by Doug Beyer
ESPER
The lighthouse at the Cliffs of Ot was one of the most solitary and desolate places on Esper. The lighthouse keeper was an old vedalken mage, his etherium enhancements relatively minor and simple compared to the extensively filigreed archmages in Vectis or Palandius. He only had bracers of the metal built into his forearms, and a bit more at the small of his back. Still, even that small amount of the alloy had extended his life a generation longer than his race historically lived. So when his assistant called up to him saying that they not only had visitors, but important dignitaries from the vedalken city of Palandius, he had an impressive stretch of years against which to compare the visit’s peculiarity.
The lighthouse keeper lived a simple life on Esper. He didn’t know what a planeswalker was, and he had never heard of such a creature as a dragon. Nevertheless, he was about to become an important part of the plans of the dragon planeswalker, Nicol Bolas.
His assistant’s tone was clear. “Sir, they’re members of the Seekers of Carmot,” he said.
The Seekers of Carmot were a relatively recent layer to the labyrinthine strata of the Esper magocracy, but a significant one. As the supply of etherium on Esper waned, the Seekers of Carmot urged the need for a large-scale search for the reddish stone known as carmot, an essential ingredient in the creation of new etherium. Although some dismissed them as alarmists and doomsayers, the Seekers of Carmot had gained an almost religious following over the last decade or two.
The lighthouse keeper didn’t know that the Seekers were secretly the minions of Bolas. But he did know that they were important dignitaries, and that a contingent of them wanted into the most remote lighthouse of the most desolate, barely-navigable shoreline of the region of Ot.
“I should have paid more attention to the stars of late,” muttered the lighthouse keeper. “There must have been signs of the occasion written on the skies.”
“Don’t touch the door, I’ll get it,” he called as he descended the spiraling stairs. “Meanwhile, I want you to shine up my orreries and astrolabes. I don’t want to miss another event of this magnitude. Use the good cleansing spell, too—I don’t want to hear them so much as squeak.”
He opened the door.
“My lords, please come in,” he said.
There were three of them. Two of them were vedalken mages, their skin hairless and bluish gray, their etherium enhancements elaborate. The other was a tall, longhaired human man in strange garb. They said nothing, but handed him a small courier’s capsule. He read the missive as they walked around the lighthouse, measuring and murmuring to one another.
According to the missive, the lighthouse was theirs for the next three days. And he was to become their telemin during that time. He knew what the word meant, but could only guess what it truly meant for him.
What was clear was that his life was about to change dramatically.
“You can stop bothering with the orreries,” he called up to his assistant.
The assistant came down to him. “Why?” he said.
The lighthouse keeper betrayed no emotions. “In fact, your services will no longer be required. Please get your things and go.”
“I don’t understand. What are they … Are they shutting us down?”
“I told you, you are done. You no longer work here. Please get out of my lighthouse, now.”
The assistant searched for some clue in the lighthouse keeper’s face, but found only a level stare. The Seekers of Carmot were just as silent and ineffable. He frowned, gathered his possessions, took one last look at his old vedalken mentor, and left.
I’m sorry, and goodbye, thought the lighthouse keeper as his assistant walked out of his life.
NAYA
Ajani knew Tenoch’s mother, Chimamatl. She was a suspicious old witch, a thin, gray-furred jaguarhag who rarely left her lair in the hills high above the den. She had always wanted her son to become kha, and therefore had always hated the popular leader Jazal and, by extension, Ajani. Her schemes rarely worked because Tenoch was so unlikable, but still, she vowed that before her bones withered away, she would see her son as leader of the pride. Whether that was due to a mother’s twisted love, or a streak of power-lust in her own heart, Ajani could only guess.
Knowing that Tenoch was likely to have claimed leadership over the pride, Ajani’s steps were quick. He knew that the steep path up to Chimamatl’s lair would be riddled with spells and traps, but he didn’t care. Thorny snares snapped at his ankles and tripped him prone, but he tore through them with his claws and moved on. Ward-spells of sun-bright incandescence blinded him, but he blundered ahead with his hands on the rock face until his vision returned.
