by Cory Herndon
“We’re going to get you out of there,” Crixizix called, “but it’s going to take some time. The town’s a mess, and the ogres are doing all they can to keep what’s still standing. The Izzet are sending help too.” The goblin’s voice sounded hoarse and raspy, like someone screaming at a funeral. “More help, I mean,” she added quietly.
“We’re paying Kavudoz to handle construction, not freelance ogres—” Pivlic objected automatically. His business sense was never far from the surface.
“Kavudoz is dead. Can you hold on?”
“I think so,” Pivlic called back but wasn’t at all certain he did think so. This kind of injury—he’d seen it before, after a panicked lokopede had picked up the kuga plague and gone berserk, rearing up in the middle of a busy street. The lokopede had crushed seven bystanders, one of them in much the same way Pivlic was injured. The man had seemed fine—conscious, even joking—but when the lokopede was taken away and the man pulled from the wreck, his ruined body fell apart. He’d died instantly, no time for teardrops or healers.
The imp suspected that he, too, was living on borrowed time. He tried to call to the goblin again, but his throat was too dry to make much more than a croak.
“Hurry,” he rasped.
Myc Zunich had always been in a hurry growing up. Like other kids, he’d had a hundred different things he wanted to be when he became an adult. But unlike many other kids, Myc had done something about it. He’d studied and he had trained, from a very early age. He knew far more about swordplay than even his mother realized. His father had been giving him advanced lessons in the blade since Myc had been able to hold a sword. In truth he hadn’t found the tests for scouthood to be all that challenging, though he’d politely refrained from telling his mother. They’d pitted him against other students, who weren’t anywhere near as far along as he was, and he had beaten all of them. He knew they resented him somewhat for that, especially since he was so much younger than most of his fellow students.
Myc didn’t blame them for it, but he understood it. Their occasional mocking didn’t bother him in the slightest, because he had priorities. He was going to become a ledev guard by the time he reached legal adulthood at sixteen. If the worst injuries that happened to him in the process were to his pride, he’d be lucky.
He also knew that most of them didn’t really mean it. He had been helping each of them with certain aspects of their training individually. But in a group, kids—Myc never thought of himself as a kid, of course—could change in funny ways.
These subconscious thoughts gave way to a wakefulness as Myc felt his body bounce with sharp, jarring pain. Fear returned. His hands were bound behind his back. He was in a cage.
A ledev would not be scared. A ledev, when captured, would first find a way to escape and free his fellow guards.
The latch was so primitive it could not be picked, only opened with brute force. No luck there. Myc winced as another jolt of pain shot up his forearms. The bindings were just tight enough that if he tried to lie on his side as still as he could, the ache in his shoulders and knees subsided to a dull throb. But any attempt to move just met with pain, no doubt by design.
Myc was hardly more than a decade old, but he’d been a ravenous reader of histories since he was three. His father had caught him rattling off the preamble of some contract or other Jarad had left out on the table, skipping the bigger words but, Myc would hear later, speaking with remarkable clarity. He didn’t really remember it. Myc couldn’t recall a time when he had not been able to read. Over his short life he had taken every opportunity to immerse himself in stories of the great guilds, the great heroes, and the infamous villains of Ravnican history. Naturally he had a special fascination for the Golgari and Selesnya Conclave guilds, especially since he wasn’t sure which guild he belonged to. His father was guildmaster of the Golgari, but his mother was a heroic ledev guardian of the Selesnya Conclave.
They didn’t like each other much anymore. That was something Myc tried not to analyze because whenever he did he came to the conclusion that somehow it was his fault.
