This is the story of a clockwork man.
Across every world and throughout all flavors of reality, tales are told of artificial girls and mechanical boys whose dream is someday to become a living thing. This is not that kind of story.
This clockwork man was alive, and he dreamed of becoming mechanical.
He turned away from flesh and stink, from birth and blood and mess; he sought even to replace limbs and trunk and head with shining metal. He made of his mind a glittering construct of gears and ratchets, of springs and weights and balances of impossible precision, and he engineered his heart into an assemblage of levers and pulleys, of fulcra, ramps, and gleaming screws.
Flesh is corruption. Metal is incapable of sin.
This is the tragedy of how the clockwork man’s fondest dream began to come true.
Walk the Blind Eternities …
Discover the planeswalkers in their travels across the endless planes of the Multiverse.
AGENTS OF ARTIFICE
ARI MARMELL
Jace Beleren, a powerful sorcerer and planeswalker whose rare telepathic ability opens doors that many would prefer remain closed, is at a crossroads: the decisions he makes now will forever affect his path.
THE PURIFYING FIRE
LAURA RESNICK
The young and impulsive Chandra Nalaar—planeswalker, pyromancer—begins her crash course in the art of boom. When her volatile nature draws the attention of megalomaniacal forces, she will have to learn to control her power before they can control her.
ALARA UNBROKEN
DOUG BEYER
The fierce leonine planeswalker Ajani Goldmane unwittingly uncovers the nefarious agency behind the splintered planes of Alara and their realignment. Meanwhile, fellow planeswalker Elspeth Tirel struggles to preserve the nobility of the first plane she has ever wanted to call homeand. And the dragon shaman Sarkhan Vol finds the embodiment of power he has always sought.
ZENDLKAR: IN THE TEETH OF AKOUM
ROBERT B. WINTERMUTE
Nissa Revane, a planeswalker and proud elf warrior, is witness to what the Eldrazi can do when she stumbles into the vanguard of their monstrous brood. What she doesn’t know is that they are merely pale reflection of the titans that spawned them. But the ancient vampire planeswalker Sorin Markov knows all to well the power of the ancient Eldrazi titans. He was among the original jailers of the ancient scourge and he has returned to Zendikar to make sure they do not escape.
Test of Metal
©2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC
MAGIC: THE GATHERING, PLANESWALKER, WIZARDS OF THE COAST, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries.
Cover art by Michael Komarck
eISBN: 978-0-7869-5805-4
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v3.1
The author respectfully dedicates this story to everyone who is almost as smart as they think they are.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Metal Island: Truth and Dare
Tezzeret: A Man of Parts
Tezzeret: The Dragon’s Jest
Tezzeret: Exchanging Unpleasantries
Tezzeret: The Home Fires, Burning
The Metal Island: The Fire This Time
Baltrice: This Old Man
The Metal Island: The Game, Waiting
Jace Beleren: Friends Like These
The Metal Island: Principles of Design
Tezzeret: Riddle Me This
Tezzeret: A Long and Winding Road, with Zombies
The Metal Island: Life and Times
Tezzeret: Something Stupid
Tezzeret: Pavane for a Death Princess
Tezzeret: Bloodstone, Stone, and Blood
Tezzeret: Even a Broken Clockworker
Tezzeret: The Real Me
Tezzeret: Midpoint, Full Stop
The Metal Island: The Last Riddle
The Metal Island: Enter Leviathan
The Blind Eternities: Who Laughs Last
About the Author
THE METAL ISLAND
TRUTH AND DARE
At the farthest reach of a world that is ocean, there is one small island, and this island is made of metal. The metal has the appearance of age-tarnished silver, or perhaps of burnished pewter, though it can be made more resilient than tool steel and harder than diamond. This metal is not armor, nor paving, nor is it built into structures for shelter. This metal is instead the grass, and the trees, their leaves and their fruit. It is the moss that clings to boulders and the algae in the tide pools, as though some eccentric god had, on a whim, decreed that every material thing on this island be transformed to metal in a single instant. This metal shines in the sun, sings in the winds, and gleams on moonless nights as though gathering starlight against the dawn.
The only living thing on the Metal Island was one lone man, naked on the metal beach, resting on doubled knees, his head lowered as though in meditation or prayer.
The island’s metal does not occur in nature, in any form on any world, from the highest heavens to the deepest hells. This metal is called etherium, and it is arguably the most valuable substance in the Multiverse. Etherium is magic.
Not magical. Many things are magical. In the jigsaw world of Alara, a horse can’t piss without splashing something magical. Most magical things are powered by mana; nearly any kind of magical operation is simply a directed use of mana. Etherium is not magical. It is not a device powered by, or used to direct, mana.
Etherium is magic.
The energies bound into etherium transcend mana as lightning transcends a lightning bug. Etherium is an expression of reality itself. Its power is the power of existence. It can be worked with, transformed, shaped into useful structures, but its power cannot be exhausted, and its substance cannot be unmade.
