Chapter Text
"Always there are legends and stories of the powers wielded by certain mages during the Pact Wars, in particular the elementalists. These distant heroes - or villains, depending on the tale-teller - roused whole forests to battle, brought the burning rock from beneath the earth, pulled the very lightning from the sky. Most today say these are only tales of the Guilds to lend themselves power, for we know of no such magic today, and why would such gifts disappear from our populace? This is said with the air of a closing argument; I say that it is the key question, and it has a simple answer. It is because of the Guild-Pact. We conceive of the Pact as a check on the great powers of Ravnnika, and indeed it is; but we must consider not only the intent but also the true nature of this wide-ranging enchantment. The Pact warps chance to ensure that no Guild will dominate the others. It is a work meant to maintain the status quo, and therefore according to its very own rules it must curtail the exceptional, the disruptive, the truly revolutionary, whether it comes in the form of ideas or persons. The enforcement of its directives requires the taming of powers so strong as to let one mage alter the course of an entire war. Of course it is difficult to prove such a supposition, but the theory is sound. Should a day come when the Pact is weakened, or even broken, Ravnnika might find itself in a great deal of turmoil indeed - not only from the warring Guilds, but from the forces of change that the Pact has resisted."
-- Feodora Nitar, The Guild-Pact Considered: Essays on the Occasion of the Bimillennial
"Yes, but what does that mean?"
Instructor Agacio sighed in pointed patience. "The divine mysteries of Tanit are exactly that, child. Mysteries. Meant for contemplation by the mortal mind."
"I am contemplating them." The boy frowned, and the shreds of mist he had conjured swirled around him. "That's why I want to know what they mean."
"You will understand as you grow," Agacio assured him.
"I want to understand now."
Agacio clicked his tongue in mock admiration. "Yes, and why not? The secrets of the Mother of Rains are entirely fit for a boy of eight." His pupil's mouth set in a defiant frown, and he continued in a gentler tone. "You are blessed by Tanit, and her mysteries shall be opened to you. In due time," he added, a touch more exasperated than perhaps a temple instructor should be. Under the circumstances, he thought, Tanit would likely forgive him.
"But I don't--"
"It's time for you to return home," said Agacio. "You are far past the end of your lessons."
"But I--"
"There are others who require my tutelage today," chastised the instructor. "Are your questions more important than theirs?"
It was on the tip of the boy's tongue to retort yes, Agacio could tell; his dark eyes narrowed, and for a moment the wisps of cloud thickened and grew heavy. But perhaps he was learning after all, because he swallowed the words and said, "Thank you, Instructor Agacio."
"Practice your mists," said Agacio, standing. "Blessings flow upon you." The boy mumbled something that could have been blessings flow upon you, snatched up the leather satchel that never left his side, and darted from the room before Agacio had finished shaking out his long blue robes.
The instructor heaved in a deep breath and stretched, lifting his hands to the sky. The short stool he had remembered to bring today had been far more comfortable than the hard tile of the practice room, but it still hadn't been enough. Once again he'd ended up nearly half an hour past time answering the child's questions, and once again all his attempts at being a proper tutor had only earned him a kink in his back.
Agacio closed his eyes, let out his breath, centered himself around the wellspring of energy flowing up from his core. Tangled wisps of mana flickered in the air of the practice room where his errant pupil had forgotten them. "Tanit of the sky, from whom all blessings flow," he began in a low murmur. He chanted the ritual words with the ease of long practice, their familiar rhythm guiding his hands as he gathered up the scraps of energy. The scent of water and earth bloomed around him. Mist condensed into droplets and drizzled down across calm mosaic faces, Tanit of the Rains, Tanit of the Open Waters, Tanit of the Gentle Sun.
When he murmured the last syllable of the psalm the strands of mana melded, joined, pooled at last in his cupped palms. Agacio carried the liquid light to the granite statue at the far end of the training room and poured it carefully over the goddess' serene visage. His inner eye watched it mingle with the water that sprang ceaseless from Tanit's stone head and fell from her outstretched hands.
"Lady of the Clouds, give me patience," he murmured to his goddess as the mana slipped through his fingers. His back twinged and his pious expression flickered. "Better yet, give it to the Zarek boy."
* * *
Thunder rumbled overhead.
"Ral? Is that you?"
His father's voice echoed from the kitchen as he closed the door, trying to time it to the grumbling sky. Krokt. Not quiet enough. Now his father knew he was home, and he wouldn't be able to escape upstairs for another hour at least.
Instead Ral Zarek went the few steps down the short hallway that took him to the kitchen door. He tapped, unconsciously, at the little framed psalm mounted inside the doorway. "It's me."
His father looked up from the onion he was dicing. "Late again," he said.
"Temple lessons went long."
