The Thran

by J. Robert King

  Xod’s blade tasted blood again. He rammed it into the belly of a gap-toothed Untouchable. The blade tore through emaciated guts and out the man’s back. He toppled to the cobbles. Xod yanked on his sword to free it. The wound sucked against it. He planted a foot on the corpse’s side and hauled hard. The sword came loose. Xod took a moment to wipe the septic gore from it.

  A ragged swarm of Untouchables flooded up around the group. Three observers died in that onslaught—a staved head, a knife in the eye, a gushing throat. The others fought all the more fiercely. Table legs chopped cleanly down and came up mantled in red. Metal rods rang bell-like against skulls. Healers leaped beneath tangled weapons to inject poison. All was yelling and thrashing and blood. Then, the last of their attackers lay dead on the ground.

  Yawgmoth and his remaining corps of fifteen moved on.

  “Where are we headed?” Xod asked.

  Yawgmoth nodded toward the half-built temple, gleaming above. “Up. We’re headed up.” He killed two more while he took a breath. “That’s where Gix will be.”

  “Gix?”

  “He’s the one who sparked the revolt,” Yawgmoth replied. “He can end it.”

  “But will he end it?”

  Yawgmoth patted the interior breast pocket of his cloak. “He will when I inject him with this cure.”

  * * *

  —

  Five minutes ago, Rebbec had never killed anything more than a mosquito. Now she had killed ten men, eight women, and three boys.

  The first was the worst—a boy no more than thirteen. He reached the pinnacle before anyone else because of fast feet and a young heart.

  “Get back!” Rebbec shouted. “If you jump, we’ll block you. We’ll kill you!”

  He flung himself across that yawning gap. He did not hesitate, but Rebbec did and Jonas too. Their poles swung numbly out to bar the way.

  Ducking, the Untouchable scrambled beneath them and drove a knife into the throat of one of the workers.

  The next moment was a blur. Rebbec saw someone grab the boy’s ragged shirt and yank him to the edge and throw him down to crash brokenly atop the dome. Only then did she realize she was the one who had done it.

  She had killed a boy.

  Yes, but he had killed one of her workers. He had given her no choice.

  When Rebbec lifted her pole again, it felt slick in her grasp. The workman’s blood covered her hands. It soaked deep into the lines and calluses. She grimly wiped the blood on her white work tunic and grasped the other end of the pole.

  “That was my fault. If I hadn’t hesitated—”

  “Here comes another!” Jonas shouted.

  It was a young woman. She might have been pretty had she lived in Halcyon. The Caves of the Damned had turned her skin into a shroud and her body into a skeleton. The woman’s eyes were so wide as to seem lidless. She jumped, a pale lizard in air.

  Rebbec swung her pole. It struck the side of the woman’s face and knocked her back. The rebel landed half on the platform and clawed blindly to pull herself up. Gritting her teeth, Rebbec rammed the bloody tip of her pole again into the woman’s face. She went limp and slid free. Even the sound-dampening temple did not mask the wet thud of her impact.

  “Damn it! Damn it!” Rebbec shrieked. “You’re going to have to kill some of them too, you know, Jonas! Damn it, you’ve got a pole too!”

  White faced, he killed the next one, and Rebbec the next three, and he another. No longer did the rebels fall with a sound of bone on stone but now with the flap of meat shoveled atop meat.

  It was grim work, made none the easier by exhortations from the builders behind them. One part encouragement, one part expiation, one part consolation, the shouts only tore at Rebbec—“Stop this one!” “Nice hit.” “That was a hard one.” “He had a knife.” “You warned him.” “He gave you no choice.”

  Ten men, eight women, three boys, and one workman. In her hesitation, Rebbec had killed him—just as surely as she had killed the others. His blood, his corpse, was projected in rainbow rays throughout the city below.

  “Damn it!” Rebbec shouted.

  * * *

  —

  It had taken months for Yawgmoth to turn his observers into healers. It took only moments to turn healers into killers.

  To his left, a woman bashed brains with a table leg.

  To his right, a man tripped phthitics and jabbed them with poison.

  Behind lay a wake of headless bodies.

  Before, Xod hurled heads into mobs of Untouchables.

