Test of Metal

CENTER OF THE LABYRINTH

“WITHOUT MY HELP, YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED.

“MY NAME IS TEZZERET…”

I damped the sound within my bascinet so that I might hear not only Baltrice, but also my own thoughts.

I allowed the illusion to cycle through three full times, while bending all my resources toward detecting any response, be it hostile, friendly, or neutral. It was a matter of some ironic amusement to me to have created an illusion intended to convey truth.

When I discovered no response beyond attracting some carnivorous interest from nearby zombies, I activated my primary defensive screens and began to walk toward the Laybrinth.

The zombies, of course, closed in upon me. I activated the outermost layer of my armor’s defensive screens, which I had devised with Baltrice’s help, as I find her solution to our zombie problem to be both elegant and efficient. Any zombies bold enough to actually attempt to touch me instantly burst into flame hot enough to set not only their whole bodies ablaze, but to spread to the others pressing in behind them. My progress was necessarily slow-being incinerated was no deterrent to their functionally mindless appetites-but it was steady, and served the additional purpose of making it absolutely clear to Renn and his presumptive army of necromancers that I was not attempting anything resembling stealth or swift assault.

Instead, I simply pushed on, the apex of a long wake of burning zombies, in the reasonable belief that the necromancers ahead wouldn’t begrudge the loss of a few tens of thousands of their undead servants, and hoping that they would presently respond to the audible illusion, still thundering above me, by ordering their minions to stand aside.

However, I burned my way through the zombies all the way to the base of the nearest structure without any noticeable reaction from anyone or anything except the zombies, who continued to slog toward me and immolate themselves.

The external surface of the Labyrinth had the texture of glass etched to appear frosted. It was clearly not susceptible to burning or melting, no matter how much power I fed into my incendiary outer screen. There was no visible entrance, which was not distressing; quite the opposite, in fact-had I found a door on my very first approach, I would have assumed it was a trap and moved on. “Doc? Do you have any preference for which direction we should move?”

“Does away count?”

“Yes and no. It is a direction, but it’s not one we’ll take.”

“Oh, sure. Y’know, I’m getting the feeling that you get us into these situations on purpose.”

“It seems unlikely.” I turned my back to the wall and edged to my right, the inferno of zombie fire following my path.

“That’s a nonanswer,” Doc said accusingly. “What it seems doesn’t have much to do with what it is. And unlikely isn’t the same as untrue.”

“Correct on all three counts,” I said. “You’re learning.” The column of greasy black meat smoke from the zombies was already a couple miles tall. If Renn and his necromancers for some reason couldn’t hear my thunderous illusion, they should certainly be able to track my progress by the smoke.

“I think you put us in mortal danger to shut me up.”

“If so, it doesn’t seem to work.”

“You know what I mean. You talk me into crazy stunts like this little adventure, and once we’re in it and I really see how much danger you’ve put us in, it’s too late for me to do anything about it. Unless I want to get us both killed.”

“Your veto power does seem to be limited by circumstance.”

“That’s another nonanswer,” he said. “Do you practice that crap, or does it just come naturally?”

I allowed myself a fractional smile. “Both.”

“And that’s another thing.” His voice rose. “You think it’s funny.”

“Somebody has to.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about! It’s not funny-and you sure as hell shouldn’t be enjoying yourself right now!”

Still no sign of activity from our presumed adversaries. “Doc, if I wanted to spend my life listening to complaints about my behavior, I’d have gotten married.”

“Oh, like we’re not married. How much more ‘of one flesh’ do you think we could get?”

“First, I’m really not comfortable with that.”

“Try if from my side.”

“And forget the ‘of one flesh’ business. Worry about the ‘till death do us part’ angle.”

“Um, yeah. Speaking of death-activity on our left.”

I turned to look back the way we’d come. Other than burning zombies, there was nothing I could detect. “I don’t see it.”

“That’s too far. Keep our back to the wall, then scan forty-five degrees off perpendicular.”

“It’s my back.”

“Whatever. Relax. Got it?”

A few dozen yards away, a number of zombies appeared to be pulling back from the crush, as though avoiding the flames of their closer brethren. “That’s activity?”

“You see it happening anywhere else?”

