Grandson of Kreyohl, the Keldon warlord who had saved Gatha’s life, Trohg had been brought to the mage at the age of ten for augmentation. A runt birth—as the smaller Keldons were often called—Trohg had no chance of selection for the warlord trials. His father preferred to see his son dead in the frozen northland wastes or by the mage’s unpredictable magic—and said as much to Gatha—than be bypassed for selection. For most Keldons this would not be so disastrous, but as the first son of a mating between a strong warlord and an influential doyenne, Trohg’s failure would directly affect the position of both his progenitors. His son would not be passed over and indeed hadn’t been. Trohg not only responded to the genetic alterations, but he was also one of the rare warlords now referred to as a witch king. In battle he excited his troops to a furious, fanatical pitch and could then draw off their combined strength to legendary effect. Young as he was, Trohg sat on the highest tier in council, a warlord with few peers.
Moving over toward the fire, Gatha took the more comfortable and therefore weaker position. Familiarity only went so far in Keld, and he never forgot the delicate niche in which he lived here. His mastery of their language and the Keldon cut of his clothes would never make up completely for his lack of a warrior’s background. A warlord could take his life at any time, provided Gatha could not first maneuver a stronger one into his path.
“I am honored to share in your victory,” he finally said, staring at the torn standard rather than be tempted to make eye contact with Trohg. Argivian—his birth nation.
The witch king grunted in agreement. “I take strength from the warhost,” he said, voice strong and deep. “Nothing hurts me. I stomp out the lives of my enemy as if they were snowbound, slow and weak.” His dark eyes sought out Gatha. “You did this for me, and I remember.” He paused. “You will do same for my son.”
Gatha glanced back to the warlord, courtesy forgotten in the shock. What he had thought would be a social visit, such as they passed for in Keld, had turned suddenly to business. The magical ability of the witch kings created incredible demand for Gatha’s work, no matter that fewer than one in ten survived the process in any shape to fight. He had even begun cutting Phyrexian genetic material back into the Matrix, using it as he used colos genes—the adaptable material working to fill in the “gaps” his own work left behind. Still, a stable process had yet to emerge. Gatha did not want to make an enemy of this man.
He averted his eyes, swallowing against the dryness that had suddenly parched his mouth. “I did not know you had a son,” he said, stroking the rough goatee he maintained in nervous habit. “Congratulations on your new warrior.” Even as he answered with the standard salute for a son, Gatha was estimating the boy’s chances: not good.
Trohg shook his massive head. “I have no son, yet. You will help me make him a witch king too.”
Preconception? Gatha had done very little of that in his four decades in Keld except with captured slaves. Keldons wanted things done now. They worked for the day, never next year or into their children’s lifetime. The future took care of itself. Trohg must have a strong dose of his grandfather’s genes to look so far ahead for himself. Gatha had given up trying to convince a warlord or witch king to allow preconception adjustments years ago. Why should they suffer his unpredictable magic before they see the result of their labor?
“You will do this,” Trohg repeated, hard voice on edge now.
The mage nodded. “It is possible,” he said, the Keldon language thick in his mouth, “but not easy, and there is no way to predict if magical ability will be passed on to your son.” Basing the new life off Trohg’s genetic make-up, a successful subject, would dramatically increase the chances. It would take additional resources in equipment, the development of some new procedures, and time of course. He cursed silently. There was always a cost in time. “You have doyenne who will agree with this?” No small concern there. Trohg had two mates that Gatha was aware of, and he couldn’t see either of them trusting the mage enough to allow preconception magics.
Trohg nodded. “I have a new manor and a new doyenne. She is eager.”
Meaning ambitious. “It may take a few tries,” Gatha warned him, “but I believe I can do this.”
Standing abruptly, Trohg saluted with a clenched fist held in up in front of his face, the hand blocking part of his vision. Gatha was sure to return the salute but not hold it nearly so long. The inferior could never afford to impair his vision for as long as a superior. It implied insult to the stronger warrior.
“You will make my son a witch king,” Trohg said, “and his son. For as long as you do this, Gatha, you will need nothing. If you ask, you will receive. If you need, we will supply it.” He paused, then in high Keld continued. “You will sit on the Warlords’ Council. This I pledge to you.”
This was the highest praise, both the switch of tongues as well as the message. Gatha took a chance and replied in similar fashion, with a grunt of thanks and slight bow at the neck to signify his unworthiness before a superior warrior. Trohg grinned, baring his teeth, and the mage bowed again as the witch king took leave of the labs. The strength fled his legs and Gatha stumbled for a chair. An impressive pledge Trogh had made him, though Gatha knew it to be a false promise. No one sat in the presence of the Warlords’ Council atop the Necropolis.
However, with a witch king and Keldon warhost at his back, Gatha would never fear for his life again and would never want for anything again. That was power the mage knew how to spend. Labs to rival Tolaria? Done. The Tolarian academy itself? Done. Barrin’s head on a Keldon pike? Done. The future was opening up before him. Gatha only had to seize upon the course he favored, and if it did not quite suit his liking, then the mage would remake it to his desire.
