by Jeff Grubb
Hajar started to argue, then stopped. He nodded, bowed deeply, and left the room, pulling the ornate doors shut behind him.
“Now,” said Mishra, smiling and leaning forward toward the three monks, “tell me more.”
The demon Gix sat in the cavern of Koilos and feasted on the minds of two of his followers. One was a spy who had come west from Argive and was still obviously human. The other came from the court of Mishra, and she was festooned with rings and other metal ornaments. Her left arm was entirely artificial. Her face was a rictus grin that indicated further work in the jaw and throat.
One priest knelt on either side of the demon, and he gripped their skulls and pierced their flesh with his talons, sucking their memories from them. He savored their experiences, their messy lives and flamboyant emotions, as he took in their knowledge.
The more human priest, the one from Argive, was obviously jealous of his companion. He could not modify his form in the same fashion as she did, for he had to operate among the other humans in Argive’s capital, Penregon. But this plain, unornamented one held wonderful information, of the new discovery of the island off Terisiare’s southeast coastline. The new land was wrapped in storms, but once past the bad weather there was a land rich for the taking, similar to Phyrexia’s first sphere in its wildness, but more organic and disorganized.
He scanned through the mind of the priest from Mishra’s court, and there was nothing similar there. Yes, they had raided Ashnod’s notes and were already successfully using her work on the human body to modify themselves. And yes, Mishra relied more and more on the priests with every passing month and was now susceptible to the brotherhood’s suggestions and recommendations. But Mishra was hurting badly for resources now and had sucked most of the lands dry. But no word of the new island’s discovery within the priest from the Artifice Qadir’s court.
Gix let the information click through the registers of his own mind. He wanted to reunite the split power stone, but he was not sure now which brother should do it for him. Mishra had been the initial invader of his domain but now was depending on Gix’s puppets, the priests, more and more. Urza, wrapped within his own hierarchy of supporters and students, remained an enigma to Gix, but with the resources of this new island he would be able to overpower his brother, given time.
Gix wanted one of the brothers dead and the other sufficiently weakened so that he would not stand in Gix’s way. But both humans had been working through their proxies, through their own minions, and had not met face-to-face in decades.
Perhaps, Gix thought, he could change that.
To the metal-studded priestess from Mishra’s court he presented information that Urza had found a new source of material to keep his war machine functioning. The woman shuddered as the new data flooded into her brain, and a single, oily tear pooled at the corner of her eye.
Gix ordered the male spy to return to Argive and allow himself to be captured. He must then reveal, only under torture, that Mishra himself planned to take the prize of the island kingdom personally, giving himself a boon of materials and opening the entire southern coast of Urza’s kingdoms to attack.
Almost as an afterthought, the demon burned out that part of the man’s brain that contained the feelings of jealousy of his fellow monk. The man let out a small gasp.
Machines did not feel jealousy, noted Gix. Neither should their worshipers.
He released the pair, and the woman moaned as the mental connection was broken. The man collapsed, and Gix had to summon a pair of su-chi, partially restored by the priests, to drag him off to recover elsewhere. Given the damage done to his mind, there would be little difficulty in his being caught by the Argivians.
Gix leaned back on his throne and clicked his taloned fingers together. Now, finally, all the pieces were falling into place.
* * *
—
Gwenna had been there when the first invader came and was there when the invasion proper began. Titania was no fool, and an invader that escaped the land was expected to return. Gwenna and others of her clan had been recruited to serve as shore watchers for the next year or ten years to guard against the recurrence of men from the sky.
And they did return, from the sky and from the sea.
Gwenna was at the tree line overlooking the pristine white beach where the invader had first landed. It was morning, and the storms that formed the outer barricade of the island were a dark line against the horizon.
Then darker flecks appeared along the gray horizon, slowly becoming clearer and more solid as they sailed out of the rain. The dark blots quickly resolved into large boats. It was a flotilla of ships sailing out of the storm.
There were other flecks aloft, no more noticeable than gnats swarming around the greater shadows. They were the bird things, Gwenna realized. Their small size alongside the greater silhouettes spoke of the boats’ huge size. Each of the great ships had to be the size of an entire elven hamlet.
As Gwenna watched, more ships sailed out of the gray storm, and then more still. Some were streaming black smoke, and others white steam; still others billowed out with great sails, torn by their passage through the heavy weather, looking like specters as they neared the shore.
It was an armada unlike any that Gwenna could recall, not even out of the old lore. The invaders were coming to Argoth.
The force was making for a peninsula westward along the coast, and Gwenna began moving in that direction. She thought of moving along the beach, but already the small bird things were overhead, swooping and scouting the area. Instead she kept to the upper levels of the trees, running along the great branches and leaping the occasional chasms within the interwoven branches.
She found young Doril at her watch position, staring at the armada as it bore down on them. The younger elf’s eyes were wide with fear.
Gwenna shook her and told the youngling to take word of the invasion back to Titania’s Court. But even as she spoke, Gwenna knew that with a force so large, Gaea herself had to know. If Gaea knew, Gwenna reminded herself, then Titania, their queen, must be aware as well. Still Doril was petrified, and even flight was a sufficient action for her at this point.
