by Jeff Grubb
She looked at Mishra’s face, seeking some smile, some recognition that he was glad to see her back. All she saw was a grim fire burning behind his eyes.
“What offer of aid is this?” he said.
“I have wandered far during my…extended leave,” said Ashnod, opening the top of the chest. “I’ve learned many things and found many items that may be of use to you.”
She pulled a copperish bowl from the chest. “I believe I can use this simple sylex to determine our future,” she told him with a smile, holding it aloft.
Mishra did not shift position as he regarded Ashnod and her gift. “You bring me metal dishes?” he said. “Have you become a coppersmith in your absence?”
Ashnod lowered the bowl, disappointed. “More than just a serving dish, Most Powerful One. There are forces in the world beyond those of our mere machines. I have endeavored to master those forces.”
“Magic,” interrupted Mishra.
“Pardon?” asked Ashnod, startled.
“Magic,” repeated the qadir, “like the fools of the Union of Terisia City believed in.”
“For want of a better word—” began Ashnod, but Mishra cut her off.
“Magic,” he said a third time, “does not exist. It is all tricks, done with smoke, mirrors, and other devices. I have done such tricks. So have you, to fool the credulous. Magic is not real. Do not bother me with such trivialities.”
“Most Comprehending One,” said Ashnod, “I do not think that the power of the scholars of the ivory towers is trivial—”
Mishra laughed. It was a sharp, barking laugh that Ashnod did not like at all. “I never thought I would live to see the day the great and powerful Ashnod, Ashnod the Uncaring, would become a simple trading-camp charlatan, seeking to con her way back into my good graces.”
Ashnod felt her face redden at the rebuke. This was not going the way she had expected at all. She said, “I can offer some small demonstration—”
Again Mishra interrupted. “Save your demonstrations for the gullible, Ashnod. I know your patter well. And I have missed it. But I have changed in your absence, even if you have not.” He looked at her, long and hard, and Ashnod, for the first time in many, many years, wondered what he was thinking.
Finally Mishra said, “You are welcome to remain with my forces, Ashnod, or go as you see fit. I lift your banishment. But know that your actions will be watched.” There was a slight bob of his head toward one of the priests. “If there is any sign of betrayal, I will personally turn you into a transmogrant. Am I clear?”
“As glass,” said Ashnod, frowning. “But may we at least speak in less formal surroundings?”
“You will come when I call,” said Mishra, “or you will not come at all. You are brilliant in your own way, Ashnod, and I am sure that, returned to true work, to building artifacts, your talent will blossom again. You may go.”
Ashnod hesitated a moment, and Mishra said again, “You may go.” There was granite in his voice.
Ashnod bowed again, and retreated from the room. Hajar followed her.
“Well, that went badly enough,” she said, then turned to Hajar. “Things have gone downhill around here while I was gone.”
“It has been so noted,” said Hajar simply.
Ashnod wanted to ask more, to find out how influential the Gixians were, who really ran things behind Mishra’s throne, when the door behind them opened. The priest with the steel-plated eyes emerged and bowed, slight and perfunctory, before Ashnod.
“We are interested in your bowl,” said the priest.
“That trivial piece of magic?” said Ashnod, raising an eyebrow, “Magic your lord does not believe in?”
The priest bowed again, and Ashnod swore she heard something click and whine as he did so. “The brotherhood is always open to new avenues, and, if they prove true, can present them properly to His Most August and Serene Personage. The bowl, please.”
“I think not,” said Ashnod.
The priest stared at her, if an eyeless thing could be said to stare at anyone. “We have been charged with keeping an eye on you, former apprentice. We have Mishra’s ear, and we can be your best allies in his court.” He smiled, and every other tooth was missing. “Or your worst enemies. The bowl, please.”
Ashnod looked at Hajar, and said, “Is this the way of the court, now, where petty muggings are common in its halls?”
Hajar did not say anything. Or rather, he looked at the floor beneath them, and his look spoke volumes.
“I see,” Ashnod said, and handed the chest over to the priest. “Please accept this gift as a token of my appreciation,” she said through clenched teeth. “May there be someone present to administer aid when you choke on it.”
The priest took the chest and gave her another toothy smile. “We knew you would show wisdom,” he said, “once the situation was made clear to you.” And he was gone, back into Mishra’s throne room.
Hajar did not say anything after that, but he did not have to. He escorted Ashnod to a tent city where most of the court was camped. She would have a private tent, and, as the qadir had directed, the permission to come and go as she pleased. If she needed anything, she should ask him. And then he was gone as well.
Ashnod lowered herself on her bunk and shook her head. She had returned, but it was not the return of the prodigal that she had hoped for. And Hajar was right. Mishra was both very much as she remembered him and very different.
She wondered if she should stay and decided that she should check out where else she could run before bolting.
She pulled her backpack onto the bunk and opened it, pulling the Golgothian Sylex from its depths, still wrapped in her clothing. Mishra had been right about one thing, of course. She had become a coppersmith in the years that she was gone. She had become many other things as well. But she had remained a suspicious enough person to bring the duplicate of her own crafting to present to Mishra. It was Ashnod’s sylex that the priests of Gix now held, while she retained the original.
