Time Streams

by J. Robert King

  “Too much smoke,” replied the scholar. “Give it a few minutes to clear.”

  “That will give them a few hours to regroup,” Malzra responded. “Altitude, radius, tangent—has our position held?”

  “We’ve gained height,” Jhoira said, “after the bombs went. We’re up to about seventeen hundred feet.”

  “Bring us down to twelve,” Urza commanded, “and anticipate the next payload drop.”

  “Radius is steady.”

  “Tangent is steady.”

  “Down to about twelve hundred feet.”

  “Payload six away.”

  * * *

  The first wave of attacks slew over a hundred and fifty of K’rrik’s minions, toppled three towers, blasted away the roof of the upper throne room and, worst of all, sent blazing death into the spawning lab. Vials of brain and placenta burst and oozed, recombination matrices ended in tatters on the floor, vats of glistening oil ignited in enormous jets, mutant stock burned to cinders, and the decanted, half-mature killers that K’rrik had been breeding to survive the time rift were roasted alive. The destruction was almost total. Almost.

  Out of chaos came order. The fires from the initial onslaught were already extinguished, the dead and dying thrown to the fishes, and the ballistae recalibrated for greater distance. K’rrik ordered all able-bodied beasts to salvage whatever specimens, equipment, and plans had survived from his breeding laboratories. The remains were taken below the castle, into the caves. Urza’s crude bombs might have blasted holes in roofs and walls, but they would not crack the basalt extrusion on which the castle sat and would not completely wipe out a century of research. All hope of escape and victory rested in that ragged refuse, in the half full jars of cracked glass with their skittish placental inhabitants. Some of the creatures would survive, and K’rrik’s clawed and tentacular horrors carried them as tenderly as human mothers with their babies.

  All of this had happened in the hour after the first attack. As the smoke cleared enough to make out the dim line of the airship above, guards spotted more of the bombs resting in the air below it. They looked like pepper on a white piece of paper. It was an easy thing to predict where they would strike and evacuate the areas.

  K’rrik stood, furious and humiliated, among his folk. Sizzling chunks of fire struck the roof of one guard tower and the adjacent section of wall. The resultant chorus of flares and pops shook the rest of the fortress and echoed through the chasm. Hunks of stone pelted outward and hailed across the Phyrexian host, who flinched away. The tower came to pieces, pulverized by the attack. The weakened wall crumbled away, crushing an armory lower down. Fires flared up wherever there was wood or cloth or skin to burn, and the armory ignited. A cloud of flame and soot shot up in a vast column, its top rolling and boiling.

  K’rrik watched. The filed teeth in his enhanced jaw ground into their opposite gums, cutting bloody rents in the flesh.

  “What are you going to do?” barked a creature next to him. It seemed more a giant flea than a man, its head three times the size of K’rrik’s and its pale, naked body humpbacked and twisted. “You can’t let this go on!”

  “Yes,” K’rrik responded grimly. Pus-colored blood was suddenly jetting from the creature’s severed back as K’rrik withdrew his sword. The monster tumbled from the wall where they stood, its body bouncing twice along the buttresses before striking the black foundations of the fortress and bursting in a white mass. “Yes, I cannot let you question my authority.”

  K’rrik turned to another Phyrexian, this one more manlike, though he had the infernal head of a haggard goat. The commander ordered, “Tell two ballistae crews to fire three rounds every half hour, half-cocked rounds that will fall short. Have crews ready in the water to retrieve the shafts. Cover the rest of the ballistae with dead bodies. I want Urza to think he has destroyed most of our ballistae, and nearly disabled those that are left. I want to draw him downward. Once they are in range, fling the dead from the ballistae and fire all simultaneously. Aim for the flying machine’s bomb bays.”

  Nodding his understanding, the goat-faced man headed off on his mission.

  K’rrik snarled at the minions around him, “As for the rest of you, put out those fires. And keep watching for more onslaughts. Anyone injured will be killed. Anyone killed will be defiled. It is your duty to fight and to live.”