All of the etherium in existence, on any plane or flavor of reality, had been created by one crazed being—known even to his admirers as Crucius the Mad—in an insane attempt to heal the wounds of broken worlds. One day Crucius had a moment of clarity, and in that moment of clarity he understood what he had done …
And he vanished. Forever.
The island is, all in one place, more etherium than can be found in the entire aggregate of elsewhere. It is wealth enough to buy a medium-size universe. This made it all the more remarkable that the man who kneeled naked on the Metal Island’s shore seemed to have no interest in anything outside his head.
He simply kneeled, thinking.
He was not thinking about the unimaginable wealth that lay before him. He was not even thinking about the power of existence that can be wielded by the metal’s master. He was contemplating a riddle.
This was not the riddle of the island, why one lone speck of dry land should appear in a world that was ocean. This was not the riddle of the island’s etherium, of whence it had come and why it has been worked into all the shapes of life. No: it was an actual riddle. A
classical riddle, posed in a classical manner by a classical riddler.
This riddle lies between the etherium talons of the Metal Sphinx.
The Metal Sphinx reclines upon the etherium sand shore, its face toward the rising sun, its shadow stretched for miles upon the sea. Its open-worked form is a structure of graceful curves and elegant arches that somehow suggest bone and blood and flesh in the different colors of light gathered and reflected by its endless array of polished surfaces. It is vast beyond even the considerable magnitude of actual sphinxes, those winged leviathans of the mountains of Esper. The Metal Sphinx is larger than a house, larger than a warship, larger than a castle; a whole conundrum of young sphinxes might play aerial tag through its curves and angles without any risk of soiling its slightest span by the brush of a wing tip.
The Metal Sphinx rests upon a plinth, also of etherium, that is as tall as a tree and as broad as a good-size farm. The eastern face of this plinth carries a legend, carved deeply into the metal in letters that form themselves into the alphabet most familiar to the reader, and into words that can be understood as though composed in any given reader’s milk tongue. This legend reads:
I AM THE STONE THAT COMES NOT FROM THE SEA
I AM THE BLOOD BUT THE BLOOD IS NOT ME
I AM THE KEY TO THE DOOR WITH NO LOCKS
I AM THE MAINSPRING THAT WINDS BROKEN CLOCKS
I AM YOUR TEARS ON THE CHAINS OF THE RACK
I AM YOUR GIFT AND YOU CAN’T GIVE ME BACK
The naked man had been kneeling there on the shore for a very, very long time—so long that had he been an ordinary man, he would have starved to death, his flesh rotted and bones bleached by the sun long ago. This man was not ordinary. He was prepared to remain there in silent contemplation until the stars themselves burned out.
He spent this time in a state of extraordinarily focused concentration, applying all his considerable resources of mind to this riddle. Sphinxes are uniquely dangerous creatures—even metal ones—and undertaking to unlock their riddles is notoriously perilous.
Guessing the answer wouldn’t help, even if he guessed correctly. He had to know the answer, which is an altogether trickier proposition. His knowing had to be more than words; words without comprehension are as empty as the whistle of wind through dead trees. He had to understand the answer. He had to breathe it in and breathe it out; he had to eat it and drink it and make it as much a part of him as his hand, or his eyes, or his heart.
And when he had kneeled there on the sandy shore of the Metal Island long enough to do all these things, the answer was obvious. He lifted his head, squinting up at the blank etherium eyes of the Metal Sphinx. “Is that it?” he said. “It’s that simple? Really?”
The statue did not seem disposed to reply.
The man sighed. There was one way to know for sure.
He brought his right hand up before his face, turned it this way and that, waggled his fingers, examining its every curve, crease, and follicle, until he had all of these details fixed firmly in his mind. He had learned, from long experience, that people who say, “I know ‘something’ like the back of my hand,” are often correct only because they don’t actually know the backs of their hands—or their fronts, for that matter—in any meaningful way.
“All right, then,” he said at length, speaking aloud with the unselfconsciousness of a man who has become comfortable with solitude. Though he was accustomed to expressing himself (even to himself) in a way that emphasized his impressive vocabulary, in this case, what he expressed was as simple as what he was about to do was complex. “It will suck to be wrong.”
With his left hand, he picked through the tangles of his graying hair until he located a tiny shard of sharp crystal, shaped like a needle the length of the last joint of his thumb. This crystal needle was warmer than could be explained by the man’s body heat, or by the rays of the sun, and even in the brilliant noon, the needle displayed a faint rosy glow.
He made a fist of his right hand until the veins on its back stood out, then shoved the crystal needle lengthwise into one of those veins until it lay wholly under his skin. The blaze of sudden pain, far more intense than a mere pinprick, he had anticipated, and so he was not dismayed even when his hand burst into flame.
