To her side stood Gerrard, his eyes intent.
The minotaur commander watched as well. His nostrils flared as Orim untied the Metathran’s leg armor.
“I know you do not understand this alliance I have made. It seems cowardly to you, but it is a matter of courage. It seems dishonorable, but at its depth, it is honor,” said Commander Agnate. His voice was strained, as if each movement of Orim’s fingers brought agony to him. He shook his head and clung to his cot. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand.”
With a sucking sound, the solleret and jambeau came away from Agnate’s foot and shin. A foul whiff of air rose from the infection beneath. It was all infection. Rot ran solidly from Agnate’s knee to the ball of his foot. His toes were gone. The few muscles that lived under that dark pudding slid along riddled bones.
Gerrard’s face hardened. “The Phyrexian plague!” He reached out, grasping Agnate’s hand. “No one blames you for this, Agnate. We know about the plague. One of our own died from it.”
Agnate gritted his teeth as Orim peeled back the knee piece and cuisse. “There were three plague spreaders…in a swamp. I blasted them—burned them away. That’s what happened to my hair. That’s when this began.” His thighs too were mottled with black spots.
“We can stop it. We can make sure it claims no more of you,” said Orim. She withdrew from the prone man, retrieving what seemed to be a vial of fish eggs. “This is the immunity serum for the plague, derived from glistening-oil.” She opened the stopper on the vial and tipped it toward Agnate’s mouth. “Swallow these, and the plague will spread no farther.”
Agnate swallowed. “I will not give in until the land war is won.”
Orim stared compassionately at him. “You must. Your legs must be removed.”
“No. I can still march. I can still fight—”
“In utter agony,” Orim broke in.
“Agony means nothing. Victory means everything,” Agnate responded. “Don’t you see? I have won the swamps with an army of Metathran and undead—a commingling of flesh. I am as my army. Together, we will win the mountains.”
A sharp look came to Orim’s eyes. “If I do not remove your legs, you will die.”
Agnate’s eyes rolled in pain. “The walls between life and death are down. I will not die. I will merely cross over.”
CHAPTER 22
The Bowels of Phyrexia
Lithe and watchful, Daria crawled atop a huge ceramic pipe. It gurgled with a river of oil. The ceramic was cold beneath her fingertips. Just above her shoulder, stone tubes glowed in a hot tangle. They seared her back. Had she been mortal, she would have been dead already. Even as an immortal, she suffered dreadfully in this caustic place. For the first time since doffing it, she wished she had her titan suit, but it could never have navigated the third sphere of Phyrexia.
The place was an endless jumble of pipes, as deep as an ocean and as wide as a world. Rarely did the tubes run more than a man’s height away from each other. In most places, they formed a maze of inescapable cages. Pits held piles of bleached bone. The flesh of those unfortunates had fed monsters that even now stalked Daria.
Metal claws skittered on the pipe behind her. The beasts only waited for her to wander into one trap or another before they converged to feed.
Daria intended to disappoint them.
Ducking her head, she slid through a narrow gap. She would have passed easily if not for the bomb strapped to her back. It hung up on a fitting. Heat poured in a vicious wave over her. Gritting her teeth, Daria flattened against the lower pipe and struggled free. She pulled herself through. There was enough space now to stand. Climbing to her feet, she ran along the pipe.
Ahead glowed a huge column, the confluence of a million power pathways. Daria felt its radiance on her skin and in her mind. The energy in that pillar created a spacio-temporal distortion that prevented planeswalking. It was a natural defense. These conduits were the most vulnerable points on the third sphere. A single bomb, like the one strapped to Daria’s back, would destroy a section of pipe a hundred miles in diameter.
It was dirty work, and hot, but it needn’t have been. Without breaking stride, Daria thought away the sweat on her brow. This body was only a projection of her mind, but sometimes a distracted mind allowed its body to follow natural courses.
The pipe took a sharp bend downward. Daria leaped from the end of it. She allowed momentum to carry her across the yawning pit. Her feet came down at a run atop a cluster of tubes. She ran into the glowing aura of the power column.
