Test of Metal p-4

by Mathew Stover

  “Weak in character, not in ability.”

  Renn paused at an intersection long enough to berate a couple of the Order’s chairwomen. I left the vision silent-I have heard enough of Renn’s self-righteous upsloper ranting to last me several lifetimes-but I took the opportunity to adjust the scry view to where it could cover the intersecting corridors in any direction.

  “His natural magical ability outstrips mine by an order of magnitude. And his family is obscenely wealthy-they bought enough etherium for him to replace most of his body. In three years of trying, I never defeated him.”

  “You don’t sound too worried about losing again.”

  Several nearby detonations rocked the building enough to shake not only dust from the ceiling but flakes of stone from the buttresses.

  “I didn’t come here to fight, Doc.”

  “Good thing, too,” he said. “Save your fighting for sometime when screwing up won’t get me killed along with you.”

  “If we have to fight, I’ve already screwed up,” I muttered. The shrieking discharge of the city’s anti-dragon artillery set my teeth on edge.

  A string of detonations laddered rising thunder as though coming straight for me; the final blast seemed to be just next door. The room pitched and bucked like a maddened gargoyle. Dust and razor-edged stone chips filled the air. Statues that had stood for centuries tumbled from their pedestals and shattered on the floor.

  “I hate that-that explosion thing!” Doc whined in my ear. “What in the hells are those?”

  “I’m not sure.” Renn was moving again. I turned the scry-view angle to follow. “Magical, mundane, whatever-I hope never to be close enough to one to find out. Don’t worry too much; the Academy’s defensive screens will deflect any that might hit us directly.”

  “Which isn’t gonna do us a hell of a lot of good if the concussion knocks down the building and thirty bajillion tons of stone falls on our head,” Doc said. “I still think we could have done this from a little bit farther away. Like, say, Bant.”

  Further blasts, however, sounded only in the distance, and shortly they too faded. No more than a few moments passed before the sirens outside wailed the all clear. The etherium chime on the desk by my left hand gave out a musical ping. “All right. Apport interdiction’s suspended while they evacuate the wounded, which means that right about now…”

  There came a deep, resonant thump, more like distant thunder than nearby explosives, which was, to my educated ear, exactly the sound I’d been expecting-the air displacement created by something very, very large teleporting into the Academy’s courtyard. In the scrying dish, Renn jumped as if stung and ran for a window.

  “Do you get tired of being right all the time?”

  “If I were right all the time,” I muttered, “you and I would have never met.”

  Reaching out with my mind, I found the tiny device Baltrice wore in her ear. He’s heading for the courtyard along the west colonnade. It would be best if you were there first.

  Her muttered response was conveyed through the same link. Really? Boy, it’s a good thing I’ve got you around to remind me about crap we already planned.

  The upside of this method of communication was that I didn’t have to endure running commentary from Doc. I pulled the scry view to the colonnade and briefly angled it into the courtyard to confirm my expectation: the immense, elegant majesty of the Grand Hegemon of Esper, flanked by two young adult male sphinxes near enough to her size to have been her sons, all three shimmering with a fortune in etherium filigree that shone even through the residual smoke of the raid. The balance of her retinue was more or less as expected, human and vedalken mages, homunculi, a pair of juvenile firedrakes, none of any concern or consequence to me.

  Renn shortly entered view, striding briskly toward a small clot of maids and porters who stood gaping just short of the colonnade, as a personal visit by the Grand Hegemon was a once-in-a-generation event. He snarled at them with his characteristic flap of the hands, and I touched the control on the rim of the scrying dish to pick up audio, as this was about to become amusing.

  The maids and porters scattered like a flock of startled geese, except for one huge and hulking porter who didn’t seem to hear. The porter just stood there without reaction, leaning casually on the long handle of a push sweep. “Boy! Porter!” Renn snapped, stomping forward. “Are you deaf, boy? I said get out of sight!”

