Rath and Storm Page 8

  The obvious, unfortunately, was not something they easily grasped. Gerrard and Hanna joined Mirri in insisting upon this test. So a few hours later I found myself on a hilltop, where they joined me. The cat warrior eyed me narrowly, twitching her tail. Hanna, with a sack slung over her shoulder, looked sullen. Only Gerrard wore a trace of a smile, perhaps a sign that he, at least, was aware of the irony that the likes of them should test me. Like Hanna, he carried something in a bag, something spherical and the size of a garden mirror.

  In the vale below, a fog was gathering. I kept an eye on it, for Tolarian fogs can be dangerous.

  “The test is simple,” Hanna said, setting down her burden. She opened the bag and withdrew an ordinary looking stone. “It’s an oral exam.”

  “You’d rather that I talked than gave a demonstration?” I said. I looked at Gerrard. “What kind of test is that?” But the master-at-arms said nothing.

  Hanna handed me the stone. “Identify this.”

  “It’s a rock,” I said, looking at it. “And not even a clean one.” I handed it back to her.

  She frowned. “Nothing special about it?”

  I had detected some spectral flow, some energetic flux in the stone, but nothing remarkable. It might be used to power an artifact, I supposed, but as artifacts were beneath my notice, I shook my head. “It doesn’t interest me at all.”

  “It is said to have come from a lost Icatian tomb.”

  “From the trash heap of history,” I said. “Why muck about in the past, woman, when you can invent the present or create the future?”

  Hanna looked at me sternly. “The Argivian University taught me two things: always look to the past, and never dismiss what appears useless.”

  “My education,” I replied, “has taught me considerably more than two things.”

  The cat warrior gave a laugh, cut off at a glare from Hanna. I smiled. If I’d made one of them laugh, it was a sign that I was winning them over.

  From the bag, Hanna withdrew a helmet of some sort, but one that was unwearable. Mounted inside it was a stone similar to the one she’d just given me, though this one glowed. “What I showed you was a mind stone, unmounted,” she said. “Control this, and you can power one or two smaller artifacts.”

  “But why would one want to control any artifacts at all? Why rely on some dead tinkerer’s construction, when you can conjure by your own wits?” The fog below us, I noticed, was shifting in rather unpleasant ways, as if something were being born from within it. “Come, ask me to demonstrate something worthy.”

  Hanna shoved the mounted mind stone back into her bag and hastily withdrew a short rod. There was some twisty wire work at one end. “What’s this?”

  I handled it distastefully, though it was cleaner than the stone had been. “Another artifact,” I said. I tapped the end without wires. “The effect emanates here.”

  “But what effect?”

  “Nothing I care about, I assure you.”

  Gerrard laughed. “I don’t believe this.” That was a strange thing to say. He could rely, absolutely, on anything I said, and I told him so. Strangely, he laughed again.

  “It’s the Null Rod,” Hanna said.

  “Named appropriately,” I said. “A rod of nothing.”

  “It’s extremely useful,” she insisted.

  Mirri was watching the mists, which coiled and writhed, then were still. “There’s something in the fog,” she said.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “What—”

  Hanna cut her off. “I have disabled the Null Rod. If it were active, then several of the other artifacts wouldn’t work at all. It creates a countering field of—”

  “Nothing I can’t do better myself,” I told her. “And as for making the other artifacts stop working, you can do the same by dropping them from a great height.”

  “These are great and rare inventions!” Hanna snapped. She took the bag that Gerrard had been holding and uncovered the globe within. It was a ball of metal strips. Through gaps in the metal, I saw gears and springs. “Do you know what this is?”

  “How can I impress upon you the simple truth that I do not care what it is?” I said, perhaps a bit more sharply than I had intended.

  “I give up,” Hanna said, turning to Gerrard. “He knows the names of nothing, the history of nothing, and hasn’t a clue about how things work. How is he ever going to set the Thran crystal?”

