Agents of Artifice p-1

by Ari Marmell

  Paldor really had sent everyone, hadn't he?

  The centaur reared, a short spear clutched in his right hand, his iron-shod hooves sharpened almost into blades in their own right, and Jace could only choke, trying to clear his lungs of the powder in time to do something, anything to save his life.

  Another figure lunged from the crowd, leaping atop the centaur's back as though he were a wild horse in need of breaking. Xalmarias cried out in indignation as a powerful hand reached out and snagged his spear, trying to yank it from his grip, even as the other buried itself in his hair, wrenching his head back sharply enough to bring tears to his eyes.

  "Jace!" Kallist cried out, struggling to keep his seat as the centaur bucked and thrashed, "Go! Run!"

  Staggering to his feet, the coughing fit finally beginning to subside, Jace did just that. He hurled himself once more into the crowd, which was now backing fearfully away from the struggle in their midst, trying to lose himself within.

  As he pushed and elbowed his way through, Jace carefully cast out with his mind. Remembering every detail of Tezzeret's lessons, he touched first one, then another, spreading himself as wide and as thin as he ever had. He couldn't read a single true thought this way, but then, he didn't need to. Most of the crowd felt little save boredom, maybe casual excitement or-near where Kallist and Xalmarias fought-a growing fear. Jace hoped, prayed, that even his casual touch would alert him to another killer in the crowd, that the sudden bloodlust of a coming attack would warn him before a Consortium blade took him in the back.

  And then the emotions around him turned to panic as a dozen people screamed, their eyes turning skyward. Jace immediately dived to the ground in a roll made awkward by his lingering shortness of breath, coming to a stop beneath a cheap vegetable stand. Only then did he look up, and he wondered if it wouldn't have been better to keep rolling.

  It flapped through the air above him, awkward but frighteningly swift. It had somehow sprouted wings that it had lacked the last time Jace saw it, that horrible night in his room, but he recognized the old man's cackling face, the scorpion-like stinger that quivered, eager to strike, above its back.

  Coming to his feet, he allowed himself to be carried along by the press of the panicking throng. That he could summon something to tear the little horror from the sky, Jace had no doubt, but it did him no good if he couldn't find its summoner-Gemreth, almost certainly, unless Paldor had called in one of the Consortium planeswalkers.

  Straining to maintain his mental "net" over the crowd, ever alert for a secondary attack, Jace cast his sight up and out, trusting the press of the throng to keep him moving while his senses hovered elsewhere. From above, he peered about him in all directions, seeking the dark robes and grey-speckled beard…

  There! Roughly a hundred feet across the market, Jace spotted his foe, crouched atop a merchant's wagon. Allowing his eyesight to return to his head, still moving with a portion of the crowd, he worked his way forward. As he advanced, he glanced over his shoulder, desperate to keep track of the minuscule fiend as well.

  He couldn't see it!

  A cold rain of fear dripped down Jace's spine. Without eyes on the creature, he was as helpless as anyone else, for he could never detect the little demon's mind as he could a mortal being's. He knew he could wait no longer to call on assistance of his own. It was a tricky thing to do while maintaining his psychic web over the crowd, keeping track not only of the enemy mage but searching for other foes who might lurk nearby, but again-thanks, ironically, to Tezzeret's exercises-he pulled it off.

  And the screams of the crowd rose further still as another shape, a larger shape, appeared with a thunderclap in the afternoon sky. Its wingspan wider than many of the vendors' stalls, a steam-tongued drake cast a shadow over the heart of the market. At Jace's silent command it circled, hunting for its smaller but no less deadly prey. Jace himself continued onward, thankful that the flying creatures had distracted the people nearest him so that none had seen him cast his spells.

  It was the gleam of triumph in Gemreth's expression as Jace drew near him, more so even than the shriek of the drake, that warned him. Jace spun to see the diminutive demon diving from atop a nearby shop. Even as he dropped once more to the earth, Jace sent a mental shriek for help to his summoned ally.

  And the drake replied in the only way it knew how.

