Scars of Mirrodin.

The Quest for Karn.

by Robert Wintermute.

Finest of all the things I have left is the light of the sun, Next to that the brilliant stars and the face of the moon, Cuc.u.mbers in their season, too, and apples and pears.

(trans. Bernard Knox)

-Praxilla of Sicyon

They scuffed over a small rise from the south, with the blinding rays of the Sky Tyrant in their eyes and the heat of the other four suns burning at their backs. Underfoot, the hills themselves creaked and popped as their metal sides expanded in the hot morning sunlight. Venser of Urborg pulled off his helmet and surveyed the rusted horizon before casting a wary eye at the two beings walking ahead of him. One towered over the other and both dragged their feet over the tarnished hill.

"I would have come on my own if you'd only asked," Venser said.

The large one stopped and turned. In the almost blinding light of the five suns the iron spikes growing from his shoulders looked dull and tired. But not his teeth, as a sly smile spread over his face.

"Would you really have come, artificer?"

"Venser is my name."

The muscular vulshok shrugged as if to show just what he thought of a name like Venser Venser.

"And yes, I would have come," Venser said.

"Well, this is my world and my people," Koth the vulshok grunted, bringing his foot down on the metal floor. "I do not have the luxury of pleasantries." He looked out over the jagged razor of mountains jutting against the horizon. "We should arrive at my village by nightfall," he said. "Be ready for meat and drink served by those with fire in their veins. We will find the one who will know what has become of the situation."

Venser watched the vulshok walk away.

"I can hardly wait," he said.

As the rest of the day pa.s.sed, the suns switched places in the sky and a far range of dun-colored, symmetrical mountains grew closer. Their chipped tips of jagged metal thrust at uniform angles, and the round clouds that ma.s.sed around their serrated tops reflected the rosy brilliance of lava in the valleys below. The vulshok stopped walking.

"Why have we stopped?" Venser asked. "We should keep walking. I haven't had enough walking."

The third companion turned away and Venser thought he heard a stifled laugh from under her hood.

"Kuldotha, the great mother of thunder and fire nears," Koth said.

"What? In there?" Venser said, pointing to the valleys between the lumbering mountains.

The vulshok turned slowly to look at the young artificer. "You have fear in your heart?" Koth said. It was more of a statement than a question, but Venser held Koth's gaze.

"No," Venser said. "I was simply saying that canyons are perfect for ambush."

"And you are a leader now, as well as a prodigy?" Koth said. "Elspeth, what do you think?"

The other figure raised her hands and pulled down her hood.

"I think he is right," she said, adjusting the greatsword strapped at her hip. "You brought him here against his will. The least you can do is listen to him," she said.

"Well," Koth said, fl.u.s.tered. "There is no other way to Kuldotha but through the canyons of the Oxidda Chain."

Elspeth squinted at the near mountains.

"That is true," Venser said.

"How would you know truth in the Oxidda Chain?"

"I have been to this plane of yours." Venser slipped his helmet back on his sweaty head. Through its eye slit he watched as Koth scowled at him. "A clockwork planet," the artificer said. "Karn brought me here." He stopped short. The geomancer was watching him intently and when Venser did not continue speaking, Koth's eyes widened.

"Karn?" Koth said.

"An old friend," Venser said, looking away.

Koth's mouth tightened. "I know n.o.body by that name," Koth said.

"Do you know every being on Mirrodin?" Venser said, still looking away. He showed an uncharacteristic tightness around his eyes and mouth. Koth's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"We are here to see if the stories I have heard are true," Koth said. "If they are, we will fight. This is why we brought you here. You will perform."

A wry smile appeared on Venser's face. "You do your world no good by threatening those you wish to recruit. You attack me, suffocate me, and expect me to do as you instruct. You are mad if you-"

A squeaking sound was blowing on the wind, and Venser c.o.c.ked his head to the side taking the sound in. How far, three leagues or just over the next hill? How far, three leagues or just over the next hill? It was hard to judge distance in this steely place...without vegetation sound could echo and travel great distances un.o.bstructed. But Koth appeared not to have heard the sound. He was absolutely red in the face and taking shallow breaths as he stared at Venser. It was hard to judge distance in this steely place...without vegetation sound could echo and travel great distances un.o.bstructed. But Koth appeared not to have heard the sound. He was absolutely red in the face and taking shallow breaths as he stared at Venser.

"Are you well?" Venser said.

"It is you you who will follow me and do what who will follow me and do what I I suggest on suggest on my my plane." plane."

"I think it may be time to separate the boys from the women," Elspeth interrupted, her own head c.o.c.ked, listening to the sound that had caught Venser's attention.

Venser followed the white-clad woman's gaze. Far off, over the heat-bent air, a form was clearly visible. As they watched, it lumbered and jerked closer on four sprawled legs. As they watched, the thing suddenly came to an abrupt stop and its legs pulled into the main body. A tube came out of the top and turned until it was pointed at the three of them. No sooner than the tube had pointed at them, the creature hopped to its feet again and began scurrying toward them at an alarming speed. They watched it come.

"Is it a machine?" Elspeth said.

"A biomechanical ent.i.ty, I would think," Venser said.

"A biomechanical ent.i.ty," biomechanical ent.i.ty," Koth said in a mocking tone. Koth said in a mocking tone.

"What do you think it is?" Venser said.

"You are both fools," Koth said. "It is an artifact creature."

"A biomechanical ent.i.ty, as I said."

The leveler sped over the dun-colored hill toward them. As it came nearer they could gauge its size better: larger than an average human and double as wide, with a dome-shaped turret on its top that spun with large, spiked metal b.a.l.l.s affixed on chains. Its old, jagged metal sides squeaked as it glided across the s.p.a.ce between them on small legs.

