Test of Metal p-4

by Mathew Stover

  Tezzeret always had been clever.

  But it was exactly his cleverness-the primary feature of which was his ability to focus profoundly on whatever immediate problem he faced-that here would destroy him. No matter how smart Tezzeret might be, no matter how incalculable the power he could wield in this place, he was still only human, with a human brain inside his human skull. He could truly focus only on one thing at a time.

  Dragons, however…

  Due to their saurian ancestry, most dragons retained great knots of neural ganglia between their wings and at the base of their tails, so large and complex that they were essentially subsidiary brains; the evolutionary adaptation that allowed them to coordinate their subbrains gave many dragons a multitasking capability far beyond any human’s imagination. And Nicol Bolas’s capabilities were beyond the imaginations of dragons.

  His mind was a vast and cluttered place, stuffed with twenty-five thousand years of memories, half-forgotten spells, and disordered remnants of dreams and aspirations. Millennia before, he had begun a process of compartmentalizing his mind, setting up an organized mental structure that allowed him to access information he wanted without having to sift through metaphorical mountains of irrelevancies. In the process, he’d split off functions of cognitive processing, virtual minds whose responsibility was the management of each of their particular sectors of knowledge, experience, and skill.

  While it was true that this strategy wasn’t currently working as well as it once had-a serious degradation of function that he was certain was wholly due to the destructive effect of the bloody Final Mending-it was more than sufficient for his current needs.

  He assigned one submind to keeping track of Baltrice, and of Jace’s body, while investigating the source of the blue mana spell that had killed his mind while leaving his body intact. Another submind was occupied with examining his recent interactions with Tezzeret, especially with regard to Sharuum and the Metal Sphinx who may or may not be Crucius in whole or in part. A third submind managed the fight on the Metal Island-mostly a function of feeding bits of mana to bolster the defenses of whichever of his dead selves was currently being dismantled, and of monitoring his remaining Lilianas. He wanted to finish the fight with at least one left, because she was both valuable and amusing, and while he valued her as an asset, he didn’t want to go to the trouble that might be required to ensnare another version of her. This left his primary consciousness with nothing to worry about except subduing Tezzeret.

  As he set about doing so, he found himself considerably amused by the occasional boasts that Tezzeret liked to make, about being the Multiverse’s greatest master of etherium. Apparently Tezzeret’s enormous intellect had managed to slide right past the fact that Bolas himself had created the Seekers of Carmot, and that there was nothing known by any of the Seekers that would not be known to the dragon as well. Not to mention that there were a number of features of etherium that Bolas was reasonably certain only he knew (and possibly Crucius, if the elusive sphinx ever turned up again). One of these was that due to etherium’s peculiar nature-existing simultaneously in reality and in the Blind Eternities-there were certain vulnerabilities that someone with the right sort of power might exploit.

  The right sort of power, in this case, was a combination of planeswalking and clockworking.

  Nicol Bolas subdivided his primary consciousness into three parts. One part undertook the mystical focusing of will that was the beginning of planeswalking. The second undertook to summon a specific subset of the dragon’s memories dealing with a certain type of magic. The third phased its attention into the near future, scanning the probability smears for hints of coalescence. When the first part completed its task, a hole in reality began to rip itself open… but instead of stepping into it, Bolas used the second part of his primary consciousness to reach into the Blind Eternities with an intention to doing one or more of a list of magics at his command, while the third kept focused on the future, seeking one that would end with Tezzeret in his hand.

  The submind that had been processing his interactions with Tezzeret warned Bolas sternly not to kill him; there was still too much to be learned.

  “I’m not going to kill him,” Bolas muttered to himself. “But this is going to hurt.”

  He could judge the potential effect of each magic on his second part’s list by scanning the probable futures that shifted and developed as the second part considered this or that spell, power, or combination of such. Neither the first nor third part of his mind was actually aware of what spell he ended up using, but they didn’t have to be; the second part had that issue fully under control, as it was able to use the?theric dimension of Tezzeret’s armor to channel a combination of telekinesis and minor shaping that transformed, in the current reality, the inside of the mechanist’s etherium breastplate into a blade that shattered his breastbone, slashed open his heart, and severed his spine just between the shoulder blades.

