeming to coexist in the same space.

  The edges of the stone were rough, and Urza knew half of it was missing. He raised the gem and showed it to the figures in white. It seemed sufficient; they immediately forgot about him and returned to their work.

  The red glow in the west was growing stronger now as the flying gear approached its destination. Looking around, Urza saw other small white-robed figures on their own sidewise gears, each with his own device. Some of the machines were spiders. Some were titanic statues. Some seemed to be great elephants or oxen. All were made of the heavy plates of reddish-gold metal, and all were armed in the same manner as his spider.

  Now he saw the glow ahead came from a great foundry, of the type used to make swords and horseshoes. The furnace was made of rough iron and shaped like a monstrous head. Long, curled horns framed a gaping mouth filled with tongues of flickering flame. Urza knew he was
a half-mile away from it, but even so he could feel its heat. It could melt the flesh from his bones, he knew, had he any flesh. A great ramp of red-tinged metal led up to the monster furnace’s mouth.

  The bronze-colored dream spider and the other bronze spiders were moving now, along with the elephants, oxen, and titans. The disks came to rest at the foot of the long ramp, and the various constructs lurched forward, powered by their own internal engines. Steam and sparks leaked from their joints. The artificial creatures formed a pair of lines, one to either side of the ramp.

  Now the figures in white, the builders of these mighty constructs, began to move as well. Slowly, almost reluctantly, they inched up the ramp. As they moved, the cylindrical weapons atop the reddish-gold machines followed them, pacing their approach beneath their barrels.

  One of the figures nearest to Urza hesitated for a moment, then turned back. Or rather, it tried to. The nearest machine, the golden dream spider the figure had helped build, fired something from its turret. A beam of incandescent light sprang from the tip of the cylinder and cut down the fleeing figure. Urza saw the creature’s yellowish bones clatter to the ground and roll to the foot of the ramp.

  The other figures in white paid no attention to the dead defector. Instead they slowly made their way up the ramp, toward the flames, bending beneath the weapons of the gold artifacts. Urza tried to shout a warning, but all he could make was a sound of smithies and ringing hammers.

  Some of the figures were melting now, while others burst into flame from the heat. Their companions urged, dragged, and hauled them forward until they reached the monstrous mouth of the furnace itself.

  And then they pitched themselves in.

  Urza screamed. His cries seemed to throw him back away from the monster furnace, away from the world of golden snakes and moving hillsides and be-weaponed machines. The furnace’s mouth diminished to a small reddish dot as he fled, and he felt something warm behind him. He turned toward the new sensation and…