Time Streams

by J. Robert King

  “How long do we keep this up?” I asked Jhoira quietly during the blazing afternoon.

  “We keep it up until the machine breaks or the master and Karn emerge.”

  I felt heartened by her words. Here was a woman who had struggled out of a ten-year coma to design a machine worthy of Urza himself.

  A quick march up over the hill told me our labors would soon end. The water in the fast-time rift would not last into the night.

  I was coming down the slope to report this grave news to Jhoira when I saw a terrifying sight. The windmills ground to a halt, the turbines ceased their whining, and the thick, life-giving wall of fog roiled and dissipated on the wind. I started to run until I saw Urza, Karn, and Teferi standing there, having just emerged, alive, from the time pit. The crowd of students let out a spontaneous whoop and surged up around the three refugees. I hurried down toward them until I saw another knot of young folk, clustered quietly around Jhoira’s wheeled cart. In the next moments I reached her side. Her eyes were shut, her hands limp at her sides, but blessed breath coursed smoothly in her chest.

  “She stayed awake until they emerged,” one of the students said with quiet reverence, “and then, a moment later—”

  “Rest, dear girl,” I said fondly, stroking the sweaty hair from her forehead. “Sleep awhile more. We’ll wake you again. We’ll always wake you again.”

  —Barrin, Mage Master of Tolaria

  Teferi had not adapted well in the months after his rescue. The explosion had been horrible, of course, and the fire afterward, but he had been utterly devastated by the fact that the world and all his former friends were nearly twenty-five years older. Teams of healers had gingerly counseled the victim about his ordeal, focusing on his slow-time isolation.

  “What isolation!” he asked. “I was alone for three seconds! When you’re on fire, you don’t care if you’re alone. The fourteen years before the explosion were more traumatic. Talk about isolation! I had no peers. Every equal of mine was five years older than me. Now they’re almost three times my age! Jhoira’s forty. Malzra’s probably five hundred and forty. What about Teferi? Oh, he’s still fourteen!”

  It was another wound Urza couldn’t heal.

  Neither, apparently, could Teferi. After weeks of counseling, Teferi told the healers to leave. When they wouldn’t, he cast an itching enchantment on them. They struggled to maintain their decorum but soon were scratching like a pack of mongrels. They fled.

  Teferi stalked out of the infirmary. He marched across the finished academy.

  “That wall wasn’t here before,” he growled, and flung a spell at it. Green coils of energy leaped from his fingers and lashed into the grass at the base of the wall. Ivy grew rampantly up from the ground, overwhelming the limestone wall. In moments, the redoubt was buried deep beneath a riling green mound. “Look at these lovely towers.” His hand flung out again. Moss sprouted all along the rooftops of blue slate and hung down in gray beards.

  Teferi’s tantrum began to attract a crowd of students. Heads popped from behind shutters. Faces appeared in doorways. Students emerged to follow the tempestuous lad. They all knew him from the Teferi monument and excitedly crowded up to see the teenage hermit in action.

  Teferi whirled. “Get out of here. I’m tired of being stared at! You’ve had nearly fifteen years! Look at something else!”

  The students shied back from him, but the moment Teferi stalked onward, they followed.

  Drawing a deep breath, Teferi bellowed. “Then look at this!”

  The student robes of Old Tolaria opened obligingly down their back panel, allowing for various necessary functions—and this unnecessary one.

  A new generation of students glimpsed Teferi’s infamous “Breech of Etiquette.” Many of them turned in disgust. Others laughed, some even checking to see if their work suits would allow a similar display.

  Teferi was apparently dissatisfied with this response and added to his visual display an olfactory one. He cast a spell that sent a stink cloud through the whole academy. The crowd shut their mouths and squinted their eyes and ran. Doors and shutters slammed closed. The community that had stared at Teferi continuously for over a decade at last closed their eyes to him.

  And he disappeared.

  Eventually, the squelching cloud dissipated enough that students and scholars ventured back into the streets.

