Time Streams

by J. Robert King

  He heard another voice, a deep rumble more massive and hollow and mournful than even Karn’s. The sound came from all around, as though the air itself spoke. The clammy breath of it, though, came from behind Urza. He pivoted, seeing only a vast wound in the base of the tree. The gouge was three times his height. Bark had struggled hard to close over the gash. Great rolled lips of wood still strained to come together. Next moment, those same bark lips drew apart, and smaller rents in the side of the tree opened above. Knots rolled beneath. The wound spoke:

  “Welcome, Urza Planeswalker. We are Multani, spirit of Yavimaya.” The face in the wood was utterly mournful, the mask of tragedy with only shadows for eyes. “We remember you.”

  The planeswalker bowed his head and actually dropped to one knee on the root cluster. “Forgive me. What I did three millennia ago, I did to save Dominaria from hideous invaders.”

  “To Argoth, you and your brother were the hideous invaders,” replied the voice, haunting as a chorus of the dead.

  “I had to sacrifice Argoth or sacrifice the whole world,” said Urza, almost pleading. “I did not doubt Titania of Argoth would have made the same choice were she strong enough to.”

  “Titania had been strong enough before they were despoiled,” the tree spirit replied.

  “As I said before, forgive me—”

  “We are not Titania. We are not Argoth. We are Multani of Yavimaya. We have welcomed you,” the voice said, and the lagging chorus of sprites, gnomes, and elves resumed.

  The melody coursed, coy and yet somehow cloying, through Urza, like the dank wind moving through his robes. There was a wild geometry to the tones as they twisted in and out of each other. The notes trickled upon Urza. Waves of sound lay beside waves of energy, nudging them into their pattern. He closed his eyes a moment, struggling to assemble a response to Multani. Whenever a pair of words connected in his mind, though, they were soaked apart by the gentle nudge of the song.

  “We would speak to you at length of this coming invasion.”

  Urza nodded, his eyes opening. He was slightly startled to realize he was standing. When had he risen to his feet? The question melted away on the pulsing song. Such matters were unimportant. There were allies here. There was music. For the first time since his ascension, Urza felt true joy. The sharp-edged box of his intellect softened into a warm, hazy buzz, like a swarm of bees—or a swarm of sprites.

  “We would first treat you to a festival dinner to celebrate our newfound association.”

  Yes, thought Urza, I am hungry.

  There was something wrong with that thought, something Urza could not quite identify. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. Of course he was hungry. If the forest’s fare was as sumptuous as its music, he would eat himself sick. Surely there would be wine and other delights to the appetites. Urza would indulge them all.

  There was something wrong with that thought too. The nagging objections bubbled up, drowned, through the flood of music:

  Return among us, child of ages.

  Sing the reconciling song

  And burn the pages where long

  The sages condemned thee.

  Sing, forgetful, sing

  Of mild, regretful things

  Before the forest’s nodding head.

  Let dead bury themselves in dead

  Sing, forgetful, sing.

  When had he begun to sing? When had he ever not sung? Urza’s voice, deep and resonant in the edifice of sound, moved among the smiling tones of the sprites and gnomes and elves. The mouth of the tree opened wide. The company of fairy folk guided Urza forward. He paced, solemn and happy, into the yawning space and down the throat of the enormous tree. There would be a feast in these deeps. There would be more music and lights and festival.

  Except that all of it was behind him now. Darkness and wood and the irresistible power of Yavimaya pulsed in the very heart of the gigantic tree. Then, these things were all around. The mouth spoke one last time.

  “We would speak to you at length, also, of the last invasion.”

  With that, the tree’s mouth closed. Its throat as well. Urza, caught in wood and the thick darkness, wondered dimly where he was, and how he was, and who he was. He would be able to think, were it not for all the pervading mind of the forest, curing him like cedar smoke, changing him, preserving him in place.