  The porter still did not react. Renn’s face was nearly as red as his crushed-velvet surplice by the time he got close enough to the porter’s shoulder to yank a sleeve. “I will count to three, boy, and when-”

  The porter responded with a casual backhanded pimp slap that smacked Renn off his feet and sent him skidding along the corridor, out of sight from the courtyard. “Who are you calling boy, bitch?”

  “You know,” Doc said as we watched the semiconscious Renn try to fumble out some kind of defensive magic, “you gotta give her points for style.”

  “She does make a vivid first impression.”

  Before Renn could remember what plane they were on, Baltrice pounced like a feral viashino, hooked an enormous hand around one of Renn’s etherium ribs, then picked him up like a suitcase and gave him a good shaking. Once she had satisfied herself that she had shaken him well before using, she turned him rightway up and slammed him into the wall. “Shh, now, sweetcake. Don’t make a fuss.”

  “You, ah, you, ah-” Renn still seemed to be having trouble understanding exactly what was happening to him. “This isn’t-do you know who I am?”

  “I’ll tell you what I know.” She lifted her free hand, which now sprouted flame hot enough to melt steel. “I know etherium won’t burn,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure your balls will.”

  “You can’t do this!”

  “You don’t know what I can do,” she said. “Screw with me and you’ll find out.”

  “What-what do you want from me?”

  “I want you to take me to the dance, sweetcake.” She set him down and stripped off her porter’s coveralls, revealing a very credible-if I do say so myself-surplice-and-cloak outfit such as those worn by the Anointed Fellows of the Arcane Council of the Order of the Seekers of Carmot. “I know you can’t see it without a mirror, but that fancy glowy hunk of etherium you’re using for a heart? Now it’s a little extra glowy. What that means is that any time I start to worry you might be trying to get smooth with me, every part of your body that isn’t etherium will burn to the kind of ash that blows away in a soft breeze. With me so far? Good.”

  She got rid of the coveralls, then paused a moment to raise her arms, admiring what was-again, if I say so myself-a spectacularly detailed illusion that they were both constructed of etherium.

  “The other thing you should absorb here,” she went on, “is that you’re not on fire right now because I’m stopping the little extra glowy business from igniting, get me? You savvy what’ll happen to you if anything happens to me? Here’s a clue: it’s the same as what’ll happen if you so much as sneak up a hint of a shield to interfere with my control. Or if a sudden move breaks my concentration. Fwhoosh. Soft breeze. Got me? No? Give me a sign here, Renn. Wave a flag. Send up a flare.”

  “You can’t-” Renn swallowed and started again. “It’s impossible-no such spell exists!”

  She smiled. “He told me you’d say that.”

  “He? There are others? How many?”

  “Depends on how you count,” she said through a predatory grin. “There’s at least one of them who’s gonna give you a pretty nasty shock.”

  I found myself with a bit of a predatory smile of my own as I pushed the scrying dish aside. “If only I could have been there to do it myself,” I murmured.

  Through the device in Baltrice’s ear I could pick up their voices as Renn made introductions. “Arcane Fellow Silas Renn, and-”

  “Baltrice,” she said. “Just Baltrice. It’s a, y’ know, an honor and all that.”

  “You are called by a single name,
then?” The voice of a sphinx is different from that of other creatures, for their vast hollow bones can function also as organ pipes, and so every phrase from a sphinx is a motif, and a speech can be a symphony. “That is uncommon for a human, is it not?”

  “Yeah, well,” she said through a crooked grin, “a last name’s just for people who want you to be impressed by their parents.”

  I made a mental note to give her a bonus.

  There followed a bit of hastily stammered conversation, as Renn haltingly attempted to explain why the rest of the Arcane Fellowship was not on hand to greet her. He couldn’t exactly admit the truth, which was that every Arcane Fellow and even many of the lesser masters were out desperately scavenging etherium. Etherium, as the basis of most weapons and an adjunct to every combat mage’s power, was central to Esper’s war effort… and the Seekers of Carmot, who had been pretending for many years to know how to make the stuff, now were faced with either providing for the whole land’s needs, or publicly confessing their decades-long conspiracy to defraud the public.