The Golgari, the guild of monsters, did not frighten him. His father’s guild fascinated Myc. And he’d never stopped reading the histories of the guilds. The noble Boros and their fiery angels. The shady Orzhov, guild of lawyers, ghosts, and zinos. The high-minded sages of law in the Azorius Senate, the brilliant doctors of the Simic Combine, the methodical and power-hungry Izzet, and the wild and savage Gruul. Not to mention—in fact, his mother had slapped him once for doing so—the Unseen, House Dimir, the tenth guild, the guild that wasn’t. It hadn’t been easy finding those stories, but Myc knew the libraries of central Ravnica well. And, of course, there were the Rakdos death cultists, the guild no one seemed to want him to know about. He didn’t see why. A road guardian had to expect to run into just about anybody, and like many a boy his age he found the dangerous Cult of Rakdos fascinating. Not that he wanted to be like them. No, Myc had pictured himself fighting the Rakdos uprisings, going toe-to-toe with hideous slavers and freeing the just and innocent with his daring sword and mighty wolf.
Now that he saw and smelled the Rakdos up close, every thumping step the massive indrik took jolting his joints, he didn’t feel very daring and didn’t even feel much like helping the innocent, except himself. And the others, if they were in the same situation.
The boy kept his focus on his new anger, lest his fear overpower him. Anger could be directed and could help him think straight. He blinked his bleary world into sharper relief just as a nearby cultist chose to jump at the cage with a snarl, laughing like a mossdog. Myc yelped and tried to push himself away but could get no purchase on the cage’s grated floor. The cultist’s face was horribly scarred, especially around the mouth. It looked like the man had cut away his lips and cheeks, leaving his jaws and yellow teeth exposed. The thrill-killer’s eyelids were also gone, and his red eyeballs rolled madly within their sockets as he snapped his teeth at the young scout and giggled with vile glee. Self-mutilation (and self-cannibalization) was a Rakdos tradition.
“Z’reddok, down,” a priest hissed. Which priest Myc could not tell. His efforts to back away from the door of the cage had only succeeded only in turning his face around toward the indrik’s gray, wrinkled hide. It smelled of sour sweat and swarmed with biting flies, which were frequently sampling ledev scout whenever the opportunity arose. “They are not for you, these ones. One of ’em’s for Izolda.”
Z’reddok, the cackling one, babbled something in a guttural tongue Myc didn’t recognize. He had a good ear for languages, and could speak ancient Devkari and the Silhana dialect of Elvish fluently. He could place most other languages in at least their broad family group, but this one eluded him. Myc was glad. It didn’t sound like what Z’reddok was saying was anything he wanted to hear.
So his chance of escape, at least at this time, was not good. But he could still try to check on his comrades, assuming some of them were with him. The priest’s statement about “one of ’em” convinced Myc he wasn’t alone on the indrik. He had half-hoped he was the only one here. The others might not be up to the plan that was forming in his mind. But then again they had passed the same tests he had, so they had the training, if they could master their fear.
One thing he knew, his mother was not here. He could hear her note in the song, but it was several miles behind them.
The others were not blood, and he could tell nothing about their proximity. He’d have to risk calling out. Maybe if they could talk they could figure something out together. From what the priest had said, they were going to leave them alone for some undefined period of time, because at least one of them was intended for something—or somebody—else. Had he really said “Izolda”? Myc recognized her name from the newssheets. He didn’t want to imagine what such a creature wanted with him or the other scouts.
“Ledev scouts,” he called in the Silhana dialect. All scouts had to show some fluency in the elf language, and few outside the Selesnya Conclave understood
it, making it a convenient code language if Myc kept things simple. He, of course, had learned it at his mother’s knee. “Are you here?”
The Rakdos didn’t react to his call, at least not that Myc could see. But he didn’t get an immediate response in the Silhana dialect either. He tried again, and still no one called back. He thought he heard a few Rakdos hiss and spit something about “foul elf noise” before another one of the priests shouted them down.
Finally, Myc heard a soft voice call back. One of the other scouts. Female. “I think we are all here,” the voice said in an adequate attempt at the Silhana dialect that she spoke with a thick, central-Ravi accent Myc found he liked for some reason.
“Lily?” Myc called in reply. “Where are you?”
“In a cage,” the older scout said. “You?”
“Same,” Myc said. “Below you, I think.”
“Myc?” That sounded like Aklechin. “Lily? I’m tied up.”
