Test of Metal

by Matthew Stover

  “He made you a better tool.”

  “I still fail to see why you think this should upset me.”

  “And I can’t understand why it doesn’t. Tezzeret, you’re barely even human.”

  “Yes,” I said, picking up the vambrace again. “That’s exactly my point.”

  I stopped for a moment before triggering the gate, pausing with my fingers on the control surface of the intricate etherium archway, and looked back at Baltrice. She crouched on her sled, bobbing gently a few feet above the sand. “Controls functional?”

  “Sure.” She demonstrated by manipulating the twin control sticks to spin the gravity sled fully around, shoot it toward me, and bring it to an instant stop a hand span from my legs. “Same as when you asked two minutes ago.”

  “It’d be better if you’d let me set you up with a mindlink.”

  “Maybe in my next life.”

  “Those control sticks are the sled’s only moving parts,” I reminded her severely. “If too much sand accumulates—”

  “I know, I know.”

  “How’s the view?”

  She flipped forward my most recent modification to her earpiece, a jointed arm that supported a small ring of etherium a couple of inches in front of her left eye. I blinked as I found the earpiece—ear-and-eyepiece—with my mind. “Focus all right?”

  “Dunno.” She squinted through the loop. “All I see from here is a giant festering pile of stupid.”

  “Hey, same as me!” Doc chimed in.

  “Exactly,” I said, which served as a sufficient response for them both; her view came from the perspective of my left eye. “Doc, I need your whole mind on the job, all right? Sometimes you see things I don’t, which may very well make the difference between success and an ugly death.”

  “I’m with you, Tezz. In every conceivable sense. But you know if I had even a hint of a better idea—”

  “I’d be thrilled to hear it,” I finished for him. “Baltrice. Ready?”

  “Close to it as this lifetime’s gonna get.”

  I sent a pulse of mana through my hand into the control surface of the transit gate, and within its archway, the view of the dune beyond wavered and wiped itself away, showing now an up-close-and-personal view of several thousand zombie butts.

  “Wow,” Doc said hoarsely. “Wow, they’re worse from close up, huh? Practically smell ’em. Shudder.”

  “Yes.” One last glance over my pauldron to Baltrice. “A transit gate is not like a conventional teleport,” I reminded her. “It’s a reality warp, to bring the two points together.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a magic door. I get it.”

  “Just bear in mind that it’s not a magic door. Do not linger on the threshold,” I said. “I’m holding it open with my own power. When you activate it, the gate will draw on the innate power of the etherium of the archway. It will stay active for only about five seconds, so don’t delay. If it deactivates while you’re passing through, there will be part of you there, and part of you here, and both parts will be messily dead. Right?”

  “Right,” she said, all business now.

  “If the gate fails somehow with you on this side of it, remember that your sled is very fast. We’re only fifteen miles out, which that sled can cover in less than two minutes from a standing start. Just don’t—”

  “Stand up or stick my arms out from the energy screen, or do anything stupid. Stupider. I got it.”

  “If all goes well, you’ll never need to move at all. I will let you know via the earpiece when matters are settled. Then you can either return to Vectis or stick with me, at your discretion.”

  “Yeah, and how likely is all to go well?”

  “It’s not. At all. But the possibility must be prepared for.”

  “Yeah.” She gazed pensively through the etherium archway at what I would face at the Labyrinth. At length, she took a deep breath and said softly, “Luck to you.”

  “And to you. To us both.”

  “It’s a hell of a thing you’re doing. A hell of a thing,” she said. “But I guess you never were a coward. Maybe you’re not so different after all.”

  “You’d be amazed.” I turned for the gate.

  “Tezzeret?”

  I paused at the threshold.

  “Have you thought about—I mean, what if he actually takes you up on it? What’ll you do if he just, like, opens his arms and says, Glad to see ya, come on in?”

  “Drop dead from the shock,” I said, and stepped through.

