Throughout the peace rites, the warring brothers looked on, angry still, all the more so since neither could claim the day, Urza from his distant post at the top of the mountain, Mishra upon his charger on the smoking battlefield.
"Well, is it dead?" said Mishra, walking the snorting steed over to Samor, who was the last left at the new tomb.
"No. These… these are dead." He held out a hand to the mound before him. "The beast only sleeps. It is planted like a seed. Contained. Were the wall to shatter, the cockatrice would certainly rise and fly again, probably to nest. Look at the pattern of its ruin." Samor pointed to the rings of desolation cut into the mountainside and hung his head in shame, trying to find the words that would bring Mishra's forgiveness.
Before he could utter a one of them, Mishra began to laugh and clapped him hard on the back.
"Well done, Samor, well done. Very clever of you not to kill such a fine and deadly creature outright. Good use of resources. Since you have been away from court, you seem to have grown much in power-as if you shared the strength of a hundred or more mages. I wonder why that is? Especially since all Almaazan magical orders have been banned under my rule. You wouldn't have any knowledge of such things, now would you?"
Samor looked away from Mishra's burning black eyes, certain that the Artificer would see every member of the Circle in his own.
"Of course you wouldn't," Mishra continued. "Samor, I have an idea. It won't take a mage of your capabilities much trouble to arrange. Compose for me a spell that will free this beast. An undoing, if you will. And add a song to declare my triumph. Something simple, memorable, almost humble," Mishra said, smiling evilly. "And I want my brother to know this- that I will leam to control what he could only summon. Samor, let us put a great image, a sort of clock is what I see, upon the mountainside to remind him that the Beast of the Hours sleeps only as long as I choose not to wake it." He reached down and picked up a handful of the blackened sand and let it drain slowly between his fingers. "I will be the incarnation of Caelus Nin. Urza's time is in my hand." Mishra smiled.
Horrified, the image of the beast's eye overwhelming in his mind, the Collector instantly thought of his daughter, Claria, laughing with her parrots, of his lovely, bright-eyed wife, of his unsuspecting neighbors in Sumifa, of the faces he had seen and voices he had heard on his journeys. And what of his collection, all that knowledge and art? Of the fallen men and women to whom he had just sung the sleep of transformation? Of Praden, who had died during the short moments Samor had wrestled with the cockatrice's deadly stare? The nameless novice? What desolation would they rise to find, come the time of the Great Awakening? He could no longer protect them. He shuddered as he looked long into the hard, iron-colored eyes of his determined king. One thing Samor knew: if he could not slay the beast now, he could never slay it. If it were loosed, it would overcome Almaaz with total desolation. He slowly shook his dark head, refusing Mishra for the first time in the twenty-odd years since he had been bought and brought to the Artificer's court.
"Lord Mishra, I would beg you to take my life before I could agree to place the world at such risk again. I respectfully ask you to consider that it is not only your enemy this horror will attack. I pray instead you let me correct my mistake now and find a way to contain the beast forever, or perhaps send it deeper into the earth. Keeping it would mean nothing but the one and only end of all things. For where a way is made to release it, a will follows. Please do not ask me to make the way."
"Do it, or by the Six Curses of Caelus Nin, and by my sacred scepter, I will take from you forever your most beloved possessions, Samor.* It took no divination to know that he meant Claria and her mother, Lesta. "Do you actually dare behave as though you were a free man? I can always find another mage while you decorate my rack. And how many others would follow you there, hmm? You have the grace of two days," growled Mishra.
The Collector could only bow, his eyes pained with unspilled tears, and nod his head. What did twenty years of honorable service mean when he was so easily replaced in Mishra's opinion? What did family mean to Mishra, who had set about to destroy his own brother? The Grand Artificer would have his will, and someone, eventually, would discover the way to wake and free the beast.
Long after the brothers and their armies had marched down the mountainside, Samor lingered, deep in thought, the smoke of burning trees heavy in his nostrils, the keening voices of grief-stricken elves playing across his heart all night long. There seemed to be no satisfactory answer. If he did what Mishra wanted, the world would likely see such ruin as had never before been. If he refused, Mishra would destroy his family and his life, and the Circle would be exposed, the Book burned, the Artificer's wrath poured out upon them, and Atmaaz left without protection from his wanton whims. As it was, the Circle were the only ones who kept the land, who healed it after Mishra and Urza trampled it. And the only way to open a crystal wall that had been locked together by the Circle was with a sound so overwhelming that it would likely deafen the user. No human voice could produce such a vibration.
The constellation of the three sisters had risen at twilight and still he wrestled with his fear, his conscience, and his imagination. At midnight, when the moons rose, he began to walk blindly down the mountain.
By dawn he had blundered into a strange valley. All around him stood towers of glittering ganzite, some rising hundreds of feet in the sky, thin fingers that played the air as he moved among them, producing sighs and whispers of bright music like the voices of the elves themselves.
Then the Collector looked up to see the sun strike the crystal wall, producing a blinding, painful glare in his swollen eyes. It seemed that he had come no further toward a solution than when he started.
But when the sun rose upon the ganzite towers, the wind suddenly swept down through them and Collector found himself amid a thunderous chorus of glorious music and a thousand bizarre distortions of his own image. Samor began to laugh hysterically despite himself, despite his trouble and crushing care, causing echo upon echo upon echo, each reflected sound growing louder and more powerful. He began to try bits of melody against the crystals, from the lightest airs to the most ponderous dirges. In a few more moments, he believed he had found a way to give Mishra what he wanted.
He fell to work, walking through the strange valley, testing each spire for its peculiar properties of resonance and light. By dark, he had found the right spire. It was the tallest in the valley, with a small slit through its base at about the height of Samor's eyes. If the slit were plugged, the wind's voice across the spire would make the towers around it echo and repeat their own strange music, so loudly that eventually the noise would sunder them. The Collector knew what such violent tones could further do. Their vibration would call a great wind storm to pull through the deep recesses of the natural gorge. And the unfettered voice of that storm would gather, and gather strength as it poured through the barren, empty valley; when it reached the mountainside, the deafening surge would create the sound that would cause the crystal door to break open.
At length, Samor found a small piece of ganzite that would fit into the notch of his chosen spire, like a key. He sang a dividing song over it, carving it into a precise fit for the slit in the spire, and then placed the crystal in his sleeve. All that was left was Mishra's victory song.