"You mean you kept Instructor Agacio long," said his father. Ral didn't bother to answer, only pulled a chair out from the table that took up one end of the narrow kitchen. His leather satchel went on his lap and he held it with both hands. His baby brother Jaromir looked up from the wooden rattle he was shoving around the tray of his high-chair long enough to burble nonsensically at him. The little bronze icon of Tanit that occupied the ledge above the sink watched him with blank, gentle eyes.
His father slid the cubes of chopped onion from his knife and said, "Ral, you need to listen to your tutor. Instructor Agacio is one of the finest rain mages in the Eighth District Temple. You could learn so much from him."
"He doesn't want to teach me," said Ral.
"Nonsense. You're a smart boy, and a gifted one. You'll be an Instructor yourself one day. Even Mother Sonja says so."
"Then why won't he tell me anything useful?"
"Instructor Agacio is a wise and holy man, and he is giving you the gift of his knowledge," said his father, firmer this time. "If you understood more than him, you would be the teacher."
"He doesn't know anything! He just says things that sound important!"
"Ral!" scolded his father. "Don't speak that way about your elders."
Something bright and hot went crack inside Ral's chest. "Everyone tells me to listen to him!" he yelled. "Why doesn't anyone ever listen to me!?"
The knife went still on the cutting block. Jaromir started to cry. "Go upstairs," said his father in an even tone. "Your mother and I will discuss your lessons when she comes home."
"Fine," spat Ral. He stomped up the stairs, hoping his father could hear it, and slammed the door to his own room as loudly as he could.
Ral's room was just about long enough for him to walk all the way around his bed, and just about wide enough to accommodate the shelves that held his clothes. Well, were intended to hold his clothes. Mostly the floor held his clothes and the shelves held much more interesting things: shining rocks, misshapen insects, lengths of wire and strange glass, flowers that had managed to find purchase between the Eighth District's endless cobblestones.
He upended his battered little satchel over a clear patch on the top shelf and let the twist of copper fall out. At least he had gotten that right today. If he hadn't had the copper to ground him instead of something less important, something less calming, he would have certainly snapped at Instructor Agacio rather than his father, and then he would be in much more trouble than a late supper. A small package wrapped in faded cloth went in its place. He snapped the leather satchel shut and shouldered it again, this time buckling the crisscrossing straps to hold it in place.
His room was small, the ceiling was low, and a stovepipe somewhere vented a little too close to the floorboards and made everything he owned smell of coal. But he wouldn't have traded it for any other room in this building, because it had a window. One glorious, beckoning square of escape. The window looked out onto an alley, of course, and onto the solid brick wall of the next townhouse in the row, close enough to touch with his outstretched fingers. But the drainpipe went by it, and he could get up and over and onto the narrow arch that braced this building against its neighbors, and from there it was a simple climb towards the distant roof, if one were careful not to look down. By now Ral hardly even needed to look at the stone in front of him. It never bothered him, anyway, the drop. He wasn't going to fall. Why worry?
Some two stories up he paused to catch his breath and sat for a moment with his back against the brick, listening. Back below him, through the kitchen window, he could hear the slice of his father's knife through the rest of the onion. On the floor across from him dishes clattered and smoke wafted from an open vent, smelling of noodles and soft cheese. In the scattered boxes beneath their windowsills the stems of horseradish and dill stretched desperately upwards in search of the sun. Jaromir was still crying; young children were screaming, or maybe laughing; steam hissed in one of the stout metal pipes that ran up alongside his perch. The clouds growled overhead and Ral's heart surged at the sight of the sky. He resumed his climb, more quickly now, making straight for the roof without pause.
When Ral Zarek reached the roof and broke out at last into the clear sky, he stood a full ten stories above what passed for the ground on Ravnica, and his first breath of open air felt like tearing away a band that had been cinched tight around his chest. The sky above him opened up into glorious chaos. He had been watching it all day, waiting, hoping, and he had gotten his wish. Long lines of heaped clouds plumed up high and straight as the columns on an Azorius consulate, flaring out at the top, looking like they would tumble over in the next moment. Clear white had given way to a thousand shades of grey smeared aloft by the wind. The back of his neck prickled; a cold gust raised goosebumps on his arms.
Anger curdled his stomach, blurred his thoughts; formless, furious, impotent rage, and here in this sanctuary he gave in to it at last. It surged up through his veins, fiery and bright. He clenched his fists hard enough that his nails bit into his palms, all that energy focused into shuddering muscles, into a soundless snarl of defiance.
How dare they!? How dare any of them treat him like this - like a fool, like a burden, like a problem to be solved - when he was--! He was...
His lungs burned and he heaved in a long breath. The fire burnt itself out, leaving behind only shivering ash in the ache of his muscles. He thumped down, suddenly exhausted, onto the faded tarpaper of the roof; then after a moment pulled in his legs and sat tailor-fashion, following the new thought that had flared in his mind.
