Mercadian Masques

Chapter 24

All morning, the storm poured its dark and vengeful heart on the city. Rain fell in sheets and aerial rivers. It pounded paving stones loose and ripped mortar from walls. It saturated thatch and shoved the cold, wet stuff down into rooms below. It washed away whatever old encrustations once held stone to stone. In the grip of its fury, Mercadia came to pieces.

The revolution below performed a similar function. Tides of Ramosans flooded the streets, dragging down Mercadian guards. Merfolk tangled pearly tridents with metal ones. Rishadans sent whaling harpoons into the shoulders of raving giants. A deluge of farmers aback Jhovalls poured across markets, downing cateran enforcers and carrying off the extortion boxes they guarded. Slaves spilled from their pits and sent slavers cascading down into them. Every dry and ancient institution of Mercadian oppression washed away. The masses, who had been mortared together into vast structures that served the state, tumbled apart. No person was preeminent. All were made equal. The society of oppression was razed.

By late morning, though, the storm above and the revolution below had spent their fury. Curtains of rain thinned to misty veils. Swords ceased their slashing. Bodies ceased their bleeding. Dead Kyren littered the ground and live ones went to ground. Dead giants formed disheveled lines, laid out by kindred who had joined the revolution.

Was this justice, though? In the waning moments of the battle, it seemed the revolutionaries had only reversed the hierarchy of oppression, exalting the lowly and humbling the exalted. Such impulses initially feel like justice, but they are only vengeance. Over time, vengeance hardens into vendetta, and vendetta into tyranny.

It was a dangerous moment for the revolution. Everyone sensed it. The old vicious monster was dead, slain by a new monster who could prove twice as bad.

Heroes rose to cage the beast. Atalla rode his bounding Jhovall to the rubbish wall to stop a mass execution of Mercadian guards. Lahaime marched his rebels to the upper market to quell rampant looting. Cho-Manno sent his water wizards to save merfolk from fires that ate away block after block. Orim tended citizens beaten by their own families and friends and neighbors, who sought to settle old scores by turning revolution to riot.

In destroying their ancient oppressors, the oppressed people had ceased to be. They lost their single defining characteristic and turned upon each other. So vicious and voracious was this new monster that it ate itself away from the inside out.

Hatred is no fit spine for heroes or nations.

"Cho-Manno! We have to do something!" Orim shouted desperately where she knelt beside a dying man. The whitehaired fellow had been stabbed by his own grandson, the one he had willed everything to. Orim had done her best to cleanse and close the wound, but the old man's guts had been multiply severed. Death by sepsis was inevitable. "The people are killing each other! You must speak to them!"

The leader of the Cho-Arrim stood silhouetted against cloudy skies. His coin-braided hair dripped rainwater on strong brown shoulders, and his once-grand robe hung bedraggled. He stared down from a rise in the tower garden. He had established his command center here amid slender trees. Skyscouts and warriors came and went below, dispatched on missions of mercy.

"My people already do all they can to save the city," ChoManno said with quiet helplessness.

"Speak to the rest of them!" Orim said as the old man breathed his last. Giving a ragged sigh, she sat back on her heels. "Not just the Cho-Arrim. Speak to the Mercadians, the Rishadans, the Saprazzans-all these people must be your people now."

"1 do not even speak their languages. You speak to them."

Orim shook her head. "They will not listen to me. I am not even from this world." She blinked blearily, thoughts retreating inward. "But were you to truth-speak with me, you would know all their languages. You could speak your thoughts in my words."

Cho-Manno heaved a sad breath. "It brings you such pain."

"This is worse," she said, flinging her hands out toward the rioting city. "This is worse."

The leader of the Cho-Arrim caught her hand in his strong grip and lifted Orim to her feet. He brought her to stand before him and released her fingers.

"Are you sure of this?" he asked gravely.

Orim's eyes were rimmed with tears as she said, "If there is no Uniter, perhaps you and 1 must become the Uniter. We must be united to bring the people together."

