I shrugged with a great deal more nonchalance than I felt. “There’s nothing to tell. It was all lies. As you know. Every scrap and every shred. Lies.”
The curve of his upper lip twisted toward a definite sneer. “Are you sure?”
“I was there, Bolas. I broke into the Sanctum. I read the Codex-no. I opened the Codex. There was nothing to read. Nothing. The whole rectum-blistering book was blank.”
Bolas unwrapped his tail from his neck and stood, folding his wings and looking so happy that I knew whatever came next would be bad.
“So, Tezzie, nice story,” he said. “Entertaining, and enlightening! You deserve a special surprise, and here it is-the task you will perform for me. You’re going to find Crucius.”
“Oh, is that all?” I could not restrain a snort. “Brilliant. Is that your genius punch line? Where should I start looking? Up your ass?”
He laughed. “That’s what I like best about you, Tezzie. Repartee, gold-plated vocabulary, culture and education and refinement… Scratch that cultured Esper mage with one fingernail, and all you find underneath is just another filthy scrapper’s spawnling… What did they call you? Cave brats? You can take the boy out of Tidehollow, but…”
“Who I am-what I was-has never been a secret. I have nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing.”
“But you are anyway.” Bolas had his too-many-teeth smile going again. “Now: Crucius.”
“Haven’t you been paying attention? He’s not real-that whole Mad Sphinx business is just more of the Seekers’ lies.”
“How sure are you?”
“As sure as I-” The dragon’s hideously smug grin stopped me in mid-reply. “I don’t… I mean, what are you saying?”
“There. See? That’s the punch line.”
I could only stare in dumb incomprehension.
“You don’t get it? Joke’s on you, cave brat. Crucius is real. He is a sphinx, and he did create etherium. He’s a Planeswalker, just like us. Come on, Tezzie-did you really think everything the Seekers taught was a lie?”
“I…” I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say. “I suppose I did.”
“Now, that’s comedy-but wait, there’s more!” The dragon shrugged open his wings and spread them as if to say, Look around, dumbass. “Where do you think we are?”
“What do you mean?”
“This.” He reached over, and with a casual yank he broke loose a chunk of the rose-glowing crystal bigger than my two doubled fists. He tossed it to me.
The chunk of crystal was heavy, far denser than it looked… and in its depths, I could see little flaws, like tiny cracks spidering through the rock… and it was from these flaws that the glow came…
A sort of existential horror began to squeeze my throat. “I don’t understand…” I looked up at Bolas. “I don’t… What is this stuff?”
“Blood.”
I blinked. “Blood?”
“Petrified dragon blood,” Bolas said with a sort of savage satisfaction, as if he really had spent fifteen years putting together a prank just for me, and he was enjoying the payoff more than he’d ever dared hope. “This particular blood belonged to… Well, you don’t need to know, do you? There was a serious dragon-war thing going on here some few years back, as you can probably guess.”
“Jund,” I said. “We’re on Jund…”
“These days, we say we’re in Jund.”
“What?”
“You’ll find out. The important thing, here, is that dragon blood spilled in battle is different from what you’d get if, oh, you were somehow foolish enough to actually cut me, for example. It’s a stress hormone thing, as well as all manner of esoteric metabolites left over from powering our various magical abilities. And here in Jund-in the high mountains, in fact, probably something relating to some unique quality of mana here-dragon blood leaves this interesting residue. That you are holding in your hand. Right now.”
I could feel some of what made this crystal interesting-mana leaked from it, giving it the warmth and the light, but it was also absorbing mana from some unknown source… It was gaining power, not losing it…
I couldn’t raise my voice above a whisper. “What in the hells is it?”
“You’re the Giant Brain, aren’t you? So proud of your self-education. So tell me: what’s the etymology of the word sangrite?”
“It’s vedalken for bloodstone,” I said reflexively… Then, when I heard the words that had come from my lips, I found I could no longer breathe.
“You must be joking…” I managed.
“Oh, I certainly am. But I’m not lying. It’s all true. Those lies that you murdered all these people over? All true. Every single one. That’s what makes it funny.”
I had to sit down. “All… true…?”
“Except for the part about them actually having the stuff. Other than that…? Yes. All true. Every rectum- blistering word. How’s that for a prank?”
I could only stare.
Nicol Bolas, twenty-five-thousand-year-old dragon, Planeswalker, sometime god, destroyer of worlds, winked at me like a demented carnival barker. “How do you like me now?”
Before I could answer, he produced a globe of milky glass and cast it at my feet. It exploded with a binding flash… and when I could see again, I was in Tidehollow.
TEZZERET
I knew it was Tidehollow. I cannot mistake my birthplace for anywhere else in the Multiverse; the cavern slums below Vectis have a unique odor, compounded of mildew, rotten fish, feces, poverty, and despair. The air feels as if it’s been breathed already-as if the distinctive odor is actually the product of someone’s breath.
Everyone’s breath.
I stood exactly as I had in the crystal cave: two flesh arms, one large chunk of sangrite, and no clothing at all.
And it was raining.
There was no wind-there almost never was-and the permanent drizzle of condensate that is Tidehollow’s rain felt icy and tasted of mold. Thank Bolas for small favors; he’d put me in deep shadow on one of the twisty beast paths that serve for streets down here. He could just as easily have dropped me in the Grand Bazaar at noon. Or the Hegemon’s bedchamber. I took my reasonably surreptitious arrival as a sign that Bolas, so far, actually wanted me to pursue his preposterous mission.
Probably.
Dragons as a species tend to be of uncertain temper, and Bolas in particular is uniquely opaque. Guessing his intention in any given sphere is a hazardous undertaking. Even his practical jokes can blossom into deadly serious schemes, and what appear to be substantive projects can, as I had just learned, turn out to be elaborate pranks.
Though, I reminded myself, the fact that Bolas claimed the Seekers of Carmot had been a prank didn’t mean anything. With Bolas, nothing is ever wholly one thing or another.
He was playing some deeper game. He always plays some deeper game.
I suppose I am not entirely different. It struck me then, for example, that I should pay a visit to the Seekers, as I was in town anyway-which could be read as a flaw of sentiment, and perhaps it was. But that’s not all it was.
First: clothing.
