The Thran

by J. Robert King

  A mob of Untouchables gathered down the street, ready to charge the infirmary. He had expected as much. Gix would have identified the infirmary as the principle objective and Yawgmoth as the foe to be captured. It was merely a game of draughts. Yawgmoth had planned every detail of the city’s defense. Gix would play the game just as Yawgmoth had laid it out—Gix and the Elder Council, Rebbec and Glacian, even the planeswalker Dyfed. All were opponents, whether they knew it or not, and this was Yawgmoth’s game.

  He drew open a drawer of the desk and removed a shallow box. Within lay a miniature floor plan of the infirmary. Small powerstones glinted in key locations along the plan.

  Outside, a group of rabble—perhaps two hundred strong—surged down the street toward the infirmary. Above their heads, they brandished whatever weapons, true or improvised, that they had gathered. An animal roar united them into a single, mangy beast. The mob stretched out in the charge.

  The front of the group rushed up the main stairs. White marble murals funneled them beneath a lofted statue of crystal—a gigantic angel spreading wings of welcome before this place of healing. Without slowing, the rioters crashed thunderously against the infirmary’s steel doors.

  “Rebbec had protested about those doors,” Yawgmoth muttered. He had replaced cut glass with stout steel. She would not protest when she learned the new doors might well have saved her husband’s life.

  The rest of the mob arrived. Rioters crushed up against steel. The momentum of their charge was spent in the impact of body on body.

  “She will certainly protest about this,” Yawgmoth said, sliding a powerstone from the miniature of the infirmary.

  Outside, the crystalline angel gave no sound as she tipped on her foundation. The massive figure tilted above the shoving mob. The angel fell. Only at the last did eyes rise to see her, rushing down, silent and grim, upon them.

  Perhaps fifty died beneath the initial impact. The statue gleamed crimson for a moment, settling on corpses. Then thousands of cracks raced across her gory figure. She shattered. Razor jags of angel lashed out to cut down another fifty. It seemed a red fountain, blood jetting up and crystal crashing down. Untouchables fell and flailed and flopped.

  “A devastating play,” Yawgmoth said. “A hundred rebels defeated by a single work of art.” That left a hundred more, of course. Let them live, horrified. Let them panic and spread the contagion among the others. “A devastating play.”

  The mob fell back. There was no longer a chance of breaking in that way, slick with blood and crystal shards. In their midst, Yawgmoth glimpsed Gix himself. Within his wrappings, Gix’s eyes were wide with horror. As all others stared in dumbfounded terror at the shattered angel and the slaughtered bodies, Gix glared toward the upper window where Yawgmoth stood.

  “He realizes. He knows this is a game,” Yawgmoth told himself. “But he doesn’t yet realize he cannot win.”

  In the next moment, Gix seemed to. Shouting above the heads of the stunned throng, he called for them to scatter.

  “It’s a trap. Split up! Everyone, split up!”

  They did not listen. Perhaps they could not hear him above the screams of the dying. He tried to show them, shoving them toward the side passages away from the infirmary. They staggered, moving only as far as he could shove them. At last, Gix grabbed the sleeves of two other rioters and dragged them bodily from the street.

  They were the only three who would escape. No sooner had they fled than five of Yawgmoth’s sword-wielding healers closed off the street. Five more appeared in each byway and twelve in each direction of the major thoroughfares. Behind them were phalanxes of the new Halcyte guard, forces now accountable directly to Yawgmoth. He had instructed them and the healers that, in case of riot, they must report to the infirmary, secure it against attack, and enter to receive orders. Now they converged, sixty-some trained, armed, and armored fighters against an unarmed mob of one hundred.

  As the slaughter began, Yawgmoth blissfully withdrew from the window. He took with him the box-schematic of the infirmary. The powerstones there indicated that the doors and shutters of the lower floor were holding. Another stone that monitored the roof glowed deeply red. A flotilla of sedan chairs was settling into position. Yawgmoth had expected this arrival—not Untouchables but another band of equally desperate opponents. Striding from his laboratory, Yawgmoth climbed a set of stairs leading to the roof platforms. He hauled the bar from the door and flung it back, stepping into full view on the crowded rooftop.

