"Aye," answered Tahngarth and the other gunners.

"Sisay, bring us in at the treetops, fast and low. Strafe the d.a.m.ned bugs."

"I think you enjoy this too much," Sisay replied, adding a belated, "Commander."

Weatherlight flew down a marshy hollow. Fronds slapped the belly of the ship. Weatherlight's roar bounced from water and wood.

"Even with bats' ears and flies' eyes, they won't be able to tell where we are," Gerrard a.s.sured himself.

His hands were sweaty on the fire controls. Fear p.r.i.c.kled the hairs on the back of his neck. There was something not right about this. He'd made a miscalculation-was thinking too much like a human, not a monster. Gerrard flicked a glance over one shoulder to Tahngarth. The bull-man returned his gaze, eyes rimmed with uncertainty. He sensed it too.

Clenching his jaw, Gerrard faced forward. "All right, just watch for the guns. Take out the guns, and we'll be fine."

Weatherlight flew from the wetlands and up the rising fields where Crovax's family had once planted their crops. A darker crop rose now-countless Phyrexians encamped for war. They were arrayed in orderly file, toy soldiers on a brown carpet. In the center of the army, a column of beasts marched-not toward battle but toward the plantation house.

"Hold your fire!" Gerrard called. "Watch for the guns!"

Though Weatherlight roared above the Phyrexians, none looked upward.

The ship topped the long rise and reached the broad tablelands where the ruins rested. Rampant vines draped palm and cypress-plenty of cover to hide bombards. No guns fired, though. In the central lane leading to the plantation house, Phyrexians marched in an orderly column.

"What is this?" Tahngarth asked.

Gerrard only shook his head.

At last the ship flew over the shattered mansion itself. Every room lay open to the sky. The ghosts of past grandeur lingered among burned beams and ruined furnishings. The Phyrexian parade entered the plantation house and snaked its way to a specific room-a small room. It was untouched by the ravages that had destroyed the rest, or it had been reconstructed-the room of a young man. There, in that doorway, Phyrexians one by one bowed to the floor in homage.

There was no time to see more. Weatherlight shot past the roofless home. Gerrard and the other gunners still watched for ground-to-air fire, but none rose.

In dread realization, Gerrard murmured, "It's not a command center. It's a holy place, a temple to the boy who grew up there. It's a temple to Crovax." A drop of sweat rolled chillingly down Gerrard's spine.

How high had Crovax risen in the Phyrexian hierarchy?

"That's why we're in Urborg," Gerrard said to himself. "Crovax is here." Into the speaking tube, he said, "Bring us around, Sisay. Let's go in with guns blazing. It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel. We'll kill every last bug. We'll capture this isle. It'll become our beachhead for rousting the Phyrexians from all of Urborg."

Even as he spoke, Sisay brought the ship around in a tight arc. All along the rails, cannons hummed hotly, ready for annihilation. The jitters were gone from gunners' hands. There was only the grim set of jaws and the lightless eyes of men who knew they were about to commit slaughter.

Gerrard's gun spoke first. It lashed out a red hand that burned away a whole platoon of Phyrexians. Tahngarth's cannon ripped through fifty more. Death stabbed down on the bowed heads and shuffling claws. Phyrexians died like roaches.

Above the roar of his gun, Tahngarth shouted, "Why don't they even run?"

Gerrard shook his head. "They cannot run. Crovax has commanded their worship."

Chapter 3.

He Has Commanded Their Worship.

Tsabo Tavoc, conqueror of Benalia and queen of Koilos, stood on a volcano in Rath. In moments, she would return to Dominaria. She had almost owned that world. By right, it would have been hers-except for one warty, green-skinned wretch. Squee was his name. Squee had given Gerrard a sword. With it, Gerrard had wounded Tsabo Tavoc and destroyed the portal at Koilos and escaped. Her prize had escaped, and Tsabo Tavoc had limped back to Phyrexia. It had been a long road back, a road paved with torment and humiliation.

First, Tsabo Tavoc had gone to the fourth sphere of Phyrexia for the none-too-tender ministrations of the vat priests. They st.i.tched closed the laceration in her gut. She commanded them to use silk, but they used leather thongs instead. Even vat priests could ignore her orders.