When he sensed a presence, though, he stopped. A thicket of dry brush hid the corner of the next switchback up the hill—a perfect place for an ambush. If Chimamatl, or one of her protectors, was waiting for him, then she would attack him there. He approached the hiding-place of dry hedge slowly.
He took out his axe and shined the flat side of the blade against the fur of his forearm. He tilted the axe over the broad patch of brush, using the axe as a rough mirror.
Nothing. No one was hiding back there. And yet he was almost sure he had felt something lurking at that point in the trail.
The thicket did something that surprised him—it stood up, crackling and popping as it unfurled its arms and legs of jagged wood into a roughly humanoid shape. It wasn’t a hiding place for Chimamatl’s guardian, Ajani thought—it was Chimamatl’s guardian. It was some kind of elemental, and judging by its size—fully half again as tall as Ajani, and broader in frame—it was the result of a powerful summoning.
The thicket elemental lunged at Ajani, and a great thorny arm swiped down at his face. Ajani managed to block most of the blow with his axe, but the wooden barbs dragged thin cuts down his arm. Ajani swung into the elemental and chopped a few pieces of wood from its frame, but it seemed undeterred. Ajani backed away, up the path, wondering if he could just get it to fall down the hill.
As the elemental crashed forward again, Ajani ducked and spun past its legs, then shouldered into the beast from behind. It barely budged—the creature had sent out multiple woody vines into the rock face, and held fast. The monster was going nowhere.
The elemental swung around, landing a crushing blow in Ajani’s stomach. Ajani fell back, and had to scramble to hold onto the rock, so as to not go tumbling down the crag himself.
Ajani roared, and his eyes flared in rage. In his mind he saw past the elemental, and saw the elements within it. It surged with streams of flowing life energy. But all around it was an even deeper, more primordial force—the huge monument of granite in which Ajani’s pride had made their den. The rock pulsed with an energy of its own—boiling, angry, and immensely strong. Ajani’s nerves tingled, feeling in touch with the peak itself. The essence of the mountain ran up and down Ajani’s body, tangling with his own fury, building up inside of him. It felt strange—invigorating, but wild, untamed. If he wasn’t careful, he thought, the power might overcome his ability to control—
The elemental erupted in flame.
ESPER
Have you ever been a telemin before?” asked the male vedalken, one of the Seekers of Carmot visiting the lighthouse.
“No,” said the lighthouse keeper.
“But you know what one is.”
“Yes. A ‘mage doll.’ A living puppet.”
“A willing instrument of mind control performance,” corrected the vedalken.
“What are you going to have me do?”
“Are you willing to participate?”
“ ‘Willing’? Your capsule says I have to.”
“It is impossible to create this kind of performance with an unwilling telemin. If you refuse, we will be unable to use you. You have completely free will in the matter. That is, traditionally, entirely the telemin’s prerogative.”
“But this says you’ll take away my lighthouse, and send me to court if I don’t.”
; “That is only a detail of the fine print of the injunction. You needn’t worry about that clause. It rarely applies.”
“Does it apply here?”
“That is all beside the point if you are a willing participant. Are you willing?”
“If I agree to do it, you’ll have complete control over me? I won’t be able to back out?”
“The mentalist and the telemin instrument cannot achieve proper unity without complete surrender of the will.”
“What are you going to have me do?”
“It’s a perfectly routine measurement of sea currents off the coast here.”
“If it’s so routine, then why do you need me?”
“If you do not wish to participate, it’s entirely your prerogative.”
The lighthouse keeper felt an ugly tangle of emotions rise inside of him. His heart felt like it was being pummeled by hammers of fear and anger. But emotions like those did not befit an Esperite. With a few long breaths, he let the feeling subside.
“I’m willing,” he said.
“Thank you,” said the vedalken Seeker.
“When shall we begin?”
“Immediately.”
