At night I would dream of the Flow, swim in it, drink of it from her bed near mine. The pendant lay across her throat, whispering of victory. I found what I needed to kill the praying mantis of Dumoss. The pendant could give me that power. That's what I wanted-to kill that praying mantis and claim my place in this city, above the poor, forever under foot when I walked past. I wanted Annise with me.
One night while she slept, I reached out to touch the pendant. She stirred. I almost touched her throat. I wondered where, how, she got that prize, that incredible prize. I wondered who she let touch that throat. Dumoss? The pit bosses? I saw them all through the window. She passed time with them, touched their shoulders, arms, maybe caressed a cheek, and always smiling. All with no regret-nothing. I pulled my hand back and clutched my fist to my chest. She would be with me. My new control could give me that.
Staring at the skeleton of the ceiling, I wondered whether Dumoss, sitting somewhere, had heard tales of how good I had become.
He had. Standing inside a casino, the player who killed my rat, a pit boss in blue with gold lace, said Dumoss wanted a challenge. Dumoss wanted to play me that night. My face was blank, a gambler's trick. In my mind I was calm. I was ready.
The pit boss stared at me. He said I could never win, no matter how good my magic. He called me king of the dirt. He said that my luck didn't make me a loser, but that being a loser made my luck.
I returned home to Annise waiting at the window. She stared, sipping from a cup of water and said, "I'm leaving."
The sensation in my chest was like the gambler's game, Freeze, someone constricting my heart. "What?"
"I'm leaving you," she said, hair burnished by fading sunlight. She put a hand on the pendant, ran her fingers along its edges. "I'm going to be off on my own."
"This is because of Dumoss, isn't it?" The constriction continued. I felt heat on my skin but cold inside. My animals thrashed against their cages, feeling my fury.
Annise shook her head slowly, not looking at me. "Dumoss has-"
I raged in place. "Liar! This is because of Dumoss!"
Clutching the pendant, she turned back to the window. I couldn't see her face. She was not wracked with sobs, as I wanted her to be, or torn with sorrow, as I deserved to see her. Slowly, she nodded her acknowledgment and confessed her lie.
"You are leaving because you think he offers you more!" My animals hissed, rattled, ran in circles. "I will give you the same."
"You can't." She had pity in her voice. "We have been together some time, and I can't give you what you want." Her free hand fell from the pendant to rest on her shoulder. "I can't give myself to you."
"And you can with Dumoss?"
"No, not with Dumoss."
I smashed my foot into the floor. A slat cracked beneath the carpet, the carpet I had bought for her. "If not with Dumoss, then with who?"
Annise shook her head again and shrugged. "I don't know. But I know I must leave here."
"You must leave here." I laughed, a short, acid laugh. Blood boiled in my animals. I turned toward them. The salamander hurled itself against the bars of its little cage and died. I flinched. Another piece of me was gone. More of my life was gone. Like Annise.
There was still a chance. If I defeated Dumoss, my mantis against his, she would stay. I knew it. I thought of all the dreams inspired by the pendant. Using it against Dumoss would show her his weakness, show her that he could never give her what I could. He was a real gambler, but his luck would change. It would change that night, and I would be the one to change it.
Annise stood, straightened her dress with the gold lace around the cuff and collar. She ran a hand through her hair. "I have no bags. I won't take anything with me."
"Give me the pendant."
She looked me in the eye and blinked slowly. "What?"
"The pendant." My hand reached out. "Give it to me."
Annise turned her shoulders defensively and raised her hand to cover the pendant. Her expression said she would not give it up. "It is my new luck. For the first time-
"Don't you dare say for the first time you are lucky!" I bellowed. "Your luck started when we met."
She tried to move past me, toward the door. Her eyes never left me. Her feet stepped silently on the carpet. She slipped from my sight, but I knew she needed me. I turned toward the mantis. Its black, hintless eyes watched me. It waited patiently in my control. An idea… was it possible? Could I do it? Could anyone?
