Future Sight Page 8

  The boy stood, gracefully rising to his feet without uncrossing his legs until his knees were locked and straight. He stepped over his right foot with his left, snapped his arms out to each side, and threw back his head. The black spaces where his eyes had been seemed infinitely deep, far larger than his childlike head could accommodate. Tears streamed out from those holes as the boy raised his blade and screamed.

  Dinne winced and retreated farther. The sound hurt him almost as much as the cold slash had. He turned to see if he could destroy the frozen mass that was powering the boy’s magic, or take it away with him, but it was too large to shred and too cumbersome to carry. Even worse, Dassene had determined his whereabouts in relation to the boy and she was gathering strength for another blast of flame. The boy’s scream harmed her as well, but she kept her teeth clenched as she oriented on the empty space that Dinne occupied. If her spells hit they would do him harm. He needed to finish this quickly.

  Dinne threw the spike he held at Dassene, but the boy cried out a warning, and she ducked away before it found her forehead. Spitting a silent curse, Dinne pulled a spike in each hand and charged the boy. Running through the noise and the cold that emanated from the child was like swimming upstream against a flood surge, but Dinne hurled himself forward, made himself solid, and bore the boy backward with his weight.

  Their faces almost touching, Dinne savagely jammed both spikes up through the boy’s ribcage into his torso. Dinne’s dull, white eyes glittered as the child’s face contorted beneath its network of scars. The boy’s mouth was still wide open, but his unearthly scream slowly died like a whistling kettle removed from the fire.

  The cold resistance pressing Dinne back died away. He stood up straight, keeping the boy upright through a firm grip on the weapons in his chest. Dassene cursed him. Dinne withdrew his weapons and allowed the boy to drop.

  Dassene seized the opportunity to strike without hitting the boy, but Dinne dodged her flames and faded from sight. He moved behind Dassene as she sprinted forward to help the boy. He drew a spike to throw and backed toward the entrance. Skive would die soon, the boy sooner. All Dinne had to do to make this a complete success was bid a proper farewell to the eight-fingered warrior and move out into the main camp.

  A wrenching shock of heat and pain exploded through Dinne from behind. He glanced down to see several feet of a broadsword sticking through the center of his chest. Like the boy’s blade, this one was charged with magic, but it was fire magic like Dassene’s. It was also far more painful and destructive. He was unable to clear his head, unable to shift to his wraithlike state and escape the agony…though once he had determined this to be the case he did allow himself to luxuriate in the sensation. His paralysis ended when Dinne felt a boot on his back shove him roughly off the end of the broadsword. Dazed, he turned and staggered deeper into the tent as he twisted his neck for a glimpse of his attacker.

  Dinne had seen many different expressions over the years as he performed his bloody work, faces grotesque and livid with fear or pain or anger. On all his battlefields, in all of his petty murders, Dinne had never seen a look like Radha showed him now. The Keldon warlord was amok, rampant, her eyes glittering and glassy, her face twisted in fury, and her teeth grinding against each other. The air behind Radha was filled with fire that seemed to flow into her and on through her blade.

  Radha dropped her sword and sprang forward, issuing a continuous stream of guttural abuse. She slashed at Dinne with both hands, wielding the same tear-shaped blades the boy carried. Still off balance, the Vec raider could not revert to his shadow form, so Radha’s blows landed, and her blades bit deep.

  Her first cut shattered the left side of Dinne’s helmet to reveal half of his pale, mummified features. Her second strike obliterated his glittering left eye and left a tear-shaped blade jutting out over his cheekbone. Dinne backpedaled as he threw spikes at Radha with both hands, trying to create some distance between them so he could recover, so he could finish this. Radha easily batted the spikes aside with her blades and even hurled one of her own Dinne’s way. As he slipped under it he noticed Dassene by the boy’s side, glaring at Dinne as if to burn him where he stood. The red-clad warrior hesitated to strike, perhaps unwilling to get between Radha and Dinne, so he ignored her for the moment. He swallowed his pain and prepared to fight on.

