by Ari Marmell
After only a few minutes of mountains and rivers, mines and foundries, treaties and neutral grounds, Jace found his mind wandering. The voices of the dragon and the artificer both faded into background noise, not unlike the blizzard itself.
Tiresome, isn't it, Jace Beleren?
Jace practically leaped out of his clothes, which might well have posed a problem given the ambient temperatures. He recognized the voice, yet the dragon's attention remained fixed on Tezzeret, its massive maw moving as it spoke. It took the mage several heartbeats to recognize telepathic speech when he was on the receiving end, rather than the projecting.
Lord Bolas? he sent questioningly.
Nicol Bolas. You'd be surprised how little titles mean after you've claimed pretty much all of them.
Jace found himself nodding and forced himself to stop. Somehow, he didn't think Tezzeret would be all that pleased to learn this conversation was taking place.
I find myself curious, Bolas continued. How did one such as you find yourself cleaning up the artificer's messes?
Again, Jace had to stop himself-this time, from shrugging. It was the best offer I had coming to me.
Ah. You may find, Jace Beleren, that being the best doesn't make it good.
A moment passed, and still the dragon continued to argue with Tezzeret, offering up not the slightest sign of any other effort.
How did you lose an entire organization, anyway? Jace would have taken the thought back as soon as he sent it, but of course it was far too late.
Bolas merely chuckled, a strange sound to hear inside one's own mind. And here I'd taken you for a coward.
Well, I-
In short, Jace Beleren, I grew careless. I have many such factions and cabals that answer to me, and I cannot keep as close a watch on them as I might wish. Not anymore, he added bitterly.
Jace wanted to ask him what that meant but decided he'd pushed things far enough.
The artificer simply worked his way up through the organization until he was near the top-and then he and his minions slew everyone of higher rank. More important, they slew everyone, save those they implicitly trusted, who knew that the Consortium secretly answered to me. Without my own people to counter his commands, he simply stepped into the power vacuum and continued operating as though nothing had changed.
I have, on occasion, attempted to slip agents back into the ranks, but he always seems to detect them. Though the dragon's head did not turn, Jace had the sudden sensation that he was being glared at. It's almost as though he has a mind-reader in his employ, isn't it?
Jace, who had more than once been asked to check a new recruit for loyalty and had pointed out those who were harboring secrets, smiled wanly and glanced around for any place to run.
But when Bolas "spoke" again, he sounded wistful rather than angry. We were gods once, Beleren. Did you know that?
I-what?
No, I suppose you wouldn't. Not at your age. The dragon heaved what Jace could only call a mental sigh. The Spark burned so much brighter then. We willed our desires upon the worlds, and the worlds obeyed. And then, the catastrophe on Dominaria and we…
We are less, Beleren. Less than we were… The dragon's mind threatened to burn Jace's soul with its sudden heat. And less than we will be!
Jace felt his world spinning, overwhelmed at the intensity of Bolas's fervor. Why… Why are you telling me this?
Why, Jace Beleren? I thought that you would care to know. That, and it made for a magnificent diversion, don't you think?
Even as Jace froze, a lightning bolt of panic flashing through him, he felt the dragon's mind sweep past, arrowing for gaps in the "net" of thoughts and notions with which he had surrounded Tezzeret's mind.
His body rigid, as though he'd long since succumbed to the blizzard's touch, Jace hurled the entire force of his will into a mental lunge. His mind screamed into the ice, and nobody heard. Like a closing fist, he snapped shut the grid of thought, trying to block Bolas before he-
Oh, dear Heaven!
Jace's mind quailed before the greatest power he had ever felt. The innermost depths of Alhammarret's psyche, the very core of the wizard's being, had been nothing, a gentle springtime gust to the roaring hurricane that was this single tendril of the dragon's mind.
That tendril became a spear, stabbing at Tezzeret's mind. The web-work of Jace's magic closed around it, trapping it between ideas. Bolas pushed, Jace squeezed, and for just an instant- precious little time, yet a far more impressive feat than Jace would ever realize-the young mage held fast.