I stretched my arm toward her. With half-closed eyes, I felt the sensation of motion. My spirit followed. Was it possible? As with other gambler's games, I sought her magic, the root, the source of her spirit. But she was surrounded by the power of the pendant, making the distance immense.
It was too much, the challenge too great. I struggled, buffeted by power, spirit to human spirit. Animals are simple. This was torture to my magic. Yet I could not surrender. She needed me, needed me! I could not lose her to another.
Annise stood enthralled. Concentrating made my nose bleed, my ears ring. I focused on her eyes. Her body was rigid, as when I first touched her, when we first met. My control spun and twisted, fighting for dominance. How much easier it would be if I had the pendant!
I pointed to her bed. She jerked, sobs breaking from her throat. She moved, lowered herself to her knees, then sat on her bed. Tears flowed from her eyes.
She would be happy under my control. Once the fight with Dumoss was finished, Annise would see that was true. I dropped to my knees in front of her and stroked her hair. Bending slowly, I place my hand on the pendant. She tried to scream. I took our first kiss. She bit me, drawing blood.
I whispered, "Everything I do, I do for you."
Dumoss stood on his side of the arena. The sand on the floor was smoothed for our contest. He was dressed in fine yellow silks adorned with rich brocade. The brazier above made him seem old. His face was set in stone, like mine. The pendant was hidden beneath my robes, but I had no doubt he could feel its power. I imagined he could feel his loss already. Around us stood the real gamblers, men and women who were lucky enough to be missed by the storm, men and women whose luck had not changed.
We sat on our short chairs and raised our hands above our heads, elbows bent. The pit bosses gathered the bets. The odds were not in my favor, but I didn't care. I could hear bets being placed on me, but I couldn't see faces because of the brazier's light. The betting was closed.
Then the pit bosses called out, "Fight!"
We both clapped our hands, summoning our beasts- praying mantises large as birds-near the center of the ring. I felt Dumoss's control prodding the limbs of his mantis toward mine. My new magic let nothing leak out. There was no way for him to read my moves.
The two translucent monsters clashed, locking their razor limbs across each other's heads. Magic struggled against magic for the strength to push the insects harder. However magic in the arena shifted, however we struggled with the changing forces, our fighters never released their grips. Our faces were set and solid.
The shouts of the players on the sidelines continued as the fight dragged on. Money had been bet on how long the fight would last. Money had been placed on whose face would show strain first.
The monsters remained locked. I couldn't find a chink in the magic to extract my mantis from his. He couldn't find it. I felt him struggling. Dumoss's magic was truly impressive. It didn't matter that I could feel his control. He could even use that against me, if I became distracted by trying to read his mox'es rather than concentrating on my own.
More money was placed, money for first limb, money for first move, money for anything. I grew more relaxed, more assured of victory for Annise. Everything was for her. Luck flowed to me to beat Dumoss. I knew it, I felt it. His mantis ripped a limb from mine, repositioned itself, and grabbed my monster's head from another angle. The shouts made my ears ring as if I'd been struck in the head. Our faces showed nothing. My mantis cracked a leg of his, and the magic shifted again, farther away.
Then the real fight began. The phantasms fought openly, ripping and tearing to the shouts of bettors on all sides. Our monsters were chipped through like walls of old stone. My control was better, my anger brighter, my magic stronger. I did not let up, I forced my mantis to attack.
Magic moved from the ring, and the other mantis seemed reenergized. It hacked another limb from mine, and I stared hard into the eyes of Dumoss, letting him know with a glance what would come next. I prepared to use the pendant.
But something in my blood stirred, drawn toward Dumoss… no, it was not toward Dumoss, but behind him. Someone stood in the shadow. Light from the flaring brazier glared in my eyes. I couldn't be stopped now, not when Annise would have everything she deserved, everything I could give her. My mantis bit into the neck of the other.
