by Ari Marmell
And the fact that the paddy stood in the direct shadow of the nearby mountain should more than suffice for her needs, as well-certainly better and more efficiently than the paddies themselves would meet his.
Jace allowed his consciousness to seep into the earth beneath him, to plumb its unfamiliar depths. And there, deep within these foreign lands, he felt the presence of others: Elemental spirits and ancient ghosts, born from or drawn to the soul of Kamigawa's lands, and they claimed much of its mana for their own. These must be the kami; Jace steered clear of them, lest they grow wroth and manifest in the world above.
So Jace allowed the merest dregs of the land's power to seep into his soul, and still felt more than a little run down after an hour's rest. Groaning softly, he forced himself upright, scowled at his cuffs, his sleeves, and the hem of his cloak, all now stiff with the residue of the muddy water in which he'd landed.
Baltrice gave him an exasperated look as he rose. Jace wondered briefly what he'd done to piss her off now and only then realized that it probably wasn't him. Perhaps she, too, had found her precious mountain less generous than she'd hoped.
"Where to from here?" he asked.
She frowned briefly in concentration. "I'll need to pick out a few landmarks before I can be sure," she told him slowly, "but I'm guessing about forty or fifty miles to the village."
"Ah. A nice spring jaunt, then."
"You don't like it? You lead next time."
Jace shrugged. At least it meant he'd have one or two nights' sleep before they reached their destination. He could use the rest-even if travel in Baltrice's company was likely to prove about as
"restful" as wrestling a gharial.
They walked. The mud beneath their feet slowly gave way to drier ground, the grass ceased to squelch and began to softly crunch. Jace, knowing full well what sort of terrain loomed in his future, enjoyed the stable footing while it lasted. As they moved away from the mountain, he saw a number of people in the distance-peasants, he presumed, judging by their drab clothes and broad-brimmed straw hats-standing knee-deep in the rice paddies. Though they clearly stared in the travelers' direction, none made any move to approach.
And far beyond even them, barely visible over the horizon, stood one of the multi-tiered and terraced Kamigawa temples.
Jace and Baltrice kept silent, each having little desire to speak to the other. He occupied some of his time going back over the plan, such as it was, but as that filled an alarmingly short span of time, he gave up on it.
Finally, the sun faded in the west, unfamiliar night birds took up a continual chorus (with something on the order of a million crickets singing harmony), and Baltrice stopped to make camp and confirm their location. The Kamigawa night, for whatever reason, smelled of chrysanthemums.
And for lack of anything else to do, Jace finally turned to Baltrice and asked, "So how is it you know your way around Kamigawa, anyway?"
"Been here before," Baltrice explained. She stretched her hand over a small pile of wood and tinder, and tensed her arm as though lifting a heavy weight. Sparks rained from beneath her fingernails, and soon they had a small but cheerful campfire dancing merrily away. "Helped Tezzeret establish the Kamigawa cell, until we found local people to lead it. Spent several months here."
"And the nezumi?"
She snorted. "Never did have to deal with them personally. But I'm given to understand they can't be trusted."
"So Paldor mentioned," Jace acknowledged.
That, however, was tomorrow's concern. Jace chewed a few bites of dried meat and retired to his bedroll without another word to Baltrice. A moment's concentration to lay a field of magic over him, one that would awaken him if anyone drew near, and Jace closed his eyes and slept.
Baltrice sat, her back against a log, and glared across the embers of the dying fire at Jace's slumbering form.
It would be easy. A quick burst of flame, or a sudden, overwhelming summons and Beleren would be dead before he could so much as clamber from his bedroll. No more worries, no more looking over her shoulder, no more wondering how high in the Consortium his ambitions reached.
No more wondering if and when Tezzeret would decide that a mind-reader made a better right hand than a flame-caster.
