by Cory Herndon
“Baroness,” Kos said. “We found the messenger. Did Pivlic—?”
“He made it out,” Teysa said. “Never mind him. Look.”
The last dragon cracked through to top of its shell, its bone-white scales and reddish eyes glowing in the mist. Crix held up the glowing arm as if offering it to the creature.
“What is she doing?” Kos said.
“I think she means to take that dragon for herself,” Golozar ventured.
“She’ll never pull it off,” Teysa said. As if she could hear the Orzhov baroness, the goblin closed her mouth and turned back toward them. She waved the arm in the air.
“Baroness,” Crix called. “Help!”
“Gruul,” Teysa said.
“Golozar,” the Gruul growled.
“Golozar, then,” Teysa said, “I hate to ask this, but time demands it. Will you carry me?”
* * * * *
“Vsyo dovzer zsya mene, drazzac, drazzavh, drazzaugh,” Teysa said.
“Is she reading it right, Crix?” Kos whispered. The dragon’s head was not completely clear of the shell yet, and the sides of the egg were bulging and cracking against the pressure of its wings and tail.
“I think so,” the goblin replied. “I’m something of a linguist, but this tongue is—”
“Quiet!” Golozar hissed.
“Tiyava silz naya, ti silya nayana vaykena hadsya yasyz.”
A bit more of the albino showed, wicked-looking horns jutting from its jaw. The spikes ripped away more of the shell, which clattered noisily to the floor. The noise rang weirdly in the sudden quiet inside the Cauldron. “Baroness,” Kos said, “I think you need to hurry.”
Teysa glared at Kos as if to say, Do you want to try this?
“Liynwryza drava,” Teysa said carefully. “Drava ti selya, xizzaya Teysa Karlov ditezzya.”
The albino dragon pierced the sides of the egg at last, and the pale, glistening creature spread her wings for the first time. She didn’t roar like her brother but looked curiously at Teysa, Crix, Kos, and Golozar in turn.
“Hello?” Teysa said.
“You,” the dragon said, her voice like a choir of snakes, “Teysa Karlov. You are this one’s master?” The dragon, her head big enough to swallow a drake whole and her face like an ivory mountain, still managed to look slightly puzzled. “This does not feel … right,” she said. “But it is so.”
The dragon lowered her chin just as the blue one had and looked at Teysa. Its red eye blinked once. “Shall I carry you, Master?”
“Now the tricky part,” she said to the others. “Anyone here know how to ride a dragon?”
“I think I could manage it,” Golozar said, his gruff voice belying true awe at the mammoth creature. “There used to be wild drakes in the Husk. Before they were hunted out we used to capture them. Showing off. I think it wouldn’t be that different.”
“All right,” Teysa said. “You’re with me, Golozar. Give me a hand up?”
“Lady, I barely know you. Are you out of your mind?”
“Quite possible,” Kos muttered.
“Gruul, I don’t have time to argue. We don’t have time. Either you help or you don’t. I can ride a dromad—this can’t be that different.”
The conflict waging war within Golozar’s conscience raged plainly across his face. “My people may be dead,” he said quietly. “I must return to them.”
“They will definitely be dead if we can’t stop Hauc,” Teysa said and offered her hand.
After another few seconds of raging indecision, Golozar took her hand and shook it. “All right,” he said. “You’ve got a point.”
“What should we do?” Crix said. She looked even more awestruck than Golozar, staring into the albino’s glowing, red eyes. Even Kos seemed to be having trouble not staring.
After the Gruul had helped her settle in behind the albino’s head and heaved himself into the seat behind her, the baroness answered.
“What about that?” she said, pointing to Hauc’s flight sphere, still hovering in the air above the platform. Whatever kept it aloft must have been internally generated, Kos guessed. It had stuck to the platform like glue. It had never occurred to him they might be able to use it.
He still wasn’t sure they could.
“Crix?” he said. “That’s impossible, right?”