  Before him, councilors climbed unsteadily from their sedan chairs. In their midst was the ever-regal Eldest Jameth of Halcyon. Her robes were battered by the hasty flight, and her coiffure had suffered similarly. Still, she managed to compose her dignity and approach Yawgmoth.

  “Greetings, Healer Yawgmoth. You know why we are here.”

  “It is the only secure spot in the city?” he teased gently.

  She was not amused. “We have come to confer on you, as per our agreement, complete command of the Halcyte guard. You will maintain control until the threat of invasion is eliminated. The city is yours to command. We throw ourselves on your mercy.”

  An enigmatic smile touched Yawgmoth’s lips. “I had expected as much.” He gestured out beyond the roof, to the streets where rebels died. The healing corps and Halcyte guard marched inward over fallen bodies. “As you can see, my forces arrive even now. They converge here because I knew this would be the main objective of the revolt. Also, the troops converge to receive special weaponry for their fight against phthitics—a bit of sweet deadliness.”

  “We had hoped as much,” Eldest Jameth responded grimly, her eyes sweeping the street, a river of blood. Elders clustered up beside her, wearing haunted looks. They were anxious to get below, so was the eldest. “May we review the troops?”

  Yawgmoth bowed gently and gestured toward the stairway. “They will be filling the hall below just now. Come see.”

  Without pause, he led them down the winding stair. His boots sent martial echoes through the passage. The others followed. Their soft-soled shoes whispered apologetically. All the while Yawgmoth descended, he manipulated his box-schematic, unlocking the doors to the great hall. From below came the sound of soldiers flooding in.

  By the time Yawgmoth and the councilors reached the great room, its white-marble floor was stained with red footprints. Soldiers fell in line, guards on one side of the long chamber and healers on the other. At Yawgmoth’s insistence, slim plates of metal had been sewn into the shoulders, bellies, backs, and thighs of their jumpsuits.

  Yawgmoth strode out between the gathering lines. The elders followed. “Welcome to the war, soldiers, healers, elders,” Yawgmoth said wryly. He snapped his fingers, gesturing to a pair of soldiers at the end of the line. “Fetch the battle armor and swords. Haul them here, beside me.”

  The two soldiers hurried to a wall of cabinets and threw back the tall white doors. Within were great racks, twenty filled with gleaming armor, and ten bins with swords, their hilts jutting upward. Hastily, the soldiers hauled racks and bins out into the center of the floor.

  From the first rack, Yawgmoth lifted a gleaming suit of silver armor—shoulder plates, cuirass, chain-mail skirt, and cuisses. With one swift motion he donned the armor. It rang bell-like. A red powerstone gleamed at his throat.

  “This armor will more than protect your body from any attacks the damned can make against you. The powerstone in each suit will make it mold perfectly to your frame. Your movements will be amplified by the armor, your strength doubled, your arms steadied. There is a helm for each of you as well. A stone set in each of those will allow me to track your positions and provide special instruction, should circumstances require it.”

  “Impressive designs, Yawgmoth,” Eldest Jameth interrupted.

  “They are Glacian’s,” he said offhandedly to her. Speaking again to the soldiers, he said. “As to specific order
s, you must march to and defend the sector of the city you are assigned in your routine duties. Slay any rioters you encounter. Use these swords.” He leaned over one of the bins of swords. Producing the jar of antiserum from his pocket, he poured some into each bin. Then he drew forth a sword—a massive double-edged weapon, its tip smeared with the red stuff. “They have the same heft and length as the swords you practiced with, but the inset stones here make the blade powerful enough to cut through rock. They are poisoned now, too, so be sure not to cut yourselves or any citizen. The poison will destroy our foes.”

  “Again, very impressive,” the eldest said approvingly.

  Yawgmoth did not deign to answer this time. Instead, he gestured toward the racks and bins.

  “Armor and arm yourselves.”

  With the clamor of hundreds of boots, the soldiers and healers converged.

