'Well, tough. You're going, but I don't think you'll much care for the company.'
'You mean Baltrice?' Jace asked smugly. She glowered at him; Paldor only shook his head.
'No. I mean that you're not going to be dealing with, uh, people. We need you two to exterminate the shogun of a nezumi tribe.'
'Nezumi?' Jace asked.
'Ratmen,' Baltrice sneered. 'Vile little creatures.'
'I'm sure they'd be just as disgusted by us.' Or at least you.
'If you two are done,' Paldor warned, leaning over his desk. Then, when he was sure they were listening, 'We've got nothing against the tribe, the, uh… Damn it, I can't pronounce it without spraining my tongue. I'll give it to you in writing before you go.
'It just so happens,' he continued, 'that this particular tribe lives in a mana-rich swamp. Tezzeret wants access to it for the Kamigawa cell, but their chieftain won't deal.
'His heir, however, is willing to deal just fine.'
Land? The Consortium was killing over land, now? When did that happen? For just an instant, Jace's stomach churned once more. He turned his attention inward and banished his qualms like a flawed summoning. He'd made his choice long ago, and it was far too late to make any other.
'What's the point?' he asked instead. 'I mean, I can't imagine the tribe's got eyes over the entire swamp at any given time. It'd be more convenient to have their permission, but it's hardly necessary, is it?'
It was Baltrice, oddly, who answered. 'Some regions of Kamigawa aren't exactly what you'd call friendly to foreign mages, Beleren. There are-things living in the land. Spirits, demons… The locals call them kami. You piss them off, drawing mana's the least of your worries.'
'All right. And?'
'And,' Paldor said, 'the tribal prince swears to us that his shaman's traditions of spirit-binding are sufficient to keep the kami from interfering with us while we establish our links with the land.'
Jace felt his lip curling. 'That's awfully convenient.'
'It is. That's why you're going along. Baltrice's job is to make sure the shogun goes away; yours is to make sure his son is telling us the truth.'
One final objection, then. 'So why not have the Kamigawa cell deal with this? Why do we have to go all that way?'
The lieutenant shrugged. 'Plausible deniability. The tribe's had official dealings with the Kamigawa Consortium. Whereas the two of you-'
'Won't be recognized if we're captured and chopped into rat food,' Jace finished for him.
'Something like that. Go get ready; I'll have details on the village for you when you get back.'
Several hours to plan, a night to sleep, another hour to gather what supplies they needed, and then Jace and Baltrice met in a featureless stone chamber, deep in the bowels of the complex. Jace was clad in loose trousers that felt as though they would fall off at any moment, belted by a blue sash tied about his waist, and a wrap-around tunic hanging partly open at the chest. Over it he wore his favored cloak; that, at least, wouldn't particularly stand out where they were going. Baltrice wore a gown of deep red, which hid her preferred leathers beneath. Both had dyed their hair black, but there was little they could do about their skin, which was notably lighter than the norm for
Kamigawa natives. Fortunately, the route they'd mapped out didn't pass through any human communities, so they shouldn't have to bear up under close examination.
'Ready?' she asked him, the usual venom gone from her voice. She and Jace both knew full well the importance of what was to come.
'I'm ready,' he confirmed, 'but I've never been there before.'
She nodded. 'I'll leave you a trail through the aether if I can.'
Jace took a deep breath. 'Then let's go.' She turned without another word and left to find her own solitude, leaving him to his concentrations.
He never knew how it looked to any other walker, how it felt, how it rippled through mind, body, soul, rigid past, uncertain future. He knew only that his own experience was as unique to him as the deepest meanings of his forgotten dreams.
To Jace, it began as a moment of sheer exhaustion, so overwhelming as to make death as welcome as sleep. His vision blacked out, his body trembled, wracked with vertigo as his conscious and subconscious minds merged, losing himself among a parade of personalities. He struggled to channel mana from across the Multiverse, compressing it into a point of singularity beyond perception, a tiny mote of metaphysical tinder.
And then in a single moment of exultation far greater than any physical pleasure, Jace Beleren was once more Jace Beleren; and Jace Beleren was once more a planes-walker. His Spark burned within his soul, and ignited the mana-tinder he had gathered.
The world erupted in an invisible flame, melting away before him until all that remained was a shimmering curtain of glowing smoke. With a single hand, he brushed the curtain aside, took a step, into elsewhere.
Jace Beleren was adrift in the Blind Eternities. The tides of creation washed over him, and he did not fall. He leaned without apprehension into the winds that blew from nothingness, spreading tiny particles of probability in their wake. He trod upon the surface of memory, climbed the slopes of tomorrows that had already passed. Toxic colors circled hungrily about him, winging their way through clouds of song, but they did not disturb his trek. Before his arrival and after his passing, they knew nothing but hue and hunger, wind and want-but for the endless moments he trod beneath them, they knew fear.
Jace's eyes flickered every which way, so far as 'way' had any meaning here. He sensed the shifts in terrain, and stepped across them carefully lest he fall into the roiling chaos that bubbled away beneath reality. Obstacles appeared before him-objects and animals and ideas-and he moved around them or slapped them down before they could warp his body or infiltrate his mind and consume his thoughts.
But always he kept a portion of his attention cast forward and downward. Ahead he saw a flickering road, a ribbon of fire that stretched into the distance. At its end was a burning husk, a dead tree that crackled and flamed but was never consumed, and he knew it was the Spark of the woman he followed. He wondered, briefly, what his own looked like to her, then swiftly gave up conscious thought and simply followed.
For a time he could not possibly measure, he walked in her path. It was a tenuous lifeline he followed, the burning line of footsteps she left behind, footprints that wavered and shifted and-a time or two-even rose and floated away. Tenuous, but it would suffice.
And finally he stood before a curtain of smoke, much as the one through which he'd stepped away from Ravnica, though the glow here tended more toward silver. Stretching forth his hand, Jace parted the curtain, and took one final step.
He collapsed to his hands and knees, gasping, and found himself crouched in several inches of standing water, sinking slightly into the muddy bottom. Around him, greenery stretched as far as he could see, and it took him only a moment to realize that he found himself in the middle of a rice paddy.
Baltrice sat cross-legged some few yards away, having had the better fortune to appear on one of the bulwarks of earth that rose between the paddies. Almost directly behind her rose the first of a range of foothills that ran toward the base of a nearby mountain.
'Welcome to Kamigawa,' she told him a bit breathlessly.
'Delighted to be here.'
It wasn't entirely sarcasm. From Tezzeret, Jace had heard tales of the shogunate realms of Kamigawa. Fascinated, he'd long wished to see the many-terraced temples and ornate palaces, walk the streets and immerse himself in the musical intonation of the native tongue.
None of which he'd be doing today, since his assignment took him nowhere near any of Kamigawa's great cities.
Jace climbed from the murky water, flopped down on the nearest spot of dry land, and just breathed. There were few magics more tiring than walking. He could have risen immediately if he'd had to, but given the opportunity, he preferred to gather his strength. So he lay still and took a moment to examine his surroundings.
Baltrice, he had to admit, had chosen their arrival point wisely. The mounts and bulwarks of earth weren't
