The bulk of Devas’s martial force gathered outside the white oak gates for a training session. Archers tacked paper targets over bales of straw. They practiced long flights in which arrows fell from the sky in a thick, steel-tipped rain. The House Guard worked with sword and halberd, their dance as graceful as it would be deadly. By counterpoint, lancemen thundered by on the plains-bred eponaes. It was an impressive sight, and one the Serran refugees allowed few to witness.
Lyanii gauged the sky, judging another thirty minutes of good light left. Raising fingers to her lips she blew a shrill whistle then circled one arm overhead and pointed toward the archers who would need more time to gather their equipment together. They set about picking arrows out of the bales and the ground. Lyanii looked back to her soldier under instruction and frowned lightly at the sword he rested, point first, into the ground.
“That was not meant for you, Isarrk. Again. Another pass.”
The young Isarrk did not bother coming back to attention, but he rubbed the blunt point against his leggings to clean it. “Apologies, Marshal. It won’t happen again.”
He grimaced his false contrition toward Karn. Lyanii hid a deeper frown at the youth’s somber spirit. As he came back en guarde she focused her attention on his every movement, watching for a mistake. His body suddenly taught with lean but well-toned muscle, the youth nodded a reluctant readiness to his two sparring partners.
As the two young Home Guard attacked with fluid sword strokes, Isarrk turned one blade into the other, fouling both. He checked his own answer cut short, leaping back to avoid the swift response of one assailant. All three paced an uneven circle, the two guards never allowing the young man a respite and Isarrk always wary of allowing them to split apart and trap him.
“How is he doing?” Karn asked, the golem’s deep voice reminding Lyanii of the rumble of distant thunder drifting across the plains. “Well, it would appear.”
Lyanii pulled a cloth from the belt of her training leathers and dabbed away sweat built up from her own exertions in practice. Her lips were salty with the residue.
“Adequate,” she said.
Rarely did she take on a Dominarian. Isarrk’s training came at Karn’s behest, the marshal remembering the time when Urza Planeswalker had rescued so many of her people—herself included—from the decaying plane that had been Serra’s Realm. Karn had been there, and Lyanii understood the debt owed all who risked their lives to bring them away from the Phyrexian infestation.
Once she had tried explaining this to the silver golem, only to find that he knew nothing of the episode except from brief historical notes Urza left for him at ten year intervals. In fact, Karn’s return to Devas every few decades always came in the same manner, as if he had never been to the settlement before. He would simply arrive with a new student, asking the Serrans to please instruct him or her in combat—until now always a young noble. Lyanii remembered her sorrow, learning that Karn’s memory had been capped. In a land of mortal humans, the Serrans were incredibly alone in that they outlived all around them. The first generation aged, but slowly—a human life but a splash of time to them.
Here was Karn, as near immortal as the Serrans except that he simply relived a life of twenty years—endlessly. For a while he would become a bridge between Clan Capashen and the village of Devas. Karn could be counted on during these times to help allay suspicions, at least in regard to the Capashens, then the golem’s other duties called him away, and when next Lyanii saw him they began again. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t remember the debt the Serrans owed him. She did.
“No,” she yelled when Isarrk overextended to score against one guard but left himself open to the striking sword of the second. “No, Isarrk, not a parry. A riposte. Riposte! You turn the one blade back against itself, and that leaves you still ready to defend against the second. Again. Do it again.” She glared at the young man, daring him to make a remark. Isarrk blew out a long sigh of frustration and set himself back on his guard.
“Is there a way to accelerate his training?” the golem asked after a moment’s silent observation. “To make him,” here the golem paused, trying to capture the words for what he meant, “better?”
Lyanii had noticed that this time Karn’s preoccupation with a student had taken an edge to it. “This boy is different, somehow, isn’t he?” she asked. “More than just being a commoner’s son?” She wondered if it had something to do with Urza Planeswalker’s last visit to Benalia, or the unsettling tales of dark creatures preying upon the Benalish people.
