Test of Metal p-4

by Mathew Stover

  “Screw ready-don’t you get it? He got here first. It’s time to burn this toilet down to bedrock and run like hell.” I came up as close behind Jace as I could without knocking shields. “Pimple. Nozzle. Change of plan. Kill the old bastard. Now.”

  “No, wait-” Jace started.

  “Screw wait too.” He had enough shields in place to walk through whatever it’d take to kill everybody else in there. I cranked up myself a Sunball bigger than my butt, which meant it’d make a credible solar flare, but I had to shove Jace out of the way to get the damned thing in through the door. Before I could get Jace clear, the old man dived under the table and rolled out the other side, and the stupid festering skull bangers didn’t even have time to figure out where he’d gone.

  The old man rolled up to one knee and snapped his arms wide like he was throwing plates in opposite directions, and in his hands were two little metal toy handbows, comically kid size, neither one as big as the hand that held it, way too small to do any actual damage, which made it altogether sonofabitching astonishing when he fired them both with a couple of high-pitched thocks like squirrel coughs and two little red quarrels not even half the size of a pencil shot out, one into Pimple’s chest right through his armor and the other into Nozzle’s sword arm, and with a noise like fwaptch Nozzle’s arm blew off above the elbow and skittered across the floor along with his sword and Pimple just plain exploded.

  Pimple’s head bounced off the ceiling and his right arm went one way and his left went the other, his legs sprayed blood as they flopped onto the floor and his breastplate hit Jace so hard it knocked him back into me like he’d been pimp-slapped by a really, really pissed-off ogre.

  While I was trying to get my balance back and at the same time clear Jace out of the way so I could show this bastard what a real explosion looked like, the old man dropped one of the handbows, ripped one of the trestle legs off the table with his bare hands and slung it like a spear at Jace’s chest.

  Having just seen something impossible jump out of this bastard’s handbows, I was not prepared to trust Jace’s shields to repel anything at all, so even though the table leg was just a hunk of wood and not even sharp I flicked my Sunball away because it was not something I wanted near Jace if his shields went down, while with my other hand I reached out and flash-fried that hunk of wood so fast there wasn’t even ash, just a puff of white smoke.

  What didn’t fry, though, was a little metal gizmo that had been inside the table leg and which flipped right through my best fire like it wasn’t even there. It hit Jace in the chest and sprouted little jointed legs and knives and drills, and it grabbed on to him and started digging through his shields like they were made of grape jam, and right about the time I realized it was made of the same stuff as Tezzeret’s metal arm and that I didn’t have a goddamn clue how to stop it without killing Jace myself, Jace started to scream.

  He screamed like a man watching his children die.

  He was bucking and writhing in what kind of pain I couldn’t imagine. I had to do something, but his shields were shredding like smoke, and I realized if I didn’t move back I was about to set him on fire.

  That pretty much left me only one thing to do. If I couldn’t save him, I could at least for damned sure stop his killer from outliving him.

  I reached toward the sky, and when my hand came back down it was full of sun.

  I wound up to throw, but the geezer was just standing there, covered with Pimple’s blood, and his shaky hands were about as shaky as the rock I was standing on, and he was taller now, and younger, and he had a two-handed grip on one of those little handbows which was aimed at my left eye.

  “Tell your hirelings outside that they’re fired. Then power down, come inside,” he said, “and I’ll tell you how to save Jace’s life.”

  Even if I could have forgotten his face, I’d never mistake that voice. “You bastard-you murderous sonofabitching pile of rotten ratshit scumchucking slugbucket-” I ran out of words because I was too mad to breathe.

  “Hello, Baltrice,” Tezzeret said. “I’ve missed you, too.”

  THE METAL ISLAND

  THE GAME, WAITING

  The blue star between the dragon’s horns winked out, and Baltrice sagged in her Web of Restraint. Nicol Bolas aimed a toothy grin at Tezzeret, who hung nearby in a web of his own. “You know, these little tricks of yours are actually cute, when you’re pulling them on somebody else.”

