Guildpact

by Cory Herndon

  “Pivlic, you see that?” Kos asked.

  “I’m afraid I do,” the imp said wearily. “You’re going to make us run, aren’t you?”

  Kos didn’t answer because he’d already leaped down from the toppled column and was heading up the hill, carefully skirting cracks and fissures while holding the bam-stick steady on his back with one hand. The thrull bounded along behind like a happy dog.

  “I should never have left the city,” Pivlic said. He checked to make sure his own bam-stick was secure and set off after them.

  Deception does not come easily to an Izzet. From the most powerful magelord to the lowliest goblin devotee, their need to boast is too great. In dealings with their kind, make sure you keep your own secrets, for they will not.

  —Patriarch Fautomni, On the Lesser Guilds (4211 Z.C.)

  2 CIZARM 10012 Z.C.

  Crix might have been more surprised than Golozar when the old man and the imp charged in to their rescue, but the look on the Gruul’s face said otherwise.

  “Kos?” Golozar shouted at the old man in the ill-fitting miner’s suit, a scarf tied around his nose and mouth. The diminutive figure trying to keep up with the human had a black, leathery face beneath his domed helmet and ran like one far more used to flying. An imp, perhaps. But Kos? Crix had heard of Kos. He was—

  He was about to run right into her. No, he was about to tackle her.

  Crix and Kos slammed to the ground. The old man turned as they fell so that his shoulder took the impact just as a bamshot soared directly overhead. “Hello, Crix,” Kos said, coughing. “Name’s ‘Kos.’ Tenth Le—No, strike that. Just ‘Kos.’ People are looking for you.”

  “I’m—I’m Crix. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Kos,” Crix stammered.

  “You all right?” Kos said.

  “Yes,” Crix said.

  “Good. I think that was a ranging shot. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Kos, what are you doing?” Golozar shouted. “This is not your place—”

  “Spare us both the ‘stoic Gruul’ rhetoric, my friend,” the imp said as he swung the bam-stick off of his back and snapped a shot into place. He lifted the ‘stick to one eye and aimed at a rocky outcrop behind them. The imp, who looked like a human child in the miner’s suit—or even a short-legged goblin—pressed one gloved thumb against the stud and fired. A tiny humanoid speck dropped from the outcrop a millisecond later without even a scream.

  “A sniper,” Golozar said quietly. “This is wrong. Aun Yom’s group is not this large. There are too many heads.”

  “Maybe he’s gotten some new recruits,” Kos said as he got to his feet. “Where were you going, anyway? Why aren’t you at your camp?”

  “Trijiro asked me to get this goblin to the Cauldron. Believe me, the camp is the first place I’m going once I fulfill that promise,” Golozar said.

  “Just you?” Pivlic said.

  “The others were killed,” the Gruul said darkly.

  “An accident, not Aun Yom,” Crix supplied as helpfully as she could. She scanned the hills behind them and didn’t spy any more specks—but several of Aun Yom’s bandits were much closer. “Perhaps we can tell the rest of the story later. We’re close enough to the Cauldron now that I think I can guide us there.”

  “Perfect,” Kos said. “But won’t you guide them there as well?”

  “That,” Crix admitted, “could present a problem. We’ve got to shake them.”

  “Perhaps—” Pivlic managed before the ground between their group and Aun Yom’s bandits violently erupted. At first Crix thought it might be a geothermic vent—they were close enough to the Cauldron that such a thing was possible—but the reddish, scaly thing that burst from the crater in the Husk soon put the lie to that thought.

  “Nephilim!” Golozar cried, pulling the stunned Pivlic back from the edge of this brand-new chasm in the middle of the trail.

  “Another one?” Crix said. “But the last one looked nothing like this!”

  “Each is unique,” Golozar said, “ancient…. To the Gruul, they were once gods.”

  “Once?” Pivlic said, regaining his senses.

  “Until we learned we could kill them,” Golozar finished.

  “Kill them?” Crix shouted. “You had to drop the last one into a pit! You said killing it was—”

  “I never said it was a permanent death,” Golozar said.