  “How’s that for power?” several of his subminds said in unison, as at least three of them saw-and one felt-the mechanist’s heart spew most of his blood out through the joints in his armor.

  The Tezzeret-tasked submind, though, reacted with enough alarm to give Nicol Bolas actual pain.

  “I already said I’m not going to kill him!” Bolas snarled. “Shut the hell up.”

  As Tezzeret fell dying to the blood-caked sand, Bolas’s fourth submind released the power that held all but one of the Lilianas in this temporal strand. The last Liliana simply blinked in astonishment at her inexplicable victory until that same submind reached into her brain and said, Sleep, whereupon she collapsed into unconsciousness.

  This freed up that submind to rejoin his primary consciousness, and-as the assigned tasks of two of the three divisions of his primary mind were complete-he reassembled an uncharacteristically large fraction of his mental resources to attend to the dying mechanist.

  He stretched forth a talon, and Tezzeret’s limp body rose into the air and floated into his grasp, dripping liquid etherium as though the armor were ice instead of metal. When Tezzeret was once again naked, Bolas-who had a somewhat more detailed understanding of human anatomy than did nearly any human alive-worked a simple charm that placed the mechanist in a state of suspended animation similar to that of Baltrice and Jace. Bolas estimated that if he ever chose to reanimate Tezzeret, he’d be able to repair the physical damage with very little permanent loss of function.

  He looked down with a contemptuous sneer upon the human lying broken and bloody in his grip. “As though I could ever be in any danger from you, you pathetic worm. I am Nicol Bolas! What have I to fear from any mortal mage?”

  His second submind-that troublesome Tezzeret-tasked one again-inquired silently that if Bolas had never been in danger, why were all those nearby temporal strands loaded with his corpses? Which was a wholly disquieting question, and one he had no intention of pondering.

  His primary consciousness reflected that his condition might be more grave than he’d allowed himself to believe. How far must you have deteriorated to have begun to heckle yourself?

  He paused for a moment to assess his situation. His Tezzeret issue seemed to be well in hand-literally-and the lightly snoring form of Liliana could be easily enough shifted into suspended animation, and both of them could without much difficulty be stored next to Jace and Baltrice on the Metal Island in that nearby temporal strand… so this was exactly what he did.

  “I suppose that means I win,” he said. “Whoopee.”

  It was impossible to be much elated by victory over such pathetic opponents; celebrating this triumph would be like doing a victory dance after stepping on an anthill.

  Still: not bad. And accomplished by very little cost or exertion on his part. He supposed he could give himself points for style-for what Tezzeret would call elegance. Poor little Tezzeret… just another of the ants.

  He could not quite make himself believe it, though. It didn’t seem real. Had he really snared not only Tezzeret
, but Liliana, and Jace and Baltrice, after all this time?

  Apparently so. He could not find a temporal strand anywhere in which they were not his prisoners. So that, in so many words, was that. Period.

  He glanced up at the expressionless face of the Metal Sphinx. “And I’m pretty sure you’re not going anywhere.”

  The sphinx-after the custom of his kind-did not reply.

  Bolas stepped close to the sphinx’s cleanly abstracted semblance of a forepaw, and he laid his own talons upon it, marveling in the thought that this, right here, might be all there was left of Crucius. All there would ever be.

  “What were you thinking, though? What brought you here? Why is this place what it is?”

  He supposed he would find these questions a great deal more compelling if he actually cared about their answers. He had not only five more Planeswalkers to add to the considerable assortment under his absolute control, but also now this unimaginably vast trove of etherium. He discounted Tezzeret’s assertion that it could not be taken from this plane. The sets of What Tezzeret Can’t Do and of What Bolas Can’t Do did not intersect in any meaningful way. Discovering how he could take the etherium-all the etherium-with him was simply a question of evaluating powers that Tezzeret did not have, lore that Tezzeret did not know, and magics that Tezzeret could not work.

