It wasn’t working. Thran metal grew. He had not recognized that fact before. He had assumed only that Jhoira’s trinket necklaces were fashioned in various sizes. Now he knew that the large lizard pendants had grown from small ones.

  The pieces of the Thran-metal man were growing too. His chest plates were already grating against each other and binding up the shoulder joints. Worse, the clockwork gears ground together, breaking off cogs, bending shafts, shattering flywheels. Even as Urza sat there, considering the slowly deforming mechanism, a great clang announced the sudden catastrophic failure of a strut in the creature’s pelvis, and a groin plate slumped ignominiously.

  Urza slouched back in his seat, wondering how long this alarm would be allowed to blare. The mana rig was like a giant bucket, amplifying the clamor until it was unbearable. Around the ringing corners of his mind, Urza chased an elusive thought… something about aligning growing parts according to the geometry of life, so that the pieces could expand in concert rather than in opposition…. A sphere shape or a three-dimensional oval, with internal mechanisms organized in nested shells, would allow for the growth of each level and that of the whole. Even in the shrieking air, he recognized the irony of designing a machine after the plan of Phyrexia with its nested planes. His gaze strayed to the abandoned plans for the Thran-metal ship-it was ovoid. Perhaps he could use the concentric organizational plan to structure … to allow the Thran metal… organization with the … make a growing-

  “Enough-!” shouted Urza at the reeling ceiling.

  The alarm was suddenly louder, jarring into the room with a flung-back door. Urza whirled angrily, seeing the silver man crouching in the too-small space.

  “What is it?”

  “Goblins. Goblins everywhere. Three tribes. The Viashino are losing,” Karn said in a rush

  “That’s it,” Urza growled, standing and growing a war cloak about his shoulders.

  The stylus he had been holding grew into a glimmering staff, and he strode ahead of the silver golem, out the door and toward the battle.

  *

  The forge room was chaos. Viashino workers in their leather coveralls fought side by side with disheveled, human students. Wrenches and spanners flashed among double-bladed paortings, wrist daggers, and dragon-headed throwing axes. The lizard men fought in ragged clusters, backed up against the vast, glowing furnaces they tended. With desperate jabs and off-balance swings, they held at bay the loud, lapping tide of goblins.

  They were everywhere. Gray Grabbits swarmed at the front. They hacked and gnawed at knees. Red-scaled Destrou crowded up behind their short comrades and swung ram-horn polearms above their heads. Here and there hooks caught lizard-man sleeves or wattles and dragged the victims onto the impaling gray horns. Behind that line, a few silver-skinned Tristou held the center of the floor and flung fire and lightning into the defenders’ ranks.

  Viashino were falling. Already seventeen workers and four warriors lay in pools of gray blood among the advancing goblins. Grabbits fed violently on these dead forms. Two more lizard warriors hung smoldering on the sides of furnaces. They had been backed against the sizzling metal, and their skin adhered. A few flailing minutes followed, and then the cooked reptiles turned to coal. Two human students also had died, one impaled on the end of a stolen paorting, and the other beneath the toothy tide of Grabbits. The remaining defenders, outnumbered, ill-armed, and overheated, languished in the verge between fire and spear.

  Diago Deerv brought a gaping wrench down on the head of a Grabbit before him. It staved the beast’s skull. He kicked the body among the mass of its comrades, giving them something besides him to eat.

  “Where is Jhoira?” he gasped out to the workers around him. “She’d have an idea.”

  “An idea?” roared a nearby mechanic. A goblin torch rammed against his chest. The lizard man reared back on his tail and kicked the fire-wielding monster back among his fellows. The torch set another pair of Grabbits aflame. “We need an army, not an idea.”

  Diago blinked at the burning Grabbits. “Sometimes an idea’s worth an army.” He whirled, pulled a forge pole from its rack beside him, and slipped its hooked end into a large latch on the side of the forge.

  “What are you doing? We’re fighting goblins, not forges.”

  “Get back!” Diago shouted forcefully.

