Ravnica

by Cory Herndon

  “I have not flown under my own power for years,” the angel said with a shrug. “Besides, that roc came out of nowhere.”

  Kos hit the latch to slide the cabin door aside and leaped out onto the platform. A short, fat, red-faced man in the familiar uniform of a wojek captain led a small phalanx of constables and a man wearing the same cut of uniform Kos usually wore. Phaskin, Stanslov, and the rest of the platoon arrived at the zeppelid at a dead run.

  Kos and Feather followed Biracazir out the cabin door. Jarad held back and exited the cabin last. He slid the door shut behind them.

  “Phaskin,” Kos began, “We received Helligan’s falcon, but—”

  “No time for that now, Kos,” Phaskin said as he strode right past Kos and up to Fonn. “Guardian, we need you down in Necro. Follow me, please.” With that, he turned and ran back the way he had come, toward a set of double doors that were still open and led to a stairwell. The wojeks accompanying him stoically reversed course to follow, though Kos saw Stanslov shoot him a look that could have burned through iron.

  Fonn turned to Kos, whose jaw was still open. “‘Necro?’” she asked.

  “The Applied Necromancy and Alchemy Laboratory,” he said and moved to follow Feather, who was already hot on Phaskin’s tail. Fonn, Biracazir, and Jarad set off after them.

  “Captain Phaskin!” she shouted. “What’s going on? Is the saint—”

  “Saint Bayul is still alive,” Phaskin shouted over one shoulder before descending the stairs, “but I can’t say how long he’ll last.”

  Fonn beat them all to the stairwell.

  * * * * *

  Air Commander Wenslauv and her flight of roc-riders had left the Tenth Leaguehall when the call came out from Centerfort: Wojek headquarters was under attack, and all available wojeks were to report there to defend it. The initial reports were hard to believe—the Golgari teratogens, a menagerie of bizarre but intelligent creatures who normally kept to their haunts in the undercity of Old Rav, had launched an organized strike on the League’s headquarters on the eve of the convocation. Even at a distance, Wenslauv spotted the attackers silhouetted against the gray sky driving centerward over the ’post-lit streets. Among them were hundreds of Devkarin huntresses and hunters, the warrior class of the Golgari’s elf clan. The tall elves sat astride huge insects that tromped over the cobblestones and bricks and rode oversized bats and beetles that flew in tight formations around the stone titan, the towers of the ’fort, and the buildings that ringed the center. Minor Devkarin priests and priestesses in bone and leather armor commanded entire squadrons of domad-sized hunting insects that spat acid at the guards lining the parapets.

  The Devkarin and teratogens were legendary rivals, and their combined strength was frightening. It only got worse as the air commander brought her wing though the crisscrossing elevated thoroughfares and into the open ring that marked the most sacred territory in the city.

  It went without saying that the attack was the most flagrant violation of the city’s sacred laws in centuries—and the fact that it was happening now had to be more than coincidence. It violated everything that had kept Ravnican society together for the past ten thousand years. To do it today of all days showed that the gorgon who led the attack must have been planning it for some time. The Rakdos rebellions hardly counted. The death cult’s behavior was predictable and practically expected of them. The Golgari, for all their dark secrets and necromancy, had always been content in the undercity. No other guild had that much territory this close to the center. The attack made even less sense with that in mind, Wenslauv thought.

  By the time the air commander’s wing reached the Rokiric Pavilion, the battle had already begun. If the emergency message hadn’t identified the attackers already, Wenslauv wouldn’t have been able to believe her eyes when she finally got an unobstructed look.

  “Neb,” she shouted over the screaming wind to the falcon clinging precariously to her shoulder. “Get to the C-G. Message: Air Commander Wenslauv reporting. We’ve arrived and will take targets of opportunity until we receive further orders. End message.” The falcon released its grip and launched itself at the towers of Centerfort.