Cho-Manno nodded. He gazed deeply into her eyes. A gentle chant began on his lips. It tangled with the sharp air of the dissipating storm.

The song entered Orim's ears and washed away all else.

She had been braced for agony, but it did not come. There was no stark violation, no bursting open of hidden memories. The true-speaking chant flowed into Orim like a healing stream. When last Cho-Manno had suffused her, he had sought scenes of murder and treachery. Now he sought only peace and beauty, truth and life. His thoughts didn't rifle through hers, stripping away barriers, but caught hers up in a glad dance. Together their minds mingled and turned and stepped and turned…

Cho-Manno's entire life poured into Orim's consciousness. She felt his joy at seeing her again. She knew his resolve in riding the storm clouds to the city. Her heart was swelled with his courage as the revolution began, and was quelled with his regret as the victorious people turned to slaying each other. He felt no more than that, defeat and despair.

Orim felt more, though. Into Cho-Manno's aching emptiness flowed her warm, bright hope. It changed him. It renewed him, and with it came the Mercadian words he needed to convey hope to the hopeless city. The lovers' minds remained entwined in dance as Cho-Manno spoke. A simple spell carried the words out into the mists and clouds above, filling the whole of Mercadia with Cho-Manno's voice.

"My people, let the killing be done. The lambs have slain the wolves. Let us not become the wolves ourselves. Let the killing be done…"

His words echoed prophetically through the city. Riots and executions and atrocities paused, if only in amazement.

He repeated the words in the tongue of the Saprazzans and the Cho-Arrim, and then went on.

"We came here to fight for justice, and we have won it. Let us fight no longer, or we will win back injustice."

Those thoughts echoed not only in streets, but in minds. Blades ceased cutting the air, lest they sever the words that lingered there.

"We came here seeking more than justice. We came seeking a Uniter. Old myths mixed with new hopes to make us believe that Ramos soared in fire across the sky, that he brought new children among the old. These new children gathered his soul and mind and body together, his spirit and heart and bones to resurrect him, to raise the Uniter. We flocked here to rally behind Ramos, to throw out evil, and be borne into a new world. We came here seeking a Uniter, but we found none."

A new strain of doubt had entered Cho-Manno's hopeful words. A lesser man would have feared to speak such words to mobs on the verge of riot, but Cho-Manno did not plant doubt in their minds. He merely expressed what already lurked there. His words struck all the deeper for it.

"Perhaps we can blame our ancient foes-nobles, Kyren, Phyrexians. Perhaps they have prevented the Uniter from rising. Rumors tell they captured Ramos-soul, mind, and bodyto enslave or destroy him. Perhaps they have, and we fight each other in despair, believing we can never be one."

Trident hafts grew sweaty in the hands that held them. Rebels and fanners, pirates and merfolk stared up toward the tower in wonder that a man could so honestly speak the doubts that plagued them all.

"Or perhaps we should blame the old myths and the new hopes. They had the power to raise us and bring us here, but they did not have the power to raise the Uniter. There is a word for stories that tickle the heart of truth without ever grasping it. Lies. Perhaps we should blame the old myths and new hopes and brand them lies. After all, we must lay the blame somewhere-in foes, in lies… or in ourselves-"

Darkness came over every face. Sword tips grounded themselves in the soil-not in hope for peace but in the hopelessness of war.

"-Unless there is no blame to lay. We say the Uniter has not risen, but here we are, united. We say Ramos has not driven evil from Mercadia, but evil is driven out. We say the old stories have not come true, but they have come true. Ramos the Uniter has risen, and brought us together, and driven out evil, and set us on the threshold of a brighter world. We need only recognize that all this has happened. We need only gratefully, reverently step across that threshold."

Tears stood in many eyes. Tears of hope and despair. ChoManno's words were true-they all felt it-but truth was insufficient.

Truth is never as quick and sure as tyranny, and the tyranny of the mob is the surest and quickest of all.

A cool hand touched Orim's forehead. She opened her eyes.

Cho-Manno spoke. "They will not listen. We cannot save them."

