by Ari Marmell
“It just so happens,” he continued, “that this particular tribe lives in a mana-rich swamp. Tezzeret wants access to it for the Kamigawa cell, but their chieftain won’t deal.
“His heir, however, is willing to deal just fine.”
Land? The Consortium was killing over land, now? When did that happen? For just an instant, Jace’s stomach churned once more. He turned his attention inward and banished his qualms like a flawed summoning. He’d made his choice long ago, and it was far too late to make any other.
“What’s the point?” he asked instead. “I mean, I can’t imagine the tribe’s got eyes over the entire swamp at any given time. It’d be more convenient to have their permission, but it’s hardly necessary, is it?”
It was Baltrice, oddly, who answered. “Some regions of Kamigawa aren’t exactly what you’d call friendly to foreign mages, Beleren. There are—things living in the land. Spirits, demons … The locals call them kami. You piss them off, drawing mana’s the least of your worries.”
“All right. And?”
“And,” Paldor said, “the tribal prince swears to us that his shaman’s traditions of spirit-binding are sufficient to keep the kami from interfering with us while we establish our links with the land.”
Jace felt his lip curling. “That’s awfully convenient.”
“It is. That’s why you’re going along. Baltrice’s job is to make sure the shogun goes away; yours is to make sure his son is telling us the truth.”
One final objection, then. “So why not have the Kamigawa cell deal with this? Why do we have to go all that way?”
The lieutenant shrugged. “Plausible deniability. The tribe’s had official dealings with the Kamigawa Consortium. Whereas the two of you—”
“Won’t be recognized if we’re captured and chopped into rat food,” Jace finished for him.
“Something like that. Go get ready; I’ll have details on the village for you when you get back.”
Several hours to plan, a night to sleep, another hour to gather what supplies they needed, and then Jace and Baltrice met in a featureless stone chamber, deep in the bowels of the complex. Jace was clad in loose trousers that felt as though they would fall off at any moment, belted by a blue sash tied about his waist, and a wrap-around tunic hanging partly open at the chest. Over it he wore his favored cloak; that, at least, wouldn’t particularly stand out where they were going. Baltrice wore a gown of deep red, which hid her preferred leathers beneath. Both had dyed their hair black, but there was little they could do about their skin, which was notably lighter than the norm for Kamigawa natives. Fortunately, the route they’d mapped out didn’t pass through any human communities, so they shouldn’t have to bear up under close examination.
“Ready?” she asked him, the usual venom gone from her voice. She and Jace both knew full well the importance of what was to come.
“I’m ready,” he confirmed, “but I’ve never been there before.”
She nodded. “I’ll leave you a trail through the æther if I can.”
Jace took a deep breath. “Then let’s go.” She turned without another word and left to find her own solitude, leaving him to his concentrations.
He never knew how it looked to any other walker, how it felt, how it rippled through mind, body, soul, rigid past, uncertain future. He knew only that his own experience was as unique to him as the deepest meanings of his forgotten dreams.
To Jace, it began as a moment of sheer exhaustion, so overwhelming as to make death as welcome as sleep. His vision blacked out, his body trembled, wracked with vertigo as his conscious and subconscious minds merged, losing himself among a parade of personalities. He struggled to channel mana from across the Multiverse, compressing it into a point of singularity beyond perception, a tiny mote of metaphysical tinder.
And then in a single moment of exultation far greater than any physical pleasure, Jace Beleren was once more Jace Beleren; and Jace Beleren was once more a planes-walker. His Spark burned within his soul, and ignited the mana-tinder he had gathered.
The world erupted in an invisible flame, melting away before him until all that remained was a shimmering curtain of glowing smoke. With a single hand, he brushed the curtain aside, took a step, into elsewhere.