  * * *

  The third, fourth, and fifth drops went as well as the first. Bombs hailed down. Fire and smoke came up. The sound of tumbling towers and shrieking beasts rose to meet them. On the second drop, Jhoira had learned the trick of spilling heat from the air sac at the moment the bombs were released, thereby preventing the machine from lurching upward. This technique allowed for quicker follow-up attacks, greater accuracy, and less time spent reeling.

  Until the sixth drop. The gorge below was a gray scar, so full of smoke that no fortification was evident within. Still, the cartographers had picked out landmarks on the edges of the cliff and could, from memory alone, pinpoint important sites to strike. They were above just such a site now—what had looked like a throne room or great hall—and Malzra issued the now familiar warning.

  “I am opening bay two.”

  Jhoira paused a breath and then bled the air from the forge. She knew immediately that something was wrong. There came no grating ratchet. There was no sound of tumbling bombs. There was only the sudden loss of height as hot air spilled from the sac.

  “The mechanism is jammed,” came a shout over the speaking tube.

  Jhoira ground her teeth as she struggled to shut off the bleed and pump the bellows. The dirigible sagged on its lines, dipping below the crest of the Giant’s Pate. The deflated sac rattled in a sudden downdraft. Jhoira heaved at the bellows, and jets of red air roared into the sac. It began to reinflate.

  Loud shouts of metal came below, ballistae shots hammering into the fuselage. The speaking tubes were flooded with screams. Then came another wave of ballistae shots only a breath after the first. They penetrated. Spearheads struck powder bombs. With a dull roar, they ignited. The explosion spread. Bomb bay two blasted away. The metal fuselage fragmented. The machine mounted up on a wave of fire. What remained of the fuselage rammed up beneath the air sac.

  Jhoira was suddenly inside the balloon, the air around her baking her skin and burning in her lungs. She was aware of a great emptiness beneath her. Half of the fuselage was gone. The rest was shoved in a tangle of lines inside the skin sac. The other crew members were dead—the officers of tangent and radius, the cartographers, even Master Malzra. She was about to die too.

  “I’m sorry, Teferi,” was all she could think to say.

  The ragged metal fuselage dropped from the air bag and slewed sideways. It tugged the deflated dirigible down behind it. The whole mass plummeted toward the Phyrexian gorge below.

  Coals from the tilted forge sprayed out around Jhoira. Cursing, she clawed her way from the harness and climbed into the tangle of ropes. She clambered over them, seeing through their webwork as the vast gray gorge rushed up to swallow her. One of the ropes was fatter than the others and tighter. She grabbed it and felt the insistent tug of life on the other end.

  “Karn is up there,” she gasped to herself. Karn and the rest of the ground crew.

  She fought her way out of the flapping folds of skin and the taut net of ropes and clambered up that one fat line, the one that pulsed with life. Hand over hand, she dragged herself up the rope, toward the Giant’s Pate and away from the Phyrexian fortress.

  There was too much rope, too little air, too much rock.

  The world roared up with crushing weight. She climbed.

  The ruined dirigible was about hundred feet behind her now. It struck the fast-time envelope. Waves of time-distortion roiled out around it. The war machine plummeted in a sudden preternatural rush. The rope snapped taut. It flung Jhoira free. The capstan ripped from its moor
ing and surged through the air. There came a white-hot explosion within the rent. The sky and ground fused into a single sheet.

  “I’m sorry, Teferi.” Jhoira struck earth, and all went black.

  Monologue

  We do not make machines, I now realize. We make only fire and death.

  The blast surprised all of us, even Urza. He survived through a great concentration of will, holding his corporeal form together, but unlike the explosion that tore apart Tolaria, or that which tore apart Argoth, Urza had not anticipated this one. He was struggling to keep his body solid even as his crew members were no more than red particles on the wind.

  And there is no time machine for bringing them back.

  The blast surprised all of us. I summoned a wall of air, trying to catch the falling craft, but only slowed its descent. In the midst of the fumbling hopelessness of it all, I saw Jhoira ambling spiderlike up the main line toward safety. That was the greatest surprise of all, though it shouldn’t have been. Jhoira’s force of will equals that of Urza.

