The lifeless body was placed in another copper capsule and routed downward to the Sixth Sphere, where it would await the attention of the Inner Circle member, Abcal-dro, servant of the Dark Lord of Phyrexia himself.
*****
She awoke standing in a domed, circular room. It was cold. She looked down at her bare arms and legs, flecked with goose pimples. A moment's concentration dispelled them as heat coursed through her veins.
How strange it was, this shell of flesh. Strange and yet familiar. She stood easily, testing the articulation of her hands, arms, and legs. Breath plumed from her nose in soft wisps. All parts worked. All systems were in order.
The chill walls were blue glass, polished and seamless. Without effort, she calculated the height of the dome at 16.39 feet. She walked slowly toward the only other object in the room, a five-foot-high chrome tripod, above which floated a small black sphere four inches in diameter.
Some things she knew, others she didn't. She knew she was alive and on Phyrexia. She knew the periodic table of the elements, the expansion rate of live steam in a turbine, and the speed at which flowstone multiplied under optimum conditions. She knew where to strike a human body to cause the most damage, but she could also set a broken leg with her bare hands. She did not know her own name.
"That has not been decided yet," said a calm, genderless voice.
She darted away from the hovering sphere and crouched near the wall. It wasn't fear that made her crouch. Fear was not in her design. Her posture was defensive, a position from which to strike at the unseen speaker.
"I am Abcal-dro, your master. Stand up."
She obeyed.
"Speak. You have the means," said the voice.
"Who am I?"
"You are called 'Belbe.'" The name had two syllables, bell-be.
"What does it mean?"
"It derives from the ancient Thran language, be'el-be. It means 'a lens.'"
She went to the gleaming tripod in the center of the room. "Lens. A device that focuses to a point or spreads apart rays of light or other forms of energy," she recited.
"Correct."
Belbe looked at her hands. "Do I focus light?"
"In your case, the name is metaphorical. As you are going among flesh beings, you are therefore expected to have a name."
"Where am I going?"
"The plane of Rath."
She closed her eyes and thought. "Rath. An artificial world, created by our supreme master, composed of flowstone nanomachines, inhabiting its own plane at coordinates-"
"Stop." The command was mildly expressed, but absolute. Belbe not only ceased speaking, she ceased moving at all,
"Learn not to speak what you're thinking. By so doing, you give away too much and bore your listeners."
Belbe remained immobile, like a statue of flesh and metal.
"Speak," commanded Abcal-dro.
"I do only your will, Great One."
A strange, liquid, bubbling laughter filled the dome. It subsided to a sigh. "Listen well, Belbe. You are going to Rath soon, as our emissary to that world. Our lens, one might say. The time approaches when Rath will be in congruence with Dominaria, the prime plane of our ancestors. When the conjunction of planes occurs, all that is on Rath will be on Dominaria-"
"And all that is on Dominaria will be on Rath."
A pause. "True." Cold clutched at her fabricated heart. Even the mildest pique of the high priest raked her entrails like a razor blade of ice.
"You were made to resemble the inhabitants of Rath, not your masters on Phyrexia. In fact, the native environment of Phyrexia is inimical to your existence, which is why you must be kept in this environmental chamber until your departure. You are as much like them as we could make you, and that is an important parameter in your mission.
"The governor of Rath has abandoned his post for the sake of personal vengeance. His dereliction is contrary to our purpose, and it will not be tolerated. A new evincar must be found to take his place. You will choose the new evincar for us. Since natural selection is the best scalpel for dividing the weak from the strong, allow the candidates to struggle among themselves until one of the specimens establishes himself as the superior candidate. You will observe this struggle for us. You may choose-" more bubbling laughter rippled through the chamber, "-we give you leave to participate in the competition as you see fit.
"Only one task must remain inviolate. Under no circumstance is the conjunction of Rath and Dominaria to be altered, delayed, or interfered with-by anyone. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Great One."
