still covered by his sleeve, Samor could only listen in horror as the cockatrice tried to rise again and again, its beak clacking together and its wings beating at the air.
Worse still, he knew he was too close. Samor felt its evil breath, and a renewed temptation to look at the creature pounded at his mind. Stunned at the thought of a traitor within the Circle, his confidence lost in the only spell he knew for the creature, the Collector bowed to the unbearable pressure, flung out his arm, and dared to look directly at the beast.
He had expected an awful, ugly thing. He had expected to be repulsed. But instead, Samor was instantly mesmerized. He had never seen such beautiful colors, as if an entire rainbow had been captured in the beast's tail feathers and scales. As the capricious mountain light fell upon the creature, its jewel-like pinions changed hue, matching the brilliance of the sun as it broke through the clouds, fading as the shadows passed quickly over. The cockatrice flailed about, terrible and majestic as it fought the magical sleep, its yellow spurs gouging up great clods of the scorched earth, its clawed wings scraping raggedly across the shattered rocks where it had made its furrow. Samor quickly found his voice again, but could not look away before the beast turned one cruel red eye upon him and caught his stare, holding the Collector's gaze by the power of pure fear.
Samor's heart quelled within him. 'Fear not,' the Book had said. He fought to obey. But Porros had come too early; Samor had not had time to make the words his own, put them in his heart, where they would afford him protection. Spellbound, all Samor
could see was the intelligence and cunning in that molten ruby eye, how the creature had learned him, learned the song; how it hated him and any other living thing that would dare challenge its territory.
Samor's legs gave way beneath him and he dropped to his knees. The beast twisted its beak into the ground in rage, unable to bring his head around so that both eyes could bear down on the Collector and turn him into stone where he knelt. Shaking, his death mirrored in that sleep-dulled, crimson eye, Samor knew surely that his spell would never work again.
In the strange silence, the other mages had begun to stir. The novice nearest Samor crawled over to see to his unmoving master. Samor felt the boy's eyes upon him, but he could not respond, could not tear his eyes from the deadly stare. The novice thought fast. As quietly and deftly as he could, the boy removed his heavy cloak and whirled it before Samor's dazzled eyes, instantly breaking the power of the creature's fell glance. The beast hissed and wrenched itself up on its wings, its spurs snatching and tearing the boy to shreds as Samor fell backward, fighting the paralyzing fear, caught by the sound of the boy's screams, frantically searching his mind for another song.
There was nothing, nothing.
Seconds passed and the beast began to turn around, throwing off the sleep. In the panic, all Samor could remember was a little minor key ley, which he had just used to help Lesta dig her gardens. It wasn't deadly, it wasn't heroic, and it could easily fail to produce an opening large enough to contain the creature, leaving Samor completely without recourse. But it was all he had. The mage rose to his feet, clapped his hands over his eyes in a supreme act of will, and gave all of his heart to the little planting song.
In desperation, his voice rose to a strength he had never known. The stones in one of his rings became fired with the power they gathered from the land, and their facets glowed as brilliantly as the monster's plumage. Before he had finished, the mountainside, already laid bare by the beast, began to split and crack open, at last swallowing the shrieking, flapping cockatrice. The Circle's several mages joined the Collector again for the last three notes, their counterpoint raising crystal from the burned earth and sealing it over the cockatrice in a shining door. The mountain itself shuddered and compacted as the Collector held the final note, and this time truly, at last, the beast was heard no more.
A moment or two passed in profound silence. Samor looked around him, the waves of the last song's power and the shifting of the mountain reverberating in his sensitive ears, pounding in his bones, making him nearly deaf. But at least he could count that Almaaz, and Sumifa, and all the lands and their peoples beyond, seemed safe again.
His short battle had been expensive.
Along with most of the elven villagers and an entire legion of Urza's finest lancers, four members of the senior Circle lay dead, some hand in hand, their eyes open and their bodies sundered or turned to stone. Some could not be found at all.