  “If it’s necessary, if some mechanical trick is the only way to do something,” I assured her, “I’ll find a way.” Her arrogance irritated me. The only lesson she’d understand was an object one. Putting my hands behind my back, I cast a web that Barrin called “Abeyance.”

  “In truth,” I said to Hanna, “I doubt that you yourself can make this ball of scrap metal do anything impressive.”

  “Scrap metal? You call a Chimeric Sphere scrap metal?” She set her jaw, drew the mounted Mind Stone from its bag, and tried to shift the shape of the sphere. With my spell in place, the metal warped and twisted itself, momentarily grew head and wings, but collapsed back into its unimpressive shape.

  “Well?” said Gerrard.

  Hanna tried again, and again her energies only partly charged the sphere, then collapsed in upon themselves. She looked at Gerrard, then eyed me with suspicion. “I can’t.”

  “That’s the difference between us,” I said mildly. “ ‘Can’t’ is not a word you’ll hear me say.”

  “You’ve got to like his confidence,” Gerrard said, laughing.

  “It’s confidence well earned,” I said. “Look!” I waved my hands at the sky. A Cone of Flame gyred and twisted with orange intensity. “Where’s the artifact that matches that? Or this? If your enemies attack you from across the distant planes, what artifact will burn them as they cross?” As the Cone burned itself out, I cast an Aether Flash. Earth and sky flickered red. “The gateway between planes is set afire. Your enemies would sizzle before their feet touched ground.”

  The energies of these spells dissipated. I disenchanted my own web of Abeyance and cast a final, longer lasting spell. In a puff of smoke my familiar settled upon my shoulder, red eyes peering at my “examiners.”

  Mirri laughed. “That spotted blue lizard is meant to impress us?”

  “He’s small,” I said, “but your equal in battle.”

  She bared her claws. “Again the insults!”

  I threw up my hands. “You perplex me. I ask you again, where is the insult in a simple truth?”

  “Can you summon other beings?” Gerrard asked.

  “I can summon a djinn,” I told him. I did not mention that the creature was almost as dangerous to me as to anyone I might turn it against. Perhaps, after all, Barrin was right that some honesty was excessive.

  “You can’t be planning to take him,” Hanna cried. “He’s hopeless with artifacts!”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw something gray gliding through the sky. Mirri turned to face it at the same time I did. A tendril had parted from the fog in the valley, and at the end of that tendril was a ghost, a mist phantom with teeth and claws that glittered like ice. Or steel.

  Hanna saw it too. “Fog elemental,” she said.

  “Dangerous?” Gerrard asked.

  “Only when they are in a wicked mood,” I observed. “But that’s the only mood they ever seem to be in.”

  The elemental was drifting in a circle around us, perhaps selecting its prey. Mirri’s sword rang as she drew it from its long scabbard.

  “Not much hope in that,” I said. “It’s powerful. It gets in one strike before it melts into ordinary vapor, but that blow would be enough for any of us.”

  The elemental seemed to have decided upon its target. Silently, it swelled and opened wide its vaporous arms and began to spiral nearer.

  “Ertai,” Gerrard said, “this is your be
st chance to impress me.”

  I thought quickly. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps it was time to impress all of them. Hanna was reaching into her bag. I snatched it from her.

  “Hey!”

  Hanna had just drained the energy from the mounted Mind Stone, but the unmounted one, dirty as it was, had an untapped charge. I looked at the Chimeric Sphere, feeling for spectral lines in the Mind Stone and in the metal ball.

  The fog elemental spun closer.

  “What are you doing?” Hanna said. “Let me have that!”

  Wings sprang into shape on the sphere. “Not the sphere!” Hanna cried. “I have a bett—”

  I turned my shoulder to her, keeping the bag out of reach. “You wanted a test!” I snapped.

  My control was imperfect as I set the wings to buzzing. Imperfect, but why should it be any better when, as I say, artifacts are beneath my notice? I managed. The sphere lifted into the air as the fog elemental made a sound like the long inward rush of breath. Glittering claws descended.

  And closed on metal.