  A wave of billowing steam washed over the market, a burning spear through the heart of Lurias. In a matter of seconds, Gemreth and his conjured beast were reduced to lumps of seared flesh and sodden bone.

  So, too, were a score of the district's panicked citizens. They died in terror; they died in agony.

  And Jace felt each and every one of them die.

  Through his network of psychic tendrils that scanned the crowd, their dying thoughts flowed into him. They flayed his mind and soul, stripping away humanity and conscious thought, until there was nothing left but pain. So much pain, so much fear, so many Final cries and he'd never again see his husbands or wives or brothers or sisters, would never open the blacksmith shop he'd dreamed of, never watch the seyer-blossoms bloom in the garden. What would the children do without him? Tanarra I loved you, oh gods it hurts it burns please gods make it stop…

  Jace curled into a ball, body and soul, screaming in voices that were not his, and all he knew was pain.

  "Jace!" Kallist had no difficulty finding his fallen friend; the burst of steam and the scent of charred flesh were signal enough. He knelt on the cobblestones, dropping the sword now stained with the blood of the centaur Xalmarias, and cradled Jace's head in his hands. "Jace, are you all right? What happened?"

  The mage's eyes refused to focus, and still he screamed.

  For an instant, Kallist felt only panic. What had happened? What could he do? Maybe he should wait for Liliana, but where was she? Could he afford to wait that long? Could Jace?

  No. No, Kallist didn't think he could.

  "Jace!" He held his friend's face close. "Jace, listen to me! It's Kallist; I'm here!"

  He took a deep breath; he didn't know what Jace was suffering, but he'd both seen and inflicted enough anguish to recognize it now. A second deep breath, steeling himself against he knew not what.

  "Jace, I don't know what to do! Tell me what I can do…"

  Jace never heard the words, but he felt the thoughts and the emotions behind them. Kallist's mind, which he knew so well, was a beacon in the dark and the pain, a light showing him the way out.

  And Jace's screaming ceased. Kallist felt something invade his mind, a touch that squeezed so painfully he thought he must surely die or go mad himself-but it squeezed not with anger, but with fear, a grip of desperation.

  Jace felt Kallist's mind in his hands, a rock amid the tearing tides around him. Clinging to it, he hauled himself back, inch by maddening, agonizing inch.

  Both men lay, side by side, panting in exhaustion and pain, surrounded by the dead and the dying until Liliana found them moments later. And with Jace leaning on her, Kallist staggering behind, they managed to limp away before Sevrien and his soldiers could find them once more.

  "Fight back? Are you insane?"

  Liliana shook her head. "Jace, they found us. They'll keep finding us! What choice do we have?"

  They were huddled in Kallist's own flat, trying to catch their breath and regroup. The shutters were tightly latched, casting the room in a grim shade, and the door was triple-bolted. Kallist had sworn they'd be safe there, at least for a time, as he hadn't rented the place under his own name. Still, they jumped at every sound, froze at every movement in the stairwell or the street beyond.

  Jace sat flopped in a thickly cushioned chair, pale and shaking, though some of his strength seemed to have returned. He refused outright to discuss what had happened, brushing off even Liliana's most concerned inquiries, focusing only on what came next.

  "Liliana," he said softly, "we can't. I can't."

  "What choice?" she demanded again.

  "We planeswalk.
We go somewhere they'll never find us."

  "It means leaving Kallist behind," Liliana reminded him.

  "That's fine." Both of them turned to see Kallist in the door to the flat's tiny kitchen, a mug of something or other in his hand. "I'm not prepared to give up my life a second time," he told them. "Besides, let's be honest. They're not really after me. Once they've figured out you two are gone, I doubt they'll spend too much time hunting for me. I'll disappear for a few weeks, and that'll be it."

  "Just like that?" Jace asked, and neither Kallist nor Liliana was entirely sure if he doubted Kallist's predictions, or referred to the end of their own relationship.

  "I think so," he answered softly. "You do what you need to, Jace. I'll be fine."