  Crix could hardly believe that. This nephilim looked nothing like a construct. It was more like a tapered tube of raw, exposed muscle and tendons with a gaping, toothy mouth on one end that opened to the sky and emitted a keening roar. The sound was excruciating to Crix’s sharp goblin ears, and she dropped to her knees clutching both sides of her head.

  The nephilim clamped its jaws shut once more with a sound like a clanging bell. Two spindly legs emerged from either side of its glistening torso and pressed two disturbingly human-looking hands against either side of the crater it had created.

  The goblin courier tried to get back to her feet, but Crix found she had completely lost her sense of balance. She managed to get vertical for half a second before tumbling over onto her back.

  “I think I need help,” she said.

  Kos picked her up with both hands. “I think we need to carry her,” the old man said to Golozar, who had already drawn a bead on the odd, skull-shaped scale over the nephilim’s drooling mouth. The brain, maybe?

  Crix was sure that hideous sound had scrambled her mind as well as her balance. Now was not the time for study. It was time to go.

  “How are you with a bam-stick?” Golozar said, his face briefly orange as he let a shot fly at the nephilim. His voice sounded very far away. The shot ricocheted off the creature’s tough hide, but it was enough to turn its attention to them.

  “I don’t think that matters,” Pivlic said. “Look!”

  Aun Yom’s Gruul hadn’t slowed their pace at all. They didn’t even try to go around the nephilim. They just attacked it, like it was a simple obstacle to destroy and pass through.

  “Those were terrible tactics,” Golozar said.

  “You think so?” Kos said. “You just did the same thing.”

  Crix could barely hear the rest of the heated words, both because of her temporary—please, let it be temporary—hearing loss and because she could not take her eyes off the scene before her.

  The pursuing Gruul didn’t just attack the roaring nephilim, they devoured it. Jagged blades hacked into the monstrous creature’s flesh, sending greenish blood spewing everywhere. Well-aimed bamshots slammed into its open mouth and emerged from the top of its eyeless head, showering the ground with bone and slimy gray matter. Once the creature began to shudder violently and even began to pull in its legs as if it might retreat, Aun Yom’s gang started to feed. They tore huge chunks of flesh from the creature’s side and stuffed it into their mouths. Three of the Gruul fought over a long ribbon of flesh that looked disturbingly like a tongue, and one of the wiry legs was hacked free.

  “That’s as good a diversion as I think we can expect,” said Kos as he lifted Crix onto his back. “Can you hear me, Crix? Can you hold on?”

  The goblin tried to bring the world Kos had set spinning into focus, an effort that was finally beginning to show results. Kos’s voice was clearer, too. “Yes,” Crix said. “That way.”

  “You heard the lady,” Kos said. “Let’s get out of here. Golozar, watch our backs. Pivlic, keep your eyes open for gaps in the road.”

  “You cannot order me,” Golozar growled. “I am not one of your deputy—”

  “I don’t have time for this, Golozar!” Kos said. “You and I both know you’re no deputy anything. Just watch our damned backs while Crix here gets us to the Cauldron, would you?”

  To Crix’s surprise, Kos’s words seemed to sink in. Golozar twisted the bam-stick and slotted another shot into place. “You lead,” Golozar said.

  “No, she leads,” Kos said. “Me, I’m just the dromad.”

  Pivlic, the imp,
was already ahead of them. “My friends, we must hurry,” Crix said.

  As they bolted down the path, Crix shouted to Golozar, “I guess the Gruul aren’t the most dangerous thing in the Husk.”

  “Not by a long shot,” the Gruul replied.

  “They may be the hungriest, though,” Crix added.

  “That frenzy, I cannot explain,” Golozar said. “But it worries me.”

  * * * * *

  Zomaj Hauc stormed out of the Pyraquin and summoned the chief observer, whom the magelord had left in charge of overall Cauldron operations while Hauc was dealing with other matters in the City of Guilds. The goblin was more of a scientist than a labor foreman, but with the original foreman dead he was the most senior of the goblins and therefore had taken on the job of wrangling and managing the work crews at Hauc’s order.