  A strange alliance of fear and hope filled the faces of the elders as Yawgmoth’s forces converged. One by one, the troops were transformed into gleaming warriors with magic-enhanced great swords.

  “How long have I been in charge of the Halcyte guard?” Yawgmoth asked the elders. “Only a few moments. And look at them now.”

  “Yes,” Eldest Jameth said. “Look at them now.”

  Yawgmoth gathered the councilors. “Come with me. You will see more.”

  As the armies of Halcyon accoutered themselves and marched out into the bloody streets, Yawgmoth led the councilors upstairs. Their shoes stained each tread. Excited whispers filled the air. They were like children heading toward a roomful of presents.

  The elders entered a corridor above. Yawgmoth strode imperiously down the aisle, stopped at a door, and flung it back. The councilors crowded up to see what lay beyond.

  It was a comical sight. In the murk, a company of ten goblins stood at the ready. They stared fearfully outward, bulbous heads and buggy eyes shimmering in the dark. Each held whatever medical implement had seemed most menacing—scalpel, clamp, strap, tube….In their midst was the most pathetic figure, Glacian in all his wretched decay. His skin was more rumpled and pocked than the goblins’, his arms more puny, his eyes more terrified. He clutched a stylus as though it were a sword. The single imposing figure in the room was Rebbec in her dirty work suit. She brandished a bed rail overhead, ready to bring it down.

  Yawgmoth spoke with gentle mockery. “You are quite safe here, Rebbec. No one will harm your husband. The infirmary is well fortified.”

  Eldest Jameth spoke up. “It is a veritable castle.”

  “Come with us, Rebbec. Come see. Today the riots will end.” He extended his hand to her.

  Blushing, Rebbec set down the bed rail. She surrendered her fingers to his grip.

  Glacian growled a garbled objection.

  No one but Rebbec could have known what he said, and even she paid him no heed. Yawgmoth led her out of the darkness.

  As they walked toward the laboratory, he lifted the box-schematic. “Do you see these powerstones here, here, and here? They are linked to the main doors. And these are linked to the shutters. And these to other defenses. Another innovation of your husband’s.”

  Rebbec’s eyes were wide with amazement. “This device…from his sketches?”

  Yawgmoth smiled. “His split mind has proved useful. Whenever I need a device, I begin the design myself and leave it in his room. He cannot remember having started the work, but he will finish it, design it for me. Together, we have created some marvelous devices for the defense of the empire.” He opened his laboratory door and entered, striding to a tall cabinet on one wall. “This, though, is the greatest of them all.”

  Yawgmoth opened the doors, revealing a simple panel of wood standing within.

  “This?” asked Rebbec as the councilors came up behind here. “This wide, flat piece of wood is your greatest innovation?”

  Without a word, Yawgmoth reached up to the top of the panel and pulled it down. The vast board pivoted on hidden hinges and springs until it settled into a broad table in their midst. The tabletop gleamed with a tight array of small powerstones. To most eyes, the organization of those stones would have seemed random, but not to the eyes of Rebbec. She had designed so many buildings and avenues, had daily stared down on Halcyon from the heights of her temple….

  “It’s the city,” she whispered. “You’ve mapped the whole city in powerstones.”

  “They are linked to doors and shutters and lights in every building. They are linked to the stones in the helms and swords of the soldiers and healers. By merely touching a stone, I can control sites and warriors throughout Halcyon.”

  Eldest Jameth’s former awe had now deepened to dread. “Yes, you can. You can control the whole city.”

  They were figures from a nightmare—warriors with silver bodies and lightning swords. Wherever those blades fell, bodies split in half. There would be a clean moment when every severed organ and bone showed in the afternoon glare. Then vitality spewed into the sudden space. All went red and grotesque. Only the sword remained clean, darting down to notch cobblestone before rising to slay again.

  Gix reeled, clutching a fence post shorn by such a brilliant blade. After centuries of peace in Halcyon, there had been no need to apply new powerstone technologies to warfare. It took a man like Yawgmoth to gaze into a crystal and see the potential for murder. An angry smile formed under Gix’s bandages. He himself had used a powerstone in attempted murder. He was the original innovator, and he could innovate again.