  For several hours Jace and Liliana talked, discussing possible worlds and destinations, she occasionally trying to talk him into staying and fighting, he always refusing even to consider the notion. And eventually she rose and left, ostensibly to send her ghosts out to see if Jace's flat was safe, so they could recover the rest of his belongings, but mostly because she was sick of arguing.

  All right, so he'd need a bit more convincing. She could do that. She had time.

  Only when she was well and truly gone did Jace rise and make his way to the next room, to which Kallist had retired, giving the couple the chance to talk. He stood in the doorway, staring at his friend who slumped, dozing, at the table.

  He hadn't told Liliana what he'd planned; she'd have tried to talk him out of it. He hadn't told Kallist, for Kallist would most assuredly have refused. And Jace admitted he'd have had good reason to do so.

  But Jace couldn't leave him behind, not now. He'd been in Kallist's mind, seen how much his friend still worried for him. And Jace worried for him in turn. He knew Tezzeret-better than Kallist did-and Jace believed, in his heart and soul, that Kallist was wrong. He wasn't safe here, not even if Jace and Liliana were gone for decades.

  There was a way. He'd thought it possible for years, ever since Tezzeret had told him of his "mind-storage" device, ever since he'd felt the minds of the traitor and the nezumi shogun and realized they were, indeed, objects that he could manipulate. And now, now that he'd touched Kallist's mind once more, felt its weight, its shape, its essence, Jace was all but certain.

  No, a planeswalker couldn't take another person with him through the Blind Eternities. But another mind? That, Jace knew, he could do. He could hold Kallist within himself, just long enough to make the journey and to find another body, a new body, for him to inhabit. It would mean erasing the mind of someone else, to make room for Kallist's own, but Jace was certain he could find someone who deserved it.

  Kallist would never forgive him; he knew that before he even started. But he would be alive, and Jace owed him that-even if it wasn't what Kallist thought he wanted.

  With a deep sigh, Jace thrust his mind into his friend's. Again he cradled it in his grip, tenderly examining it from all sides. And then he did what he'd never tried before-what nobody, to his knowledge, had ever tried before-and drew it to him.

  He was Jace Beleren, mind-reader, planeswalker. And he knew he could do this.

  Knew, right up until the moment that Kallist's mind truly entered his own, and everything went wrong.

  Jace thought he could keep them separate, that he could keep the him that was Kallist in a tiny corner of the him that was Jace. Two minds sharing a body, yes, but far from equally. As they touched, Jace's protections popped, soap bubbles on the wind, for this was a pressure of a sort he'd never known. It wasn't an attack, it wasn't communication, it wasn't anything he could have imagined-and what Jace could not imagine, he could not weave into his spells.

  Already he was experiencing memories not his own, remembering dreams he'd never had. He seemed to be staring at the room from two different angles, staring at two faces, and he couldn't recall which was his. His head began to throb, his concentration to blow away like perfume on the wind.

  Desperately he tried to stop the spell, to push Kallist's thoughts back where they belonged-but even if he'd had the power or the focus to do so, Jace had already forgotten how, the knowledge buried beneath the flood of someone else's mind.

  Still he pushed, running on instinct now rather than knowledge, struggling to separate the thoughts of his friend from his own, even if he could no longer remember which was which, who was who.

  On it went, and on, until finally what had nearly become one was indeed two once more. And Jace, who had been Kallist, and Kallist, who had been Jace, lay unconscious together on the thin rug of the anonymous flat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Slowly, so slowly, the rush of returning memories, of a returning life, subsided. Shivering violently despite the night's warmth, Jace Beleren opened his eyes, and found himself once more in the alley-once more today-lost no more in the memories of the past. For the first time in months, he was himself, rather than the man whose thoughts and recollections he'd stolen.

  His hands and legs were coated in refuse from where he'd fallen, and the stench of the alleyway permeated his clothes. He noticed neither. The sounds of the city, muted but hardly silenced after the setting of the sun, crept into the narrow walkway behind him, and he ignored them as well.

  How long he'd lain there, he couldn't say. He felt as though he were awakening from a long sleep, a sleep beset by nightmares of his own device. Jace rocked back on his heels, wiped a sleeve across his face to clear the worst of the tears from his cheeks.