Tears streamed down Orim's cheeks. She embraced him. "Then we all are doomed-"

A sudden, shrieking thunder interrupted her words. She looked up. The sky split in two. A god shot through the air-a fiery body with angel wings and a throat that sang as loudly and gloriously as a heavenly choir.

All Mercadia fell to its knees. Even Cho-Manno dropped down.

Orim would have too, except that she had ridden in the belly of that god and knew it to be merely a ship. "Weatherlight!"

She seemed the only one to recognize the ship.

"Ramos… Ramos… Ramos…!" Every last creature Mercadian, Cho-Arrim, Saprazzan, Rishadan; giant, boarman, griffin, goblin-knelt where they were and chanted the name of their god. "… Ramos… Ramos… Ramos…!"

Orim only stood, shaking her head in wonder. Weatherlight was beautiful and powerful in flight, grander than she had ever been, but she was only a ship. She was no god. Still, what did it matter? People needed gods. Better that they find them in old legends and flying machines than in tyrants and Phyrexians.

The chants suddenly ceased. An audible cry of dread came from the city streets. It formed itself into a new word- the name of a very old god. "Orhop!"

"Orhop?" Orim muttered in wonder. It was the name of Ramos's evil brother god-Ramos and Orhop, Urza and Mishra, Gerrard and…

Orim hissed as she saw the second ship^a Phyrexian ship, and she realized the one man who could be at its helm. "Volrath!"

At last, Orim went to her knees.

The Phyrexian ship, hoary in its huge magnificence, vaulted in the wake of Weatherlight. Atop the scream of its engines came the crackling sound of ray cannons unloading on the craft.

"Volrath…"

"We can't shake it!" Sisay's voice echoed urgently through the speaking tube. "The ship's just as fast as Weatherlight, twice as big, and has three times the firepower!"

"Outmaneuver!" Gerrard shouted back, clinging to the barrel of his ray cannon as wind ripped past him. "Turn broadside so we can draw a bead!"

"Hang on!"

Weatherlight sloughed suddenly sideways, air spilling across the deck. The Phyrexian ship came into view, just fore of Weatherlight's port wing.

Beneath a breaking wrack of cloud, the ship seemed a soaring dragon skull. Its bridge was a sloping brainpan, its pilot a sinus bone between gaping eye sockets. From jutting tusks along what would have been the jaw of the thing, twin bolts of power emerged. They raked across the main deck of Weatherlight, vaporizing a section of rail.

Gerrard squeezed off a pair of blasts. The shots bounded past Weatherlight's wing and cracked through the hull of the Phyrexian ship. Black smoke belched out, and debris fell, but the ship came on, heedless. It hurtled through the skies, intent on ramming Weatherlight broadside.

"Get us out of here!" Gerrard shouted.

Weatherlight leaped, surging from the space just as the larger ship soared through it. Glancing aft, Gerrard made out the ship's name-Recreant-and glimpsed a very familiar face at the helm.

"He's alive? Volrath's alive?"

Bolts lashed out from Recreant toward Weatherlight's unprotected stern.

Almost unprotected. The stern ray cannon surged with sudden life. A certain green fellow flung ravening rounds aft. With the percussion of great hammers, blasts struck the Phyrexian beams. Energy tangled and riled and exploded in midair. A few of the goblin's charges even won through, striking Recreant's center sail and ripping a wide hole in it.

Gerrard let out a whoop. "Nice shooting, Squee!"

Weatherlight surged out away from its attacker.

Recreant's batteries followed where its hull could not. Cannon fire ripped the air all around.

"It's no good!" Gerrard shouted. "They've got multiple guns on every side. As long as they're aft, only Squee can return fire."

Worse, Recreant was damnably agile. It banked violently and quickly closed the space, cannons blazing all the while. "Fast, agile, deadly," Sisay shouted through the tubes. "What now, Commander?"

"Climb!" Gerrard replied. "Make Volrath haul that extra weight into the sky."