  TEZZERET

  PAVANE FOR A DEATH PRINCESS

  I arrived a few yards short of the outer fringe of the zombie mob. Checking back over my shoulder revealed no sign of the gate, which was as it should be. I triggered the eye-and-ear link built into my bascinet. “You there?”

  “Everything’s go,” she whispered in my ear.

  “All right, then.” I activated my armor’s primary defenses, took a deep breath—and was seized by a fit of uncontrollable retching.

  “Duh-ammn,” Doc said. “Gag. Choke. Guess I was wrong about smelling ’em before, huh? Gag some more. Retch, too, just to be sociable.”

  I was unable to reply, as the feculent miasma of decay gases unleashed by the rotting flesh of a million-plus zombies had exceeded by far the limits of my imagination, and thus also overwhelmed my countermeasures. I was wholly occupied with trying to avoid filling my bascinet with my own vomit.

  Holding my breath did not help, as the air I inhaled might as well have been a chemical weapon. It scalded my nose and throat, and presumably my lungs as well, triggering an equally convulsive spasm of coughing. Eventually, I gathered enough of my mental resources to tweak the armor’s anti-sand field, intensifying its blue crackle so that it would burn off noxious decay products as it did the desert’s powdered glass—and so I was once more able to breathe.

  “Tezzeret, what happened? Are you hit? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. It’s all right. Zombies stink.”

  “Well sure they do, but—”

  “Imagine swimming in nyxathid vomit.”

  “Ooo. Damn, do I have to?”

  “I have a fix. One moment.” I was able to mentally retrace my armor’s link to her ear-and-eyepiece, and adjust her anti-sand field as I had my own; she couldn’t be much use to me if she was retching too hard to breathe. “That should cover you. Now it’s your turn to cover me.”

  “I’m on it.”

  I activated another prepared spell, this one a very straightforward sonic illusion, which made the sky seem to crack with thunder, and followed with words that might be heard, like thunder, for tens of miles.

  “MY NAME IS TEZZERET.

  “I AM NOT HERE TO FIGHT. I WOULD SPEAK WITH THOSE WHO SEEK THE CENTER OF THE LABYRINTH.

  “WITHOUT MY HELP, YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED.

  “MY NAME IS TEZZERET …”

  I damped the sound within my bascinet so that I might hear not only Baltrice, but also my own thoughts.

  I allowed the illusion to cycle through three full times, while bending all my resources toward detecting any response, be it hostile, friendly, or neutral. It was a matter of some ironic amusement to me to have created an illusion intended to convey truth.

  When I discovered no response beyond attracting some carnivorous interest from nearby zombies, I activated my primary defensive screens and began to walk toward the Laybrinth.

  The zombies, of course, closed in upon me. I activated the outermost layer of my armor’s defensive screens, which I had devised with Baltrice’s help, as I find her solution to our zombie problem to be both elegant and efficient. Any zombies bold enough to actually attempt to touch me instantly burst into flame hot enough to set not only their whole bodies ablaze, but to spread to the others pressing in behind them. My progress was necessarily slow—being incinerated was no deterrent to their functionally mindless appetites—but it was steady, and served the additional purpose of making it absolutely clear to Renn and his presumptive army
of necromancers that I was not attempting anything resembling stealth or swift assault.

  Instead, I simply pushed on, the apex of a long wake of burning zombies, in the reasonable belief that the necromancers ahead wouldn’t begrudge the loss of a few tens of thousands of their undead servants, and hoping that they would presently respond to the audible illusion, still thundering above me, by ordering their minions to stand aside.

  However, I burned my way through the zombies all the way to the base of the nearest structure without any noticeable reaction from anyone or anything except the zombies, who continued to slog toward me and immolate themselves.