  Beyond the shorn fence, a sedan chair waited in a small statue garden. Catching an anxious breath, Gix vaulted up over the fence.

  A sword shaved through wood behind him as though it were mere paper.

  Leaping into the sedan chair, Gix slid a trembling hand beneath the control crystal. He pulled upward. The craft jittered into the sky. There came a crash below. Gix glanced over the rising edge of the vessel.

  The silver-garbed warrior who had pursued him into the garden had taken a swing at the sedan chair, missed, overbalanced, and spilled among statues. Marble figures toppled around and atop the guard, pinging against his armor. His sword had bit deeply into the ground, and he struggled to yank it free.

  Gix moved his hand to the top of the control stone. The craft plummeted. It spun slowly as it descended and veered toward the struggling warrior.

  Sword arm pinned under pernicious statues, the man was oblivious.

  The sedan chair fell like a hammer on the man. Even enchanted armor could not dull that blow. There came a screech and a groan. The warrior collapsed beneath crushing weight. The chair cracked and fell to one side. A hiss of steam went up.

  Gix clambered from the wreck and surveyed his work. The garden was ruined. Shattered statuary littered the ground, and the warrior lay among the other figures. He was little more than pulp within his powerstone armor. It had pulled away from dead muscle.

  Aching and dizzy, Gix flung back fallen statues, peeled the man’s fingers from the sword hilt, and dragged the thing loose. The sword had quite a heft, and it tingled in his grasp. Gix kicked the helm off the bloodied head and set it in place on his own head. It, too, bristled with power. Feverishly, he knelt and tugged at the bloody armor.

  “I can use this sword to seem one of them…to kill ten of them,” he panted as he worked. “I can strip them too and…and dress ten Untouchables. Each of them can kill ten, until we’ve taken over the whole city.”

  The armor sucked free of the pulverized man. Gix wriggled into the slick suit and felt it tighten around him.

  “Until we’ve taken over the whole city…”

  The sword cleft the fence one last time, and Gix strode forth. He had not gone three paces before he ran his blade into the eye of another guardsman and dragged him into the garden of statues.

  * * *

  —

  Xod paused, hauling his sword out of a man’s chest. It was hor
rible work for a healer, to split open this machine-work masterpiece. That’s not why he paused. He paused because Yawgmoth spoke into his mind.

  There are impostors among you. It was not so much the sensation of a voice but the tactile sense of one mind pressing upon another. Turn around. Look for lesions. Do not trust everyone in armor. Some are Untouchables. Some are the damned.

  He staggered, scanning the street. His company of twenty had been pursuing a group of Untouchables through a granary. They had met little resistance until they had discovered a family holed up in one of the silos. The parents had fought like a pair of lions to give their children a chance to escape. The plan worked, and the young ones ran off while Xod clove their father in two.

  It was horrible work for a healer, but it was the will of Yawgmoth.

  Another healer staggered back from the fallen mother. He tapped his helm. The message must have been going out to all of them, all of the Halcyte warriors. Yes, there were two others, staring about themselves in shock—and a third who ran purposefully up behind his comrades.

  “No!” Xod shouted.

  He was too late. The two guards had begun to turn when the Untouchable’s sword flashed. Their heads leapt from the shoulders on a pair of crimson fountains. Their armor sucked away from their bodies even as those bodies fell, lifeless, to the ground. The Untouchable crouched over them and plucked up the two swords.

  Xod arrived in the next moment. His own blade descended. It sliced through the Untouchable’s neck. There were three heads now on the ground, and three helms, and three oozing bodies. Xod lifted his eyes, unwilling to see their faces, unwilling to be caught by another Untouchable in silver armor.

  Destroy the armor, Xod. Destroy the helms. Yawgmoth’s thoughts pressed on his mind. Do not let another Untouchable claim them.

  As though it moved with a will of its own, Xod’s sword lashed down, splitting three helms and three heads. It smashed down thrice more, cutting wide three breastplates and the hearts within.