The Brothers' War

by Jeff Grubb

  Then there was Sarinth. There were the official commander’s reports of great dragonlike wyrms that haunted the forests, and light troops who struck from ambush. The city of Sarinth itself, immured to years of assaults from the Yumok nation to the north, was as hard to crack as an iron-shod chestnut.

  There were other Sarinthian reports, these from Ashnod and harder for the Gixians to get their hands on, though not impossible. These reports were friendly and conversational, but they never failed to mention the problems of the current Fallaji commander and the inevitable tragedy that would ensue if the red-haired woman were not immediately given free reign in military matters. Mishra held firm to his decision: he did not give her a command, nor did he call her back to his side, and the Gixians approved of both decisions.

  And last there were the reports from the east, from the passes through the Kher Ridges to Argive and Korlis. The war there was a slow, grinding process, as two titans hurled themselves against each other. Urza was busy, of that there was no doubt, ripping huge chunks from the Argivian landscape to feed his own war machines. The land was ringed with towers that appeared almost overnight, each tower containing mechanical protections. The camp was awash in rumors that the Argivians were about to cross the mountains and the desert and press on into occupied Yotia. Mishra was forced to relocate his court to Tomakul, closer to the heart of his empire, closer to the siege of Sarinth, and farther from the thinly defended Yotian border.

  This last item was a bad thing for the Brotherhood of Gix. Such a move would disrupt their organization, which they had shaped into a perfect machine. So they gathered in their quarters (situated beside the spillage from one of the great iron foundries) and called their master.

  Their chant was logical and precise, their motions practiced and machinelike. They had been taught how to call upon Gix before they left Koilos, and the demon had left precise instructions when to call upon him. Now, in the windowless room of their small quarters, the twenty-four brothers chanted the proper dirges and motioned their hands in the proper manner, carving symbols in the air.

  In return, the air winked at them, coalescing into a great pillar of blackish smoke, smelling of burning oil. There was the sound of crashing gears, and from the smoke stepped their master, Gix, resplendent in his living armor, his snakelike tendrils flexing and coiling from the back of his head.

  “You have summoned me,” said Gix. “I trust it is for a good reason.”

  * * *

  —

  Gix moved unseen through the darkness of the desert night, a landscape hidden from the heavens by clouds of smoke and illuminated from beneath by the light of the foundries that ran around the clock.

  The great trees that had originally cradled the factories were dead now, their lumber sawn up and used to make catapults, rams, dragon engines, and other war machines. The surviving stumps had been hollowed out and converted to barracks and foundries and plated with sheets of thin copper. There were still humans about, both warriors and slaves, but much of the work was now done by automatons—great clanking beasts that shuffled mindlessly from one task to the next.

  It was no Phyrexia, thought the demon, but it was a good start.

  His followers had been correct. Once Mishra relocated his command center, he would be tougher to strike at. Further, it might take years for the human artificer to raise Tomakul to the same wonderful level of civilization that he had achieved in this region.

  Now was the time to strike, the demon thought, before the advantage was lost.

  Gix moved like a spirit through the empty hallways and mechanized forges. He left his children, the priests, behind, after rewarding them with a touch of the dreams of Phyrexia. They lay in a stupor now, dreaming of their mechanical paradise. Gix moved best alone.

  Were he discovered, Gix knew that with but a thought he could easily return to Koilos. He had gained an affinity with the desert caverns over the years, and simply by willing it so he could travel there. He needed help from his priests to be summoned elsewhere, but he could go home at will.

  Gix allowed a narrow smile to cross his lipless face. He thought of Koilos as home now. Not Phyrexia, to which he could not return, not at least without first punishing the interloper. Not without taking from the trespasser his valued stone of power.

  There was only one incident en route to the workshop. An automaton from one of Mishra’s factories crossed before him. Sensing something unfamiliar, it stopped in place, whirring menacingly. Gix was uncertain if the machine had the rude sentience to recognize him as a stranger or if it was merely sounding an alarm as an automatic reaction.

