Time Streams

by J. Robert King

  Urza reflected grimly on this advice, the same he would have given to anyone going with him into K’rrik’s fast-time gorge—if anyone had been able to accompany him.

  The archangel leading him glanced upward. The party had just reached a broad shaft that rankled upward past hundreds of floors and balconies and promenades. Even in its decayed state, the space was awe-inspiring, disappearing into blue distance a mile overhead.

  “She awaits, above.”

  The angels, like a startled flock of doves, leaped suddenly into the air.

  Urza accompanied them. As they rose, he saw the city in cross-section. The streets were deserted, the public squares taken over by encamped warriors, the windows darkened by plates or locked away in cages of steel. Hollow groans moved through the haunted structure. Smoke seeped from forges. Boot steps echoed from armories. A jewel box no longer, Serra’s Palace had become a weapon. It was a city under siege.

  Urza thought of his distant Tolaria. It had once seemed as lost as this place. Now it was the nexus of a new alliance that spread across Dominaria. It had been a long battle to save the island. It would be a longer battle to save Serra’s Realm, but it was a battle he would willingly fight.

  They arrived. Urza drifted from the shaft into an enormous space, a circle of marble thousands of feet across. A vast hole in the center of the space opened onto a deep, verdant forest, a literal hanging garden, in which exotic birds flitted and sang. Above the marble circle rose mile-high windows of stained glass. All along the outer walls of the aviary tower, platforms and perches hung, where Lady Radiant’s court conversed or planned or discussed. Banners of state, some with the sun-and-wing heraldry of Serra, and others with Radiant’s own lantern-in-darkness design, floated on wires across the center of the tower.

  Most impressive of all, the glistening-oil stink that tainted the air everywhere else was gone. Urza sensed the filtering work of great magic in the air.

  He exhaled in awe. The aviary was the only pristine place in the realm—quite an exorbitance, given the aerial army it would take to protect the place. An angel nudged him with her staff and gestured toward the pinnacle of the aviary.

  The archangel at the head of the party rose into the air. “Up.”

  As the contingent ascended up the tapered tower, the spaces around them closed in. Heat grew. In moments, palatial promenades gave way to large balconies. Golden windows narrowed. They changed too. As the parry rose, simple triangles of glass gave way to powerful lenses. Light-bending enchantments lay thick on the panes. Some gave fragmentary views of other rooms in the palace. Others showed ruined gardens near the edge of the plane. Still more followed over the shoulder of one angel or another. Every floating continent, every tumbling clod, every shattered wall of the place had its own window. Figures—angelic and mortal—moved kaleidoscopically through the panes of glass.

  All about Urza, angel warriors averted their eyes from the jarring mosaic of images. For them, the sight must have been dazzling and absurd. But Urza’s multifaceted gaze could make sense of it. In this spot, he could see every corner of the realm. If he stayed here long enough, he could peer into every mind and heart in heaven. This all-seeing chamber had been the single most powerful tool at Serra’s disposal. In it, she, or any other planeswalker, would be omniscient.

  In the midst of the glaring windows hung her throne. The seat was grand, a pendulum dangling from the apex of the aviary. Its back was fashioned of pearl-inlaid gold. It was draped in red samite that curtained down into the hot space. It could pivot completely around and thus provide easy view of every pane of glass. The throne was politically well positioned too, requiring all supplicants to hover in air and crane their necks toward the one seated there.

  The planeswalker Serra no longer occupied the throne. Now the seat held a mere angel—Radiant.

  The woman sat the throne as though it were her eternal punishment. Myriad images shone from the windows and swam sickly over her. She endured their ceaseless caress, but her eyes showed no sign of deciphering the images. For her, the throne was no all-seeing seat but a torture chair dangling in the midst of an off-balance carousel. Her eyes were glassy from long exposure, and her hands clutched the throne like a pair of talons. She sat with the aspect of one terrified of heights and did not deign to look upon the company that hovered, up beneath her. Golden hair and white wings draped in regal majesty about her, but her face showed nothing like royal grace—only desperate resolve. She had never been suited to rule the realm, not even at the height of her power. She had fallen far since then. The realm had decayed around her, and war had begun. She seemed grimly determined to see it through to the bitter end.