  Barrin and Malzra were livid, a week-long experiment ruined. Their anger only deepened when the prankster was nowhere to be found.

  “Look everywhere,” Barrin commanded the students in the streets. He hissed to Malzra. “We’ve not saved him from fire and time only to lose him to stupidity.”

  The whole school was mobilized. It seemed they were being invaded. It was too bad Teferi was gone, for he would have loved the sight.

  Jhoira emerged into the din. Students and scholars trooped like army ants through the academy, opening every door, looking beneath every bed, poking at every curtain and tapestry. Her brow was creased in consternation.

  “Teferi, where are you hiding?”

  A smile came to her face. It was as though she could read his mind.

  * * *

  “I knew I would find you here,” Jhoira said quietly as she approached her niche on the western edge of the isle.

  Teferi didn’t look up. He sat on a sunny slope of sandstone and stared out at the glimmering sea. He had come to this spot once before, ages ago, and discovered Kerrick and Jhoira trysting within. Teferi’s heart must have broken, but he hadn’t betrayed her secret, even in the face of Malzra’s questions.

  Jhoira remembered the time. To her it was ages ago, but for Teferi, it had been only a matter of months. Ages. Months. What did they mean on Tolaria? Jhoira herself seemed little older than in those days. Slow-time water had kept her outward age around twenty-two, and the coma had left her seeming younger still. Her inward vision quest had restored her. It had saved Teferi and her as well. She had discovered a way to break through the temporal wall that isolated him and the social wall that had isolated her. They were perhaps not soul mates, she and Teferi, but they were meta-physical twins.

  Jhoira eased up to the rock and slid into position beside him. It was as though she were reenacting that low moment ages ago, though now Kerrick was gone. It felt right to sit beside Teferi instead.

  “I’m glad you’re here. It’s a good place to be, when you’re feeling trapped between Tolaria and the world.”

  The muscles along Teferi’s jaw clenched. He stared out to sea.

  “If you have to be alone, it’s the best place in the world.”

  “You don’t understand,” Teferi broke in.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “Yes, I do.” She reached a hand out to him.

  He didn’t take it. “We’re farther apart than ever. When you were eighteen, you always told me to grow up. Well, look, now you’re forty, and I still haven’t taken your advice.”

  “This is Tolaria,” Jhoira said philosophically. “Time doesn’t matter. You’ll see. In a few years, we’ll be the same age.”

  He heaved an angry breath. “A few years—an eternity, a horrible eternity.”

  “Not so horrible,” Jhoira said, “when you’ve got friends.”

  At long last, he took her hand. “Thanks, Jhoira. Thanks.”

  * * *

  Seven years had passed since Teferi was released from his temporal prison. In that time, he had at last become a man—a young man, to be sure, but at twenty-one, he and Jhoira seemed the same age. She had been partaking of slow-time water for two decades. Most of the scholars and students over the age of thirty were also allowed to drink slow-time water once a year—the frequency required to halt aging. More frequent drinks caused strange illnesses. Since no one understood the long-term effects of the stuff, its use was strictly regulated. Those younger than thirty were forbidden the drink at all. Tefe
ri, at one point, had to be reprimanded by Barrin for drinking fast-time water in hopes of growing up sooner.

  In the seven years that he had been free, young Teferi had distinguished himself among the pupils and shown a new maturity. His pranksome nature eventually played itself out, though he still had a sharp wit and, occasionally, a sharp tongue.

  Among Teferi’s most ingenious innovations was organizing a squad of “temporal spelunkers”—students interested in studying the effects of movement into and out of steeper time gradients. They modified Jhoira’s machine to create longer-lasting artificial bridges into drastic time shifts. Teferi even pioneered using existing rivers to cross temporal curtains. By submerging oneself completely in water and holding a large glass jar of air inverted over one’s head, a spelunker could be carried along by the current and, cushioned by the water, slowly readjust to a different time. Through such discoveries, the academy was able to establish laboratories in moderate fast-time areas, where a month of experimentation could occur in a week.