I fell to my knees, my hands shaking. The luck, on that I could depend. All this magic, all this luck would save me, prevent me from losing my concentration. I would have revenge on Dumoss for stealing Annise. I, alone, challenged fate, dared to care for another. The city killed and left the corpses on the dust-covered streets.
I forced my eyes to remain locked on Dumoss's. Clenched, my teeth ached. Blood boiled and pounded at my temples. My chest constricted.
Annise stood behind Dumoss. I couldn't see her face, but her hair glowed red in the firelight. I felt her control on me, strong, seeking the root of my magic, my spirit. She was choking my life, crushing me with a great weight.
She couldn't kill me here. There were protections against such things in an arena. My magic was stronger.
From the pendant I took the power, the pure magic. I rode the crest of her feeble strength back to her source, where her spirit waited. She ran from my attack, ran and didn't turn back. I reached for her, for the final response, stretching all my strength to finally strike her down.
Dumoss's creature snatched its claws forward. The head of my mantis fell to the floor. I forced magic into the spirit, but it was already gone. I knew the body at home was dead. Everything was gone. The pendant was empty. There was nothing left.
Weak and sweating, I couldn't stand. Dumoss was already gone-the spirit of his mantis returned. The arena cleared, bodies shuffling, shadows moving. Annise was the last of them to leave the building. I never saw her face, but I heard the sound of a door closing, leaving me inside, alone. Empty and alone. Everything I had done, I had done for her.
The Gold Border
Loran's Smile
Jeff Grubb
Loran died ten years after the devastation-after Urza and Mishra destroyed most of the world with their war, after the tumultuous explosion that eliminated Argoth and altered the rest of the world forever.
Loran died in part because of that devastation. She did not die in battle, for she was not a warrior. Nor did she die in a duel of magical forces, for though her lover Feldon had mastered the study of magic, she found she could not. She did not die of intrigue, or of passion, or of some fatal flaw.
She died in bed, weakened by wounds suffered over a decade previous-wounds inflicted by Ashnod the Uncaring, Mishra's assistant. She was weakened by the lengthening winters and the cold mountain air, weakened by her own great age, weakened, and eventually defeated, by the world that the brothers, Urza and Mishra, had created.
At first she just winded easily when in the garden or cooking, and Feldon would put aside his own work to help. Then she had trouble working in the garden at all, and Feldon did the best he could, under her direction, to substitute for her.
Later she could not work around the house, and Feldon brought in servants from the nearby town to aid. When she could not get out of bed, Feldon sat beside her and read to her, told her stories of his own youth and listened to hers. After a time he had to feed her as well.
At length she died in bed in her sleep, Feldon sitting beside her, asleep as well from his long guardianship. When he awoke her flesh was cold and pale, and the breath had long-since left her body.
He commanded the servants to dig a grave behind the house, among the now weed-choked garden that Loran had begun with Feldon's grudging, grumbling aid shortly after they first arrived. She had kept it going through several seasons by sheer force of will, but when she took ill that last, final time, she had to surrender the garden to the weeds and the cold rains.
It was raining when they laid her to rest, wrapped in her bed sheets and sealed within a coffin of thick oak planks. Feldon and the servants uttered a few prayers, then the old mage watched as the servants methodically piled the dirt atop the lid. Feldon's tears were lost in the rain.
For days afterward Feldon stayed by the fire, and the servants brought him his meals, much as they had brought Loran hers. Feldon's library and workshop stood empty for the nonce, the books closed, the forges cold, the various reagents and solutions settling quietly in their glass jars. He stared into the fire and sighed.
Feldon remembered: the touch of Loran's hand, the Argivian lilt to her voice, and her thick, dark hair. Most of all, he thought of the smile that she gave. It was a slightly sad, slightly knowing smile. It was a soft smile, and it wanned Feldon whenever he saw it.
Now, Feldon was a practitioner of the Third Path, the way that was neither Urza nor Mishra, charting a new course between the two warring brothers and their technological miracles. He could pull from his mind great magics, fueled by the memories of his mountain home, and work wonders with them. He could cause fire to appear or the land itself to shift or summon the strokes of a lightning storm and bend them to his will.
