Test of Metal

by Matthew Stover

  Rhabdomancy.

  With only the slightest twist of will, I could perceive the etherium in the area. All of it. Renn’s body. The transit gate. The gravity sleds.

  The needle in my aorta.

  I chose the needle in my aorta for my first move. It withdrew from the blood vessel, leaving only a bead in place to seal the puncture. With no need for caution, I wrenched the needle back out through my ribs, my pectoral tendon, and my skin. I decided against a bravura line; why warn him? With my mind, I shaped the needle into a thin blade, then stabbed it through the iris of Renn’s right eye.

  He screamed, throwing me aside, clawing at his face, ripping bloody stripes with his fingernails. I counted myself lucky that the shock hadn’t made him reflexively rip my head off, but his incredible strength nearly killed me anyway: throwing me aside involved sending me spinning through the air, twisting helplessly until my spine crashed into the arch of the transit gate hard enough that it very nearly broke me in half. Gasping, I fell to the sand, my arms and legs twitching and flopping in partial seizure.

  If Renn pulled himself together before I could do the same, he was going to kill me anyway. I couldn’t even get up. Couldn’t stand and take it like a man. Maybe I could crawl. Maybe.

  Power had made me stupid. I had been strong, so I didn’t bother to be smart. A mistake I swore never to make again.

  Though the lesson would be wasted if learning it killed me.

  I had a chance. One chance, because all that power was gone now, and my intellect was again on the job. One chance.

  I reached out with my mind and activated the transit gate. A view of the zombie mob in the Netherglass opened above me, for I lay only a few feet from the gate’s threshold.

  Renn stopped screaming. Perhaps the twist of power had been enough to remind him that he hadn’t killed me yet. His left eye fixed upon me, and his bloody mouth stretched like a nightmare ogre. “Running?” he shrieked, hurling himself toward me. “Run then! Run! I’ll start by severing your legs! One festering joint at a time!”

  But when he got close to me, he skidded to a stop, staring down at me in open puzzlement, because I wasn’t trying to crawl through the gate. That was the moment he realized it was a trap. I saw it in his eyes.

  He knew he was about to die.

  His mouth opened like he was going to ask what in the hells I thought I was up to; he managed to say, “Tezzer—” before my gravity sled at full shrieking speed smashed into the small of his etherium back hard enough to cut an ordinary man in two. Renn was no ordinary man, and the gravity sled weighed less than thirty pounds, so the impact only knocked him forward, stumbling, trying to regain his balance.

  It was enough.

  Arms flailing, he actually would have made it—stopped himself short—had I not managed to make one twitching foot move at the last second, to hook his ankle and send him headlong into the transit gate.

  Not through the gate. Into the gate.

  Into the gate because I canceled the spell just as his head and shoulders broke the plane of transmission. About half his torso, his pelvis, both his legs, and one arm fell on me. Which hurt. But I really didn’t mind.

  The rest of him—head, shoulders, heart, and one arm—was lying on the sand of the Netherglass, fifteen miles away.

  Perhaps my prejudice against improvisation was unfair. My own, just now, had produced satisfactory results.

  Less than elegant, far from painless, and passingly humiliating, but satisfactory.

  I lay there for a second or two, trying to regain enough breath to tell myself I was still alive. When I found my insistence sufficiently convincing, I got up and triggered the transit gate again.

  On the far side, Renn’s remaining arm was scrabbling for purchase in the soft powder, trying to drag itself, his shoulders, and his head off toward some imaginary safety. He seemed to be in some kind of shock. When I stepped through the gate and moved around to head him off—so to speak—he didn’t seem capable of speech, producing only a thick gargle, a few lip smacks, and a pop or two.

  “Stop it, Renn. It’s over.”

  His eyes rolled, and his hand reversed course, and I sighed. Once the shock wore off, he’d be dangerous again; magic is a function of the mind, and his would, given the chance, come through this largely unharmed. His heart was still glowing in what was left of his chest, and the enchantments that served him in place of blood and lungs and other organs could keep his head alive indefinitely. The last thing I wanted to do was give him a chance to reassemble himself.