The invaders had landed by the time she arrived. Their boats did not moor but drove up onto the beach itself. The bows of the great craft split open, and out of them spilled a torrent of creatures like ants from a ruptured anthill. There were men among them, but there were other things of a type that Gwenna had never seen. Some looked like beetle-headed humanoids, and these took the perimeter of the beachhead. Others were mechanical giants with knees that bent oddly, and they were already unloading supplies. Huge castlelike creations rumbled from the bellies of the ships, bristling with armament and blades. A great machine with a saw-toothed mouth lumbered forward on spider legs.
If Gwenna had any doubts as to her own responsibility in this invasion, they were banished when she saw the figure leading the assault. There, among the mechanical beings and human warriors, was her Invader, the one that she had refrained from killing over a year ago. He was bellowing orders to the men and machines, and they responded to his words. He turned to listen to another man, a taller, older man with broad shoulders. They spoke, and then the younger Invader snapped another set of orders, and the machines bent to his will.
The spider-legged creation lumbered toward the tree line, even as the mechanical giants began to dig the foundation of a fortress above the high tide line. The sawteeth of the great spider behemoth bit into the trees, and sawdust and bark flew in all directions as it chewed its way into the jungle.
Other ships were landing now along the beach, their bellies rupturing and giving birth to other monstrosities. Some of the ships had hung on the reefs, but enough passed through that gauntlet to repeat the scene Gwenna witnessed all along the coastline. Overhead, the sky buzzed with bird things, both large and small.
There was no time to wait for a response from Titania’s Court. These were not solitary invaders cast up from some shipwr
eck. This was a force, armed and dangerous, which within moments of its landing began to assault the land.
Gwenna knew she should wait for official response, but she also knew what the response had to be. If she waited the forest would be lost. Her perch shuddered as one of the great bleachwoods toppled, taking with it two more trees with which it had interlinked branches.
Gwenna retreated, pulling back to the deeper heart of the forest. She needed to gather the rest of her clan and form a war party.
The invaders would not wait for such niceties as permission.
* * *
—
Ashnod stared at the sylex and smiled. It had taken many years, but its secrets were at last hers.
She ran a finger along the bowl’s lip. The world seemed to darken around her, and she welcomed that darkness. It spoke of an entirely new type of power, a new resource that she could harness.
She had learned well, though her teacher had needed some encouragement to share the secrets of the ivory towers. The scholar was gone now, though not dead. Ashnod would have found a way to preserve her if she had merely died, but the woman had instead escaped, made off into the night either by herself or with aid.
It mattered little. She left most of her knowledge behind.
It required a different way of thinking, a way Ashnod had trouble understanding at first. Hers had been a world of the physical, like the other artificers. But once the concept existed that the land itself held power, that it only needed to be released, the rest of the theory fell easily into place.
Once you believed in magic, it could happen.
Ashnod lifted her fingertip from the bowl, and the world returned to normal. This device was too dangerous for direct use, but the secrets it revealed were powerful enough to demonstrate her abilities to Mishra and to regain her place by his side.
He needed her aid desperately. The tribes of the Fallaji were finally falling apart, and the non-Fallaji nations they had conquered were wracked by revolution and civil war. Through it all, an ever-increasing wave of devices spilled across the eastern passes from the foundries and workshops of his accursed brother.
She had made her own home in Almaaz, far from its now-ruined capital of Sumifa, and played one faction off against another as that country spiraled into dissolution. At one point she thought she could unite the nation and return to Mishra as Almaaz’s queen, but now…
He would be much more impressed with the power and knowledge she held than with any mere nation.
There was a shadow at the door—one of her own acolytes, veteran of several sides in the civil war. She had shared some of her secrets with her students but not enough to make any of them dangerous. She told them nothing of the true power of the sylex.
“Mistress?” said the acolyte.
“Speak, Thaxus,” Ashnod replied grandly.
“News from Tomakul,” he said.
Ashnod looked up, her eyes narrowing. “Out with it.”
“Word has reached Mishra that his brother has found a great island, filled with trees and metals to let him fuel the war effort.”
Ashnod nodded. Yes, such news would make Mishra all the more desperate. “Is it true?”
“The Artifice Qadir has reopened the boatyards at Zegon, and has dispatched slaves to build a fleet of his own,” said Thaxus. “He intends to take the island for himself.”
Ashnod nodded again. Yes, that was very much like Mishra. He needed a new goal to keep his empire together, and the promise of fresh plunder was enough to keep the child-men who were the Fallaji war chiefs in line. And he would need help if he was to succeed. Her help.
The news was at least three months old. Mishra would have finished his ships by now.
Thaxus shifted from one foot to another, and when Ashnod looked up, there was fire in her eyes.
“Saddle my mount,” she said, “with supplies for a long trip.”
“Where are we going?” asked Thaxus.
“You are not going anywhere,” said Ashnod with a wicked smile, one that the apprentices had learned to fear. “I, on the other hand, am going home.”
