Planeswalker

CHAPTER 15

Xantcha and Sosinna both screamed as the darkness sealed around them. Navigation was impossible, and they became one more tumbling object in the chaos raining down from the colliding islands. Sosinna called her lady's name, begging for deliverance. Xantcha hoped Serra could hear. The sphere wasn't like Urza's armor. The armor lasted until Xantcha willed it away, but once the sphere had risen, it collapsed as soon as it touched the ground. At least that was what had always happened. It might do something different this time when it had come out black.

The jostling, which seemed to last forever, ended when they struck a decisive bottom. The sphere collapsed, as it always had, coating Xantcha in soot and leaving them in a shower of rocks. Xantcha was stunned when a stone struck her head. But mind-stars were all she saw through the sticky soot. Sosinna's hand closed over hers. Xantcha let herself be guided to a place where the air was quiet.

"So, what next?" Xantcha asked when she'd wiped away enough soot to open her eyes.

There wasn't much to see. The air was dusty, and the overhead island-the island from which they'd fallen and that continued to rain chunks of itself onto the island where they were standing- remained close enough to keep them in twilight darkness. She feared another collision.

"We can't stay here," she added, in case Sosinna had missed the obvious.

They were both nursing bruises. Xantcha's hand came away bloody when she touched the throbbing spot where the

rock had hit her skull. The left sleeve of Sosinna's gown was torn to rags, and she was dripping soot-streaked blood from a gash on her forearm. Xantcha never worried her own cuts. She healed quick, and the infections or illnesses that plagued born-folk weren't interested in newt-flesh. She worried about Sosinna, instead.

Although Sosinna had gotten them to safety beyond the rock fall, she was dazed and unresponsive. She held her bleeding arm in front of her and stared at it with glassy eyes. The folk of Serra's realm were born, or so Sosinna had claimed. Despite the strangeness of the floating-island realm and the way Serra's air sustained them, Sosinna might be as fragile as the born-folk usually were. The soot alone might kill her. Blood poisoning wasn't an easy death or a quick one. But unless she had hidden injuries, Sosinna's problem had to be shock and fear.

"Waste not, want not, you're not near dead yet. Pull yourself-"

"It was black," Sosinna interrupted.

"I noticed," Xantcha said with a shrug. "It's always been clear before. But it kept us alive, and we'll use it again."

Sosinna wrenched free. "No! You don't understand. It was black! Nothing here is black. The Lady doesn't permit it." She began to weep. "I told you, you couldn't call on black mana here."

"Black mana? I'm no sorcerer, Sosinna. I've never called to the land in my life." But the cyst had felt wrong since she'd awakened, worse since she'd used it, and the sphere had been black.

"You shattered the land. Shattered it!"

Xantcha didn't demand gratitude, but she wouldn't stand for abuse. "I didn't shatter anything. Two islands collided, and I kept us alive the only way I knew how. Would you rather I'd left you to be crushed by the rocks?"

"Yes! Yes, they'll come for you because of what you've done, and they'll come for me because what you've done is all over me."

"If I'd known that, I'd've done it sooner," Xantcha lied.

Xantcha wasn't in pain. If anything, she was numb. For the first time in centuries, she wasn't aware of Urza's cyst. Her hand felt cloth when she rubbed below her waist, but the rest of her couldn't feel her hand. The numbness wasn't spreading. The part of her mind that knew when she was healthy said that she was numb because she was empty. She didn't know what would happen if she called on the cyst while her gut was numb and didn't want to find out unless she had to.

"How long before your Lady gets here?"

"The Lady won't come. She takes no part in death, even when she knows it must be done. The archangels will come." Sosinna looked up at the still-crumbling underside of their original floating island. "Soon."

Sosinna dried her tears, leaving fresh streaks of blood and soot on her face. Then she did what Serra's folk seemed to do best: she sat down, folded her hands in her lap, and settled in to wait. The gash on her arm continued to bleed. Maybe Sosinna didn't feel pain, or maybe she hoped she'd bleed to death before the dreaded archangels arrived.