  Well now, Leshrac said. This won’t do, Dinne. Look at the state of you. Lucky for you your work is done here. I am very particular about how I want my property treated. Bear that in mind for the future.

  Dinne felt the familiar, tingling pressure of his master’s magic, and he felt his body disappearing, for once not at his own choosing. He glared at Radha through his broken helm and his remaining eye as Leshrac took him away. The Vec raider silently promised to return someday. His master said his work was done here, but Dinne savored the pain in his face and the smoldering anger in his breast and knew he was a long way from finished with these Keldon brutes and their terrible, formidable leader.

  * * *

  —

  Jeska was not far behind Radha, but she still arrived too late. As she appeared in the entrance to the command tent she saw the carnage and paused. There was a great deal of blood, and Radha’s big viashino lay dying near a child at the far end of the tent. Radha was there, venting heat and fire as her anger threatened to ignite the canvas walls, and her Ghitu lieutenant was seeing to their wounded comrades. There was a grotesque slab of frozen meat heaped between two torches. What in Fiers’s name had happened here?

  “Radha,” she called.

  The Keldon elf whirled furiously at the sound, clearly ready to kill whomever had entered. Jeska watched recognition flicker across Radha’s wild eyes and a moment of hesitation as the Keldon fought the urge to strike. Radha stopped and went completely still.

  “Get her out of here,” she said to Dassene.

  “Done,” the Ghitu said.

  Radha held out her hands and drew the flames around her back into her body. “I need about two minutes.”

  “Understood.” Dassene drew her batons and advanced on Jeska.

  “I can help,” Jeska said.

  Dassene came face-to-face with the planeswalker. “Outside,” she said.

  “I don’t like your tone,” Jeska said.

  Dassene shrugged. “Do something.”

  “What if I do nothing? What if I refuse to leave and demonstrate that you can’t make me leave?”

  “Then one of us dies here,” Dassene said. She shrugged again. “The survivor has to deal with Radha, so my choice is clear.” She gestured with her batons. “Outside.”

  “Fine.” Jeska turned and stepped out of the tent. Radha was a beast, a wild ape who bullied stray dogs into following her into battle, but Dassene was a Ghitu. She reminded Jeska of Jhoira, serious, competent, loyal—worthy of respect. For her sake, Jeska quit the tent and waited for Radha to do whatever it was the Keldon planned to do.

  Leaving actually proved an advantage, as Jeska could easily monitor the inside of the tent without drawing Radha’s ire. Dassene tossed frequent glances back at the closed flap to make sure Jeska was staying out as she went back to the others. The Ghitu crossed the inside of the tent and stopped short of Radha, Skive, and the boy.

  “Can you help them?” Dassene said.

  Radha was focused on the bloody scene before her. Her voice was strained. “I think so. Skive is in rough shape. And the boy…”

  “He might not survive your treatment,” Dassene said, “but he definitely won’t survive those wounds.”

  Radha glanced at Dassene and grunted, but she also gave an appreciative nod. “I agree. Stand back now.” The Keldon spread her arms and planted her feet, assuming the same position she had after she had stabbed the elves just outside the camp. Radha called to the harsh mana of Keld to her, and it replied, flowing from the deeply embedded rocks below into her body. Radha collected this energy and shaped it as flames and hot wind whirled around her. She shouted something incoher
ent and thrust her arms forward, and fire sprayed from her fingertips. She covered Skive and the boy in a shroud of flames, standing over them for almost a full minute as she directed twin streams of fire onto their bodies. The flow ebbed and hitched like a kinked length of water hose at first, but Radha redoubled her efforts restored the spell to full force.

  It ended suddenly. The flames stopped pouring from Radha’s hands all at once, and the warlord’s knees buckled. Radha shook off the fatigue and strode over to Skive. She paused, then shoved the lean viashino with her foot so he rolled onto his back.

  “That’s all I can do,” Radha said. “If they’re strong enough, they’ll survive.” She looked through the closed tent at Jeska. Radha stepped forward and spoke in Dassene’s ear, but Jeska heard her clearly. “Gather the ’host.”

  “Done.”

  Radha’s hand lashed out, and she cut a long slash in the wall of the tent. “Do it now.”

