Test of Metal

by Matthew Stover

  Her eyes drifted shut, and she lowered her head until Tezzeret might have touched her mask-shield with his hand. “Your gracious nature confounds me, Tezzeret,” she piped solemnly. “I do not know how to address you with proper honor, as the master of my life and all I possess.”

  “If you choose to address me by any word other than my name,” he said, “I would be honored to be called your friend.”

  Behind him the dragon grunted disgustedly, “Since when do you have friends?”

  “Bolas.” Tezzeret did not turn around, and his voice was mild as the ocean around them: a gentle surface beneath which lurked unimaginable threat. “Manners.”

  The dragon growled low in his throat, but subsided.

  “Then my friend you shall be,” piped Sharuum, “unto the end of my days, and beyond. It will be written upon my tomb, first among my titles: ‘Friend to Tezzeret the Seeker.’ ”

  “Thank you,” he said, and reached up to touch the edge of her mask-shield with one hand.

  The etherium that had filled her scars turned once more to liquid, draining down her face like silvery tears. “The etherium strands—the tears of my beloved—bring light to my eyes and strength to my limbs. They cannot remain?”

  “From this place, one can take only what is brought from beyond,” Tezzeret said. “And memories.”

  “Then let it be so. Memories are more than I’d hoped to gain.”

  Tezzeret gestured, and the rippling plane of etherium-colored interplanar gate reappeared. “Give my regards to your son.”

  Sharuum, Grand Hegemon of Esper, looked back at him with a smile and, astonishingly, a wink. “It will be done, my friend,” she said, then entered the gate and passed beyond the universe.

  Tezzeret turned toward where Nicol Bolas sat upon the etherium sand like an obedient puppy—a sixty-foot-long, fire-breathing, horned, scaled, and impressively fanged puppy, but obedient nonetheless.

  “As I promised, you are free to depart as well, Bolas,” Tezzeret said, “but my tale nears its end. I hope you might be interested enough to stay yet awhile.”

  “Your tale is closer to its end than you think.” The dragon’s eyes went sleepy, and a hint of sneer curled one corner of his upper lip. “You’ve gotten so good at riddles, try this one: What’s at each end of a tale?”

  “Our business doesn’t have to take very long, but if you choose to be difficult,” Tezzeret said, “it can take the rest of your life.”

  “Aw, Tezzie, come on! Play along.”

  “Don’t call me Tezzie,” he said. “Before you answer, recall that here and now, I can stop you. And I can promise you won’t like it.”

  “Tezzeret, then. Humor me.” The dragon’s sneer spread toward a mocking grin. “What’s at each end of a tale?”

  With a tiny irritated shake of his head, Tezzeret said, “Fine. I give. What’s at each end of a tale?”

  “At one end, nothing at all,” the dragon said. “At the other, an asshole.”

  Tezzeret made a face. “Up to your usual standard of wit.”

  “You just don’t get why it’s funny. It’s a double pun,” said Nicol Bolas. “Come on, Tezzie—you called me an asshole.…”

  “I called you a doltish thug.”

  “You’re missing the point.” Bolas dropped the playful mockery in favor of a darkly infinite certainty. “I am the end of your tale.”

  Tezzeret frowned, and clouds gathered overhead, spitting jagged lightning.

  He cleared his throat, and the Metal Island trembled with earthquake.

  He lifted his hands, and the eldritch energies of the etherium around him supercharged his layered shields until he blazed with power, brighter than the sun itself. “Do we need to have this conversation all over again?”

  The dragon bared his fangs. “Want to see a trick?”

  “No.”

  “One little trick. You’ll love it. I promise.”

  “Watch mine instead.” Tezzeret made a fist, and from the sand shot upward girders of etherium thicker than a man’s chest that in an instant had curled around the dragon and braided themselves into an impenetrable cage that flared with every color of power. “Don’t try to draw mana, and don’t touch the bars. I tell you this for your own protection.”

  The dragon shrugged carelessly. “You showed me yours. Let me show you mine.”

  “Save it.”

  “But it’s a really good trick. Here, watch,” Bolas said, and vanished.