Sweat poured from his brow and froze, forming a tiny hedge of his hair. His eyes watered, threatening to do the same, and Jace blinked them clear before the forming icicles could blind him. His head pounded, and the sky and the snow turned gray before his fading vision. In seconds, what little mana waited to be tapped underground was gone. He strained to reach farther out, hoping for more, and found almost none to be had. Bolas, or whatever wizards dwelt on this inhospitable world, had truly sucked the region dry.
His breathing came in short and ragged gasps, the frigid air burning his lungs. His stomach knotted, his fists clenched inside their gloves. He felt a capillary burst in his left eye, heard something pop deep in his sinuses. He felt a liquid warmth running from his nose, a warmth that didn't last long before it, too, began to freeze.
Still the pressure grew, the mind-tendril shifting in his grasp, and Jace knew, without knowing how he knew, that the dragon had not yet begun to struggle. Maybe-maybe-if Jace had remained focused, if he'd caught the attack before it had already penetrated his scattered defenses, he might have had a chance. He could have altered the phalanx of concentration and deliberation that protected Tezzeret, closed the gaps before Bolas exploited them, and just perhaps repulsed the dragon long enough to get Tezzeret some sort of warning.
But now? Every instinct Jace had, every part of his soul, shrieked at him to retreat, to draw back into his mind and get as far away as possible. With a defeated gasp, he tumbled to the ground. His body shook, and the ice and snow around him turned pink with blood.
Tezzeret saw none of this. The artificer, still in mid-sentence, staggered as the weight of Nicol Bolas's mind touched his own. Only then, jaw slack with shock and a growing alarm, did he glance behind long enough to notice Jace crawling across the ice.
"Really, Tezzeret," Nicol Bolas said, his tone unchanged. "I'm disappointed. Of course, I've already killed him; I've known he was being paid off for some time. But he didn't seem to know who was receiving the ore he skimmed from my shipments. Smart move, using a third party.
"Coming to see me afterward, somewhat less so."
"You can't touch me, Bolas!" Tezzeret insisted, drawing himself back to his full height even as his body began to shake for reasons that had nothing to do with the cold. His left hand was behind him, hovering over a pouch of implements and tools, while his prosthetic was raised high, ready to cast a battery of potent spells. "Whatever you're accusing me of doing outside this place, the wards bind you while you're here!"
The dragon's laughter thundered through the canyons and set the snow atop the nearest mountains to quivering. "Little artificer, you are absolutely correct. I am bound by the same wards you are, and you would be long gone by the time I could break them."
Tezzeret felt at least a bit of tension drain from his shoulders-only to return twice over as an arrow thudded into the ground at his feet, sending shards of ice slicing into the leather of his boot.
"Of course," Bolas continued, as a veritable mob of humanoid silhouettes appeared atop the chasm's walls, "as you've already so generously established when bribing my servants, third parties don't count."
The crunch of his steps drowned out by the sounds of running men, twanging bowstrings, and the hideous rumble of Bolas's laughter, Tezzeret fled.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The snow gave only slightly beneath the artificer's feet, scarcely slowing him, as though he were partly held aloft by some invisible
platform. Swiftly he drew even with Jace, and for a moment he appeared disinclined to stop. Only when he saw the younger mage already struggling to rise did he reach out a metallic hand and haul him to his feet.
"Can you run?" Tezzeret demanded of him.
"I-"
"Run or die." Jace ran.
Arrows fell around them, thick as sleet, and Jace stumbled frequently in the deep snows, slowing their progress. One of the razor-edged missiles sliced through the flesh of Tezzeret's left arm, sending a spray of blood to solidify swiftly on the freezing earth. The artificer grunted, scooped a fistful of snow in his etherium hand and clamped it over the shallow wound to stanch the blood, but otherwise seemed scarcely to notice.
Yet the sleet was their ally, as was the howling wind, for they caused most of the native hunters' bows to aim wide, protecting the fugitives until Tezzeret gathered his wits sufficiently to cast an illusion of shifting white above them, blending, at least from a distance, with the fallen snow.