  —Barrin, Mage Master of Tolaria

  They sat at Jhoira’s bedside in the makeshift infirmary. No pallet, no cot—here she had an actual bed—Barrin’s, volunteered by him for the purpose. The infirmary was soon to be a kitchen attached to one end of the great hall, but now, amid newly mortared fireplaces and stacks of iron-worked spits and grills and pots, she lay in coma. She was the only one injured in the wreck of the dirigible. All the others were killed.

  Except Urza. He and Barrin sat on cook stools just next to the bed, and they spoke in low tones.

  “She’s become another Teferi,” Barrin said sadly. “Three months, and still no response. Lying there, an arm’s length away but unreachable.”

  Urza watched the still woman, his eyes glimmering darkly. “Physically, she is well. You saw me lay hands on her. You saw the wounds close and the breath begin again. She was whole the moment I laid hands on her. I can’t understand why she does not awaken.”

  “Her wounds are deeper than you can reach, my friend,” Barrin replied.

  He fondly brushed her hair back from her forehead. Her face was losing its olive patina after all this time beneath roofs and blankets. Her hair was darkening from the roots outward. It was as though the years were being one by one revoked from her, and she was becoming again a mere child.

  “She survived Old Tolaria, through ten years of abandonment, isolation, and want. Then we came back, and we all thought she would return to us. But she didn’t. Karn was her only friend. She was withdrawn and haunted. Every time she saw Teferi—spoke of him, thought of him—the horror of those ten years came welling back. She felt trapped, like him. An arm’s length away from us but always alone.”

  “She could stay in this coma forever,” Urza said.

  “No. She is fighting. Either she will win or lose. It will not be forever, but it may be a long time. Last time, she fought for a whole decade.”

  Urza lifted his eyes, seeming to see straight through the wall and even through an oblique curve of the world to some dazzling place that lay beyond it all.

  “Serra’s Realm had once restored my health. I would take her there at once if Serra remained, if the place weren’t shrinking, if I hadn’t led Phyrexia to it….” A cloud passed over his features and they grew iron-hard. “We have to keep up the fight. Everywhere I have gone, those monsters have followed. Everyone I have befriended has been wounded or killed by them. I would destroy myself if I knew it would stop them, but they will never quit. I must fight them as long as I live.”

  “And what if you die before they are defeated?” Barrin asked soberly. “Who will fight them then?”

  All light fled Urza’s face, and it was as black as a mask. “Yes, who then?”

  * * *

  Karn heaved the massive keystone into position atop the archway. The stone grated against its neighbors. Sand sifted down from its settling bulk. Silver hands lingered in uncertainty on the huge block.

  “Does it look straight?”

  Behind him, Barrin looked up from Malzra’s field table and squinted along a sight line. The keystone gleamed like a jewel in the morning sun, its polished edges reflecting the Tower of Artifice and the Tower of Mana in the background.

  “Yes, Karn. It looks straight.”

  The silver golem nodded and then asked, “Will it stay put?”

  This time, Barrin was too busy with his sketches to look up. “Of course it will stay put.”

  He sighed. The stack of floor plans and elevations before him were the latest creations of Urza for his new academy. Already, after five years of intensive, year-round building, the school was nearly as extensive as it had been in its previous manifestation: dormitories, lecture halls, laboratories, great halls, guard towers, curtain walls, gates, gardens, and now a new infirmary. Not that many of the academy’s hundred and ninety students were ill or injured. Most were too young to have any serious health problems aside from homesickness. Whatever injuries or illnesses occurred were treated with placebo pills, gauze, and Urza’s healing touch. No, this grand new two-story infirmary was not so much a necessity as it was a monument to the school’s perpetual patient.