  The most visible effect of these accelerated laboratories was the rapid proliferation of Malzra’s falcon attackers. Their intricate mechanisms were manufactured more quickly than powerstones could be found. The crystals came in only sporadic numbers aboard New Tolaria as it made its rounds from Thran site to Thran site.

  Meanwhile, Malzra had been busy designing another set of guardians. He took the sensor systems from the guards he had built for the walls of Old Tolaria and merged them with various locomotor apparatuses—bipedal structures modeled after long-legged and fleet-footed emus, preferentially quadrupedal frames based upon the feline physiology of panther-warriors, and even octopedal devices made for ambling over any terrain type and up even the sheerest surfaces. Each of these devices was armed with specially designed pincers and blades for piercing Phyrexian flesh, an array of sight-targeted quarrel launchers, and a core packed with explosive powder, to be activated when all other systems are spent and an engaged foe has incapacitated the sensory or locomotor systems.

  The resulting machines were collectively known as the Guardian class—a fearful assortment of artifacts. The two-legged variety were Tolarian runners, capable of great bounding speeds, their mirrorlike torsos bearing eight quarrel ports up each side. Where wings would be on emus, scythe blades emerged to snap together before them. These artifact creatures were meant to fight on open fields. The four-legged machines were known as pumas, sleek stalkers that would patrol the forests from the treetops and drop soundlessly onto any intruders. Their daggerlike claws could bear them swiftly up even sheer tree trunks and could take off a man’s head with one swipe, slicing his neck into three equal disks. These claws sharpened themselves each time they were withdrawn into the machine’s pads. The final type—eight-legged beasts—were called scorpions, with pincers fore and aft and the dexterity of any spider. As yet only half a dozen of each of these beasts existed, but their gleaming hides and dark, gemstone eyes were enough to frighten even the older students. Given the need—and given Teferi’s fast-time laboratories—armies of these creatures could be created in a single year.

  With patrols of runners, pumas, and scorpions on the ground and flights of falcons in the sky, Malzra felt he could ensure the safety of his isle. In addition to these forces, Malzra instructed students on the creation of ornithopters. Five were currently being built.

  The academy had become an armed fortification, despite the efforts of Barrin and Jhoira. They had ensured, however, that it was still a human place. They emphasized learning and experimentation over arms production and scheduled celebrations and festivals to help break the tedium of work. Even so, the black blight of the Phyrexian gorge never went away, and every tender thing that came into being in the walls of the new academy did so in the shadow of that horrid threat.

  Then they found it—the dead Phyrexian lying at the top of the gorge, having clawed its way up the cliff. It had used the properties of normal-time river water to help cushion its passage, climbing a thin waterfall. Even so, the beast was macerated from the crown of its bony head. to the last spike in its scourgelike tail. The fiend’s pink skin was ripped, revealing mounds of gray muscle over a hulking skeleton. Its once-long claws had been worn to bloody nubs in its tortured climb to the top of the chasm. It had passed through the shredding blades of time and somehow survived to reach the top. After two hundred years of experimentation and mutation, the Phyrexians had bred a beast resistant enough to time change to climb five hundred feet through the curtain of fast time. In two more generations, they would be strong enough to escape the gorge and fight. In four more generations, there would be hundreds of them. With their fast-time advantages, the Phyrexians could produce four generations of hybrids in eight years of time outside.

  This was why Malzra planned the Day of Falcons. Even as he geared up for all-out war, he devised a swift, preemptive air strike. The attack had two objectives. Minimally, it would slay Phyrexians, perhaps even the new generations, and buy time for Malzra to complete his arsenal. Maximally it could exterminate every last beast in the gorge and thereby end its threat forever. Barrin approved the plan, which required no risk to students or scholars and employed the seven hundred fifty falcon mechanisms already created.