  “Understood.” Dassene slipped through the new opening and ran out into the camp. Jeska was intrigued by how Dassene carried out her orders—instead of shouting to make herself heard, the Ghitu simply made eye contact with each warrior she saw and hooked a thumb toward the assembly area outside the command tent. No words were spoken, but every single Keldon she encountered understood and complied immediately. Soon there were dozens of the gray-skinned thugs stomping toward the tent.

  “Pardic.” Radha startled Jeska. The warlord had approached and opened the tent flap to watch Jeska watching Dassene.

  “I had nothing to do with that,” Jeska said.

  “No,” Radha said. She came forward directly toward Jeska. “You just happened to show up to distract me with challenges and wagers as your assassin raided my command tent.” She stopped and glowered down at the shorter woman.

  “I’m telling you the truth. I came alone. Whatever happened in there was not my doing.”

  “Maybe not,” Radha said. “But I would have been here sooner if not for you. You delayed me.” She hitched her shoulder and brought her fist up under Jeska’s chin. Jeska felt the heat and force of a black powder bomb as Keldon magic exploded out of Radha’s knuckles.

  The blast carried Jeska back. She landed heavily, scattering the soldiers who had gathered at the near end of the assembly grounds. Still slightly dazed, Jeska retained the presence of mind to let Radha have her way for now. The blow hadn’t truly hurt, and it would make the Keldon elf’s inevitable defeat more impressive to her warhost. Jeska abandoned any hopes of negotiating with Radha and resigned herself to besting her physically. Berserkers liked a good, bloody show after all.

  She found she was eager to defeat this brash young beast in front of her own followers. By now Dassene had sent almost two score warriors to support Radha, and that suited Jeska just fine. She was used to fighting in the pits before a partisan crowd. She had already wasted too much time in Keld, but she could yet salvage something useful. If she took down a thuggish warlord down in the process, it would be more than worth it.

  As she and Venser and Teferi arrived in Yavimaya, Jhoira realized she had spent relatively little time there. For all its historical and magical import, the place was incredibly remote, almost unreachable. The forest covered an entire island that sat near the center of a vast stretch of empty ocean, on the opposite side of the globe from Shiv and Urborg and all the other places she frequented. Her dealings with the forest had largely been through Multani, who could travel to any place that had plant life. Multani always came to them, so there had rarely been a pressing reason to make the long journey to his home.

  Now, as she and Teferi and Venser appeared on the edges of the forest, Jhoira wished she was more familiar with the place. She expected Nature’s most dynamic stronghold to weather the mana drought better than the rest of Dominaria, but she hadn’t seen it since before the Invasion. She realized she had no true basis for comparison between what the forest had been and what it had become.

  She breathed in moist salt air. Yavimaya was a still a lush, wild paradise where massive trees touched the sky, and their exposed roots formed an almost impassable tangle at ground level. Thorn canes as thick and tall as a man grew in a unbroken line along the sheer, rocky cliffs at the island’s edge. Stinging insects as big as her fist buzzed lazily above the thorns, and beyond them was a field of carnivorous plants with jaws large enough to tear off a horse’s head and swallow it whole. Jhoira saw none of Yavimaya’s famed menagerie of giant beasts, but she expected the interior of the jungle was teeming with them. In fact, she hoped it did.

  Like the Skyshroud Forest under Freyalise, Yavimaya’s environment actively discouraged visitors, especially humans. Freyalise’s hatred and distrust of outsiders was rooted in her love of the elves who worshiped her and her desire to see them protected. In Jhoira’s view, Yavimaya had a far stronger reason for its hostility.

  Once Yavimaya had been Argoth, and Argoth had been deforested, strip-mined, and otherwise plundered into near extinction by two human armies from another land. These invaders followed the brothers Urza and Mishra as each sibling fought to control the forest’s resources, though neither had any valid claim on the place. After Argoth was picked clean and nearly dead, the brothers finished the job by setting off a powerful, artifact-driven spell that all but leveled the island down to its bedrock. That blast ended the Brothers War and annihilated Argoth. It also started the Ice Age, cut Dominaria off from other planes for thousands of years, and tore a hole in the fabric of the Multiverse that would become one of the first and most powerful time rifts.