  Tezzeret managed what was, for a human, a reasonably good approximation of the dragon’s grin. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  “Really? And what exactly are you intending to show me?”

  “Good question.” He coughed a couple of dry laughs. “I’m sure by the time you get around to digging into my brain again, I’ll have forgotten.”

  “And people wonder why I like you so much.” The dragon chuckled. He turned back to Baltrice. “And you-what an adorable little creature you are. Like a fire-breathing puppy.”

  “Screw you, scaly,” she ground out around a clenched jaw, as though she hung on to consciousness by only her teeth. “Your turn’ll come.”

  The dragon sighed. “If only I could live a year for every time someone’s said that to me. Oh, wait, I have,” he said. “Keep laughing, gatorface,” she panted, sagging again. “Just you… wait…”

  “Do I have a choice?” He reached down with one talon and touched her lightly on the forehead. She slumped into unconsciousness. “Dull. I can stand almost any kind except dull. She just doesn’t have your gift of conversation, Tezzie.”

  “She’d take that as a compliment.”

  “Hmp. Might be one, too. So-from nothing more than professional interest-after you did the illusion to look like your father, you, what, partitioned your consciousness? And how exactly did you convince Doctor Jest to let you sit around and be tortured for a few hours?”

  “What’s really interesting,” Tezzeret said, “is how you’re asking me. Instead of going back to digging around in my head.”

  “You say that as though slogging through that septic tank you call a mind might be somehow less than revolting.”

  “It’s your game, Bolas. If you’re not having a good time, take your balls and screw off.”

  “Clever as usual. Which is less than very.” Bolas went over to where Jace Beleren lay, also within a Web of Restraint despite not yet having regained consciousness. “What’s this device of yours that Baltrice is so anxious about?”

  “You’re asking again.”

  “Humor me.”

  “Let’s just say it’s a mechanical Doctor Jest.”

  The hump of scaled muscle that served Bolas for an eyebrow arched. “You’ve finally managed to surprise me.”

  “And it’s still early.” Tezzeret squinted up at the dragon, who now was sneaking a glance along the beach in the opposite direction from which Baltrice and Beleren had come. “Expecting someone?”

  For a silent span of a second or two, it seemed the dragon would decline to answer, but at length he said, “Apparently not,” and Tezzeret detected in the dragon’s voice a faint undertone of puzzlement, perhaps even dismay.

  Bolas gave an irritated snort that blew twin smoke rings uncoiling down at the immobile man. “This device of yours, the, ah-” the dragon began, as if he’d lost the thread of the conversation.

  Tezzeret smiled. “You’re still asking.”

  The dragon’s distraction curdled into hostility.

  “Bugger asking.” He glared down at Beleren’s unconscious form, his eyes slitted in a fashion suggesting that his entire reservoir of malicious playfulness had suddenly evaporated. Gap sparks of lightning leaped from horn to horn, swirling about one another to condense into the blue sun. “I’ll find out for myself.”

  “Now, that’s interesting,” Tezzeret said. “Back to the memory siphon-because whoever you thought was coming didn’t show up.”

  “Shut up.”

  “How is it you know they’re not just a couple of minute
s late?”

  “Tezzeret.” Nicol Bolas swung his vast head close enough that Tezzeret could clearly see Silas Renn’s shredded flesh, still dangling from tendons caught between the dragon’s teeth. “Keep pushing me,” he growled. “Go on. Keep it up.”

  Keeping up the snappy patter became a great deal more difficult when he could smell Renn’s guts on the dragon’s breath. “You’ve gotten very cranky all of a sudden. What went wrong?”

  The dragon angled his face so that his huge yellow eye, larger than Tezzeret’s whole head, was only inches from the artificer’s nose. “In no more than minutes, I can make you beg me to kill you,” he said in a low and deadly growl. “And a thousand years from now, if I’m in a good mood, I might let you speak long enough to beg me again.”

  Tezzeret stared into his own reflection in the vertical slit of midnight in the center of that great yellow eye. “I was only keeping up my end of the conversation.”