Yet he could not heal Loran's body or dying spirit. He could not keep the life within her. His magics had failed him and had failed his love.
The old man sighed and raised a hand toward the fire. He unlocked a part of his brain that held the memories of the mountains around them. He pulled the energies from those lands, as he learned to do in Terisia City with Drafna, Hurkyl, the archimandrite, and the other mages of the Ivory Towers. He concentrated, and the flames writhed as they rose from the logs, twisting upon themselves until they finally formed a soft smile.
Loran's smile. It was the most that he could do.
For five days and five nights Feldon sat by the fire, and for a brief time the servants wondered if they would soon have to tend the master as they had tended the mistress. Indeed, Feldon was never fully healthy himself, overweight and walking only with the aid of a silver cane he had rescued from the heart of a glacier. His dark beard was now streaked with silver, and the corners of his eyes drooped from grief and age. The servants wondered if he would ever rise from the fireside again.
On the sixth day Feldon retreated from the hearth to his workshop. Soon afterwards a short note appeared for the servants-a list of items that they were to procure as soon as possible. The list called for thin sheets of copper, iron rivets, cords made of various spun metals, brass gears if they could get them, steel otherwise, glass blown into a variety of shapes (with illustrations and dimensions). And there was a letter to be delivered to a place far to the south and west.
For the next two months the workshop clattered. Feldon brought the forge to life, and the small anvil rang with ear-splitting blows. Fire was within the domain of mountain magics, and Feldon was its master. He could cause it to heat a precise location with the exact amount of heat needed merely by ordering it to do so. Such was the nature of the old mage's magic.
The wire arrived, and the gears (iron, not brass), sheets of copper, and some of bronze. The glass was substandard, and Feldon had to resort to teaching himself how to blow it to form the shapes he needed. More wire arrived, this new amount spun with horsehair to form thick, long cords like braids of human hair.
At the end of two months Feldon looked at his work and shook his head. The joints were stiff, and the arms jutted in the wrong directions. The head was too large, and the hair looked like what it was: a collection of wire and horsehair. The eyes were little more than badly-crafted glass spheres. It was too tall at the shoulders and too large in the hips.
The creation looked nothing like Loran. Only around the mouth, where there was the ghost of a smile, came the hint of a memory.
Feldon shook his head, and thick tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. He took a sledge and knocked the automaton to pieces.
And he began again.
He pored over Loran's journals in the library. She had studied with Urza himself and knew something of artifice. He restrung the wires and ligatures through the arms and legs, building first miniature models, then full-fledged mock-ups before proceeding to the final version. He worked in animal bone and wood as well as metal and stone. His glasswork became better, so he could provide a glass eye for an old woman in the village that matched her good one. Slowly he built the automaton in the shape of Loran, sculpting her out of myriad materials.
After six months she was finished. The statue missed only the heart. Feldon waited patiently for that organ to appear. He spent his days in the workshop, polishing, testing, and rebuilding the automaton. When he first met Loran, she had use of both arms. Later she lost the use of one of them, crippled by Ashnod. He went back and forth, removing and replacing the arm. Finally he restored the statue to its complete state.
A month later a package arrived from a place far to the south and west, from a scholar whom Loran and Feldon had known when they were at Terisia City, at the Ivory Towers. The package contained a small chip of a crystal, glowing softly-a powerstone, the heart of artifice. There were fewer and fewer stones of this type in the years since the devastation, but this was one.
The package contained a note as well, signed by Drafna, master of the School of Lat-Nam. It said simply, "I understand."
Feldon held the powerstone and noticed that his fingers were trembling. Cradling the crystal in both hands, he went to the automaton, standing guard in the center of the workshop. He had placed the bracket for the crystal where the heart would be in a living woman. Feldon set the crystal within its framework, and closed the compartment door. He reached behind the automaton's left ear and touched a small switch.
The Colors of Magic Anthology (magic: the gathering) Page 24