NAYA
Ajani felt power seething inside him. As he watched, teeth of fire spread along the elemental’s body, and its thin, woody vines blackened instantly. Its tendrils attached to the rock face burned and broke, and its limbs flailed as it fell. Ajani hugged the cliff face close, and let the burning mass of bramble careen past him and down the hill. It slammed into the ground somewhere far below, leaving a smoky trail behind it.
It was a moment of glory. Ajani was a fierce warrior, but never before had he been able to throw his ferocity directly at his enemy in the form of a spell. His gifts had always come in the form of the granting of power to others, of somehow perceiving the ineffable nature inside another person and encouraging it come out. He could heal the body and steel the soul for the good of the pride. He could even help the pride defeat its enemies by reinforcing the bodies and souls of his allies. But never before had he been able to lash out with his magic directly at his foe, or turn his emotion—his anger—into fuel for such raw power. His head swirled with blood, and he drew deep, rapid breaths into his lungs.
Please don’t let the feeling go, he thought. He needed it. It was the power he needed to kill Jazal’s murderer.
He ran up the trail to the lair of Chimamatl.
Chimamatl’s patchy snarls of gray fur were shrouded by a rough green robe. When she turned to see him, her expression went from shock, to confusion, to caution.
“You’re alive,” she said finally.
“No thanks to your son,” said Ajani.
She shrugged and flashed a snaggle-toothed smile. “Accidents happen,” she said.
“Accidents? I’m starting to wonder what other ‘accidents’ you and Tenoch might have been involved in.”
“Accusation is a dull weapon. Don’t come in here unarmed.”
“I know you’re guilty. Your son, in a moment of weakness, told me you knew about Jazal’s murder.”
“Guilt and knowledge—they are not kin. They wouldn’t even recognize each other in the dark jungle. Why would I be the one to bring those creatures to our den? My goals are plain: for Tenoch to come into his own, and to rule the pride as kha. Why would I do anything to harm the pride he sought to rule?”
The thought turned Ajani’s stomach. “Because it resulted in the kha’s death. You knew there would never be an opportunity for your vicious, simple-minded son, unless Jazal was out of the picture.”
“You’ve always been a little cat. Your thoughts are too tiny. With your mind that size, you’ll never fit into it what you desire to know.”
“Then tell me. If you’re not the killer, tell me what I need to know to find who it was.”
She noticed the thin, red slashes in Ajani’s arms.
“You fought my elemental,” she said looking outside the lair. “Why didn’t it chase you up here?”
“It perished.”
“You destroyed it? But it’s been months since I’ve had a visitor other than Tenoch. It should have been hungry enough to swallow you in a single bite.”
Ajani’s eyes narrowed. “Someone visited you? Who?”
She peered at him. Her eyes widened. “You’re a storm of rage inside, aren’t you? My, you’ve grown little cat. Maybe you do have room in your heart-cage for the truths you’re hunting.”
“Someone visited you. You said before. Who was it?”
“An old friend, and a hero,” she said.
ESPER
The spell felt surprisingly nonintrusive to the lighthouse keeper, if it was working at all. His thoughts were his own. His body moved normally. He was able to walk out the lighthouse door and toward the sea-cliffs all under his own power. The mentalist, a young vedalken woman of the Seekers of Carmot, followed behind him, performing dancelike gestures, but he didn’t see anything in her movements that indicated he was part of anyone’s performance. Maybe they had failed at the spell without knowing it. Or maybe he had overestimated the amount of control it conferred over him; maybe he was free to do whatever he willed after all.
But it was when he decided to walk all the way to the edge of the sea-cliffs that he realized the spell had worked as intended. He had never walked so close to the edge—the ragged coastline and the open sea joined there in a way that had always made him uncomfortable. He always admired the serene, gray regularity of the sea, but looking straight down the Cliffs of Ot reminded him too much of a wild animal, of forces unshackled by reason.
He was putting something on, he realized. One of the other Seekers, the tall, wild-haired human man, had handed him a vest of some kind, and the lighthouse keeper had taken it and was putting his arms through it. His movements were so effortless, his kinesthetic experience so natural, that he believed he was doing it all on his own. But he didn’t want to do it. The vest was heavy. He willed himself not to put it on, but his body didn’t respond. In a way, even his mind didn’t respond—if he let himself stop concentrating for a moment, he could hear what sounded like his own thoughts attending to the tasks his body was carrying out. His volition, his self, was lost inside his mind. He was an audience to his own life.