Ashnod ran her finger along the edge of the ancient, rune-etched bowl, and the light dimmed slightly around her.
Harbin and his men arrived, footsore but otherwise unharmed, at the edge of Titania’s territory. The elven queen had been honorable in her declaration of protection. Harbin felt they had been watched every step of the way, but there were no incidents with the natives. Even the animals seemed to stay clear of them as they trudged the long miles back to the base through the oppressive humidity found beneath the forest canopy.
It was clear when they arrived at the border of her majesty’s territory. The forest ended as suddenly as a cliff. One side of the border was the lush, green, and humid world of Titania. On the other was the land of Harbin’s father and of the Argivians.
It had been clear-cut, with every tree sawed down and hauled away. Smooth stumps marked the former forest like gravestones, and every bit of detritus and foliage had been stripped. Off in the distance, a huge mound of leaves and vines was smoking lazily, and beyond that, Harbin could see large machines ripping up the earth itself, searching for mineral wealth beneath.
It looked more like the Argive he had grown up in than the Argoth that the elves claimed as their own, Harbin realized. His people had taken the land and made it their own, for good or ill.
Harbin stepped out into the open; the ground immediately became hard-packed, and the sun beat down on him like a hammer. He blinked in the brightness, as each of his men in turn stepped into the sunlight.
Behind them, from the forest, there was the war cry of elvish voices.
As one, the five men bolted across the wreckage of stumps, hoping to make the cover of the burning mounds before the elves caught up with them.
* * *
—
In his lair in Koilos, Gix watched his entertainment through the eyes of a minion.
She was one of the unfortunates among his brotherhood, one of those who had failed the test of the machine. Her limbs had been replaced by s
ervos and mechanisms, but the work was shoddy, quickly failed, and could not be replaced. She lay like a broken puppet at the foot of his throne, her useless prosthetics cast in all directions. She had cried about her fate for a long time until Gix tired of that and sewed her lips shut.
Still she had her uses. Gix gripped her skull and tapped into her mind, watching the contest before them through the filter of her emotion and pain.
Two of the su-chis were battling. Gix controlled them as he controlled the woman before him, but did so at a distance. With practice over the long years in this strange land and with the aid of few devices of his own creation, he had become very good at commanding the hearts and souls of these machines.
The su-chis stood two paces apart and flailed at each other. One bore a length of chain, the other a club made of the leg of another su-chi it had previously beaten in battle. Gix commanded the two automatons to beat each other to pieces, and, loyal to their god, they did so without complaint or comment.
There was no poetry to this battle, for both machines stood their ground, neither retreating nor dodging. Instead they relentlessly hammered away at each other, and the cavern walls echoed with the clang of metal on metal.
As they thundered at each other, Gix’s observer watched, flinching with each rasping clash of metal. Occasionally a part of one of the su-chis would fly off, and she would start suddenly, her skull firmly in the grip of the demon.
Gix savored the feeling, the sudden rush of adrenaline through the priest’s body. Without her senses, her reactions, the battle was merely a study of forces and impacts, of metal and resistance. But through human eyes, the two inhuman machines took on different appearances, and Gix relished the difference.
The combatants were tireless, but in the end the metal itself succumbed before the mindless will of the participants. The chain-wielding automaton wrapped the length of chain around its opponent’s neck and snapped its head from its pivots. The head of blue-metal wires bounced off its support toward the throne, and Gix’s observer flinched at that as well.
Meanwhile, the now-blind automaton attempted to hammer its opponent with its club. Its opponent let go of the chain and blocked the attack with an upraised arm, which bent under the force of the blow. Sparks began to issue from the joints of the former chain-wielder from the impact, yet it moved smoothly under the blow and reached up with both hands, driving its fingers into the clubber’s chest.
The former chain-wielder pulled its hands apart and ripped its opponent’s chest open. There was a shower of sparks as the leg-wielder collapsed in on itself, lacking anything at its center to hold it together. Again the observer flinched and tried to turn away, but Gix held her head tightly and commanded her to keep her eyes open, to drink in the eye-searing sparks of the device’s destruction.
In an instant it was over. The chain-wielder towered over the broken pile of scrap metal that had been its opponent. Gix felt the fear and revulsion in his observer and drank it like a fine wine.
He let go of her, withdrawing the talons back into himself as she collapsed into a twitching pile at the foot of the throne. Gix rose and strode to the victorious automaton. Sparks rained from its joints, and the battering it had received had caved in part of its skull.
Gix held out a finger and pushed against the victor’s chest. The su-chi, unbalanced, tilted backward, and smashed against the hard stone floor of the cavern. Its arms and legs separated under the blow, and its chest heaved in one last shower of sparks; then it was quiet.
“Unworthy,” he said as an epitaph.
Gix looked at the two fallen devices. So very much like the brothers they were: mindless, easily manipulated, and relentless in their assault. And in the end the victor would be vulnerable to Gix.
“Soon,” said the demon through lipless teeth. “Very soon.”