  Sangrite had been discovered in the mountains of Jund (with whom, inconveniently, we were currently at war), but carmot, the last essential ingredient-in an irony that warmed me every time I thought about it-remained so elusive that the masters couldn’t even agree on what it was, much less where to find any. This meant that for the first time in the entire history of the Order, the Seekers of Carmot were out in the world, and-not to grind too fine an edge on it-they were actually, well…

  Seeking carmot.

  I doubt I’ll ever stop finding that funny.

  While it probably would have been even more amusing to leave Renn twisting in the wind of his own lies with his underclothes hanging out, Baltrice moved the plan in its intended direction with her customary bluntness. “I believe Master Fellow Renn might be unaware that the Exalted Hieresiarch of the Order has unexpectedly returned, and awaits the Grand Hegemon in the Vault of the Codex.”

  Renn was unquestionably unaware of this, as it was a bald-faced lie-but as I had anticipated, he was too concerned with protecting his own anatomy to do anything other than play along.

  “He awaits me?” Sharuum fluted somberly. “Then go we shall. There might we slake our thirst for knowledge at the original spring.”

  They proceeded on through the Academy’s innards without delay-due to protocols that were rigidly enforced at the Academy’s construction, all public areas were easily accessible to sphinxes, most well-mannered dragons, and all but the very largest gargoyles-while Renn kept trying to summon some plausible excuse for preventing the Grand Hegemon from entering the Vault and discovering that the legendary mystical Codex Etherium to be wholly legendary and not mystical at all.

  Sharuum shed members of her retinue at every juncture. By the time they reached the Tower of the Vault, only the two young male sphinxes remained, and she set them to guard the doors behind her.

  Sharuum, Baltrice, and Renn wound their way up the great spiral stair to the spire-top Vault of the Codex. At the last, Renn was reduced to simple pleading. “Please, Your Wisdom-the Vault is not intended for any but the Fellowship!”

  “I suppose that when one is made of glass,” Sharuum replied solemnly, “everything looks like a stone.”

  At the door, he gave it one last shot. “But-but-but-”

  “That’s already two more than most folks have any use for,” Baltrice put in, bless her snide little heart. “How full of crap do you have to be to need three butts?”

  “Your Wisdom-Your Wisdom, please!” he stammered, pretending he hadn’t heard. “In the entire history of the Order of the Seekers of Carmot, no being who is not a Fellow of the Arcane Council has ever been inside the Vault!”

  This moment was, because I share with Nicol Bolas a regrettable fondness for the dramatic, when I reached out with my mind from where I stood-on the far side of the Vault, leaning on the lectern that held the Codex Etherium-and opened the door.

  Carefully framed so that the swirling dust motes in the single shaft of sunlight from the roof portal above shimmered around me in a golden halo, making me shine in the gloom-shrouded chamber like a fugitive angel, I spread my hands with an apologetic shrug.

  “I’ve never been a fellow of anything,” I said, “and I’ve been here twice.”

  There was very little commotion. Sharuum was even more inscrutable than is common for her opaque kind; Baltrice, of course, had known I would be there; and Renn was gob-smacked beyond speech.

  “Your Wisdom.” I stood up straight, of course, in the presence of my queen. “Please come in, and make yourself as comfortable as may be possible. Baltrice, if you could please see to Master Renn. He may need assistance in finding a seat.”

  Renn finally found his voice. “You…”

  “Surprise.”

  “It’s not possible…” He seemed to be having difficulty getting his breath. “I saw you die!”

  “You share that honor with a surprising variety of others.”

  Sharuum lingered beyond the Vault door, eyeing me with wholly understandable caution. “If this is your Hieresiarch,” she piped to Renn, “please convey my compliments to his doctor.”

  “Is she hitting on you?” Doc whispered in my left ear. “I think she’s hitting on you. Wow, that makes her like a, whaddayasay, zoophiliac, right?”

  I made as much of a shh-ing noise as I could manage without making Sharuum wonder if I might be impersonating a teapot.

  “The Hieresiarch-? Him? He-he-” Renn sputtered. “He’s the man who murdered the Hieresiarch!”