He dashed around a sharp bend in the canyon wall, bodily yanking a panting Jace after him. From his pouch he yanked a crystal sphere, the same he'd used to spy on Jace during Baltrice's test. Holding it to his eye, sharpening his vision far beyond what might qualify as human, he peered back around the corner.
Distance meant nothing; the falling snow ceased to blur his sight. He saw several dozen men scaling the chasm walls like spiders, some not even bothering with ropes to aid their descent. Each sported a heavy beard of red or brown or blond, and each was clad in leathers and furs belonging to no animal Tezzeret had ever seen alive. Axes and scramaseaxes hung from their waists, short but powerful bows across their backs. Barbarians, then, no doubt hired or pressed into service from native tribes. Of Bolas, he could detect no sign, save for a trace of laughter still hovering upon the frigid winds.
But what worried him most were not the barbarians themselves, though their numbers were daunting indeed. Rather, it was a pair of men already at the base of the cliff, each of whom wore a heavy cloak of red-dyed fur atop his armor. How they got there, Tezzeret didn't know, but they pulled a two-wheeled wagon made of old, cracked wood. Atop it stood a box, perhaps five feet on a side, sculpted entirely of black iron and covered with simple runes that steamed in the icy air.
Even as Tezzeret found himself wondering what might lurk in that cage of steel and spell, one of the bearers leaned in toward the metal, ran a hand over the carven symbols. Starting from that rune, the metal warped, bending and peeling away, a grotesque flower of blackened iron. And the thing within emerged.
A single limb struck the ice and snow, like the front paw of a stalking hound, yet this was no paw but a humanoid hand. Long fingers splayed out as the palm touched the ice, followed instantly by a second hand.
It was humanoid, this thing, and indeed roughly human size, yet it crept on all fours as a hunting beast. Tezzeret could clearly see its eyes flickering this way and that, its crooked teeth behind a scraggly bearded jaw. It was built like a man, it moved like an animal-and it was made entirely of mists, individual wisps woven together, the final steaming breaths of a hundred frozen corpses.
And though it could not possibly have seen Tezzeret through sheets of sleet and a blanket of illusion, nonetheless it raised its head to the skies in a silent howl and began to lope in their direction, the barbarians following.
Again they ran, Jace panting and wheezing beside the artificer, who seemed utterly tireless. More than once Jace stumbled, tripped up by snow drifts over which Tezzeret smoothly ran; and after his third tumble, Tezzeret stopped reaching down a hand to haul him up. Jace felt a sudden chill that had nothing whatsoever to do with the blizzard around them, and redoubled his efforts.
Once and once only, Tezzeret-far more comfortable in the role of hunter than hunted-stopped and turned to fight. Mouthing a complex spell, he hurled a tiny shard of scrap metal. It flew far, and against the wind, to strike the iron box in which the barbarian's ghostly hound had lurked-and that iron began to bend. It toppled slowly off the wagon, accompanied by the sound of rending metal. And then it rose, a mere box no longer, but a construct of enormous size, humanoid but twice as tall as a human, inhabited by whatever spirit Tezzeret had called from the outer void. It stepped forward with a series of clicks and whirrs, ready to engage the barbarians in battle.
And from above, a shadow spread over the ice-veiled sun. Nicol Bolas circled once, wings outspread as though to clutch the world entire, and melted Tezzeret's forged ally to slag with a single fiery exhalation, filling the chasm with choking fumes.
The flames never came near the artificer or the mage, of course, for Bolas was indeed still bound by the ward. And again his laughter echoed through the canyon as Jace and Tezzeret ran once more, the barbarians close on their heels. Jace looked briefly back, and noticed with some puzzlement that the frozen apparition leading those barbarians stopped for a moment to stare at the swiftly cooling scrap; an idea began to work its way through the haze of exhaustion that smothered his mind.
The chasm grew jagged. Spurs of rock reached into their path, grabbing at cloak and limb; narrow bridges arched overhead, from which extra bits of snow sifted down as savages ran from one side to the other seeking a better vantage. Beneath the snow and the ice, the stone grew precarious, until even Tezzeret had to slow his pace lest an ankle turn beneath him or he find himself planted face-first on the ground.