  In the passing years he had developed an understanding of these simple machines made by clumsy mortal children. Gix reached out mentally to the artifact, caressing it with soft words as a human would comfort a wounded animal. It did not matter if the animal understood the words, only that it understood the intent behind them. The priesthood back in Koilos had been rebuilding the old su-chi automatons, and this one was little different from them.

  The machine shivered for a moment as Gix’s mind touched the small shard of power stone that served both as its heart and brain. The demon changed only a few small matrixes within the crystal itself, but those were enough to convince the lead-minded device there was nothing out of the ordinary and no alarm need be sounded. The automaton stopped whirring and soon scooted out of sight.

  Gix entered the workshop, gliding past bleary-eyed guards who no more noticed his passing than they did the smoke that now rose from the surrounding landscape. The demon’s feet did not touch the ground as he floated effortlessly to the thief’s chambers, where his minions had assured him his prey awaited.

  Indeed he was present: slumped backward in a work chair before a great board made of slate, a piece of chalk still clenched in his hand. Gix’s mechanical eyes swept the room. It was filled with books, most of which were covered in a thick coating of dust. At the far side, near a heavy wooden throne, another man, a Fallaji guard, was asleep.

  Gix nodded. One less being he would have to kill immediately. He moved toward the inert form of the sleeping Mishra.

  The human looked almost cherubic in slumber. His beard was now flecked with bits of gray, and his hair was cropped at the neckline behind him. Mishra was wider now than he had been when he had entered Phyrexia, the excess weight spilling over his beltline. There were small wrinkles beside his eyes, and lines stretched across his forehead. The crown of rulership had rested heavily on that head.

  But Gix could sense an alertness about the man, even in slumber. His mind was working, dreaming of new devices and new plans. Even in rest there was the sense of motion about him. The demon would have to move quietly.

  Originally Gix had thought to merely excise the top of the man’s head and scoop the brains out slowly, to make Mishra aware of what was happening to him before he perished. Now, seeing the man think even when asleep, Gix decided to merely slash his throat and take the power stone for himself.

  The power stone. It lay within a small pouch hanging from around Mishra’s neck. Gix could feel the crystal’s presence, just as he could feel Mishra’s, or feel the automaton’s heart. The ordinary human across the room was a statue, a lump of earth by comparison. Both Mishra and his stone exuded a sense of power that Gix could almost taste.

  The demon held up a finger, and a single needle-sharp talon extruded from his fingertip. He leaned forward. One swift cut, he thought, along the base of the jawline, from ear to ear.

  There was a noise, a humming so soft that only Gix could hear it. Beneath the folds of the human’s vest, within its pouch the gem began to glow in rainbow colors. It flickered to life of its own volition, the colors spilling from the gathered opening of the bag and bathing Mishra in its light.

  Gix froze for a moment and not of his own will. The stone was aware of him as he was aware of it. Somehow, it could prevent him from carrying out his plan. He pressed a hand forward, and with every inch progress became more difficu
lt, until at last it was like pressing through forged iron: solid and unrelenting.

  Gix shook his head in puzzlement. There was no indication earlier that the stone offered any personal protection to its holder. Yet he could not lean forward and end this one’s life.

  The demon changed his goal. He would take the gem itself and then kill the human for his insult.

  The gem seemed to sense Gix’s intent and flashed brightly as the demon reached for its pouch. Gix pulled his hand back and let out a hissing curse. The stone’s proximity had burned him like acid, and wisps of smoke rose from his scalded hands.

  Across the room, the other human stirred in his sleep. Gix tucked the burned hand under his arm, muttering in a clicking tongue of the pain.

  Gix looked at the slumbering Mishra and let out a low, catlike hiss. The stone offered some protection to itself and its user, at least from creatures such as the Phyrexian. It burned him as he approached.