  On the way to the center, Wenslauv had already seen enough bizarre activity to make her doubt her sanity. Even now, at a lower altitude than the skyjek Air Commander, the quietmen—the silent, seemingly docile servants of the Selesnya Conclave—were everywhere, flitting to and fro above the heads of Ravnica’s citizens. With the convocation due to start at dawn, the streets were already packed with citizens from all over the plane, but everywhere the quietmen went the masses were silent. Instead of milling about, preparing for the celebration, they all began to converge on the center like a flood. The tide of beings flowed around the Centerfort battle and on to the north side of the ancient mountaintop. From Wenslauv’s vantage point, the white-robed figures looked like shepherds taming an unruly flock, and the members of the flock formed a thousand tributaries in the colors of all nine guilds that flowed in toward a central point—Vitu Ghazi.

  That had been strange enough, but the army attacking Centerfort was even more bizarre. It looked as if every teratogen in the undercity had emerged from beneath the streets at once. Hard-shelled giant centipedes flooded Rokiric Pavilion and crawled up the legs of the Tenth’s stone titan. Flocks of harpies made cautious strafing runs on the guards that lined Centerfort’s golden spires and the stone titan’s head and shoulders.

  Wenslauv signaled the pair of rocs on either side to do what they could and wheeled off to find her own targets.

  “I can see why they waited ten thousand years for this convocation,” she muttered. She readied her lance and moved into position to strafe the insectoid horrors flooding the pavilion. As she brought her mount in closer she could see that the teratogen horde and Devkarin weren’t alone. Bringing up the rear, difficult to spot among the shuffling citizenry from on high, hundreds of deadwalkers spilled from the drainage grates. The mindless zombies weren’t much of a threat alone, but in the numbers Wenslauv was seeing they would be able to overwhelm the guards in minutes, if the teratogens didn’t do the job first. Strangely the zombies weren’t attacking the beatific horde pouring toward Vitu Ghazi but followed along behind the teratogen and Devkarin forces. Wenslauv flew low over their heads, taking a few swipes on the way just to limber up her arm. Her wingmates kept pace and did the same, though she doubted her small squad could make much of a difference.

  They broke through a swarm of giant beetles that turned to pursue them and kept a low altitude to get a lay of the battlefield the pavilion had become in so short a time. That was when Wenslauv spotted her astride a huge monitor lizard covered in bony scales and mossy fungal growths. The gorgon mistress of the Golgari herself was at the head of this charge. Ludmilla’s eyes flashed left and right, making statues out of innocent citizens and scattering guards with a glance.

  If the gorgon led this attack, it was something unheard of since before the Guildpact—open conflict between the guilds. The Swarm had declared war on the wojeks, and though she would fight to the bitter end, Wenslauv wasn’t sure how the wojeks—exhausted from months of overtime and preparation for the Decamillennial influx—could hope to win.

  She wondered, not for the first time, if the Guildpact had been written with an expiration date. Everywhere she looked, order gave way to chaos. Wenslauv had borne a bad feeling about the convocation, and it looked like her premonition was coming true. She just hadn’t expected it to be quite this accurate.

  The air commander adjusted her goggles, signaled the attack formation to her wing, and descended into the fray.

  * * * * *

  The lab was silent as possible while Fonn communed, or something, with the not-quite-dead loxodon who lay on a gurney in the necro lab. Helligan, the bearded labmage who stood opposite the shattered body of the Selesnyan ambassador and his bodyguard, watched the ledev like she were a fascinating lab specimen, which in his case was a mark of respect.

&n
bsp; Feather shifted and coughed, which made Fonn flinch momentarily, but she kept one hand on Biracazir’s neck and one on the loxodon’s bloody, hopelessly bandaged chest. Her eyes were closed. Even Borca’s ghost, hovering behind Kos, kept his spectral mouth shut, for which Kos was grateful.

  Except for that flinch, Fonn had been in this position for more than a half hour.

  Kos eyed Stanslov, whose badgerlike eyes flitted back and forth between the Selesnyans and the Devkarin as if he wasn’t sure which one to arrest first. Kos wanted to talk to the ’jek and find out what he’d learned, but the primary investigator in the case that had forced Kos to abandon his badge wasn’t interested in talking to him. Kos wasn’t surprised. He imagined that Phaskin had already told the other lieutenant about Kos’s assessment of his abilities. It often occurred to Kos that he should have kept his mouth shut but only long after the deed was done.