  But not preserving him. Urza felt his body dissolving away into wood. His fingers were the first to go, each burning with incandescent agony. His every nerve sizzled beneath the skin. His bones turned to chalk and rubbed away in the gnawing of the heartwood around him. His fingers and toes, harvested slowly by the massive tree, turned into mere minerals.

  “When Harbin, son of Urza Planeswalker, landed upon Argoth, he sought a green limb to replace a spar on his flying machine. In its mercy, the forest showed him a fallen limb that perfectly suited his needs. In repayment, the man returned to the heart of Argive to bring back armies of ravagers to harvest the forest. Men and machines felled ancient trees, slew druids, hunted creatures into extinction, pillaged, burned, raped, destroyed, all to the glory of Urza and his brother Mishra. Slowly, they ate away at Argoth, killing Titania, her spirit.”

  The words were needless. Urza had become Titania. His body had become a vast forest. He felt in every tissue of his being the destroying, despoiling work of his own armies. Minute creatures invaded his body and, mote by mote, turned him into mere minerals, mere resources.

  Urza would have screamed, but he was no longer Urza. He would have planeswalked from the spot, but that would mean leaving his body, the forest, behind. He could only hang there, encased in wood, and endure.

  Monologue

  Urza is arriving in Yavimaya even as I write this. I know the forest’s position, as unreachable and forbidding as Shiv. He hopes to return in two days’ time. Knowing Urza’s sense of time—and guessing about the reception Yavimaya will have for him—I’ll give him a week before I become unsettled.

  This could well be the pivotal point for Urza. He has shown he is capable of building human alliances, and more than that—building coalitions among many races. Perhaps by creating an alliance with Yavimaya, he can make amends for Argoth. Perhaps no amount of penance could ever make amends for such atrocity.

  We have our own atrocities under way in Tolaria. Just today I led a charge of scorpions against Phyrexian entrenchments at the border of Slate Waters. Given the physiology of my mechanical forces, a pincer movement naturally suggested itself. We flanked the main body of Phyrexians left and right and trapped them in their trenches. They were caught between us and the temporal curtain. I sent scorpion units flooding into their dens. Meanwhile, I drove a wall of wind down the middle. Flushed from cover, the beasts fell back into the time curtain at the edge of that charred swamp. I ordered a charge. We hurled them into the rift.

  That passage would have killed any human. It did little more than further jangle these fiends. Even so, the extreme slow time of Slate Waters halted the Phyrexians in a thick wall. I ordered the scorpions to fire. Quarrels stormed out in a killing gale. The front line of Phyrexians was nearly sawed in half. They were spewing glistening oil in a cloud before them by the time a human contingent arrived to reinforce us.

  One young woman tore a hunk of cloth from beneath her armor coat and doused it with oil from a fallen scorpion. She stuck the cloth on a spent quarrel, ignited it, and hurled the thing into the gap. It entered the spray of glistening oil. A dull orange glow spread from the spot. The fiery quarrel hung strangely in the air as slow flame rolled laterally out along the Phyrexian lines.

  We stopped firing. We stood, staring in a mixture of exultation and dread. Languid tendrils of flame coiled out around fiendish arms and legs. We watched as our foes ignited. The cheer that came from us when hair and carapace were limned in flame devolved quickly to a groan. Eyeballs ruptured from the
heat. Limbs were blasted away. The deep, horrid roar of dying monsters struck us.

  “Back!” I yelled.

  Even I was cemented in place when the blaze went critical. White hot, the flash was blinding. We fell back then by instinct alone. Clutching our eyes, we clambered over stalled scorpions and mired dead to escape the coming blaze. When the blast at last emerged from Slate Waters, most of us were half a mile into the forest. Even so, it flung us to our faces and, like the warriors on Argoth of old, we could only pray the sun-bright blast would someday end.

  It will be another Argoth, this conflict. The Phyrexians press us day and night. Their numbers grow greater with each sally. Their magical might will soon be the equal of mine. The students are weary of fighting, and though I have employed my most awe-inspiring battle spells, I am not a charismatic leader. Jhoira and Teferi were better suited for that. Urza, despite all his inhumanity, perhaps leads best of all.