The goblin looked thoughtful. “No,” she said, stroking her chin, “I don’t think it is impossible. I know a few tricks with locks, and the control layout should be standard. If there even are locks. One doesn’t normally just walk away with a magelord’s personal property. It’s just not done.” She grinned at Kos. “But I think I’m past things that ‘just aren’t done.’ What do you say? Ever flown in a ’sphere before?”
“I can’t say I’ve ever wanted to,” Kos said honestly.
“You’ll love it,” Crix said. “My grandfather took me up once. It’s nothing like a zeppelid. It’s more like—”
“Crix,” Kos said.
“Yes?”
“All right, let’s do it. Just stop talking about it or I’m going to lose what nerve I have left.”
“Good luck,” Teysa said. “We won’t be able to communicate once we’re up there, so try to keep an eye on us.” The dragon lifted its head. “Dragon,” she said, “take us through the roof if you can.”
“I can,” the dragon sang. “Hold on.”
Kos and Crix were knocked over by the wave of hot air the dragon’s wings kicked up as it launched itself through the interior of the Cauldron and through the rooftop exit. Its wings clipped the sides and sent off sparks then they were out of sight.
“Kos, we should go,” Crix said. “If we can’t get into that sphere, we’re going to have to get out of here before the generators start to spill over into the plants.”
“Why? What happens then?” Kos asked.
“Ever seen a geothermic dome erupt?”
“Not for a long time.”
“Were you standing on top of it?”
“No,” Kos said.
“You don’t want to,” Crix said.
The old ’jek nodded. “Good point. Well … Who wants to live forever?”
* * * * *
Zomaj Hauc soared over the flats and relished the warm rays of sun that struck his face when he gained enough altitude to see the rising orb to the east. He could feel the blue dragon’s heartbeat against his legs.
“You shall be called Hauc’s Blue, I think,” he said. “Over time, as you prove your loyalty, I will consider giving you a true name, something fittingly historic. But for now … it’s got a certain ring to it, does it not?”
“Yes,” the dragon growled, “Master.”
Hauc took a moment to draw a deep breath and relish flying under the open sky, with no mizzium plating or magical fields between him and the winds, free of any dread that Niv-Mizzet would find him. If the Firemind dared to challenge him now, the old guildmaster would get much more than he bargained for.
Something didn’t smell right. Specifically the air. At the same moment he detected the heavy presence of pollen in the air, he heard the dragon wheeze a long, slow breath. White petals from the Vitar Yescu floated by.
“Master,” the dragon said, “the air. It does not—” the dragon drew another ragged breath. “It is hard to breathe.”
The magelord tried not to panic and fought to keep his flaring temper in check at the same time. “Can you continue?” he asked Blue.
“Yes,” the dragon replied, “if you wish it.”
“I wish it,” Hauc said. “And I think I know a way to clear the air as well. Do you see that accursed tree at the southern end of your new range?”
“Yes.”
“Burn it.”
“Gladly, Master.”
Hauc let out an involuntary shout of triumph as the Great Dragon, his dragon, began its assault on Utvara, beginning with the Vitar Yescu and the mewling, pathetic Selesnyans inside.
The Vitar Yescu grew closer by the second. �
��Now, Blue,” Hauc barked.
The dragon’s jaws flung wide and belched an explosion of blue flame that engulfed the Vitar Yescu’s willowy branches in seconds. The blaze clung to the Selesnyan tree like gobs of oil and sent petals of flame coursing through the breeze. Screaming life churchers poured out of every orifice of the Vitar Yescu and into the surrounding veztrees. Black smoke bubbled and billowed into the sky, and Hauc bid the dragon to inhale deeply as they went past.
“Better,” the dragon said.
“Good,” Hauc said. “Who needs plague winds when you’ve got dragon fire? Again, Blue.”
“Yes,” the dragon replied and wheeled around for another pass at the burning Vitar Yescu.
The screams of the Selesnyans filled Hauc with an unreal sense of joy. Such pain as legends caused. Zomaj Hauc was going to rewrite the history of Ravnica, and if that whithered relic Niv-Mizzet or anyone else tried to stop him they’d burn just as easily.