  His comrades fell back, and in the next moment he flung open a slag gate in the side of the forge. Out poured a river of molten metal, spilling across the goblin hordes. Even the heedless and senseless Grabbits retreated from the blistering flood. Many weren’t quick enough, swept under the tide and exploding as every liquid in their bodies turned instantly to gas. These small blasts sent red-hot spatters of metal out to burn other goblins.

  Panting behind the flood, Diago gasped out, “Gives us a moment to breathe.”

  The warrior beside him was prickly, his scales jutting out all across his body. “I’d rather die by spear than by fire.”

  Diago looked up, toward the wide stairway that led down into the forge room. “Maybe we won’t have to die at all.”

  Another tide rolled down the stairs-Viashino warriors, fully armed and armored, their paortings gleaming in a thicket as they waded into battle. Above the tide of warriors, another figure came, floating above the floor and emblazoned with fiery light. Urza Planeswalker drifted down, a second sun above his army. From his fingertips, bolts of power lanced outward. Where the red crazings struck, goblin bodies flipped up into the air. They tumbled like charred toys before clattering to the ground.

  The straggling defenders let out a cheer.

  Urza hovered into the center of the forge room. He lifted his hands together overhead. A white light awoke between his fingers. It shone across metal struts and trusses that hadn’t been illuminated in millennia and then swept out in stunning waves. Rings of illumination moved over the gathered monsters, stilling them in the midst of battle. Upraised cleavers did not fall, frozen in air. Scourges followed one last course before going limp in the hands of their wielders. The magical staves of the Tristou flared and became rods of fire before fizzling away into sifting ash. In his last labor before the stilling waves of magic lay hold of him, Diago hauled hard on his hooked staff, drawing the slag sluice closed and stopping the flood of metal.

  Next moment, even the war cries died away. All eyes turned to the floating figure.

  Urza shouted over the throng. His voice was guttural, a collection of growls and harsh barks. The words, nonsensical to humans, made sense to the goblins and their ancient lizard foes.

  “Surrender, all goblinkind. Throw down your weapons or face immediate destruction.”

  He made a sign, and three goblin figures-taller and more elaborately mantled than their fellows-rose into the air. The three chieftains kicked in struggle against the invisible claws that gripped them. They drifted toward the imperious figure.

  Below them, among the goblin rank and file, nerveless claws opened, letting cleavers and axes fall to the floor. Grabbits withdrew, bloody mouthed, from corpses. Destrou dropped to one knee in sign of surrender. Tristou stood, spells forgotten on quivering lips. Even as they did, the pacifying waves of white energy gently cycled among them.

  “I will speak with your chiefs about terms of surrender,” Urza announced to the room.

  He made a final gesture, bringing the floating creatures to a stop before him. They hung uncomfortably in the air, their robes of state trailing in bloody tatters.

  Urza examined them. His uncanny eyes rested on each in turn. The Tristou chief was a wizened old creature, his eyes large and solemn behind a nose as withered and dark as a date. His robes were once fine-midnight blue with silver piping, though a scorch mark showed where his staff had blazed away. One claw had been burned brutally. Beside him, the chieftain of the Destrou was a warrior female, clad in gray leather armor from which taut red arms and legs protruded. She wore the scowl of bitter undefeat and kept her eyes lifted defiantly in the presence of her foe. The third chieftain was a mad imp, its small body wrapped in bloodied armor studded in teeth and metal shards. It fought angrily against its captivity.

  “I am the lord of this rig,” Urza said in forceful goblin tongue.

  “You and your folk will withdraw. None of you will be left within five miles.”

  “These are our ancestral homelands,” objected the silvery Tristou.

  “You were permitted to live here until you attacked,” Urza pointed out. “You have brought about your own exile.”

  “Our attack was provoked,” the Destrou warrior chief said. “Two of your lieutenants desecrated our sacred necropolis.”

  “That does not matter,” Urza said dismissively. “You have been utterly defeated. Withdraw from this facility and the lands around, or I will slay every last one of you who remains.”