Sewn together like an old sack, Tsabo Tavoc went to the second sphere. There Phyrexian cogwrights replaced the five legs ripped from her thorax. The replacements were crude things, rusty and inelegant. As to the injuries to her spider abdomen, the cogwrights merely sawed away the infected half and welded a steel plate over it. Even cogwrights had dominion over her.

Yawgmoth was displeased.

Next, Tsabo Tavoc received an ominous a.s.signment: Report to Envincar Crovax in the Stronghold, and give account of your failings.

On grating legs, Tsabo Tavoc ambled across the sooty wastes of the second sphere. She reached a portal to Rath. The gate guards-a pair of mogg goblins-dared to mock her shorn abdomen. One of her good legs thrust into the mouth of the first mogg, impaling him from tooth to tail. The other beast leaped on her-a miscalculation. With human hands, she gripped his neck and drove her nails through skin and muscle and windpipe until the flesh seemed only wet rope.

She was still Tsabo Tavoc. She would not be mocked by weevils. This was only a setback. Tsabo Tavoc would report to Crovax, would bear his wrath, and would rise again, one day to kill him.

She was still Tsabo Tavoc.

Painted in mogg blood, Tsabo Tavoc had pa.s.sed through the portal to a volcanic hillside on Rath.

The ground beneath her feet was red and rolling. It was not lava but flowstone. Each speck of it was a minute machine clinging to those around it. As a whole, flowstone responded to the mental suggestions of the Evincar of Rath-Crovax. He shaped the world. The hills and plains around her bore the mad geography of his mind. They changed always, some- times slowly, sometimes violently, but always Rath changed- until now.

Even as she stood there, Rath overlaid itself on Dominaria. The flowstone world phased into being atop the real one. It brought with it the races of Rath, the Phyrexian armies arrayed across its surface, and even Tsabo Tavoc herself. She arrived on Dominaria by riding the Radii overlay, freight on a barge.

Tsabo Tavoc breathed the air of Urborg. It stank of death- not clean, metallic death but the fetor of decaying bodies.

"Of course Crovax brought his Stronghold here," she told herself. "Necrophile." She shuddered with distaste. How much more fun it was to torture the living than to play with the dead.

Nearby on the volcano's side lay a violent crack. Brimstone steam wafted from that s.p.a.ce. Dominarians would have thought this a pa.s.sage into h.e.l.l. They would have been right. Crovax and his Stronghold lay in the heart of the dormant volcano.

Tsabo Tavoc ambled to the rough crack and climbed within. Through slanting shafts and narrow corners she went. The tortuous route would have killed a lesser creature, but Tsabo Tavoc had the grace of all arachnids. Even light abandoned her, but she could see in absolute dark. The spider woman clambered for miles into deep rock. At last, a new, red glow began ahead. It lit the sulfuric crack, and hot winds rolled up around Tsabo Tavoc.

She emerged in an enormous hollow, perhaps a dozen miles in diameter. When this volcano had been active, the cavern would have been filled with a mountain of lava. Now the vast subterranean chamber held only the Stronghold.

Despite herself, Tsabo Tavoc paused to stare in awe.

The Stronghold was ma.s.sive-a mile tall and three miles in diameter. It floated in the center of the volcanic cavern and seemed the elaborate pelvis of some t.i.tanic predatory beast. It had been grown more than built. Walls and windows and floors all were formed of flowstone, which aped the properties of countless materials. In the superstructure of the city, the flow-stone had the consistency of bone. Ivory b.u.t.tresses and arches connected processes and concavities. Horns jutted from each tower and rail. Slender ribs extended in walkways. Within the complex, the flowstone took the form of metal. Stacked tiers of balconies and inner chambers rose into the high vault above the city. Armored mechanisms dangled beneath.

For all its size and elaboration, the Stronghold performed one simple function: converting volcanic and planar energy into flowstone. The Stronghold had created flowstone and channeled it out the side of the volcano, creating Rath. Now that the plane was complete, the ancient flow of power was stilled. The Stronghold awaited its ultimate task.