If her own life hadn't hung in the balance, Xantcha would have laughed at the absurdity. She grabbed Sosinna below the shoulders and hauled the taller woman to her feet.

"You want to live, Sosinna. You got us both away from the falling rocks and dirt-" She shook the other woman, hoping for reaction. "You want to live. You want to see Kenidiern again."

A blink. A frown. Nothing.

"This is not perfection!" Xantcha shouted and then let Sosinna go.

The taller woman balanced on her own feet a moment, then calmly sat down again. Xantcha walked away in disgust. She'd gone about ten paces before the light of understanding brightened in her mind.

"You knew!" Xantcha shouted as she ran back. "You've known from the beginning! You've been expecting these archwhatever- angels since I woke up ... since before I woke up. Your precious, perfect

Lady sent me here to be killed and sent you as what? A witness? 'Come back to the floating palace when everything's taken care of.'? All this time, waiting for the archangels-"

"I never wanted them to come!" Sosinna shouted back.

It was the first time Xantcha had heard the other woman raise her voice-perhaps the first time Sosinna had raised it. She seemed aghast by her outburst.

"Why not? Didn't you want to get back to the palace and Keni-diern?"

Sosinna gasped and fumbled for words. "Don't you understand? I can't go back."

"Because I saved your life with my black mana." Xantcha thought she understood, perfectly. "If only the archangels had been a little quicker. Is that what you've been doing while you sat all the time. Praying to the archangels: get here soon?"

"I didn't want you to wake up because while you were asleep there was no chance you'd use your black powers, and nothing would draw the archangels to us. Once you were awake ... You are ... You are so difficult. I was afraid to tell you anything."

"I'd be much less difficult," Xantcha said with exaggerated politeness, "if I knew the truth." She sat down opposite Sosinna. "The perfect truth."

"Kenidiern-"

Xantcha rolled her eyes. "Why am I not surprised that he is at the heart of the truth?"

"You are very difficult. It is the black mana in you. It rules you. The Lady said so."

Xantcha wondered what the Lady had said about Urza, but that would have been a truly difficult question. "I know nothing about black mana, but I won't argue with your Lady's judgment. Go on ... please ... before we run out of time."

"How can you run out of time?"

Xantcha shrugged. "Just talk."

"The Lady smiled on Kenidiern and I. She has never encouraged the divisions between the sisterhood and the angels. We had her blessing to come to the palace, but before we could be together he was sent away, and I was

chosen to accompany you. I would not have objected," Sosinna continued quickly and emphatically. "I serve Lady Serra proudly, willingly. We all know how she sacrifices herself to maintain the realm. It would be the worst sort of pride and arrogance to question her decisions.... But I could not, cannot believe this was her decision."

"To send me away to die or to send you away to die with me?"

Sosinna had the decency to look uncomfortable. "You are difficult, and you are devious. You imagine dark corners and then you make them real."

That was a criticism Xantcha had never heard from Urza's lips.

"You would never do among the sisters or the angels, but if I were to speak to the Lady, I would tell her that except for your black mana you would make a most excellent archangel, and I think she would agree. I was-am-young among the sisters, but I have-had-the Lady's confidence. I know she would not have sent me away without seeing me or telling me why."

"Then why hasn't she come looking for you? Wouldn't she notice you were missing, you and Kenidiern, both?"

Sosinna shivered. "You ask such questions, Xantcha! I would never think to ask such questions myself." She paused and Xantcha raised her eyebrows expectantly. "Until I met you. Now, I ask myself such questions, and I do not like my own answers! I ask myself if the Lady has been deceived by those who were displeased that Kenidiern had given me his token, and no matter how hard I try to purge my thoughts, I cannot convince myself that she hasn't."

"Or maybe your Lady's not perfect?"