* * *
“I don’t like it, Urza.” Barrin threw the pages of material down onto his desk. They spread across the marble slab top, a few sheets drifting to the floor with a whispered flutter. “We—I—curtailed Gatha’s work because it represented a danger to morality as well as the lives of his subjects. His defection proved that he was never to be trusted, though you later defended his right to leave. Now he has set up his own labs? With one of our minor Eugenics Matrices?” Barrin rocked back in his chair, shaking his head, voice plaintive. “Urza, I wanted him stopped, not set loose on Dominaria.”
The planeswalker stood on the other side of Barrin’s large desk. He appeared the Urza of his youth again, years numbered in the teens instead of the thousands. His seamless face was too serious and intense for his apparent age.
“It’s not as if the Keldons are suffering him involuntarily,” the ‘walker said. “They gave him a home and labs because they want what he is offering. They’ve practiced selective breeding and magically enhanced evolvement for far longer than you or I, Barrin. Why debate their choice, especially when it gives us the chance to observe such useful events?”
Barrin rubbed at eyes red and scratchy from late nights at work. He stood, fingers sifting among the loose pages that had spread over the desk until finding one of the rough sketches Urza had provided.
“There,” Barrin said, drawing the page out from the others. “Have their breeding cycles ever turned out something like that before?”
Roughly man sized, the creature was a misshapen excuse for a Keldon—monstrous in size with an exaggerated bone structure that hunched it over and built an almost domelike carapace across its broad back. Sexless. It had malformed hands and feet with webbing between what few fingers and toes had formed. Bony barbs protruded from its heels and elbows.
Urza shook his head, his appearance aging a few years as Barrin cut into his excitement. “We’ve had similar catastrophic failures here on Tolaria,” he said. “I think that one was from Gatha’s cutting colos genes into the Eugenics Matrix.”
“That thing was not borne from a faulty experiment,” Barrin said, exasperated that Urza would compare the two programs. “That was created out of a living being in retroactive manipulation, somethi
ng we have never done except when Gatha broke the guidelines.”
Urza slammed an open palm down against Barrin’s desktop. “It is possible. He has created from under-strength subjects viable warriors worthy of the high criteria Keldons hold for warlord selection.” He sat back into a chair, calming himself obviously by force of will.
“Barrin, I’m not saying we should adopt Gatha’s methods, but they might be used to temper our own. What if they would allow us a higher success rate? No radical mutations but simply to nudge and guide a subject into the pattern we tried to establish prior to conception. Preventative therapy, Barrin.”
As much as he wanted to resist the idea, Barrin could not help considering it. Though deformities were rare after a century and a half of relative real-time work, they still occurred. Many of those born normal still exhibited signs of personal maladjustment later. Those were nightmares the mage could do without. He gripped the edge of his desk.
“In that light, I am forced to agree that there might be some benefit to review of this matter, but why should we allow Gatha to continue his work?”
“You’ve seen the latest reports. Most bloodlines have entered cascading failure because of earlier fast-time growth. We can treat them, but they will never be viable generations leading to the heir. Of the Tolarian generations, only the ones raised strictly outside of fast-time environments are looking strong enough, and Tolaria’s ambient blue mana is beginning to influence their heritage too strongly. We are facing a serious setback. I’ll need the kind of data Gatha is generating to start again and make up for lost time.”
Barrin slowly stood, an eerie chill shaking the mage. Tolarian generations? Urza was not one to qualify a statement unless necessary. He swallowed dryly through a blocked throat. When he spoke, his voice was little better than a hoarse whisper.
“How many?” he asked. “How many bloodlines exist off this island?”
“A few,” Urza admitted as if the subject bore little consequence. “Nothing different from what we have done here on Tolaria. Dominarian, raised in heavy white mana-rich areas, most influenced by Thran genetics.” The planeswalker frowned. “My first generations were much more stable as well, though later generations did not degrade nearly so badly as the ones here on Tolaria because they stayed in contact with the white mana lands most likely.”
A second program carried out by Urza alone. Barrin sat back into his chair, numb. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Urza shrugged. “They were not part of Tolaria’s program, and you already had so much to worry about. If you recall, I worried from the start about using Tolaria’s mana to make adjustments to plains-dwelling subjects, and then with Timein’s work—”
“Stop, Urza.” Barrin held up his hand in a gesture of submission. “Just stop.”
He massaged the bridge of his nose, feeling a throbbing headache building. He remembered once, so many decades ago relative time, when all he had hoped for was a simple life. He did not want virtual immortality or to be in control of so many lives other than his own. He did not want to be caught up so intricately in the insanity that was Urza’s program against the Phyrexians.
Even threatening to walk away now, though, would accomplish little. Urza Planeswalker could not be argued with and certainly couldn’t be controlled. All Barrin could do was attempt to mitigate the collateral damage. Like it or not, Barrin was responsible for those lives, not the least of which were his wife’s and—eventually he hoped—his children.
“Do you have data on your outside experiments?” he asked, hating himself for the question.
