Time Streams

by J. Robert King

“No, Jhoira, you are wrong,” Karn said. “I’m a thinking, feeling machine, but I am not alive. This ship is Urza’s only living machine. It is always growing, integrating new parts into its structure. I am not growing. I am disintegrating.”

  Jhoira sighed heavily. “Disintegrating—aren’t we all.”

  Masts and spars that had for long months jutted sideways from the upended ship stepped into the sky. With a final shudder and thud, the vessel settled atop the landing spines. Ropes that had eased it downward grew slack. The teams hauling on those lines leaned forward and let them drop to the ground. There was a sigh from workers and artificers and even the ship herself. Upright for the first time, the sleek-raked craft looked large and muscular against the whispering forests of Tolaria. Crews reverently approached it, staring in awe at its glimmering portholes and its elegant webwork of lines.

  Then the commands started again. Workers set ladders to the side of the vessel and climbed aboard. Ramps were hauled into position to ease loading. Weapon crews swarmed the various beam weapons embedded in the prow and along the length of the gunwales. Master Mage Barrin levitated himself into the air and floated along the curving rail of the craft, surveying it on all levels.

  “Well, Karn, let’s get this stone inside,” Jhoira said.

  She pulled back the black cloth, revealing a massive and beautifully shaped stone, configured in a long lozenge like the Weatherseed itself. It caught the sunlight, amplified it, and sent it stabbing outward in a blinding corona. Karn leaned down, gathered the heavy gem against his gleaming chest plates, and hoisted it into the air. The combination of silver and crystal was dazzling. Karn was transfigured, a man made of lightning. He walked reverently toward the ramp that led into the ship, and a cadre of four runners surrounded him.

  Jhoira fell back, astonished by the bright spectacle. It suddenly occurred to her that Karn and the airship were of a piece. They were not two different generations of invention but one continuum. Perhaps Karn didn’t realize it—perhaps Urza did not even realize it—but the silver man and the skyship would go down together through time, parts of a single legacy.

  * * *

  Urza crouched in a dark chamber in Serra’s Palace. Gorig’s forces had located him and were closing in. Their boot steps rang in the hallway. He still had not found the soul battery. He had not even discovered where Gorig kept charged soul torches. Time grew short. With sudden violence, soldiers’ boots pounded against the barred door.

  Urza stepped away. He crossed the echoing crawlspace between worlds and emerged in the empyrean reaches of Serra’s Realm. Here the palace was only a distant black speck drifting on the horizon. Ahead of him, the Jumbles formed a chaotic sea of tumbling stones.

  A golden regatta of troop landers and angel wings glinted above one of the larger masses. They descended toward a refugee hive. Their white-blue soul torches trailed smoky crazings in the air. There, just beneath a green ridge where grasses clung to a ruined temple, was the entrance.

  With a mere thought, Urza disappeared from the spot where he hovered. He stepped in a flashing moment into the mouth of the hive.

  A handful of young guards started at his appearance and pivoted to hurl their crude spears. One man fell in a tangle of grimy clothes. Four others managed to send their spears Urza’s way.

  The planeswalker swept his hand in an arc before him, and the spears cracked from a sudden, invisible barrier. They rattled to the cave floor.

  “Save them for the cleansing army,” Urza advised. “Like it or not, I am your ally against them. I am going within to take with me any who wish to escape to a new place.” He retreated quickly down the passage while the sentinels stared, stunned, after him.

  One of them, a young angel warrior, rose on her wings and followed. Urza sped away from her. She shouted in his wake.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Urza, the planeswalker.” The broadening cave walls picked up the announcement, bearing it inward to the people clustered about fires there. Without pause, Urza continued his oration, “The armies of Radiant are coming. They will kill anyone they can find in this place. Any who wish to escape, gather here beside me.”

  His summons was met with only dull stares.

  “There is no time. If you would live, gather here.”