And always the barbarians were there, led by their unerring hound. They lurked above, sending arrows deep into the chasm at the slightest sign of motion. They ran only a few hundred yards behind, following the directions of the ghostly guide from the box. Time and again Jace and Tezzeret took cover and heard only the winds, hoped that they might have lost their pursuers long enough to walk from this world, only to hear the echoes of nearing boots as they began their concentrations.
Eventually even the seemingly indefatigable Tezzeret was wheezing, and Jace had to keep one hand constantly on the wall to prevent himself from toppling over.
Turning on his heel, the artificer dragged Jace into still another tiny crevice, one that would provide no shelter at all once their pursuers spotted them. But this time, Tezzeret cried out, calling upon every iota of mana he could spare without stranding him on this forsaken rock of a world. To each side of the fissure, the clinging ice melted into running rivulets, the stone grew red hot. Slowly- too slowly, Jace feared-it poured across the front of the crevice, sealing it away from the main chasm. Tezzeret continued to stand, chanting, face sweating despite the cold, and as swiftly as it had melted, the rock began to cool. In a matter of instants, a featureless wall of stone separated prey from hunters.
Jace staggered, all but falling against the wall. His head still pounded, and he could hardly speak for the frozen crust of sweat and blood that caked the side of his face. He knew that casting much of anything was unwise, that he had to save his physical strength to get out of this world.
"That'll hold the savages out," Tezzeret grunted, "but I don't think it's going to stop that other-thing. How does it keep finding us?"
Struggling to stay alert, Jace whispered hoarsely, "I think it senses our warmth, Tezzeret." Again he tried to dig deep into the surrounding ice, hoping, pleading for a source of mana into which he could tap. And again he found nothing but dregs.
But what he found instead was inspiration.
"Tezzeret!" he hissed into the shadows. "That gadget of yours? The one keeping you warm!"
"What about it?" Tezzeret asked suspiciously.
"Can you make it generate cold instead?"
"Beleren, what good could that possibly-you're not serious!"
"No, of course not. It's a joke I've been saving for just the right bloody occasion."
"Do you have any idea how cold the air would have to be to block our own body heat? If we take even half a minute too long, we'll freeze to death!"
Jace scowled. "And you're arguing with me, wasting what time we have, because you have a better idea."
Outside, the beast of the frost had placed a single hand upon the newly formed wall separating the crevice from the outside world, when it abruptly stopped. Uttering a canine whimper, it lifted its head and sniffed heavily at the air. Puzzled, it tried again, and yet again.
Nothing. No heat at all, save its masters and their packmates behind it.
For many long moments it stood, confused as it had never been before. But the tattered soul that empowered the spectral thing was not that of any hound, however much it behaved as one. It had once been a man, and though all traces of that man were gone and forgotten, the beast could reason still. Thus, when it could not reacquire any trace of its prey, it made straight for the point it had scented them last.
But those few minutes of confusion made all the difference. When it finally seeped into the crevice, its misty form passing between the rocks and snow where even a beetle could not have creeped, it found the hollow empty.
"How are you doing, Jace?" Kallist asked, leaning against the wall beside the doorway.
Jace looked up from beneath a veritable mountain of blankets. "I'll be fine," he said, "though that may be the last remnants of the kalyola brandy talking."
The other man grinned. "Feeling no pain, are you?" "Kallist," Jace said, and chuckled, "I'm not sure I can even feel my head." His face quickly turned serious, however. "What about your assignment?" he asked. "Were you still able to make it look natural?"
"Barely. It required a whole lot of fire. You really don't want to know any more about it." He smirked knowingly. "And don't think you can change the topic that easily, either."
"Honestly, Kallist, I'm fine. It was just a toe; I've got nine more. The healers say I shouldn't even be limping after a few more days."
Kallist nodded. "You think Tezzeret had to have anything amputated?"
"I have no idea, but you be sure to let me know when you plan on asking him. I'd like to be elsewhere."
"Well, it won't be today," Kallist said, his own expression turning serious as well. "Today he wants to talk to you."