Urza visibly paused then nodded slowly. “Of course, with arrangements that all data would be delivered to you in case anything ever happened to me.”
“I want it now,” Barrin said. “I’ll put Timein on it. Tutor or no, he is still one of the best—most reasonable—minds we have.” Even to his own ears, the mage’s voice sounded tired—defeated. “I’ll put the academy on it, Urza. We’ll see what might be done to correlate all the data—yours, mine and,” he couldn’t keep the disgust from his voice, “Gatha’s. I’ll do what I can.”
“I never doubted that for a moment, Barrin.” Urza stood. “You are the best I could have ever hoped to find for this work.” He started to say more, hedged, then continued on anyway. “Go home and rest,” he suggested. “Visit with your wife.” He was gone, with a step between worlds.
Barrin sat alone, his work prior to Urza’s arrival forgotten and absolutely no enthusiasm for the new work laid before him, but he would do it, he knew. Not today, not until he had completely assimilated it into his brain, but he would do it because it needed to be done, and because there was no one else who could.
* * *
Timein met Barrin on the hill overlooking the Colony—the small hamlet of bloodlines subjects who had moved to this far corner of the island to distance themselves from the academy and the project into which they had unwillingly been born. A few people were in evidence, a couple still bearing evidence of the bloodlines legacy. A man with a withered left arm worked a sparse field of vegetables. One large woman, her upper body swollen out of proportion to her lower, lifted a large rock out of the way of a plow.
“Don’t they know that we can fix most of the gross deformities?” Barrin asked, the light wind pushing the front hem of his cloak back against his legs.
Timein nodded. “They know.” He reached up and tucked back a stray lock of hair. “I’m not sure why they don’t come in.” He spread his hands expansively. “Look what magic has done for them so far.”
Barrin glanced over sharply at the sarcasm. The student met his gaze easily, secure in his own ability though he still refused anything resembling promotion.
“You brought me out here for a reason, Timein. What is it?” He looked down on the Colony again. “I know you don’t pick your meeting places casually.”
“I’m leaving the academy.”
Barrin’s face hardened into a mask at the declaration. “I don’t have to allow that you know. Only scholars are allowed access back into the world, and you are not yet a tutor.”
The sorcerer smiled thinly, sensing Barrin’s bluff. They both knew how much was owed to Timein.
“I didn’t say I was leaving the island.”
The master mage caught on immediately. He glanced downhill. “Here? Will they let you in?”
“I’m hoping so. I’ll need help to build any kind of home before the storms arrive.”
Barrin shook his head, in frustration more than denial. “Timein, you could be reassigned. Other projects…” he trailed off.
“Not so long as the academy supports Urza’s Bloodlines project,” the sorcerer promised, folding thin and spindly arms over his chest. “I’ve gone as far as I can. Now I need some distance. The Colony is about as far as I can get and remain on Tolaria.” He paused, uncertain. “Maybe I can do something here to help these people. Master Barrin, I’m tired of fighting an enemy I’ve never even seen and with questionable tactics at that. It’s over.”
The look of despair that flashed briefly on Barrin’s strong face nearly bent Timein from his purpose. He knew that in a way he was running out on the academy, on Barrin and Rayne and especially Urza, but the truth was in his words. He had gone as far as he was able, and by Barrin’s slow nod, Timein knew the other man understood that. He watched as Tolaria’s master mage braced himself up, shouldering that much more of the burden himself.
“When you are ready to come back, Timein, the academy will be there.”
Timein watched as Barrin turned away from the Colony and headed back along the path. With the decision made and accepted, there was no longer any hesitation to the mage’s step. He would go forward because there was no one else, and Timein respected him for it. As the sorcerer marched downhill in the opposite direction, he only hoped the feeling was returned. Entering the Colony, he put such debate from his mind.
There was work to be done.
* * *
Urza’s l
ab holding the Thran Eugenics Matrix was one of the most secure sites on Tolaria. Two chancellors were required in attendance for any work. No one adjusted the complex machinery except Urza or Barrin. Rayne stood near the device cradling a massive leather-bound volume in her arms, her husband next to her. Marking her place in the Thran Tome, she studied the intricate artifact. A complex design built from delicate-looking components of Thran metal, it had lasted underground over many millennia awaiting Urza’s discovery. The Matrix also had a touch of magic to it, very rare to find in Thran artifice, and in Urza’s belief, an inadvertent addition.
“In all probability,” the ‘walker had once said to an assemblage of the scholars, “the Thran never realized the significance of magic, and so even they did not know exactly how their Eugenics Matrix worked.”
If that was supposed to make them feel better for their tampering in a science they only half understood, it failed to do so. Rayne was one for the more straightforward work of artifice—clear established relationships and predictable results, yet the order of accomplishments of the Thran empire suggested greater understanding than Urza suggested. Rayne couldn’t be sure that the planeswalker was correct in his theory.
“Can it be done?” Barrin asked, impatient and unable to help the question.
Rayne glanced up, sighed a frustrated breath. She gathered up her long, dark hair with a quick twist around her hand and tossed it over her shoulder then bent back to her task.
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