Agents of Artifice

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

None of the Consortium healers would touch him, not this time. Everyone knew just how he'd been injured, and nobody was willing to interfere with Tezzeret's discipline. For almost two days, Jace tossed and turned in agony, unable to sleep, barely able to move. His sheets and mattress were stained with dried blood. The cuts along his back and his arms were shallow but long. The pain was excruciating, but not nearly so much so as the pain within.

Jace felt as though he'd been burned from the inside out. The very notion of spellcasting made him queasy, and he'd been unable to absorb so much as a sliver of mana, no matter how hard he tried to concentrate.

By the evening of the second day, he knew that he could take no more of it. Staggering out of bed, he pulled on the first tunic he found, wincing with every move, every bend. He slowly made his way out of his chambers and down the hall, heading for the nearest exit.

If nobody in the Consortium would help him, he'd go to someone who would.

He'd made it as far as the first main corridor when someone appeared from the shadows off to the left.

"I was wondering if you were going to try something like this," Kallist said.

"Have to. No choice. Hurts too much."

"Jace," his friend told him, voice ripe with worry, "you can barely stand. How do you plan to get out? I don't think the guards would hurt you, but they're certainly not going to let you leave without permission, not until they're sure your punishment's up. Go back to bed. I'll bring you something, some brandy maybe, to help you sleep."

"No. Kallist, please. You've no idea what it's… I need your help."

Kallist frowned, and then sighed deeply. "You owe me," he said softly. "How long do you need to get to the exit?"

Jace took a moment to picture the halls, thought about his current state. "Ten minutes."

"All right. Get close and be ready."

Jace never did find out exactly what Kallist did to trigger the magical alarms that protected the complex from unauthorized entry-but he did so, and clear on the other side of the building. By the time the chaos was sorted out, and the patrols returned to their standard routes, Jace had slipped out the nearest door and onto the streets of Rubblefield.

What should have been a five-minute walk took him fifteen, but he finally found himself in the next district. It took another twenty minutes, given the lateness of the hour, to flag down a coach-for-hire.

"Where to?" asked the centaur who was both driver and hauler.

"Ovitzia," Jace gasped, all but collapsing into the seat.

"Hrm. I don't know, sir. That's an awfully long trip for this late at night. Maybe-"

Jace groaned, reached into a pouch and dropped a handful of gold coins on the shelf before him without even bothering to count.

"Ovitzia," the centaur announced, standing suddenly straight. "Right away, sir."

The jostling of the carriage over the cobblestones, though agonizing, almost managed to lull Jace to sleep with the promise of relief to come.

"You sure I can't get you anything, Berrim? You really need to keep your strength up."

"Just my shirt," Jace said, shuddering slightly-and not just from the chill-as Emmara's fingers softly, gracefully traced the newly healed scars across his back. "It's pretty cold in here."

"You'll get dressed when I'm satisfied these are healing properly, and not one second before. And Berrim," the elf added, "if you make one snide remark about me touching you like this, I may just heal your mouth shut."

Jace clamped his teeth together, swallowing the comment he was about to utter like a half-chewed dumpling.

They sat together, not at Emmara's dining table downstairs, but at a small desk in her library-"library" being defined as "that bunch of pillars with the bookcases between them." It and the guest quarters were the only areas Jace had seen in the two days he'd been here. He'd slept a great deal as his body recovered from Emmara's magic, and tried to pass the rest of the time perusing those shelves. Unfortunately, the only books that were written in any script he could read were either cloying romances or high adventure fiction for which, thanks to recent events, he was very much not in the mood.

"All right," she said finally, standing up and handing him his wadded tunic. "I think I'm done. It looks like the physical damage is mostly healed. How about…?" Jace hadn't given her much in the way of details, of course, but he'd had to explain the nature of the manablade to ensure she could heal him properly. He frowned briefly, turning his attention inward, flexing muscles that weren't at all physical.