“Me too,” Lily said.
“Quiet!” hissed one of the priests and smacked Myc’s cage with a gnarled wooden club. “No more elf talk!”
Myc waited a few minutes, and the priests and other cultists spread out along the road again. When he felt he had a little breathing room, he resumed, whispering this time. “Lily? Have you heard Orval?”
“No, but there’s someone in the cage to the right of me. You can tell by the way it’s bouncing. I think I can see a hoof,” Lily replied in kind. “They wouldn’t put him in a cage if he were—if he were dead, right?”
“I hope not,” Myc said quietly. “And no one saw what happened to my mother?”
“She vanished in the smoke,” Aklechin whined. “She must be—”
“No,” Myc snarled, “she’s not. But they’re taking us away from her. I can tell. Believe that.”
“I believe it,” Lily said.
“I said no elf talk!” the priest barked. “We get hungry, maybe we eat the one that talks the most. Z’reddok’s hungry, aren’t you, Z’reddok?”
Myc clamped his mouth shut. He wouldn’t be the cause of harm to the others. Instead he tried to see recognizable architecture through the grated cage, without much luck. The sun was behind the towers, throwing any identifying features in dark shadow from Myc’s angle. He suspected they were still on the main road but couldn’t be sure. Without any other point of reference, like the time of day, the position of the sun didn’t really help him tell what direction they traveled in either.
Z’reddok, for his part, confirmed that he was indeed hungry and unfortunately went on to describe some of his favorite foods, to no one in particular, with nauseating zeal.
Don’t say I’ve got the voice of an angel,
Don’t tell me that you think I’m true.
Don’t say I’ve got the voice of an angel,
’Cause an angel would never lie to you.
—Face of an Angel, by Shonya Bayle,
the Balladrix of Tin Street
31 CIZARM 10012 Z.C.
An angel, perhaps. Failing that, a ghost. A simple, run-of-the-mill ghost. Wenslauv would have loved to see a ghost. It would have somehow made the carnage she slogged through on her way to the Parhelion command floor a bit more familiar. She had seen death, but death was always accompanied by spiritual residue. When this many things—this many people died, there were always a few who lingered. Spirits, sometimes vengeful, often simply lost, but almost always useful for a clue or two. Here, there was nothing.
Only dead angels.
Wenslauv had been raised to believe that angels were immortal and indestructible. Ravnica would always be safe, her people always at peace, because the angels of Boros sailed the sky in a golden, flying fortress called the Parhelion. No one could kill an angel, and an angel never grew old or sick. Angels were magic and justice and vengeance given form and the perpetual, invincible heroes of the cheap adventure books she’d grown up on. As a very young girl she’d believed for a while—led on by her sister—that if your heart was pure and true, you could grow a pair of wings and become an angel yourself. Then she’d discovered that Jirni had made the whole thing up, which had led to a fight that left young Shokol with a fat lip and Jirni with a black eye. Wenslauv would never had admitted it to a soul, but she had joined the skyjeks because, quite simply, they flew with the angels.
She wasn’t flying now, and neither were the angels. Not anytime soon.
The bodies had been infrequent at first. She’d gone pretty far down the hall before she found the second, broken and twisted like the fallen angel on the landing deck. Broken sword, broken bones, signs of decomposition. Also about a week old, from the look of it. After a few more, she’d stopped looking them over too closely.
She spotted the snake as she doubled back from a passage that ended in a collapsed bulkhead. A flash of black slid from the corner of her eye, and it was gone. Wenslauv padded back to the T-junction and saw a scaly tail slip beneath one of the corpses. This particular body was faceup had been left all of her limbs, but most of her the neck was gone. The lifeless head was turned grotesquely but mercifully facedown.
The snake did not emerge from the other side of the body after a few seconds. The serpent’s very presence was improbable, but mages and druidic types were known to use them as servants. Perhaps it was watching her every move, or perhaps it was just lost. Either way she couldn’t just leave it slithering around. That species was poisonous, for one thing, and she had work to do. The air marshal reached down with one foot, silently prayed the angels would forgive her, and pushed the corpse aside with the sole of her boot. It slumped over, revealing an eyeless mug.