  Jhoira had not awakened. She had indeed become another Teferi. For his part, the young man was now wrapped in the wet cloak and beginning a tumble that would take him another handful of years to complete. Jhoira had meanwhile grown pale, her hair dark brown again. She did not awaken. Barrin had discovered that water from slow-time rifts helped to sustain her health, and Urza provided his healing touch daily. Nothing improved. Urza had devised a machine that liquefied whatever food was offered in the great halls and pumped it into her stomach. Karn, meanwhile, had developed the habit of picking wildflowers for her from the hillsides of Angelwood and bringing them to her bed. He too often stood vigil there, choosing to spend his nights in her company instead of deactivated.

  Her plight weighed heavily on Barrin and Karn as they worked on the new building. Both moved sadly and slowly, as though building a mortuary rather than an infirmary. There was anger in them too, frustration at their inability to save her.

  Karn trudged up beside the desk and stood, gleaming in the bright, hot sun.

  Barrin shielded his eyes from the glare and said irritably, “Can’t you let yourself tarnish a little?”

  “Master Malzra forbids it,” Karn replied truthfully. Then, with a tone of sarcasm he had been slowly developing over the last fifteen years, he said, “It would bother you less if you wore a sack over your head.”

  Barrin cast a reproachful look at the golem. “I think maybe it’s time to design a new helper—one with a thicker skin, if that is possible.”

  “If you’re after compatibility, try a helper with a thicker skull.”

  “Thicker than Arty Shovelhead’s?”

  “Teferi was a better companion than you—”

  “An old shoe is a better companion than you—”

  A sudden buzz tore through the air between the two. They shied instinctively back, gaping at empty space. Something darted, the size and speed of a falcon, above the treetops. It circled and dived down toward them again. It glinted metallic.

  Barrin swore, stepped to the desk, and hauled a sword from it. As the thing swooped by again, he swung the blade. It cracked against the silvery shoulder of the device, but the metal bird soared again, ripping leaves from their boughs as it shot through the forest. The rattle of its passage faded briefly and then returned with a swift crescendo. Growling, Barrin hefted his blade again and watched the mechanism shriek inward.

  Karn stepped into the path of the attacker. He reared back, balled a fist, and hurled the massive thing at the flying target. It crashed amid a jangle of slivered struts and sprung coils. The artifact creature fell back in the dirt. Its metallic wings glinted, shuddering to either side. Spikes thrust outward all across it. An assortment of round,
rending blades emerged, whirling violently.

  Astonished, Barrin and Karn gazed at the broken mass as it whined furiously. They were so amazed by the display that neither noticed Master Malzra approach from behind. The artificer watched with amused interest. It was only when the mechanism had nearly spent itself and shimmied into stillness that the master spoke.

  “It was only a prototype. The final falcons will stoop at hundreds of miles an hour on the gorge—arriving even before the sound they make. They will smell Phyrexian glistening-oil blood, home in on it, penetrate the beast’s hide, and begin a shredding procedure.”

  Panting heavily, Barrin turned toward the man. “How many of them will you build?”

  As many as I can, given our supply of Thran powerstones. If I could only design and build my own stones, I could fill the skies with these creatures, could perhaps protect the whole world. With the stones we have—and the ones I hope to uncover at three Thran sites I have found—I can make perhaps a thousand.”

  “Three Thran sites?’ Barrin asked, eyebrow canted. “You are planning on sending students to dig!”

  “Yes,” Malzra replied. “They’ll be taken aboard New Tolaria, and the ship will return with a new load of students, whom I’ve chosen from the best and brightest the world has to offer. I have the itinerary right here. And since I, myself, need to remain for research—”

  “Yes, yes,” Barrin replied irritably. “How many years will I be away this time!”

  * * *

  “Teferi is covered in your robe, now,” Karn said gently. He sat by Jhoira’s bedside in the completed infirmary. “He’s not being burned anymore. You’ve saved him.” He didn’t add that the boy would likely rise, now, and make his way toward the outer world and be killed in the curtain of time.

  Jhoira was too fragile to bear that sort of news. She looked pale and small in the bed. Her arms and legs were weak from years of stillness, her eyes were lost beneath lids forever closed, her mouth was red where the tube of Malzra’s feeding machine descended.