* * * * *
Teysa whooped in surprise as they cleared the Cauldron dome and went from stifling, oily heat to cold dawn air in a flash. The sun now dueled with the Schism for the sky, but the Schism looked as if it had begun to fade again.
The blue dragon, Hauc astride its neck, soared away from them as they continued to climb.
“What are we doing?” Teysa shouted over the winds. “He’s going that way!”
“We need to get some height on him,” Golozar shouted back over his shoulder, “take him by surprise. We want to end this quickly. No offense, Baroness, but I have no desire to be cooked alive, and I doubt you do either.”
“You don’t talk like a Gruul,” Teysa said.
“How many Gruul do you know?” Golozar asked.
“Counting you? One.”
“Figures.”
The dragon reached a height satisfactory to her pilot, and Teysa’s stomach lurched upward when Golozar coaxed the albino to level off and begin a long, slow dive, building speed, toward Hauc.
The blue dragon had changed course slightly and now headed directly for the Vitar Yescu. It launched a searing volley of blue fire at the Selesnyan tree, which was beginning to cave in on itself.
“Barkfeather,” she said, “you suppose he was in there?”
“Who’s Barkfeather?” Golozar asked.
“A—” A what? An ally? A friend? A temporary ally, at least. Maybe there was something she could do. She needed every ally she could get until this was over. “We’ve got to go faster,” Teysa said. “They haven’t destroyed it yet.”
“The plague will end, you said,” Golozar said. “Why do you care?”
“There are hundreds of people in there,” she replied. “And they’re about to owe me. Faster.”
“Yes,” the dragon said, her voice rising with the wind along her broad, pale wings. The dragon’s breath sounded labored.
“Dragon?” Teysa said. “Are you all right?”
“The air is thin,” the dragon said.
The plague. She hadn’t anticipated that she herself would be relying on one of the dragons.
“Ah,” Teysa said. “Wish I’d remembered that part. Dragon, will anything help it?”
“Burning things,” the dragon replied.
“I’ll take us over the Vitar Yescu,” Golozar said.
“No ordinary fire,” the dragon rumbled. “Dragon fire.”
As she watched Hauc’s blue dragon send another inferno at the Vitar Yescu, Teysa said, “Don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
* * * * *
“This is too dangerous,” Kos said.
“It’s a ramp,” Crix said. “You’ll do fine.”
“Not the ramp,” Kos said, examining the flight sphere Pyraquin.
He was about to rob an insane magelord, and he’d come to grips with that. He was going to have to fly out of here in that death-ball if he was going to escape a fiery doom when the generators went up, assuming the chunks that kept falling out of the ceiling didn’t crush him first. No, his problem was simpler than that, simpler even than not believing the goblin really knew how to fly the sphere. It had nothing to do with the bulbous flame pods packed with liquid pyromana that could probably just as easily blow you off the map as work properly.
If Kos got into the sphere, he’d be alone with only one other individual. In the last twelve years, Kos had made sure that never happened, ever. It was, he realized now, one of the reasons he’d stayed so long at Pivlic’s. There were always people coming and going. Even on late, slow nights there would be at least one drunk at the end of the bar, Pivlic behind the bar, and Kos standing—or more often sitting—watch over it all.
Being alone with another was how the lurker got to you. He rarely dwelled on it, but Kos lived in constant fear that someday, somehow, those writhing, wormy tentacles would find him again. Find him, kill him, and take over his life. Kos would be gone, dead, but no one who knew him would even realize it. He’d seen many wojeks who had turned out to be impersonators exposed at the Decamillennial, along with a lot of others, and all had been good people once. Kos would die before he let that happen to him.
“Kos,” the goblin said, “I can do this myself, but if you don’t make up your mind soon you’re not going to get out of this place in time. I can fly this. I promise.”
“I know,” Kos said. Come on, you old fool, he told himself. How could Lupul impersonate rocket feet? “Let’s go.”
He had to duck at the top of the ramp. Crix had moved into the pilot’s seat and said apologetically, “I’m afraid you’ll have to try to wedge yourself in over there. And don’t touch that. Or that. In fact, don’t touch anything.”
