by Cory Herndon
Her headache, at least, had vanished.
“Uncle,” she said, struggling to keep her composure, “you can’t mean that.”
“Oh yes,” the mirror said with a disconcertingly satisfied tone. “You did it. You cut your way through my chest and drove the Gruul blade into my heart. The pain was exquisite, and I thank you for the experience. A fitting way to end my physical life, was it not?” He laughed at his own weak joke.
“You think this is funny? I killed you,” Teysa said. “And you took that memory from me. You both let me believe it was Gruul.”
“It was necessary. For you to receive your inheritance, I had to die. It was the only way to make Utvara legally and completely yours. I would not spread that fact around, though, if you want to keep it—suicide is not approved of in these situations, and I believe a good advokist could make a case for it.”
“Is that a challenge?” Teysa said, anger rising to duel with her shock. “You’ve manipulated me, and you’ve—”
“I can’t understand your objection. You’ve taken the title of baroness, but given time you will be a matriarch, I believe.” The voice in the mirror chuckled again. “If you do as we agreed and become our agent, the Obzedat’s agent.”
“I had no idea you were so flexible on these things,” Teysa said. “A matriarch?”
“‘I am what I have to be to achieve what I want,’ “Uncle said. “That was something the fourth matriarch said, recorded in the Book.”
“What? Fourth matriarch?” Teysa said. “There are no matriarchs mentioned in the Book.”
“The Book of Orzhov is something everyone ought to read,” the mirror said, “the complete Book I mean, not that trinket of the mortal realm. You don’t know half of our true history. And you won’t learn it until you’re dead. You wouldn’t be the first matriarch, my dear, but you would be the first in a long time.” The mask spread into a wide smile, and Uncle’s wet, muffled laughter erupted from the mirror.
Why shouldn’t Uncle be jovial? He’d gotten what he wanted. And he’d given Teysa what she’d—well, not wanted but accepted as a challenge. Her inheritance. The entire Utvara region. And all she’d had to do to get it was kill Uncle. And all he had needed to do was use Melisk to convince her it had been the Gruul. Was that really such a bad thing? He didn’t seem to think so, and it chafed at Teysa that she’d had to learn now. If only they’d trusted her, she would have probably embraced the plan entirely. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Teysa had a contrary streak that rose to the fore when others told her what to do.
Uncle and Melisk had taken away her memory of a great many other things, and kept much more information entirely secret. In the last five minutes, all of the memories had been restored and she’d learned why the Cauldron was so very important to the Obzedat, Uncle, and Melisk. But the first question she asked was the most urgent as far as Teysa was concerned.
“My spells,” Teysa said. “The narcolepsy. That’s how he took away my memories, right? Somehow, while I was unconscious—”
“Not exactly,” Uncle’s voice said behind the mask in the mirror. “He wasn’t erasing your memory during your spells.”
“When did he do it?”
“You don’t understand,” Uncle said. “Your spells were a convenient fiction. My dear, you have never had narcolepsy. That was Melisk doing his job for us. Think. When did the spells start? Now that I’ve released the memories, you should be able to find it.”
Teysa drove through the new and unfamiliar hallways in her mind, opening doors that hid things she knew but couldn’t quite place in the context of her life without careful examination. “They didn’t manifest until he became my attendant.”
“Are you sure?” Uncle asked. His tone made Teysa mildly squeamish.
“No, wait. Not when he became the attendant. They started when he and I first—” Teysa said. Oh no, she thought. I should have seen that one rounding the bend.
“I see you have remembered,” the mirror said.
“I’m going to kill him. No contracts. I’ll do it personally. Perhaps with that Gruul knife you two seem so fond of.”
“You’ve already agreed to do that by agreeing to serve,” the mirror oozed. “Of course you will kill Melisk. I—excuse me, we—leave it to you to choose the appropriate means.”
“I didn’t agree to serve yet.”
“Oh?” Uncle’s tone hopped from jovial to cold threat.
“No,” Teysa said. “I crossed my fingers.”
“This is not a playground, my dear, and we are engaged in a child’s game.”