  The external surface of the Labyrinth had the texture of glass etched to appear frosted. It was clearly not susceptible to burning or melting, no matter how much power I fed into my incendiary outer screen. There was no visible entrance, which was not distressing; quite the opposite, in fact—had I found a door on my very first approach, I would have assumed it was a trap and moved on. “Doc? Do you have any preference for which direction we should move?”

  “Does away count?”

  “Yes and no. It is a direction, but it’s not one we’ll take.”

  “Oh, sure. Y’know, I’m getting the feeling that you get us into these situations on purpose.”

  “It seems unlikely.” I turned my back to the wall and edged to my right, the inferno of zombie fire following my path.

  “That’s a nonanswer,” Doc said accusingly. “What it seems doesn’t have much to do with what it is. And unlikely isn’t the same as untrue.”

  “Correct on all three counts,” I said. “You’re learning.” The column of greasy black meat smoke from the zombies was already a couple miles tall. If Renn and his necromancers for some reason couldn’t hear my thunderous illusion, they should certainly be able to track my progress by the smoke.

  “I think you put us in mortal danger to shut me up.”

  “If so, it doesn’t seem to work.”

  “You know what I mean. You talk me into crazy stunts like this little adventure, and once we’re in it and I really see how much danger you’ve put us in, it’s too late for me to do anything about it. Unless I want to get us both killed.”

  “Your veto power does seem to be limited by circumstance.”

  “That’s another nonanswer,” he said. “Do you practice that crap, or does it just come naturally?”

  I allowed myself a fractional smile. “Both.”

  “And that’s another thing.” His voice rose. “You think it’s funny.”

  “Somebody has to.”

  “See, that’s what I’m talking about! It’s not funny—and you sure as hell shouldn’t be enjoying yourself right now!”

  Still no sign of activity from our presumed adversaries. “Doc, if I wanted to spend my life listening to complaints about my behavior, I’d have gotten married.”

  “Oh, like we’re not married. How much more ‘of one flesh’ do you think we could get?”

  “First, I’m really not comfortable with that.”

  “Try if from my side.”

  “And forget the ‘of one flesh’ business. Worry about the ‘till death do us part’ angle.”

  “Um, yeah. Speaking of death—activity on our left.”

  I turned to look back the way we’d come. Other than burning zombies, there was nothing I could detect. “I don’t see it.”

  “That’s too far. Keep our back to the wall, then scan forty-five degrees off perpendicular.”

  “It’s my back.”

  “Whatever. Relax. Got it?”

  A few dozen yards away, a number of zombies appeared to be pulling back from the crush, as though avoiding the flames of their closer brethren. “That’s activity?”

  “You see it happening anywhere else?”

  I didn’t.

  “They’re not doing it on their own,” Doc said. “It’s being done to them.”

  “Threat assessment?”

  “Shrug. Too early to tell.”

  A mental adjustment that thinned my greaves and sabatons by shifting some of their etherium into the equivalent of boot lifts gave me a slightly better view. The opening gap had become a ring, as several hundred zombies had turned aside from their mindless pressing in upon the Labyrinth to gather themselves into a roughly circular clot of undead. There was motion in the middle of that clot, and shortly I was able to make out what it was: the innermost zombies had either fallen or laid themselves down on the sand, and the zombies around them were walking on their bodies until they too reached the center and laid themselves down. The pile of recumbent zombies grew as tall as the creatures themselves, and the upright specimens were forced to clamber up the growing mound.

  “You have any idea where this is going?”

  “No,” Doc said. “But this looks like a good time to fire up the rest of your shields.”

  Sharing his perspective, I did exactly that. “Baltrice,” I said, “are you seeing this? I seem to be getting some sort of response.”

  Silence.

  “Baltrice?” I said, more sharply. “Baltrice, respond.”

  Frowning, I sent my mind into the etherium circuitry of our linked ear-and-eyepieces. Mine, built into my bascinet, appeared to be perfectly functional, so I bypassed it and sought Baltrice’s device with my mind … and found nothing. As though the device no longer existed. My heart began to pound like a living creature trying to bash its way out through my sternum.