  Yavimaya forest rose from the ashes of Argoth with a kind of sentience and a strong collective memory of the horrors it had already endured. The destruction left by the brothers made more than a physical scar on the land, more than a magical one, and as Yavimaya’s nascent hive-mind coalesced it was already taking steps to defend itself if anyone ever tried to repeat the brothers’ sins. Everything that grew in Argoth’s place had a shared and focused will to survive, to act in concert against any external threat. Through its avatar Multani, Yavimaya kept itself hale and strong for centuries, holding off mad planeswalkers and Phyrexian nightmares alike. The only questions now were, could it also survive the time rift at its center? And was Multani still here, and still strong enough to help them make a difference?

  Ever eager to play the charming host, Teferi stepped off of the ambulator’s dais and said, “Welcome to Yavimaya.”

  “It’s incredible,” Venser said. He was staring wide-eyed at the shoreline and the gargantuan trees. He turned to Jhoira and said, “And this is what it’s like after being drained of mana for hundreds of years?”

  “It was strong to begin with,” Jhoira said. She stood up and removed the ambulator’s control rig from her shoulders. “We should assume that it’s fallen as far as the rest of the places we’ve seen. It only seems healthier now because it started healthier then.”

  “Here’s something,” Teferi said. He had edged closer to the thorns, which squirmed and struggled to latch onto his hand. “We’re on the shore. The time rift ought to be closer to the island’s center.”

  Jhoira glanced at the thorns to make sure Teferi was in no immediate danger. “Relevance?” she said.

  “Venser is keyed to the rifts. He should have teleported himself straight to the one here.”

  “Keep that in mind, but don’t dwell on it,” Jhoira said. She stepped off the machine. “There’s a lot we don’t understand about Venser’s abilities.”

  “That makes three of us,” Venser muttered.

  “Can you find it?” she asked Teferi. “You said you were aware of the rifts.”

  “And I am. Yes, I can find it. It’s still here on the island. It’s just not where it’s supposed to be. Neither are we.” He shook his head. “That troubles me.”

  “It makes sense considering how Yavimaya doesn’t like visitors. Maybe this is as far as it will allow us to go without a formal introduction.”

  “Then the forest agrees with us,”
Teferi said. “And if fortune favors us even a little, the forest will send Multani out to receive that introduction.”

  “Fortune hasn’t favored us so far,” Jhoira said. “Not even a little.”

  “Bosh,” Teferi said. “But I see your point. We won’t wait for Yavimaya to rouse itself against us. We should figure out how to contact Multani ourselves.” He smiled boyishly. “Any suggestions?”

  Jhoira scowled. “Not so far.” She looked up at Yavimaya’s distant canopy high overhead. The ceiling of limbs and leaves was uneven, and its irregularity was not the result of wild, unrestrained growth. There was a pattern to it, but it was impossible to determine or recognize from where she stood.

  “Venser,” Jhoira said, “can you take me up?” She pointed to the canopy. “Over that?”

  “I can,” Venser said. “But we can’t stay there long. We’ll start to fall as soon as we appear. I can bring us back down before we build up speed so we don’t break our bones when we land, but we won’t have long to look.”

  “I can help you stay aloft longer,” Teferi said. He tapped his staff on the ground, and smoky, blue light flared from its tip.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Jhoira said. “I don’t need long.” She approached Venser, and as she came up alongside him she said, “Just make sure you bring us back here”—she pointed to the field of carnivorous plants—“and not there.”

  Venser laughed nervously. “Count on it,” he said. He extended his hand, and Jhoira took it.

  “Wait here,” she said to Teferi. He nodded at her, and winked as if sharing a private secret.

  “It’ll be good for Venser to get some practice,” Teferi said.

  “I need all I can get,” Venser said.

  It will also be good for me to observe his teleportation up close, Jhoira thought. She didn’t know whether to be angry at Teferi for assuming she had ulterior motives or at herself for having them. She pushed her private thoughts aside and took Venser’s hand.