J J. ROBERT KING “Time Streams” (Magic: the Gathering. Artifact cycle. Book III.) Prologue Urza says he’s sane. Perhaps he is. Measures of sanity among planeswalkers are hard to come by. He has lived for over three thousand years. He heals by merely willing it. With a thought, he steps from world to world to world. His very appearance is a matter of convenience, clothes and even features projected by his mind. How can conventional notions of sanity apply to a planeswalker? of sanity apply to a planeswalker? Perhaps they cannot, but his madness began before he was a planeswalker. Three thousand years ago, a mortal Urza battled his mortal brother. Their sibling rivalry turned fratricidal. So began the Brothers’ War. In his rage to kill Mishra, Urza enlisted the armies of the world, sank the isle of Argoth, gutted the continent of Terisiare, and wiped whole nations from the globe. He ushered in an ice age. In repayment for all this madness, he became a planeswalker. Urza says he regrets the destruction. True regret would be a good sign. It wasn’t regret that later sent Urza on his own private invasion of Phyrexia. It was revenge for his brother. Somehow, Urza convinced himself he hadn’t killed Mishra, that the Phyrexian Gix had done it. True, Gix seduced Mishra with promises of awesome power and in the end transformed him into a monstrous amalgam of flesh and artifice. But Urza was Mishra’s slayer. Not in his mind, though. In the mind of madness, Urza blamed Gix and plotted to get even. His motive was mad, and his invasion madder still. Urza attacked Phyrexia-one planeswalker against armies of demonic monstrosities. He lost, of course. He couldn’t defeat a whole world and was nearly torn to pieces trying. Tail between his legs, Urza retreated to Serra’s Realm, a place of angels and floating clouds. There he convalesced, but he never truly recovered. Madness still haunted him, and so did Phyrexia. Gix followed on his tail. No sooner had Urza left Serra’s Realm, thinking himself whole and hale, than Gix and his demons arrived. A war began in heaven. That place, like any other where Urza had chosen to dwell, was decimated. Centuries later, it is still shrinking in its long collapse. When I point out these mad indiscretions, Urza shrugs. He claims he regained his sanity after all that. He credits his newfound perspective to Xantcha and Ratepe-“two dear friends who sacrificed themselves to slay the demon Gix, close the portal to Phyrexia, and save my life. To them, I am forever grateful.” True gratitude would be a good sign, too. Urza has never, in his three millennia of life, shown true gratitude nor had a “dear friend.” I have known him for three decades. For two of those, I have worked side by side with him at the academy we established here on Tolaria. I am not his dear friend. No one is. Most of the tutors and students at the academy don’t even know his real name, calling him Master Malzra. The last person who was close enough to Urza to be a dear friend was his brother, and everyone knows what happened to him. No, Urza is incapable of regret and gratitude, of having dear friends, not that there haven’t been folk like Xantcha, Ratepe, Serra, and I, who genuinely love the man and would give our lives for him. But he seems incapable of returning our affection. That’s not enough to declare him insane, of course. As I said, measures of sanity among planeswalkers are hard to come by, but there is something mad about Urza’s blithe belief that Xantcha and Ratepe sacrificed themselves, that Serra’s Realm and Argoth sacrificed themselves, that Mishra sacrificed himself…. It seems everyone and everything Urza claims to care about gets destroyed. And what does that mean for me, his newest dear friend? - Barrin, Mage Master of Tolaria Part I SCHOOL OF TIME Chapter 1 Jhoira stood at the edge of her world. Behind her lay the isle of Tolaria, its palm forests and lecture halls overrun with magical prodigies and clockwork creatures. It was a realm of ceaseless tests and pointless trials and worries and work, lots of work. Before her lay the blue ocean, the blue sky, and the illimitable world. Clouds piled into empyrean mountain ranges above the shimmering sea. White waves broke on the ragged rocks below. Beyond the thin, brilliant line of the horizon, the whole world waited. Her soul mate was out there somewhere, she dreamed. Everything was out there-her homeland, her parents, her Shivan tribe, her future. Jhoira sighed and slouched down to sit on a sun-warmed shoulder of sandstone. Sea winds sent her long black hair dancing about her thin shoulders. Breezes coursed, warm and familiar, through her white student robes. She’d spent many hours in this sunny niche, her refuge from the academy, but lately the hideaway brought her as much sadness as joy. She’d been at the academy for eight years now, learning all she could of machines. A prodigy when she arrived, Jhoira was now a formidable artificer. She was also a woman, or at eighteen nearly so, and was weary of the school and the kids, of brimstone and machine oil. She was sick to death of artifice and illusion and wanted something real-someone real. Jhoira closed her eyes, drawing a deep breath of salty air into her lungs. Her soul mate would be tall and bronze-skinned, like the young Ghitu tribesmen back home-keen-eyed and strong. He would be smart, yes, but not like Teferi and the other boys who tried to get Jhoira’s attention through juvenile antics and unsubtle innuendoes. He would be a man, and he would be mysterious. That was most important of all.