  Utterly and completely, as though he had never been there at all.

  Instantly Tezzeret slapped his hands together in front of him, interlacing his fingers. The bars of the etherium cage became razor-sharp blades and crushed themselves into a jaggedly solid mass.

  But among them he found no bloody chunks of dragon.

  The dragon’s footprints were gone from the etherium sand, and no trace of even his previous presence could be detected by any magic Tezzeret could command.

  He looked over his shoulder at Baltrice and Jace. The Webs of Restraint that had bound them were gone, and both of them were stirring from their magically enforced unconsciousness. Rubbing her eyes, Baltrice pushed herself dizzily up to a sitting position. “What’s going on?”

  “Something bad.”

  “Where’s the dragon?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why it’s bad,” Tezzeret said. “Get ready to fight.”

  “I’d rather not,” she said, even as she climbed to her feet and shook her shoulders loose. Flames kindled in her hair and licked down along her arms. “This is not exactly a big red-mana kind of place.”

  “You’re welcome to go find one.” Tezzeret extended his arms, and the sand beneath his feet poured upward along his legs, trunk, arms, and head until he was fully encased in shining etherium armor.

  Baltrice made a face. “That stuff again. Think it’s gonna work this time?”

  “We’ll find out. Meanwhile, you’ll want to protect Jace.”

  “Jace?” Her eyes clouded over. “Yeah, I better. Hey, boss, you awake?”

  Jace groaned and rolled onto his side. “What happened?” he said faintly. “Did we make it? I was having the weirdest dream.…”

  Baltrice looked at Tezzeret. “This would be a really good time for you to take your doohickey out of his brain.”

  “I disagree,” the mechanist replied, as Nicol Bolas flickered back into existence right in front of him.

  The dragon reared, forelimbs and wings spreading wide, and brutally intense flame rained down upon the artificer. Baltrice barely managed to raise shields around her and Jace. From what she could see, Tezzeret’s armor seemed to be working just fine. He didn’t appear to notice the hellfire raging around him. He made a quick motion of his right fist, as though delivering a punch to an invisible opponent.

  And the dragon exploded.

  Even without flame or blast, the detonation was spectacular. Enormous chunks of dragon flesh trailing black blood sailed through the air. One great wing whirled out over the sea like a thrown dinner plate and splashed into the water. His hind legs gouged long divergent furrows through the etherium sand; his tail crashed into the trees far along the beach. His head got caught in a high juncture of the etherium spars that made up the Metal Sphinx and dangled there, his eyes still glaring balefully down upon the humans below.

  “Hot festering crap!” A flash of fire burned away the thick gobbets of dragon blood that had smeared across Baltrice’s shields. “Did you really just do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You just killed Nicol festering Bolas!”

  “No.”

  Right atop the steaming pile of internal organs, Nicol Bolas flashed back into existence. He stretched forth his talon and annihilating energy poured forth, setting the air itself on fire. The power blasted Tezzeret backward and down, sliding into a deep, steep-sided pit of white-hot etherium sand. The fringes of the back blast alone chewed into Baltrice’s shields so fast that she had to grab Jace and dodge back along the plinth
to keep them both from being roasted alive.

  The dragon kept pouring the blazing torrent of power into the pit as though he couldn’t be bothered with trivial things such as conserving mana. He blasted Tezzeret with levels of energy that should have killed him along with the artificer, as power of this magnitude could be maintained only by pouring his life into the assault along with every scrap of mana he could gather. The intensity of the attack liquefied the sand, turning the pit into a cauldron filled with molten etherium, into which Tezzeret sank like a sounding stone.

  And out from which he arose once more, lifting smoothly into the air as though borne aloft by the power that should have destroyed him.

  His armor didn’t even look hot.

  He clasped his hands in front of his face, and the dragon’s blast was instantly extinguished. He pushed his doubled fists straight downward like a man hoisting himself out of a pool, and the great dragon himself pitched helplessly headfirst into the molten etherium.

  A volcanic eruption of flame and burning metal from below blasted upward around Tezzeret without noticeable effect. The effect on the dragon was more spectacular, as his entire head instantly flash-burned to ash, and his neck roared with flame and burned all the way down to his breastbone.