  All this etherium, and all the many Planeswalkers in his hands, and now that he thought about it, he realized that what he had right now might actually, finally, unexpectedly, be enough.

  “Maybe I really have won. Won it all. Hmp. Whoopee again.” He sighed. “My Crowning Moment of Triumph should really have been more dramatic.”

  He passed some considerable interval wandering a bit aimlessly around the island, admiring the etherium trees and the etherium grass and the etherium outcroppings of bedrock that shouldered into the light. And speaking of light… He frowned down at the shadow he cast upon the etherium underbrush. Something about his shadow was troubling him, and for a long moment he couldn’t seem to work out what it was.

  Ah, that was it. His shadow hadn’t moved.

  Well, it did move when he did-it was after all his shadow-but its angle was exactly the same as it had been when he’d first arrived here. Hours ago. Did this planet not rotate? What in the hells was going on here?

  Where we are is all one place. Here, it’s always now.

  He moved around to the front of the vast etherium plinth, kicking aside heedlessly the ragged remnants of both his own corpses and Liliana’s. He was not sentimental, and pity was alien to his nature. Even self-pity. Something was going or had gone or will go terribly wrong, and his clockworking ability seemed to make it or had made it or will make it worse instead of better.

  He had to know or he had to go. Probably both.

  He spared the infantile doggerel on the plinth’s east face only enough of a glance to register that it was written in a long-vanished dialect of Classical Draconic… Wait, that was the language his parents had spoken… a language no living creature had heard or spoken in the twenty-four thousand years since his birthplace had been destroyed and all his close relatives slaughtered (to be precise, since his birthplace had been destroyed and all his close relatives slaughtered by him). He then indulged a passing wonderment at how Tezzeret could possibly have even recognized the glyphs for what they were, much less deciphered what they stood for.

  He actually turned to ask before he remembered that he’d sequestered Tezzeret in a different temporal strand, and that awakening him to inquire would not only require a considerable expenditure of mana to heal his wounds, but it would also force Bolas to endure more of the artificer’s unspeakably irritating conversation.

  Bolas shook his head, disgusted with himself again. Really, this advancing senility or whatever it was had gotten entirely out of control. Good thing he had all this etherium, and all his captive Planeswalkers, because he really needed to get his whole personal recovery and reconstruction business fully under way before he forgot what it was he needed to… what?

  He couldn’t remember why he had to remember anything, much less what it might be. How was he supposed to think around here? An unanswerable question, which led him inexorably toward an even less pleasant contemplation.

  Wasn’t he breaking down a great deal faster than he should?

  Had to have something to do with the etherium. Or with this particular plane, as etherium had never had any noticeable effect on him anywhere else. Or with Crucius or the Metal Sphinx or whoever was supposed to be either one of them, whenever they might be each other, or not. Or something.

  More damned riddles.

  He shook his head again, but somehow instead of clearing, the shaking only thickened the fog inside his various minds. How had Tezzeret deciphered the glyphs? How could he know Classical Draconic at all, much less the dialect of Bolas’s native mountains? Bolas decided that maybe it was worth both spending the mana and enduring the aggravation in exchange for some answers… if he could just recollect where he’d stashed the deanimated mechanist…

  Oh, yes. Of course. Over in that temporal strand with Jace and Baltrice and his last-remaining Liliana-the time line where Tezzeret had never made it to the Metal Island.

  He stopped, scowling. “Wait… wait, there’s something wrong…”

  Tezzeret had made it to the Metal Island in that time line. That’s what was wrong. Bolas had just put him there. But that didn’t make any difference. It couldn’t. Could it?

  Somehow, he couldn’t escape the feeling that it had been a bad idea.

