rafts between buildings, conversing on whatever topics might interest a tribe of humanoid rats. Farmers trudged back and forth, waist-deep in the muck, carrying sacks of harvested rice. Soldiers in boiled leather armor, carrying tae yari spears, wicked daggers, short recurved bows, and even the occasional katana, guarded the borders of the community. Some stood post on tree branches or platforms built high in the bamboo, while others traveled on high-walled skiffs.
The sun fell, the stars once again flickered, and the coy moon showed only a sliver of his face. The farmers retired for the night but the hunters emerged in droves, baiting traps and stalking the nocturnal beasts of the swamp. Lanterns cast an aura of light over the community that was barely enough for Jace and Baltrice, but probably more than sufficient for the rodent's eyes of the nezumi. And still the village refused to sleep.
'That's it,' Jace said when it became clear that night was no more an ally to them than the day had been. 'This is beyond stupid. We can't do anything without more information. Wait here.' Without pausing for acknowledgment, he slithered forward through the muck, crawling on knees and elbows. He gave brief thought to cloaking himself in the image of something that belonged here, but decided that appearing as an alligator or a great constrictor would probably get him perforated by an overzealous hunter, and he wasn't familiar enough with Kamigawa to know what other forms might be equally appropriate but less appetizing. Come to think of it, he didn't even know if Kamigawa had alligators or constrictors. He chose, instead, simply to wrap the shadows around him, making himself invisible even to the senses of the ratmen.
He whispered as he drew near, drawing on the lore of an ancient spell he rarely had opportunity to practice, one that would solve the language problem entirely. Many mages sought such magic, but they came far more easily to planeswalkers; something about the Spark, their connection to the world beyond all worlds, opened their minds more readily to the magic of meaning.
His clumsy, filthy course took him just near enough to the outermost patrol of soldiers to hear their words. At first they were unintelligible, a language he didn't know spoken in voices that were far from human. But the words passed deep into his mind, filtered through his spell, and grew clear. He still heard the Kamigawa tongue, but the meaning of the words sprang to mind half an instant after the sounds reached his ears, as though he remembered definitions he'd never actually learned.
'… meat,' one of the guards was saying as Jace's mind finally tuned in to the language. 'It's been a while since I've had any good salamander. The day patrols always take the best cuts.'
Jace briefly congratulated himself on his wisdom in not choosing an animal as a disguise, and settled in to listen.
'Not sure I learned much of use, though,' he told Baltrice roughly an hour later, 'except to confirm what we were already afraid of. The village pretty much never sleeps. I have no idea how we're supposed to get to the chieftain without being discovered. My illusions are good, but I'm not sure I can fool an entire community.'
'He lied to us, Beleren. The filthy little rat-prince lied to us.'
Jace nodded. 'I'd noticed that, yes.'
Baltrice's eyes began to glow a faint red, her lip to curl in angry disdain. 'We're being set up, used as some nezumi's pawns. And by someone who's either an idiot or who deeply believes that we are. I mean, the 'intelligence' he provided isn't even close to accurate.'
Again Jace nodded. 'We should go, then. Report back to Tezzeret, let him decide-'
'Oh, I don't think so,' she proclaimed, her expression abruptly flipping into a horrid grin. 'We both know what Tezzeret thinks of betrayal, don't we, Beleren?'
Covered head to toe in clinging mud and bits of decayed plant matter, a spirit of the swamp rising to vent its wrath, Baltrice stood. Flames danced openly in her eyes, her entire body quivered with a sudden strain.
'Baltrice? Baltrice, what are you doing?'
And then, though she spoke not a word in response, Jace had his answer.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The sky above the swamp brightened. Almost unnoticeable at first, through the umbrella of heavy branches and dangling moss, the strange light swiftly grew. A second moon appeared in the heavens, red and crackling and angry; and then it was no moon at all, but an artificial dawn.
Even as the nezumi peered upward from their posts, or emerged blinking from their huts, the ball of fire plummeted from the sky and burst on the village outskirts. Entire houses evaporated at a stroke, and the flames fanned outward, carried over the stagnant waters on the back of burning winds.
Cypress, bamboo, and nezumi pelts ignited in a terrible conflagration-but the trees and the stalks didn't scream. Smoke rose between the surviving branches, blotting out the stars and spreading the choking, sickening scent of cooked flesh.
Jace screamed at Baltrice to stop, but his voice was lost in the crackling of the fire and the shrieks of dying nezumi. The smoke burned his eyes, and despite the blazing heat, he found himself shivering with a sudden horror.
One murder. One. That he could live with. To that, he had long ago resigned himself. But this…
Unseen behind Baltrice, who exulted in the release of her most devastating spells, Jace raised his hands as though to wrap them physically around Baltrice's essence. He held her mind in those fists, and for an instant, Jace knew he could kill.
Still she was casting. Even as the carnage from the fireball spread, her muscles tensed once more, her lips parted with something like a screaming grunt. His skin tingled, and he recognized the feel of something forcing its way into the world from outside.
It erupted from the swamp at the heart of the fireball's impact, a volcano of fire and fury, and the shallow water around it vanished in a hiss of steam. Humanoid only by the most generous use of the term, it towered above the bamboo stalks, above even some of the trees. It glared about it with eyes of fire, lashed about with hands of the same, for that was all it was. Fire: raw, primal, elemental.
The crackle of its flames was the cackling of Baltrice as it advanced on the village, an inexorable titan of agony and death. Turning their attentions away from the burning huts, the soldiers of the nezumi clan formed a defensive line before the oncoming terror, but few had any illusions that they could do more than die with honor.
'Baltrice!' The dam blocking the flood of Jace's horror finally burst. 'Gods and demons, woman, what are you doing? There's supposed to be a tribe left for us to treat with!'
She seemed past understanding. Her arms were spread as she soaked in the heat of the inferno she had ignited. Her eyes gleamed red with fury and fire.
Even so, she calmly turned her head to face him. 'Relax, Beleren. I have a plan.'
'Really? How's that working out for you?'
She smiled, and it actually looked to be the expression of a rational human being, rather than the guise of pyromaniacal glee she'd worn a moment before. 'Why don't you take a look?'
Jace looked, and he had to admit she might have a point. For all its initial fury, the fireball had obliterated only a handful of huts, and most of the others it had ignited could probably be saved. And the elemental itself, though tearing through the ranks of nezumi soldiers as though they truly were nothing but rats, seemed uninterested in advancing into the village proper.
'This isn't about wiping out the tribe, Beleren. Just making sure the prince understands the price of lying to the Consortium, understands the power of those he's tried to manipulate. He'll be a lot more honest with us from now on, wouldn't you think?'
Jace felt sick. 'How many did you burn to death,
Baltrice? Three dozen? Four?'
This time, she truly didn't hear him, or chose not to respond. All she said was, 'We won't have a better opportunity than this. Come on; assuming anything the little rat told us is true, the chieftain's hut is the one in the center.'
Not knowing what else to do-or else unwilling to do it-Jace followed. At least, he thought morbidly, staring up at a handful of burning trees that had become little more than the torches of titans, we won't have any trouble