  Though she did not look down, Lady Radiant recognized the prisoner. “Ah, Urza Planeswalker, returned at last to the scene of he crime?”

  “Greetings, Lady Radiant,” Urza said formally. He bowed in midair. “In a way, I have. I have returned for an alliance. I have returned to save you from your foes.”

  “Foes you brought to this place,” Radiant pointed out. “Foes such as your consort, Xantcha.”

  “Xantcha was a friend, not a consort,” Urza corrected placidly, “and she did not bring the Phyrexians here. I did. They followed me.”

  “They followed you and ruined us,” Radiant said. “We drove them out once, but never has their taint left us.”

  Urza nodded in understanding. “Yes. The stench of Phyrexia is in the air. I sensed it the moment I arrived, faint but omnipresent. It is in the air, in the wind, off angel pinions, even in the lower palace. Only here, in this aviary, is the stench gone.”

  Lady Radiant’s voice was strained. “It takes great feats of magic to make this air pure.”

  “But you cannot cleanse the whole realm. For that matter, you can never restore it to its old grandeur. With or without Phyrexians, all artificial planes collapse in time. This one is no exception. But I offer you salvation. I will bear you and all your people from this place and give you a new home on Dominaria. It will be as beautiful and grand as this place. And it will be yours. In return, you need only pledge your alliance to fight at my side against Phyrexia. Do not despair for this realm or for Serra’s vision. Once the plane is empty, it can become part of our greatest weapon. It can charge the powerstone at the center of an airship that will defend our world.”

  “Our world,” asked Radiant. Her eyes flashed with malice. “No. Dominaria is not our world. It is your world. This plane is our world. It is collapsing because of the fiends you brought here. I am fighting a war against those fiends. How dare you suggest we abandon our world? Would you abandon yours? Your old arrogance remains.”

  “Forgive me, Lady,” Urza said, bowing. “Much of my old arrogance does remain. I did not realize how committed you were to this battle. I should have. I have just concluded my own private war against Phyrexia. They can hide in plain sight. They take human form, perhaps even the form of angels. There is no more insidious foe. In apology for my presumption, I would like to share with you the technologies I devised and the spells my mage master devised, to destroy them. If you will not ally with me on Dominaria, at least let me ally with you here. I offer myself, my machines, and my enchantments to aid in this private war of yours.”

  “It is exactly that,” said a new voice, a man’s voice, coming from a platform behind Urza. He pivoted in air to see a tall, thin man with a black goatee and eyes as slim and yellow as wedges of lemon.

  “It is a private war.”

  “Allow me to introduce my minister of war, Gorig.” Radiant said regally.

  The goateed man gave a shallow bow, though he never lowered his baleful eyes from the planeswalker. He gestured to his own features. “As you can see, I am a wielder of mana magic. I am also an able general. Our war is in hand, and it is private.”

  Urza demurred with a small smile. “I have, learned no war is truly in hand.”

  Though she sai
d nothing, Radiant suddenly drew all eyes to herself. Her face wore a strange, beaming intensity. “When first we knew you had returned, Urza, we expected you had come for war. You must excuse us for being so surprised by your offers of peace.”

  “It is a new man who stands—who floats before you,” Urza explained.

  “Yes,” Radiant agreed, somewhat dismissive. “Before you commit yourself and your armies to this conflict, perhaps you would wish to accompany us on our next raid. We would like to view your combat strategies as well. Our next offensive will be launched in a few weeks. Stay with us and feast until then. Once we have battled shield to shield, as the saying goes, we will know if this alliance will benefit us both.”

  Urza nodded. “This counsel is well considered.” He bowed low. “I gratefully accept your invitation.”