  Xod. He had vomited at his first glimpse of battle. Now nausea was forgotten. Regret was gone. There was no time for fear. There was only killing.

  Enraged Untouchables rushed Xod. It was just the reaction he’d hoped for.

  Xod strode to meet them. His sword chopped into a man’s chest. It caught in ribs, a gradual kill. Xod hurled the flailing man sideways to crash into a woman. Both struck the ground. Wrenching his sword free, Xod strode across their backs to his next kills.

  Some fell bloodlessly. Others fought on though they fountained. It was really quite interesting. There was as much science to slaying as to healing. Rigorous science, practical…and fun.

  Xod had no shortage of subjects. He and the band were surrounded by phthitics. Each died differently.

  I can use this one, Yawgmoth thought. He’ll become something even more deadly.

  Though Xod was having fun, this fight brought Yawgmoth no closer to the Thran Temple. That’s where the real battle would be. He glimpsed an untended sedan chair. Whistling over his shoulder, he signaled Xod to his side.

  As eager as a dog called to the hunt, Xod bounded toward him.

  * * *

  —

  “I knew I would find you here. The best way to get back at the two men I most hate is to kill you!”

  “Gix!” Rebbec gasped, staring dumbfounded at the man. The phthitic rebel stood at the pinnacle of the Council Hall dome, just beyond the reach of Rebbec’s staff. “Glacian said you threatened this, but no one believed—”

  “Bastard though he is, your husband is the only one who sees the truth,” Gix said, “except for me.” He jumped toward the temple.

  Rebbec was slow with her pole. Jonas flung his out.

  Gix was expecting it. He had watched the others fall. He had learned Rebbec’s strategy. Ducking his head to one side, Gix grabbed the pole and pulled himself up to land on the temple threshold.

  Jonas let go of the pole to avoid being pulled over the edge.

  Too late. Gix had solid footing. He whirled, bashing Rebbec’s staff and smashing her fingers.

  She dropped the weapon.

  Spinning, Gix struck Jonas in the back.

  The young man arched and howled.

  Gix hit him again. Setting his feet, he flung the young man from the temple.

  Jonas fell as the Untouchables had fallen. He died as they had died.

  The workers surged in, but Gix was too quick. He knocked one man unconscious, stole the feet from a woman, and drove the others back with quick jabs of the staff. He was quick in other ways too. Behind him, Untouchables lowered a stout wooden door across the gap between pinnacle and temple. They flooded up their makeshift bridge.

  Rebbec had no pole to fling away the door, and Gix struck her thrice with Jonas’s staff. She retreated among the others.

  Across the bridge they came—three, seven, eleven, eighteen—more than they had killed so far. In mere moments, the rebels equaled the workers. In moments more, they outnumbered them two to one. They kept coming.

  Gix advanced at their head. He wore a devilish grin.

  Rebbec and her host didn’t get far. There was nowhere to go. Untouchables surrounded them. Their ragged figures gleamed in the crystals all around.

  Above his toothy smile, Gix’s eyes wer
e almost sad. His voice had the quiet tension of a winding spring.

  “I know what you are trying to do, Rebbec. Everyone knows. But you are rising by climbing across our bodies. Your husband’s mana rig kills us. Your temple kills even your own people. Do you care? Do you stop? Do you dismantle the horrors you have made or only build them taller?”

  “Yawgmoth is working on a cure,” Rebbec protested. She swung a heavy pulley in one hand, warning him back. The device would do little good against a staff with an eight-foot reach. “A cure not just for my husband but for all people—your people as well.”

  “Yawgmoth can’t find a cure. Even if he did, he wouldn’t give it to us.”

  “I would and I will,” came a voice above. A shadow blotted out the sun.

  Every head there tilted back. Every eye squinted to see who it was that spoke. A figure descended in a drifting sedan chair. He seemed robed in radiance. None could have known who it was except Rebbec and Gix.

  “I have a treatment, perhaps a cure,” came Yawgmoth’s reply. “I have one dose here with me. Already Glacian’s skin improves, his suffering eases.”

  Gix dropped his eyes from the blinding presence. “Lies. Lies! Why would you bring me a cure in the middle of a rebellion I started?”