"I'd feel better if I could get near the water," he said finally, "but I think I shouldn't have any trouble once I do. It feels like everything's working."

"I'm glad."

"Are you sure you won't let me pay you something?" Jace asked. "I really feel like I owe-"

"Berrim, no." A shallow smile, then. "Although, if you find yourself in possession of another shipment of fruit…"

For a time, they sat in silence. Then, "I think he's losing it, Emmara," Jace said softly. "Tezzeret?"

He nodded. "He's always been a hard man, but now he's getting cruel. Or maybe… Maybe he always was, and it just wasn't aimed my way." Jace shook his head miserably. "I knew from day one he wanted power. It's part of what drew me to him; I thought I could share in it. But now I think he's honestly going mad with it. He may have just started a war with a competing mercantile interest, for no better reason than he got overconfident in his abilities. His and mine both, actually, but he's only interested in my mistake, not his."

"And was your mistake so very awful?"

Jace shrugged. "My mistake was not realizing from the get-go that I wasn't powerful enough to do what he asked of me. But he should've known that, Emmara, even better than I. It's almost as if he's forgotten there's anything he can't do. So every time something goes wrong, it's somebody else's fault.

"But that's not even the worst of it." Jace knew he should stop, that even without offering details he was revealing more about the Consortium than Tezzeret or Paldor would approve of. But he found that once he'd begun, he couldn't stop. "I think-I think I'm more scared about what he's doing with that power than what he's doing to acquire more. I'm about as far from a saint as you can get, but some of what I've seen, especially lately… Some of what he's done to me… I'm scared to death of him, of what he might yet do."

"So why do you stay?" she asked softly.

There it was, the question he'd hoped wasn't coming, though he had asked it of himself a thousand times since he'd first felt the manablade on his skin.

"Because he has shared his power," he admitted finally. "My magic is stronger now than I ever thought it could be. Because I'm rich, and I don't want to go back to being what I was."

Emmara placed a soft hand on Jace's own, and pretended not to notice his was shaking. "And maybe," she whispered, "because you're afraid of what he'll do if you leave?"

Jace looked down at the table and said nothing at all.

"What am I going to do with you, Beleren?"

The question didn't seem to demand an actual answer, so Jace didn't offer one.

He stood arrow-straight in the lieutenant's chamber, where he'd been ordered to appear in no uncertain terms the instant he returned to the Consortium complex. Paldor paced behind the desk, the room shaking mildly with his tread, and glancing at Jace only occasionally.

"I mean, on the one hand, I think it's pretty clear that Tezzeret intended his punishment to, ah, linger a lot longer. That's why he wouldn't let you see any of our healers."

Jace scowled but still said nothing.

"On the other," Paldor said, suddenly stopping and turning to face the mage directly, "nobody actually ordered you to stay put, did they? Everyone just assumed you knew better, but I guess it's never come up for you before. And it's not as though you ran off on an assignment, since nobody figured you'd be up for any sort of duties for at least a few weeks."

The lieutenant drummed the fingers of one hand on the desk. The other was hidden inside his robe, where Jace knew the manablade rested. Jace licked his lips and otherwise tried not to appear half as nervous as he felt.

Finally, Paldor shrugged. "Go back to your quarters. We'll call this whole situation over and done with. But Beleren? Next time the boss punishes you, you do not try to weasel out of it. Consider that a standing order. And I suggest you see about keeping pretty much to yourself until your next assignment comes down."

With a sigh of relief he couldn't quite suppress, Jace turned away. Just as he reached the door, however, Paldor's voice stopped him cold.

"Oh, Beleren? Kallist did know better. And he was punished for his little part in your song and dance."

Jace's fist clenched hard on the latch. "Is he… Is he hurt?"

"A lash or two, nothing that won't heal a lot faster than you did. Plus a few fines and some menial chores. Just enough to make my point."

"And that is?" Jace couldn't help but ask.

"That is," Paldor said, his gruff voice suddenly very heavy, "that I know what happens in my building. And that when you decide to take a flying leap into a pool of crap, it splatters on the people near you. You get me?"

"I get you," Jace whispered.

"Good. Then get the hell out."

Some weeks later, in a large but modest chapel built in the shadow of the ancient Ethereal Temple, an old man leaned back in his chair and sighed as he pondered that evening's address. Talqez was his name, and he was the August Questor of the Church of the Incarnate Soul. His skin was the rich brown of an old chestnut, his beard the gray-white of moss. In conjunction with his deep green robes of office, it had inspired his youngest students and parishioners to dub him Grandfather Tree. He'd never admonished them for it; in truth, he rather enjoyed the endearment.

For all his life Talqez had served his faith, first as a simple congregant and apprentice, then mage and Questor, until he finally occupied the highest ecclesiastical seat. And it was, quite frankly, getting almost impossible to give an original address anymore.

The August Questor waved a hand across the paper, watching the last paragraph fade and disappear. He turned aside, took a swig from the half-empty mug of mead (now warm) and a bite of the half-finished plate of venison (now cold) that sat on the desk's far side. Sighing, he returned to the paper and began again. He lifted no quill, used no ink, but simply ran a finger across the page and watched the words appear. A simple magic, yes, but a practice of one of the central tenets of his faith-that a worshipper of the Incarnate Soul never used manual labor, however minor, when he'd mastered a spell to do the job.

So focused on his sermon was he that he scarcely noted when the door to his rectory office opened behind him. "Have a seat, my Sibling," he offered by way of distracted greeting. "I'll be with you in a moment."

Nothing struck him as wrong at all until he heard the double-click of the door not only being shut, but locked.

Jace had laughed when they first described the Church of the Incarnate Soul to him, for their faith was perhaps the most peculiar he'd ever encountered. The members of the Church believed devoutly that mana was nothing less than divinity made manifest. To learn the arts of magic was to touch the power of gods, and should a mortal ever master all the secrets of mana-beyond the greatest archmage, to truly master it all-he would ascend to godhood himself. Indeed, they considered planeswalkers to stand on the verge of divinity, and prayed to them en masse, though they engaged in little if any direct interaction.

Jace had no idea how such a peculiar system of beliefs had arisen (though he suspected planeswalker interference many generations past), nor did he know how Tezzeret had learned of it in the first place. Indeed, the Church might have wound up just another sect to grow, to fade, and eventually to be forgotten by even the most vigilant historians, were it not for the rumors: the same rumors that brought Jace to their world now.

Due to their study of mana, the Church possessed-or at least was rumored to possess-spells and techniques for manipulating magic beyond the ken of other mages. Rumors and whispers maintained that they had items capable of storing enormous amounts of energy, of converting one type of mana to another; that they could draw mana from lands that seemed utterly exhausted, from worlds that had never known the touch of magic; even that they could manipulate how other people channeled mana, empowering their allies and rendering their enemies as helpless as any normal mortal.

How much of this might be true and how much pure nonsense, nobody could say with certainty. But they'd shown enough power in public, including the forging of devices like Paldor's manablade, that even those who scoffed at the Church's beliefs did so silently and made every effort not to rile them.

For some time, Tezzeret had contemplated various means of forcing the Church to ally with him, of suborning its leadership. It was, he insisted, a tool he must have, a resource that would allow the Infinite Consortium to stand up to and defeat anything their enemies-be they Bolas or anyone else-could throw at them.

And now he insisted that Jace Beleren acquire it for him. The artificer made no bones about the fact that this was, bar none, the most vital undertaking he'd ever assigned the mind-reader. And though Tezzeret didn't deign to say so, Jace knew he was being trusted with such a mission only because nobody else could do it-and he knew, as well, that it was his one and only chance to atone for his "failure" with the dragon Nicol Bolas.