* * *
—
Junior Artificer Sanwell, who a lifetime ago stood with Urza among the ruins of Kroog, found the Lord Protector in his workshop. A great area had been cleared in the center of the room, and a glowing sphere hovered in the center.
The sphere shone with a color unknown to Sanwell, a combination of swirling yellows and greens that seemed to etch their intensity into his eyes so they were still visible even when he screwed his eyes shut against the brilliance. Lightning danced off the surface of the sphere as it spun, unsupported, in the center of the room.
Sanwell wanted to shout, but Urza noticed him and cut the power to the machine himself. The sphere spat one last arc of greenish lightning, then floated gently to the floor. Sanwell noted that the Lord Protector’s white hair had been standing on end and surmised that his had been as well, within the field of the great device.
“Rakalite,” said Urza briefly, grinning, as if the name explained everything. “Works on the same principle as the old amulets of Kroog, wrapping the body in a protective field that nurtures its healing. What do you have?”
“The spy, Milord.”
Urza’s smile disappeared, and Sanwell could see the old man make the mental transition from thinking about his devices to thinking about the war. “The Gixian? What of him?”
“We finally got him to talk,” said Sanwell gruffly. “I’m afraid we had to break him to do it.”
“Of course,” said Urza softly. “What did he know?”
“He was Gixian, a priest in the order,” said Sanwell. “And yes, he was funneling information to Mishra. He gave us some other names, but they’ve already fled the kingdom.”
“The qadir knows,” said Urza sharply. “He know about the island.”
Sanwell nodded. “Your brother, the qadir, is said to be building his own invasion fleet and will be leading it to the island himself.”
“Tawnos is there,” said Urza. “Harbin is leading the expedition.” The old man ground his palms together. The motion raised his shoulders, and to Sanwell it made him look like an albino vulture. He was silent for a long moment, looking at where the oddly colored sphere now rested on the floor. He muttered something Sanwell could not hear.
“Milord?” asked Sanwell.
“I’m going, I said,” Urza grunted, looking up at Sanwell. His face was exhausted, and all the spirit that had been there moments before had been drained from it. “I’m going to that island. To meet my brother one last time.”
Harbin arrived in the Court of Queen Titania of the elves of Argoth.
He had been surprised to discover that the island had its own queen. Indeed he had been surprised to discover that the island was inhabited by more than trees and multicolored slugs. Nothing from his earlier scouting showed clearings, wood fires, or any of the normal trappings of civilization.
But these elves were not normal. They lived in the trees themselves, and had somehow bent them to their own wills. Great cathedrals of open space had been nurtured in the center of the woods, and the elves made their homes among the branches. The Court of Titania was the greatest of those cathedrals, and banners of green, gold, and white dripped from the branches overhead.
Harbin had set down his flight of ornithopters in a clearing about a half-mile away. He was greeted by a small army of elves, dressed in armor made of varnished reeds and armed with razor-tipped bone spears. Darting among the warrior elves were pixies, small humanoids with dragonfly wings, and behind the lines of elves were centaurs and treefolk—giantlike creatures who looked very much like the forest that surrounded them.
Among the armed guard was a single tall elf, almost as tall as Harbin himself. He was dressed in green and white robes that seemed to swirl around him like a cloud. He held his hands out palms upward. Harbin returned the gesture. In Argivian, the elf said, “You are to come with us. No harm will fall upon y
ou while within Titania’s power. I am her Speaker.”
The voice was clipped and precise, another surprise for Harbin. The elves they had fought to date had their own language and showed neither the ability to nor the interest in communicating; only in fighting, tooth and nail, for every piece of land on the island.
The raids had begun almost immediately after Harbin’s landing and grew in intensity with each passing month. The shore towers were under assault almost immediately, and the work crews were victims to snipers as soon as they entered the forest proper. It had become necessary to clear the land within a mile of each tower, and even that was a difficult operation. Often the forest itself would begin to grow back unless the brush was regularly cleared and burned.
Then came the major assaults, of elves, centaurs, and treefolk. There were massed battles against crudely armed beings who fought with the passion of raging animals. There were animals among them as well: cougars, wolves, and other wild creatures. At first Harbin thought the armies drove the animals before them, but soon he realized the elves exerted some measure of control over the mindless creatures, much as the Argivians did over their machines. They would make lightning strikes from the tree line, then fade into the forest once Argivian forces arrived. Those who pursued the elves beneath the canopy of green were ambushed.
Battlements surrounded the towers, and stockades of newly hewn lumber were set up a reasonable distance from the ever-advancing frontier. Heavy, modified ornithopters, now called ornibombers, strafed the jungles to clear it of wildlife and elven raiding parties before the lumbering machines even rolled forward. Slowly, the resources were pulled from the land and poured into making more stockades, battlements, and machines.
The losses were horrible, both of men and machines. The Argivians rarely saw their opposition, and then suddenly they appeared, a huge horde of elves, or a flight of pixies, or an army of treefolk. A group of the last had reached one of the shore towers and was shredding supply boats before the Argivians realized the treefolk burned the same as any other tree.