  “Don’t.” The dragon had already turned back to Beleren. “If I want a conversation with someone worth the breath, I’ll talk to myself.”

  He cupped one foreclaw around the unconscious telepath, and the blindingly white energy of the Web of Restraint detached itself from the Metal Sphinx, binding instead to the dragon’s talons. Bolas lifted Beleren to his face as though the man were a glass of fine wine, and the dragon wished to luxuriate in his aroma. “Oh, Jace, Jace, Jace,” he hummed, softly enough that Tezzeret could barely make out the words. “If you only knew, child, how long I have been waiting for this moment. I hope you appreciate the honor. I expect that your first encounter with our newly minted artificer was at least as entertaining as Baltrice’s.”

  As the twisting energy lash of Bolas’s memory siphon attached itself to Jace Beleren’s forehead and the mind ripper’s memories began to flow into the dragon’s mind, an attentive observer might have noticed a slight, almost infinitesimal, deepening of the wrinkles at the corners of Tezzeret’s eyes and mouth, as though the artificer might be trying, and failing, to keep a straight face.

  The dragon was, however, too busy with Jace’s awakening in Tidehollow.

  JACE BELEREN

  FRIENDS LIKE THESE

  I woke up coughing. My throat felt like I’d been trying to dry swallow barbed wire. Probably screaming when I passed out. I couldn’t remember. The taste of vomit made my stomach heave, but all that came from my mouth was half-clotted blood.

  The strong hands cradling me I would have known anywhere. That helped pull me together. As long as Baltrice was with me, whatever this was couldn’t be too bad.

  Could it?

  “Jace, listen to me,” she was saying, low and urgent.

  I tried to nod, but moving my head made me retch again. “Sorry…” My voice sounded blurry and cracked. Notes played on a broken woodwind. “Sorry… I’m sorry, Baltrice, I… don’t know what happened…”

  “Jace, you’re in trouble.”

  “Oh…” I said, “oh… crap…”

  Even semiconscious, I didn’t miss that she said you’re, not we’re.

  “How… bad?”

  “Don’t do any magic, Jace. You hear me? No matter what happens. Don’t do anything.”

  “What…? What? Why not?”

  “Because,” said a voice I hear in nightmares, “that will make a bad situation even worse.”

  And I turned my head, and there he was, just standing, standing and smiling and it was instinct, or training, or practice, that snapped my shields into existence and whichever it was didn’t matter at all because before my shields could even fully form, a blast of agony whited out the world.

  This time, I remember screaming.

  I didn’t quite pass out, even though it felt like a lightning bolt had exploded inside my head. It had me convulsing in Baltrice’s arms, and I thrashed for a lifetime or two until I finally let go of the magic. When my vision cleared, he was still standing there. He wasn’t even watching, though I could feel his attention attached to me, the sort of link I can back-chain almost without effort and get into his mind-

  This time rats were chewing through my skull. From the inside.

  Within a second or two the pain shredded my concentration; even the most basic telepathy was shut behind a door locked with agony. All I could do was lie there across Baltrice’s knees. Lie there and look at Tezzeret and wait to die.

  Tezzeret didn’t look happy. Or angry or triumphant or really anything at all. He wasn’t even paying that much attention to me. Instead, he seemed to be cutting some bandages off his fingertips with a small curved knife. The whole place was drenched with bucketsful of blood. Some random-looking body parts lay here and there, and one live mercenary sat propped into a corner, ashen and shaking, clutching at a tourniquet that closed off the stump of his arm.

  All the different ways my nightmares had shown me this moment never looked anything like this. I guess as prophets go, I’m a pretty good telepath.

  “Baltrice, are you hurt? Because if you are-”

  She gave her head one tight shake. “Wasn’t much of a fight, boss. Didn’t get a nick.”

  “You need to go,” I told her. “Get the hell out while you still can.”

  “Not a chance. We go together or we stay right here. Both of us.”

  That damned spell-of course she wouldn’t leave me. She couldn’t. And it was my fault.