  I stepped over him and caught his wrist, lifting him from the ground. His eyes rolled, and his mouth worked, and now he was able to form intelligible words. “… kill me … Tezzeret … kill me.…”

  “You’re too valuable to waste simply because I hate you,” I said. “I gave you a chance to cooperate by choice. I will not repeat that mistake.”

  “ … Tidehollow scrapper bitch …”

  “Hush now. Try not to heckle me while I save your life.”

  The severed ends of his enhancements were leaking mana like blood. It was the work of a moment or two for me to make contact with his etherium and manipulate its function sufficiently to seal the severed strands of latticework. That accomplished, I mentally took hold of the tiny blade in his eye and stretched it into an ultrafine thread, about a third the diameter of a human hair. I sent that back through his retina and along his optic nerve, which must have been a bit uncomfortable, because it made him shudder and moan.

  Using the thread, I probed his brain matter until I found his sleep center. Hooking one end of the thread there, I sent the other directly into his pineal gland and worked the thread to feed its small mana current as a trickle charge. In about five seconds his eyes closed, and he relaxed into slumber.

  A gust of breeze came from behind me toward the transit gate, bringing with it enough odor of zombie that I borrowed a bit of Renn’s shoulder joint to put up an anti-glass-and-stink field. Looking through the gate, I understood why the breeze seemed to blow from here to there, as the Glass Dunes for a mile or two on the far side were no longer so much dunes as they were glass—molten glass, at the base of a firestorm bigger than most thunder-heads. In the heart of the firestorm, Baltrice still battled three of the e-drakes, all of them appearing to be having a fine old time.

  I looked from the firestorm to the million-strong zombie army in the Netherglass, and back again to the fire. It struck me that as long as I had a pyromancer in mortal combat with etherium-enhanced firedrakes, there was a more useful location for their battle.

  Reaching out with my mind, I found Baltrice’s ear-and-eye piece. Renn’s down, I sent. Still having fun?

  Would it be too corny for me to say I’m just getting warmed up?

  Over here in the Netherglass, I have a, ah … pest control issue. One that’s begging for personal attention from you and your playmates. Can you lead them through the transit gate?

  Incendiary sanitation? My specialty. Hold the door, we’re on our way.

  Making sure I did so required nearly all the strength I had left. I sagged to the ground, and set the sleeping Renn down beside me. I hugged my knees and tucked my battered face against them. For what felt like a very a long time, I could do nothing except sit there and shiver.

  So this was what winning felt like. Finally.

  Triumph. Victory.

  Whatever.

  “We won, right?” Doc said. “I mean, we did win, didn’t we? This has to count as an old-fashioned ass-whuppin’, huh? An authoritative spanking. A whack and smack that cracked his rack. We beat him like a red-headed stepchild. Thumped him like a rented drum.…”

  “Doc. Enough.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure. Whatever. Must feel good, though. Right? After all these years?”

  I took a deep breath, then sighed it out. I didn’t reply. I didn’t have anything to say, because victory didn’t feel like anything at all.

  I felt nothing but tired.

  One mor
e thing, I told myself. I lifted my head and gazed off toward the incomprehensibly huge monolithic halls of the Crystal Labyrinth.

  One more thing.

  TEZZERET

  THE REAL ME

  I sat on the sand, tinkering with Renn’s perceptual powers while Baltrice incinerated the last few thousand zombies. To the limits of my vision around us, the desert was stained with black soot and dusted with white ash. A vast pall of smoke filled the sky above the Netherglass, casting a permanent twilight upon the Crystal Labyrinth. Given that the peculiarities of the area included a huge stationary vortex in the prevailing winds, it was possible that the smoke would be there forever. Or at least until some powerful stormcaller could be persuaded to blow it away.

  I had to pause in my tinkering every so often; the clothing I had magicked for myself was not quite sand-proof. I had been more comfortable naked.