No sooner were the words spoken than Weatherlight's prow swooped up toward the raveling clouds. Her stern swung down toward the muddy desert below. Engines surged. Intakes roared. Fire shot in twin columns out the rear of the ship. Squee gave his own whoop, watching the blaze. Weatherlight vaulted into the sky with the eager speed of a heaven-bound soul. Her wings flung clouds away from the lemon sky and the beaming sun.

Recreant followed. It clung tenaciously to its prey, losing little ground despite its vast bulk. At least the furious ascent weakened the blasts from its cannons. Auxiliary power was diverted to the engines. The cannon rays still blistered paint and flash burned fabric, but no longer did they vaporize wood. Doggedly, the Phyrexian ship climbed.

Gerrard gazed back, seeing his brother's mutilated figure, gripping the helm in rage. In ancient days, Mishra had been similarly mutilated, warped into a Phyrexian. Urza destroyed his brother in revulsion. It was strange how history repeated itself. Would this day end like that day? No. Gerrard's anger was gone. He no longer hated his brother. He felt only sadness. He would kill Volrath not in fury but in mercy.

"Divert all power to Squee's gun. Cut engines," Gerrard ordered.

"What?" came the incredulous response through the tube.

"Divert all power to Squee's gun and cut engines."

"We'll fall from the sky. He'll ram us."

"No. We'll ram him."

Reluctantly-"Aye, Commander."

There was sudden silence. The roar of Weatherlight's power plant ceased. Air stilled in the intakes. Even the wind that had raged over the bow grew calm.

Weatherlight hung for an instant in air, a pickax hovering before it falls.

In the hush, only Squee's gun spoke. It unloaded bolts so hot they shot clear through Recreant.

Then Weatherlight fell. Its long, strong stern pierced the bridge, shattering glass and helm. Volrath shrieked and dodged aside before it could slay him. The stern drove deeper into the ship and might have gotten mired but for Squee's cannon fire. Bolts of white-hot energy ripped away wood, metal, crystal-all. Nothing remained to foul Weatherlight's stern.

In moments, the aft of Recreant was completely vaporized and with it a hundred tons of engine. Only the prow of the ship survived. It tumbled away, with Volrath clutching its severed hull.

"Engage engine!" Gerrard shouted. "Full power!"

Gerrard's command was ended by the roar of Weatherlight's power core. The great ship pulled from its listing dive and rose again. Intakes filled with air, and foils hoisted the vessel toward the sun.

"Where to, Commander?" Sisay said happily.

"Take her up higher," Gerrard replied, staring over the rail at the plummeting wreckage that held his brother. "There's another ship approaching the city. Prepare a diving attack!"

Gerrard had done it, again. Gerrard had killed him again. Volrath knew he should die this time. It would be cowardly not to. He was utterly defeated. To live on now would be to live on as a worm. That would be a miserable life.

It would be a life, though-a life Volrath could endure.

Even as the prow of his battleship plunged in smoky ruin, Volrath clawed his way into his personal quarters. All was in disarray, tumbling loose in a deadly hail-but not the portal mechanism. It was fastened to the wall, behind a locked hatch.

Despite the chaos all around, despite the plunging death below and the utter defeat above, Volrath calmly worked the lock and opened the hatch.

Afraid to face me… coward…

They were no longer his brothers' words. Now they were Volrath's own.

He stepped into the portal device. That single simple movement took him out of death, out of Mercadia. He returned, a whipped dog, to his throne on Rath.

Orim had watched the two ships climb into the sun. Gerrard and Volrath… Urza and Mishra… Ramos and Orhop-all were overlaid in her mind as the vessels disappeared in the radiant sun.

The Separi story had told it all-two brothers battling each other, tearing down hunks of the sky to slay each other… But that story had ended in devastation and death. How would this one end?

Cho-Manno pointed to a tiny meteor that streamed smoke as it tumbled down across the eastern sky. It was too small to have been even one of the ships, let alone both. "What is it? Do you suppose your friends-?"