The silver man nodded. “He is different, yes, but not quite a commoner. One parent was a Capashen noble, though he died before it could be proven. That leaves Isarrk a farmer for the rest of his life, trapped by the caste system. Purceon Capashen asked me to look after his training this year.”
“He has the ability,” she admitted, “but he must have the drive as well. You can’t force a person’s basic nature.”
“Don’t be sure,” Karn said softly.
Lyanii glanced over, Karn studied Isarrk with a gesture of fondness. “Is it the Capashen Clan or is it Urza?” She felt certain now that the planeswalker might have more to say on this than Purceon Capashen.
Karn stiffened, wary, but then whispered for her ears alone, “Urza.”
That was enough for Lyanii. Any debt she owed Karn was far outweighed by that owed to Urza. “He can be pushed to excel, Karn, but I’m not sure if it will help. A just cause isn’t enough. He has to have the heart to defend it. If he cannot rise to my challenge, I may do more harm than good.”
On the field Isarrk skipped back, arm clutched to his side against the pain of a solid hit. He tossed his sword down in disgust, not for his opponent but at himself.
“I can’t do it, Marshal. It’s not that either one is stronger than I am, but they aren’t committing to probing attacks I can turn easily. When a sword comes in driven behind their full weight, how am I supposed to match that with the strength of my arms alone?”
Lyanii looked over at the silver golem. She knew Karn liked the young man, and that he must be weighing that fondness against his orders from the Capashen noble and Urza. It surprised her how long he stood there, immobile, the sky’s riot of sunset colors washing his silver sheen with a touch of red.
Karn nodded. “Push him.”
Lyanii drew her longsword and stepped into the practice circle. She threw it to Isarrk, who caught it properly by the hilt. An easy flick of her foot and his abandoned weapon flipped into the air. She struck an en guarde position with it, anchoring her feet flat against the ground.
“Come at me.”
Isarrk studied her with wide-eyed amazement. “This sword will break that one in two, Marshal.”
“If I let you do that, I deserve to bleed,” she said, voice steel. “You’ll come at me,” and she quoted him, “driving with your full weight.” She gestured with her weapon, and when he hesitated she slashed at the air and screamed in her best commanding voice, “Do it now!”
Isarrk leapt forward, almost as if not by his own volition, the gleaming sword whistling a quick feint and then driving in with a slashing attack that would hope to overpower any defense the marshal could offer. Lyanii brought the smaller weapon up at an angle to the flat of Isarrk’s blade, catching it in a spinning parry that she held into a full arc, until turning the blade back toward Isarrk’s right shoulder. She kept her feet planted. Not wanting to drive the sharp instrument back into the young man. She released it and extended her arms to rap the side of Isarrk’s head with the back of her closed hand. The youth crumpled to the ground, dazed.
Lyanii stood on her guard, ready for another attack. Tossing the small sword down onto his chest, she stalked back to her place of instruction. Isarrk came reluctantly to his feet, one hand pressed to his new bruise.
“Do it again,” she ordered him. “Do it right.”
Rayne stood in the shadow of the captain’s raised quarterdeck near enough to the gunwale that she could s
tare out past the peaked bow and watch Yavimaya’s appearance. The tall forest grew slowly out of the horizon, like an immense wave suddenly frozen in permanent relief. As it spread across the horizon, color tipped the lower edge, a long pale strip promising fair beaches. It was a false promise, Rayne knew.
Captain Pheylad brought the vessel in under topsails only. This was Pheylad’s first and likely only visit to the sentient forest, and this without Multani to forewarn Yavimaya or direct their course. Multani was in the elven lands of Shannodin inspecting some forest sites where entire villages had supposedly gone missing. Rayne was here—needing a break from Tolaria and her study of Phyrexian methods in creating negators.
Why she had thought a visit to the sentient forest might allow her the chance to reclaim some peace of mind, she could not now say. Yavimaya bothered her with its unnatural cycles and strange growths. There was a process at work here she could not understand. There were no set laws and relationships like she dealt with in artifice. Allowing for the forest’s sentience, Rayne sometimes wondered if the feelings of unease were mutual. Yavimaya might be as uncomfortable with their presence—with her presence—as Rayne was with it.