  The magelord ignored the hails of greeting and praise from the devoted goblins, hundreds of them, who went to and fro pushing insulated carts of cooling lava into power sinks, adding attachments and modifications to the power plants and generators and performing other, simpler tasks, like polishing the brass—all crucial for proper functioning. A few were even standing, on break, apparently, gazing at the center of the Cauldron and the great ovoids that rested there. As Hauc passed, it seemed all of them at once clamored to get even a sliver of his attention—a glance, a punishment, a simple acknowledgment. Hauc had no time for the fawning workers right now, and the fact that they made such displays only added incrementally to his fury at the inefficiencies of the Cauldron project. They should be working, not cheering. He was only concerned with one goblin right now: the courier who, despite his efforts and those of his agents, was still missing somewhere in the Husk.

  Chief Observer Vazozav scrambled up one of the many stair ramps that led to Hauc’s personal observation-and-landing platform, suspended high over the Cauldron. The platform was dominated by the Pyraquin, which hovered over the platform on a cushion of antigravitic magic. The goblin had only grown more wrinkled over the last forty-seven years, and he huffed mightily as he stomped up the winding staircase. He was unused to running. That was going to change, thought Hauc. Vazozav would be run ragged by the time this was done, advancing age be damned.

  “Chief Observer,” the magelord said, with fire in his eyes, “what is the status of our operations?”

  “My lord,” Vazozav said. He bowed and scraped and tried to gather his breath in the thick, oppressive heat, all at once. “The panels have continued to channel the ectoplasmic energy, just as intended, and we’ve actually seen an uptick of about twenty percent. There have been many deaths in the region of late, I believe.”

  “And more to come. The Schism is growing in strength. You have not diverted that energy into the power plants then?” Hauc said.

  “Of course not, my lord,” the goblin said, with a touch of injured pride. “Nor the windmills, which as you know are only for show. The plants are running at exactly the efficiency you requested, with all extra energy channeled directly into the—”

  “I know what I asked,” Hauc said. “That is enough. What about the workers? Have there been any additional incidents?”

  “Not after those slackers were tossed into the lava pit,” the chief observer said.

  “Good,” the magelord declared and looked up through a large, circular gap in the domed roof—a gap that was just a bit bigger than the Pyraquin—at the crystalline, blue sky. “Chief Observer, do you see those distortions?”

  The goblin followed Hauc’s arm up through the skylight and asked, “Distortions, my lord?”

  “Look closely, Observer,” Hauc said. “The ripples in the sky. Like clouds, but not like clouds. Focus your tiny eyes.”

  Vazozav squinted and eventually nodded. “Yes … I see them, my lord?” His tentativeness made the statement sound like a question.

  “No, you do not,” Hauc said, “for you do not possess the gift of great Niv-Mizzet. The dragon’s gift is not given to those without vision.”

  The goblin looked confused, which did not surprise Zomaj Hauc in the slightest. “Yes, my lord,” was the best Vazozav could manage. “I mean, no, my lord. No. Vision. I have no vision?”

  “No, you—Never mind, Vazozav,” the magelord said.

  When Zomaj Hauc had been young, some three, four hundred years ago—he sometimes had trouble remembering exactly how many centuries it had been—he’d received as a gift a trained blood-crested drekavac from one of the many family members who paid the dues for his academic and arcane education. He’d kept the thing for a week until he’d grown tired of it, the longest-lived pet he’d ever owned if he didn’t count the beings in his colloquy, which in many ways were little more than pets themselves. The drekavac’s killer instinct had been stolen by its trainers before Hauc ever got his hands on the creature, and so it was useless as anything but a specimen. Just before he vaporized the drekavac’s skull with a blast of fire (from his own eyes—he’d just learned the spell at the time and wanted to impress upon his fellow students the speed with which he’d mastered it), the creature had looked at him exactly as the goblin did now. Expectant, faithful, with no clue of the doom lurking in its immediate future.

  Hauc was sorely tempted to boil the chief observer’s brain in much the same way, but he’d lost enough capable goblins. Sadly, this Vazozav was one of his brainiest remaining subjects.

