Venser swept a section of the Phyrexian’s riveted plate out of the way. The metal, pliable to the artificer’s mind, flowed in a graceful wave out of the path of his hand. Venser reached to his upper arms into the interior of the Phyrexian. He began rearranging. A moment later the crusher’s arm impacted his side and Venser slid out over the smooth floor. He skittered to a stop at the foot of a huge Phyrexian with thick legs and a shelflike chest, skeletal arms and a head as large as its fist. Before Venser could stand, the Phyrexian seized his skull in the palm of one claw and lifted him off the ground. The creature’s other hand was poised for a strike with two of its claw fingers extended to gouge into Venser’s eye sockets.
Venser brushed the hand aside, but as the fingers and palm dripped back into the wrist, the tips of other claws poked out of the wrist, and another hand grew before his eyes, literally. Soon there was another claw.
Then something exceedingly odd happened. All the metal on the Phyrexian began to arc upward, as though it were dripping upside down. The dark metal of it began to dance and wind, much to the creature’s amazement. Its exposed sinews and muscles looked strangely naked as its whole body began to tumble down without the metal’s support. The metal of the creature’s structure danced higher and higher in the air. The meat parts of the Phyrexian fell with a wet thump to the metal floor. But nobody was watching that. All eyes were on the metal, arcing up and down and side to side in graceful loops and peaks.
The metal turned colors as well-first red, then jet black, and then a bright, shimmering gold. Venser heard Koth’s sharp intake of breath when the metal went a glassy blue. It pulled together into a square shape and fell with a hard thump on the ground next to the crumpled Phyrexian the metal had come from, who looked at it with eyeballs bare and wobbly.
Then somebody was clapping. Venser turned to see a line of Phyrexians different than any he’d seen up to that point. They were twisted and small of head, with teeth coming out everywhere, and their metal parts were shiny. Their hands had small devices and long, sharp tools of chrome attached to them. And standing at the center of them was a human, or most of a human. A bright light shone at his right shoulder. Venser felt his breath catch in his throat as he recognized the metal floating in strips around that radiant shoulder. The strips extended in a fluid motion down an arm that ended in a long-fingered hand. An arm that glowed as much as the shoulder. A metal arm unlike any Venser had ever seen. And as Venser stared, his jaw slack, the being continued to clap.
Chapter 8
Well now,” the being said, in a voice that, like his arm, seemed to modulate itself slightly. “I did not expect to find you all the way over here, with these clankers, down here in the muck and the filth. By all rights they should have been scrapped long ago.”
It took a moment for Venser to find his tongue. “Where is here?”
The human chuckled. “Indeed,” he said.
But the crusher and the dark Phyrexians did not see the humor in the situation. The crusher screeched as it adjusted its weight. Its tiny head looked back and forth from the being with the glowing arm to the Phyrexians that stood just behind him. The crusher’s Phyrexians and moriok glanced uncertainly at the pile of flesh that had been one of their own.
The new arrival looked over the dark Phyrexians. He shook his head. “It’s sometimes ridiculous what this Phyrexian taint produces. Their forms are not pleasant, not that I mind the form of a thing. I know they have no control over how they turn out, but so many of their designs have such flaws.” He gestured at the menagerie. If Venser did not know better he might have thought they were laughing. If he had not known that Phyrexians lacked the sentience for humor, even such simple humor as ridicule.
“Flaws or not, there are plenty of them,” Koth said.
The being moved its strange eyes, blue as water, to Koth. He looked him over from foot to spiked hair. “You work with ore, vulshok, no?”
Koth nodded. “I have that honor.”
“You have that honor,” the being repeated.
The Phyrexian crusher lurched forward suddenly. The sound was so loud that Venser felt like moving the hand he had over his eyes to his ear. The being with the moving metal arm turned to the crusher. “I did tell you,” he said.
He sniffed and raised both of his arms. After a series of motions with his hands, the Phyrexian’s arms and legs were gone-the metal that had once been its legs and arms floated in a ball before the Phyrexian’s face. The creature with the glowing arm turned back to Koth. The ball rearranged itself into a throne of sorts and came to rest on the metal floor. Two blue chrome Phyrexians rushed forward and moved the large seat behind the being. Without looking he sat down. The crusher looked on soundlessly.
“Do you work for your ore?” the being said to Koth.
“Our mother provides us with her blood.”
“Your mother?”
Koth nodded.
Venser shifted his weight. To say the vulshok was impressed with the being was a great overstatement. Venser could tell by his friend’s expression that Koth thought the being nothing more than another Phyrexian.
“My mother is dead,” the being said.
Koth seemed not to have heard this. “And what are you then?” Koth said.
“Unfortunately, there are still parts of me that are human,” the human said. He extended his metal arm and moved it before his eyes. “I am Tezzeret. I have lived in filth and muck. I have lived in palaces. I prefer palaces.”
“You are one of the ethersworn,” Elspeth said. “I would know your flash anywhere.”
The being almost smiled. “Ah, a good knight of Bant. What foolishness. This is a little homecoming of a sort.”
“So you are one of these ethersworn?” Venser said.
“No. All hands are raised against me, except those that work for me.”
“How do you bear no blemish of the Phyrexian taint?” Elspeth said. “You clearly bed with these abominations. Do they possess etherium?”
Tezzeret’s eyes stayed on Elspeth. The white warrior stared back. Venser could tell without a doubt what Elspeth thought about the being-enemy.
Tezzeret seemed to read Elspeth’s mind. “I am not your enemy. I am not Phyrexian. I have come to help you, actually.”
“Phyrexian’s are not our only enemies,” Elspeth said.
Tezzeret nodded. He looked back at his chrome Phyrexians. Following an unseen command, his chrome troops leaped on the dark Phyrexians and began savagely tearing at them with their claws. There were more dark Phyrexians, but they were no match for the smaller troops, who moved faster and struck with arms that morphed from claws to needles and then to bludgeons in the blink of an eye. One of the shiny Phyrexian’s claws shot out of its wrists and flew through the air attached with a chain. Venser watched as that Phyrexian’s claw knocked another Phyrexian’s head clean off its shoulders. The tortured snarls and rattle of the Phyrexians fighting reminded Venser of gnarl beasts, but with armor on. It was over when the last black Phyrexian lowered its spear-shaped head and charged at a chrome beast, which stood still and let the spear pierce its chest. Then it began tearing chunks of sinew and metal out of the other’s back and neck. Soon there was nothing left of the dark Phyrexian except for its head impaled in the other’s chrome chest.
“You have something,” Tezzeret said to the chrome Phyrexian with the head through its chest. “Just here.” He made a sweeping motion, as though gesturing to a stain on a shirt after a meal. The chrome Phyrexian cocked its head at Tezzeret, the bladed head jutting out of its chest. Tezzeret turned back to the compatriots and shook his head.
“You can’t do anything with them,” he said. “That one will need work. Now then, did that gain your trust?” Tezzeret looked from one to the other of them. “No,” he said. “I can see it did not. What about you, artificer? Do you trust me some now?”