Stop it, he thought. I want to stop. I want the spell to end.
His body didn’t listen. As the mentalist traced intricate patterns in the air, the lighthouse keeper—her telemin, her mage puppet—continued to strap on the weighted vest. He tightened the buckles around his chest and between his legs. As he moved, hundreds of small reflectors hanging from the vest rotated and glittered in the light.
Great sphinxes of Esper, he thought. What were they going to do to him?
Don’t worry, said a feminine voice in his head. It’ll be over soon.
It was the mentalist. Oh, telepathy now? He wished he could cover his ears, or somehow block her out. Is this what all you do to all your telemins? Taunt them while they’re helpless?
No, said the voice. But your task is of vital importance. I must be in contact with your thoughts throughout the performance.
Enough of this. You can have the lighthouse, he thought. Send me to the courts in Palandius if you want. Get out of my mind.
Thank you for being a willing participant, the mentalist’s voice said.
With that, the lighthouse keeper took a deep, involuntary breath, and felt his body dive over the cliff into the bottomless, gray waves of the sea.
NAYA
Another day, another sin, thought Marisi. It was shameful work for a nacatl warrior-hero, a living legend of Naya, to do the errands of an otherworldly dragon. But what choice did he have?
Marisi turned a small sphere of dark scales around and around in his hands. It glittered in the filtered Nayan daylight, glossy like a snake’s body. It was heavy for its size, and sloshed gently as though it were filled with a thick liquid. It would be dark soon, so he resumed climbing down out of the misty mountain heights tow
ard the lush valley of the Sacellum, the realm of the elves.
He was getting too old for such tasks. The pads on the bottom of his feet were cracked, and his bones complained at every step. The errand was as ridiculous as they always were, but it was better, all things considered, than being eaten by his draconic master. What would that feel like, when he failed Bolas? Would the dragon’s teeth puncture his life-sustaining organs, so he bled to death, or would the palate crush him first? Or would he be swallowed in one gulp, and die in the sizzling acid of the stomach?
None of those, he decided. In truth, he would die of whatever ached in his bones, or some other disease of the old—but without any trace of his faculties. He had seen Bolas end lives before, and it was always by the destruction of the mind, not the body. It was cruelly impersonal, he thought. All the might and majesty of dragonhood, and Bolas would sit casually back on his haunches, stare down at his victim, and barely move as the deed was done. No snap of bones. No pillar of flame. Marisi’s renown on Naya had come from being a hero full of rage and action, the force that broke the Coil and severed the nacatl people into warring factions. But when Marisi’s end came, it would not come by the sword and claw, but by the aloof dismissal of his mental faculties at the whim of a dragon, and the revelation of the evil behind his legend. Maybe that’s what being monstrous truly was, he thought—not devouring a person’s body, but his legacy.
He wondered whether success was really required on his task—which was a relevant concern, since there was no chance he would succeed. A little illusion magic would never motivate the elves to war. Killing was an easier errand, something with a beginning and an end, but his task was more complex. But would a good, honest try buy him enough time to find a way to escape Bolas for good? Or should he just give up, and sink into the jungle floor, and let his bones finally rest?
He was venerable by nacatl standards. He had lived two lifetimes, one impetuous and full of passion, and the other solitary and full of regret. Both lifetimes had been puppeteered by Bolas. The otherworldly lizard had charmed him as a youth, encouraging him to instill chaos within the society of nacatl; and he had threatened him as an adult, forcing him to instill further panic among the elves. Bolas wanted war, that was clear—but for what purpose Marisi couldn’t divine. As he aged through the late stages of Bolas’s plan, Marisi felt less and less motivated by the threat of death. “You’ve already taken my whole life from me, Bolas,” he muttered. “Why do you think that telling me you’ll take my last few years will make me bow down to you?”