  Though most of the folk beside the fires—grimy men and women and dispirited angels—stayed where they were, a few young folk rose tentatively and made their way toward Urza. Behind him, several metallic thuds sounded, and then came the distant roar of warriors charging. More of the cavern’s inhabitants gathered to the stranger’s side, a group of nearly twenty. Flashes and shrieks sounded from the mouth of the cave. Now no one remained by the fires, either fleeing to Urza or fleeing away to the dens carved into the rock off the main hall.

  “Those who will not come,” Urza shouted out as he focused his mind on the coming planeswalk, “if you survive, get yourself to the colony farthest from the palace—the Arizon colony on the aerial island called Jabboc. I will return there in two weeks’ time to save you and anyone else you can bring with you.”

  Gesturing the fearful, starving mob into a tight cluster, Urza extended his consciousness to surround them. Just as the air began to flare and spark with lightning, Urza folded them into two dimensions and ‘walked with them from the world.

  * * *

  Radiant sat on her throne at the height of the aviary. In the last few weeks, it had become a much more soothing place.

  When Urza had joined the rebel cause, Gorig at last convinced Radiant to fortify the aviary. She let him surround the glass tower in a web of steel grills. That measure did not satisfy Gorig though. He pointed out that any flying creature with a crossbow could slay her on her throne by sending a bolt through the glass. Radiant relented. She allowed Gorig to fasten thick plates of steel atop the grillwork. Of course the aviary grew dark. The plants died. The birds fell into an unnatural slumber from which they never awakened. The place became cold and dank, but at least it was safe—except for those cursed windows and their violent images. Last of all, Gorig had convinced Radiant to let him dispel the far-seeing enchantments and convert all the panes in the aviary into mirrors.

  Now Radiant sat in a dark and safe aviary. The only light came from her glowing presence. The mirrors all around her shimmered with her image. For the first time in centuries, she felt at home on the throne of Serra. Here she sat, searching the eyes of a multitude, the eyes of Radiant.

  “Lady Radiant,” came a voice from below. It was Gorig. He had emerged on his audience platform. The whine of servos told that he yet wore his battle armor. There was another sound, too, the untidy whisper of a large and heavy bag being drawn along marble. “I have something to show you. Something that will please you very much.”

  “Not now, Gorig,” the angel said distractedly. “I am seeing the future. I am gazing into my own eyes.”

  His voice was impatient but as sly as a serpent. “Look down for a moment and you will see the future.”

  “No. The future is here. It is in my eyes. That’s where Urza Planeswalker will find his fate. He will look into my eyes. This war will come down to us. I will fight him myself. He will look into my eyes and see the beauty there and remember what this place was when Serra sat this throne, what this place was before he brought death here—”

  “We had a successful harvest today—”

  “I will look into his eyes and understand at last what madness makes a man bring devils to heaven and then return to aid them.”

  Gorig’s voice was suddenly hesitant. “I would advise you not to look directly into the eyes of Urza Planeswalker, my lady. They are unnatural things—like the eyes of a bug. They will only hypnotize you.”

  “No, Gorig,” Radiant said with a bitter smile. “I will look into his eyes, and he into mine, and we’ll know which of us is right and which of us is mad.”

  “Ple
ase, dear lady,” begged Gorig. “forget about Urza for a moment. Look down and see what I have brought you.” His entreaty was followed by a clattering sound, as though the bag he dragged disgorged hundreds of large wooden balls.

  Her curiosity piqued, Radiant at last glanced down. Her eyes lit with delight. “Oh, heads! There must be two hundred heads! Oh, how beautiful, Gorig. How beautiful!”

  Monologue

  In the last three weeks, Urza has gotten four hundred and twenty-three refugees out of Serra’s Realm. He estimates that at least that number has been slaughtered by Radiant’s cleansing army.

  He also believes each of his intrusions into the embattled plane only accelerates Radiant’s genocidal war. All of the large concentrations of refugees have been harvested—aside from the Arizon colony on Jabboc. It holds thousands.

  For them, there is only one hope—the airship. Once it is fully operational, it should be able to hold most of the remaining Serran “rebels.” The trouble is, the vessel will be fully operational only when we find the soul battery.