“You’ll have to prove that in court. But you’ve told me everything I need to know. And with these,” she said, opening her cloak to show Uncle’s mirror the plague cure she’d acquired from the vedalken doctor, “I’m going to stop it from happening,” Teysa added. Her decision was made. “Uncle, I’m going to keep Utvara in one piece, and we’re moving operations into the flats once this plague is gone. The prospectors can work for us, or alongside us for a percentage. Your deal is null and void as far as I’m concerned. You have negotiated in bad faith. Very, very bad faith. This place is mine now. I belong to no one.”
“Now, wait, my young advokist,” Uncle said. “You don’t really think you can agree to abide by our wishes then do the exact opposite of what we say? I’m telling you it must happen, no matter what you think. You have no choice in this. You do not make a deal with a being like Niv-Mizzet and expect to just break it at the last minute. And now you are part of that deal.”
“No,” Teysa said, “I am not. I’ve been your tool, but no longer. The deal you made will destroy everything here. Everything, including billions, trillions of zinos in treasure. I’m doing this for myself and for the Orzhov. If this deal comes to fruition, it won’t just be Utvara that ends up in flames. ‘The Guild of Deals cannot thrive without a world to deal in.’ Consider that my first matriarchal proverb.”
“You will not command us,” the mirror hissed. “You have no choice in the—”
“You would loose that upon the world?” Teysa asked. “The Obzedat has lost its mind. This is my place. My barony. It’s not your call.”
“Baroness,” Uncle said formally, “you will be just as dead whether Niv-Mizzet decides to kill you for breaking this deal or the Obzedat has you assassinated.”
“Let them try. Assassins don’t scare me. I never made the deal,” Teysa said. “You did. If your Great Dragon comes after me, I’ll take him straight to the High Judges of the Azorius Senate. I still have friends there. And if he chooses to pursue punitive action against you, who knows? He might need a good advokist. Perhaps on that day I’ll come out of retirement. You won’t have a leg to stand on. Not that you ever stood.”
“Now you overstep, girl.” The mirror skidded sideways slightly from the vibration of Uncle’s roar. “You are nothing without the—”
Teysa tossed her cane straight up in the air, grabbed it by the end, and swung the heavy, silver handle against the mirror with both hands. It shattered, sending tens of thousands of tiny, screaming portraits of Uncle scattering across the antechamber table. A few seconds later, the screams died off and the shards were nothing more than broken glass.
“Oh, I overstep all right,” Teysa said. “And I’m going to overstep all over you for using me.” She brushed the handle of the cane off against one of Uncle’s favorite tapestries, then blew the remains of the mirror off the table in a sparkling cloud that settled onto the floor after a few minutes. By then Teysa was already out the door.
On the steps of the Imp Wing she saw the first appearance of the kuga mot that night. The ghostly, golden shape seemed to emerge from the rising moon to sail steadily southwest until it faded back into blackness, its journey barely begun. The third Grugg brother, faithful Phleeb, ambled out the door in his apelike way, leading the new Gruggs she’d made from his essence. She’d dubbed the new Gruggs Lepheb and Heblep. She’d grown them in a little under a minute, but already they were complete and rea
dy for action. The Orzhov blood had many uses. Creating thrulls was one she hadn’t used enough, in her estimation.
The Gruul considered the kuga mot a bad omen. Prospectors believed it a good one. But omens of any kind were myth, Teysa believed. The kuga mot was probably a completely explicable phenomenon like the Schism. The Schism was probably even responsible for the illusion, a reflection of the moon on the sky-fracture’s magical fields, not one thing more.
Omens meant anything you wanted them to. One person’s good omen was always bad for someone else. Tonight, the kuga mot was a very bad omen for her not-so-faithful attendant.
* * * * *
Crix and her assorted self-appointed guardians emerged from the tunnel and into a tangled, initially baffling network of stone, metal, fire, and life that made the convoluted architecture outside the Cauldron look tame by comparison. The steamworks certainly were orderly to a trained mind, set at perfect angles and degrees to embody the most complex equations and variables known to the Izzet, and then some. Crix’s enhanced, analytical mind had little difficulty making out a few of the simpler calculations of fate here and there, as well as a tangle of pipes and energy-filled tubes that were a perfect depiction of Niv-Mizzet’s Seven-Dimensional Geometromancy Proof. Others tickled her mind with familiarity, but she couldn’t quite place them all. It looked as if the magelord had been toying with the equations, creating new ones and twisting the old, bringing them all together in a glorious collision that spawned something entirely new. Her heart burned just a little with pride, pride tempered by a curious anger she still felt toward her master over the unnecessary deaths of four Gruul that sat heavy upon her conscience.
