Planeswalker

CHAPTER 22

There was no laughter three days later over the Sea of Laments. The weather had been chancy since Xantcha had put the Argi-vian coast at her back. From the start, thick clouds had blocked her view of the sun and stars. She navigated against a wind she knew wasn't steady and with an innate sense of direction that grew less reliable as she tired. They hadn't seen land for two days, not even a boat.

Xantcha would have brought the sphere down on a raft just then and taken her chances with strangers. A black wall-cloud had formed, leaking lightning, to the northeast. The waves below were stiff with cross winds and froth. She knew better than to try to soar above the impending storm, didn't have the strength to outrun it, and didn't know what would happen to the sphere if- when-downdrafts slammed it into the ocean.

Ratepe had his arms around her, keeping Xantcha warm and upright, the most he could do. He'd spotted the storm but hadn't said anything, other than that he knew how to swim. Ratepe was one up on Xantcha there; the long-ago seamen who'd taught her how to sail had warned her never to get friendly with the sea. If- when-they went down, she'd yawn out Urza's armor. Maybe it would keep her afloat, though it never had kept her dry.

The storm was bigger than the wall-cloud, and fickle, too. In a matter of minutes it spawned smaller clouds, one to the north, the other directly overhead. The first wind was a downdraft that hit the sphere so hard Xantcha and Ratepe were weightless, floating and screaming within it. Then, as Xantcha fought to keep them above the waves, a vagrant wind struck from the south. The south wind pushed them into sheets of noisy, blinding rain.

The squall died as suddenly as it had been born. Xantcha could see again and wished she couldn't. The distance between them and the storm's heart had been halved and, worse, a waterspout had spun out. Rooted in both the ocean and the clouds, the sinuous column of seawater and wind bore down on them as if it had eyes and they were prey.

"What is that?" Ratepe whispered.

"Waterspout," she told him and felt his fingers lock into her arms like talons.

"Is it going to eat us?"

The waterspout wasn't alive and didn't really have an appetite for fools, but that scarcely mattered as they were caught and spun with such force that the sphere flattened against them. It flattened but held, even when they slammed into the raging waves. At one point Xantcha thought they were underwater, if only because everything had become dark and quiet. Then the ocean spat them out, and they hurtled through wind and rain.

Wind, rain, and, above all, lightning. Whatever the cyst produced, whether it was Urza's armor or the sphere, it attracted lightning. Bolts struck continuously. The air within the sphere turned acrid and odd. It pulled their hair and clothes away from their bodies and set everything aglow with blue-white light. Xantcha lost all sense of

north or south and counted herself lucky that she still knew up from down.

Every few moments the storm paused, as if regrouping its strength for the next assault. In one such breather, Ratepe leaned close to her ear and said, "I love you,"

She shouted back, "We're not dead yet!" and surrendered the sphere to an updraft that carried them into the storm's heart.

They rose until the rain became ice and froze around the sphere, making it heavy and driving it down to the sea. Xantcha thought for sure they'd hit the waves, sink, and drown, but the storm wasn't done playing with them. As lightning boiled off the ice, the winds launched them upward again. Xantcha tried to break the cycle, but her efforts were useless. They rose and froze, plummeted, and rose again, not once or twice, but nine times before they fell one last time and found themselves floating on the ocean as the storm passed on to the south.

The pitch and roll among the choppy waves was the insult after injury. Ratepe's grip on Xantcha's arms weakened, and she suffered nausea.

"I can't lift us up," she said, having tried and failed. "I'm going

to have to let go of the sphere."

"No!" Ratepe's plea should have been a shout; it was a barely coherent moan instead.

"I'll make another-"

"Too sick. Can't float."

She tried to ignite his spirit. "A little seasickness won't kill you."

"Can't."

"Waste not, want not. I'm the one who can't swim! I'm counting on you to keep me afloat until I can make another sphere."

Ratepe slumped beside her. His face was gray and sweaty. His eyes were closed. Whatever strength he had left was dedicated to fighting the spasms in his gut. A little bit of seasickness would kill them both if she released the sphere. And if she didn't release it?

Xantcha tried to make it rise, but lifting the sphere had always been something that simply happened as it formed and not anything she'd ever consciously controlled.

"Urza," Ratepe said through clenched teeth. "Urza'll come.

Your heart."

Urza had come when she'd nearly blown herself up with the Phyrexian ambulator, but now she wasn't in any immediate danger. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue, and the sphere bobbed like a driftwood log.

"Sorry, Ratepe. If he didn't pull us out of that storm we were riding, then he's not going to pull us out of here. I'm not close enough to dying to get his attention."

"Gotta be a way."

Xantcha peeled Ratepe's sweat-soaked hair away from his eyes. He'd said he loved her, in a moment of sheer panic, of course, but there was a chance he'd been telling the truth. Sexless, parentless newt that she was, Xantcha didn't imagine she could love as born-folk did, but she felt something for the miserable young man beside her that she'd never felt before, something worth more than all her

books and other treasures.

"Hold on," she urged, grasping his hand. "I'll think of something."

Xantcha couldn't think of anything she hadn't already tried, and the sphere remained mired in the water. The waves had lessened, and she enjoyed the gentle movement, but Ratepe was as miserable as when the storm had dropped them, and by the way he was sweating out his misery, he'd be parched before long, too.

"Come morning, we'll be late," she said as the sky darkened. "Maybe Urza will come looking for us, but maybe not right away."

"Can't you ... do something ... to make him look?" Ratepe asked.