Tsabo Tavoc nimbly picked her way around the interior of the cavern. There was only one bridge onto the Stronghold, and even a spider woman could not spin another way across. To reach the bridge, Tsabo Tavoc had to climb atop the mogg goblin warrens that lined the inner walls of the cavern. It was yet another indignity. The beasts emptied their slops out the windows of their warrens, leaving long slick trails.

They would pay, these goblins-they and everyone else.

Tsabo Tavoc crawled from stony sills down onto the main bridge. Her metallic legs chimed quietly on the rocky expanse. More moggs lined the structure. Brutish and mindless, they stood at what amounted to attention for a hunchbacked species. Tsabo Tavoc strode down the gauntlet of them. Her legs itched to knock them over the rail to their deaths. The beasts let her be. They could smell the blood of comrades on her.

Besides, Tsabo Tavoc was expected.

She reached the main gate, called simply Portcullis. It had once borne the stylized emblem of Volrath's face. Crovax hadn't removed his predecessor's likeness. He only added to it a set of grinning shark's teeth. At Tsabo Tavoc's approach, the great gears began to roll, and the gargantuan gate swung slowly upward. This was more like the reception she had expected.

She knew the way to the evincar's throne room. Tsabo Tavoc had memorized the route, intending to ascend to the throne. Through corridors that seemed vesicles in a giant's heart, Tsabo Tavoc wound inward. Windows gave views into the hydroponics gardens beyond. Pits dropped to laboratories and dungeons. Il-Vec and il-Dal humans moved through the pa.s.sages. Some were guards in scale mail. Others were slaves in leather coveralls. None sought to impede the march of the spider woman.

She arrived. The throne room was huge. Once it had been the convocation hall in the center of the structure, but Volrath had claimed the site for himself. Crovax had then added his own distinct flavor.

The columns that lined either wall had been twisted by Crovax's mind. Above, the vault dripped stalact.i.tes, some of which held impaled bodies. Tsabo Tavoc pursed her lips, calculating how much muscle it would take to hurl a body that high. A few were relatively fresh, sending down a pattering red rain. Around these gory puddles crowded dogs the size of ponies. Hackled and muscled, the vampire hounds lapped blood past enormous fangs. They kept the slate-black floor clean and protected the huge throne, which was fashioned of obsidian, its back carved with blindly staring faces and motifs of death.

All about the room, il-Vec guards stood like hypertrophied statues. Among them was the court mage, Ertai. Spine-implanted and metal-trussed, the man had become a whipping boy. Constant desperation rimmed his red eyes. He stood there, statue still, even though his master was nowhere to be seen.

Tsabo Tavoc paused, expecting to be announced. The guards paid her no heed. Even Ertai averted his eyes. This was the most galling of all. Tsabo Tavoc strode toward the nearest guard, intent on slaying him. She was stopped short by a sound from behind the throne-words and laughter.

"-nice to know you have finally noticed, Father," came a mellifluous voice.

Another speaker replied, "No, indeed, Son. It is nice of you to forgive our long ignorance of your greatness."

"Don't even start to apologize, Father. I would not expect imperfect creatures such as you and Mother to understand perfection."

A shrill, false laugh answered, the mocking sound of a man pretending to be a woman. "Well said, Son! We should have made your room a shrine much sooner."

"Yes, you should have." More laughing shrieks. "You've seen how popular it is. Tens of thousands of troops line up to do homage."

Tsabo Tavoc edged out around the throne. Beyond, on a small dais, sat a dainty table spread with a white-lace tablecloth. A silver kettle sent tea-scented steam into the air. Three cups and saucers sat decorously before three chairs of carved ebony. Two of those chairs held human skeletons, crudely wired together. The bones were smoke blackened, some half-burned away, some missing altogether. The skulls were the most obvious absentees.

They rested on the hands of the man who sat in the third chair-Crovax.

The Evincar of Rath had once been a small man. That was before Yawgmoth had transformed him. Now Crovax had a powerful chest and a torso like a bull's. Under black scale armor, huge arms flexed, easily able to hurl a man fifty feet upward to die on a stalact.i.te. His legs were equally broad, like coiled springs. Crovax's head jutted, round and close cropped, from a metallic collar. The worst change of all to him, though, were his teeth-row on row of triangular, jag-edged teeth. Crovax's jaws could distend, allowing him to remove heads with those teeth. He had eyes to match, the soulless eyes of a shark.