If she ever became a magelord—a fanciful thought, to be sure—she would never kill indiscriminately. Of that she was certain.
It took the courier a few moments to realize that the goblins within were not walking on the configurations themselves but on ramps, ladders, and other dangerous-looking elevated walkways spanning the entire Cauldron. The place was filled with them, alongside towering fusion djinns and the silent weirds, many of whom labored as hard as the goblins, it seemed. Crix hadn’t been sure what to expect, but being completely ignored had not been on the list. Yet no one paid them any heed, save a few wearily curious glances from the goblins.
There it was. One very long, cold look from a pyrohydric weird. Its fiery body flared in recognition, and it turned away from her. The magelord would know of her arrival soon, if he didn’t already.
The tangles of brilliantly planned infrastructure, when viewed as a whole, looked like a bizarre metal-and-magic nest built around the more familiar cylindrical power plants and beetle-shaped pyromanic generators, positioned at the four cardinal compass points. Steamcores gathered energy from the generators, power plants, and the geothermic dome itself, then fed it back into the network and out into the world. They hummed with energy, filling the air, already hot as a furnace, with a buzz that the goblin could feel in her bones.
All of this would have been reason enough to praise the genius of her master, Zomaj Hauc, despite her minor disillusionment with the casual deaths that had affected her personally. But the things that made Crix stop so suddenly that an equally awestruck Kos collided with her were truly wondrous. The shapes inspired a primal, terrified awe in the courier’s soul.
“Those are—Those, those are—” Crix coughed in the thick heat and smog that clung to these lower levels.
“They’re what?” Golozar said. “They look like some kind of generators. That’s what you call these things, isn’t it?”
“Your education is surprising for a Gruul,” Pivlic said with thinly veiled suspicion. “But I don’t think the goblin would be reacting like that to mere generators. It’s obvious what they are. Think. Even a Gruul must know who leads the Izzet.”
“I think I have a pretty good guess, but if my guess is right, then I’m also pretty sure my heart’s finally given out and you all are hallucinations. And I really would have preferred better hallucinations for the end of my life,” Kos said. “Those can’t be what they look like. They just can’t.”
“They are,” Crix said as she finally regained her breath.
“I have to agree with the goblin, my friend,” Pivlic said. “I can feel it. Can’t you?”
One alone would have been wondrous, a miracle. Three was inexplicable, a sure sign that the Izzet were meant for the greatness to which they all aspired, individually and as a guild. Three majestic ovoid shapes mottled with gemstone patches of gleaming color: one red, one a faded blue, and the third a deep-purple pattern like spattered goblin blood. The ovoids were under bombardment, simmering—no, incubating—beneath a staggering amount of energy on all sides. That was why the equations had been changed. They were perfectly set up to split the energy the Cauldron was taking in and divert much of into the ovoids. Truly masterful sigil-work. At least half the power being produced by the Cauldron went into the nest, if Crix understood the calculations.
Indeed the whole Cauldron was a nest, and judging from the weathered, hardened igneous stone that seemed to grow into the bases of the objects, supporting them and balancing their weight, it was a very old nest. Clearly the gigantic shapes had once rested within the caldera of the geothermic dome beneath their feet, laid there long ago by a creature that certainly must have passed from the world before the Guildpact was ever signed.
“Those,” Crix said, her voice little more than a whisper, “are dragon eggs.”
“That’s impossible,” Golozar said. “There are no dragons. Not anymore.”
“Blasphemy,” Crix said, stunned. “Great Niv-Mizzet—”
“I should have said none but him,” Golozar said. “But he is a he. You’re saying he laid eggs?”