Jace Beleren was adrift in the Blind Eternities. The tides of creation washed over him, and he did not fall. He leaned without apprehension into the winds that blew from nothingness, spreading tiny particles of probability in their wake. He trod upon the surface of memory, climbed the slopes of tomorrows that had already passed. Toxic colors circled hungrily about him, winging their way through clouds of song, but they did not disturb his trek. Before his arrival and after his passing, they knew nothing but hue and hunger, wind and want—but for the endless moments he trod beneath them, they knew fear.
Jace’s eyes flickered every which way, so far as “way” had any meaning here. He sensed the shifts in terrain, and stepped across them carefully lest he fall into the roiling chaos that bubbled away beneath reality. Obstacles appeared before him—objects and animals and ideas—and he moved around them or slapped them down before they could warp his body or infiltrate his mind and consume his thoughts.
But always he kept a portion of his attention cast forward and downward. Ahead he saw a flickering road, a ribbon of fire that stretched into the distance. At its end was a burning husk, a dead tree that crackled and flamed but was never consumed, and he knew it was the Spark of the woman he followed. He wondered, briefly, what his own looked like to her, then swiftly gave up conscious thought and simply followed.
For a time he could not possibly measure, he walked in her path. It was a tenuous lifeline he followed, the burning line of footsteps she left behind, footprints that wavered and shifted and—a time or two—even rose and floated away. Tenuous, but it would suffice.
And finally he stood before a curtain of smoke, much as the one through which he’d stepped away from Ravnica, though the glow here tended more toward silver. Stretching forth his hand, Jace parted the curtain, and took one final step.
He collapsed to his hands and knees, gasping, and found himself crouched in several inches of standing water, sinking slightly into the muddy bottom. Around him, greenery stretched as far as he could see, and it took him only a moment to realize that he found himself in the middle of a rice paddy.
Baltrice sat cross-legged some few yards away, having had the better fortune to appear on one of the bulwarks of earth that rose between the paddies. Almost directly behind her rose the first of a range of foothills that ran toward the base of a nearby mountain.
“Welcome to Kamigawa,” she told him a bit breathlessly.
“Delighted to be here.”
It wasn’t entirely sarcasm. From Tezzeret, Jace had heard tales of the shogunate realms of Kamigawa. Fascinated, he’d long wished to see the many-terraced temples and ornate palaces, walk the streets and immerse himself in the musical intonation of the native tongue.
None of which he’d be doing today, since his assignment took him nowhere near any of Kamigawa’s great cities.
Jace climbed from the murky water, flopped down on the nearest spot of dry land, and just breathed. There were few magics more tiring than walking. He could have risen immediately if he’d had to, but given the opportunity, he preferred to gather his strength. So he lay still and took a moment to examine his surroundings.
Baltrice, he had to admit, had chosen their arrival point wisely. The mounts and bulwarks of earth weren’t islands in the traditional sense; the paddies in which the rice grew not much of a lake. But still, it was enough living, rippling water, and enough mingling of water and earth along the feeble “shore,” that he should be able to draw some small measure of mana from the land, to refresh his spirit as well as his body.
And the fact that the paddy stood in the direct shadow of the nearby mountain should more than suffice for her needs, as well—certainly better and more efficiently than the paddies themselves would meet his.
Jace allowed his consciousness to seep into the earth beneath him, to plumb its unfamiliar depths. And there, deep within these foreign lands, he felt the presence of others: Elemental spirits and ancient ghosts, born from or drawn to the soul of Kamigawa’s lands, and they claimed much of its mana for their own. These must be the kami; Jace steered clear of them, lest they grow wroth and manifest in the world above.
So Jace allowed the merest dregs of the land’s power to seep into his soul, and still felt more than a little run down after an hour’s rest. Groaning softly, he forced himself upright, scowled at his cuffs, his sleeves, and the hem of his cloak, all now stiff with the residue of the muddy water in which he’d landed.
Baltrice gave him an exasperated look as he rose. Jace wondered briefly what he’d done to piss her off now and only then realized that it probably wasn’t him. Perhaps she, too, had found her precious mountain less generous than she’d hoped.
“Where to from here?” he asked.