Energy pressed on her and flowed around her. It was like running through hot water. Power dragged her hair backward. Soon the strands would burn away. With a thought, Daria formed her hair into a helmet. Her battle vest thickened and grew to a heat-resistant hauberk. Even her exposed skin darkened and hardened. Nictitating membranes covered her eyes.
The central core was just ahead. Running, Daria unstrapped the bandoleer that held the bomb. She swung the thing up before her. Twisting the conic tip of the device, she activated it. Her feet slowed. The dynamic flux was almost unbearable. She held the bomb out into the streaming energy. There was no need to affix the device. It would cling like a magnet to a construct of such power.
The air became gel-like. Daria consciously ceased breathing. Her scaly hand pressed the bomb inward. At last, it touched the solid edge of the column. There it clung.
She backed away a few paces before turning. It felt good to have the bomb gone from her back. It felt good to have the heat push her outward. She cast a shadow before her. Daria walked, looking at her hands in their black carapace.
“I look almost like Szat,” she mused.
Something moved on the twist of pipes ahead, something black and huge. It must have been one of the bone pickers that had been following her. It approached.
In reflex, Daria tried to planeswalk away. She could not, mired in the spacio-temporal fluxes.
It would be a fight then. Daria set her feet in a crouch. She extended her left arm. Her sleeve grew into a long, thick shield. Lifting her right arm, she formed the air around into a blazing sword. The helmet on her head grew a gleaming visor. She was ready.
The beast bounded toward her. It was huge and black—a dragon engine. Its hackled back scraped the pipes. A barbed tail lashed behind it. A fangy mouth gaped before it. Corruption welled up between the creature’s teeth.
There was something familiar about that face. Before she could make it out, a ball of acid hurtled from the toothy maw.
Daria raised her shield. It grew to cover her whole front. Acid splashed across it, striking the pipes above and below. The inky stuff dissolve them. Steam hissed from the pipe overhead and oil gushed from the pipe underfoot.
Daria fell back, lest she plunge through the ceramic and into the open channel. Her shield was gone, but it had saved her life—for a moment.
With a thunder of talons, the dragon was upon her.
Daria swung her sword out. Its hilt became a haft, which she rooted on the pipe. Its blade jagged into a huge pike. The edge struck the dragon’s breast and cut through scale and meat and bone to organs beneath. This was no dragon engine, but an actual dragon. Ducking under the soaring belly, Daria wrenched her pike sideways. It macerated the monster’s liver. Bile sprayed out over her. The beast’s momentum carried it overhead. It crashed atop a tangle of pipes. Daria’s pike jutted from its heart.
It wasn’t dead. That blow would have killed any normal dragon, even a dragon engine, but this was something more. It yanked the pike from its breast. Sinew and scale closed over the wound. The creature sat up. When its head lifted, at last Daria knew who hunted her.
“Tevash Szat,” she growled, her eyes narrowing. “What are you doing here?”
Climbing to his feet, the planeswalker stalked forward. His tail lashed fitfully. “I should think that utterly obvious. I’m doing to you what
I did to Kristina.”
Shaking her head ruefully, she said through gritted teeth, “I should have known.” She leaped backward over the break in the oil pipe. Her hand lashed out, hurling a spell. There was very little mana in this sphere—it was the reason she had not cast a spell before—but this effect needed only the mildest of power. Fire rushed down into the pipe. It ignited the oil, hurling up a wall of flame. Daria turned and ran. The flames burst the pipe behind her, introducing more air. The fire redoubled. It would be racing the other direction as well, toward Szat. Flame would force him back toward the power column, would trap him there until Daria could escape its aura and planeswalk to the others.
She ran. There was no other escape. Pipes burst behind her. Fire lashed her feet and blasted against her hauberk. The narrow passage was just ahead. If she could reach it, if she could dive through…
Mantled in flame and hoary with wounds, Tevash Szat surged up suddenly behind her. His jaws spread wide. His teeth clamped down. They pierced her through the head and throat and chest. They went straight through her and met. Claws scooped up the severed lower half. Wings surged once more.