So easy… And nobody would ever know. She could say that the nezumi killed him, that he delved too deep into the Kamigawa mana and earned the wrath of the kami, the local demon-spirits. She could even say that he'd grown lost following her trail through the Eternities and vanished from her sight. It was unlikely, but not impossible, and he'd not be the first planeswalker to set out for an unfamiliar destination, never to appear again.
She felt her breath quicken, her blood grow warm. Tiny sparks of flame leaked from the corners of her eyes, though of course she couldn't see them. Even the embers of the campfire flared briefly into a second life, as the magic flowed around and through her.
So easy… Baltrice took a deep breath and allowed her jealous anger to fade. The campfire died once more, the flames vanished from her eyes.
It wasn't mercy that stayed her hand tonight. It was loyalty, she told herself, loyalty to Tezzeret, to the Consortium, to the mission. She couldn't know precisely what was ahead, what she would face when she came up against the nezumi. She might just need Beleren, much as the notion turned her stomach. And she would not face Tezzeret having failed, not when that failure was her own fault.
So Beleren could wait for another night. Perhaps, when the mission was complete, another opportunity would present itself.
Finally Baltrice lay down, wrapped herself in her own bedroll, and let sleep come to her.
"Whose idiotic idea was it to send two humans to infiltrate a ratman warren?" Baltrice snapped.
Jace shrugged, though he was pretty sure she couldn't see the gesture. "Just as soon as you manage to recruit a nezumi planeswalker for the Consortium, you be sure to let me know. Besides," he added after a moment, "we both know exactly whose idea this was. If you'd like, I'll be happy to take your complaints to Tezzeret when we get back. I'm sure he'll be delighted to hear how committed you are to his vision."
Baltrice gave him a look that threatened to set him alight without the benefit of magic, but said nothing.
They lay crouched in a slimy, viscous gunk-fluid enough to seep into everything and thick enough to stick. It sloshed across the skin like the touch of a living disease. The water flowed steadily despite the lack of breeze, suggesting the presence of subsurface currents moving among the reeds and towering cypresses whose greedy wooden fists gathered in all possible sunlight, leaving none for the swamp below.
Jace twitched as an insect that must have been the size of a small drake bit him behind the ear. He swore that this was the last time he'd go anywhere near a swamp if he had any say in the matter.
They lay there for hours, covered in muck and leaves. Lay there, and watched, and thought, and argued, and watched some more, because neither was entirely certain what to do next.
The nezumi village stretched across a broad swath of swamp. Twisted huts carved from the husks of trees and bamboo plants stood at various levels, all raised above the muck of the marsh below. Although primitive, they showed a level of craft and skill that Jace found surprising. The doorways and windows were not rough and random holes, but perfectly shaped ovals and circles; the steps that wound their way around the largest trunks were solid and even, albeit clearly carved for nonhuman feet. Lanterns and an occasional banner hung on bamboo poles that jutted from the sides of the structures, and though most of the swamp around here was shallow enough to wade through, many of the homes had skiffs tied up at their base.
None of which was their problem. No, the fact that the sprawling village hosted several hundred individual nezumi, and that the ratpeople appeared to follow no recognizable schedule, nor to acknowledge the rising or setting of the sun-that had them stumped. "Minimal impediments," indeed! Baltrice had spent their first five minutes here cursing Paldor for his faulty intelligen
ce.
So they waited for nightfall, hoping to make their approach in the dark. They watched as nezumi poled their rafts between buildings, conversing on whatever topics might interest a tribe of humanoid rats. Farmers trudged back and forth, waist-deep in the muck, carrying sacks of harvested rice. Soldiers in boiled leather armor, carrying tae yari spears, wicked daggers, short recurved bows, and even the occasional katana, guarded the borders of the community. Some stood post on tree branches or platforms built high in the bamboo, while others traveled on high-walled skiffs.
The sun fell, the stars once again flickered, and the coy moon showed only a sliver of his face. The farmers retired for the night but the hunters emerged in droves, baiting traps and stalking the nocturnal beasts of the swamp. Lanterns cast an aura of light over the community that was barely enough for Jace and Baltrice, but probably more than sufficient for the rodent's eyes of the nezumi. And still the village refused to sleep.