  Urza still hasn’t located it. He has searched Gorig’s private chambers. He has penetrated the deepest vaults in the palace. He has fought his way into and out of the best-defended sections of the realm. Still, nothing.

  On one of his journeys, Urza was forced into a showdown with an angel contingent. After the smoke had cleared and the bodies had fallen to dust, he recovered twelve mana-charged soul torches. A week’s study, night and day, revealed the trick of them. They held enough white mana to provisionally charge the ship’s powerstone. We estimate the vessel will be able to fly, planeshift once, fire a few bolts from the deck-mounted energy ports, and maneuver to the refugee encampment.

  The twelve emptied torches are now mounted along the lines of the hull, power conduits running from them to the core of the ship. Urza hopes they will draw enough white mana from the air of Serra’s Realm to recharge the stone for another planeshift—with the refugees aboard. The power will not last, of course. We need the soul battery to permanently charge the stone. But Urza is less concerned about completing his airship than he is about rescuing refugees.

  He acts as though these folk are modern-day ambassadors representing the bygone thousands killed in his wars. Perhaps they are. Perhaps in saving them, he is saving himself.

  —Barrin, Mage Master of Tolaria

  The day of launch had arrived. A great crowd filled the Tolarian glade—student and scholar, elf and artifact engine, Viashino and goblin, angel and human. Half of them were refugees from Serra’s Realm. They pinned all their hopes on the rescue force at the center of the glade. The other half of the crowd had worked for years to assemble that force. Now the work was done. All that remained was to wait and watch. The crowd pressed inward, just out of reach of the war-barded drakes but as close as they could get to the great skyship.

  Aboard the vessel, Master of Engines Karn made his rounds in preparation for launch. He peered down into the open hatch.

  Artifact creatures clustered in the hold, shoulder to shoulder—two hundred runners, twelve pumas, two hundred scorpions, and a hundred modified Yotian warriors. These creatures formed the planetary defenses meant to guard the refugees as they boarded the ship. The mechanical men shifted in the close quarters, some of them packed so tightly they could not stand. There would be no room for them on the return trip, Karn knew. They would be left behind to be blasted into nothing, or captured and dissected and melted down. Barrin seemed impressed by Urza’s willingness to sacrifice the artifact creatures, speaking of Urza’s newfound humanity. Karn felt only saddened by it.

  Disintegration.

  He drew the hatch closed over the main hold and turned away, striding across the narrow deck to the roosts where three hundred falcon engines awaited release. They would perform a new task, providing aerial cover for the fleeing refugees. In addition to this function, they would home in on Phyrexian blood, impaling themselves in any target, and shredding the creature from the inside out. They would also fight any foes that threatened the refugees. Just in case the falcons did not purge the plane, Urza had filled bombards with modified spider capsules, which would resonate in the presence of strong white-mana sources.

  He spoke of saving the refugees and cleansing the plane.

  Of course, Karn thought darkly, neither the falcons nor the spiders would be returning either.

  He moved along the gunwale toward the first bank of fog-cutting lanterns along the bow. They were fitted with focusing lenses and parabolas that rendered their light into powerful beams. In tests, these ray weapons could ignite clothing from two thousand feet away, could make deadfalls burst into flame, and could etch stone. The lantern crews were goblins, selected due to their familiarity with the Thran ray technology used in the crystal forge. Terd and a pair of gray, stumpy Grabbits manned the lantern Karn checked over.

  “Everything in order here, Master,” Terd declared with a salute snapped so rapidly that his fingertips left welts on his forehead.

  Karn only nodded, continuing his inspection of the device. “The sighting mechanism is dirty.”

  Eyes widened into saucers on Terd’s face. In a gibbering tongue, he upbraided his companions. He stomped on one’s foot and twisted the other’s ear before returning his attention to Karn. A toothy grin crossed his lips.

