Agents of Artifice (Magic The Gathering: Planeswalker Book 1) by Ari Marmell

Author:Ari Marmell [Marmell, Ari]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780786955763
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2010-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

The snow gave only slightly beneath the artificer’s feet, scarcely slowing him, as though he were partly held aloft by some invisible platform. Swiftly he drew even with Jace, and for a moment he appeared disinclined to stop. Only when he saw the younger mage already struggling to rise did he reach out a metallic hand and haul him to his feet.

“Can you run?” Tezzeret demanded of him.

“I—”

“Run or die.” Jace ran.

Arrows fell around them, thick as sleet, and Jace stumbled frequently in the deep snows, slowing their progress. One of the razor-edged missiles sliced through the flesh of Tezzeret’s left arm, sending a spray of blood to solidify swiftly on the freezing earth. The artificer grunted, scooped a fistful of snow in his etherium hand and clamped it over the shallow wound to stanch the blood, but otherwise seemed scarcely to notice.

Yet the sleet was their ally, as was the howling wind, for they caused most of the native hunters’ bows to aim wide, protecting the fugitives until Tezzeret gathered his wits sufficiently to cast an illusion of shifting white above them, blending, at least from a distance, with the fallen snow.

He dashed around a sharp bend in the canyon wall, bodily yanking a panting Jace after him. From his pouch he yanked a crystal sphere, the same he’d used to spy on Jace during Baltrice’s test. Holding it to his eye, sharpening his vision far beyond what might qualify as human, he peered back around the corner.

Distance meant nothing; the falling snow ceased to blur his sight. He saw several dozen men scaling the chasm walls like spiders, some not even bothering with ropes to aid their descent. Each sported a heavy beard of red or brown or blond, and each was clad in leathers and furs belonging to no animal Tezzeret had ever seen alive. Axes and scramaseaxes hung from their waists, short but powerful bows across their backs. Barbarians, then, no doubt hired or pressed into service from native tribes. Of Bolas, he could detect no sign, save for a trace of laughter still hovering upon the frigid winds.

But what worried him most were not the barbarians themselves, though their numbers were daunting indeed. Rather, it was a pair of men already at the base of the cliff, each of whom wore a heavy cloak of red-dyed fur atop his armor. How they got there, Tezzeret didn’t know, but they pulled a two-wheeled wagon made of old, cracked wood. Atop it stood a box, perhaps five feet on a side, sculpted entirely of black iron and covered with simple runes that steamed in the icy air.

Even as Tezzeret found himself wondering what might lurk in that cage of steel and spell, one of the bearers leaned in toward the metal, ran a hand over the carven symbols. Starting from that rune, the metal warped, bending and peeling away, a grotesque flower of blackened iron. And the thing within emerged.

A single limb struck the ice and snow, like the front paw of a stalking hound, yet this was no paw but a humanoid hand.

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