"That's it," Jace said when it became clear that night was no more an ally to them than the day had been. "This is beyond stupid. We can't do anything without more information. Wait here." Without pausing for acknowledgment, he slithered forward through the muck, crawling on knees and elbows. He gave brief thought to cloaking himself in the image of something that belonged here, but decided that appearing as an alligator or a great constrictor would probably get him perforated by an overzealous hunter, and he wasn't familiar enough with Kamigawa to know what other forms might be equally appropriate but less appetizing. Come to think of it, he didn't even know if Kamigawa had alligators or constrictors. He chose, instead, simply to wrap the shadows around him, making himself invisible even to the senses of the ratmen.
He whispered as he drew near, drawing on the lore of an ancient spell he rarely had opportunity to practice, one that would solve the language problem entirely. Many mages sought such magic, but they came far more easily to planeswalkers; something about the Spark, their connection to the world beyond all worlds, opened their minds more readily to the magic of meaning.
His clumsy, filthy course took him just near enough to the outermost patrol of soldiers to hear their words. At first they were unintelligible, a language he didn't know spoken in voices that were far from human. But the words passed deep into his mind, filtered through his spell, and grew clear. He still heard the Kamigawa tongue, but the meaning of the words sprang to mind half an instant after the sounds reached his ears, as though he remembered definitions he'd never actually learned.
"… meat," one of the guards was saying as Jace's mind finally tuned in to the language. "It's been a while since I've had any good salamander. The day patrols always take the best cuts."
Jace briefly congratulated himself on his wisdom in not choosing an animal as a disguise, and settled in to listen.
"Not sure I learned much of use, though," he told Baltrice roughly an hour later, "except to confirm what we were already afraid of. The village pretty much never sleeps. I have no idea how we're supposed to get to the chieftain without being discovered. My illusions are good, but I'm not sure I can fool an entire community."
"He lied to us, Beleren. The filthy little rat-prince lied to us."
Jace nodded. "I'd noticed that, yes."
Baltrice's eyes began to glow a faint red, her lip to curl in angry disdain. "We're being set up, used as some nezumi's pawns. And by someone who's either an idiot or who deeply believes that we are. I mean, the 'intelligence' he provided isn't even close to accurate."
Again Jace nodded. "We should go, then. Report back to Tezzeret, let him decide-"
"Oh, I don't think so," she proclaimed, her expression abruptly flipping into a horrid grin. "We both know what Tezzeret thinks of betrayal, don't we, Beleren?"
Covered head to toe in clinging mud and bits of decayed plant matter, a spirit of the swamp rising to vent its wrath, Baltrice stood. Flames danced openly in her eyes, her entire body quivered with a sudden strain.
"Baltrice? Baltrice, what are you doing?"
And then, though she spoke not a word in response, Jace had his answer.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The sky above the swamp brightened. Almost unnoticeable at first, through the umbrella of heavy branches and dangling moss, the strange light swiftly grew. A second moon appeared in the heavens, red and crackling and angry; and then it was no moon at all, but an artificial dawn.
Even as the nezumi peered upward from their posts, or emerged blinking from their huts, the ball of fire plummeted from the sky and burst on the village outskirts. Entire houses evaporated at a stroke, and the flames fanned outward, carried over the stagnant waters on the back of burning winds.
Cypress, bamboo, and nezumi pelts ignited in a terrible conflagration-but the trees and the stalks didn't scream. Smoke rose between the surviving branches, blotting out the stars and spreading the choking, sickening scent of cooked flesh.
Jace screamed at Baltrice to stop, but his voice was lost in the crackling of the fire and the shrieks of dying nezumi. The smoke burned his eyes, and despite the blazing heat, he found himself shivering with a sudden horror.