Sosinna's thin-lipped mouth opened, closed, and opened again. "I don't know if she never looked for me or if she could not find me but in either case, yes, there would be imperfection. So you see I cannot go back to the palace, not with these thoughts in my heart. Kenidiern is lost. You mock me, Xantcha, do not bother to lie about it, but Kenidiern is a paragon. He would have looked for me and since he hasn't-"

"Hasn't found you, but maybe he is looking. How many of these floating islands are there? A thousand? Ten thousand? You shouldn't give up. He might be just one rock away. Think of the look on his face when he finds you here dead because you stopped trying to stay alive."

"Difficult."

"But right."

"Half right." A faint smile cracked the dirt on Sosinna's face, then vanished. "We couldn't go back to the palace."

"Seems to me that's exactly the place we should be going."

"We wouldn't be welcomed."

"Waste not, want not, Sosinna, your precious Lady is being lied to, and you'd roll over and die without your lover because your enemies won't welcome you."

"Not enemies."

"Enemies. Anyone who wants you dead, Sosinna, is an enemy, yours and your Lady's. If you're determined to die, let's at least try to find this floating palace where your Lady is surrounded by silent enemies. Urza will support

you."

That was a promise Xantcha didn't know if she'd be able to keep, but it had to be made. Anything that would get Sosinna thinking had to be done, because even if the archangels didn't show up, the islands were likely to collide again. The upper island had taken the worst damage in the first collision and might again in the second, but anything on the surface of the lower island was going to get squashed like a bug.

"Difficult," Sosinna repeated.

Xantcha stood up and offered her hand. "But right."

"I don't know where the palace is. Only the angels know."

"Didn't Kenidiern ever tell you how he flew in and out?"

"We never talked about such things."

Xantcha almost asked what did they talk about, but Sosinna might have answered, and she didn't truly want to know. "Come on, let's at least start walking. We've got to walk ourselves clear of what's overhead. Maybe when we get to an edge we'll get lucky and see this wondrous palace." "We can't." "Can't what?"

"We can't walk to the edge of an island. I don't think we can walk out from under the one overhead. I tried, Xantcha, before you woke up. I tried to abandon you. I knew when you walked away that you'd have to come back."

"No apologies. Pd've done the same," Xantcha said and offered her hand again. "Come on. I've lived with worlds over my head, but not this close. Makes me nervous."

Sosinna reached, and winced as the gash on her arm began bleeding again. It was ugly now and would only get worse if they didn't find water soon. Xantcha hadn't seen free-running water since she'd first opened her eyes in Serra's realm, but now that Sosinna was moving again, she didn't seem worried about her wounds, so Xantcha said nothing either.

Xantcha kept an eye on the island overhead to measure their progress. The lethargy that had slowed her on her previous walk was worse. They weren't covering ground the way she would have liked. Even so, they were getting nowhere relative to the convoluted underside above them. Sosinna looked at her every time she looked up, a look that expected concessions and defeat, but Xantcha kept walking.

Sosinna's remarks about black mana had confirmed Xantcha's suspicion that Serra's floating-island realm was a magical place, as unnatural in its way as Phyrexia. The forces that made Phyrexia a world of concentric spheres were as inexplicable as the ones that shaped Serra's realm into thousands of floating islands ... and, perhaps, not all that different from each other. She'd have questions for Urza when they met again. If they met again. If she and Sosinna could walk to a place where the opening between the collided islands was large enough that she'd risk casting them adrift in the sphere.

The thought of waking up the cyst brought an end to gut numbness. Xantcha dropped to one knee.

"The archangels will find us," Sosinna said, not the words Xantcha wanted to hear at that moment. "Every time you call on black mana, it brings them closer."

"I didn't call on black mana," Xantcha insisted.

Xantcha used a mnemonic to awaken Urza's artifact. She didn't know how the cyst made the sphere or armor. Urza knew mana-based sorcery; the necessary insights had come with his eyes. He said the Thran hadn't used mana so he wouldn't either, but the Thran had made Urza's eyes. Sosinna thought Xantcha imagined dark corners. Xantcha didn't need imagination so long as she had Urza.