“My well-educated Gruul friend,” Pivlic interrupted, “you would be surprised how many things I have seen in even my short time on this plane that I once thought impossible. Gradually, I have come to realize that nothing is impossible. There are only improbabilities, improbabilities that either are or are not.”
“Those sure look ‘are’ to me,” Kos said. “Those look alive.”
“Oh yes,” Zomaj Hauc said as he stepped to the edge of the suspended landing platform he’d turned into his central command center. His voice cut through the din easily, at least to Crix’s sharp ears, and she saw recognition on the faces of her companions too. “Indeed, they live,” the magelord continued, the crystal sphere of the Pyraquin looming behind him like a halo. “Can you feel their furious impatience growing by the second? They want out. And now that my courier is here, their wishes will be fulfilled.” The magelord spread his arms wide, and his eyes burned with orange flame.
The nest began to move all around them, jolting Crix out of another of the day’s shocks, which just kept getting more alarming. The steamworks screamed as components twisted and bent into new shapes, and those shapes snapped off tubes and stone pipes as they broke free of the nest and surrounded the small band. The shapes were roughly humanoid and reminded Crix of smaller versions of that first nephilim she’d encountered, the junk monster.
These weren’t just monsters. They were guardians, like the fusion djinn and the weirds. But these were controlled, Crix suspected, directly by the magelord. These things couldn’t possibly have independent thoughts. They’d been part of the steamworks only seconds before.
“My lord,” Crix said, “I have arrived. This is not necessary.”
“Crix. Crix, Crix, Crix. My favored one. You were one of my proudest experiments,” Hauc said calmly. The calm did not last, and his voice was already showing strain as he added, “You dare speak to me now? After you have almost failed me?”
“But my lord, I—”
“Crix,” the magelord interrupted, “you are a tool. One of my favorites, I admit, but only a tool. Be quiet. You should not have brought these others into the Cauldron. It is not time for others to learn of this. Not yet.”
“I would have thought he’d be happier t
o see her,” Kos muttered to the others.
Crix had to agree. This was not the welcome she’d expected. This was barely even a greeting. She felt more like a prisoner here than she had tied up in the Gruul camp.
Golozar snarled a battle cry and raised his bam-stick, aiming at the nearest pipe-guardian. The metallic monster stood on two thick legs of fire and metal, with four arms ending in brass fingers of wire and bolts. It had no head to aim at, but the Gruul let fly a shot at the center of its skeletal, metal-frame torso.
“No, don’t!” Crix shouted. “You can’t—”
The shot went clean through without striking anything solid and pinged harmlessly against the bottom of the platform. The pipe-guardian knocked Golozar onto his back with one swipe of its arm and sent the drained weapon skidding across the floor. It teetered on the edge of a lava pit, and Golozar doubled over, writhing in pain from the blow and the searing heat so nearby.
“Come, courier,” Hauc said, beckoning the pipe-guardians to close ranks around the four. “We have work to do. Because I like you, Crix, you may even survive long enough to see the purpose of the message you carry. I may even show them, if you obey me. But they will have to die, as will you. I must be able to trust my courier, Crix, and you are showing signs of too much independence.”
Hauc’s words hit Crix harder than any fist could. Her master, her magelord, the one being she served without question. And what had that service gotten her?
From here, it looked like a fiery death, that’s what.
* * * * *
Teysa spotted Wageboss Aradoz first and decided he was as good a place as any to start distributing the cure. The guildless were the least likely to take free medicine at face value, especially from an Orzhov, so getting them to join her should serve to hasten the formation of her makeshift alliance, her own Guildpact, as it were, to fight Hauc’s mad plans.
Part of her mind still had trouble wrapping around Uncle’s revelation. The Cauldron was only partly artificial. It was built upon an ancient nesting ground in the range of an even more ancient race of beings, and it had been buried for a reason. If not for the deal the Obzedat had struck with the dragon Niv-Mizzet, it would have stayed that way. But Niv-Mizzet wanted them hatched, and he’d managed to ply the ghostly patriarchs with enough of something—gold? Souls? Something she couldn’t even imagine?—that they were willing to risk the end of Ravnica itself. Utvara would be the doormat for the apocalyptic power the Obzedat seemed happy to set loose.