"No," Orim said with a finality she did not feel. She struggled to see some sign of Weatherlight against the beaming sun. "No, it can't be."

All this while Orim had resented the intrusion of Gerrard and the crew in her new life. Now, faced with the possibility they were gone, she was staggered. As much as she loved ChoManno, as much as the Cho-Arrim had changed her life, her life still lay aboard Weatherlight.

"I don't know what that smoking thing is, but it's not them." She watched the spinning wreckage impact on the distant plains and then peered back toward the sun, where the warring gods had disappeared. "It wasn't them."

"What is that?" Cho-Manno wondered, pointing out another form behind them. It was much larger than the smoking wreck, and it approached from the west. "A ship?"

"That's them," Orim said hopefully even before she caught sight of the object. As soon as she saw it-metallic wings of gold shimmering with each vast stroke-she knew the thing was not Weatherlight. "No… that's not them. It must be another

… another Phyrexian ship…"

It was huge, and it grew larger every moment. Its metal frame was undeniable, its power and speed inescapable. Even from this distance, its Phyrexian design shone clear. Where was Weatherlight? What defense could the city have except Weatherlight? Everything the rebels had accomplished today would be undone by that singular ship.

Except that it wasn't a ship-too lithe, too living. The thing flew with surges of its metal wings. Before it, a slender neck coiled, and behind it, a lashing tail.

"A dragon engine!" Orim said, astonished.

Cho-Manno stared up in wonder. A smile spread beautifully across his face. "The metallic serpent! Ramos and Orhop fought once again in the sky, though this time, they were united into this creature-into the Uniter! For eons, this metal serpent has filled the dreams of my people!"

Orim stared upward, nodding absently.

It could not have been true. Gerrard and Volrath could never have been united, just as Dominaria and Phyrexia could never become a whole. One would destroy the other. For these people, though, it was true. For them, the evil unleashed by Urza and Mishra was at last ended.-Ramos and

Orhop had been reconciled, and the dragon engine-the Uniter-was the symbol of that reunion. Evil had been driven out and the people of Mercadia brought together. It was all true. Cho-Manno's myth had no fact but all truth.

"Yes, Cho-Manno. The Uniter has come," Orim said in joy.

The enormous, beautiful, ancient dragon engine circled the city once, looking for a place to land. It spread its wings and settled lightly in the garden beside the tower. It folded metal mesh and stared down. Before it bowed Saprazzan merfolk, Rishadan pirates, Cho-Arrim warriors…

In a voice as ancient as the races, in a dialect as old as Urza and Mishra, the dragon engine spoke, "Children of Ramos, your protector has returned."

Two days hence, Gerrard and Orim stood on the distant plains and gazed up at the looming mountain.

Once Gerrard had realized it was the dragon engine, Ramos, below and not another Phyrexian ship, he had called off the diving attack. Instead, Weatherlight had risen high into the sky to slip away unnoticed. Better that the folk of Mercadia think their deliverer a dragon engine rather than Weatherlight. Gerrard had just gotten his ship back, and he wasn't about to sacrifice it again. Once Weatherlight had landed in the distant plains, Gerrard had sent Fewsteem and Dabis to the city to gather Orim and the rest of the crew and buy provisions for the ship. Meanwhile, Gerrard, Hanna, Tahngarth, Karn, and Squee repaired the battle-scarred vessel. Fewsteem and Dabis had returned from Mercadia with every surviving member of the crew, three cartloads of supplies, and a pair of dignitaries.

Beside Gerrard and Orim this morning stood Cho-Manno of the Cho-Arrim and Atalla, the newly elected Warden of Plains Farmers. Though Weatherlight hovered to one side, ready to depart, none of the four watched it. All gazed toward the strange, inverted mountain of Mercadia.

At length, Gerrard asked Cho-Manno, "What will you do now?"

Orim translated the question and the reply.

"We will work to join forest, mountain, plains, and sea- to make them allies instead of enemies. Perhaps in time we can find a way to unite all the peoples of this world. Until then, I'm content to heal the wounds the Mercadian nobles and their Kyren masters inflicted."

