Agents of Artifice: A Planeswalker Novel (12 page)

Two levels above, near the very peak of the mountain, a man stood within the high, arched confines of a tower window. He stared down, not with the naked eye, but through a peculiar crystalline device, globes within globes. Within its confines, he watched the events of the café unfold, lowering the sphere only when Jace Beleren swept from the open patio and into the bustling avenues.

And still he waited, until he was joined several moments later by a woman, taller than he, broader of shoulder, with a shock of ash-gray hair that made her appear far older than her years.

“Not a bad performance,” he said to her without preamble. “He survived your firecat easily enough, my dear.”

“Bah.” She shrugged, leaning against the side of the massive window frame. “I’m not impressed. Decent reaction time, and I won’t deny he’s got power. But we’ve rejected recruits who performed a lot better.”

“We have. But then, we’re not after Jace Beleren for his reaction time or even his illusions, are we?

“We’ll see how he performs for Gemreth. And then we’ll decide if we can make Jace Beleren who, and what, we need him to be.”

To Jace’s paranoid and worry-addled mind, every insect flitting in the darkness was the eye of an enemy;
every echo the footsteps of an unseen stalker creeping across the cobblestones; every stranger an assassin set to grab him from behind; every overhanging banner a noose that hungered for his neck. He trod the roads, the alleys, and the broad steps of the descending avenues as swiftly as he dared, jumping at every sound, peering suspiciously at every shadow, until he finally reached his destination.

What Jace called home was a modest three-room flat, located in one of Dravhoc’s lowest tiers, where the scents of the river filled the humid air with a vaguely fishy aroma and the cost of living was only moderately outrageous. It was cheaper than anywhere else in the extravagant quarter, yes, but its proximity to the shore and the tiny islands beyond filled Jace with a sense of security. Jace had never understood, and none of his teachers had satisfactorily explained, why the magics of the mind were best and most efficiently empowered by the mana that drifted and flowed within the waters of the many worlds; he knew only that it was so.

With a sigh of profound relief, Jace slammed his door behind him, leaning briefly against it and trying to calm himself. That he’d made many enemies throughout the past few years was no surprise at all, considering how he’d supported his preferred lifestyle. That any of them could have found him so exposed, however, was worrisome in the extreme. He turned, locking the door’s four deadbolts. Without lighting a lantern, he tossed his cloak haphazardly over an old coat rack, stepped into the next room, and collapsed into bed without bothering to get undressed. He’d deal with the rumples and wrinkles in the morning; right now he just needed time to relax, to meditate on the mana flowing through the currents beyond the shore.

Despite his nervous energy, he was asleep within minutes, wrapped in peculiar and disturbing dreams wherein he tried to bribe a giant cat not to spit fire at him, only to find he couldn’t afford the beast’s asking
price. He ran from the predator, calling for help, as embers rained from the sky.

And then he was awake, screaming at the terrible pain that throbbed in his chest.

Craning his head until his neck ached, Jace stared at the horrid shape squatting atop his torso. Only scarcely visible in the dark of the chamber, it stood on four legs that jutted obscenely from its sides like those of an insect. Two more appendages emerged from its shoulders to clutch at his collar. Its head was that of a jolly, almost cherubic old man, which stood in stark contrast to the wicked stinger at its tail, dripping with Jace’s own blood.

“What—” Jace froze in mid-question, his jaw clenching tight as his body spasmed with a new surge of pain. “What do—?” He couldn’t seem to force out the question.

“You tell me, mind-reader,” the demon hissed in a voice that quivered with palsy.

“I—I can’t!” He could barely concentrate enough to speak, let alone read its mind.

“You will! Tell me why I am here, Jace Beleren, and what I wish from you, and I will provide respite from this pain. Fail and the poison shall run its course!”

Jace scarcely even reacted to the use of his name, though he’d never done business in Dravhoc as anyone but Berrim, and never revealed the name “Jace” to anyone since he’d arrived on the sprawling, urban world of Ravnica. He struggled to rise, to throw the terrible thing away from him, but the last of his strength was drowning swiftly beneath the toxin’s spreading burn.

He wanted to cry out, to scream, to rail against the unfairness of it all, but he did none of these. Squeezing shut his eyes, clenching his jaw until his teeth ached, he forced himself to calm.

Long moments passed and the pain grew steadily worse, but Jace remained focused and stared down at
the creature once more. Scarcely visible even in the darkened room, his eyes began to glow.

“Your master, your summoner, is a mage called Gemreth,” he told the demon through trembling lips. “You were told that
his
master, called Tezzeret, wants to meet me. The First Vineyard, an hour after dusk tomorrow.” Even through the pain, Jace felt his anger growing, burning away the worst of his weakness. “This was a test!” he accused his vile attacker.