  —Barrin, Mage Master of Tolaria

  Jhoira stood on the lofted control platform at the nexus of the mana rig. To one side of her stood Teferi and to the other, Karn.

  Teferi watched over his workers—the goblin hordes that tended the crystal-manufacturing wing of the factory. It had been nearly two years since the Viashino-goblin war had concluded, and the forbidden zones were now fully functional. Each of the three clans of goblin—the silvery Tristou, the red Destrou, and even the irrepressible gray Grabbits—had aided in the cleaning and repair of the facility. In doing so, they had risen to their individual levels of ability. Chieftain Glosstongue Crackcrest of the Tristou had become the nominal leader of the three clans, but a certain manic Grabbit machinist had won over the masses with his antics, his nonsensical but volatile speeches, and his instinctive and incessant glad-handing. Though all decisions were made by Chief Crackcrest, they had to be approved by Machinist Terd.

  The gray creature even now climbed to the observation post.

  He scrambled up a ladder engineered for goblins considerably larger than he. His much-spattered coveralls jangled with small shiny tools that no one had ever seen the goblin use—bits of metal Terd wore like talismans or awards. Despite his inability to perform actual work, the creature was in constant motion. His eyebrows—great knotted tufts of hair that were even more prominent than his prominent nose—were raining sweat down on his knobby chin. As he grabbed the rails of the control platform and pulled himself up beside Teferi, Terd gave a bright, sharp-toothed smile. It was one of his proudest features. A goblin with a full set of teeth was a rarity. One with white teeth was a messenger from the gods.

  Terd kowtowed obscenely, tipping a little rag of felt that he considered a hat. “The rock thingies all ready.” Terd’s reports were no more explicit than his speeches. Interpreting them typically took a tedious game of charades.

  Teferi gave a long-suffering sigh. “The ore conveyers?”

  Terd shook his head with such abruptness that an umbrella of sweat unfolded from him onto all those around.

  “The crystal presses?” Teferi guessed.

  Terd pursed his scabby lips in thought and then whipped his head as though he were trying to rend the suggestion with his teeth.

  “The Thran-metal molds?”

  Ecstatic, Terd touched a withered finger to his nose. “Yes, yes. We make rocks today? Yes?”

  Teferi shook his head. “Not until the ore conveyers and crystal presses are ready.”

  “You make Terd a pretty big rock.”

  “Yes,” Teferi assured.

  It had been one of the incentives provided the goblin workers that, once a month, when the rig was in operation, each would receive a small crystal—in fact only a cast-off shard from a cut stone. Even if a goblin had happened to get hold of a larger stone, none of the crystals from the rig would be imbued with power until it was charged with mana. Even the smallest of stones would permanently drain the mana from a large tract of land. To power a stone the size of the one Urza had designed for his flying ship would require the mana destruction of a whole world.

  “Terd use his stone to be big magic man. Terd become big king of goblins.”

  “Yes,” Teferi humored, “and that will be a bright day for us all.”

  “Terd go tell goblin scum—‘Work faster! Work faster!’ Then he be king sooner.”

  “Go do that.”

  Even as the irascible little fellow scuttled away down the ladder and shouted commands to his kinsmen, a very different liaison officer climbed the opposite ladder. Diago Deerv had proven himself a capable and levelheaded lizard man in regearing the Thran forges. Now with the ancient enemy of the Viashino occupying half of the rig, it was only creatures such as Diago and Bey Fire Eye himself that kept the creatures from all-out revolt—Diago, the bey, and Jhoira’s continual reminders that Urza would return any day.

  Jhoira was not the official manager of the Thran forges. That job fell to Karn, the very creature who was promised to the lizard men in payment for their labors.