* * *
—
Queen Titania was dying, thought Gwenna. The queen was dying, and the land was dying with her.
A continual haze pervaded the surviving forest now as more and more of the land fell to assaults of the brothers. From one side Urza advanced, from the other Mishra, and they left nothing in their wake. With each glade that fell, with each knot of trees that was lumbered and consumed by their machines, with each mountain that was strip-mined, the land grew weaker. With the land, the queen grew weaker, and with the queen, the people.
Gwenna could feel it, and so could the others. Their tie to the land, the soft and reassuring touch that they felt in the core of their being, was gone. There was only emptiness. Emptiness, and the smoke of the burning pyres.
Titania had retreated to the most hidden part of her kingdom to plan the last assault, Gwenna had been told. But she had seen the queen before her retreat and knew that Titania would not emerge from her sanctuary again. Her majesty was harridan-haggard and exhausted, for each blow against the land was a blow against her. Gwenna knew that Titania was lost to them and with her the wisdom of Gaea herself and the goddess’s protection.
Gwenna would not stand aside and wait for news to come of Titania’s surrender, nor for a final battle after their forces were so weakened they would be ineffective. They could stand against one of the invaders, but not both at once. She spoke with others among the elves and decided they must make their own assault.
Then the red-haired human woman appeared to her group of plotters and gave them the opportunity to strike back.
Now she and a legion of comrades had gathered on the denuded shores of Argoth, an area where the despoiling armies had passed but not remained. They waited on the shores for one set of enemies, in order to strike out against the others.
The others rounded the headlands in their strange ships of metal and wood, their internal engines shooting sparks into the night sky. Some of the elves muttered among themselves, and Gwenna heard the word, “abominations.” But she would ride in the belly of these abominations if it meant she could fight the invaders on their home ground.
The larger ships remained in the deep waters of the bay while smaller craft came and beached on the shores. The red-haired woman with the ornate staff led the way, followed by a group of warriors swathed in cloth. These later warriors were led by an old human with a narrow face.
The red-haired woman bowed curtly and said in Gwenna’s tongue, “Are you prepared for the voyage?”
Gwenna looked at her people. There was nervousness among them, but also anger. Anger at having their homes destroyed and their lands ripped asunder by the invaders. She nodded.
“Then you’d best board and board quickly. As long as you are on shore, you are vulnerable,” said the red-haired woman. “Fortunately, the storms offshore have abated, so it should be safe sailing.”
The storms were abating because Titania was dying, thought Gwenna, but she said nothing. Instead she merely nodded and gave the signal to her forces. They hefted their weapons and began climbing into the boats. Gwenna paused for a moment and listened as the red-haired woman and the old man made their good-byes. Gwenna did not understand what they were saying and wondered for a moment if the two had been lovers and were now parting, possibly forever.
The thought appealed to Gwenna as she climbed over the gunwales of the boat and took her first steps away from Argoth and into the heart of the enemy land.
“This is risky,” said Hajar, as the elves in their armor of shellacked wood clambered into the boats.
“Everything is risky,” said Ashnod. “But we need to strike at Urza’s boatyards before he can resupply further. We do not have the manpower, but these forest children are mad enough at him to do the job for us.”
“You should come along,” said Hajar.
Ashnod shook her head. “Mishra will accept your departure, I think, but if I leave, he will come after me.”
“He will be angry,” said the old Fallaji.
“He will be delighted,” said Ashnod, “when you succeed.”
“I’ll bring the boats back,” said Hajar.
Ashnod
shook her head again. “Why? So they may be used to bring supplies from Zegon? There is nothing left there. It’s all been melted down and chopped down and converted and sent here. We’re at the end of things, Hajar. It is now or never.”
Hajar was silent for a moment, then said stiffly, “I have missed your way of thinking. The Brotherhood of Gix is not nearly as comforting.”
Ashnod said, “I will tell Mishra when he finds out that this was my idea but that you insisted on leading the raid so things would work out.”
Hajar chewed over the idea, then managed a small smile. “It has been an honor working with you. You think like a man,” he said.
Ashnod’s fingers tightened around her staff, but she said, “Thank you, Hajar. I accept that as the compliment you mean it to be.”
The boats were loaded, and Hajar was gone, rowing out to the larger craft. Ashnod watched the sparkling lights of the craft until they sailed again around the headland and were lost. Then she began a long walk back to camp, wondering if Mishra would even notice that Hajar and the ships were gone.
* * *
—
“He’s sending me home,” snarled Harbin, settling down in the camp chair across the tent from Tawnos.
Tawnos looked up from his work but said nothing.
“He says I am needed more back in Penregon,” continued the younger man.
Tawnos tightened a nut on the large construct he was working on and said, “He’s right.”
“Of course he’s right,” snapped Harbin. “He’s always right. That’s what being Lord Protector is all about, isn’t it? Being right.”
Tawnos stood up and regarded his handiwork. “This looks about ready. What do you think?”
Harbin looked at the object. It looked like a large crate, seven feet in length and three in height and depth. It was unremarkable, save that it was made of metal and had a great, heavy lid.