“A test indeed, Jace Beleren. And you have passed.” The horrific vermin skittered off him and made for the window.

“Antidote …” he croaked, his throat dry with agony.

Somehow, the inhuman creature shrugged. “Poison’s not lethal,” it cackled at him as it scurried over the sill. “You’ll be fine in an hour or two.”

Jace watched it go, the rage and humiliation burning within him as fiercely as the poison itself. He fell back on his mattress, struggled to find his center, to focus on the rushing, mana-rich waters. And then, through his pain, through his confusion, through his lingering fear, he began to cast a spell far simpler than mind reading.

He waited nearby, this mage called Gemreth, sitting beside a fruit-vendor’s stand and crunching contentedly on a honey-apple. His salt-and-pepper beard was thick and bushy, rather than neatly trimmed, but otherwise he appeared every inch the rich and stylish citizen of Dravhoc, draped in multiple layers of tunics and coats of rich crimson and black. And he smiled, taking a last bite of the candied fruit, as his pet came scurrying around the corner, clinging to the walls and windowsills.

For a few moments they conversed, the minuscule demon hanging just above the wizard’s shoulder. Only then, with an upraised hand, did Gemreth dismiss the abomination back whence it came. Picking a bit of peel
from between his teeth, he strode away, merging with the nighttime traffic.

Above him, all but invisible in the darkened sky, its dragonfly wings fluttering in unnatural silence, a tiny insect-winged cloud sprite followed in his wake.

Not all the wealthy neighborhoods of Ravnica were quite so dramatic as Dravhoc, of course. That particular district might cling to a mountainside like a tired explorer, but much of Ravnica was covered not in great peaks, shining lakes, or thick swamps, but gently rolling plains. In the center of one of the largest was the district Ovitzia—and in the center of Ovitzia stood a number of manors, among the largest that Ravnica had to offer. And it was to one of these, up the gleaming steps from the curb, across the broad marble porch to the front door, that Jace’s steps carried him early the next day.

The woman who opened the door in response to his tug upon the bell was clearly no servant. She wore a gown of the finest white gossamer over a snug slip of woven gold, a perfect match for the waist-length hair swept back behind her pointed ears. Her reed-slender figure could most generously be described as “boyish,” but her features were soft and elegant, and she moved with what Jace could only think a purely feminine grace.

“Berrim!” She greeted him warmly, with an affectionate if shallow embrace, a purely chaste kiss upon his right cheek.

“Hello, Emmara,” Jace smiled broadly in turn. “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by unannounced like this.”

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” she told him. “You know I don’t. What brings you to Ovitzia?”

“Nothing in particular,” Jace hedged. “Just fluttering around the city, and realized I wasn’t accomplishing anything, so I figured I’d visit a friend.”

“Well, of course you weren’t. Isn’t it you humans who always say ‘Fluttery will get you nowhere’?”

Jace blinked, replaying the sentence to be sure he heard what he thought he had. “Funny,” he finally dead-panned. “How long have you been saving that one?”

“Oh, years at least,” Emmara replied cheerfully. “Elves have that kind of time, you know.”

Both broke into large grins then, and she stepped back, allowing her visitor to pass through the doorway and into her home.

“Home” indeed. “Private indoor villa” was more accurate.

Emmara Tandris was the first mage Jace had met in Ravnica, and still one of the most confusing. Rumor had it she was once a member in good standing of the Selesnya Conclave, but if so, her own fortunes clearly hadn’t faded with the influence of the guilds. In public, she made little if any show of her powers. But in private, just about everything with her was magic, even when it would have been just as simple, or even more so, by mundane efforts.

No living servants occupied her vast manor. Instead, various constructs—some of white marble, some of stuffing and woven fabric in the form of various humanoids and woodland animals—fetched and cleaned and gathered at her need. Most were tiny, barely able to carry a platter full of food, though a few were as large as the elf herself. Animating these “dolls” was only one of her many hobbies, and in fact Emmara had been known to take commissions for these mindless servants as a means of bolstering her income.

Even stranger, the manor boasted no internal walls, no doors, no stairs. A vast array of marble columns, carved to resemble the bark of trees, stood at intervals throughout the domicile. They supported the weight of the floors above but did little to separate one chamber from another; in fact, “chambers” pretty much began
and ended where Emmara said they did. If one required privacy, one simply adjourned to a different story—and that, too, involved the many pillars. For while each seemed solid enough, if one chose, one could physically step inside (a feeling that Jace could only liken to walking through a wall of the fatty accumulation scraped from the top of a pot of heavy stew), and emerge from any of the other pillars, anywhere in the manor.