  At a motion from Radiant, the swarm of archangels and angels melted away beneath them, leaving only the planeswalker, the angel ruler of Serra’s Realm, and the dark-bearded man, Gorig.

  * * *

  In one noisy wing of the Shivan mana rig, Jhoira and Karn peered through a glass port in the side of the crystal matrix chamber. Below the floor, magma engines channeled their searing heat into a concentrated beam of ruby light. It rose up a series of tubes, reflecting from panels of silvered glass positioned in exact alignment, and lanced into the matrix chamber. There the beam was split by a large lens, and split again, the four resulting bands of light rebounding through the space to sketch out in air the exact dimensions and cut lines of the airship’s powerstone.

  “An ethereal stone for an ethereal ship,” Jhoira remarked acidly.

  Karn glanced briefly toward her, wondering at her mood. “At the rate Multani is growing the hull, the ship is more than ether now. It’s been over a month.”

  “I know,” Jhoira snapped. She rose from the riveted superstructure, dusted off her hands, and whistled toward the scampering teams of goblins, signaling the magma pumps to accelerate. “Almost two. Urza is off on another of his endless journeys.”

  A quizzical gleam entered the silver man’s eyes. “He has saved Tolaria. He has made alliances with Yavimaya. He has devised a great ship to save the world. Now he seeks to drive Phyrexians from another place. You can’t fault him for that.”

  “I don’t,” Jhoira said impatiently. She stooped beside a pair of arguing goblins, entered the disagreement in their own dialect, pointed to a schema one of them held, delivered a pair of thumps to their heads, and sent them on their way. “It’s just that Teferi is gone.”

  “He’s what?” Karn asked.

  “He’d said when we were leaving that he’d be heading for his homeland, Zhalfir. They were having a war of their own, and they could use a mage of his caliber. He wanted to say goodbyes three weeks ago, but I put him off, said we’d have time when I’d returned from Shiv. I’d thought we would be here only two weeks.”

  “Perhaps he is still at Tolaria,” Karn said. “Perhaps he is waiting for us to come back. What difference will a few weeks make?”

  “Much difference, in time of war,” Jhoira said. She angrily threw a great lever, sending lava into chutes around the matrix chamber. These channels of rock would solidify around the ionized center of the jewel matrix, providing a compression mold. “No, he’s gone. He wouldn’t wait for me. He couldn’t wait for Urza. Last time Urza stepped out for a week, he was gone five years.”

  “He’s changed, Jhoira,” Karn replied. “Before that trip, he traded me away to the Viashino. Afterward, he negotiated to get me back.”

  Jhoira at last stopped working, letting labor slough from her shoulders. “This isn’t about Urza; this is about Teferi.”

  Stomping up beside her, the silver man stood, awkward. He had long ago learned not to drape one of his massive arms over Jhoira in consolation, lest he crush her.

  “We were best friends before Teferi. We can be best friends again.”

  She turned toward him, a trembling smile on her lips and tears welling in her eyes. “You’re right, Karn. We’ve always been best friends. I was silly to think I needed more.” A tremor of uncertainty underlay her words.

  Hesitantly, Karn reached out to take her hand. “Urza has taken me back, and now you have as well.”

  “Yes,” Jhoira said. She melted sadly against him.

  Karn stood there, even more lonely than before. He was the only thinking, feeling machine among Urza’s artifact creatures, and because of it, Urza had no idea what to do with him. Karn was not a colleague; nor was he a mere creation. He had been designed to journey through a time machine that no longer even existed. He was kept busy with a thousand duties, but he had no real purpose. Had he been any other artifact creature, Urza would already have junked him, melted down his parts, and made new machines.

  Now, though Jhoira called him “best friend,” her voice told of disappointment and resignation.

  Standing there, Karn wondered if joining the junk pile would be a mercy.