  The telemin halo I’d fashioned out of Renn’s etheriumalloy body had turned out unexpectedly well. The external screening and impact cage was almost three feet in diameter; the bowed centering struts screwed into Renn’s skull had enough flex to provide effective shock absorption. I daresay within this halo, Renn was in no danger of impact damage; I could have bounced him like a rubber ball without doing more than making him dizzy. The six carry handles I had built onto the impact cage’s exterior projected far enough to prevent the halo from rolling on any surface less than a thirty-degree incline, and I certainly wouldn’t be placing Renn’s head on any slope steeper than that. He was too valuable.

  A few more threads of pure etherium, similar to the one that kept him asleep, inserted into other parts of his brain allowed me to directly access his entire perceptual system—which was, I discovered, unexpectedly impressive. In addition to being able to see, smell, hear, taste, and feel what was in front of him, he could do the same with objects that were only potentially present, as well as objects that were long gone. Though as the interval increased, perception dimmed, it was still a useful talent.

  Most interesting of all was his ability to see sideways in time. With the expenditure of considerable mana—easily done, given my current plenitude of etherium—he (and I, through him) could directly perceive the consequence of any given choice or string of choices, as the temporal streams bifurcated outward from each decision point. The more probable any given potential time line was, the easier it was to see.

  It did not take much power at all to see time lines where Renn had won the fight.

  I had decided not to tell Baltrice what would have happened to her if we’d lost. If she had so much as a hint, I could never have stopped her from killing Renn, and I was going to need him to navigate the Labyrinth.

  Having left intact the magics that sustained his life and healed his injuries, I anticipated a virtually unlimited potential use-life for my Rennoscope (Rennscanner? Rennometer?). All his physical needs provided by the magics, he might well survive a century or more, which was far longer than I would need him.

  Someday, perhaps, if I found myself in a sentimental mood, I might decide to rebuild him into a man. It was possible.

  But not likely.

  Once she had finished up, Baltrice rode her gravity sled over to where I sat with Renn’s head. She slid off and mopped sooty sweat from her face with a grimy sleeve. “Well, that’s it. Probably more inside, but no trouble. I got to tell you, I still don’t understand why our army of necromancers didn’t whip out a few thousand nasty beasties to piss on my bonfire.”

  “You will. Patience.”

  “Is that all you have to say about it? Patience?”

  “It’s an underrated virtue.”

  “Tell you what, then: you keep all of yours and take mine too. What there is of it.” She propped her hands on her hips and stared back at the featureless, opalescent enormity of the Labyrinth. “What now? Straight in?”

  “No.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Usually.”

  “I’ll tell you, I don’t think anything I can do will affect the structure itself. The walls don’t even pick up soot.”

  “It’s not ordinary crystal. I’m not sure it’s physical.”

  “Huh?”

  I let one shoulder twitch in half a shrug. “It has occurred to me that if Renn’s hypotemporal shield trick were to be made a great deal more powerful—if time never passed at all at its surface, or nearly so—it could, theoretically, look like that.”

  She shook her head. “Glad I’m not the one who has to figure stuff out around here.”

  “You do very well at it, though. How’s your back?” I had adapted the autohealing magic Renn had built into his body to treat our various wounds—an imperfect solution, but the best we had.

  She worked her shoulders back and forth a few times, then shrugged. “It hurts. But it’s not gonna kill me. How’s your face?”

  “Likewise.” I gave her a lopsided smile, which was the best I could do around the swollen bruises and barely closed cuts that covered most of my head. Two of my teeth were loose enough that they might fall out before I had time to repair my jaw, but the long-term effects of the rest of my injuries would be only scars. “It hurts.”

  As did my hands, my legs, my guts, and virtually every other part of my body to which I could put a name.

  “Bruises and a couple new scars? Small enough price to pay for living through a scrape like that,” she said. “I won’t forget what you did today, Tezzeret. You didn’t have to come back for me. You went in knowing what he could do. Put yourself between him and me. I’m not sure I would have done the same for you.”