Venser stepped forward and took a deep breath. When he exhaled, the beds of his fingernails glowed a dull blue. Elspeth drew her sword and Koth fell into a squat. The creature shot directly at Venser, who was farther to the side than the others. Venser put out his hand. As fast as it was moving, the machine came to an abrupt and jarring stop at Venser's touch, and the b.a.l.l.s spinning around its turreted top jerked free and spun away to clatter over the metal hill. The machine stood still.

"Well, let's take a look," Venser said.

He rapped twice on the side of the creature and the rivets holding one of its panels in place popped free. Venser whispered a word under his breath and the panel snapped to his palm as though magnetized. He placed the panel carefully at his feet. Then, to Elspeth's surprise, he pushed his head into the hole and began taking deep breaths.

Koth glanced at Elspeth. Venser suddenly jerked his head out of the hole.

"Fascinating and good."

"What is fascinating?" Koth said.

"This creature, of course. It has never had any synaptic taint...," Venser said.

Elspeth slipped her blade back in its sheath.

"That is is good news," Koth said. good news," Koth said.

Venser waited. "That means no taint of, uh, infection."

"Superior," Elspeth said. "One machine we don't have to send to the sc.r.a.p heap."

She sounded confident and angry, Venser thought, but there was something else in her tone-some slight tremble in the upper ranges that did not sound confident in the slightest.

Koth knocked carefully on the artifact's thick side.

"What do we do with this?"

"We will leave it and my spell will eventually wear off and this marvel will continue on its way."

"Why not dismantle it now so we do not have to fight it later?" Koth said.

"Because it has done nothing to us," Venser said.

"Except try to destroy us."

"Let us keep walking," Elspeth said, ignoring them both. "This heat tires me greatly."

They kept walking. Soon the mountains they'd seen in the distance were upon them. Their dull iron sides shot up at right angles never seen in nature...at least never seen in any kind of nature that Venser had spent time in.

"The Oxidda Chain," Koth said reverently.

The Chain seemed to be composed of corroded, notched slab iron run through with winding conduit tubing. Dark caves and holes abounded in the tight valleys between the peaks. Unaccountably, walkways of metal welded to the sides of the mountains wound away through the valleys. Venser smelled oxidation in the air and something else...rotting meat maybe. Nothing moved. No tree limbs stirred in the hot breeze. There were no birds. No sand blew around the cornice of a hill. The view appeared as still and remote as a painted picture.

They pieced their way through the jagged debris that had corroded and rolled off the higher peaks and came to rest deep in the valley. Eventually they reached the base of one of the raised walkways and clambered up its side. The walkway's metal gangplanks were buffed to a dull sheen, but many were oxidized through and derelict.

"Enough of this," Koth said. He put his two sizable hands before him and made a seizing motion, as if to grab one of the huge iron boulders lying in the bed of the valley. To Venser's momentary shock, three of the chunks rose off the ground and floated toward them, guided by Koth's glowing hands. The chunks stopped, one in front of each of the Planeswalkers. Koth stepped on his, and soon Elspeth and Venser were on theirs. Koth's boulder began to float out over the valley floor, a bit higher than the stature of a man. Venser was next. When it was Elspeth's turn, she shot her arms out to her sides to steady herself as her chunk glided forward.

The heat seemed to increase as they moved deeper and between the riven spires of the Oxidda Chain. There was no noise save the wind skittering the loose metal flakes along the valley floor.

Koth had to maintain a lifting motion as the slabs flew. For a moment Venser considered teasing the geomancer for the pose, but then thought better of it and looked out over the raw landscape. He thought about how it had appeared when he visited all that time ago. The same. Just as harsh and, to his eyes, unforgiving. He remembered Karn's pride in Mirrodin. He would go into great detail explaining how many days it had taken him to create a certain ridge, or sculpt a peak with just the right sheer. As Venser looked around at the tortured aspect of the Oxidda Chain's brown and orange mountains, he wondered...where the creator of Mirrodin was. Where was Karn?

"Where are the living things?" Elspeth said.

"I too would have expected to have encountered a border patrol by this point," Koth said.

"Perhaps the situation on this plane is not as dire as we had thought?" Elspeth said.

"Do any of these suns ever set?" Venser said, gazing upward at a low red sun. "I mean, one falls and another rises, and so on and so on."

Koth glanced up at the sky. "They pull into alignment, and then fall. This will happen soon and quickly-and by that time we should be in the safety of my village."

"Why?" Venser said.

"It is not safe to wander through the Chain at night. The dangers of falling into something sharp or striking metal is enough."

"But there are creatures, as well?"

"Oh yes, there are many creatures."

Venser let the comment hang in the air before turning to Elspeth.

"What is Bant like, fair knight?" Venser said to Elspeth, with only the barest lilt of jest in his voice.

The corner of Elspeth's mouth turned down.

"It was beautiful," she said.

"But there is sadness, now. Is there not?" Venser said.

Elspeth was looking down the canyon. She did not shift her gaze at Venser's words.

"There used to be only honor, bravery, and perfection," Elspeth said. "In my dreams it is still as it was, and people serve for the greater good."

Koth let out a gruff laugh. "Service?" he said. "I have never heard something so..." he stopped and turned to Elspeth, who was staring at him intently. "I have never heard of anything so...foolish. The strong lead. The weak follow or die."

"Foolish?" Venser said. "Strength comes in all forms. Sometimes working together is the only way to achieve an end. You may be required to cooperate to save your precious Mirrodin, by the end."

Koth growled at Venser before gliding away on his rock.

The suns lined up in the sky as Koth said they would. They fell in a line toward the craggy horizon. Their light was almost extinguished by the time the village came into view. Sunset found them floating above a high precipice looking down on the quiet village.