  Damn the Gruul for taking his messenger, and damn the Orzhov for not keeping her protected. The Guild of Deals had more zinos and raw assets than all the other guilds combined, yet he could not, it seemed, trust the Orzhov to get a courier from point to point without losing her. Crix was valuable for so many reasons, not least because she was one of the few creatures in Hauc’s sphere of influence who actually possessed the ability to discourse at length about a wide range of subjects well beyond the greatness of Niv-Mizzet and the brilliance of Zomaj Hauc. This was by design, of course—his design. Crix was one of the few successes in the now-defunct goblin augmentation project, and her value was both monetary and personal. After a while, even an Izzet magelord tired of repetitive praise.

  “Chief Observer, come here,” Hauc said. “Stop looking at the sky and come here.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Vazozav said. “What should I look at?”

  “There,” the magelord said and pointed over the platform rail past a network of pipes, tubes, and crackling bolts of electrical discharge at a pair of glowing figures lurking among the steamworks. The pair of hydropyric weirds—which, unlike the pyrohydric weirds, had exterior bodies of water filled with fire—stood placidly, obscured somewhat by thick, lingering fog around the lava pits, where most of the direct interaction between elements took place. “What are those two weirds doing?”

  “They’re guarding the lava pits, my lord,” the goblin said.

  “And those archers in the upper tier?”

  “Guarding the power plants and the lava pits, my lord.”

  “And the djinn at the gates? The djinn standing and chatting with the weirds? That sleeping drake up there? I imagine they guard the gates, the weirds, and the nest, in addition to the power plants and the lava pits? Would that be correct, Vazozav?”

  “Yes, my lord,” the chief observer said. To his credit, he did not stammer in the slightest, though he flexed his hands into fists nervously. He, obviously, had not been a product of the augmentation project.

  “Do I need to continue?” Hauc said.

  “Perhaps if you would grace me with, er, a continuation of your brilliance, my lord? I am but a goblin and welcome enlightenment. My lord,” Vazozav said and bowed his head to stare at his own feet.

  Hauc continued not to kill the goblin, though the temptation grew stronger with every second. Fools. Surrounded by fools. Fools and inefficient wastrels. At least he knew they would be dead soon. He wouldn’t need them once his courier came home and the Cauldron had served its true purpose. Then he would unveil his plan not just for the Izzet but for the entire plane. No others could pos
sibly comprehend the greatness of what he was going to achieve, save perhaps the Firemind himself, but of course Niv-Mizzet was the only being that could not know. Not if Hauc was to succeed.

  “Wake the drake, and get her in the air,” Hauc said without rancor, which calmed the chief observer a bit. “Put the archers on rotating shifts, three per day. The head of each fire team will be rotated to the next one.”

  “From the twelfth team to the thirteenth, for example, my lord?” Vazozav said, eager to have grasped something with his small, unmodified goblin brain. That brain could cook easily with a gesture from Hauc, if he only gave in to the temptation.

  “Yes, exactly,” the magelord said instead of killing the chief observer. “The djinn and weirds will be put on labor shifts, as well as guard duty, and I want only one per gate and one each at every compass point inside this glorious structure.” After a few seconds, he added, “Well?”

  “Yes! I’ll get right on it, my lord,” the goblin said. “May I be of any other service, my lord?”

  “No,” Hauc said. “Keep yourself and everyone else off of this platform for the next hour. I will be in the flight sphere, in conference.”

  “Shall I assign guards to the steps leading to this glorious platform, my lord?” Vazozav asked.

  “Chief Observer Vazozav, son of Joxotuxak,” Hauc said. “If I need protection, you will already be dead.”

  The goblin’s face went a little ghostly, and he almost tumbled down the steps as he backed away from the magelord. Then he turned, grabbed a rail, and virtually flew down to the lava pits, stomping toward the slacking guard elementals once he reached the work floor.

  Hauc stood and turned his attention back to the skylight. The distortions were there. The Schism was spreading, even if goblins could not see it. He nodded in satisfaction that the mana-compression singularity bomb, at least, was performing exactly as expected. Hauc spun on one foot, strode into the Pyraquin’s open ramp, and pulled it closed behind him.