The pain had faded, and numbness returned. Xantcha's legs were leaden when she stood. She could barely lift her feet when she tried to walk. "There's got to be another way."

"We wait until the archangels find us. There is no other way."

"Is your lady sensitive to black mana, or just the archangels?"

"Black mana has no place here. It hurts. We can all feel it, the Lady most of all. She is aware of the whole realm as you are aware of your body. The archangels patrol the islands looking for black mana and other evil miasmas. They eliminate evil before it can affect the Lady, but when they found you and the other-Urza- together, they called Lady Serra for a judgment. You've already been judged. When the archangels find us, they won't call Lady Serra again. They won't risk her health. None of us would risk it. If the Lady sickened, we would all die."

Another unfortunate choice of words, given the state of Xantcha's gut, but she had an idea. "I'm going to get everyone's attention, the archangels and, with any luck, your Lady herself."

Xantcha yawned and thought the mnemonic for her armor. At first there was nothing, and she thought she'd lost the cyst altogether. Then the pain began and she felt something acid rising through her throat. Sosinna screamed, but by then Xantcha couldn't have stopped the process if she'd wanted to. The armor burned as it flowed over her skin. It spared her eyes. When Xantcha looked down what she saw was blacker than the darkest night, as black and featureless as the walls of an unlit cave. She brought her hands together, saw them touch, and felt absolutely nothing.

"You got the archangels, that's all." Sosinna pointed through the narrow opening between the islands. "We're doomed."

Sosinna stood no more than two arm's lengths away, but with the black armor covering Xantcha's ears, she sounded distant and under water. Xantcha looked in the indicated direction. A dazzling white diamond had appeared in the ribbon of golden light between the two islands. A moment's observation revealed that it was growing, moving toward them at considerable speed. From the air, then, the floating islands had edges. It was only from the ground that the horizon never became an edge.

As the diamond grew larger, it became apparent that it had five parts: four smaller lights, one each in the narrow and oblique points, and a much larger light in the center.

"The Aegis," Sosinna said.

The Aegis was also diamond shaped and too bright to look at directly. Xantcha held her black-armored hand in front of her eyes and squinted through the pinhole gaps between her fingers. She saw writhing plumes of yellow fire emerging from a hole that reminded her of a portal, a

portal to the sun. Moving her hand slightly she observed the smaller lights, the archangels themselves: radiant, elongated creatures with dazzling wings that didn't move and smooth, featureless faces. They resembled Sosinna the same way many compleat Phyrexians resembled newts. Not an encouraging thought.

Xantcha didn't think Urza's armor, in its present condition, would be proof against the Aegis. She tried to say good-bye to Sosinna and discovered the armor had taken away her voice.

Wind preceded the archangels. It shook boulders loose from the overhead island and lifted the island itself out of the way. One loosened boulder struck the ground so near to Xantcha's feet that she felt the ground shudder. The wind died when the archangels brought the Aegis to a hovering halt. As good warriors anywhere, the archangels tested their weapon before they put it to use. A beam of light as hot as a Phyrexian furnace and many times as bright seared the land directly below the Aegis. Then the beam began to move toward Xantcha and Sosinna.

It made no difference whether Xantcha's eyes were open or shut. She was blind, and it felt as if the back of her skull were on fire. Xantcha had never believed in gods or souls, but facing the end of her life, Xantcha found she believed in curses. She'd roundly cursed Lady Serra's notion of perfection when she was struck down by a sideways wind.

The wind was a word and the word was:

Holt!