I didn’t.

“They’re not doing it on their own,” Doc said. “It’s being done to them.”

“Threat assessment?”

“Shrug. Too early to tell.”

A mental adjustment that thinned my greaves and sabatons by shifting some of their etherium into the equivalent of boot lifts gave me a slightly better view. The opening gap had become a ring, as several hundred zombies had turned aside from their mindless pressing in upon the Labyrinth to gather themselves into a roughly circular clot of undead. There was motion in the middle of that clot, and shortly I was able to make out what it was: the innermost zombies had either fallen or laid themselves down on the sand, and the zombies around them were walking on their bodies until they too reached the center and laid themselves down. The pile of recumbent zombies grew as tall as the creatures themselves, and the upright specimens were forced to clamber up the growing mound.

“You have any idea where this is going?”

“No,” Doc said. “But this looks like a good time to fire up the rest of your shields.”

Sharing his perspective, I did exactly that. “Baltrice,” I said, “are you seeing this? I seem to be getting some sort of response.”

Silence.

“Baltrice?” I said, more sharply. “Baltrice, respond.”

Frowning, I sent my mind into the etherium circuitry of our linked ear-and-eyepieces. Mine, built into my bascinet, appeared to be perfectly functional, so I bypassed it and sought Baltrice’s device with my mind… and found nothing. As though the device no longer existed. My heart began to pound like a living creature trying to bash its way out through my sternum.

Apparently I was not yet the emotionless golem she had described. “Doc. We’re in trouble.”

“Oh, you think? Are you watching this?”

The mound of zombies had grown nearly ten feet tall, and likely three times that in diameter. Now their rotting flesh had begun to melt as though they lay under a waterfall of aqua regia. But whatever power might be liquefying their flesh, it left their skeletons untouched, even as it dissolved tendon and ligament. In moments, the mound of zombies had become a pile of naked, disjointed bones. The bones themselves began to move, lifting and twisting and fusing themselves into a web-work archway that anchored itself upon a ring fused of the remaining bone. The archway stood ten feet tall, and the ring on which it stood was perhaps sixty feet in circumference. In the very instant it was complete, an eldritch reality whorl distorted the view through the arch.

A transit gate not unlike mine, differing mainly in materials.

When the view stabilized, I was looking into what appeared to be a lavishly appointed sitting room, and looking back at me was what appeared to be a young woman of exceptional beauty, her lustrous obsidian hair unbound and draped in ringlets to perfectly frame her flawless oval face. She wore a wrap of translucently sheer silk, artfully layered to leave exactly enough to the imagination. She said, “Tezzeret. It’s been a while.”

“Vess,” I said slowly. “Liliana Vess. The necromancer. I remember you.”

“That’d be more flattering if it hadn’t been quite so much work. We need to talk.”

“You’re a Planeswalker…” More and more about her was coming back to me, but in glacial drips and drops, slower than cold treacle-almost as though the information had been deliberately obscured. By Bolas, undoubtably. But why? “I don’t recall you having this level of power.”

“That’s part of what we need to talk about,” she said impatiently. “I work for Bolas, just like you. We don’t have very much time.”

Interesting. Almost interesting enough to divert me from my immediate necessities, which included reestablishing contact with Baltrice. “Are you alone?”

“For now. Briefly.”

“Silas Renn.”

She nodded, her gaze flickering from side to side as though he might unexpectedly appear.

“How long before he gets back?”

“Depends,” she said. “How long do you think it’ll take him to kill Baltrice?”

The sitting room on the far side of the transit gate was every bit as well-appointed as it had appeared. I stood in the middle of a rug that undoubtedly cost more than my father had earned in his entire life. I was still in my armor with all my shields working, excepting only the outermost, as it is an ungracious guest who sets his hostess’s house on fire.

The sunlight had a peculiar quality here, brighter and warmer than I’d ever experienced on-in-Esper, as well as displaying a distinctly more golden color. Bant, perhaps? I had not yet had the leisure to acquaint myself with the finer details of our newly conjoined planes.

I tolerated an extended account of why Liliana Vess had helped Jace escape from my presumably villainous clutches, and how she had managed to defeat some dark interrogations to which I had apparently subjected her, and why this and how that and who everything else, seemingly without end; her tale was larded with evasions, rationalizations, and excuses for various acts of which I had no memory at all.