Most of what Instructor Agacio told him was obviously useless, but he had found a few facts of interest hidden among the cryptic talk of divinities. Ral considered the hymn that had been the subject of this afternoon's abortive lesson. It had bored him to tears even as it frustrated him, but even so some small fraction of it had piqued his interest, and he had learned to trust that intuition. It had led him to gold hidden in the temple's ambiguous muck before, and it might again.
The Instructor had begun his "education" with a series of breathing and meditation exercises, and Ral had discovered that with some modifications - mostly excising the prayers he was meant to be focusing on - they were eminently suitable for clearing his mind. He applied one of them now, breathing in and drawing mana at the same time, tracing the flow of light in through his lungs and out through his blood, branching and branching again into every cell of himself. Smoking rage still churned in him but he wrapped it up and set it aside for now, swallowed that heat back down into his core. Focused on his target.
The hymn itself was little more than a list of silly names for the goddess. The overwrought adjectives had already slipped his mind. But as he quietly recounted the melody he saw again the pattern that had captured his interest. There was something there in the rhythm, in the harmonic tones. He mulled it over, but nothing came to him. Yet now that he knew there was an answer, he knew too that he would figure it out eventually. He could wait.
Instead he opened his eyes and unbuckled the satchel, drawing out the parcel and folding back the cloth to reveal a small pair of binoculars. The "brass" on the barrel was already peeling, despite the fact that he'd only been given them a few months ago, and he had already had to reseat one of the large lenses at the end. But they were his, no one else's, and that was all that mattered.
He stood up on the flat roof, ignoring the gusty winds that plucked at his clothing, and raised the binoculars to his eyes. The distant horizon sprang into focus, and all the stretch between him and it, the jostling field of steeples and arches and bridges and buildings. The unfinished dome of an Orzhov cathedral rose about a mile to his west. He zoomed in on it. The workers had abandoned the site at the storm's approach, and huge, dingy cloths flapped loose from their anchors and billowed high above the skeleton of steel, the half-completed brickwork they were meant to protect. Steam and smoke and stranger things floated up into the sky. The city hummed around him, ragged, beautiful, eternal Ravnica.
Another ripple of low thunder ran through the clouds and the hymn jumped unexpectedly to the forefront of Ral's mind. He lowered the binoculars, frowning, repeating its measured chant in his mind. Without any conscious decision he began to shape mana to the pattern that rang beneath the empty words. Such a simple thing, he saw it now, and yet it repeated through so many variations, interacting with itself, building up--
The sky cracked above him sharp as a whip, tearing through his concentration, and the wisps of mana snarled. He grabbed after them, scrambling to pull the spell back together, but they dissipated into the aether. He let them go with a twisted frown, but the disgruntled expression did not sit long on his face. He couldn't stay upset. Not under a sky like this. Anything so human washed away in the elemental brilliance of the storm that rose above him, that broke over Ravnica as it had since the world had been nothing but open fields.
"Since the Temple of Tanit actually meant anything," he said aloud, confident that the wind would steal away his words. He had learned quickly enough not to say such things where adults could hear. But up here it was only him and the sky and the storm, and he could say whatever he wanted to. A few cold drops tapped him on the shoulders. Damn. Rain, just a scattering, but wet clothes would surely give him away. He'd have to go back down. Unless--
He closed his eyes and drew thin coils from the light that burned in his mind, in his heart. A faint blue dome spiraled out from him and shunted the falling rain aside till he stood beneath a bowl of clear air. Ral opened his eyes and breathed out, setting the final seal on the spell, then caught himself in an unexpected grin. Pride glowed warm in his chest. Agacio hadn't taught him that one; he'd figured it out from watching the older mages at their exercises, and it appeared - the dome held steady now even without his attention - that he had gotten it right.
He raised the binoculars again and swept them this time across the sky, mapping the million different variations in the seething clouds. Here was one that looked like cotton shredded to rags; here was another sleek and dark as oil poured onto glass, slipped between two massive thunderheads like the assassin's knife; this one here was caught in some rising wind, pulled out into strange spirals.
Something snapped up above, sharper and more focused than the thunder, and Ral tracked across the belly of the storm till he spotted the glow. A flaring silhouette burnt through the clouds, sinking down, tearing through the mist. Surprised excitement sparked in his stomach and fizzed along his limbs. He knew that fire. Only one beast cast it.
The dragon was coming.
Drakes and their larger cousins sometimes dared the skies above the eighth, coasting on the high and rising thermals. But the dragon was something else altogether. Wide-winged, blazing red, it glided far above the stain of the streets. Its bulk wouldn't fit within the binoculars' field of view and parts of it appeared and disappeared as it moved: the long tail, the powerful talons, the broad and flaring crest and finely scaled head. Sunlight would have scattered away from those scales in shards of ruby and sapphire, but beneath the darkness of the storm it glowed within its own nimbus of golden fire.