  Canceling the spell wouldn’t take five seconds; then at least she’d have a choice. Maybe even a chance. I reached out with my mind-and collapsed again under the surge of agony. All I could do was let out a shuddering moan.

  I had no idea how to get Baltrice out of this alive.

  There had to be a way. Had to. I couldn’t let her die just because she liked me too much to be sensible.

  Especially considering why she liked me so much.

  The moan had finally gotten Tezzeret’s attention, but only for a second. He gave me a level stare for maybe a heartbeat, then went back to work on his hand. When he spoke, he sounded distracted. Affectless.

  Like a machine.

  “Beleren. I have never verified how much pain a human nervous system can endure without permanent damage. Nor do I know whether a person can be killed by pain alone-if you can ‘hurt to death,’ as it were. If you try something as extreme as planeswalking, we likely will find out.”

  “What… What did you do to me?”

  This earned me another look. It was as cold as his voice. “I let you live.”

  “Am I supposed to thank you?”

  “Boss,” Baltrice hissed. “For the love of crap, don’t antagonize him!”

  “What you are supposed to do, Beleren,” he said as he removed the last of the bandages, “is what you’re told.”

  He held the hand up to inspect the damage. He had some kind of wire twisted so tightly around his wrist that it was cutting into his flesh. Two of the fingers on that hand were missing their last joint, and all had only ragged bloody splotches where his fingernails should have been. His only reaction was a tiny compression of the lips, as though he were mildly irritated.

  “It was you,” I said. “It was you all along.”

  “No,” he said. “The body was mine, within the illusion, but the mind you felt was my father’s. Inspired by the trick you pulled with Rhoka, in fact-you can be surprisingly resourceful. It was the closest I could come to a prudent course. My estimate of your ability is comprehensive. And apparently accurate.”

  “Have I told you lately that you scare the crap out of me?”

  “I should.” This earned me another look-and there was a hint of softening to his features, as though he might actually smile. A friendly smile, instead of the predatory grimace I always used to see. “That’s a compliment,” he said. “My estimate of your intellect is similarly comprehensive.”

  He stepped over a body part or two on his way to the shocky mercenary in the corner. The mercenary looked up at Tezzeret with eyes like moons on a clear night. “Don’t… come on, don’t…” the mercen
ary managed to say. “I can… I can help you, right?”

  “Right.” Tezzeret leaned down and took the mercenary’s remaining hand as though to pull the man to his feet. When instead he produced the small hooked knife he’d used to cut away the bandages, the mercenary started to scream.

  He didn’t stop screaming until Tezzeret had severed the man’s hand at the wrist. It wasn’t a gentle kind of thing. Or fast; the guy stopped screaming because he was bleeding out. When Tezzeret finally dropped the arm, its fountain of blood had already slowed to a trickle. He held the dying man’s hand upright on the palm of his own injured hand as he unlooped the wire around his wrist.

  As the wire came free, blood spurted from his two severed fingers-and just as swiftly, the blood stopped, and the last joints of the dying man’s fingers turned black and rotted away. The fingernails disintegrated, and shortly Tezzeret tossed the dead hand onto the body of its dead owner.

  “Necromancy,” he said, holding up his hand again, which was now only bloody. His fingertips were back, all his nails were in place, and now he did smile, just a bit. “A useful trick I picked up from an unlucky bandit, when I was just a teenager.”

  With Baltrice’s help, I eventually managed to sit up. “Tezzeret…” I began, then shook my head. There had to be something I could say. Some way to convince him to let her go. “I have these dreams, sometimes. Ever since I… uh, you know, since our fight. Nightmares, I guess. Where you were still alive. Coming after me.”

  The smile wiped itself from existence. “Likewise. Except in mine, I catch you.”

  “And then I’d wake up and tell myself I was being stupid, because I knew you were dead. You were dead. I felt you die. But I could never make myself believe it.”

  “The avenging revenant.” He nodded. “Your conscience always did have a way of manifesting itself at… inconvenient times.”

  And this would be one of them, I thought. “You know that Baltrice was fighting for you, all the way to the end, right?”