There was no reason to reveal this to her; quite the opposite. Her account offered substantive insight into how she thought, and into what she took to be the truth of why, and the power and ruthlessness she was willing and able to wield in pursuit of her goals.

That I stood there at all was the result of a coldly rational assessment of Baltrice’s chances against Renn-especially if he’d managed to take her by surprise-and my own chances of rescuing her against a forewarned and forearmed clockworker.

If I survived the morning, I might have an opportunity to avenge her.

At length, I felt I had to cut Vess off, in the interest of expediting our negotiations, though there was one point of curiosity that I felt should be satisfied. “I am still unclear why you would have bound yourself to Bolas’s service,” I said. “I should think a woman, mage, and Planeswalker of your obvious intelligence and experience would know better than to sign anything in blood, much less a binding contract with Nicol Bolas.”

She looked a bit nettled. “You work for him too.”

“Against my will,” I said. “Whereas the sort of contract you signed is willing by definition. No one sells their soul by accident, through deception, or under duress. It doesn’t work like that.”

She looked away, a shadow settling upon her face, dulling the sparkle from her eyes. “There’s willing and there’s willing, and not all duress is created equal,” she said. “Let’s just say that Bolas was the best choice I had left.”

“Your other options must have been dire indeed.”

“You can’t begin to imagine.” She shook her head to drive the shadow away. “We need to talk about Crucius and Bolas and Renn.”

“Are you accepting my offer?”

“I’ll take any help I can get. Even from you.”

I shrugged away the insult. She did not know me anymore, if she ever had. “Your brute-force-and-ignorance approach has failed to solve the Labyrinth. Believe me when I tell you it never will.”

“Bolas gated the zombies in from Grixis,” she said grimly. “But it was my idea.”

“He’s not fond of wasting mana on futile operations,” I said. “But neither am I. If you-or he-had bothered to ask me, I could have told you in advance that it wouldn’t work. And, more usefully, I could have told you why.”

“You can tell me now.”

“I can.”

After a second or two, she said, “Well?”

“Can is not synonymous with will.”

Her face set as though carved in cold stone. “What do you want?”

“I want-I need-some assurance that I can trust any single word that comes out of your mouth.”

She allowed herself a humorless laugh. “Trust? We’re both grown-ups here, aren’t we? If you don’t want to work with me, you’re welcome to go back to burning Bolas’s zombies.”

“He has you in a screw press, yes? And he’s tightening it every day.”

“Every hour,” she said. “He has zero faith in your ability to find this Crucius character on your own.”

“Was making a deal with me your idea?”

“I’m desperate, Tezzeret.”

“An imperfect rhyme.”

“Damn it, listen to me! Bolas knows everything-your little chat with that sphinx-queen of yours and the whole damned thing.”

“I anticipated that he might know what transpired at the Seeker Academy,” I said, “but that’s far from everything. What’s your offer?”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “You’ve got it all backward. He knows way too much-he can probably solve the Labyrinth by himself.”

“I doubt it.”

“We have to stop him. Somehow.”

“A project even more dubious than locating Crucius.”

“If only,” she said. “The last thing in the Multiverse we want to do is give that bastard what he wants. We need to make sure he never finds this sphinx of his. Never.”

Doc whispered in my left ear, “Don’t even think about it. Unless you want to ruin our friendship.”

“An interesting proposition,” I said to Vess. “Assuming, for the sake of argument, that I am willing and able to conspire with you against the dragon, what do I get out of it?”

“Same as me,” she said. “Your life and your freedom. If we win.”

“Ah.”

“Did you ever stop to think why Bolas wants to find Crucius?”

“I have several theories.”

“Me too. Except I actually know something about what Bolas is up to.”

I confined my response to, “Oh?”

She cast a nervous glance around the room, as though checking the corners for indiscreet spies. “I don’t know how he plans to do it, and I don’t even know why, but I’ve got a lead on what. You know how he gets playful sometimes, and how he likes to tease you with Mysteries of the Multiverse You Will Never Comprehend? Well, he’s not as good at it as he used to be. It’s almost as if he can’t really remember what he’s already said. Over the last few months, I’ve been able to piece some bits together, and what I’m seeing doesn’t look good. Tezzeret, I think he’s going to kill us.”