Rayne grasped the polished railing and stared down, watching as the first slender root tentacles reach out to brush against the Weatherlight’s hull of living wood. The impaling points pulled back, and on the shore the root network writhed and split open, allowing a path of firm ground from beachhead to the magnificent coastal forest. Rayne breathed a short sigh of relief. At least Yavimaya still recognized the Weatherlight.
It was a comfort which lasted only long enough to bring the longboat ashore. No elf met them. No sound of birds or even insects cascaded through the trees. Silence reigned except for a light breeze wandering the trees and rustling brush. Leaving the strange root network behind had helped to ease nerves, the students and crew present spreading out in the relaxed setting of calf-high grasses and flowering underbrush. Now they each shifted uneasily, suddenly nervous in their unannounced arrival with no welcoming party.
“Too quiet,” Rayne said, uncertain of what else she expected. Suddenly she put a name to it. “No falling trees.”
Rayne’s previous visits had been during the advanced mulching cycle of the forest as it built up stores of raw matter. Now the sound of falling trees was absent, replaced with a simple whisper of the wind through treetops and interlocked branches rubbing lightly together. The tall sparse grasses rippled only with natural movement, their own fast-growth cycle apparently complete. It was as if Yavimaya slept.
“The forest must know we are here,” she said. She nodded to Pheylad but wondered who she was trying to convince. “The elves will be along soon enough.”
The captain glanced uneasily at the dark shadows beneath the trees, his shipboard confidence lost on dry land. “They might already be here,” he said. “Can’t see ’em unless they want to be seen.”
One of Rayne’s senior students pointed farther into the forest. “There, isn’t that new?”
Rayne didn’t bother to point out that after fifty years, everything was likely to be new. The normal rules didn’t apply to Yavimaya. “Yes, looks like a tropical flower of some kind.”
The new plant was extremely large, its finlike growth reaching ten meters high. Colorful winged bugs flew around it, some of them occasionally flitting out to fall into the grass. A caustic stench welled up over the meadow as several bugs were stepped on by advancing students and ship’s crew. The offending crushers exclaimed sharply, trying to wipe the residue off against the ground.
Rayne stood off to one side, indecisive as she waited for some form of contact. Rofellos, would he still be alive? The academy chancellor did not like the silence that continued to greet them even after these long first minutes. Rayne noticed beside another of the strange tropical plants some thorny vines and another plant with spikes standing out three inches like small daggers. Something off to her left rustled as with hidden movement, though she did not believe it to be the elves. Their passage tended to be silent and hidden.
She had just decided that they would all return to the ship—to await the arrival of Yavimaya’s emissaries—when she noticed the color shift in the nearby trees. It was subtle yet fast enough to be tracked by the eye as light green darkened and shifted to various blue hues. The trees closer to them were in advanced stages of the color change, while deeper into the forest the change was just beginning. From her previous journeys in the Weatherlight, Rayne immediately grasped what it would look like from an aerial view and how Yavimaya would no doubt sense it—an expanding circle of disturbance at the center of which was the Weatherlight and her people.
“Back to the ship,” she said, voice low with carefully concealed concern. Only a few turned to look. “Back to the ship!”
Everything seemed to happen at once. A trio of wolves, so heavily muscled their shoulders blended in with their neck, sprang from concealment to suddenly encircle one of those crewmen who had protested the stench of a squashed bug earlier. Another offender found herself encircled by a cloud of stinging creatures. With a shrill scream she tried to plunge into a thick wall of brush, hoping to lose the winged insects in the heavier growth, and was caught in a tangle of vines covered in sharp thorns. Blood welled in cuts and streamed down her face from the crown of vines wrapped about her brow. Another creature, a sledge-headed beast, shouldered its way past the thorny brush to snarl a challenge.