  “We hold these lieutenants captive,” the Destrou continued. “We hold them in a death cage. It is linked to me. At a moment’s notice, I can make the cage collapse with them inside, killing them instantly. If I die, they die.”

  Urza studied the warrior woman. “You are lying.”

  “Their names are Jhoira and Teferi,” the warrior chief replied.

  Urza began a response, but the words jumbled on his tongue, and he quieted. He breathed, perhaps for the first time since entering the forge room.

  “Take me to them. I must see they are alive.”

  “No,” the Destrou chief replied. A file-toothed smile spread across her face. The tables had turned, and she savored the shift. “But you may speak with them.” She nodded to the Tristou oracle, who used his charred claw to draw a black circle in the air.

  Noises came from the circle-the jabber of goblins, the crackle of a fire, the shift of midnight winds.

  “Teferi, Jhoira,” Urza called, “can you hear me?”

  A shifting sound came, and the clang of metal. “Who is it?” came a woman’s voice.”

  “It is Urza. Where are you?”

  “We don’t know. A dark cavern. They have us in a strange cage.”

  “Is Teferi with you?”

  The young man’s voice answered, “Yes.”

  Urza’s features darkened. “What is this they tell me about you desecrating their sacred necropolis?”

  Teferi sighed. “We went into the forbidden zones. That must be what they mean.”

  Urza turned to the silvery oracle. “Your sacred necropolis is within the rig?”

  “It is sacred to our ancestors. They dwelt in it, long before the lizard men,” responded the Tristou with a twitch of his prune nose. “They dwelt in it with the old masters.”

  Before Urza could respond, Teferi offered, “It looked like it was designed for them. Everything is goblin sized-corridors and ladders and consoles. Viashino couldn’t have operated or maintained any of the machines we saw.”

  The silvery oracle blinked placidly back at Urza.

  “Are you saying your ancestors served the Thran?” Urza asked in hushed tones.

  “There’s more,” Jhoira interrupted. “That sector of the rig-the largest sector-is devoted to making powerstones.”

  The planeswalker, despite himself, turned white.

  The oracle spoke into the following silence: “Now, do we surrender to you, or do you surrender to us?”

  Monologue

  Urza arrived today with strange and marvelous news. He has just brokered a peace accord between five races.

  Yes, Urza Planeswalker-defiler of Argoth, scourge of Terisiare, bane of Serra’s Realm, destroyer of Tolaria, he whose name has become synonymous with mad and savage war-Urza has brokered peace. Viashino, Tristou, Destrou, Grabbit, and human now work hand in claw within the mana rig. To make matters more incredible, the two human prisoners of war caught desecrating the sacred necropolis of the goblins have been set in charge of returning the goblins to their ancient homelands in the rig and training them once again to run the machinery there. And, most incredible of all, what Jhoira, Teferi, and their goblin hordes will be producing are powerstones-large and perfectly engineered for whatever task Urza wishes.

  He seemed mad again, relating all these things to me. He seemed as delighted as if he had just finished designing some vast, improbable, and powerful machine. In a way, that’s what he has just done.

  I was sad to report less stellar results for my own efforts. K’rrik’s negators are growing more powerful by the week. Our laboratories can hardly keep up with the old designs. New versions of our runners are still months away from their initial trials. The spells we have marshaled have succeeded in blocking whatever summoned creatures and artifacts the Phyrexian mages have conjured, but we cannot keep up with their studies. I sense a final conflict coming. Even if K’rrik’s forces do not overrun us soon, we will deplete our resources and workforce. Whether they win in a moment or in a million moments, they will win.

  It was with this assessment that I pleaded for Urza to return and bring Jhoira and Teferi with him. He shrugged off the request, saying he had complete trust in me. He reminded me of the beacon, saying I could call on him at a moment’s notice, and that was the end of it. He couldn’t wait to return to his mana rig and the marvelous machines it would produce.

  I cannot help feeling abandoned. Urza has learned much, indeed-he no longer forgets his past obligations, only ignores them.

  - Barrin, Mage Master of Tolaria

  Chapter 15

  “This is our salvation,” Urza said.