  “If I’d left you there, I’d be dead now. Or soon.” It seemed wisest to avoid elaborating further.

  “Well, I’m grateful anyway, huh?” She looked down at Renn’s head, and nudged the telemin halo with her drakeskin boot. “He dead yet?”

  “No. I need him alive.”

  “Isn’t he kind of excitable, though? Loses his head in a crisis, right? He like, y’ know, flies off the—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t mock him,” I said. “Please.”

  “Why in the hells not? You think he wouldn’t be gloating over us if this had gone the other way?”

  “His behavior isn’t my concern. Mine is.”

  “You seem pretty concerned about my behavior.”

  “I’m not. But allowing you to taunt him would be rude.”

  She flexed her shoulders and thrust her chin out toward me pugnaciously. “And if I decide I feel like doing a victory fandango up and down that back-shooting bastard’s face, just exactly how do you figure to stop me?”

  “By asking you not to,” I said. “Politely.”

  She glared at me for about a second, which was as long as she could hold the glare before she cracked a smile. “You are some piece of work,” she said, shaking her head and chuckling. “You really are.”

  “Compliments on my design and construction should be addressed to Nicol Bolas.”

  “I wonder if he knows exactly what he’s got here. Something tells me that behind that deadpan of yours, you’ve got a surprise or two for him, too.”

  This didn’t seem to call for a reply. Out from a pocket in my magicked clothing I brought the etherium thumb ring I had made for her. “Here.”

  She took it from my hand. “Jewelry? Are you sure it’s time to take our relationship to that level?”

  “You can wear that on your thumb—or, I suppose, given the size of your hands, on your fourth finger.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “It’s a locator, that’s all. When I’m done, I’ll signal. You’ll know it’s me because the ring will light up and tingle. It will direct you to wherever I am. It’s etherium; it’ll never run out of power.”

  “When you’re done?” She flushed, and tiny flames began to flicker in her eyes. “What, is this the brush-off? The Take a Festering Hike, Fat Bitch?”

  “It’s a promise,” I said. �
��You have done everything I’ve asked of you, and more. You have earned Jace Beleren’s freedom. Even if I fail. Even if I die.”

  I lifted my own hand to show her the matching ring I wore on my left thumb. “Your ring will lead you to this one, wherever it might be. If necessary, your ring is encoded with a summoning that will draw mine to you if I am dead or it is lost. Even if I am not available to do so myself, bringing the two rings together will impart the secret of safely removing the device from his brain.”

  “Yeah?” She looked at me sidelong, measuring. “Maybe I should, y’know, bring them together right now. Save myself the trip.”

  “Despite having done a stupid thing or two in the past few days, I’m not an idiot. I’ll prepare my ring when you are far, far away. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t want us to fight. I would be sorry if I killed you, and sorrier if you killed me.”

  She stared in open disbelief. “You want me to just trust you on this?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Is that a problem?”

  “Well … damn. I don’t know. It sure as hell ought to be.” She sighed and lowered herself to the sand beside me. “You are without a doubt the damnedest sonofabitch it’s ever been my dubious pleasure to meet. Probably should’ve roasted you back in Tidehollow.”

  I nodded. “I’ve enjoyed working with you again.”

  “You say that like you mean it.”

  “Because I do.”

  “Crazy thing is, I actually kind of believe you.” She slipped the ring onto her finger and held out her hand to admire it. “Goes with my hair, huh?”

  “That hadn’t occurred to me,” I said, “but I suppose it does. Baltrice, I have something to tell you. We may not meet again, and there is one thing I truly do hope that you will believe about me.”

  She gave me that sidelong look again. “Is this where you profess undying love? Save it. You’re not exactly the guy of my dreams.”

  “Baltrice.” I laid my hand on hers. She let me. “I like to imagine that Jace Beleren knows how fine a friend he has in you. I hope he does; I certainly do. And I want you to know that I hope I might, someday, deserve a friend who cares as much for me.”