  “Wait …” Baltrice said, scowling. “What in the hells?” How does plain old white-molten metal burn his whole head to ash when a few minutes ago her best shot couldn’t even make the bastard blink?

  Tezzeret again displayed no sign of jubilation. He drifted sideways over the huge smoking corpse of the dragon and took up a position on the left forepaw of the Metal Sphinx.

  And waited.

  Behind him on the plinth, Jace clutched at Baltrice’s arm. “Something’s wrong.…”

  “Oh, you think? What was your first festering clue?”

  “No …” His other hand went to his forehead. “No, it’s the dragon. The dragons.”

  “Yeah, that’s what gave it away to me too,” she said, yanking Jace with her to take cover behind the Metal Sphinx’s elbow.

  This time two Nicol Bolases appeared simultaneously, on either side of Tezzeret. One simply lashed out and grabbed the artificer, while the other bent his neck to bite the mage in half.

  “I’m telling you,” Jace insisted fiercely. “These dragons—these Bolases—they aren’t really Bolas.”

  “So what? They’re nothing we want to tangle with.”

  “Baltrice, listen—I’ve touched his mind before. And these dragons—they look like him, they might even wield some of his power, but they don’t even have minds. At all.”

  “You can read them? Or, y’know, not read them or whatever? What about Tezzeret’s doohickey?”

  Jace shook his head. “Maybe it doesn’t work here or something, but that’s not important—”

  “Hells it isn’t—that’s what we came here for, which means it’s time to go.” She peered around the vast etherium elbow for a quick look at how Tezzeret was doing.

  Both dragons who had restrained him had been reduced to redly glistening skeletal remains, their flesh having melted and dripped away, puddling beneath their bones in huge pools of meat syrup. But now four dragons came at him, two with magic and two with claws and teeth, and to Baltrice’s experienced eye, it looked like Tezzeret was starting to feel the pressure. More and more he seemed to be focusing on defense, and his counterstrikes were no longer instantly lethal.

  Not that it would have mattered if they were, as eight more Nicol Bolases came wading through the gore of their predecessors, waiting their turn to attack.

  “Jace, we gotta get gone,” she hissed. “Tezz can’t hold ’em off forever, and after they get him chewed and swallowed, they’re still gonna be hungry. Your magic’s working and who in the hells cares why or why Tezzeret’s getting killed by mindless whatevers or why any damn thing else because I think I hear my festering mother calling and she’s been dead twenty years so come on, let’s go!”

  A blue haze of power crackled around Jace’s head. “Wait—they’re not fake,” he said, his brow furrowed in concentration. “And they’re not illusions.… It’s like they’re dead. Like … like—”

  “Like zombies,” Baltrice said through her teeth. “Son of a bitch. Now my day is festering complete. Vess.”

  “What?”

  “I said Vess. As in that little zombie-sucking slut bag you used to like so much.”

  “Liliana? What would she be doing here?”

  “If I were a little faster, she wouldn’t be doing anything anywhere,” Baltrice growled. “Find her.”

  “But she wouldn’t—wait. Oh, hells,” he said. He reached out with his right hand, and a flash of white shot from his fingertips and whipped around another of the Metal Sphinx’s spars.

  Out from where the white mana had vanished stepped Liliana Vess, her lustrous raven hair falling in curls around her flawless face. Her dancer’s lithe grace was not in evidence, however; she moved jerkily, resisting every step, a broken marionette dragged forward by white fire that wreathed her arms and legs and chest.

  “Jace …” she said softly, her eyes glistening with welling tears. “Jace, I didn’t know it’d be you. You have to believe me. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry!”

  “I’m not,” Baltrice said, and blasted her with a flame bolt so powerful that the beautiful necromancer was instantly burned down to her bones. “Go zombie that, bitch.”

  “Baltrice!” Jace gasped. “Baltrice, what have you done?”

  “No more screwing around, Jace,” Baltrice growled. “Are we leaving, or am I going alone?”