  He addressed the same group of scholars-Jhoira, Teferi, and Karn at the head of the group-in the same study where he had first presented the design. The plans hanging behind the pacing master, however, were completely rethought. Thran metal was used only in key places. The rest of the structure was wooden.

  “It will be capable of faster-than-sound travel, will be able to planeshift, will be fitted out with powerful offensive weapons, and is designed to bear its crew into the most hostile Phyrexian environments. It will be the ultimate strike weapon, arrayed to penetrate the enemy’s defenses and destroy the heart of their attack.”

  Urza paused, as if waiting for Jhoira’s objections. She coughed discreetly in her hand but offered no comment.

  “One of the key changes to this design, you will notice, is its wooden hull. Given the properties of Thran metal-specifically its tendency to grow-I have determined that it is best used in conjunction with living materials, in this case wood-a specific kind of wood.” Urza set down the pointer he had been using. “Given the excellent progress you have made in the new alliance, I feel the time is right for me to take a brief absence to secure the wooden components.”

  The once-silent crowd was suddenly on its feet, protests coming from them all.

  “What are you talking about-”

  “-bring us to this inferno and then leave-”

  “-how are we supposed to keep them from killing each other-”

  Jhoira’s voice rose above the others. “-only reason the accord has worked as well as it has is because you are here, the everpresent and incalculable foe.”

  “Let them think I am still here then,” Urza said. “If you want, I can even arrange a few illusory appearances during my absence. I’m speaking of only a few days away.”

  That assurance quieted much of the objection. Jhoira was still dubious, “What if it is longer?”

  Urza seemed to consider, his eyes twinkling, and then he gave a small shrug. “You will manage. You always have. In the meantime, I have some new specifications for Thran-metal castings-the fittings for the ship. I want you to get started on them. Also, I have these specifications for the size and shape of the powerstone I need for the ship’s engines. Jhoira, I want you and Teferi personally to oversee its creation.”

  *

  Urza descended into the heart of a dense jungle, into the heart of an ancient dream.

  It was called Yavimaya. Its ancient trees reached three thousand feet into the sky and three thousand feet into the ground, and three thousand years into the past. Just beneath Urza’s feet-shod in gold-gilt sandals, suitable to his role as ambassador for all Dominaria-spread the tumbled landscape of treetops. Multiheaded crowns nodded sagely in the high winds. Among their shifting forms, giant limbs twisted, as large and brown as whole hillsides elsewhere.

  In the hollows of some of the massive boughs, clear waters gleamed in wide and twisting lakes, thirty feet deep above smooth-skinned bark. Daily rains filled these raised lakes. Their verges hung with shaggy curtains of moss, and elven settlements crouched at their edges. Waterfalls cascaded from the lakes, down bows or empty air into the darksome forest below.

  Urza did not stop among the elven folk. He sought none of the forest’s inhabitants individually but all of them collectively. He sought the spirit of the forest itself-Yavimaya.

  In places, a magnificent tree had succumbed at last to the colonies of worms and termites that riddled its city-sized trunk, or to the rot of deep roots in lightless slime, or to the implacable time clock within it, and had fallen. Many dead giants leaned against their neighbors, forming vast decaying ramps down into the murk. On such slopes, whole new ecologies of undergrowth and grazing beast and sharp-eyed hunter grew up. Other trees, the titanic ones that could not be held aloft in their creaking plummet toward ground, opened vast pits in the forest canopy, giving view down thousands of feet, past the mounded and rangy bulk of the world trees to the tangle of roots at their base.

  Urza entered one of these empty shafts now. He watched in appreciation as the huge sprawl of tree summits rose to close out the sky. Only a large, ragged hole remained overhead. All around him, single-tree forests shivered bright green against the blue sky and its scrolling clouds. The high brakes of branch and bloom gave way to lower ranks of coiling vine and draping lichen. They in time surrendered to dark, cold, plunging depths, reached only by manifold waterfalls and the ever-dimmer sunlight. The air turned cold, wet, and biting.

 

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