Time Spiral

by Scott McGough

  You are the mountain.

  “I am? What are you?” When the voice didn’t answer, she said, “Are you Keldon? A planeswalker?”

  There are no Keldon planeswalkers. Kradak dedicated himself to the land and the land to him. Their power is shared. Keld’s magic must be shared.

  Radha thought for a moment. “What about me?”

  You are unique. You are of Keld, but you are not yet part of me.

  She spoke quietly. “Are you Keld?”

  I am the covenant.

  “I am not part of you.”

  No.

  “Can I be?”

  If you wish to dedicate yourself to it.

  “How?”

  You must give what you have and take what Keld offers. Be fire and let Keld be your fuel. Be the spark and Keld will be your tinder.

  Radha heard annoyance, impatience in her own words. “I know the thrice-damned spell.”

  Then speak it. Speak the words. Enter the covenant.

  “The words,” Radha said. She knew which words, of course, but she had grown suspicious of bodiless voices. The truth was she was probably dead already, so what could it hurt?

  Radha took a breath and intoned, “Coal and tinder, fire and spark, Keldons are fire, and Keld commands … burn.”

  Something hot and alive surged through her. Radha shouted involuntarily and dropped to her knees.

  What is your name, child?

  “Radha.” She exhaled then filled her lungs to capacity. “My name is Radha.”

  Rise, Radha, Warlord of Keld. Go forth and burn. Shine brightly through twilight and beyond.

  “Through twilight.” Radha crawled painfully back to her feet. The darkness began to soften around her and she swooned, toppling back but never hitting the ground.

  The next sound Radha heard was Dassene calling her name. She awoke below the cloud-thick night sky, the Ghitu’s swollen features hovering over hers.

  “She’s awake,” Dassene said.

  “Greht,” Radha muttered.

  The Ghitu woman leaned closer. “Dead,” she said. “Ashes and suet.”

  “’Host.”

  “What?”

  “His warhost.”

  “They tried to rush the platform after he blew up. We scooped you up and carried you clear.”

  Radha sat up, eyeing the Ghitu sharply. “You ran?”

  “We strategically withdrew.”

  Radha grunted. She stood up, not waiting for Dassene to step back. “Where was I?”

  “What?”

  “Where did you find me?”

  Dassene looked puzzled. “On the platform,” she said. “You were lying next to the crater.”

  “What crater?”

  “The one made by the explosion. The blast dug down almost two hundred feet.”

  “More,” Radha said. “It went much deeper than that.” She closed her eyes again. “Any danger?”

  “Not presently.”

  “Good. Bring me Llanach and four … no, six Skyshroud rangers.”

  Dassene looked uncomfortable, and Radha said, “What?”

  “You sent Llanach and eight rangers out several hours ago. I didn’t think you were completely conscious, but nobody wanted to argue with you.”

  Radha paused. “What did I send them to do?”

  “You said there was a forgotten village about halfway between here and the forest. You sent them to collect a blind boy and bring him to you.”

  “Good. I mean what I say even if I don’t remember saying it. Now. How many are we?”

  “I counted almost sixty a short while ago. More keep coming, elves and settlers.” She trailed off, hesitant once more.

  “And Gathans.” Radha said.

  Dassene nodded. “And Gathans. About ten of them asked if they could join your ’host. They claim they never followed Greht.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Radha said, “if they were Gathans, civilians or even elves because Keld will make Keldons of us all.” She grinned. “Gather two dozen who are itching for a fight. Tell Skive I want him to start tracking down the rest of Greht’s timber convoys. We can use the wood, and tell him he can kill anyone he likes in the process, including his own men. Make sure the turncoat Gathans hear you tell him that.”

  “Understood. What about me?”

  “You’re going to teach me that cross-baton fire blast you use, and when Target arrives, you’re going to help me make a warrior out of him.

  “Target?”

  “The blind boy. I intend to make him so dangerous that the mark on his face will frighten more people than it amuses.”

  “How?”

  Radha reached out and grabbed Dassene by the shoulder. Vivid multicolored flames shot from Radha’s eyes to the Ghitu’s, and Dassene suddenly stood taller and straighter, her eyes clear and sharp. Her hair and skin had taken on a subtle red sheen.

  “Oh,” she said with a hungry grin. “Skive will love this.”

  Radha nodded. Her fierce dark eyes fogged over and her eyelids began to droop.

  Dassene steadied her before she stumbled. “Warlord,” she said, “rest here. I’ll let you know when the boy arrives.”

  Radha started to disagree, but decided to let it go. She also let Dassene lower her back onto the woven mat, and even let herself relax, her thoughts swirling into a slow, comfortable eddy of approaching sleep.

  Radha shrugged off her exhaustion and fixed Dassene with a steely glare. “Wake me when Llanach returns. Or at first light. Whichever comes first. Either way, we go back to work on the Gathans tomorrow.”

  Dassene nodded. “Understood.”

  “And then on to the slivers. And maybe the saproling thicket….”

  Dassene called out “Understood,” from very far away. Her voice and her footsteps grew fainter until they disappeared entirely.

  At last, Radha drifted off. She would sleep for eighteen hours straight and have but one, long, epic dream: she, her mother, her grandmother, and Astor all ascending the mountain together. They never spoke, and the wind kept her grandfather’s long black hair in his face, preventing Radha from ever seeing it clearly.

  It didn’t matter. She could tell he was smiling.

  Teferi stood smiling, unashamed of the tears that flowed from his eyes. “She did it,” he said. Before him, the Shivan rift roiled and stormed. “She did it, Jhoira.”

  “Who did what?”

  “Radha. Radha won out. She’s a warlord now, at one with the mountain.”

  “How is that good for anyone but Radha?”

  “You don’t understand. She didn’t just beat the Gathans; she forged a link between herself and Keld. I told you there was something special about her.”

  “I still say how is that special? Everyone taps the land for mana.”

  “Radha formed her connection as an adult in one fell swoop. People are always tied to the place they grew up, but Radha was tied to the rift, not Keld. Somehow she switched from one to the other by choice, by the sheer power of her will.”

  “That is unusual. How is it helpful?”

  “Because if she, a creature of the rift, can reconnect to the land, then I, a creature of the land, can connect to the rift.”

  Jhoira’s face was skeptical. “I’m not sure that holds.”

  “I am.”

  “‘Connect’ in what way?”

  “In every way. If I do as Bo Levar did and pour every last bit of myself into healing the rift, I can seal it. A planeswalker can at least do that. Thus, no more cracks in the bowl.”

  “No, but the rock is still coming.”

  “It won’t matter as much. Without the rift, Shiv phasing back into place is far less complicated, far less perilous.”

  “I’d feel better if you hadn’t invoked Bo Levar.”

  “He’s the benchmark.” Teferi smiled warmly at her, then turned to the others. “Good-bye Venser, Corus,” Teferi said. “Thank you for supporting my greatest endeavor.” He turned and smiled once more at Jhoira, a thou
sand years of happy memories racing through his mind.

  Good-bye, my friend.

  Teferi winked and before Jhoira could react, he rocketed up, soaring through the barrier he had erected and on toward the Shivan rift.

  Teferi. Jhoira’s thoughts were right there with him. What do you mean “good-bye?” What are you going to do?

  What Bo Levar did. What I should have three hundred years ago. He preserved one small corner of the world from Phyrexia’s plagues and war machines during the invasion, same as we did. The difference was he sacrificed himself to do it. Had I done that….

  Had you done that you’d be dead and all of Shiv would be like the part we left behind.

  Perhaps. We can’t change the past … not even I can do that. I can do what I know is right, and I can do it right now, when it’s needed most.

  Teferi, no. There has to be another way.

  There may be, but if neither of us can think of it in the next few seconds….

  What about the other rifts? What about Zhalfir? You are your homeland’s protector. Who steps in if you die now?

  I don’t know, but I think you’ve already met him. Or her. Now, Teferi said solemnly. Watch me. Learn from what I do. If it works, seek out Freyalise, Windgrace, and Karn. I will find a way to succeed here. I will blaze the trail. You must make sure that other planeswalkers follow it.

  I can’t. I won’t. Teferi, I do not agree to this.

  You have no choice. None of us do.

  Jhoira did not reply again, and Teferi could hear her thoughts half-choked with rage and frustration. It was a good thing he didn’t intend to come back because she would never forgive him for this.

  Before Jhoira could call to him again, Teferi plunged into the rift.

  Voluntarily entering the Shivan rift was entirely different from being dragged into the one at the Stronghold. Shiv’s rift was only one phenomenon and one set of time distortions to contend with, for starters. The sensation of the strange un-space and un-time was even slightly familiar, as he had been here before. Most importantly, he now understood what was required of him and was fully prepared to see it through.

  Watching Radha in Keld had made it inescapably clear to him. She and Venser were not planeswalkers and could not become planeswalkers, not in the sense of himself, Freyalise, and Nicol Bolas.

  They had something, though, something that connected them to the multiverse’s underlying structure and vast supply of magical energy. Radha could have bonded with the rift itself, merged and mingled with it to share its power. If she had, she might have been able to travel through it, as Bolas did through the Talon Gates. Instead, she had bonded with her homeland, chosen to anchor herself to Keld, to merge and mingle her force with the land’s.

  Teferi felt himself rise, borne up by the undeniable clarity of what he must now do. Radha and Venser had unique magical potential, and Teferi Planeswalker knew if their new spark could connect them to the phenomenon, then so could his old one.

  He felt the rift affecting him, reacting to his presence. It was not alive in the sense of conscious thought, but the rift was definitely active, even aggressive. It helped Teferi to think of it as alive, as an enemy to be outfoxed.

  Outside, Shiv was quickly coming back into phase with the rest of Dominaria. Teferi felt resistance from the rift and from the existing portion of Shiv as the missing landmass solidified.

  Teferi reached out to the continent-sized landmass. Under normal circumstances he could probably hold Shiv in the palm of his hand and flip it in the air like a coin. Today, however, he had to treat it delicately on behalf of the millions of sentient beings who lived there as well as the feral scavengers of modern Shiv.

  He could wrap himself around the returning landmass and personally shepherd it into place. Doing so would also protect Shiv from all the dangerous forces that would otherwise tear it apart, but the problem of the rift would remain. Taking Shiv away had created the fracture. Returning Shiv would only make things worse, widening and deepening the rift until it affected the entire foundation of the world, the plane, and perhaps the multiverse itself. Shiv’s return alone would be difficult, even devastating, but it would be catastrophic if the rift remained.

  His course was clear, as it had been since he first decided to pursue this matter outside Jhoira’s workshop. He didn’t need to shield Dominaria from Shiv; he needed to protect it from the rift. Shiv and Dominaria could not be removed from the equation, so the rift had to be.

  Teferi prepared himself for a maximum effort, the greatest and final act of his long, storied life. Bo Levar would applaud and the entire universe would approve, even if Jhoira did not.

  Teferi abandoned his physical form and became a bodiless presence, a flickering mass of mind and magical power. He extended himself into the rift, infiltrating it, blending with it, and merging with it. The rift soon felt like a part of him, a dead and callused part with no feeling or familiarity, but unmistakably part of his being. It reminded him of the clothes he picked when he incorporated in the physical world, the robes and headdresses that were not truly cloth but part of his physical shape. Now he was without shape and wore the rift as he once wore his human body.

  He felt the phenomenon seize hold of him as soon as he finished merging with it. It recognized him as alien, foreign to itself, and it tried to expel him. It was strong, incalculably strong, and it was hungry.

  Though it resisted him at first, the rift quickly pulled Teferi in as it recognized what he was doing, recognized the magical might he contained. He sought to become one with the rift and now it was seeking the same thing. The only difference was Teferi wanted to become the rift and disappear while the rift wanted to consume Teferi and remain.

  It drew his strength from him, leeching it as it had leeched the mana from Shiv. Teferi struggled to keep his mind discrete from the rift, to maintain his own efforts for as long as he could. He didn’t have the kind of mana resources that the land or the rift had, but he could access unlimited supplies of arcane energy through his planeswalker spark.

  An academic to the end, Teferi could not help but wonder … was the Shivan rift drawing mana from him as Radha drew mana from the one in Skyshroud? If so, it would be a most interesting contest, rift against planeswalker, the insatiable trying to consume the inexhaustible.

  Teferi decided to end this quickly, before regret and the memory of Jhoira’s face weakened his resolve. He would pour everything he had, his very life-force itself, into the rift in an effort to choke it, to smother it and blot it out. He could shut it down, fill it in, and smooth it over so that he was the only casualty. Following his example, Jhoira would walk away knowing how to save Zhalfir and how to repair the other rifts that threatened everything everywhere.

  Teferi gathered all the power he could, pulling it to him from deep within his being and from the fabric of the multiverse itself. He converted his thoughts, hopes, dreams, and emotions into pure mana. He became a magical singularity, a burst of energy so concentrated and vital that it was as dangerous as the rift.

  More clear-headed and confident than he’d been since his days in the Zhalfirin court, Teferi maintained himself as the massive surge of energy he had become. Then, smiling in his mind’s eye, Teferi let go, releasing that energy in a blinding, magnificent flood of liquid blue will and cloud-white fury.

  Something is burning. Teferi’s first waking thoughts were muddled but the searing, stinging sensation in his nostrils was foremost in his mind.

  He sat up suddenly and suffered a rush of dizziness. His eyes rolled. When he could breathe and see clearly, he saw Jhoira, Corus, and Venser all standing around him.

  “You did it,” Jhoira said. “The rift is gone.”

  “I did?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I did it!”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I didn’t die,” he said.

  “No,” Jhoira said crossly. “That reminds me.” She reached out and gave Teferi a ringing slap across t
he back of his head.

  “Ow!”

  “Don’t try to sacrifice yourself again without telling me first.” She turned, continuing to grumble to herself. “I knew you were going to do something like this, knew it right from the start when you showed me the globe in my workshop. I should have slapped you then.”

  Teferi slid forward onto his knees. “I really thought I would die. It felt like I was gone. There was nothing left to give.” He turned to Venser. “What did it look like?”

  Venser glanced at Corus. “I was distracted,” he said. “There was too much to see down here, and I didn’t really think to look up.”

  Teferi turned to Corus. “And the rest of Shiv? Have your phased-in brothers come out to greet you yet? Have you welcomed them home?”

  “No one’s ventured this far north yet,” the big viashino said, “but I expect some of Jhoira’s tribe soon. This was part of their territory, way back when.”

  “Splendid. Is there any other pressing news? I feel like I need to rest a while.”

  “The barrier’s down,” Corus said. “The locals have just noticed, and they’re already closing the gap.”

  “I suppose I’d better reestablish it then.” Teferi’s voice was weary but jovial. “Otherwise I’ll never get any peace.” He stood and dusted hot Shivan sand from his robes.

  Corus was right—the feral Shivans were almost within range. Teferi concentrated and extended his palms. He held the position for a moment then said, “There. That should do it.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Corus said.

  “You wouldn’t. It’s an invisible barrier.”

  “It wasn’t before.”

  “I was feeling more robust before. This barrier is different, but it will hold just as well.”

  There were a row of goblins at the front of the mob. One of them reached down and picked up a rock. Snarling and spitting, the wretched little monster heaved the stone high up over the strangers.

  Teferi watched the rock descend, utterly unconcerned. He turned away from it and said to Jhoira, “Do you think the two Shivs will coexist peacefully? There could be problems. If I were to make peace, to somehow forestall a Shivan civil war, would that get me off the hook?”