"03.Time Streams" - читать интересную книгу автора (McGough Scott)

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