The floor beneath the angel was empty. Wenslauv pushed the corpse a little further to the side without looking into the empty pits in the angel’s face and still found nothing. The snake must have slipped through a broken seam in the walls. There were enough of them in this floating disaster. That didn’t explain what it was doing here.
Whatever the case, she was wasting time. She had a crash to avert.
Wenslauv held a hand over her nose against the smell as she headed down the gangway and followed what signage remained. The passages were cavernous, as befit a crew consisting of flyers, but the lingering odor of death hung heavy and turned them into a network of airy tombs. The air marshal felt smaller and smaller the more bodies she passed, the closer she got to command. The listing deck told her she was headed in the right direction.
Wenslauv had an hour, maybe two, if she were lucky. The shattered floatsphere might overheat one of its counterparts and trigger a massive explosion at any time. Whatever had killed the angels could jump out from around the next corner and tear her limb from limb. Apparently, she might even die of snakebite if she wasn’t careful. Something was very wrong about that.
Lost in thought, she almost walked past it without noticing, but the glint of silver in the orange glowspheres caught Wenslauv’s eye, and she stopped with a start. She looked at the baton in her hand then turned back to gaze in stupefied wonder at a wall lined with bam-sticks, pikes, swords, explosives, and a surprising assortment of axes and long knives.
An hour. Maybe two. But she had to live that long. If she had to fight, best to be loaded for drekavac. Wenslauv shrugged and ducked into the armory.
“Agyrem?” Nodov blurted. “That’s—That’s a story,” he finished lamely.
“It is a very real place,” Feather said. “I am in the verity circle. You may step inside if you wish to confirm I speak the truth.”
“The accused shall not issue challenges of any kind,” the Grand Arbiter said.
“Will you confirm the verity circle is working properly?” Saint Kel said. “If so, this is—well, ‘blasphemy’ is probably too strong a word—”
“It’s just another word for—for heaven, though,” Nodov said, “the place you go when you die. It’s like saying the Parhelion flew off to another plane of existence.”
“Not another plane,” Feather said. “Not exactly. More of a … pocket of ex
istence.”
“What do you mean?” the Grand Arbiter asked. When Teysa arched an eyebrow, he added, “For the record.”
Blind, my eye, Teysa thought.
“We—the angels—have long known, as have you, my lord, that Ravnica is sealed off from certain … eventualities,” Feather said, “other places and worlds and states of being. Long ago, when even the angels were young, there were those who came to this world from these other places—these worlds like this one but not like this one—with their own angels and demons, their own people and gods. Most of the newcomers did not even realize they had not always been here. A few of the visitors, powerful beings indeed, left again, for those other worlds. Sometimes they would return, with tales of these places.”
“We know this, do we?” Nodov said.
“Objection. Badgering the—”
“Continue, Legionary,” the Grand Arbiter said. “I suppose this is inevitable.”
“What is inevitable?” the loxodon asked.
“This was long before the Guildpact,” Feather said. “After a while, we noticed the visitors had stopped coming as frequently, and the visits stopped completely. Only a few remembered that there had been such visitors at all. The first Azor knew and passed it down to his successors, did he not, your honor?”
“The accused will not pose further inquiries,” Augustin IV said. “But for the sake of speeding things along … yes, he did.”
“What other secrets are you keeping from us, I wonder?” the loxodon said with a suspicious curl of his trunk.
“This is not the time, Holiness,” the Grand Arbiter said.
“When the visitors stopped coming to Ravnica, a few angels decided to try to find them.”
“Were you among them?” the Selesnyan judge asked.
“I was one,” the angel agreed. “We did not understand how they traveled to these other places, nor do we to this day. But we built the Parhelion anyway, with scraps of what magic and artifacts the visitors left behind. We took the sky fortress to the ends of the heavens, trying to follow the strangers to their other worlds.”