“Us?”

“The Planeswalkers,” she said. “All of us. All of us he… well, owns. It has something to do with these oaths of fealty he’s collecting. And he’s planning to… do something. To us. All at once. And from how he talks, he’s not expecting any of us to be around afterward. I’m not sure how, or when, but he is absolutely certain that he can, and will, do whatever in the hells he’s planning.”

“He never suffered from self-doubt.”

“It gets worse,” she said bleakly. “I think he’s going to destroy the universe.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what it sounds like. This whole plane and everybody on it. Grixis, Esper, Jund, Bant, and Naya. All the damned stars in the bloody sky. Everything. All at once.”

“That would be…” I said, searching for the proper word and finding only, “unfortunate.”

“And maybe not just here. Ravnica. Kamigawa. Lorwyn. Mirrodin. Who knows? I’m not sure Bolas himself knows-he’s getting more erratic every day. Tezzeret, he could wipe out the whole Multiverse by mistake.”

“A daunting prospect. But I’m not sure either of us can do much about it.”

“Crucius,” she said. “Crucius is on his mind a lot. All the time. You and I aren’t the only agents he’s set to looking.”

“So what exactly are you proposing?”

“We have to find him first. I don’t know if Bolas needs him as part of his scheme, or wants to kill him to keep him from interfering, or some combination of the two, and I’m not sure it matters. What matters is keeping Bolas’s talons off Crucius. Permanently, if possible.”

“It’s an attractive proposition.” For good reason-she had clearly designed it that way.

“It’s like she read our minds,” Doc said.

“She didn’t have to,” I muttered.

“I’m sorry?” she said. “You’ll have to speak up, unless you want to take off that stupid helmet.”

“I’m more comfortable like this.” Her chain of reasoning had little effect on me. I don’t need an excuse to oppose Nicol Bolas and everything he does with every resource at my command. She didn’t need to spin an apocalyptically grandiose rationale to make me believe she’d do the same. I would have believed it if she’d offered no reason at all. To know him is to hate him.

None of it mattered. “How do we proceed from here?”

“First,” she said, “we get rid of Renn.”

“Kill him?”

She frowned at me. “Of course. What did you think?”

“I prefer plain language.”

“Bolas and I thought Renn might be useful. Before he sent me out here, he took Renn off somewhere and mind probed him or something. Renn doesn’t even know as much about Crucius as you do. Now that you’re here, he’s just extra baggage.”

“That’s not entirely accurate.”

“How about if you add on top that he’s going to kill you on sight? That he’s probably already killed Baltrice-no loss to me, I hate that lumbering bitch, but you always seemed to care about your people. And-”

Again she looked away, and a very pretty flush climbed her exquisite neck. Her tone, however, was flat and as ugly as the grinding of ill-fitting gears.

“So?” Liliana said. “How about it, Tezzeret? Are we on?”

I sighed. “I sympathize with your situation, and I hope you believe I would help you if I could. However-”

“There’s always a however,” she said bitterly.

“Yes. When it comes to reaching the center of the Crystal Labyrinth, Silas Renn is more necessary than you are.”

She stared at me in blank astonishment. “You think you can cut a deal with him? He’s completely insane-he can talk like a normal person, but inside he’s baying at the bloody moon.”

“I’ve allowed for that,” I said. “It’s said you have to be crazy to study clockworking, and the more you learn, the crazier you get. The ability to choose between realities can disconnect you from all of them. Crucius was known as the Mad Sphinx for a reason.”

“Is there no way I can change your mind?” She turned toward me, and I noticed her translucent silks had begun tending more toward transparent-but not as transparent as she was. “Are you sure…?”

“Liliana Vess,” I said gravely, “you are very likely the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Looking at you, I can’t so much as recall the face of another woman. If I were foolish enough to allow myself even a fantasy that you might actually be attracted to me, matters might be different. But it is my business to see things as they are. An unsentimental view of your offer makes the transaction all too plain.”