She frowned briefly in concentration. “I’ll need to pick out a few landmarks before I can be sure,” she told him slowly, “but I’m guessing about forty or fifty miles to the village.”
“Ah. A nice spring jaunt, then.”
“You don’t like it? You lead next time.”
Jace shrugged. At least it meant he’d have one or two nights’ sleep before they reached their destination. He could use the rest—even if travel in Baltrice’s company was likely to prove about as “restful” as wrestling a gharial.
They walked. The mud beneath their feet slowly gave way to drier ground, the grass ceased to squelch and began to softly crunch. Jace, knowing full well what sort of terrain loomed in his future, enjoyed the stable footing while it lasted. As they moved away from the mountain, he saw a number of people in the distance—peasants, he presumed, judging by their drab clothes and broad-brimmed straw hats—standing knee-deep in the rice paddies. Though they clearly stared in the travelers’ direction, none made any move to approach.
And far beyond even them, barely visible over the horizon, stood one of the multi-tiered and terraced Kamigawa temples.
Jace and Baltrice kept silent, each having little desire to speak to the other. He occupied some of his time going back over the plan, such as it was, but as that filled an alarmingly short span of time, he gave up on it.
Finally, the sun faded in the west, unfamiliar night birds took up a continual chorus (with something on the order of a million crickets singing harmony), and Baltrice stopped to make camp and confirm their location. The Kamigawa night, for whatever reason, smelled of chrysanthemums.
And for lack of anything else to do, Jace finally turned to Baltrice and asked, “So how is it you know your way around Kamigawa, anyway?”
“Been here before,” Baltrice explained. She stretched her hand over a small pile of wood and tinder, and tensed her arm as though lifting a heavy weight. Sparks rained from beneath her fingernails, and soon they had a small but cheerful campfire dancing merrily away. “Helped Tezzeret establish the Kamigawa cell, until we found local people to lead it. Spent several months here.”
“And the nezumi?”
She snorted. “Never did have to deal with them personally. But I’m given to understand they can’t be trusted.”
“So Paldor mentioned,” Jace acknowledged.
That, however, was tomorrow’s concern. Jace chewed a few bites of dried meat and retired to his bedroll without another word to Baltrice. A moment’s concentration to lay a field of magic over him, one that would awaken him if anyone drew near, and Jace closed his eyes and slept.
Baltrice sat, her back against a log, and glared across the embers of the dying fire at Jace’s slumbering form.
It would be easy. A quick burst of flame, or a sudden, overwhelming summons and Beleren would be dead before he could so much as clamber from his bedroll. No more worries, no more looking over her shoulder, no more wondering how high in the Consortium his ambitions reached.
No more wondering if and when Tezzeret would decide that a mind-reader made a better right hand than a flame-caster.
So easy … And nobody would ever know. She could say that the nezumi killed him, that he delved too deep into the Kamigawa mana and earned the wrath of the kami, the local demon-spirits. She could even say that he’d grown lost following her trail through the Eternities and vanished from her sight. It was unlikely, but not impossible, and he’d not be the first planeswalker to set out for an unfamiliar destination, never to appear again.
She felt her breath quicken, her blood grow warm. Tiny sparks of flame leaked from the corners of her eyes, though of course she couldn’t see them. Even the embers of the campfire flared briefly into a second life, as the magic flowed around and through her.
So easy … Baltrice took a deep breath and allowed her jealous anger to fade. The campfire died once more, the flames vanished from her eyes.
It wasn’t mercy that stayed her hand tonight. It was loyalty, she told herself, loyalty to Tezzeret, to the Consortium, to the mission. She couldn’t know precisely what was ahead, what she would face when she came up against the nezumi. She might just need Beleren, much as the notion turned her stomach. And she would not face Tezzeret having failed, not when that failure was her own fault.
So Beleren could wait for another night. Perhaps, when the mission was complete, another opportunity would present itself.
Finally Baltrice lay down, wrapped herself in her own bedroll, and let sleep come to her.