Evincar Crovax did not seem to notice Tsabo Tavoc's arrival. Instead, he continued his conversation with the skull puppets he held on his hands. Gravely serious, he stared at his tea guests.

"When I was growing up, I thought you'd never understand me. If I'd known all it took was your murder and immolation, I would have done it much sooner."

His father's skull boomed a belly laugh. His mother shrieked her merriment.

Tsabo Tavoc interrupted. "Evincar Crovax, the Ineffable has sent me to give report."

Blinking, Crovax looked up at Tsabo Tavoc. He did not seem to see her. "And you are?"

Red anger showed on her face. "I am Tsabo Tavoc."

With a nod, Crovax seemed to recall. "Oh, yes. One of the field commanders-"

"I am your second-in-command," Tsabo Tavoc corrected.

Crovax shook his head, a little jiggling motion. "That cannot be. I do not have a second-in-command." Setting down the skulls, he stood. "My second-in-command was destroyed at Koilos."

"Those rumors are false," Tsabo Tavoc hissed. She was not accustomed to dealing with superiors and hadn't even now convinced herself she dealt with one. "I am Tsabo Tavoc. I survived Koilos."

"That cannot be," he repeated. "Ten thousand scuta, twenty thousand bloodstocks, thirty thousand troopers did not survive-"

"But I did."

"One hundred ten dragon engines, six witch engines, forty gargantua, twenty trench worms-"

Tsabo Tavoc loomed up before him. "But I did."

"One hundred heavy ordnance, two hundred field ordnance, five hundred slashers-"

"But I did!" she raged, lunging for him.

Her legs would not move. The floor was not black slate but flowstone. Crovax controlled it. It had latched onto her legs. She could not rip them free.

Crovax continued as though she hadn't interrupted. "All those troops lost, all those machines ... gone. Worse still, the permanent portal, which had joined Phyrexia and Dominaria for nine thousand years-it was lost too. And Gerrard Capashen, whom you were charged to gain for Yawgmoth? All this lost, and yet you survive ?"

A shudder of fear moved through Tsabo Tavoc. She was used to fear, to feeling it in others, but it had been decades since she had felt it for herself.

Crovax walked up to stand before her. His head did not even rise to meet her thorax. Despite all the doubt that rumpled his brow, Crovax grinned.

"Still, I can't deny what my eyes tell me. Here you are. Second-in-command Tsabo Tavoc."

"Yes," she replied tersely.

"You are not as grand as tales have said. I heard silken skin." He gestured at the leather thongs that held together her belly wound. "This looks more like burlap. It's crude work. We'll have to fix that."

He reached up, grasped the wound in a powerful grip, and ripped it out-thongs, laceration, skin, and muscle. His fingers clutched the hunk of flesh. Glistening-oil dribbled onto the floor. Vampire hounds loped up to lick it away.

Shrieking in pain and rage, Tsabo Tavoc struggled to pull her legs free. She would kill this b.a.s.t.a.r.d.... In a rage, she lunged down to grab Crovax with her human arms.

Crovax casually lifted his bloodied fist and backhanded her face.

The force of the blow was incredible. Tsabo Tavoc would have tumbled across the floor if her legs hadn't been rooted. She reeled. Glistening-oil coursed down her head.

Crovax meanwhile delicately balanced the meaty gobbet on the nose of one of his vampire hounds. The huge canine dutifully waited, oil sliding into its nostrils, until Crovax nodded. Fangy jaws snapped, and the flesh was gone down the beast's throat.

Petting the creature, Crovax turned his attention back to the dizzy spider woman. He gazed gravely at her thorax.

"And shoddy workmanship, these legs. We'll have to fix that as well."

He gripped the first of her new legs and hauled against the joint. Metal cracked. Wires snapped. Sparks flew. A ball sucked free from a fleshy socket. The leg fell to ground.

Tsabo Tavoc tried to grab him again.

Crovax merely caught her arms and ripped them off.

The pain was exquisite. She had forgotten what her own agony felt like.

One by one, he broke her other legs free, all eight of them. With a crash, she fell to the floor. She writhed amid her own limbs. Oil covered her.

Vampire hounds converged. Their eager tongues lapped at her.