"You may encounter certain beings who, by an accident of breeding, have the power to pass from plane to plane. These planeswalkers may attempt to thwart our plans to overlay Dominaria. You will not let them interfere. Your own life means nothing compared to the success of our plan. Is that clear?"
She bowed with all the grace of her copied body. "It is, master."
"Approach the sphere."
Belbe closed within arm's length of the black orb. It floated a scant inch above the polished tripod. The ball's surface was smooth, yet did not reflect her face as she gazed at it.
"Stand still."
Belbe locked her legs in place. The sphere silently rose and came to her. It touched her at the base of her throat, and for an instant she felt nothing. The sphere melted into her flesh without breaking the skin or causing any bleeding. Pressure built inside her chest, pushing on her newly-placed organs. She gasped with newfound pain.
"This is our 'lens.' It will be the connection from you to us."
"What is this feeling?" she whispered.
"It is called pain. As it is part of mortal existence, you must learn to recognize it. To rule creatures of flesh, you must make pain your ally. Use it whenever you can, Belbe. It is the foundation of power."
Her mock-blood roared in her ears. She feared her heart would rupture, her lungs collapse. Belbe's vision filmed with gray, and her breath caught in her throat. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Her knees buckled.
Stand!
The voice of Abcal-dro was no longer in her ears, but inside her head. Despite intense pain, Belbe kept her feet. She staggered against the tripod, blinking through the haze of her suffering. The tripod abruptly vanished, and she stumbled forward, blind and gasping. Something warm ran down her lip.
The eye is now in place. You will soon adjust to its presence. She heard the words, but behind them there was something else. Behind the cool voice and godly demeanor of the high priest, Belbe sensed this:
Sweet, sweet the hall of flesh! The song of blood, what ancient joy! Too long have I slept-why, in this shell I can walk a thousand worlds, renew the sensations of lost millennia! It is mine, it is mine. Who is better than I? I take them all in my hands, caress them or crush them. My little puppet, my lens. Shrink from nothing, please your maker Belbe struck herself in the face with her open hand, twice, three times. The thin, shrieking voice submerged in the throb of her raging pulse. She wiped glistening oil from her lip. Slowly the room came back into focus. It seemed so empty without the orb and tripod.
She became aware of being watched. She saw in her mind an image of herself, standing naked under the cold glass dome. The lens was working-she was seeing herself as Abcaldro saw her.
This frail creature was her? Standing erect on two thin legs, Belbe was the color of fresh parchment, slightly flushed from her exertions. A spray of pale blue freckles dotted her face and shoulders. Her hair, an unruly shock of brown, began at a peak in the center of her forehead and arched back over her high, pointed ears. Along her arms, legs, buttocks, and back were matte black lines in geometric patterns, like tattoos, but in fact were strips of reinforcing carbon fiber. Her face was angular, her chin sharp. Thin white scars remained where her flesh had been reattached to her metallic skeleton.
She raised her eyes to the apex of the vault. The azure glass gradually became transparent, and Belbe saw her hidden master peering down at he
r from outside the dome.
The room was 29.5 feet in diameter-she knew because her master knew it. Pressing against the clear shell was a mass of translucent tissue. Pulsing black veins, distended with the same glistening oil that filled her blood vessels, lined the shapeless body. Dozens of pseudopods as thick as her waist gripped the base of the dome. Drops of thick blue slime clung to the dome.
Rhythmically twitching green bladders and complex multilobed organs were visible through the dirty gray protoplasm. At the very peak of the dome was Abcal-dro's true eye: a swirling green and black iris fifteen inches wide, a trio of red-rimmed pupils in the center,
"Is this how you see me?" asked the high priest. She nodded once, slowly. "How does my appearance strike you?"
"My master is beautiful," she said. "Such power and efficiency must be beautiful."
The Phyrexian's liquid laughter resumed as the dome went opaque again. "One last warning, little one. On Rath you will be on your own. Though backed by the power and authority of the Dark Lord, you will succeed or fail by your own efforts."
"I will not fail, great one."