  Phaskin, to his surprise, had been much more forthcoming. He’d even told Kos that the suspension had been revoked, all things considered. Word of the attack on Centerfort had arrived by falcon minutes before Kos’s group. Kos supposed that with all that had happened in the short time since he’d left the infirmary, a Golgari army launching an attack on League headquarters was par for the course. The unanswered prayers and invocations to the angels of the Boros Legion for assistance were of greater concern. An army was marching on the center. By law every guild was required to help stop them. Yet it seemed every guild in the city had become entranced by the spell of the quietmen, except for the wojeks. And the wojeks were fighting for their lives. If not for Fonn’s urgent mission, Kos would have been there with them, but something told him that the loxodon might be the key to unraveling the entire thing.

  Phaskin had summed up Helligan’s report on the way. The girl, Luda, was an almost-textbook stabbing. Insert knife, drain blood, relatively quick death. Saint Bayul, on the other hand, was grievously injured but had entered some kind of hibernation or trance or some such Selesnyan thing that mimicked death but protected the body from harm. When Helligan had gone to try and remove the green gemstone set in the center of the loxo’s forehead, Bayul had spoken, calling for Fonn, who he insisted was with a wojek named Agrus Kos. Needless to say, the labmage had contacted Kos immediately.

  One other thing, Phaskin had added. What was left of Borca and the goblin wasn’t much, and it had taken the labmages the better part of a day to separate them all. There were only fragments left of either, but something about Borca’s remains was unusual. Phaskin recommended that Kos ask Helligan about it later, which had prompted Borca to float ahead of them as they made their way down the hall, behind only Fonn.

  The ledev’s spine lashed back like a whip, making everyone in the room jump. Jarad moved for the first time from the corner where he’d stood silently watching and placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder, but she threw it off. Fonn was still crouched between the wolf and the dying loxodon, her hands on each, but her face and eyes were pointed, Kos realized, straight at Vitu Ghazi—if one could have seen through several walls and several dozen very large buildings between the Tenth and the center. Her eyes glowed with some kind of green energy.

  No one moved a muscle except Fonn. Her hand lifted from the loxodon’s body and moved to his forehead. She placed her palm over the gemstone and began to speak with a voice that sounded nothing like her own. The sound echoed musically, a chorus of sounds more beautiful than anything Kos had heard in all his years. It filled the cramped laboratory like a living thing, from the wall of drawers that served as a temporary morgue—and still contained Luda’s body—to the glass walls opposite that offered a view of the hall outside.

  “Vitu Ghazi. Convocation. Stop them. It is a mistake.”

  Fonn’s mouth was slack and open, with a bit of foam forming on her lip. If this wasn’t over soon, Kos was going to interrupt it anyway. Whatever was happening, it didn’t seem to be any good for the ledev.

  “They do not know. They can no longer see it,” the Fonn-chorus continued. Still the quietman did nothing. “She must not become the ambassador. Stop the priestess. Protect the stone.”

  As the last word trailed off, the chorus faded with the glow in Fonn’s eyes. She collapsed in a heap. Helligan ran to the loxodon while Kos, Jarad, and Feather almost collided trying to get to Fonn.

  The angel got there first and helped prop the ledev up against Biracazir, who sat stoically and licked the top of the guardian’s head with concern. “Fonn?” Kos said urgently, waving a hand in front of her open, staring eyes. The ledev blinked and shook her head. Her face was wet with silent tears that were still flowing.

  “Did you hear it?” she whispered, choking on the words. “Did you hear him?”

  “We heard something,” Kos said. “Was that—was that Bayul?”

  “It was,” she said sadly. “He was waiting so long for me to come to him … he used everything to speak.”

  “He’s gone,” Helligan said from above. The labmage’s long, gray sleeves waved back and forth over the loxodon’s fractured chest as Helligan ran a life-sensitive wand over the body. He held the stone up to the light. “This time I’m sure of it.”

  “Weren’t you sure last time?” Borca’s ghost demanded. Kos repeated the question, a good one.