Then Szat was gone. He had planeswalked away with his meal. He would take time to eat it, to heal the burns across his body before returning to the others.
Then he would reappear within his titan engine and wait for his next victim.
* * *
—
Urza had chosen this section of the fourth sphere because it was intensely black. There was no better place to hide eight titan engines. The blackness also meant that most beasts avoided the spot. Only stupid things approached. Urza had been visited by twenty-some scuttling gremlins—dog-sized creatures with white claws and red eyes. They crushed just fine underfoot.
Urza’s engine stepped on two more. He scraped the tripod sole on metallic ground.
How long before they raise an alarm? asked Taysir. He stood guard with Urza but had allowed his comrade all the stomping duties. Doesn’t the lord of this junk pile know the mind of all his creatures?
So legends say. But these beasts are nothing to him. They are toenails. Toenails split all the time without their owners noticing.
Lightning cracked out across the sky. It showed up the underbelly of the third sphere—pipes knotted in tight convolutions. Jagged energy probed an enormous flywheel. It illuminated a complex of gears and spindles before disappearing across the sky.
He knows we are here, Taysir said. Why doesn’t he do more to stop us?
He cannot, Urza replied. All his forces are committed to the invasion. In his arrogance, he never believed we could assail him.
You’re wrong, Taysir said. He and Urza had never been friends, and since Kristina’s death, Taysir made no attempt to hide his animosity. He is smarter than that. He knows something we don’t know. He’s luring us in.
And you accuse me of paranoia, Urza said. No, Taysir. You are the one who is wrong, about this, and about a great many things.
One of the vacant titan engines powered up. A bluster of thoughts intruded on the conversation. Can’t believe we have to muck about in pipes and sepsis, putrefying our hands and burning our beards and scratching our—my monocle! How in hell did that damned creeper scratch my best monocle?
How did your mission go, Commodore Guff? Urza asked.
Huhh? came the thought, flustered at the presence of the other two planeswalkers. Oh, peachy, my man. Not a hitch. Textbook.
Textbook? Urza ribbed. So, you are writing fiction these days?
The commodore gave a confident chuckle. That’s the beauty. A man in my position writes fiction, and it becomes reality.
Two more titan engines powered up. Their piloting bulbs glowed faintly in the darkness. Within one sat Bo Levar, happily puffing on a cigar. Blue smoke curled up around him and drew away through fans at the rear of the suit. He waved a greeting to his comrades.
Within the other was Freyalise, settling into the command harness. Grime and oil and soot. Really, Urza, I don’t know what you see in machines. Filthy, loud, vicious things.
Look at it this way, Bo Levar commented amiably, you’re setting bombs to blow up the biggest damned machine in the multiverse.
Freyalise dipped her head in acknowledgment. That’s the whole reason I agreed to come. I couldn’t blow up all Urza’s machines at once, but I could blow up all of Yawgmoth’s.
Do not say that name, Urza warned. Do not even think it.
Urza thinks Yawgmoth doesn’t know we’re here, Taysir explained.
Freyalise gave a snort. Yeah, that’s likely.
Don’t say that name! Urza insisted.
The panther warrior’s quadrupedal machine powered up. So too did the draconic machine of Tevash Szat.
Ah, so the animals are the last ones back, quipped Bo Levar, sending a great puff of smoke up into his piloting dome. I’d think on four legs you could have done the job in half the time.
Ever laconic, Lord Windgrace spoke only a few purring words. I ran into some…rats.
Did you plant the bombs? Urza asked.
Yes. They are set.
Mine too, offered Szat quietly.
That leaves only my daughter, Taysir said.
Oh, she won’t be coming, said Urza casually. She’s dead.
What? chorused Taysir and Freyalise.
Urza’s titan engine began to pace with the same demeanor the man had used in Tolarian lecture halls. There has been a lot of talk lately about who has underestimated whom.