  Diago rose to his full height on the platform—he had grown in the last four years—and looked Karn directly in the eye. “We’ve finished the castings Master Malzra requested. We ask that you come to approve them.”

  Karn nodded. “I am waiting for a report from the lava batteries. Then I can come with you.”

  Diago took a deep breath and spoke with a strained voice. “With the completion of these castings, we have fulfilled the terms of our agreement. We ask for payment of the price owed us.”

  Before Karn could answer, Jhoira interrupted, “Actually, we have still not successfully created a Thran-metal man.” She glanced warily between reptile eyes and silver ones. “Those were the terms of our agreement.”

  “You’ve abandoned that project,” Diago objected.

  “Actually, no,” Jhoira said quickly. “We have a new design, one that takes into account the metal’s growth patterns.”

  “May I see these plans?” Diago asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Jhoira said. “I will provide them to you tomorrow. We can begin our castings then.”

  Diago wore a suspicious expression. “And once these new machines are cast—”

  “Yes,” Jhoira said, “then you will have your price. You will have the silver man.”

  Diago bowed low and backed down the ladder.

  Jhoira, Karn, and Teferi traded sober looks.

  “You don’t have any new plans, do you?” Teferi asked.

  Jhoira shrugged. “I have old plans—for Tolarian runners. I’ll modify them tonight, taking into account Urza’s nesting-doll pattern of construction. It’ll hold them off awhile more. It may even prove a useful fighter for the Phyrexian wars.”

  That mention brought all of their thoughts around to Barrin and besieged Tolaria.

  Jhoira spoke for them all. “I hope Urza returns soon.”

  * * *

  Every axe-blow that struck the trees of Argoth bit into the man’s limbs. Every fire that mantled his magnigoth trees flared through his veins. Every killing blast and grating landslide enervated him.

  Urza was on the island. Urza and Mishra. Their names were plague and famine, fire and flood. From opposite ends of the land they tore at each other. They converged, and whatever stood between them was destroyed by their fury.

  The man in the wood watched as ancient trees leaned and crackled and fell. Their bulk did not even rest on the root cluster before vast machines yanked and hewed and hacked them into beams and joists and planks—but mostly scrap. Bark and thin branches, leaves, and buds became only mounds of debris over which the killing machines rolled. Black snakes of smoke coiled into the troubled sky. There they joined great mountains of darkness, hovering as though in mourning.

  What could drive those killing brothers? What passions?

  And yet, the question seemed false. It was forced into the man in the wood from the outside. He knew just w
hat drove them—ambition, curiosity, competition, vitality, and all of it enwrapped in a thin, tragic blanket of distrust. What drove them? The highest intentions and hopes. What directed them? The lowest emotion—fear. They were monsters, yes, but only because of their power. Were it not for their machines and their armies, they would not be monsters, but only little boys.

  That thought brought a surge of anger from around the man. He railed. As sharp and tenacious as resin, reproof flowed into him. Urza and Mishra were true monsters. They despoiled all they touched. Their very flesh was corruption. Their only motivations were pure hatred.

  The man in the wood resisted the welling flood of recrimination, holding his breath. He pushed back against the thoughts. They overtook him anyway and soaked into every pore and poured into his lungs—for every man must breathe.

  There was something wrong in that thought, but the distinction drifted away on a fresh wave of agony. In that screaming space, there was no room for any excuse, any forgiveness, but only the undeniable sentence of guilt.

  At the man’s throat there came another sound of screaming and more visions. Not trees burning now, but people—white-robed students. Not axe machines and levelers, but loping artifact creatures, some like headless emus, some like pouncing pumas, some like giant scorpions. Not armies of Argivians and Fallaji, but armies of fiends and negators, of killing monsters. They swept over another island, far away, not Argoth but…but…the name would not form in his mind.

  In the face of this new, horrific assault, the armies of Urza and Mishra seemed civilized and noble. Felling trees seemed nothing in the face of burning children. An idea lurked there, something about the better war to fight, the war that could prevent the apocalypse.