Ral tracked it across the sky, already certain of its destination. The dragon came from many directions, but when it flew towards Ravnica's center it always made for the same place: a high tower that just pierced the horizon, a structure his binoculars told him stood a shade too tall to be built of stone and metal alone. Some magic must float it up there. That seemed right, for a dragon's home.
He lowered the binoculars and watched the fiery shape soar overhead. His mother told him that the dragon's name was Niv-Mizzet, that he was fifteen thousand years old and lived in the Tenth District and ruled a whole Guild - the whole Guild, not just a hall or a district. She said she'd even seen him once - though not up close - on one of the special days when the Conclave called her in to the Temple Garden. Just the idea of that amazed him, even if his mother hadn't sounded so happy when she talked about it.
Niv-Mizzet's distant form jolted upwards, the wide wings flaring up and back, catching a draft - and light lanced down from the clouds above, a brilliant spear of lightning that splashed across his back, blazed from wingtip to wingtip, lit his crest with electric fire. The dragon reared his head, parted his immense jaws, let loose a roar that drowned in the thunder long before it reached Ral; but he knew the sound anyway, could sing it out himself, the blistering light of joy, of freedom--
The view ahead of Ral shivered and all his glory flashed to ice. No. Oh, no. Not today, not when he was already in trouble; he couldn't - but the air before him wavered heedless of his pleas, pulsed and thinning, and through it
another city, another sky, this one pierced by delicate spiraling towers, filigree structures half building and half art, attended by swarms of flying--
He staggered back, nearly dropping the binoculars, clutching at his head. Pain burst through it like the thunder above. He dropped to his knees in the grime of the rooftop, squeezing his eyes shut, but the vision remained. The brick beneath him wanted to sway, to grow transparent. He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and black colors burst behind his eyelids, blotting his sight--
and then the pain was gone, and the vision, and the sense that anything strange at all had hung for an instant in the air before him. Ral blinked, letting his sight clear. Far ahead and beyond the golden flame that was Niv-Mizzet sunk into the grey clouds, and was gone.
A sonorous bong rang out across the rooftops as the Orzhov cathedral began to chime the hours. Ral counted: nineteen. His rain spell had scattered like the windblown clouds and he shivered in the damp chill. How long had he been up here? Too long, Ral silently answered his own question. Mother will be home soon, if she isn't already. He'd better be back in his room by then, dry and presenting a convincing image of confined suffering. He stood carefully and inspected his clothing for any obvious damage that would earn him a reprimand. The binoculars had a long scratch down the side of one barrel now and he was going to have to fix the lens again. He smiled at them anyway as he packed them back in his satchel, buckled it closed for the climb down. Really, how could he be upset? It was a stormy day and he had seen the dragon. Everything else came second.
* * *
Rain drummed against the windowpanes and ran through cracks in the brickwork. The sound echoed down the stovepipe into the kitchen, filling the silence between his parents' words. Ral kept his head down, staring at the plate in front of him.
"When do you have to go out?" his mother asked his father.
"Not till twenty-two at least," his father answered. "We can't shut down the water main before then, and there's no point in starting until it's dry."
Ral didn't have to look up to know that his mother was frowning, creasing the lines worn into the corners of her eyes. "I wish you didn't have to stay out so late."
"It's not Golgari territory."
"Anywhere underground is Golgari territory."
"It'll be all right. The League is sending someone."
His mother scoffed. "You mean the League is paying some Boros washout to stand in the tunnel with a blunted blade."
"It will be all right, Natalka. That's not my concern at the moment." A rustle of cloth told him his father had shifted his gaze. Ral kept his eyes fixed resolutely on the wood in front of him. On the other side of the table Jaromir banged his little spoon against his chair.
"Ral, darling," said his mother softly. "The Temple Instructors said you had a difficult day today."
Ral didn't say anything, fighting to keep his expression blank. The rain beat out an irregular tattoo on the metal of the pipes. He counted the drops.
"He believes he has nothing left to learn from them," said his father.
That was wrong enough to sting him into action. "I never said that!"
"What did you mean, then?" asked his mother calmly.
"Just...that they won't tell me anything. Instructor Agacio just wants me to nod and say the prayers and maybe try a Breath discipline. I'm ready for Crown, I can do it. I can do so much more."
"Of course you can," said his mother. "You're going to be a very powerful mage one day, like your uncle Laslò and cousin Julia. You'll have a home of your own that takes up a whole building, and all the Guilds will compete for your services. But even the Honored Mages were students once."
"I bet you didn't have to deal with a stupid Instructor," muttered Ral.
"I had many tutors, and some of them were not nearly so nice as Agacio," said his mother. She ruffled his hair and he tried to scowl. "My dear little thundercloud, one day you will know so much."
I want to know now, he fumed.