  Monologue

  Teferi left just this morning. He took the refitted New Tolaria, and a small army of runners, pumas, and scorpions. I kept half the force—some five hundred units—but probably did not need to. The island has been cleansed of Phyrexians. Spider crystals fill the land. Zhalfir needs the machine warriors more than we do, but Teferi’s ship would not hold more. As it was, I had to argue quite a while to get the proud young mage to accept the mechanical aid. I do not blame him. Though my association with Urza makes artifice a necessary study, I much prefer spell battles to mechanized ones. Of course, if one wants to win, one employs both.

  I am seeing such necessary connections everywhere these days. The hull of the skyship is taking shape, day by day. Wood fuses with metal, and both grow together. I have spent many evenings with Multani. Weary in the suspiring night, he relates to me all he has learned from our fast- and slow-time forests. He speaks of young worlds and old, of the cycle of growth and decay. He tells how the blast that tore through Tolaria brought death in its first moments, and new and diverse life thereafter. He says that had it not been for the destruction of Argoth and the sinking of Terisiare, Yavimaya would never have risen. Life and death oppose each other, yes, but it is only in their opposition that either can exist at all. There is no death without life, and no life without death.

  Magic and machine, metal and wood, life and death, Shivan fire drakes and Tolarian sea drakes, somehow, Urza has brought them all into alliance. Somehow, in the words of Multani himself, Urza has come to embody each of them. I have never had such hope for our world as I do now.

  Urza has been gone too long in Serra’s Realm. He seemed to think he would be able to quickly tell angels from devils. I have to wonder. If fire and water can become allies, perhaps good and evil can, too.

  —Barrin, Mage Master of Tolaria

  Urza flew among echelons of Radiant’s purification army. He wore a battle suit, much like the one he had devised for his assault on Phyrexia. The mechanized assault armor bore special protections against fire—he remembered well the conflagration of glistening oil in the gorge—and airborne poison. It was also proof against ballistae bolts. He bore a great black battle lance tipped with numerous blades, including a narrow axe and curved spearheads. From earlobes to toes, he was covered in black metal, scale mail, and power conduits. He realized with a certain irony that should he slay Phyrexian sleepers this day, he would seem more the monster and they more the humans.

  Ahead of Urza to his left flew the commander of this echelon, an archangel as faceless and sexless as the others, its name unknown to Urza but its command unquestioned. It bore a magna sword that could cleave the head from a bull with one swipe. Behind the archangel, in a great cone, flew a contingent of fifty angel warriors, some armed with whips and nets, others with enchanted torches that flared blue-white and were said to turn the skin of Phyrexian newts yellow. The remainder carried swords for summary executions and head
bags that would allow the dead to be counted and the skulls to be immolated, preventing grave magics from reviving them. At the rear of the party sailed an airship loaded gunwale to gunwale with white-suited holy warriors. These humans stood statue-still as the ship surged along. Their eyes stared golden and dead from their heads. Righteousness had been part of these warriors’ demeanor when they first arrived in Serra’s Realm, and ruthlessness had been learned along the way.

  The flight of angels and avengers sighted their target ahead—a tumbled cluster of pulverized earth. What once had been an archipelago of aerial islands had been shattered into fragments of rock and grass. The remaining planetoids turned listlessly in midair. Some of them spewed uneven spirals of soot from the hovels dug in their sides.

  “The Jumbles contain the single largest infestation of Phyrexians in the realm,” Radiant had explained some days ago over a course of tea. The porcelain settings rattled with each stomp of boots drilling in the palace below. “They masquerade as angel folk and human outcasts—and to be sure, there are settlements of each among them—but there are wolves hiding among the dogs. You’ll know them by their yellow-green cast in the light of the soul torches.”

  Urza lofted one such torch now. Others did the same. As yet, the light from the arcane brands was too distant and dim to pick out any creatures on the rolling boulders and hunks of ground. They would see soon enough. Angels swooped down with lightning speed.

  The archangel commander made a series of crisp hand signals. The outer wings of the attack column broke away into sweeping lateral dives. Urza stayed with the leader, its core flight of twenty fighters, and the air barge. The other two units—fifteen angels each—soared outward to converge on their target like a pair of hammers. The main flight rose, following the archangel.