She didn’t seem abashed in the slightest. She found an even more fetching angle for her lovely eyes, and her silks continued to evaporate. “A girl does what she has to,” she said. “Just like you.”

“What I have to do doesn’t include you,” I said. “The sad truth is that I am interested only in finding Crucius-for that I need Renn, and he needs me. Neither of us needs you.”

Her face darkened; she even glowered beautifully. “You always were a bastard.”

“Possibly. My parents weren’t forthcoming on the subject.”

She turned and flounced to the door. “Well, screw you, then-”

“I’ve already declined.”

“And you can find your own damned way back to the Labyrinth!”

She could not be allowed to simply leave. I turned, extending a fist, reaching for her with an invisible hand of power, and the sunlight had a peculiar quality here, brighter and warmer than I’d ever experienced on-in-Esper, as well as displaying a distinctly more golden color. Bant, perhaps? I had not yet had the leisure to acquaint myself with the finer details of our newly conjoined planes…

I thought, Wait a minute…

Shortly the bones themselves began to move, lifting and twisting and fusing themselves into a web-work archway that anchored itself upon a ring fused of the remaining bone. In the very instant it was complete, an eldritch reality whorl distorted the view through the arch.

This isn’t right, I thought-but I wasn’t sure why. “Doc?” I said hoarsely. “Is there something wrong about this?”

“You mean other than the zombie gate and the fires and Baltrice not responding?”

“Baltrice…” I remembered something else about Baltrice, or thought I did, but I couldn’t quite bring it into mental focus. “Baltrice.”

“Tezzeret, what happened? Are you hit? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. It’s all right. Zombies stink.”

“Well sure they do, but-”

“Imagine swimming in nyxathid vomit.”

“Ooo. Damn, do I have to?”

“I have a fix. One moment.” I was able to mentally retrace my armor’s link to her ear-and-eyepiece, and adjust her anti-sand field as I had my own; she couldn’t be much use to me if she’s retching too hard to breathe. “That should cover you. Now it’s your turn to cover me.”

“I’m on it.”

That feeling of wrongness only increased. “Baltrice, change of plan. I might be under attack, and it could be Renn, and-I don’t know. I have a feeling that I can’t explain. Be on your guard.”

There was no response.

“Baltrice? Baltrice!”

When designing on the fly, it’s generally best to start from the middle, and work one’s way outward from there. Also, the cuirass and cuisses would be simplest to create, requiring no more than an approximate fit. All the jointing and lapped plating would come later. I held a hand above my etherium sled, and its dorsal surface began to ripple and bulge as I drew forth the metal for my first pieces of armor.

Doc said, “Eugh. What’s that smell?”

I ignored him. The rim of the Netherglass was some three miles away and downwind. Though zombies are rightfully notorious for their odor, I strongly doubted we could smell them from here.

Roughly five pounds of etherium poured upward toward my hand, pulling free from the sled in an inverted teardrop. Using both of my hands to aid in the focusing of my will, I softened the metal and spun it like dough for flatbread to form it into a disk of uniform thickness… and I smelled the odor Doc had been talking about. It wasn’t zombies.

It was blood.

The smell is unmistakable, but considerable blood must be spilled before the scent is obvious to an ordinary human nose, especially outdoors. And this odor was accompanied by a distinct undernote of sulfur, as well as a hint of the proteinaceous soot that arises from charred meat.

I had a thought that Baltrice might, conceivably, be cooking something on her sled behind me… but an animal she had freshly killed? In the middle of the Glass Desert? It was so improbable that I paused a moment, struck by an overpowering conviction that I had done this before. And that what came next would be bad.

“Just like deja vu all over again, isn’t it?”

I froze. If I live a thousand years, I will never mistake that voice, the blend of upsloper condescension and petulantly malignant mockery.

The etherium dropped into my hand, and I left it there. “Renn.”

“This is the part where you turn and attack, Tezzeret.” He sounded like he was looking forward to it. “Come on, don’t be shy.”

“Or turn and run,” Doc buzzed in my left ear.

I told both of them, “No.”

“You will, you know,” Renn said. “And soon. For all the good it’ll do you.”

“I didn’t come here to fight.”

“Oh, it won’t be a fight, Tezzeret. You attack, then take a nap. Hardly qualifies as combat.”