  “The latest previous, Your Wisdom, a decade ago,” I explained. “Nor was it murder.”

  “He was an old man!”

  “He was attempting to rob me. I defended myself and my property.”

  “Rob you?” Renn said wildly. “Rob you in his own study?”

  I sighed. “Baltrice?”

  “Yeah.” She put a hand to Renn’s etherium breastbone and shoved him into a chair. “Sit.”

  “The current Hieresiarch is elsewhere,” I said, “presumably mugging innocents for their etherium.”

  This comment turned Renn such an alarming shade of purple that I briefly wondered if his etherium heart might after all be vulnerable to spontaneous arrest.

  “Ah…” Sharuum came slowly over the threshold, watching me as if I might be some exotic, unfamiliar, possibly dangerous bug. “Tezzeret, isn’t it? Tezzeret the Renegade-I’ve encountered your legend.”

  “Your Wisdom is very kind. Though I would resist the epithet the Renegade, as it implies that I broke faith with the Order, when the truth is precisely opposite.”

  Sharuum did not appear interested in the distinction. “Is there an epithet you prefer?”

  This stopped me for a moment; I’d never actually thought about it. “I suppose,” I said finally, “the Seeker suits me as well as any I can imagine. Unlike these fraudulent Seekers of Carmot, my search is real.”

  I watched closely to see how she would take this characterization of the Seekers, but again my powers of observation were insufficient to penetrate her seemingly infinite opacity. “I have been given to understand that you are dead.”

  “He’s been dead for more than ten years-” Renn forced out in a strangled gasp, and his hands went under his surplice, no doubt seeking some sort of anti-zombie spell or some such silliness.

  Baltrice said, “Fwhoosh. Soft breeze.”

  Renn, with uncharacteristic insight, decided to shut the hell up.

  “Ten years?” Fully within the Vault now, Sharuum brought her own light with her, in the softly twinkling radiance of her fantastically intricate etherium filigree, as well as the miniature solar system of etherium droplets the size of strige eggs that orbited around the majestic sun that was her humaniform mask. “My information is younger than that-hardly dry, much less weaned.”

  I inclined my head. “Your Wisdom has excellent sources.”

  “Hey-hey, didn’t Jace rip up your brain in, li
ke, a whole different universe?” Doc hissed. “You think she knows about us? Well, not me, but about, y’know, Planeswalkers and such?”

  “I have reason to believe she does,” I murmured.

  She inclined her head to take in a different view of my face. “To whom do you speak?”

  Hmmm. Distressingly good ears. I took a breath. “As do many tinkerers, artists, and others who spend too much time alone, I have developed an unfortunate habit of talking to myself, Your Wisdom. I humbly beg your pardon.”

  “For mumbling, or for lying?”

  I drew breath to protest, but the faintly sly smile that touched her humanlike lips was enough to stop me. “You spoke truth, not honesty,” she fluted, “and thought I wouldn’t know the difference.”

  Well.

  I took a second or two to try out my response in my head before I let it pass my lips.

  “I have spent entirely too much of my life around beings all too unfortunately resembling Master Renn, Your Wisdom,” I said. “It has left me ill-prepared for thoughtful conversation.”

  “A pretty answer,” she piped with a hint of amusement. “A thorny union of truth and honesty, birthing graceful flattery.”

  I inclined my head. Feeling myself flush, I did not trust my speech. It was unexpectedly gratifying to be appreciated by someone with real intellect.

  She went on. “Please assure your stealthy friend that he need not whisper, and then please introduce him.”

  “Hey-hey, is she talking about me? She can hear me? How can she hear me?”

  “The Grand Hegemon, Doc, was not born into her title, nor did she win it at dice,” I said. “Your Wisdom, I call my friend Doc, short for Doctor Jest. My friend is stealthy from necessity, not discourtesy. His body is, for good or ill, coextensive with my own. He speaks to me by manipulating the nerves of my left ear. He and I have been… joined… only recently, and we are still unsure of our relations to each other, much less the rest of the world.”

  “And now we have an answer of more honesty than truth-but truth is, after all, merely fact,” she piped.