A whole sentence exhausted him. He rested with his eyes closed. Xantcha tried to tell Ratepe that the motion would bother him less if he sat up and looked at the horizon, as he'd learned to do when they were soaring. Ratepe insisted the motions were totally dissimilar and refused to try.

"How does ... Urza know when you ... need him?"

"He doesn't," Xantcha answered. "When we were dodging Phyrexians we stayed close, but the rest of the time, I never gave much thought to needing Urza, and he certainly never needed me."

"Never? Three thousand years ... and you never ... needed each other?"

"Never."

Ratepe sighed and curled around his knees. He began to shiver, a bad sign considering how warm the Sea of Laments was in the summer. Xantcha tucked their blankets around him, then, because she'd worked up a sweat herself, and stripped off her outer tunic. It got tangled in her hair and in the thong of a pendant she'd worn so long she'd forgotten why she wore it.

"You can hit me now," she said, breaking the thong.

"What?"

"I said, you can hit me now ... or you can wait until after we find out if this thing still works."

"What?"

"A long time ago-and I mean a long time ago-Urza did make me an artifact that would get his attention. I used something like it just once, before Urza invaded Phyrexia. I have to break it."

That time Xantcha had crushed the little crystal between two rocks. This time she tried biting it and broke a tooth before it cracked. Waste not, want not. At least she'd been farsighted enough to use her back teeth which grew back quicker than the front ones.

That time, between the rocks, there'd been a small flash of light as whatever power or sorcery Urza had sealed within the crystal was released. This time Xantcha neither saw nor felt anything, and when she examined the broken pieces, they were lined with a sooty residue that didn't look promising.

"How long?" Ratepe asked.

"A day before he got there with his dragon."

Ratepe groaned, "Too long."

Xantcha was inclined to agree. Urza must have come back to the forest before he went after the dragon. He wouldn't have taken the chance that the Phyrexians might get away,

and after he'd finished with the diggers, he'd known where the ambulator was. If Urza was going to haul them out of the Sea of Laments, they'd be on dry land before moonrise. If the crystal hadn't lost its power. If Urza recognized its signal and remembered what it meant.

Those were worries Xantcha kept to herself. The stars came out. Xantcha began to fear the worst, at least about Urza, and for Ratepe. They had enough food and water for two more days. Taking advantage of her newt's resilience, Xantcha could get to land either way. She wasn't sure about Ratepe.

It would be a stupid way for anyone to die, but the same could be said about most deaths.

Ratepe fell asleep. His breathing steadied, his skin grew warmer and drier. He might be over his seasickness by morning; he had adapted to soaring, and there was nothing to be gained by premature despair. Xantcha settled in around him. It was remarkable that two bodies could be more comfortable curled around each other than either was alone. She closed her eyes.

Xantcha woke up with a stabbing pain in her gut, water sloshing against her armpits, and Urza shouting in her ear:

"What misbegotten scheme put you in the middle of an ocean!" He had her by the nape of the neck, like a cat carrying a kitten, and held Ratepe the same way. The sphere was burst, obviously. Xantcha knew she should yawn out the armor, but Urza moved too fast. They were a split instant between-worlds, a heartbeat longer in the wintry winds of a nearby world, then back through the between-worlds to the cottage. Xantcha was gasping, mostly because Urza dropped her before turning his attention to Ratepe who'd turned blue during the three-stride 'walk. She knew his color because they'd traveled west and the sun wasn't close to setting behind the Ohran Ridge.

A bit of healing and a few sips from a green bottle off Urza's shelves brought Ratepe around.

"Change your clothes, Brother," Urza commanded in a tone that had surely started battles in their long-ago nursery. "Wash. Get something to eat. Xantcha and I need to talk."

Mishra, of course, stood his ground. "Don't blame Xantcha, and don't think you can ignore me ... again. I'm the one who wanted to see Koilos."

Ratepe pronounced the word in the old-fashioned way. Xantcha dared a glance at Urza's eyes, thinking her lover was getting advice from the Weakstone. Both of Urza's eyes were glossy black from lid to lid. She hadn't seen them like that since they'd left Phyrexia, which made her think of Oix and the Thran and a score of other things she quickly stifled. Xantcha tried to catch Ratepe's eye and pass him a warning to tread cautiously, if he couldn't figure that for himself.

With his bold remark, Ratepe had effectively changed the landscape of recrimination. If Xantcha could have seized control of the argument at that moment, she could have guaranteed there'd be no revelations about the fate of the Thran. If she could have seized control. She didn't catch Ratepe's eye, and Urza had lost interest in her as well.

"Koilos is dead. There's nothing left. We took it all,

Brother. Us and the Phyrexians," Urza said, leaving Xantcha to wonder if he'd visited the cave since his return to Dominaria.

"I needed to see it with my own eyes," Ratepe replied, a comment that, considering the circumstances, could have many layers of meaning. "You told me to go away for a while, so I did."

"I never meant you to go to Koilos. If it was Koilos you wanted, we could have gone together."

"That was never a good idea, Urza," Ratepe said with finality as he walked out the open door, following the near-orders Urza had already given.

"You should have stopped him," Urza hissed at Xantcha when they were alone. "My brother is ... fragile. Koilos could have torn him apart."

"It's just another place, Urza," Xantcha countered, resisting the urge to add that Ratepe was just another man. Neither statement was true. After a year on the Ohran Ridge, Ratepe might not be Mishra, but he'd become more than a willful, onetime slave.

" 'Just another place,' " