J. Robert King - Artifact Cycle 3 - Time Streams

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TIME STREAMS

ARTIFACT CYCLE • BOOK III

J. Robert King

Prologue

Urza says he's sane. Perhaps he is. Measures of sanity

among planeswalkers are hard to come by. He has lived for

over three thousand years. He heals by merely willing it.

With a thought, he steps from world to world to world. His

very appearance is a matter of convenience, clothes and

even features projected by his mind. How can conventional

notions of sanity apply to a planeswalker?

Perhaps they cannot, but his madness began before he

was a planeswalker. Three thousand years ago, a mortal

Urza battled his mortal brother. Their sibling rivalry turned

fratricidal. So began the Brothers' War. In his rage to kill

Mishra, Urza enlisted the armies of the world, sank the isle

of Argoth, gutted the continent of Terisiare, and wiped

whole nations from the globe. He ushered in an ice age. In

repayment for all this madness, he became a planeswalker.

Urza says he regrets the destruction. True regret would

be a good sign.

It wasn't regret that later sent Urza on his own private

invasion of Phyrexia. It was revenge for his brother.

Somehow, Urza convinced himself he hadn't killed Mishra,

that the Phyrexian Gix had done it. True, Gix seduced

Mishra with promises of awesome power and in the end

transformed him into a monstrous amalgam of flesh and

artifice. But Urza was Mishra's slayer. Not in his mind,

though.

In the mind of madness, Urza blamed Gix and plotted

to get even. His motive was mad, and his invasion madder

still. Urza attacked Phyrexia—one planeswalker against

armies of demonic monstrosities. He lost, of course. He

Time Streams

couldn't defeat a whole world and was nearly torn to pieces

trying.

Tail between his legs, Urza retreated to Serra's Realm, a

place of angels and floating clouds. There he convalesced,

but he never truly recovered. Madness still haunted him,

and so did Phyrexia. Gix followed on his tail. No sooner

had Urza left Serra's Realm, thinking himself whole and

hale, than Gix and his demons arrived. A war began in

heaven. That place, like any other where Urza had chosen

to dwell, was decimated. Centuries later, it is still shrinking

in its long collapse.

When I point out these mad indiscretions, Urza shrugs.

He claims he regained his sanity after all that. He credits

his newfound perspective to Xantcha and Ratepe—"two

dear friends who sacrificed themselves to slay the demon

Gix, close the portal to Phyrexia, and save my life. To

them, I am forever grateful."

True gratitude would be a good sign, too.

Urza has never, in his three millennia of life, shown

true gratitude nor had a "dear friend." I have known him

for three decades. For two of those, I have worked side by

side with him at the academy we established here on

Tolaria. I am not his dear friend. No one is. Most of the

tutors and students at the academy don't even know his

real name, calling him Master Malzra. The last person who

was close enough to Urza to be a dear friend was his

brother, and everyone knows what happened to him.

No, Urza is incapable of regret and gratitude, of having

dear friends, not that there haven't been folk like Xantcha,

Ratepe, Serra, and I, who genuinely love the man and

would give our lives for him. But he seems incapable of

returning our affection.

That's not enough to declare him insane, of course. As I

said, measures of sanity among planeswalkers are hard to

J. Robert King

come by, but there is something mad about Urza's blithe

belief that Xantcha and Ratepe sacrificed themselves, that

Serra's Realm and Argoth sacrificed themselves, that

Mishra sacrificed himself.... It seems everyone and

everything Urza claims to care about gets destroyed. And

what does that mean for me, his newest dear friend?

—Barrin, Mage Master of Tolaria

Time Streams

Part I

SCHOOL OF TIME

J. Robert King

Chapter 1

Jhoira stood at the edge of her world. Behind her lay

the isle of Tolaria, its palm forests and lecture halls overrun

with magical prodigies and clockwork creatures. It was a

realm of ceaseless tests and pointless trials and worries and

work, lots of work.

Before her lay the blue ocean, the blue sky, and the

illimitable world. Clouds piled into empyrean mountain

ranges above the shimmering sea. White waves broke on

the ragged rocks below. Beyond the thin, brilliant line of

the horizon, the whole world waited. Her soul mate was out

there somewhere, she dreamed. Everything was out there—

her homeland, her parents, her Shivan tribe, her future.

Jhoira sighed and slouched down to sit on a sun-

warmed shoulder of sandstone. Sea winds sent her long

black hair dancing about her thin shoulders. Breezes

coursed, warm and familiar, through her white student

robes. She'd spent many hours in this sunny niche, her

refuge from the academy, but lately the hideaway brought

her as much sadness as joy.

She'd been at the academy for eight years now, learning

all she could of machines. A prodigy when she arrived,

Jhoira was now a formidable artificer. She was also a

woman, or at eighteen nearly so, and was weary of the

school and the kids, of brimstone and machine oil. She was

sick to death of artifice and illusion and wanted something

real—someone real.

Jhoira closed her eyes, drawing a deep breath of salty air

into her lungs. Her soul mate would be tall and bronze-

skinned, like the young Ghitu tribesmen back home—

Time Streams

keen-eyed and strong. He would be smart, yes, but not like

Teferi and the other boys who tried to get Jhoira's

attention through juvenile antics and unsubtle innuendoes.

He would be a man, and he would be mysterious. That was

most important of all. She could not be in love with a man

unless, at the core of his being, there was mystery.

She opened her eyes and shifted her weight, one sandal

sending up a puff of dust. "I'm a fool. There's not a man

like that in the world." Even if there were, she'd never get

to meet him, not while she was stuck on this blasted island.

* * * * *

Standing, the silver man awoke. He had moved before,

had walked and spoken before. He had occupied this

enormous body of metal, peered out of its silvery eyes, and

lifted things in its massive hands. Before it had been always

as if in a dream. Now he was awake. Now he was alive.

The laboratory around him was bright and clean.

Master Malzra liked it clean—clean but cluttered. One wall

held hundreds of sketches and refinements of sketches,

some in ink, some in lead, some in chalk. Another bristled

with specialized implements— metal lathes, beam saws,

injection molds, presses, rollers, bellows, drills. A third wall

bore racks of cogs and struts and other mechanical castings.

A fourth held ranks of assembled mechanisms. A fifth—

very few of the school's rooms were square—allowed egress

into the room. In the center of the space, a great black

forge rose. Its smokestack climbed up and away through the

dome above. A second-floor gallery ringed the fringes of

the room. Up in those balconies even now, young eyes

peered down on the result of Master Malzra's latest

experiment. They peered down on the silver man.

J. Robert King

The silver man peered back. He felt frightened,

awkward, shy. He wondered what they thought about

him—wondered and cared in a way he never had before.

Everything was like that. He had seen this laboratory many

times before, but he never would have used terms like clean

and cluttered and bright to describe it or the man who had

created it. Now the silver man perceived more than just

things. He perceived the organization of things, their

disposition, and what they implied about their creator. The

laboratory was a study in the mind of Master Malzra—

ancient, obsessed, brilliant, tireless, preoccupied, short-

sighted, grandiose....

Master Malzra, meanwhile, studied him. The man's gaze

was penetrating. Folds of aged skin drew up skeptically

beneath one eye. His nostrils flared, but he didn't seem to

breathe at all. One soot-blackened hand trembled slightly

as he raised it to scratch his ash-blond beard. He

swallowed, blinking—but with eyes like that, as hard and

sharp as diamonds, it seemed he didn't need to blink at all.

"Any noticeable change in the probe's energy profile,

Barrin?" Malzra asked over his shoulder.

It was a strange greeting. The silver man felt somewhat

offended.

"A reasonable enough question," came the response—

from Malzra's second, a master mage. Barrin stepped from

beside an injection mold. He wiped grit from his hands

with a white cloth. "Why don't you ask him?"

Malzra blinked again. "Ask whom?"

"Ask him," the mage repeated, quirking one corner of

his mouth. "The probe."

Malzra pursed his lips. He nodded. "Probe, I am Master

Malzra, your creator. I wish to know if you notice any

change in your energy profile."

Time Streams

"I remember who you are," responded the silver man.

His voice was deep and resonant in his metal form. "And I

notice a very definite change in my energy profile. I am

awake."

A sibilance of voices came from the balcony.

Malzra seemed almost to smile. "Ah, you are awake.

Good. As you are doubtless aware, we've made some

modifications to you, hoping to enhance your performance,

your intellect, and your capacity for social integration." He

ground his teeth and could not seem to come out with

anything else. Malzra glanced back to Barrin for help.

The mage—lean, middle-aged in a white work smock—

approached. He patted the silver man's shoulder. "Hello.

We're glad you've woken up. How do you feel?"

"Confused," the silver man heard himself say, then in a

voice of wonder, he went on. "Everything seems to have a

new dimension. I am filled with conflicting information."

Barrin asked, "Conflicting information?"

"Yes," replied the silver man. "I sense, for example, that

though Master Malzra is your superior in rank and age, he

often defers to you due to his social disinclinations."

"Social disinclinations?" Barrin prompted.

"He prefers the company of machines to that of

people," clarified the silver man.

Titters of humor came from the gallery. Malzra's

expression darkened as he glanced up.

The probe continued, "Even now, I perceive that my

observation, though accurate, displeases Master Malzra,

amuses the students, and embarrasses you."

Barrin flushed slightly. "True enough." He turned to

Malzra. "I could run some magical tests, but even without

them, it's clear the intellectual and emotional components

of the implant are functioning."

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®TIMESTREAMSARTIFACTCYCLE•BOOKIIIJ.RobertKingJ.RobertKing1PrologueUrzasayshe'ssane.Perhapsheis.Measuresofsanityamongplaneswalkersarehardtocomeby.Hehaslivedforoverthreethousandyears.Hehealsbymerelywillingit.Withathought,hestepsfromworldtoworldtoworld.Hisveryappearanceisamatterofconvenience,clothesand...

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