“Whose idiotic idea was it to send two humans to infiltrate a ratman warren?” Baltrice snapped.
Jace shrugged, though he was pretty sure she couldn’t see the gesture. “Just as soon as you manage to recruit a nezumi planeswalker for the Consortium, you be sure to let me know. Besides,” he added after a moment, “we both know exactly whose idea this was. If you’d like, I’ll be happy to take your complaints to Tezzeret when we get back. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to hear how committed you are to his vision.”
Baltrice gave him a look that threatened to set him alight without the benefit of magic, but said nothing.
They lay crouched in a slimy, viscous gunk—fluid enough to seep into everything and thick enough to stick. It sloshed across the skin like the touch of a living disease. The water flowed steadily despite the lack of breeze, suggesting the presence of subsurface currents moving among the reeds and towering cypresses whose greedy wooden fists gathered in all possible sunlight, leaving none for the swamp below.
Jace twitched as an insect that must have been the size of a small drake bit him behind the ear. He swore that this was the last time he’d go anywhere near a swamp if he had any say in the matter.
They lay there for hours, covered in muck and leaves. Lay there, and watched, and thought, and argued, and watched some more, because neither was entirely certain what to do next.
The nezumi village stretched across a broad swath of swamp. Twisted huts carved from the husks of trees and bamboo plants stood at various levels, all raised above the muck of the marsh below. Although primitive, they showed a level of craft and skill that Jace found surprising. The doorways and windows were not rough and random holes, but perfectly shaped ovals and circles; the steps that wound their way around the largest trunks were solid and even, albeit clearly carved for nonhuman feet. Lanterns and an occasional banner hung on bamboo poles that jutted from the sides of the structures, and though most of the swamp around here was shallow enough to wade through, many of the homes had skiffs tied up at their base.
None of which was their problem. No, the fact that the sprawling village hosted several hundred individual nezumi, and that the ratpeople appeared to follow no recognizable schedule, nor to acknowledge the rising or setting of the sun—that had them stumped. “Minimal impediments,” indeed! Baltrice had spent their first five minutes here cursing Paldor for his faulty intelligence.
So they waited for nightfall, hoping to make their approach in the dark. They watched a
s nezumi poled their rafts between buildings, conversing on whatever topics might interest a tribe of humanoid rats. Farmers trudged back and forth, waist-deep in the muck, carrying sacks of harvested rice. Soldiers in boiled leather armor, carrying tae yari spears, wicked daggers, short recurved bows, and even the occasional katana, guarded the borders of the community. Some stood post on tree branches or platforms built high in the bamboo, while others traveled on high-walled skiffs.
The sun fell, the stars once again flickered, and the coy moon showed only a sliver of his face. The farmers retired for the night but the hunters emerged in droves, baiting traps and stalking the nocturnal beasts of the swamp. Lanterns cast an aura of light over the community that was barely enough for Jace and Baltrice, but probably more than sufficient for the rodent’s eyes of the nezumi. And still the village refused to sleep.
“That’s it,” Jace said when it became clear that night was no more an ally to them than the day had been. “This is beyond stupid. We can’t do anything without more information. Wait here.” Without pausing for acknowledgment, he slithered forward through the muck, crawling on knees and elbows. He gave brief thought to cloaking himself in the image of something that belonged here, but decided that appearing as an alligator or a great constrictor would probably get him perforated by an overzealous hunter, and he wasn’t familiar enough with Kamigawa to know what other forms might be equally appropriate but less appetizing. Come to think of it, he didn’t even know if Kamigawa had alligators or constrictors. He chose, instead, simply to wrap the shadows around him, making himself invisible even to the senses of the ratmen.
He whispered as he drew near, drawing on the lore of an ancient spell he rarely had opportunity to practice, one that would solve the language problem entirely. Many mages sought such magic, but they came far more easily to planeswalkers; something about the Spark, their connection to the world beyond all worlds, opened their minds more readily to the magic of meaning.