  A dozen times he drew breath to speak to his absent friend, a dozen times he faltered.

  "How can I?" he whispered finally. "How do you apologize for something like this? 'Oh, I'm so sorry I lost control of the spell. I never meant to steal your mind; I just meant to commandeer it for a while and stick it somewhere else. Still friends?'"

  Jace shook his head, and sniffled once or twice. "You'd know what to say, Kallist. I don't know if I'd want to hear it, but you'd say it. I was so sure. So certain I knew what was best for you, so certain I could do it. The great Jace Beleren couldn't fail, could he?"

  Jace sank until he sat on the filthy ground.

  "You know I came to Favarial to save you?" he said with a bitter laugh. "Well, to save 'Jace.' And it was your strength and your decision that brought me here. You who decided to do the right thing, not me.

  "There's so much I wish we could have settled, Kallist. Even if I could never have made up for what I did to you, I could have tried. Maybe even been friends again, now that I understand why Liliana did what she did, why she left 'Jace' for…"

  And then he was up and running, cursing himself for a thousand kinds of fool. Here he was, moping in alleyways, with who-knew-what still happening to Liliana. He remembered her cry from the stairwell, and a surge of magic passed through him, a spell he could only have wished to cast when he'd still thought himself to be Kallist. He directed his magics sharply down and allowed them to lift him skyward, spreading out in invisible wings of pure telekinetic force that brushed the buildings to each side, the feel of the stone cold against his mind. He took to the air, arcing over the nearest buildings, angling sharply toward the apartment that his mind in Kallist's body had called home.

  This was Ravnica. Nobody gave the soaring figure more than a second look.

  Before him was an open window, broken and shattered in Semner's attack. Jace swooped inside, the psychic wings fading into nothingness even as his feet touched the floor.

  Liliana stared with wide, red-rimmed eyes from the floor, where she'd slumped exhausted against the fallen table. Shaky as a newborn fawn she rose, and made her way toward him with tentative steps. He feared, at first, that she was injured, but the blood that stained her gown was not hers.

  "Jace?" she asked softly, her hand rising, her fingers brushing the side of his face, as light as hummingbird's breath. "Jace?"

  He nodded once, trembling at her words, her touch.

  "Oh, Jace, I'm sorry!" He almost found himself falling back as she wrapped h
er arms tight around him, as though afraid he'd simply vanish once more. "I wanted to explain, I wanted to fix it," she sobbed into his chest. "I didn't know how."

  "It's all right," he told her through tears of his own. "It's not your fault. I did it to myself, to me and to-to Kallist." His words ended in a soft gasp, and he refused to turn his gaze, to look at the room beyond the woman he held. "I wonder… I don't think the right one of us survived, Liliana. I think he deserved it more than me."

  "What was it like?" she asked gently, face still pressed against him.

  "It… It didn't really feel like anything," he replied slowly, thinking back over the past six months. "I mean, I was just him. It didn't feel like anything had changed. Even when…" She felt his chest move as he shrugged. "We're not exactly identical twins, but it somehow never occurred to me that my face had changed. If I thought about it, I could have said 'Jace was the one who lost a toe to frostbite,' yet whenever I looked at the stump, it just felt natural. I never even questioned it."

  "Your soul," she suggested.

  "What?"

  "You traded minds, Jace, not souls. Your soul was still you. Maybe that was its way of protecting your mind. Maybe knowing what had happened without being able to fix it would have-damaged you."

  "I'm not sure I believe there's any such thing as a soul separate from the mind," he admitted.

  "There is." It was scarcely more than a whisper. "Believe me, there is."

  Jace nodded, and finally steeled himself for what was to come. Tenderly but firmly, he pulled himself from Liliana's grasp and stepped across the room, ignoring Semner's mutilated corpse as he searched for-

  Jace dropped to his knees, felt Liliana's hand on his shoulder and couldn't even turn to meet her gaze. He'd known Kallist was dead, of course, had known since he awoke in the alleyway with his own memories, but to see it…

  "I couldn't save him," she whispered to him.