  “Yes,” the labmage admitted, “but look at him—in that condition, no one thought he could be—”

  “He was alive,” Fonn said, breaking down into stuttering sobs. “He was alive and waiting for me. And I—” She leaped to her feet, almost knocking Biracazir over and shoving Feather’s hand away. “I failed!” Then she got a wicked glint in her eye and turned on Helligan. “And so did you,” she said, all trace of grief transformed to anger in an instant. “He’s a loxodon. How could you fail to check to see if he was hibernating? They can sleep for years at a time!”

  Feather and Kos each placed a firm hand on one of Fonn’s shoulders. “Fonn, it’s over,” Kos said as gently as he could manage. “Did you understand what Bayul said? Stop what?”

  Fonn’s shoulder’s slumped, and she held up her hands to indicate she wasn’t going to threaten Helligan. “I’m sorry,” she told the labmage. “It’s not you I’m angry at. I should have known too. I should have felt. But he was trying so hard to cling to life, he couldn’t call to me.” She straightened and turned back to Kos. “It’s the Selesnya Conclave. They’re … they’re calling a new member into the holy collective at the convocation. He thinks it is … thought it was a mistake.”

  “We got that part,” Borca’s ghost said. “What’s wrong with my remains?”

  “So that’s what we have to stop,” Kos said. “But who’s the new member? Why is she—”

  “Savra,” Jarad said. “So that’s her plan. She’s joining the Selesnya Conclave.”

  “But how?” Kos said. “She’s a Devkarin. No offense, but your people aren’t exactly Conclave material.”

  Fonn opened her fist and revealed the stone that had been set in the loxodon’s brow. “No. But this could do it.”

  “What is it?” Kos asked.

  “It’s a simple talisman,” Fonn said. “Most of the collective are dryads. But a few nondryads like Bayul are also a part of the song. This is what makes it possible. There are only three, and the other two are not roving ambassadors like the saint.”

  “Why do the quietmen follow her commands now?” Jarad asked.

  “That I’m not sure of,” Fonn said.

  “How did you do that?” Helligan demanded. “I’ve been trying to get that out for days.”

  “It was bound to him for life,” Fonn said sadly. “He released it to my care.”

  “Is it possible,” Feather asked, “that he meant for you to use it?”

  Fonn turned the green gem in her fingers and held it up to the light. “I don’t know,” she said. “That doesn’t feel right somehow.”

  “So you’re saying,” Phaskin said, “that the stone is the only way for the priestess to fulfill whatever crazy plan she’s
got? And if we give her that rock, she’ll call off her gorgons and harpies and bugs and gods only know what else?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Fonn replied.

  “Just wanted to confirm that,” Phaskin said before he dissolved into a writhing man-shaped mass of wriggling blue worms and enveloped Lieutenant Stanslov.

  The wojek didn’t even have time to scream.

  * * * * *

  Helligan did have time to scream. Then Fonn screamed. Feather screamed. Borca’s ghost screamed. Kos screamed. Biracazir snarled. And Phaskin’s roiling worm-body, which had doubled in size after consuming Stanslov, lashed out with a maggoty pseudopod that crashed into a table covered with beakers which tumbled over the side and crashed on the floor, crystal tubes shattering in a pool of alchemical elixirs.

  “Jarad, it’s that thing again,” Fonn shouted.

  “You’ve seen this before?” Kos cried. “What’s happened to him? What happened to Stanslov and Phaskin?”

  “I don’t know,” Jarad said.

  “I do,” Feather boomed. Moving faster than Kos had ever seen the angel move before, she drew her short sword and held it before her. The angel’s eyes flashed and the sword ignited, blazing with magical fire.

  “Did you know she could do that?” Borca’s ghost asked. Kos shook his head, eyes wide.

  The thing that had imitated Phaskin flexed and expanded. The outline of its form flowed like wet clay into a hulking shape that Kos found all too familiar. The worms that made up its body fused and pressed together into a waxy film, then faded gray and took on the texture of craggy skin. Where Phaskin had stood less than a minute before, they now faced the spitting image of an ogre that Kos and Borca had questioned what felt like years ago, before the bombing. Nyausz.