"See that you don't. It is time to leave."
The seamless floor split apart, revealing dark descending steps. Humid, sulfurous air wafted up from the hole. Unhesitatingly, Belbe went down the steps to a wide, noisome corridor where four priests in full regalia stood waiting for her. Behind them was a full entourage of lesser constructs and functionaries, and lastly a gang of gremlins bearing her new wardrobe-robes of woven chrome and onyx brocades, headdresses of flash-formed obsidian. To the rear were the bearers of her arms and armor. Each piece had been forged in the Fourth Sphere from Monitor 8391's original specifications, resulting in perfectly tailored armor that would fit no one but Belbe.
The suit was made of black diamond, the hardest substance on Phyrexia. It was so hard in fact, it had to be shaped and cut with fluoric acid, since no tools existed that could cut the plates. The acid treatment left the armor matte black, as dead a color as the lens now embedded in Belbe's chest.
She coughed and felt the first drops of sweat form under her arms. The priests bowed as Belbe passed. She thought it odd the exalted clerics of Phyrexia should bow to her, a newly made creature more flesh than metal, but then she heard a whisper deep inside saying my lens, my eye…
Their obeisance made sense. It was not her they were bowing to, it was their master.
*****
"Monsters."
The room was crowded with elf warriors, stained with sweat, smoke, and the blood of battle. They had not assembled here to fight, but to mourn. Their chieftain's daughter was gone, her fate unknown.
Eladamri knelt by Avila's empty bed. "Monsters," he said again. "I knew the evincar was vicious and unnatural, but I didn't think he would stoop to this!"
"The fiend responsible will be found, we swear it," said Gallan, Eladamri's lieutenant. The warriors around him grunted in agreement.
Eladamri put his hand on the boughs where his daughter had lain. This treachery soured his success at the Stronghold. His warriors had confronted Volrath and his warlord, Greven il-Vec, and survived-a victory as signal as any ever recorded on Rath. Now this.
He withdrew his aching hand, bruised by recent combat. The motion stirred the soft boughs, revealing the soft glint of snake bone.
"What's this?"
The agent's knife had fallen to the bottom of the bed. Beside it was a small glass vial, still upright, and a single blue feather.
"I know this weapon." It was plainly of elven make, the garnet pommel bearing the intricate engraving of Skyshroud artisans.
"Gallan, whose knife is this?" Eladamri asked sharply.
His lieutenant held the blade close. In the poor light it wasn't easy to see.
"The emblem is of the clan of Carodonal."
"Yes." Eladamri stood. "Tenesi."
It was too awful to believe, but it was the evincar's style all right. Avila's own fiance. He was lost in a skirmish twenty nights past.
"I'd hoped he'd found death rather than capture, but…" Eladamri made a fist around the tiny glass vial.
"What's that?" asked Gallan.
"Something for our healers to study, I think. Now, my brothers, don't dwell on what's happened! Volrath thinks he can frighten me into inaction by taking my child. This will never happen.
"From this moment, I count Avila among the dead. Let her name be added to the roll of warriors who've died to make our land free."
He fixed the narrow blue feather to the brow of his helmet. It would be his talisman during the coming fight for freedom.
The next day, the hunting party returned with the agent's body, tied hand and foot on a pole like a trophy snake. Though he had been altered with many Phyrexian implants, including a control rod in place of his spine, every elf in the village recognized him as Tenesi, once the finest hunter in the Skyshroud Forest, and the betrothed of the lost Avila.
CHAPTER 1
PRISONERS
Ertai fell screaming into a tangled mass of rigging suspended from the side of the pursuing vessel. In the last second before certain death, a giant hand of rope snatched him from the empty air.
The airship Predator, reeling under accumulated battle damage, scarcely noticed the addition of one to her complement. She had an eight degree list to starboard, her speed had fallen to a scant four knots, and her steering gear was so damaged the ship could not maintain a straight course. Dead sailors and mogg goblins-Predator's boarding troops-sprawled everywhere. Smoke billowed from hull scuttles along the battered starboard side, filling the deck with choking black streamers. Into this chaos strode Greven il-Vec, Predator's master.