The chancellor took a step in the direction of the trapped crewman, whose thrashing drove thorns deeper into her skin, and the forest suddenly closed up in front of her. She saw a pair of vines leap up to opposing trees for support, animated like a pair of striking snakes and forming an immediate barrier. They suddenly sprouted enough thorny vegetation to create an impassable wall. The wall then sprouted jade-green blooms which Rayne recoiled from as if struck. The innocent looking blooms touched at her core and drew strength away.
Acting from instinct, Rayne reached into a pocket for globe-bombs, an invention of Barrin’s for those traveling away from Tolaria in case they should meet with Phyrexians. She tossed one into the wall. The globe shattered, its force automatically channeled away from the thrower, shredding the thinner plant life and scoring deep scars into nearby trees. A Tolarian student was not far behind Rayne’s action, tossing one of his own globes at the wolves and careful not to throw too near the beset crewman. The wolf yelped as splinters of glass impaled its hind quarter. The wounded beast and one other companion streaked back for the safety of the forest. Rayne tossed another of her globe-bombs at a suddenly active bush covered in globular blossoms. The plant disintegrated under the force. Behind it, previously screened from view, an elf riding a great moa raced toward her, cradling a war bow in one hand and reaching back for an arrow. Rayne drew back for another throw.
“Stop!”
The voice sounded off trees and quivered in the branches and leaves surrounding them. It seemed to shake the very ground and was reflected back from the upper boughs of the great trees. The reflections echoed among the plantlife, which shook under the order. It was as if the forest itself spoke, except Rayne remembered that voice. Rofellos.
The Llanowar elf stood nearby, just inside the forest and at the top of a grassy knoll. He carried what appeared to be a halberd, a long smooth pole of silver wood topped with a wide, green leaf that seemed to possess the rigid sharpness of a blade. He had changed little in the relative centuries since Rayne’s last visit, except now he boasted a trimmed mustache.
Rayne suddenly realized that her intended target was an elf—not the animate vegetation or even one of the creatures that had assailed them—but a sentient resident of Yavimaya. The elf’s own wild-eyed glare of anger faded, his face going slack with a sudden lack of animation. He lowered his bow as Rayne brought down her own hand, returning her globe-bomb to a pocket. She noticed that the creatures had all retreated, and the vines released their grip on her student.
“Everyone calm down,” she
said as easily as she could, heart pounding in her chest with the adrenaline rush. “Just stand where you are until Rofellos tells you otherwise. Don’t worry. We are among—” friends? Not exactly—“allies here.”
Watching Rofellos’s slow approach, his weapon still held tightly at the ready, Rayne could only wonder if that were still true.
* * *
“The forest is,” a pause, “distracted,” Rofellos said. Standing on the beach as evening fell over the island, his polearm resting in the crook of one arm. The Llanowar focused on Rayne alone as he spoke. The coastal roots had closed up, allowing only a narrow path from the water’s edge back into the forest. “Yavimaya is working to tailor its defenses before the Phyrexian threat finds its way here.”
Rayne had watched Rofellos treat the wounded with herbs and a jellylike salve taken directly from the folds of a large violet-colored plant. He moved with purpose, efficient in his every act but lacking the energy and enthusiasm with which he had once assailed life. Certainly this was not the same elf Rayne remembered from before. Now, listening to him explain the initial lack of contact, she couldn’t be sure that his reference to Yavimaya came from an individual’s view of the situation. It reminded her too much of the imperial we.
“Are you saying Yavimaya is dormant?”
Rofellos shook his head lightly. “Not dormant. The accelerated mulch cycle is complete, and Yavimaya is spending intense resources in the evolution of the forest and its servants.”
“And you, Rofellos, how have you been?”
Obviously the elf had not aged much, but without slow-time waters even a long-lived elf should be showing signs of time’s passage by now. She performed a quick review of the years, checking her dates. Rofellos should actually be dead, though here he was, looking still to be in the middle part of an elf’s long twilight of middle age.
Bloodlines Page 18
