His lips trembled, and he shook his head. "No! Madness! You didn't blind me. Volrath blinded me."
"You betrayed everyone to win back your daughter," Takara said, though her voice was changing, deepening. "And you thought you had won her back, but betrayal is a wager that wins only its own returns."
"Volrath!" hissed Starke in terror.
It was his last utterance. Behind him, Takara grabbed Starke's forehead with one hand and drew her knife in a long, slow, deep line over his throat. It was almost a decapitating wound, so deep was her hatred. There came a wet, red moment, and then the blind man slumped to his face on the mosaic floor. His lifeblood made a bright sunburst around him, what seemed a gleaming and fitting adornment in that patterned place.
Takara stepped back, but she was no longer Takara. Her red hair compressed into a gray mantle of skin, and bone, and brain. It curled up from knife-edged brows, back around pointed ears, and down to fuse along a tapered jaw. Small black horns jutted from the ridge of these folds, and a tail of flesh draped from the back of the knobby skull. Where once there had been fiery eyes, now were white, inhuman orbs. A masculine face replaced the feminine one. The muscled body of a man replaced the wiry litheness of the woman. Clothes became plates of gray armor across a tortured green-black skin. At last, the body matched the voice… matched the seething hate.
Volrath. The shapeshifting lord of Rath-and Mercadia.
Snickering gleefully, Kyren emerged from behind the throne of the magistrate.
The fat man quivered there, staring in dread at the corpse of Starke and the pool of his blood-but not for long. Kyren hands laid hold of the magistrate, set after set, and claws sunk in. Struggling, the crew of goblins hauled hard. With a rubbery motion, the magistrate slipped from his seat and spilled messily to the floor. His finery ended in a pile, and his corpulence lolled out grotesquely beneath the fabric. His hands and face slapped the floor in the pool of blood. Powder makeup was painted in red. Gibbering in dread and tears, the magistrate lifted his head.
Volrath strode slowly through the sanguine pool. His armored feet dripped with each step. Lifting one of those gory boots, he set it gently on the magistrate's head, forcing it down into the blood.
With a contented breath, Volrath said, "It is good to be rid of masks once in a while. It is good, occasionally, for outward things to plainly reflect the things that lie within."
The chief of the Kyren gestured placatingly toward the empty chair of the magistrate. "Does Master Volrath's plan proceed well?"
Treading across the magistrate's head, Volrath slowly ascended the throne. He sat, easing himself into the chair. "Yes. My blood-brother Gerrard is half destroyed. His ship is in my grasp. His friends travel to retrieve the artifact that will repair it. Already, my agents have framed them for the theft of the device. Once it is in my hands, my people will repair the ship, and I will kill Gerrard and fly Weatherlight and the Legacy back to Rath." He smiled with vicious savor. "Yes. Master Volrath's plans proceed well."
"What would the Glorious Master have us do with the body of the blind man?" asked the lead Kyren obsequiously as he arrayed cushions about the master.
Volrath stared dispassionately at the corpse. He heaved a sigh. "Starke was the weightiest part of the mask I wear. Having to coddle him… having to walk slowly beside the old bastard… especially knowing he was the man who lured me into Phyrexia. I could not stand him." He made a dismissive gesture. "He'll have to be conveyed to the infirmary and discovered there, his throat slit by some hateful healer. Someone will have to be charged with the crime and killed for it, of course, and Takara will need to seem distraught- more repellent playacting. But it will all be worth it. Soon, Gerrard will be destroyed, and his Legacy will be mine."
Volrath's eyes glowed with a cold light beneath his brows. He turned his attention on the lead Kyren. "And what of your progress, Lord Griid? Last week you reported rebel uprisings in both the lower and upper markets. Have you rounded up the culprits? Have you put them to death?"
Griid recoiled from the pillows, and his head bowed.
"Has Master Volrath heard the rumors of the giant killers?" Eyelids drooped angrily across Volrath's eyes, and his lips curled. "Don't hide your ineptitude behind tales of the rabble."
"Is it not remarkable how a fiction can rally the people? How the Ramosans have used lies to foment rebellion? Is it not astonishing how their leader Lahaime lays hold of vulgar minds?"
"Astonishing," Volrath echoed, his hand lunging like a cobra and gripping the Kyren's bowed head. "Isn't it astonishing how I have laid hold of your vulgar mind? Now, tell me what you are driving at-and tell me without any of your damned questions!"
Griid went to his knees. His eyes clamped shut against the pain. His brow pressed the edge of Volrath's throne. "The giant killers-Gerrard and Sisay and their friends-have rallied the people. They have become popular heroes. Hope has replaced fear. Folk who once were unquestioningly loyal are I now harboring and aiding revolutionaries."
"Dispel these stories then," Volrath said, tightening his grip. "Forgive, Master, but how can we dispel them while Gerrard and Sisay yet live? While you yet are Takara among them?"
Volrath hissed. "When Weatherlight is repaired, Gerrard and the whole crew will be killed. That will end these stories." "Perhaps not," Griid replied miserably, his voice muffled by the edge of the chair. "The giant killer stories have banded the people together, have catalyzed the Ramosans. Lahaime leads them. While he lives, the revolution lives."
"We will find him, then, and kill him," Volrath replied. "You can kill Lahaime, but you cannot kill the Uniter." "The Uniter!" growled Volrath. In fury, his hand clenched, fingers piercing the Kyren's skull as if it were a ripe melon.
Griid convulsed, impaled on the man's clawlike hands. He slumped against the throne, and his riddled head gushed down his leg.
Volrath stood, abstracted. His fingers slid languidly from the mush that had been Griid's head.
He walked. Gore dripped from his claws. It fell with a quiet pattering sound on the floor, on the prostrate magistrate, on the puddle of Starke's own lifeblood. "I should have anticipated this. Weatherlight is an oracle wherever it goes. I should have seen that Lahaime and his Ramosans would be whipped into a frenzy by it." He strode calmly over the body of Starke. "Everyone is after my prize. I shall simply have to rebuild it more quickly and defend it more… viciously." He neared the barred doors.
Kyren scurried to haul away the bodies, to mop up the blood, to cover the chief magistrate's bloodstained face and hands with powder.
Meanwhile Volrath himself transformed armor to clothes, black muscle to pink flesh, gray skull to red hair. In midstride, the master of Rath and Mercadia had once again become Takara.
She placed one hand beneath the stout bar on the door and with a single gesture, hurled it up from its brackets. The bar rattled loudly across the tiled floor. Takara hauled the doors open, spilling nobles and guards who had been listening there. As they fell to the ground in seeming obeisance, Takara strode through their midst, out into the deepening night of fomenting rebellion.
"Defend my prize more viciously…"
Chapter 15
After much effort, Sisay obtained an interview with Orim, who was being held in a small suite of rooms beneath the statehouse. If a makeshift prison, it was a spacious one, but the lack of growing things and the forced confinement had pushed Weatherlight's healer back into a state of acute depression. Under Sisay's prodding, she repeated the conversation she had overheard. She vigorously expressed her opinion that Guard Commander Oustrathmer and the Mercadian ambassador were responsible for the theft and murder. They had made off with the Power Matrix, framed Orim, and left the Weatherlight officers virtual captives in the city.