While his flesh blackened and charred, he gathered his concentration in a particular way, then extended his arm as though reaching with his burning hand for something invisible in the air before him. As if dipping through the surface boundary of reflective water, his fingers began to disappear, wiping themselves from existence, followed by his burning hand—for there was indeed a surface there through which he reached, though it was not water.
It was the surface of the universe.
The end of the wrist, from which his hand had now disappeared, did not display bone and vein and muscle; instead, it presented a mirrorlike surface of polished metal, which appeared to have roughly the luster of burnished pewter.
The man said, “So far so good,” then closed his eyes to focus every scrap of his attention on what his hand was doing on the far side of reality. He could still feel it as though it were on the beach with him, because it wasn’t actually in another universe, but between universes, in the æther soup of unrealized possibility that he, and those like him, named the Blind Eternities.
What his hand did there took considerable time, as such things were measured on the world that was ocean. When at last he decided his experiment was complete, he focused his mind again as he had on insertion, then pulled his hand back into the universe he shared with the Metal Island.
His hand was grievously burned, flesh blackened and peeling, and the skin on the back of his hand, where he had inserted the crystal needle, was gone altogether, exposing a charred mass of bone and tendon. He nodded to himself; this was one of the possible outcomes he had anticipated. For this outcome, he had planned a further experiment.
He took another needle from his hair and drove it into his burned flesh where the first had been. He focused his attention very much as he had when his hand had been outside the universe … and charred muscle began to heal, and fresh pink skin crept back over it. The last place to close was the back of his hand, where the skin had been altogether missing. Here, just before pink skin covered it altogether, there could be seen—just along one metacarpal and a fractional length of vein—a tiny glint of metal, like burnished pewter … or, of course, etherium, for that was what it was.
He lifted his gaze once more to meet the blank etherium stare of the Metal Sphinx. “Thank you.”
The Metal Sphinx did not reply.
He took a deep breath and settled back into a comfortable position. “And for the rest,” he said to himself, “patience. When using unfamiliar bait, one can only cast it into the ocean and wait to see what bites.”
No great amount of patience was needed; presently, his anticipation was rewarded with the sound of the universe screaming in pain.
This is a sound that ordinary ears cannot hear—it’s more akin to a ragged, rending silence deeper than that of airless space—but the man knew this sound well, and he did not even lift his head as vast talons sliced into the world-ocean from the outside, ripping a hole in reality, pulling the shreds apart, slicing the universe in a gruesome parody of birth. Shortly, the rip in reality was torn wide enough that a scaled shoulder appeared, bringing with it a vast leathery wing, and finally a dragon the size of a house forced itself into the world.
The dragon held a human in its jaws, wedged in the corner of its mouth as a rich man might hold a fine cigar. All that could be seen of this unfortunate individual was the lower half of his naked body, which was how the man who kneeled on the shore could tell—with the help of excellent vision—that this man was in fact a man.
The dragon’s eyes shone with a yellow flame that cast a pale dandelion glow on the white sand. Actual flames licked out from its eyeballs, sending greasy pale smoke twisting upward between its horns. Smoke of a different sort leaked from the dragon’s nos
trils. Someone familiar with dragons would have noted that this one seemed angry—to say it burned with fury would be literally accurate.
This dragon pounced like an enormous cat. One taloned forelimb slammed the man on the shore onto his back, pinning him to the ground, then began, ever so slowly, to crush the life from him.
“Bolas.” The man did not show the slightest discomfort. “Took your time, didn’t you?”
“Oh, very funny. Took my time.” The dragon’s voice was compounded of thunder and landslide. Even spoken out of the side of its mouth, each word might have been crushed from a granite mountain. “You have a refined sense of humor, for a dead man.”
“I’m surprised you even realized it was a joke.”
“This is what I think of comedy.” In its free hand, the dragon took the man’s legs, which kicked weakly at the corner of its jaw, and bit the man in half. His scream of agony was brief, and mostly muffled, being inside the dragon’s mouth. The dragon broke off the corpse’s lower half as though it were a celery stick as he chewed on the rest. A black tongue flicked up, around, and across the dragon’s mouth, gathering the sprays of blood that had splattered its scales.
The dragon, whose name was Nicol Bolas, was not known for his sense of humor.
The man pinned under the dragon’s other hand did not look impressed. “That wouldn’t happen to have been Jace Beleren, would it?”
“B’l’rn?” The dragon made a face and spit the mangled remnant of torso into the sea. “Ychh. Raw free-range human. Tastes like goat balls.” The dragon made another face and spit again. “No, sorry to disappoint, Tezzeret—that wasn’t Jace. He would taste like, oh, spring lamb, I imagine. That … inedible crap … was that clockworker of yours.”
“Renn?” The man, who was called Tezzeret, broadened his smile. “The last time I saw him, he was nothing more than a head and etherium. Even his heart. No lungs at all, nor any of the other bits. Getting himself a whole new body must have been a substantial undertaking, even for him.”
“He didn’t,” the dragon said. “I did. The rebuild was his fee for telling me where you went.”
Test of Metal Page 1