His ears ringing and sore, his heart withered by the power of the beast's feargaze, the Collector climbed through smoldering, shattered maples and bone-white birches, up the ruined terraces of the elves' ch'mina crop for his last duties. He found and saluted Urza's chief mage, then walked back to what remained of his beloved Circle. After the last song, they had wisely scattered, losing themselves with the regular mages among the wounded and dying, caring for their last or future needs.
'Samor-' Aswi the Sender surreptitiously caught his sleeve as he passed by. 'It's Praden… I think he was caught by a spur while the beast struggled on the ground.'
In the center of the largest crater, Samor's best friend, Praden the Sower, lay clutching a large, smooth, ovoid stone, his hands clamped to the oddly veined rock as though he had been trying to crush it. All the blood had been drained from Praden's corpse; an ugly gash about the width of Samor's hand opened his neck.
The Collector wept as he lifted the pale body and laid it gently with the others, and again, the bitter tears came when Aswi brought the body of the young novice. Samor could not remember his name.
'Samor, the chrysalis spell… you must lead us.' Aswi beckoned to him.
'I cannot…' said Samor.
'You must, Samor. You are still our master,' Aswi quietly declared. 'We will follow you. Just begin.'
They entombed them, then, all of the mages of Mishra wearily cooperating to hollow the earth and gently place the broken bodies in the newly made chambers. In the quiet song, no longer able to hold his emotions back, Samor, who had never before known hesitation or compromise, began to shake violently as he was thoroughly consumed by clawing, all-consuming fear.
Throughout the peace rites, the warring brothers looked on, angry still, all the more so since neither could claim the day, Urza from his distant post at the top of the mountain, Mishra upon his charger on the smoking battlefield.
'Well, is it dead?' said Mishra, walking the snorting steed over to Samor, who was the last left at the new tomb.
'No. These… these are dead.' He held out a hand to the mound before him. 'The beast only sleeps. It is planted like a seed. Contained. Were the wall to shatter, the cockatrice would certainly rise and fly again, probably to nest. Look at the pattern of its ruin.' Samor pointed to the rings of desolation cut into the mountainside and hung his head in shame, trying to find the words that would bring Mishra's forgiveness.
Before he could utter a one of them, Mishra began to laugh and clapped him hard on the back.
'Well done, Samor, well done. Very clever of you not to kill such a fine and deadly creature outright. Good use of resources. Since you have been away from court, you seem to have grown much in power-as if you shared the strength of a hundred or more mages. I wonder why that is? Especially since all Almaazan magical orders have been banned under my rule. You wouldn't have any knowledge of such things, now would you?'
Samor looked away from Mishra's burning black eyes, certain that the Artificer would see every member of the Circle in his own.
'Of course you wouldn't,' Mishra continued. 'Samor, I have an idea. It won't take a mage of your capabilities much trouble to arrange. Compose for me a spell that will free this beast. An undoing, if you will. And add a song to declare my triumph. Something simple, memorable, almost humble,' Mishra said, smiling evilly. 'And I want my brother to know this- that I will leam to control what he could only summon. Samor, let us put a great image, a sort of clock is what I see, upon the mountainside to remind him that the Beast of the Hours sleeps only as long as I choose not to wake it.' He reached down and picked up a handful of the blackened sand and let it drain slowly between his fingers. 'I will be the incarnation of Caelus Nin. Urza's time is in my hand.' Mishra smiled.
Horrified, the image of the beast's eye overwhelming in his mind, the Collector instantly thought of his daughter, Claria, laughing with her parrots, of his lovely, bright-eyed wife, of his unsuspecting neighbors in Sumifa, of the faces he had seen and voices he had heard on his journeys. And what of his collection, all that knowledge and art? Of the fallen men and women to whom he had just sung the sleep of transformation? Of Praden, who had died during the short moments Samor had wrestled with the cockatrice's deadly stare? The nameless novice? What desolation would they rise to find, come the time of the Great Awakening? He could no