  “To end it,” Yawgmoth said simply. “To ransom the life of this lady and the life of this city. I will give this treatment to you and will promise to descend to the caves and bring enough to treat everyone there in a week’s time—if you will stop this riot, if you and your people withdraw from the city.”

  Rebbec could see the flush of Gix’s pale face. The young man wanted to believe. He wanted to be cured and have his people cured. Yet, he knew better than to trust this foe.

  “It’s poison you bring me, not a cure.”

  “It isn’t poison,” came another voice from the sedan chair. “I was with him when he invented it. I saw it cure an Untouchable. I saw it help Glacian.”

  “Show me this cured man,” Gix challenged. “Let me talk to him.”

  “He is down below,” Yawgmoth said. “I have no time to search through rioters to find one man.”

  “He isn’t down below. There was no such man,” Gix said. “Now leave, or I’ll kill Rebbec while you watch.”

  Yawgmoth’s shout was immediate. “No! I’ll come down among you. I will inject myself with half the mixture, and when you see that I do not die or fall unconscious, you’ll know this is no trick. When I inject the rest in you, you’ll know it is a cure.”

  Gix’s eyes hardened in distrust.

  Rebbec said, “You told Glacian that your people would rebel because they had nothing to lose. They were doomed to die. Now, they have everything to lose. Listen to Yawgmoth. Test his cure. Let it heal you and your people and our city.”

  The blush that limned Gix’s jowls told of the hope he feared to feel. “Come down, Yawgmoth. Show me this is not poison, and prove it is a cure, and swear to me you will provide enough for us all—and I will take my people out of Halcyon.”

  A large figure loomed suddenly out from the sedan chair. Without warning, Yawgmoth dropped among them. His eyes were sun-bright as he regarded Gix. Rolling back the collar of his cloak, Yawgmoth found his own jugular vein. With slow precision, he inserted the needle and squeezed.

  Gix could visibly make out the progress of liquid into the distended vein.

  Yawgmoth’s fist tightened on the bladder. When it was half collapsed, he drew the needle from his neck. A small line of blood emerged from the puncture, wound its way down his tanned skin, and pooled in the crook of his collar bone.

  “There, you see? It is not poison or a sedative,” Yawgmoth said levelly. “And for me, it is not a cure, because I am not ravaged as are you, my friend.”

  Yawgmoth stepped forward, bloody needle jutting in his hand.

  “Don’t call me friend,” Gix warned. “If this is a trick, my people will tear you and Rebbec and this whole city to shreds.”

  Not responding, Yawgmoth reached for Gix’s neck. The man shied only a moment. Yawgmoth found the jugular. He set the hollow needle and pushed it gently in. Serum flowed into Gix. Yawgmoth’s fist clenched tightly around the bladder. He emptied the chamber and pulled the needle out. Blood flowed gently from the puncture.

  Gix’s brow furrowed. He glared at the lesions on his arm. “That’s it? That’s all?”

  “It was only half a dose,” Yawgmoth said. Untouchables began to growl. Hands tightened on weapons. “And it takes a moment—”

  “Wait! Look!” Gix shouted. He gazed at his arm. The black lesions receded. Pink scar tissue filled in the gaps. He looked at his other arm, where the same process took place. The sores shrank on his chest, his legs, his face. “It wasn’t a lie. It is a cure.”

  “A treatment,” Yawgmoth said. “A temporary cure. But injections of this can keep you healthy—you and your people—until we can find a permanent cure.”

  “How long will this last?” Gix asked.

  “I don’t know. A week, perhaps?” Yawgmoth guessed. “Maybe less, since it was only half a dose.”

  Gix stared into his eyes. Joy was tempered by hatred. “You have a week. We will withdraw and leave you for that week. But then, you had better appear with injections for us all.”

  “Yes. That is the agreement,” Yawgmoth said.

  “You have a week.”

  Thran-Phyrexian War Day Two:

  Battle of the Null Sphere

  From high above cloudy folds of mountain, the Null Sphere seemed a giant pearl.

  “My pearl,” Yawgmoth whispered to himself. He stared down from the prow of his war caravel. Wind buffeted him. “My glorious creation.”