  No, not burned, thought the demon. It was attempting to recognize him and to dominate him, to command him, as it had commanded the dragon engines years earlier. The stone, though itself unthinking, recognized his sentience, and it rejected him as dangerous. That rejection was the burning.

  Gix perched on the edge of the worktable. The stone protected the man. The stone protected the stone while in the man’s possession. Gix thought about it for a few moments, then smiled.

  The answer was to change the nature of the stone, or to change the nature of the man.

  The stone was half of its original, and perhaps its protective nature stemmed from that cleaving. It was seeking its mate, thought Gix. Perhaps it had somehow determined that Mishra was its opposing half. That would explain the wards that kept a Phyrexian creature such as himself at bay.

  Unify the halves, and the entire crystal would be restored. Gix could take it back to his homeland.

  And the man? Gix looked at the sleeping Mishra. Perhaps he could be changed as well, altered to something that would serve Gix’s masters better as a live slave than as a dead example.

  Yes. It would take time, but Gix had little but time. Mishra was separated from his fellow humans by his intelligence, by his position, and by his power. Could Gix recruit him, and his brother for that matter, into his world?

  Would that not be a more fitting punishment than just killing them?

  Gix let a lipless smile spread across his face. Yes, there were more ways to kill a creature than just by ending its life. Sometimes all you had to do was give it what it wanted.

  Gix tilted his head back and barked a short string of clicking syllables. Within his body, small alterations were made, and he called out to the machines in the caverns of Koilos. They answered his call and pulled him back to their warmth and comfort. In an instant he was gone.

  In Mishra’s workshop, Hajar stirred and inwardly cursed for allowing himself to drift off. The preparations for relocating to Tomakul had drained the life from him as well as from Master Mishra.

  Hajar padded over to where Mishra was sleeping, still seated in one of his chairs. His vest had come open, and the pouch containing his talisman, his multicolored stone, lay on his shirt. Hajar smiled and tucked the pouch back within Mishra’s shirt, covering the qadir of the Fallaji with a blanket.

  The guard blinked and sniffed the air. There was an odor present, a mixture of burning coal and machine oil; probably the result of a wind shifting its bearings and blowing over some sulfur pit or workroom.

  Hajar shook his head. He for one would be glad when they were quit of this place and back under the desert sky. He checked the doors to make sure they were locked, then retreated back to his own position and drifted back to sleep, dreaming of that desert.

  In their quarters, the Brotherhood of Gix dreamed as well, dreams sent by their masters. There were new orders, said the dreams, and it would require that they serve in Mishra’s court longer than had been planned. But the rewards would be great once they succeeded.

  All the dreams in Mishra’s encampment that night were pleasant.

  Loran moved down the curved hallway of the tower with practiced grace. For the first year of her tenancy among the ivory towers, she had regularly gotten lost, for the corridors and walls were not straight but rather curved to fill their outer shape. Slowly she had stopped thinking in terms of north and south, and instead estimated in terms of distance from the tower’s center and the angle from the entrance. Now the towers were no longer an enigma to her.

  The archimandrite had noticed her growing assuredness, of course—she seemed to notice everything—and congratulated her on the matter. “Drafna still rises from meetings and heads for the wrong door,” she said.

  Drafna was confused by many things but proved to be brilliant with artifacts. He could postulate an entire artifact from the merest scraps and was rarely incorrect in his assessment. As he pored over Tocasia’s notes he occasionally reminded Loran of the young Urza and Mishra, so intent was his desire for understanding.

  On a daily level, Drafna proved to be a trial. He regularly disagreed with whatever the majority seemed to prefer. Were it not for Hurkyl, he would have left the Union long ago.

  Hurkyl held the leash, and Loran soon realized many of Drafna’s discoveries were in fact made by her and only relayed through the balding scholar. She was a timid woman, almost to the point of being invisible. In the three years Loran had been at Terisia City, she had heard the woman complete a full sentence only three times. In many ways, Hurkyl reminded Loran of herself as a young woman.