The crew-what was left of it-dashed about in ratlike frenzy, each man pursuing his own task. Greven shook his head in disgust. Not a brain to be found in any of them! He spied four sailors by the starboard rail, hacking at tangled rigging with cutlasses.
"Never mind that!" he roared. Leaning against the slant of the deck he shouted, "All free hands to the port side! Can't you feel the list? Do you want to capsize us?"
"But Commander-" said one, blade poised.
Greven seized the man by the throat. The sailor's face purpled; his cutlass clattered to the canted deck.
"Question me, will you?" Greven said, seething. The choking man could not reply. "Worthless meat! Lightening the ship will solve two problems!" So saying, he hurled the sailor over the side. The remaining three scampered for their lives to the port side of the ship.
Predator trembled, and a forward hatch cover blew off. A jet of flame erupted from the hold. The heavy hatch cover passed within a finger's breadth of Greven's head-the wind of its passing cooled his cheek-but he never flinched. The shrieks of men burning in the engine room below had as little effect.
"Engineer, dead stop! Direct all power to lift! Firefighters to the forward hold, now! The rest of you, form a work party and clear the decks!" His voice cut through the terror and confusion, and Predator's crew fell to saving their battered ship. Thanks to Greven and the fearful discipline he instilled, the airship slowly righted itself and maintained its altitude.
Stepping over deck wreckage, Greven reached the forecastle. Here the ship had taken most of its punishment. Bulwarks were shattered, the alloy casing peeled back like gray flower petals. Colliding with the closed portal had caused the worst damage. The ship's prow had been crushed backward to the fourth hull frame. The serrated ram had broken off and was lying at the bottom of Portal Canyon somewhere. The forward harpoon gun had been dismounted, the barrel jammed into the upper boarding mandible overhead. It would be days, maybe weeks, before such extensive structural damage could be repaired.
Greven stood with his feet braced widely apart on the twisted deck and stared at the ancient portal through which Weatherlight had vanished. He'd lost a battle, something he seldom did, and he'd failed in his pursuit of the enemy, something that had never happened before. High atop the portal structure, the great Phyrexian control ce
nter, styled like a fiercely staring face, mocked Greven's failure.
"Someday, Gerrard," he muttered. "Someday you'll bleed for Greven. I swear it."
*****
Far below, clinging to the rigging draped over the starboard side of Predator, young Ertai debated his chances. From this height he would never survive a fall to the ground. He knew a flying spell, but it required calm and the utmost concentration-not very likely conditions at the moment. He briefly considered hiding in the wreckage until Predator landed, but the Rathi airship was still hovering and gave no sign of an intention to land. Ertai's arms ached. He couldn't hang on forever. The only sane choice was to climb to the ship above. Talent like his should not be wasted on a meaningless death.
He'd just begun to climb the skein of lines when a body hurtled past. A sailor hit the rigging a few feet from Ertai, and the back of his shirt snagged on some wires. He hung helplessly for a moment, then his clothing slowly began to tear. Ertai and the sailor's eyes met, and for a few seconds, Ertai saw the approach of death in the man's eyes. The sailor clawed at the rigging, but he could not find a handhold. As he tore free, the only sound the man made with his mangled throat was a horribly muted gurgle. Ertai watched him fall.
With renewed purpose, Ertai resumed climbing. The wire rigging tore his hands. What a shame, he thought. Such wellshaped, expressive hands he had. The old masters who had trained him in the nuance and gestures of spellcasting always complimented his fine hands. Now they were being cut to ribbons. A great-and painful-shame.
The shouting from the hull above him abated. Predator climbed slowly. Ertai was a few yards below the keel when he heard a voice boom out, "Prepare to clear away the fouled rigging!" His heart contracted into a hard knot when he saw axes and swords glinting above the rail. They were going to chop his lifeline off!
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