"What have you done with the goblins?"

"Most of them perished in the uprising. Some few were captured. We will take them far from here to where another ridge of mountains rises in the west. There, perhaps they can make a home for themselves. But we will not allow them near Mercadia for a long time." Cho-Manno smiled. "Some things about Mercadia we will not change, I think. It will always be a place of buying and selling. But we will buy and sell goods, not souls, and with coin, not treachery."

He looked at the ship hovering above them and sighed. When he spoke next, the words were for Orim alone.

"I understand that you must leave, chavala. Your place is among these fine people, on this ship that has brought the Uniter to our world. This ship has battles yet to fight in defense of your own world, battles that you must aid in. Even so, I wish you would stay. I love you. Every day, I will think of you. When the battles for your world are done- when your Ramos and Orhop are united and the evil is driven out-return here to me. I will be waiting."

She nodded, a tear forming in her eye. "Of course I will, Cho-Manno. I love you."

Gerrard asked, "What did he say?"

Smiling through her sadness, Orim replied, "He said that my destiny lies with Weatherlight for a time, but that I will return to him. This he has foreseen."

When she translated the question, Cho-Manno drew from his robe a small vial. He dripped a few drops of clear water onto his palm. Then he lifted his hand and touched Gerrard's forehead.

The Benalian felt a small, cold shock.

Cho-Manno withdrew his hand. "This," he said, and Orim relayed the words, "is water from the Navel of the World. Of this, Orim may have spoken to you. I do not know your destiny, Gerrard. Your future stands at a place where many paths cross, and I cannot see which way you will take. But in dark moments, think of the Navel of the World, and you will find comfort."

"I will. Thank you," Gerrard said. He turned toward Atalla. "And what of you? I understand your courage has earned you enough money for your own flying ship."

Atalla flashed a ready smile, and he shrugged. "I'd rather use the money to help the farm. With the coming reforms, we should be able to bring back the forest and reintroduce water to the plains. With money, hard work, and courage, we can turn these dust flats into rich farmland."

Gerrard laughed. "And I thought you were so much like mean adventurer at heart."

"I am," Atalla replied without guile. "I just choose to find my adventure here."

"Excellent," Gerrard said, extending his hand.

Atalla looked puzzled for a moment, and then took his hand. Cho-Manno added his grip, and Orim hers. For a moment they stood still and silent.

Gerrard broke away. He turned and grasped a rope that dangled from Weatherlight's rail. With an easy, hand-over-hand motion, he drew himself up onto the deck of Weatherlight.

Orim lifted her hand as well. With a single, lingering kiss, she bid farewell to Cho-Manno. Turning, she grasped the rope and rose with the same rapid ease as Gerrard. She climbed to the deck next to him. Side by side, they lifted their hands in a gesture of farewell to the two figures standing below.

"Well, I had best get to the sickbay," Orim said, her voice heavy with regret. "Squee is still not fully recovered from his ordeal."

"Or perhaps he's milking it for all it's worth." Gerrard chuckled. He noticed Orim's tears. "Ah, well, he's earned it."

She gave a sad smile and said nothing, only staring down toward Cho-Manno.

"You will return," Gerrard said seriously. "I have foreseen it."

Orim nodded. "Thanks." With a last look, she strode toward sickbay.

Gerrard meanwhile made his way to the bridge. As he entered, Hanna smiled from her place at the navigation desk. At the helm, Sisay gave a brief nod. Tahngarth lurked nearby.

Gerrard nodded. "Let's go."

Sisay spoke into the tube, "Full ahead, Karn. Stand by to planeshift."

"Take us home, Sisay," Gerrard said. "Take us to Dominaria."

Atalla watched the great ship slowly lift away from the hillside. It shrank as it accelerated. The air before it seemed to shimmer and bend. Then, as smoothly as a fish gliding through a still pool, Weatherlight disappeared into the clear heavens, which closed behind it with a boom.

Atalla smiled and remembered the night when he first saw the ship that flew.