  The Null Sphere was not truly Yawgmoth’s creation. It was Glacian’s, but Glacian and all his creations now belonged to Yawgmoth. The lord of Phyrexia had climbed through the man’s mind and knew everything. He understood the true and terrible power of the Null Sphere. Glacian could have used it to take control of the empire—but for his virtue. Yawgmoth had no such impediment.

  He reached out his hand, imagining the Null Sphere in his grasp.

  It was a vast metallic orb larger than Halcyon itself. The lower half of the sphere rested within a deep impact crater. Its contour perfectly matched the rocky bowl beneath it. Huge pylons anchored the orb in the crater. The upper half of the sphere formed a gleaming dome of steel among tumbling clouds. No solid globe, the Null Sphere was a shell of causeways and grids around a gigantic emptiness. For all its vastness, the structure was very light. For all its lightness, the structure was very strong. Such was the wonder of Glacian’s design.

  The real wonder, though, was the purpose of all this parabolic metal. The upper hemisphere of the device was a gigantic dish aimed down into the rock. It gathered and focused the massive mana energies of the mountain. The lower hemisphere was a dish aimed skyward to harness the quintessential energies of the heavens. The orb was also infinitely divisible into vertical dishes, allowing it to pinpoint every second and dwarf-second of arc throughout the continent. In this way, the Null Sphere was an enormous antenna, drawing power from the land and channeling it to monitor and control every artifact creature in the Thran Empire. Only Yawgmoth’s own armies were beyond its reach—thanks to Glacian’s secret knowledge.

  Yawgmoth motioned over his shoulder, summoning one of his officers.

  A Phyrexian commander arrived. Her flesh was as gray and sinewy as steel cables. She wore an armored vest, chitinous leggings, and dagger-tipped boots. The horns that jutted up along her jaw formed a set of external fangs in a perpetual grin.

  Yawgmoth pointed over the rail, toward the main road through the mountains.

  “The sphere’s garrison is stationed there, beneath that rocky shelf. Fifty warriors—enough to hold that bottleneck against a large conventional assault. We’ll land on the staging grounds this side of
the bottleneck. I expect you and your strike force to eat through the Thran soldiers in a matter of moments.”

  “Yes, great lord Yawgmoth,” she answered, bowing her head.

  “Not a single Thran soldier is to reach the sphere. I want only artificers within. You may join the team in the sphere only after every Thran soldier is dead.”

  “Yes, great lord.”

  With a wave of his hand, Yawgmoth summoned the Halcyte commander. The man approached, gleaming in silver power armor. Yawgmoth’s eyes remained trained on the sphere.

  “Once the artificers are secured, usher them—alive—to the control core. Keep them hostage there until I come.”

  “Yes, my lord!” the Halcyte commander barked.

  “I myself will lead the implosion-device team. Prepare your squad.” At last, Yawgmoth looked away from the sphere. He turned his lightless eyes on the crew. “Battle stations, everyone.”

  The Halcyte and Phyrexian commanders each gave a final bow before departing to their troops. Yawgmoth meanwhile strode across the deck to the rappelling gear. His team awaited. Some were gray-fleshed Phyrexians, some silver-garbed Halcytes. All were powerful climbers, intent and deadly. Atop their climbing harnesses, they had strapped belts from which dangled large powerstones and implosion devices.

  Yawgmoth fastened harness and belt in place. From a hatch by the gunwale, he retrieved a bundled mechanism. It was a stone-charger, an experimental and powerful explosive device. Cradling it with maternal gentility, he gazed over the rail.

  The Null Sphere was enormous now. It filled the world below.

  The war caravel executed a long arc, curving downward. The ship’s shadow seemed small on that endless grid-work. The ship banked. Its dive deepened. The ground soared up.

  Yawgmoth gripped the rail and watched avidly.

  Steel grids slid away. The long horizon of the sphere fell to stern. Crossing the crater’s ragged lip, the ship soared out along the garrison road, narrow between stone outcrops. Beyond lay a staging ground and a cliff wall. The garrison crouched there. Carved from living rock and fortified by rubble walls, the outpost was imposing.