  At long last, the Day of Falcons arrived.

  * * *

  Atop the Giant’s Pate, Barrin and Karn watched Malzra climb into the framework of his newly completed ornithopter. This command-class mechanism carried remote sensors that were linked to the prototype runners, pumas, and scorpions deployed in a circle around the gorge. It also bore a payload of fifty powder bombs, a complement of sixteen quarrel ports, and wings capable of being swept back alongside the main struts to allow for swift diving. From this aerial command seat, Malzra would monitor and direct the coming attack.

  Barrin squinted into the bald morning sun. He held his hand visorlike over his eyes and peered from the Giant’s Pate out toward the edges of the island. Thin tendrils of red smoke appeared on the western rim of the isle and frayed out on the sea winds.

  “Jhoira and her three squads have reached the shore and set up their posts. They are the last of the thirty-eight launch squads. The falcon fleet is ready to be deployed.”

  Urza strapped himself into the command seat. His usual blue robes were replaced by a charcoal-gray suit replete with pockets, tool belt, and armor at the shoulders. He wore boots laced to the knee, and his gemstone eyes were shielded by a dark crescent of polished obsidian.

  “If this works today, perhaps we can send millions of these beasts into Phyrexia itself, and not a single Dominarian will have to fight.”

  “What about you?” Barrin asked levelly. “You are a Dominarian.”

  “Don’t you ever stop worrying?” Malzra asked. “I will fly over the gorge, drop my payload of bombs, and rise out of reach of anything they could hurl my way. It’ll be just like flying over the deserts of the Fallaji. Besides, I’m only a diversion, a smoke screen to hide the assault.”

  “The falcons themselves will hide their own assault. That’s why we’re taking the trouble of launching them at the edge of the island. They’ll outrun sound itself in their dive. The Phyrexians will neither hear nor see them until they are torn apart by them. Your bomb salvo only risks you and your new ornithopter.”

  “We both know I might possibly survive a fall through the temporal bubble around the Phyrexians—”

  “Could you survive the moments afterward, surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the beasts? Planeswalking cannot save you when the distances are temporal.”

  With a snort, Malzra activated the great Thran device. It shivered to life. Its wings accordioned out and began to beat. The machine rose, slow and animated, into the skies.

  “This is a battle I must fight and win.” Malzra soared away from the Giant’s Pate.

  Just before the wings’ whirring drowned out all sound, Barrin shouted, “There is another batt
le, a much bigger battle, you must fight and win.”

  Karn watched the machine climb into the sky, beyond the reach of words. The silver man said, “The crews have prepared your ornithopter, Mage Master, as you requested. They included a payload of fifty bombs.”

  After a long, drawn breath, Barrin said, “I hope I will not need it. Master Malzra might survive a fall into the time bubble, but I am quite—” he broke off, as though he thought better of what he was about to say.

  “You are quite human, yes,” Karn agreed. his eyes still focused on the shrinking ship, “and I have been near him long enough to know Master Malzra is not.”

  The not-human in his not-bird spiraled upward above their heads in a maneuver designed to catch the attention of every beast in the gorge—and to signal the falcon crews at the edge of the isle.

  * * *

  “There’s the signal,” Jhoira said to herself. She peered into the rising sun, where Malzra rode in bold spirals. “He’ll start his bombing run any moment.” Turning, she called to her three squad captains, “Falcons ready?”

  “Squad Fifteen ready,” replied Teferi, who stood beside an array of twenty falcon creatures.

  Each bird occupied a small metal launch platform, anchored by a foot-long spike driven into the wet sand. The small creatures shimmered in the early light, their metal pinions folded against their legs, and their eyes glinting with predatory hunger.

  “Squad Sixteen ready,” carne the report of its captain.

  “Squad Seventeen ready.”

  Jhoira paused a moment, surveying the gleaming rows of bird creatures, fifteen rows of four each. They and their six hundred and ninety comrades could well save the isle. “Loose falcons!”