  Liliana’s charred bones were still skidding across the plinth when Jace and Baltrice heard her voice again. “Well, that wasn’t very nice.”

  They whirled. She stepped out from behind a different spar, alive and whole and not even singed, the air around her grayed with layered shields.

  Baltrice’s lips peeled back from her teeth, and another flame bolt gathered in her right hand—but before she could attack, she was blasted with glistening obsidian ooze from a third Vess, who was perched atop a curve of an overhead beam. The smothering goo knocked Baltrice sideways, and it clung to her shields, chewing down through them even as it caught fire from the shield and began to burn away.

  “What in the hells?” As he sprang to Baltrice’s side, Jace raised his own defenses and pushed them thicker and deeper until everything he saw was some shade of blue. The roaring and blasting from Tezzeret’s battle against the conflagration of undead dragons rocked the world around him, and by the time he reached Baltrice, two more Lilianas had appeared, rising over the rim of the plinth, carried in the arms of spirits like black smoke with embers for eyes.

  “You should give up, Jace,” one of them said.

  He could no longer tell which Liliana was speaking.

  “There will be as many of me as we need, Jace. You can’t win. Fighting will only get you hurt.”

  “Baltrice, what’s going on?” he said, low, poised for combat. “How can she do this?”

  “She can’t,” Baltrice snarled. “The only way she could pull this off is if she’s with a sonofabitching—”

  “Clockworker,” Nicol Bolas supplied cheerfully from behind them, just as his huge talons closed around them both. “Right you are. Congratulations. Now don’t struggle, and this doesn’t have to hurt.”

  Jace went boneless in his grip; he knew better than to fight Bolas. Baltrice, who also knew better than to fight Bolas, fought anyway, unleashing the full fury of her power, which could not even singe his talons.

  This’d be the real Nicol Bolas, she figured. She still couldn’t make the bastard blink.

  “Sad little girl,” the dragon said. “Did you think I wouldn’t be ready for you? Sleep now.”

  A curl of power coiled in front of her face, then stabbed in through her shields almost without resistance. She collapsed into unconsciousness.

  Jace took advantage of this brief distraction to slide a tendril of thought into
the great dragon’s mind. Having become a great deal more proficient a mind ripper since their last encounter, he nursed a half-formed hope that he might be able to erase himself and Baltrice from Bolas’s mind, at least for long enough that they might be able to slip away. But in the instant he had within the dragon’s brain, he found something so astonishing that he gasped, “What in the hells is that doing there?”

  Nicol Bolas turned his mind and gaze to Jace. “What in the hells is what doing where?”

  Before Jace could reply, a flash of blue snaked under the dragon’s wing and speared into Beleren’s face—and Jace’s mind vanished. Simply disappeared.

  It was gone as though his body had never been more than a mannequin. His body still breathed and his heart still beat, but the young mentalist was mind-dead.

  As dead as Tezzeret had been.

  Bolas snarled and twisted around—but Tezzeret was still battling the corpse dragons. Someone else must have done this. Or was doing it. Or was going to do it shortly. Or something. Even when he could do it himself, clockworking didn’t actually get easier to think logically about.

  “Lilianas!” he said. Most of them were out in front of the Metal Sphinx, controlling the zombie Bolases that Tezzeret was so studiously dismantling, but a few were still lingering back here within the sound of his voice.

  “Yes, Great and Mighty Bolas?” all eight of her replied in unison. She always called him that, and he didn’t even mind the bitter edge of sarcasm in her voice; he liked the title well enough that he might make it official. It would be particularly amusing to make Tezzeret use it. “Get up there and help your other selves stomp Tezzeret.” Bolas stopped for a moment, frowning. He was suddenly dizzy and decidedly queasy. A side effect of so much clockworking all at once? Or the effect of whatever it had been that Beleren saw? Whatever it was, he decided the time had come to bring this charade to a close.

  He shook his head clear and said, “Don’t kill him. Just beat him until he can’t fight back. I need his mind intact.”

  “As you command, Great and—”

  “Save it. Just do as you’re told,” Bolas growled around his clenched teeth. Suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore.