Time Streams

by J. Robert King

  The field of rolling rubble dropped away beneath, revealing for the first time in its midst a series of larger aerial islands. The central force would land on the largest of these, purify it, and post a contingent there to secure it while proceeding to the second largest. Already refugee hives of mud and stick were visible below. The colony crouched in a hollow of stone beside a dead forest of gray stumps. The refugees must have been scavenging the ruined forest for firewood.

  Another hand signal from the archangel indicated a flat rock bed just below the warren. They would land there. Like screaming falcon engines, the angels stooped from the sky. Their enchanted torches blazed all the brighter in the rushing air. The sight must have been horrifying from below—two-score sun-bright lights blazing down like comets, bringing with them a host of warrior angels and a boatload of angry humans. The sight must have seemed an apocalypse.

  The angels came to ground at a run. They dashed up slope toward the gaping entry to the warrens.

  Within, faces shone, yellow-green and wide-eyed. They flashed away into shadow.

  The angel warriors homed in on those fleeting faces. Their strides lengthened. Their blades rose. There came no shout of fury or terror, as comes from mortal armies on the charge. Only the sizzling torches and the relentless boots announced their coming. Blue-white light bleached the gently rolling landscape. Glaring circles spilled into the shabby warren entrance.

  As the charge closed, a mighty crunch and thud sounded behind. The ground leapt. The barge of holy warriors had beached itself. A clank and boom announced the fall of the troop door. Then came the human roar of fury and fear.

  Meanwhile, Urza and his archangel commander had reached the warren’s entrance. They charged within and rounded a corner. A pair of desperate blades swung weakly out toward them. The first caught on the archangel’s massive shoulder plate. The second scraped dully against Urza’s armored flank before clattering loose to the floor. The wielders—two young human-looking males—staggered back from the assault and flung up hands to ward off the archangel’s torch-cudgel. In the blue-white glare of the torch, the young men glowed a ghastly shade of green.

  A spell arced from the angel’s gloved hand, pinioning the limbs of both men on spits of lightning. They paused only a moment before bursting outward in a rain of charred flesh. White flashes of life-force flared from the falling bodies and were drawn violently into the torches. Without pause, the archangel strode over the smoldering forms and into the narrow passage beyond. It was a spiraling descent that led into the heart of the aerial island. Urza followed.

  Behind them, the main body of angel and human warriors entered. Two warriors took post at the cave mouth.

  “They live in cold, squalid darkness down there, afraid of the light, of the truth,” Radiant had said as she nibbled on a corner of toast. She had followed the comment with a wistful sigh. “It is as though the air that had once nourished all of us is poison to them.”

  The archangel led Urza and the rest of the cleansing contingent down the spiraling passage. It let out into a large central chamber. It was deserted. Five small fires leaked smoke into holes in the ceiling. A few middens of bone and trash lay near disheveled sleeping mats. From this central chamber, many dark side passages opened.

  The archangel drifted regally into the middle of the cavern. He signaled the troops after him to scour the passageways. Two by two, the warriors pressed into the darkness. Torches flared. Voices cried out in terror, lightning crackled. Teams emerged.

  Efficient, rapid, and ruthless.

  Except that something was very wrong. As they had descended into the cavern, the Phyrexian stench of the air had lessened until it was gone.

  Urza swept quickly ahead of the brute squads, into a dark passage. His gemstone eyes dismantled the darkness, and he saw:

  A very human family huddled in that tiny alcove—mother and father and child. Phyrexians did not make sleepers to resemble children. These folk clung to each other, cowering against unyielding stone. They stared through the blackness at the hulking figure of Urza. They muttered prayers to their angels.

  Then the killers arrived. They swept past Urza. Their torches sent mirror-shards of blue and white scattering across the wall. Urza saw his own shadow cast, huge and malevolent, over the family.

  Then torchlight broke out over them, and their skin glared yellow-green.

  An axe rent the father’s head, and a spear impaled mother and child both. Red blood came from them all in the moment before the incinerating blast. White fire gave way to black smoke and red welts in the eyes. In the midst of it, spinning ghosts poured from the cloven forms and were sucked away into the beaming torches.

  An angel cast another sorcery. Glowing motes of sand followed the inner contours of the wall, seeking secret doors. When none were found, the killing team gave the all-clear whistle, shouldered their weapons, and marched out past the holy warrior posted at the entrance.

  Urza followed them out. He soared to the archangel who hovered in the cavern midst. Arriving beside the commander, Urza spoke rapidly.

  “Those torches don’t work. They show human skin to be yellow-green also.”

  The archangel’s response was unimpassioned. “We have no better way to proceed.”

  “You are killing your own folk. You are killing humans and angels, not Phyrexians!” Urza insisted.

  “This is a private war,” the archangel replied flatly.

  “I can smell their blood.”

  “We cannot send you like a scent hound into every burrow—”

  “You cannot keep killing innocent people—”

  “You have done so—”

  “I have done so to battle Phyrexia!”

  “Phyrexia is here. You said it yourself!”

  “The reek isn’t here. It is in the palace—”

  And then he knew he had said too much.

  Even as the lightning bolt jagged out from the archangel’s fingers, Urza stepped into the space between worlds and walked the halls of chaos.

  * * *

  Urza emerged in the height of the aviary. He was alone, for the moment. Radiant’s throne stood empty. The nearest angels or guards lingered on platforms hundreds of feet below. He was alone, save for hundreds of spell triggers, silently tripping, one after another. He felt their sorcerous hooks drawing over him and retracting into the walls. He waited—for Radiant, for her personal guard, for whomever would answer the alarms. In the all-seeing panes of glass around, Urza glimpsed images of slaughter and death. The cleansing squads had not ceased their labors.

  A globe of light leapt into being around him. Its surface roiled with fire. A score of angels rose in a fierce circle from the floor and, in moments, hemmed him in with spears.

  She arrived. Whatever other enchantments lay upon the space, Radiant apparently maintained a summoning alarm. She appeared, seated in her punitive throne, wings and hair drooping over her sides. As her robes of state spread across the high throne, a darker being took form just behind Urza. Minister of War Gorig drew his tall, lean figure together from empty air and strode to the edge of the platform. His lemon-wedge eyes glared balefully at the planeswalker.

  “To what do we owe this intrusion?” Lady Radiant asked from her lofted throne.

  “Forgive my effrontery,” Urza said, sketching an elaborate bow, “but the situation is urgent.”

  “You were to accompany our cleansing army at the Jumbles,” she said. “You were fully provisioned and briefed. That battle is even now in progress. Why are you here?”

  “Your cleansing army is killing humans and angels as well as Phyrexians,” Urza said urgently. He flung a hand toward the images in the windows. “Look! See for yourself!”

  Radiant involuntarily peered toward the scenes, and then reeled, her eyes swimming with violent images.

  Gorig blinked in irritation. “There will alw
ays be civilian casualties in such operations. There are weeds among the grain. To root out the weeds, a few heads of grain will be lost. But to leave the weeds, they will all be lost.” “I sensed no Phyrexians in the main cavern we entered, and yet every living creature within was being slaughtered. They were humans. They were angels. They were not Phyrexians, and yet they died all the same.” Gorig’s response sounded like a growl in his throat. “They were dissidents. They were traitors to the state. They were in league with Phyrexia, were in all respects but physiology Phyrexian. You do not know their crimes against the state and so cannot judge their fates. This war is a private matter.”

  “If you wish to be rid of these refugees—”

  “These dissidents,” corrected Radiant serenely.

  “—these dissidents, I will prepare a place for them on Dominaria.”

  Radiant’s fair features were tainted with distaste. “You would bear them to your world, even knowing Phyrexian sleepers hid among them?”

  “Yes,” Urza said without pause. The response seemed to surprise even him. “I would do my best to root out whatever Phyrexians lurked in their midst, but better the multitude of mortals survive to shield a handful of monsters than that they die to eliminate them.”

  Radiant glanced a question at her war minister.

  Anger jagged across Gorig’s features. “How can you possibly make this offer? If even one of the beasts survives, your whole world could be destroyed.”

  “I know that very well,” Urza replied sternly, “and yet I make the offer. Lady Radiant, do you give me leave to rid you of your refugee problem?”

  The woman’s face had regained its placid composure. “I suppose it would save us casualties and weaponry merely to ship out the dissenters—”

  “No,” interrupted Gorig. “No one leaves. The doors of the realm are closed and will stay closed. No one leaves.”

  A protest formed itself on Urza’s lips but never emerged. In a sudden flash, Urza understood. “No one leaves except me.”

  Even as he stepped across the dimensional threshold into that shifting space between worlds, the roar of Gorig followed him out, “Return and you will be slain. You are an enemy of the state, Planeswalker. You are Phyrexian!”

  * * *

  “Phyrexian sleepers are indeed in Serra’s Realm,” Urza said as he paced in his private study, “and they are transforming it, using it to prepare their invasion of Dominaria, but not as we had thought.”

  Mage Master Barrin sat grimly at the black-wood table. The shadows of the high study gathered about his shoulders. Beyond the window, in a distant glade, the nearly completed hull of the airship creaked in its slow, final expansions.

  “The sleepers have fomented rebellion in the realm. They have sparked a civil war. They’ve done it not by stirring up dissidents among the citizens but by filling the palace with fear. Their leader is War Minister Gorig, who has shut down the discourse and debate that once filled the terraces and gardens of the realm and replaced them with tribunal and terror. Every day he declares more citizens traitors to the state and evicts them from the palace. They cannot leave the realm, though, and flee to refugee camps on broken islands at the edge of the plane. There they are hunted down as though for sport. All the while, the realm shrinks.”

  Barrin was nettled. He ran a hand through his ragged hair. “How does any of this advance the Phyrexian invasion?”

  “White mana,” Urza said. “Phyrexia has discovered a way to decant it, draw it off, and convert it into black mana. By slaying the refugees, they are harvesting white mana, drawing it into sorcerous torches that store the power until it can be taken to Phyrexia. Between raids Gorig must empty the torches into a soul battery. All the while, Serra’s Realm is shrinking, and Phyrexia’s reach is growing. Gorig will allow no one to leave because he is harvesting their souls.”

  A specter crossed Barrin’s eyes. “Harvesting them…” He shook his head, dumbfounded. “How much has the realm shrunk?”

  Urza rubbed his jaw in consideration. “It has already fallen below its critical mass. Its collapse is inevitable.”

  “If all of that white mana is harvested by Gorig and reaches Phyrexia—”

  “We are doomed,” Urza finished.

  Barrin could sit no longer. He bolted to his feet, chair toppling behind him. He paced feverishly.

  “If we could find Gorig’s stores of white mana and divert them into the powerstone for your flying ship…”

  An astonished look crossed Urza’s face. “I can’t believe what you are suggesting. It is Argoth all over—using the souls of others to power my own private war.”

  “No,” said Barrin. “No, this is different. This is no longer a private war, Urza. And you would not be harvesting souls. You would be resurrecting them. They are gone already. You would be bringing them back, saving them from Phyrexia, and giving them new life in the heart of your ship. You would be giving them a chance to avenge their own deaths.”

  “Perhaps,” Urza allowed. His eyes glowed with remembered atrocities. “Perhaps.”

  “This is not Argoth at all, Urza,” Barrin assured. “We’re too late to save Serra’s Realm. The Phyrexians have already destroyed it, but you can still save her people.”

  Urza’s voice was fervid as he picked up the thought. “I’ll find where Gorig is storing the souls—they must be in Serra’s Realm, perhaps in the palace. But he’ll know I’ve come back. He’ll know what I’m looking for. He’ll tighten his defenses. I’ll have only a few chances. Perhaps I can bring back some refugees each time. I could take a hundred at once if they would gather together—but there are thousands.” He looked up. His eyes sparkled intensely. “We need the ship, Barrin. Once I find the battery of souls, we’ll need the ship to go get the rest of them. How soon can it be ready?”

  “The hull is almost complete. The engine and metal pieces are already in place. The sail crews finished months ago. By now Jhoira and Karn will have completed the powerstone core. We’ve got to train a crew, of course. Find the soul battery, and I’d say we could fly in a month. Three weeks, if we work day and night.”

  “I’ll find the battery…and save those I can…and muster the rest.”

  Barrin smiled broadly, rubbing his hands together in astonishment. “I had thought our victory over the monsters in the gorge had been your crowning moment, my friend. But you have made wars before, and it takes no great man to kill. It takes a great man to save, Urza. It takes a great man.”

  * * *

  The cranes were in place around the upended airship, block and tackle threaded through great straddling braces of metal. Terd kicked the base of one of the stanchions, scratched his head in vexation, and shouted instructions to his gray-skinned comrades. They scurried up about him and stared in puzzlement at the bottom of the metal beam. It sat almost but not quite atop the stone it was supposed to rest on. As his workers looked downward at the spot, Terd took the occasion to fling his arm out, winging them all in the back of the head. More shouts followed, and the workers turned to a set of ropes stabilizing the great piece of machinery.

  Meanwhile, Diago Deerv and Barrin consulted diagrams spread across the field table. They discussed torque and stress loads. Diago assured the master mage that the metal cross members could support two flying ships. If any aspect of the arrangement were insufficient, he insisted, it was the network of ropes. With a quirked lip, Barrin likewise assured the Viashino engineer that Tolarian hemp was extraordinarily strong in all of its applications.

  Nearby stood another table. It was stout and stone. Four runners surrounded it, a watchful scorpion was stationed beneath it, and falcons circled high above it. Atop the table lay a black cloth, beneath which huddled a mass the general size and shape of a man. To one side of the table stood Karn. Though he was utterly still, the focus of his eyes shifted nervously across the crowd of students, lizard men, and goblins clustered b
eyond the ropes.

  Jhoira sensed the tension in her friend. “Relax, Karn. There are no Phyrexians among us today.”

  “The stone is priceless,” Karn said. “It wouldn’t take a Phyrexian to try to steal it.”

  “It would take a mammoth,” Jhoira pointed out.

  “I’ll just feel better when the stone is in the engine,” he said.

  Jhoira shook her head wonderingly and teased, “You’re constantly complaining about having a purpose in the grand scheme of things, and once you have a purpose, all you can do is worry.”

  “Perhaps my affective matrix is flawed,” Karn said in impressive deadpan.

  A shout came down the line of goblin laborers. Ropes that had been slack went suddenly taut. The great hull of the ship creaked as lines tugged it in cross-directions. Long and slender, the ship quivered within its drydock framework. Its bowsprit wavered, three hundred feet up in the blue sky, and with a tremendous groan the prow tilted down toward the horizon. More shouts came from the goblins, and lines shuddered with the strain. The curved metal stanchions overhead bowed just slightly beneath the ripping burden.

  Mage Master Barrin sent streamers of blue magic out to wrap themselves around points of stress. Scintillating power sank into metal or hemp, adding magical strength.

  The tapered stem of the airship, once lying against the ground, tilted upward, showing a row of windows and an insignia shaped like a giant seed.

  “The Weatherseed,” Jhoira said, pointing to the spot.

  “Yes,” Karn agreed.

  “Multani says the ship is complete but unfinished,” Jhoira said. “It’s still alive, still growing. It is as much a creature as it is a machine.”

  Karn was silent.

  Jhoira pressed. “You are no longer alone, Karn. Urza has designed and built his second living machine.”