  Either way, the whole business worried him. It was as though when he’d done it, he hadn’t even been paying attention…

  Nicol Bolas discovered that for the first time in his life, he wasn’t certain about anything. And he didn’t like it. Not one little bit.

  “Fine,” he muttered. “This, at least, is something I can fix.”

  He cast his perception once more sideways in time; all he had to do was find a temporal strand where he had decided not to stick Tezzeret over there, but to keep him close, here on the beach. Simple.

  In concept, anyway.

  In execution, however, it was not only unexpectedly complicated but thoroughly disquieting. He discovered there was no time line, anywhere, in which he’d made the choice he was looking for. In fact, he could not find one where he’d made any other choice at all. Did that mean he’d never really had a choice? That it was some kind of preposterously predestinated fate or something?

  He was beginning to favor the or something, as he found to his dismay that in fact no temporal strand-not a single one within the considerable range of his perception-showed any sign of Tezzeret at all, save only the strand where the artificer lay on the etherium beach, suspended animation holding him minutes from death. And now Bolas recalled that earlier, when at Tezzeret’s invitation he had scanned their future-when he had found so many of his own corpses on so many versions of the beach-he had seen nothing of Tezzeret at all. Nothing. Alive or dead or anywhere in between.

  How could there be only one of him?

  Bolas had a feeling he’d be able to work it all out easily if he were only somewhere else, far away from the Metal Sphinx, the Metal Island, the world that was ocean itself-far from whatever it was that was pumping pea soup into his brain. He gathered mana as easily as he might take a deep breath, then ripped open the surface of the universe so that he might step through into the Blind Eternities.

  But how could there be only one Tezzeret? And how could Tezzeret read Classical Draconic? And what was up with the whole sun-not-moving business? And if it was etherium messing with his brain, shouldn’t he figure out how and why? Wouldn’t leaving all these mysteries behind him be tantamount to driving stakes through his own hearts?

  The rumblings and mumblings of his various subminds as they mulled over these and other troubling questions were so diverting that when he came back to himself, he found his rip in reality had closed without him ever having taken so much a
s a step toward it.

  This, he realized, might be a problem.

  With great determination and preternaturally focused intention, he again exerted mana and ripped open a portal to the Blind Eternities.

  And some indeterminate interval later, he again found himself standing on the beach with unanswerable questions chasing one another’s tails through the various and sundry compartments of his mind, the rip having closed while he was woolgathering.

  “All right, I’m done. That is exactly as much as I am going to take,” he muttered to himself. “Time to fix it, or to burn down this whole bloody universe. Or both. Extra bonus points for whoever guesses which.”

  His face contorted into an involuntary snarl as he fixed his intention upon the temporal strand where the four Planeswalkers lay side by side. With a needlessly violent wrench of will, he thrust himself into their time line.

  He stood over Tezzeret’s body, which might as well have been a statue. When he noted that his angle of shadow here was subtly different from that of the time line he’d just left, his snarl deepened to a rictus of rage. He snatched up Tezzeret’s body in one hand and with the other gouged a ton or so of etherium from the plinth. Then he jammed Tezzeret’s body fully into the now-viscous metal, let the metal reharden around him, and then simply hurled it with all the strength he could muster-physical and magical-out over the infinite ocean. He didn’t even bother to mark where it would hit the water, some hundreds of miles from the island, but turned instead to the other three deanimated Planeswalkers.

  He took just a moment to fasten each of them with his power so that he could summon them from anywhere across the Multiverse. Then, one at a time, he picked them up, ripped open reality, and shoved each at random into the Blind Eternities. There was no way to predict where any of them might end up, or if any would ever reappear into ordinary reality. While this might be disastrous for unprotected Planeswalkers, the power of Nicol Bolas would preserve them intact until the end of time, and a considerable while beyond it. All Bolas knew for sure-all he needed to know-was that he could bring them to his hand at will. The magic that held them in suspended animation and bound them to him could be broken only by a mage more powerful than its caster. Bolas felt justified in his confidence that the existence of said “more powerful mage” would remain safely hypothetical.