Weatherlight listed suddenly toward port, as if dragged down by a huge weight. The jolt swung Gerrard around. Just before him, gripping the forecastle rail, were a pair of huge metal talons. The wingless creature clutched the hull of Weatherlight. There was no way to blast those talons without damaging the ship herself.

Cursing, Gerrard pulled free of the gunnery traces. He raked out his sword and strode toward the spot. He would hew the conduits buried beneath those claws…

The dragon lifted its head above the rail. It reeked, this metallic beast. Its enormous fangs gaped wide, and it lunged toward Gerrard. Black, tarry mana flooded up the neck to spew out.

Roaring, Gerrard rammed his blade at the scaly jaw of the beast. The sword drove through flesh and tongue and up into the creature's ribbed pallet. It pinned the mouth closed. Black mana oozed between its teeth. Ducking beneath the gush, Gerrard jammed the sword higher, into the neural core of the beast.

It pulled back. Gerrard went with it, still gripping his sword. His boots left the deck. The dragon engine arched its head, intent on hurling him away.

Gerrard swung out into the reeling sky. He held on tightly. Clouds tore around him and the impaled serpent. Below, Urborg rattled past in black quagmires. The only thing that kept Gerrard from falling was the monster he was trying to kill.

"Let's do it!" he shouted, releasing his sword and clawing his way up the dragon engine's horn-studded muzzle. He rammed his fist in its eye. Glass lenses shattered. Knuckles smudged blood across mirror arrays. "Let's go down together!"

The beast's struggles grew frantic. It pitched its head back and forth, struggling to shake off its tormentor.

"I've got a friend I want to see," Gerrard yelled as his fingers slid into the housing of the beast's other eye. "I've got things to sort out." He yanked the whole orb from its socket. Its demon glow faded to darkness. Into the dragon engine's ear, Gerrard shouted, "You could broker the deal!"

Beneath his feet, cables went slack. Scales slumped. Will left the beast. Its claws slid from the scarred rail. With an irresistible motion, the monster dropped out of the bright sky toward the blackness below.

Gerrard felt the beast pull away beneath him. He held on tight. Dead trees and stagnant waters flashed in his wide eyes. "Let's do this."

Something struck his shoulder, something that burned like cold iron in his back and burst in a bloody rose out his front. Barbs spread, gripping flesh and muscle and bone. Gerrard roared, his hands releasing the dragon engine and gripping the end of the impaling thing. It yanked brutally on him. He rose, away from the plunging carcass.

The dragon fell to the treetops. A cypress speared the body. It broke free and rolled, flinging water. Limbs, head, and tail were all uniformly crushed around it.

Gerrard saw no more. The weapon that had torn through his shoulder was attached to one of Weatherlight's lines. Gerrard had been hooked like a fish. Winds shoved him up beneath the ship's hull, near her saw-toothed keel. It didn't matter. He was prepared to die. He was eager to appear before whatever lord ruled the dead and join his love, his Hanna.

The rope dragged him fore. Someone had other plans for him.

Thumping against the gunwales, Gerrard left crimson spots on the boards. His hands hung limply at his sides. The rope tugged. He slid up alongside the massive figurehead of Gaea. Hair mantled her shoulders and her ancient face. Her body was both maidenly and matronly. Out of hardwood eyes gazed a sad and familiar countenance.

The figurehead spoke, "What are you trying to do, Gerrard?"

"Multani," the man gasped through gritted teeth. Once this nature spirit had instructed him in maro-sorcery.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?" the voice asked.

The rope yanked him higher. Gerrard's back arched in agony, and his shoulder traced a bloody line across Gaea's face.

"No," he managed. "I'm defying death. I'm cheating it. I'm beating it. I'm showing it I am a forced to be reckoned with."

"Why?"

"Because if I can beat it, I can win Hanna back."

The conversation ended with a rough tug of the line. Gerrard surged up over the rail and landed on his side on the forecastle planks.

Above him towered Tahngarth, who was wrapped in rope like a living capstan. Even with one arm injured, he'd had the strength to hurl a harpoon, hold its line, and draw Gerrard in by winding the rope about himself.

Orim was there too. The healer knelt above him. The coins in her hair flashed above worried eyes.

"You boys and your rescues," she said. Expert fingers worked the harpoon head from its shaft. With one mercifully fast motion, she pulled the head through the gouge. "One of these days, I'll not be able to patch you back up." Her hands settled on the wound, and silver fire awoke.

Tahngarth shrugged out of his rope wrappings, his own arm bandaged beneath. He lifted an eloquent eyebrow.

"If I remember, Commander, you saved me in much the same way from Tsabo Tavoc." He reached up to his own shoulder and tapped a star-shaped scar. "We're blood brothers now. Whatever happens to you happens to me."

Gerrard wore a grim expression. "You've gotten the worse end of that deal, I fear."

Chapter 8

The others were supposed to be here. The instructions had been simple: Deliver the armies where they were to go- Urborg, Keld, Shiv-and then report to Tolaria. Still, Urza, in his titan engine, was the only one who had arrived.

On a smooth ridge of stone, the engine stood like a dejected boy. Its three-toed feet fidgeted. Hydraulic muscles moaned. Metallic hands, with their ray cannons and flame throwers, hung limp beside massive hip joints. The thousand weapons that bristled across the torso of the titan suit were still and silent. Even the engine's shoulders-large enough to hoist a hillside-slumped. The command pod was darkest of all. In it, Urza sat. He stared at his ruined home.

Tolaria had once been beautiful. In his mind's eye, Urza could still see it. Blue-tiled roofs blended with the sky. Domed observatories stood above K'rrik's rift. Crowded dormitories spread out beneath a canopy of leaves. Laboratories and lecture halls, archives and artifact museums-it had been quite a place.

Now all of it was gone. Urza had melted down the old engines, had burned the old plans, had shipped away all the students and scholars he could. He had given the place over to the Phyrexians. It was a diversion to keep them busy while he won the war elsewhere.

Mage Master Barrin had not given it over. Barrin, who for a thousand years had been Urza's associate and only true friend, had always been sentimental. Tolaria held the grave of his wife, Rayne, and his daughter, Hanna. It was hallowed ground, worth defending to the death. Tolaria had became his grave as well.

He had destroyed it all. He had cast a spell to shatter plague engines and kill every Phyrexian on the isle. The sorcery also had leveled forests and razed buildings and melted mountains. It had destroyed the elaborate network of time rifts and covered the whole of the island in a molten cap. Barrin had used himself to power that spell. He who had spent his life humanizing the planeswalker died in a spell that mimicked Urza's atrocity at Argoth.

"Oh, Barrin," Urza said. His breath wisped out within the pilot bulb of his titan engine. He did not have to breathe. His body was only a locus of his mind, a convenience that anchored his spirit, but mention of that name, Barrin, cut all anchors on Urza's soul.

He was outside his titan suit without having consciously willed it. Urza sat on the foot of the engine. The salt air was hot in his lungs. Without trees or hills to stop it, ocean winds tore across the isle. They rifled through Urza's war robes and tossed his ash-blond hair.