The sculler wasn’t screaming. It was singing.
And the echoes and harmonic overtones were no artifact of the tide caves-they were the answering voices of dozens of scullers, hundreds, who came poling their silent skiffs out from the dark-shrouded caves around us, forming an eldritch chorus of voices never raised before.
The flames now spread across the sculler’s chest and up and down its cloak… and then like a scrap of burning paper, the sculler lifted into the air.
It rose like the sun, and cast out the cavern’s permanent gloom.
Even in the face of imminent death I could not restrain my awe. I found myself quite overcome with an inexplicable sense of sanctity, a distinct intuition that what we were witnessing here was something holy, beyond what mortals are meant to see-a sensation with which I was, to the surprise of no one who has ever known me, largely unfamiliar.
But now, here, I found myself flooded with awe… and gratitude.
Perhaps this is one more way in which I am not like other men: to be granted a glimpse of some deeper truth-a hint of mysteries beyond the mundane puzzles of day and night and health and work-meant more to me than my own life. Though perhaps other folk are not so different after all. Perhaps such a sight would mean fully as much to anyone who might ever be granted the gift of seeing it… but they’ve never lifted their eyes.
I know that there are no true gods; that gods worshiped here and there throughout the Multiverse are imaginary-or worse, creatures like Bolas. That knowledge was bitter to me then as never before. When granted such an astonishing blessing, when feeling gratitude so profound that words stumble, too lame to evoke it…
There was no one for me to thank.
The magma scorpions themselves had paused in their pursuit, as though uncertain of the portent of this unexpected flare. They clung to the cavern ceiling, watching. Now engulfed in flame, the sculler continued to rise, higher and higher, while its fellows gathered around the burning skiff where I sat transfixed.
The song’s interlocking harmonics rose toward a climax, and suddenly, shockingly, stopped. Even the echoes. I caught my breath.
The only sound was the lick of flames from my skiff’s stern.
And just as I was about to observe that the proceedings appeared to be about over, the burning sculler exploded in midair.
A far more spectacular detonation than that of the magma scorpion, this had the look of a military explosive, or the burst of a fireball cast by a mage of the power of Nicol Bolas himself. It filled the entire upper reaches of the cavern’s ceiling with a blast of fire that scraped both magma scorpions off the rock and dropped them flat on their backs in the tide pool, adding their own explosive blasts into a roar that blew away my hearing.
This may explain the silence from Doc as well.
It was fortunate that I had sat in the skiff, as the huge swell of shock wave would certainly have cast me into the water-but even that, it may be, would not have presented the sort of hazard it might otherwise have.
It appeared the scullers had decided to look after me.
One of them nearby reached toward my skiff with one empty hand, which it then clenched as though plucking an invisible fruit. The fire at the stern was extinguished instantly, without so much as an ember remaining. Two other scullers maneuvered their skiffs in tandem, just off the forward bow to either side, and leaned into their poles in their usual slow, silent rhythm. Either the deep spot I had found was much smaller than I’d thought, or they had motive powers beyond the leverage of the poles, for they had no difficulty making headway, and though no rope or visible energy bound my craft to theirs, I found my skiff following along as though theirs were mountain geese and mine an obedient gosling.
I was tempted to make an observation to Doc about being out of danger for the moment, but decided against it on the off chance that Doc’s uncharacteristic silence was not, in fact, due to temporary deafness. There was much to think about, and very little time to ponder.
I knew all too well that this moment of safety would not last. Jace would know his trap had been triggered. And he knew of my sentimental flaw, which made it all too obvious where his next trap would be set.
And if I didn’t get there fast, my father would be dead before I could spring it.
THE METAL ISLAND
On the shore of the Metal Island, under the blank etherium stare of the Metal Sphinx, the small blue sun between Nicol Bolas’s horns flickered once, then winked out. The jet-chains of energy that had linked the blue sun to Tezzeret’s head vanished as well.
“Don’t stop now…” The human, still hanging within the crackling white Web of Restraint, seemed to be breathing with some difficulty. “You were just getting… to the good part…”
“Quiet.” Bolas enforced his command with a gesture that sewed Tezzeret’s lips shut with white fire.
The dragon lifted his head, and his immense forked tongue flickered out, stirring air into his even more immense nasal cavity, though what had captured his attention was not a scent. It was a peculiar imminence-a gathering of potential that was escalating toward the actual-and the sensation it produced was not one for which there are words in ordinary languages, because to feel this sensation required senses far from ordinary.
“We’re about to have company,” the dragon said in a tone suggesting that unexpected guests were not necessarily unwelcome, as long as they brought food-or, alternatively, were food. “Some friend of yours? Oh, right, I forgot the friends thing. A lackey, then. Reinforcements? Who is our Special Mystery Guest?”
Immobilized within the web of white energy, Tezzeret could do nothing but breathe and blink. So he did both for several seconds, until Bolas hissed in exasperation and gestured again.
The white fire vanished. Gasping in sudden relief, Tezzeret collapsed on the etherium plinth between the forepaws of the Metal Sphinx. “You do that… a lot,” he wheezed. “Act before you think… then have to undo what you’ve done. Embarrassing, isn’t it? Must make you feel rather… ah, hmmm. What’s the word I’m looking for? Starts with st and rhymes with oopid?”
Smoke trickled up from the fire in the dragon’s eyes. “Who is this incoming Planeswalker of yours?”
“How can you tell a Planeswalker is coming?”
“He starts breathing hard,” Bolas said absently. “It wasn’t a riddle? Never mind. I’ll let you make any necessary introductions.”
The dragon wrapped himself in his wings and with a shrug wiped himself from existence. Even his footprints disappeared from the etherium sand.
With considerable protesting of his abused joints and muscles, Tezzeret slowly organized himself into a seated posture on the eastern edge of the plinth, letting his feet dangle above the riddle’s first line.
Not far up the metal beach, air rippled with heat shimmer. This effect intensified until a thermocline refraction of the images of etherium and ocean spun into a shining swirl of metal and sea. Out from this swirl stepped a woman.
Apparently human, she was large enough that one might be forgiven for speculating that a giant or two had contributed to her bloodline. She was nearly a head taller than Tezzeret-who could be fairly characterized as a tall man-and though Tezzeret was muscled like a boxer, the woman’s shoulders were half again the width of his.
Her hair was gray, and cropped close to her skull in an “I’m too damned busy to waste time doing my hair” style. She was dressed in a similarly utilitarian fashion, heavy drakeskin boots, with tunic, pants, and jacket of tightly woven fibers of stonewort, a Bantian mountain herb widely recognized for its fire-resistant properties. The reason for her peculiar ensemble was prominently announced by the flames that licked from both of her hands, and the swirl of fire dancing across her head and shoulders.