“Are you sure he’s wrong?” Doc said nervously.

“Nobody needs to get hurt,” I said.

Renn snorted a contemptuous chuckle. “That pyromancer of yours didn’t agree,” he said. “Kind of a hothead, isn’t she?”

In his mind, that had probably sounded funny. “Where is she? Is she alive?”

“Guess.”

“Renn-”

“You can try to beat it out of me.”

“Some other time.”

“He took out Baltrice?” Doc sounded appalled. “Just now? While we were standing here?”

“No,” I murmured. “He’s going to take her out after I leave. He won’t even get here until we’re in the middle of the zombies.”

“Then how can-why is he-I mean, what?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Oh, really?”

“The armor was a great idea,” Renn said conversationally. “I’ve always admired your ingenuity. You’ll never know how many times you beat me. I should say, time lines where you beat me.”

Doc said, “Something tells me this isn’t one of those time lines.”

“Shh.”

“Finally, I just got aggravated enough with losing that I decided we should have our chat before you make any. This way, we skip the whole fight and get straight to the part where I torture you. A lot.”

Finally I turned. Renn leaned casually on Baltrice’s gravity sled, its etherium dulled by a thick coating of fresh-looking blood. The area around it was drenched until the powdered glass was wholly black. The scent of charred meat rose from his clothing-but it wasn’t his flesh that had burned.

“You don’t have to torture me, and you have no reason to harm Baltrice,” I said.

Renn snorted. “I don’t have to eat,” he said, gesturing with his etherium arms to his etherium chest, in which the sole remaining organ was his etherium heart. “But I eat anyway.”

“I’ll tell you what you need,” I said.

“Oh, don’t do that.”

“It’s why I came here. Specifically. To share what I know.”

“You always were tiresome,” Renn said. He pushed himself off the gravity sled, to stand balanced on the sand. His personal shields crackled and spit as they disintegrated the powdered glass on the wind. “Listen to me, Tezzeret. You’ve already told me everything you know. I’ve been torturing you for several days-recreational torture, really. Just for fun. To pass the time. I’ll get so bored after I torture Baltrice to death. You told me everything before I even touched her.”

“Does he know he’s not actually making sense?” Doc whispered.

“He is making sense,” I muttered, “just not to us. Get ready.”

“For what?”

“Then why are you here, Renn?” I spread my hands. “You know everything I know-why talk to me at all?”

“I don’t know everything,” he said, walking toward me. The golden haze of his shields intensified, and blazing white mana gathered itself around his fists. “I’m still trying to figure out how you escaped.”

“Did I? Well, well.”

“It’s not even possible,” he said. “I have you restrained by a mana siphon and shackles made out of these sleds, so you can’t use any magic at all, and I have you in a hundred thousand-to-one hypertemporal field. So I can watch you age. And then I blink… and you’re gone.”

“Interesting.”

“I thought so,” he said, and lashed out with both hands. Blinding white energy erased the sun and the sky and the sand and everything in the universe except for Renn himself. It caught me and held me in its unbreakable grip, turning my own mana reserve against me, so that the harder I struggled, the stronger it became. “Tell me how you escape, and I’ll let you live long enough to try it again.”

“I have a better idea,” I said through my teeth, clenched hard enough to chip by the power of Renn’s binding. Focusing my will in a specific way-not unlike imagining a musical passage so vividly that I could change which mental instruments played it-did not require mana. “I’ll tell you when I see you again… about, hmmm, let’s say, twenty minutes from now.”

Renn tightened his magical grip until I could no longer breathe. “Really? And where you will be in the meantime?”

I could not speak to reply. Instead, I winked at him.

His sneer of triumph coagulated into a frown of uncertain disbelief that warmed me to the centers of my bones. Then I uncoiled the focusing of my will, exactly as I would have if I’d had command of my own mana… exactly as I would have if I were trying to planeswalk.

There followed an exceptionally gratifying blam, which erased Renn and the desert and the gravity sleds, to dump me gasping on the floor of a large, dimly lit cavern lined with glowing red crystals, which smelled strongly of dragon.

“Y’know,” Doc said peevishly, “you could have just asked…”