  There was the sound of metal bands snapping, springs cracking, and rivets creaking until they popped.

  The elemental melted into mist, and what was left of the Chimeric Sphere fell to the ground with a crash. I handed the stone to Hanna and brushed the dirt from my palms. “You might clean that rock,” I said. “It’s quite unpleasant to handle.”

  “My sphere!” She ran to kneel beside it.

  Turning to Gerrard, I said, “I trust I have proven my ability.”

  “Oh, it’s been quite a demonstration,” said the master-at-arms.

  “Thank you,” I said. And I bowed.

  * * *

  —

  “You’ve upset my daughter,” Barrin told me in his study.

  “Some people are ill equipped to encounter their own limitations,” I sighed.

  “Ah, yes,” Barrin answered.

  “I look forward to joining the ship.”

  “Ertai, I hope that when you meet the rest of the crew, you will be careful to make a favorable impression.”

  “Of course. They will quite naturally admire my abilities.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said again. “But perhaps you might make some effort beyond, ah, just being yourself. After all, what would you do if there were a clash of styles, as it were, and they asked you to return to Tolaria?”

  “You mean dismiss me?” I laughed at the idea.

  “I’m serious.”

  Barrin was getting old, and the old sometimes have curious ideas. I humored him. “Barrin, you have been a most excellent teacher. I shall take your advice.”

  He looked relieved.

  * * *

  —

  And I did as he suggested. When I followed the trio back to their ship, I made an effort to connect in the most friendly way with the other crew members. Indeed, they were the only company available to me, since Hanna spent too much of her time fiddling with that Chimeric Sphere, Gerrard was brooding in his cabin, and Mirri had, curiously, lost the ability to speak. Perhaps she was ill.

  The minotaur, who busied himself with the ship’s rigging, was easily drawn into conversation. I admired the construction of Weatherlight, a subject about which he was quite enthusiastic. I shared my suggestions for how the ship might be improved, but I changed the subject when his mind seemed to wander. I asked why he was not decorated with scars as minotaurs always are.

  “You think of the Hurloon,” he said. “I am Talruum. We do not scar our bodies and our horns. It is an abomination before Torahn.”

  “Well Torahn should reconsider,” I said. “Decorations improve a minotaur.”

  He returned to working on the rigging, no doubt considering my advice.

  Orim was the ship’s healer. I overheard her fussing about the clutter of ointments and powders in her quarters, so while she was above decks, I did her the favor of sorting through her pharmacy and throwing out those things I knew to be useless. I offered to arrange what remained alphabetically, but she said I’d helped quite enough.

  And finally, there was the goblin. I played a friendly joke on him, showing him the eelskin pouch I carry and asking if he did not think it was exactly the right color to be made of goblin skin. I did not, of course, actually lie to him. I am scrupulously honest.

  I think my jest made an impression upon him. In fact, and I say this with all modesty, I have made an impression upon them all. I hadn’t given it much thought before, but without the slightest effort, I seem to have a knack for making first impressions.

  It may prove to be another thing, besides magic, for which I have tremendous native ability.

  Here ends the Tale of Ertai

  “Was Ertai the last of Weatherlight’s crew to come aboard?” asked Ilcaster.

  “No,” replied his master. “They went to Urborg to pick up Crovax, whom they found before the crypt of his family. All his family had been slain by the denizens of Rath, and the estate itself was in ruins. Crovax, too, was twisted and bitter, yearning for his lost Selenia. He came on board, vowing destruction against Volrath as much as loyalty to Sisay.”

  The old man sighed, and his hand absently ruffled his pupil’s hair. “Hate is a terrible curse, Ilcaster. It destroys those whom it consumes. That is the true tragedy of Volrath himself. And it became the tragedy of Crovax.”

  The boy twisted impatiently. “But what happened, master?”

  “They had one more passenger to pick up: Starke.” The master raised his hand. “I know, I know. But they needed his knowledge of Rath.

  “But Master, surely as treacherous as Starke was—”

  “Treacherous he certainly was. But Starke was equally treacherous toward Volrath.”