One murder. One. That he could live with. To that, he had long ago resigned himself. But this…
Unseen behind Baltrice, who exulted in the release of her most devastating spells, Jace raised his hands as though to wrap them physically around Baltrice's essence. He held her mind in those fists, and for an instant, Jace knew he could kill.
Still she was casting. Even as the carnage from the fireball spread, her muscles tensed once more, her lips parted with something like a screaming grunt. His skin tingled, and he recognized the feel of something forcing its way into the world from outside.
It erupted from the swamp at the heart of the fireball's impact, a volcano of fire and fury, and the shallow water around it vanished in a hiss of steam. Humanoid only by the most generous use of the term, it towered above the bamboo stalks, above even some of the trees. It glared about it with eyes of fire, lashed about with hands of the same, for that was all it was. Fire: raw, primal, elemental.
The crackle of its flames was the cackling of Baltrice as it advanced on the village, an inexorable titan of agony and death. Turning their attentions away from the burning huts, the soldiers of the nezumi clan formed a defensive line before the oncoming terror, but few had any illusions that they could do more than die with honor.
"Baltrice!" The dam blocking the flood of Jace's horror finally burst. "Gods and demons, woman, what are you doing? There's supposed to be a tribe left for us to treat with!"
She seemed past understanding. Her arms were spread as she soaked in the heat of the inferno she had ignited. Her eyes gleamed red with fury and fire.
Even so, she calmly turned her head to face him. "Relax, Beleren. I have a plan."
"Really? How's that working out for you?"
She smiled, and it actually looked to be the expression of a rational human being, rather than the guise of pyromaniacal glee she'd worn a moment before. "Why don't you take a look?"
Jace looked, and he had to admit she might have a point. For all its initial fury, the fireball had obliterated only a handful of huts, and most of the others it had ignited could probably be saved. And the elemental itself, though tearing through the ranks of nezumi soldiers as though they truly were nothing but rats, seemed uninterested in advancing into the village proper.
"This isn't about wiping out the tribe, Beleren. Just making sure the prince understands the price of lying to the Consortium, understands the power of those he's tried to manipulate. He'll be a lot more honest with us from now on, wouldn't you think?"
Jace felt sick. "How many did you burn to death,
Baltrice? Three dozen? Four?"
This time, she truly didn't hear him, or chose not to respond. All she said was, "We won't have a better opportunity than this. Come on; assuming anything the little rat told us is true, the chieftain's hut is the one in the center."
Not knowing what else to do-or els
e unwilling to do it-Jace followed. At least, he thought morbidly, staring up at a handful of burning trees that had become little more than the torches of titans, we won't have any trouble seeing.
Baltrice darted through the dancing shadows, wading through water up to her thighs. She made at least a cursory attempt at stealth, not that it mattered. Every face in the village was turned toward one mass of flame or the other. Jace was certain that the two of them could have marched on the center of the community with a battalion, a full company of drummers and trumpeters, and possibly a war-elephant, and still had an even chance of going unnoticed. He nevertheless took the time to wrap himself once more in a cloak of shadows, just to be sure.
As they neared the large central hut, Jace found his attention drawn to a smaller structure, rising beside the main house. It stood atop an impossibly narrow trunk, one that appeared utterly incapable of supporting the bulk of the structure. It lacked windows, boasting instead a single door and a chimney that protruded from the roof at a sharp angle. But it wasn't the house itself that drew his notice, but rather the sounds emerging faintly from within. Even over the surrounding cacophony, Jace was certain he heard the rhythm of a tribal drum, accompanied by an inhuman, hissing voice raised in an ongoing chant.
Even as he recognized the cadence as the basis of a potent spell, a heavy rain began to fall. The conflagration that had spread from the fireball's impact sizzled and shrank. The elemental seemed largely unconcerned, though puffs of steam shot from its body in random wounds. But behind it, the water of the swamp began to bulge, to shift, and to rise, as something equally primal struggled to be born.