  City life seemed to agree with Hurkyl. She, her husband, and all their students back in Lat-Nam, apparently, had shaved their heads because the school was mostly underground and shaving of all body hair kept the lice at bay. Since staying at the ivory towers of Terisia City, Hurkyl had allowed her hair to grow out and proved to have thick, luxurious tresses that caught the light like strands of obsidian cord. Drafna had returned to Lat-Nam several times, but Hurkyl always remained. The archimandrite was the center of the Union, but Hurkyl was one of the keystones of that group, as well as Feldon and, despite himself, Drafna.

  And, Loran had come to recognize, herself as well.

  The halls were full of lesser scribes and scholars as she wended her way to Feldon’s private sanctuary. The city was quickly becoming a refuge for those individuals who saw their work threatened elsewhere. Most were from the lands bordering the Fallaji empire, but there were numerous expatriates from Zegon, Tomakul, and other Mishra-held cities. To Loran’s surprise, there were some from Korlis and Yotia as well, and some dwarves from the Sardian Mountains who did not trust Urza and the Argivians.

  There had also been an infusion of charlatans, tricksters, hoaxers, and outright frauds. Yet for every three such con men (and con women) there was an individual who carried a useful device, an old scroll, or something that added to the growing body of knowledge kept in the tower. Loran would have evicted the lot of them, but the archimandrite had taken them in, and the Union was stronger for it.

  Then there was the Brotherhood of Gix. Their order of black-robed monks venerated some sort of machine god, which should have made them invaluable in working with ancient artifacts. But their love of the artifacts approached fetishism, and they were continually judging both the artifacts and those who used them. To those careless enough to ask, they explained at length that they held Urza and Mishra both unworthy of the great devices they had built and believed the two would be punished for their effrontery. The brotherhood left little doubt that it had the same opinion of Drafna and herself. As a group, they seemed to be holding something back as well, listening to everyone but saying little in response save to offer praises to the machine.

  Feldon had brought back with him some seers from Sarinth and shamans and witch priests from the Yumok nations of the mountainous northern coast. These last were heavy men with sallow skins, sweating profusely beneath their furs and seal-hide capes. Loran could see why Feldon got along with them, for both he and the Yumok priest
s were uncomfortable in the warmth of Terisia City.

  The archimandrite brought the scholars and librarians of her city. They ranged in quality and temperament from enthusiastic bibliophiles to hidebound book-straighteners. The latter would rather die than let anyone open their cherished tomes and risk the information within escaping. Still with kind words and a steely will the archimandrite pried their holy texts from their hands.

  There was one bitter disappointment. The song mages of Sumifa refused the offer of the Union. Instead, they had thrown in with Mishra and were using their skills in his service.

  “I don’t see why that’s a problem,” Drafna said upon getting the news. “The Sumifans—all Almaazians, for that matter—are an irritating people at best. Their language is filled with trills and warbles, and it’s hard to understand them.”

  “They have a version of old knowledge,” said the archimandrite calmly. “Their songs carry some sort of power, which allows them to calm, and to some degree control, savage beasts.”

  “Hokum,” snorted Drafna.

  “Perhaps,” responded Loran, “but there might be truth behind their claims, some natural effect we are missing. There might be something we can learn from.”

  “If there is anything at the core of their teachings,” said Drafna, “it is wrapped under so much folderol and mummery that it’s generally useless to us. Like that machine god of the Gixians. Now there’s a bad lot: creepy fanatics with delusions of mechanical utopia. They’re just not all here.” The scholar tapped his bald pate repeatedly for emphasis.

  Feldon usually started frowning the moment Drafna opened his mouth. Now he slapped the table with an open hand. “Don’t dismiss the song mages out of hand. Just because we don’t understand a phenomenon doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”