  “It so clean, you see your face in it—” the thought shimmering in his eyes grew a bit cloudy. He blinked uncomfortably “—or not. We not shine ray at your face. You shiny enough, it bounce off anyway! ‘Course, it then kill everybody else. We not shine at your face. Malzra say angels got shiny faces, too. We shoot for whites of eyes. Wait, we not see whites of eyes—”

  Karn left the creature in midsentence, following the rail to the glasspitter—an invention of Jhoira’s. She had been inspired one day by the deadly sprays of molten metal that occurred when water dropped into a blast furnace. The bombards hurled spheres of glass-covered energy among enemies. Where the balls burst, melted shrapnel was flung outward. Her design was finished and presented to Urza before she had fully thought through the lethal consequences. Before she would allow the devices to be built, she made Urza promise they would be used only against dire and deserving foes. She got her wish—and command of the flying ship.

  Even now, Jhoira crouched in the prow beside the ship’s final ranged weapon—an acid atomizer. The device used an unstable energy field to disperse a caustic spray among foes. Karn approached her.

  “Is the atomizer in working order, Captain?” Karn asked.

  Jhoira startled. She stared at Karn, blinking stupidly for a moment before shaking the visions from her eyes. “Sorry, I was just mentally preparing for the coming battle. What were you saying?”

  “The acid atomizer, Captain,” Karn repeated, “is it ready?”

  Jhoira nodded, crossing arms over her chest. “Yeah, but don’t call me captain. Call me Jhoira. Just because I’ve been given command of this vessel and crew doesn’t make me a captain. As for the atomizer—the fog from this thing will be as destructive as a blast of the fire drakes’ breath.”

  They both reflexively cast glances toward Gherridarigaaz and Rhammidarigaaz, positioned on either side of the long, sleek ship. The fire drakes would provide an aerial defense of the ship and the refugees. The beasts would be planeswalked into Serra’s Realm by Urza himself.

  Just now, Urza was to starboard tightening saddle straps on the ancient drake dam. To port, Barrin packed wands and tomes into the saddle bags of the young dragon. Though Jhoira was in charge of the ship, Urza and Barrin would direct the entire operation, employing an arsenal of white-mana spells from the backs of the fire drakes.

  Urza even then stood in the drake saddle and made a gesture to silence the buzzing crowds. “They will call us invaders,” Urza said, his voice amplified by a quick spell from the mage master. “They will call us invaders, just as they have called their own citizens
traitors. They have even called us Phyrexians, so powerful is the web of delusion that traps them. We will not listen to what they call us. We will listen to what history calls us. We will save them despite themselves.”

  A mild ovation answered these words.

  “We are not invaders. We are defenders. We are the alliance of Dominaria. We are human and divine, Viashino and goblin. We are builders and enchanters. We are the power of the forest and of the sea, of the mountains and of life itself. We have cleansed our own island of Phyrexian hordes, and we will cleanse Serra’s Realm as well. But, most of all, we will return, and bring with us the rest of her refugees, a new army of allies.”

  A roar of joy began among the humans and angels gathered there. It swept through the ranks of lizard men and goblins, elves and artifact creatures, students and scholars, until the very forests and oceans echoed the shout.

  As the sound mounted up, Jhoira nodded to Karn. “Initiate the startup sequence, Master of Engines.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Karn replied.

  He crossed the narrow deck to reach the bulkhead where stairs descended into the hull of the ship. In moments, he had reached the engine room. Diago Deerv and three other red-scaled Viashino came to awkward attention as Karn entered.

  “Initiate startup sequence,” the silver man ordered.

  The Viashino snapped salutes and scrambled to their posts. Switches were flipped, levers adjusted, and gyros set into motion. Groans came from the massive engine. A chatter of commands and verifications arose among the lizard men.

  Karn meanwhile moved to the center of the curved console bank, beneath an ornate speaking tube that led directly to the bridge. Before him, a pair of deep ports delved into the inner reaches of the engine. Karn inserted his hands into the holes, feeling for the twin bars at their bases. He found them and clasped his hands. When turned, the rods would trigger the engine’s start up.