  Apparently I was not yet the emotionless golem she had described. “Doc. We’re in trouble.”

  “Oh, you think? Are you watching this?”

  The mound of zombies had grown nearly ten feet tall, and likely three times that in diameter. Now their rotting flesh had begun to melt as though they lay under a waterfall of aqua regia. But whatever power might be liquefying their flesh, it left their skeletons untouched, even as it dissolved tendon and ligament. In moments, the mound of zombies had become a pile of naked, disjointed bones. The bones themselves began to move, lifting and twisting and fusing themselves into a web-work archway that anchored itself upon a ring fused of the remaining bone. The archway stood ten feet tall, and the ring on which it stood was perhaps sixty feet in circumference. In the very instant it was complete, an eldritch reality whorl distorted the view through the arch.

  A transit gate not unlike mine, differing mainly in materials.

  When the view stabilized, I was looking into what appeared to be a lavishly appointed sitting room, and looking back at me was what appeared to be a young woman of exceptional beauty, her lustrous obsidian hair unbound and draped in ringlets to perfectly frame her flawless oval face. She wore a wrap of translucently sheer silk, artfully layered to leave exactly enough to the imagination. She said, “Tezzeret. It’s been a while.”

  “Vess,” I said slowly. “Liliana Vess. The necromancer. I remember you.”

  “That’d be more flattering if it hadn’t been quite so much work. We need to talk.”

  “You’re a Planeswalker.…” More and more about her was coming back to me, but in glacial drips and drops, slower than cold treacle—almost as though the information had been deliberately obscured. By Bolas, undoubtably. But why? “I don’t recall you having this level of power.”

  “That’s part of what we need to talk about,” she said impatiently. “I work for Bolas, just like you. We don’t have very much time.”

  Interesting. Almost interesting enough to divert me from my immediate necessities, which included reestablishing contact with Baltrice. “Are you alone?”

  “For now. Briefly.”

  “Silas Renn.”

  She nodded, her gaze flickering from side to side as though he might unexpectedly appear.

  “How long before he gets back?”

  “Depends,” she said. “How long do you think it’ll take him to kill Baltrice?”

  The sitting room on the far side of the transit gate was every bit as well-appointed as it had appeared. I stood in the middle of a rug t
hat undoubtedly cost more than my father had earned in his entire life. I was still in my armor with all my shields working, excepting only the outermost, as it is an ungracious guest who sets his hostess’s house on fire.

  The sunlight had a peculiar quality here, brighter and warmer than I’d ever experienced on—in—Esper, as well as displaying a distinctly more golden color. Bant, perhaps? I had not yet had the leisure to acquaint myself with the finer details of our newly conjoined planes.

  I tolerated an extended account of why Liliana Vess had helped Jace escape from my presumably villainous clutches, and how she had managed to defeat some dark interrogations to which I had apparently subjected her, and why this and how that and who everything else, seemingly without end; her tale was larded with evasions, rationalizations, and excuses for various acts of which I had no memory at all.

  There was no reason to reveal this to her; quite the opposite. Her account offered substantive insight into how she thought, and into what she took to be the truth of why, and the power and ruthlessness she was willing and able to wield in pursuit of her goals.

  That I stood there at all was the result of a coldly rational assessment of Baltrice’s chances against Renn—especially if he’d managed to take her by surprise—and my own chances of rescuing her against a forewarned and forearmed clockworker.

  If I survived the morning, I might have an opportunity to avenge her.

  At length, I felt I had to cut Vess off, in the interest of expediting our negotiations, though there was one point of curiosity that I felt should be satisfied. “I am still unclear why you would have bound yourself to Bolas’s service,” I said. “I should think a woman, mage, and Planeswalker of your obvious intelligence and experience would know better than to sign anything in blood, much less a binding contract with Nicol Bolas.”