“I thought you were sure you could handle this,” Kos said. “Maybe there’s another way to get out of—”
“I am sure,” Crix said, but the wojek thought she sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “Hold on to those straps there. We’ll be taking off in a few seconds.” The goblin buckled a pair of belts across her chest.
“Just hold onto the straps,” Kos said. “Any other advice? Shouldn’t I have a chair?”
“Maybe,” Crix said. She waved her hand over a brazier that rose from the console as several crystals, dials, and glass bubbles of odd-colored fluids flickered to life. “Let’s see, I should still have an offering left …” the goblin muttered. She fumbled at her belt and produced a few pinches of dust, each pinch a different substance, and tossed them into the brazier. Then Crix spoke a few words of offering then declared, “Ignite!” The brazier flared and the glowing controls hummed with life.
“Looks like we’re fully fueled,” Crix said, “I think. Either that or we’ve already overheated and I haven’t even started the flame-pods yet.”
“You haven’t?” Kos said. “What’s that noise?”
“Just the systems,” Crix said. “She’s a really beautiful artifact, isn’t she? Only one of her kind, the Pyraquin.”
“I’m honored,” Kos managed. He tried not to dwell on all the different ways he was probably going to get burned alive in the air and instead tried to focus on how he was going to be destroyed in the Cauldron if they didn’t leave. It didn’t really help.
“Here we go,” Crix said, gripping a prominent, red lever in her hand.
“Wait,” Kos said. “No offense, but don’t you need two arms to fly this thing?”
“Don’t think so,” the goblin said. “But if it turns out I do, keep yours ready, would you?”
Crix wrenched back on the lever, and the flame-pods roared to life. She jammed it forward again, and Kos was thrown back against the floor. Then the transparent invizomizzium ball shot straight up through the exit atop a column of fire, which grew into a conflagration as the nest of generators and power plants finally went off in a series of spectacular explosions that tore the Cauldron apart.
Fined—Zomaj Hauc, magelord, a sum total of five thousand zinos per day until safety codes are met on Power Project U-001012. Fine levied in absentia.
—Public notice
s, the Utvara Townsman
(31 Paujal 1012 Z.C.)
3 CIZARM 10012 Z.C.
Pivlic was down to the last remnant of cure when he reached Garulsz’s camp, but it was enough for the ogress and her crew, with a bit left over. He had to hand it to the Simic, the stuff went a long way, though no one would really know if it worked for at least another day, assuming some fool went wandering around the flats tomorrow without a sphere suit.
Pivlic had intentionally gotten to Garulsz last. He didn’t particularly want to tell the ogress he’d left their mutual friend Kos to most likely die a horrible death, and his head still ached from his last visit to this particular mining claim. Garulsz had shown surprising restraint in Pivlic’s estimation and only broken a single pick that didn’t even come close to hitting the imp.
“So we go back to help, right?” Garulsz said after ruining a few more tools and sending her partners running for the mining rig lest she turn her frustration on their livelihood. This was exactly what Pivlic had hoped he wouldn’t hear.
“Actually, I was thinking we might all retire,” Pivlic said. He needed to stall. Either Kos and the others would succeed, or they wouldn’t. Out here on the flats, a strange, alien heat beating down on his leathery skin, Pivlic didn’t feel particularly confident about Kos’s success. Success at what? Keeping the dragons out of Hauc’s control but watching them hatch anyway? What force on Ravnica could stop the new dragons now that they were on their way into the world? “Yes, we should retire, my friend. To the Imp Wing. Drinks are on the house.”
“Me only drink dindin juice,” Garulsz said. “Kos was telling me about some of that imp rotgut you sell, and—”
“Fine,” Pivlic said. “I have plenty of—Oh my word.”
A blue dragon emerged from the dome atop the Cauldron and roared into the sky on wings that momentarily blotted out the first rays of sunrise before wheeling overhead and flapping off toward the township.
“Or maybe we stay here,” Garulsz said with the exaggerated caution of one not used to expressing caution at all. “Looks like bar might be getting cooked, imp.”