  “How do you mean that, Master? Starke was working for Volrath, wasn’t he?”

  “True, but people change, and Starke had been through many changes over the years. First he had been Vuel’s mentor, urging him to kill his father and Gerrard, always pushing him toward the dark destiny that awaited him. Then when Vuel was transformed into Volrath Starke became the evincar’s loyal servant. But one should never forget that Starke was also working for those whom Volrath served—the Phyrexians. And soon he realized that Volrath might not serve their interests as much as his own selfish ends. Starke fled from Volrath to Dominaria. It was there he learned that his daughter, Takara, had been taken hostage by the evincar.”

  Ilcaster nodded. “Yes, you said something about that earlier. That was why Starke maneuvered Sisay’s kidnapping—so that Gerrard would go to Rath.”

  The old man snorted. “Starke was trying to play both sides against the middle. In fact, from his point of view he would win no matter what happened. If Volrath captured and killed Gerrard, Starke would get the credit as the one who had lured the Legacy’s heir into Rath. And if Gerrard killed Volrath, well, Takara would be free and Starke, too, would be liberated from the evincar’s control.”

  “Finding Starke wasn’t easy for Gerrard and Weatherlight’s crew. He was a prisoner of a warlord named Maraxus, sent by Volrath to keep an eye on him. In the warlord’s hands he twisted and turned, looking for a way to save his life and turn the situation to his profit. He was prepared to sell Gerrard to Maraxus, Maraxus to Volrath, and Sisay to anyone. Nonetheless, Weatherlight’s crew succeeded in snatching him away from Maraxus. The warlord gave chase, pursuing Gerrard, Mirri, and Tahngarth (the three who had rescued Starke) through a series of narrow, twisting canyons. At first light, they were cornered by the warlord’s army. As the hulking figure of Maraxus stepped toward them, Starke pulled free of Mirri’s restraining hands and threw himself facedown before Maraxus. He whined that he had personally led Gerrard and his friends into a trap just so Maraxus could destroy them, fulfilling the plans of Volrath, their mutual master.”

  Ilcaster’s mouth was open. “What a horrible thing to do!” he
cried. “What treachery! What—”

  The old man nodded his head and again lifted his hand. “Well, well, such is the nature of those who betray. Once they begin, they find it difficult to stop. Such, perhaps, was the case with Starke. He saw the world through a series of twisted, tortured angles, all converging upon himself. That, after all, was always his primary goal: to preserve his own miserable skin.”

  The librarian chuckled. “Fortunately, just at this point, as Maraxus’s soldiers were advancing on Gerrard and his companions, and as they drew their swords, prepared to sell their lives as dearly as possible, there was a great shadow from above. Weatherlight dropped from the sky upon the soldiers of the warlord, crushing some, frightening others. Like all bullies, they fled in disorder, leaving behind only Maraxus himself. Knowing that if he failed he would have to face Volrath’s anger, Maraxus rushed upon Gerrard, sword drawn, and the two thrust and hacked at each other, the noise of their battle echoing through the surrounding canyon.

  “As Gerrard battled the warlord, seeking only to defend himself, Starke had one last bit of treachery up his sleeve: appearing suddenly from behind a boulder, he buried his dagger in his captor’s back.”

  Ilcaster gasped, then laughed aloud. “Served him right!” he said.

  “Yes,” agreed the Master. “Gerrard was angered by the dishonorable killing, but he forced Starke to agree to guide the ship to Rath. Together they boarded the ship. And so, at last, they set out toward the unknown plane.”

  An enormous crash of thunder resounded, and a flash of lightning split the sky. There was a splintering from beyond the library windows. That will be the oak tree in the courtyard, the old man thought sadly. For how many years has it stood? He sighed and turned back to the room’s interior, where the boy perused a leather-bound volume, his finger following along the lines.

  “ ‘The hum of Weatherlight’s engines dropped an octave as the flying ship emerged from the aether between worlds. Dominaria slipped past its hull like water running down glass….’ ”