A woman's voice. This time there could be no mistaking it, even through Xantcha's blackened armor. The great Lady of the realm reined in her archangels. The heat ebbed at once, but Xantcha remained blind. A more ordinary voice, a man's voice, shouted, "Sosinna!" Xantcha guessed that Kenidiern had found his beloved. She hoped Sosinna was still alive. She'd hoped, too, that Urza might be part of the rescue party, but no one called her name. Someone did lift her to her feet and into the air-at least Xantcha thought that she'd been lifted-she presumed she was being carried by an angel or archangel. Blind and numb as she was, it was impossible to be certain, and she was in no way tempted to release Urza's armor, assuming she could release it.

The journey lasted long enough for Xantcha's vision to recover from its Aegis searing. She was moving through the air of Serra's realm, tucked under the arm of the right side archangel. Craning her neck as much as she dared, Xantcha caught a glimpse of a silver face with angles for nose, chin, and not so much as a slit for vision.

A mask she thought, because the hand she could see at her waist was flesh with stretched sinew and pulsing arteries apparent beneath normal-hued skin. Xantcha could understand why the archangels might choose to cover their eyes. Even when it was shut down, the Aegis-one golden tether to which her archangel held in his, hers? its? other hand-was nothing Xantcha wanted to look at. Easily four times as high as her archangel, it reminded Xantcha of nothing so much as a piece of the sun, that Serra's realm did not otherwise possess.

They left the Aegis behind, shining among the floating

islands, once the great island that could only be Lady Serra's palace came into view.

The palace was many times the size of any other island Xantcha had seen, and if she'd had to make a guess, she'd have said that it was the very center of the lady's creation.

As all Phyrexia had formed in spheres around the Ineffable?

But Xantcha had seen nothing like the palace in Phyrexia.

Lady Serra's home leaped and soared in fantastic curves. Xantcha could think of no stone or brick that would glisten as the palace walls and ribs glistened in the Aegis's light. The underlying color was white, or possibly a golden gray. It was difficult to be certain. A myriad of rainbows moved constantly along every arch and into every corner. There was sound in all timbres to accompany the kaleidoscopic light, and not an echo of discord.

The total experience, which could have been as overwhelming as the Aegis, was instead subtle and unspeakably beautiful. It was also pushing Xantcha and her archangel away. They were falling behind the others, including the fifth, unmasked angel carrying Sosinna. Xantcha would have preferred to keep her armor, black as it was, around her but she didn't want to be left alone either. Perhaps releasing the armor would be the most foolish thing she'd ever done, and the last, but she recited the mnemonic that made it melt away.

Black dust streamed away from her. It dirtied the archangel's pure white robes, but he regained his right side place in the formation moments before they began a dizzying ascent to the rainbow lace ornament atop the palace's highest, most improbable arch.

With nothing else to guide her eye, Xantcha had misjudged the scale of Serra's palace. She'd seen snow- capped mountains that weren't as high as that single, soaring arch, and mighty temples that were smaller than the deceptively delicate edifice on whose jeweled porch the archangel landed.

Her knees buckled when her feet touched the ground. She was numb the same way the palace was many-colored: awash in shifting waves of sensation. She kept her balance by keeping a close watch on her feet and the floor.

"Follow me."

Xantcha looked up quickly, a mistake under the circumstances. The archangels had already vanished, and Kenidiern, assuming the unmasked angel was Kenidiern, had no hands to spare. Xantcha broke her fall with her arms and stayed where she was, crouched on the glass-smooth floor.

"I can send someone out for you," Kenidiern said in a tone that clearly conveyed the notion that he wouldn't recommend accepting the offer.

He had a friendly, honest voice. Xantcha had never paid much attention to the handsomeness of men, but even she could see that Kenidiern was, as Sosinna had claimed, a very attractive paragon. She guessed he knew how to laugh, although his face was anxious at that moment. If Sosinna wasn't dead, she was clinging to life by a very delicate thread. The Aegis had burned the tall woman badly. Her flesh was seared and weeping beneath its crust of dirt.

"Go," Xantcha told him. "I'll follow." She started to stand and abandoned the attempt. "I'll find a way."