So he found himself on yet another foreign world, wearing the green robe of an Incarnate Soul acolyte, trying to prepare himself to transform the mind of an elderly priest into something resembling a child's toy. Into something Tezzeret could command.

The office was a small room set above and to one side of the main sanctuary, where half a dozen parishioners had already arrived, clad in their best wool leggings and leather jerkins, for evening ritual. It contained only a small desk, a pair of rickety chairs (one of which was in use by the August Questor himself), a bookshelf that had overflowed into numerous stacks of books and papers, and a strange multihued circle upon the wall that Jace believed was the Church's greatest symbol.

The walls were thin, and the voices below had not yet grown loud. Jace hoped that whatever happened would happen quietly.

He found himself nodding as the old man offered him a seat- damn, but the man had a soothing voice! — and stepped inside, turning to lock the door behind him.

The August Questor was no fool, Jace gave him that; he turned instantly, at the sound of the bolt clicking into place.

"I don't believe you're one of my assembly," Talqez said blandly.

"Ah, no," Jace said, suddenly at a loss for exactly how to proceed.

"Then who…" The old priest's eyes grew suddenly wide, and to Jace's shock Talqez dropped to the floor, abasing himself at the newcomer's feet.

"Worldwalker!" the man proclaimed, and Jace almost felt sick at the reverence in his voice. "You do me great honor!"

"Get up," Jace snapped, for some reason angrier than he'd been in a long time. "Get up!"

The priest rose, but only to his knees, his eyes brimming with tears. "I never thought to meet one of you in my lifetime," he breathed, reaching out a hand as though to touch Jace, to confirm that he was real. "I never dreamed…" "How did you even know?" Jace asked, real curiosity in his voice. "We can't even always identify each other."

"What sort of priest would I be, if I did not know those who stood in the light of divinity itself? We know you-perhaps better than you know yourselves."

"Damn it, get up!" Jace demanded angrily. "I'm not a god, you old fool! I'm not even close!"

"You need not believe," Talqez said, smiling behind his beard. "It is true, all the same."

Jace felt his fists clench of their own accord. "I'm no god," he said again. "And you wouldn't call me one, if you knew why I was here."

"Oh, I know," the August Questor said calmly. "You would have been welcome, had you come among us openly. For you to feel the need to sneak in, clad as you are-you can only be here for me."

"Then let's get it done." Jace dropped into a crouch and called out, hands clutching at the air as though to yank it open and reach for the mana within. The air turned suddenly humid as a wet wind whipped through the chamber, spinning parchments around their feet. Bestial forms began to take shape, slowly, faintly, in the accumulating dew. Jace's eyes, even his fingernails, began to glow blinding blue.

He focused his mind into a stabbing blade, ready to cut into the August Questor's mind, to interrupt any spell he might cast before it could manifest. Indeed, Jace was ready for anything…

Except for the old man to simply spread his arms wide and close tight his eyes.

Jace knew that he shouldn't question, should take advantage of any opportunity no matter how strange. He swore he could hear Tezzeret shouting over one shoulder, Kallist coaxing over the other.

Seconds passed as Jace stood frozen with indecision, his minuscule soldiers buzzing and hissing around him.

Then, cursing, he raised a hand. The winds died as rapidly as they'd risen as Jace allowed some of the accumulating mana to fade back into the waters of the world. Still scowling, he crouched on the balls of his feet.

"August Questor?"

The old man opened his eyes, and his smile broadened in contentment. "You are a planeswalker," he said simply. "I don't know what good my life will do you, but if that's what you have come for, it is yours to take."

Jace felt his stomach turn and his hands shake. He replied, his voice strangely gentle and even sympathetic, "You misunderstand me, Questor. You're no use to us dead."

Only then did Talqez seem to understand. Only then did his face blanch, did his breath catch, did he seem to consider resistance rather than submission.

But by then he had waited too long, and Jace was already inside his mind.