What does this have to do with Daria? Taysir demanded. Where is she?
The hand of Urza’s engine rose. Let me finish. It has been said I have underestimated our foe. This is not possible. I’ve spent four thousand years preparing for this battle. It has been said I have underestimated Tevash Szat, that he is untrustworthy and evil. This is also impossible. I constructed these engines with Szat in mind. In fact, the one person in this group who is chronically underestimated is me.
Szat hissed, What has any of this to do with Daria?
Simply that you killed her, and I knew you would, and I now exact your punishment.
Instead of responding, Szat only hung there within his engine.
Taysir shouted, What going on!
He’s dying, Urza replied simply. I’ve initiated the kill rubric.
Kill rubric?
At my command, ten thousand metal fibers emerged from his piloting harness to pierce his flesh. Minute lightnings pass through each of these, creating a local and general paralysis. He cannot move or feel, act or think. He is in a kind of suspension.
Taysir stared in amazement into the piloting bulb of Szat’s engine. The dragon hung limply within the harness. So, you have incapacitated him. You’ll punish him. But what about Daria! You said you knew this was going to happen. Why did you let it happen? Why did you let him kill Kristina and Daria?
Oh, I didn’t know he would kill any of us, only that he would betray us. And I had to allow him to betray us so that I could exact punishment. And I had to exact punishment because it was the only way to charge my most powerful weapons.
Have you gone mad? Freyalise demanded.
An uncomfortable laugh came from Urza. Barrin always use to say that. No, I’m not mad. Come here, all of you, up beside Szat. Come look at what is happening inside the engine.
They crowded around Tevash Szat and peered into the piloting bulb. Tiny motes of light scintillated across the dragon’s form. They emerged from the core of his being and glinted along the filaments that pierced his scales.
Barrin always said that I did not consider the moral implications of my actions. He said it particularly loudly when I developed these soul bombs. You see them there, beneath the piloting seat? They are extraordinarily powerful explosives, able to destroy whole cities. Unfortunately, they can be charged only by capturing a soul. Barrin
had said I could never ethically charge them. I pointed out that plenty of traitors and murderers are executed every year, and their souls could charge these bombs. Again, he said I was mad, that no mortal crime deserved an immortal punishment.
So, look what I have done. I have found an immortal to commit an immortal crime—a traitor and a murderer whose soul can charge not one bomb but twenty. Even now, Szat is giving us the means of destroying the fourth sphere.
Can any of you imagine any more moral solution than that? Can any of you imagine any more sane plan? Now you know why I insisted Szat come. He has become my greatest weapon.
The others could only stare in horrified amazement as the last of Tevash Szat’s life force seeped out of him and into the soul bombs.
CHAPTER 23
Predator as Prey
In the early morning light, Weatherlight rose from the encampment. The engine rattled command tents. Ash from spent logs fled up the volcanic hillside. Metathran stirred in their bedrolls. Minotaurs looked up from sharpening strivas. The perimeter of ghoul sentries turned to see the great ship surge out across the mountains of Urborg.
In his gunnery traces, Gerrard stared down at the conglomerate army. “Life surrounded by death.” Agnate was winning the land battle but losing his life in the bargain. His pure heart was surrounded by rot. Even now, he and Commander Grizzlegom mustered their forces for an assault on the first volcano. At the summit, they would meet up with Lich Lord Dralnu and a new contingent of undead.
Gerrard and Weatherlight headed to a different mountaintop for a different confrontation.
“How far out are we?” asked Gerrard into the speaking tube.
“Thirty miles,” Sisay responded. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Aye,” Gerrard said with a nod. “Karn, you’re sure about the power signature?”
“It is unmistakable,” came the resonant voice of the silver golem. The ship’s new configuration allowed her not only to sense the presence of a Phyrexian ship but also to identify it. A huge power signature rose from the central volcano in the range. “Without a doubt, that’s where we’ll find the Stronghold.”
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