"Are you trying to kill yourself?" the voice asked.
The rope yanked him higher. Gerrard's back arched in agony, and his shoulder traced a bloody line across Gaea's face.
"No," he managed. "I'm defying death. I'm cheating it. I'm beating it. I'm showing it I am a forced to be reckoned with."
"Why?"
"Because if I can beat it, I can win Hanna back."
The conversation ended with a rough tug of the line. Gerrard surged up over the rail and landed on his side on the forecastle planks.
Above him towered Tahngarth, who was wrapped in rope like a living capstan. Even with one arm injured, he'd had the strength to hurl a harpoon, hold its line, and draw Gerrard in by winding the rope about himself.
Orim was there too. The healer knelt above him. The coins in her hair flashed above worried eyes.
"You boys and your rescues," she said. Expert fingers worked the harpoon head from its shaft. With one mercifully fast motion, she pulled the head through the gouge. "One of these days, I'll not be able to patch you back up." Her hands settled on the wound, and silver fire awoke.
Tahngarth shrugged out of his rope wrappings, his own arm bandaged beneath. He lifted an eloquent eyebrow.
"If I remember, Commander, you saved me in much the same way from Tsabo Tavoc." He reached up to his own shoulder and tapped a star-shaped scar. "We're blood brothers now. Whatever happens to you happens to me."
Gerrard wore a grim expression. "You've gotten the worse end of that deal, I fear."
Chapter 8
The others were supposed to be here. The instructions had been simple: Deliver the armies where they were to go- Urborg, Keld, Shiv-and then report to Tolaria. Still, Urza, in his titan engine, was the only one who had arrived.
On a smooth ridge of stone, the engine stood like a dejected boy. Its three-toed feet fidgeted. Hydraulic muscles moaned. Metallic hands, with their ray cannons and flame throwers, hung limp beside massive hip joints. The thousand weapons that bristled across the torso of the titan suit were still and silent. Even the engine's shoulders-large enough to hoist a hillside-slumped. The command pod was darkest of all. In it, Urza sat. He stared at his ruined home.
Tolaria had once been beautiful. In his mind's eye, Urza could still see it. Blue-tiled roofs blended with the sky. Domed observatories stood above K'rrik's rift. Crowded dormitories spread out beneath a canopy of leaves. Laboratories and lecture halls, archives and artifact museums-it had been quite a place.
Now all of it was gone. Urza had melted down the old engines, had burned the old plans, had shipped away all the students and scholars he could. He had given the place over to the Phyrexians. It was a diversion to keep them busy while he won the war elsewhere.
Mage Master Barrin had not given it over. Barrin, who for a thousand years had been Urza's associate and only true friend, had always been sentimental. Tolaria held the grave of his wife, Rayne, and his daughter, Hanna. It was hallowed ground, worth defending to the death. Tolaria had became his grave as well.
He had destroyed it all. He had cast a spell to shatter plague engines and kill every Phyrexian on the isle. The sorcery also had leveled forests and razed buildings and melted mountains. It had destroyed the elaborate network of time rifts and covered the whole of the island in a molten cap. Barrin had used himself to power that spell. He who had spent his life humanizing the planeswalker died in a spell that mimicked Urza's atrocity at Argoth.
"Oh, Barrin," Urza said. His breath wisped out within the pilot bulb of his titan engine. He did not have to breathe. His body was only a locus of his mind, a convenience that anchored his spirit, but mention of that name, Barrin, cut all anchors on Urza's soul.
He was outside his titan suit without having consciously willed it. Urza sat on the foot of the engine. The salt air was hot in his lungs. Without trees or hills to stop it, ocean winds tore across the isle. They rifled through Urza's war robes and tossed his ash-blond hair.
"Barrin."
Suddenly another titan engine stood before him. It was a green and riotous thing, designed in part by Multani and further modified by its occupant. She had made it a veritable garden, planting countless living components within its metallic structure. The asymmetric machine held an asymmetric soul.
"Hello, Urza," said Freyalise, materializing beside him.
She wore her usual getup, savage-shorn blonde hair, a half-goggle over one eye, a floral tattoo over the other, and a shift of twining vines. Her slender legs hovered just above the ground, which was how she preferred it. Freyalise and Urza were utter opposites. The Ice Age begun by Urza's sylex blast was ended by Freyalise's World-Spell-just as catastrophically. These two planeswalkers were so opposite, they were nearly the same.
Eschewing both her floating stance and her longtime antagonism toward Urza, Freyalise seated herself beside her brooding comrade.
"Nice place you've got here, Planeswalker."
"Has Eladamri rejoined his Skyshroud elves?"
She nodded, a lock of blonde hair raking across her eyes. "I even saved the forest from icy Keld." She examined her nails and rubbed them on her shift. "He's one lucky elfchild."
Urza nodded absently. "What of the Keldons?"
She shrugged. "They made a couple assaults on the forest and figured out it was warded. They called for parley with 'the King of Elves.' Parley for Keldons means a fight. You know their motto-'prove it.' "
"Yes. Barrin had have quite a time winning their trust- especially after kicking them out of Jamuraa." He shook his head, smiling bleakly at the memory.
Freyalise stared levelly at Urza. "So that's what this mood is all about?"
"How did Eladamri fare?" Urza said, changing the subject.
Lifting her eyebrows, Freyalise said, "Eladamri acquitted himself well. Of course it helped when I showed up in my titan engine. The Keldons have a big thing for titans. It's part of their Twilight mythology."
Before Urza could form a response, another titan engine appeared.
This one seemed a dignified statue in white. Tall, stately, and decorous, the Thran-metal frame of the engine was covered in smooth shields. They could deflect gouts of mana, plague winds, and plasma blasts. Within those shields lurked subtle deadliness-ray cannon slots and rocket launchers. The control dome had a white sheen as well, like a cataractous eye, and the figure within the shell shuddered in irritation as he released his straps. Steam shushed from air brakes, and the engine settled angrily.
The planeswalker pilot emerged-Commodore Guff. He wore a crimson waistcoat and slim knickers above creamy stockings. His hair and beard were a red that perfectly matched the clothes he wore, and a foggy monocle was clutched in one eye. He stared at a book- Urza's instruction manual for his titan engine.
"Where's the blasted exhaust system for the pilot capsule?" He paged through the book. "I'm fogged in! Give me a touch of the wind, and I'd damn well be doomed!"
"Page sixteen-B," Urza replied.
"Is that the entry for wind or for exhaust?" Freyalise asked.
"What's the difference?" Urza muttered.
"And what's this sixteen-B, sixteen-C business?" huffed Commodore Guff. His monocle dropped from his eye and swayed on its chain. The condensation on the lens wiped on his waistcoat. "You know, I have ten hundred trillion histories in my personal collection, and not a one of them has a sixteen-B?"
"I'm an artificer, not a writer," Urza said wearily. "Ten hundred trillion? Haven't you ever had to number them with As and Bs?"
Commodore Guff spluttered. "No need to number them." He jabbed a finger to his rumpled temple. "Encyclopedic, my lad. Encyclopedic." He blinked, seeming to realize that his monocle was gone. He patted the pockets of his waistcoat and began swearing violently. "Must've fallen out in damned Urborg. Filthy rutting lich lord bastards."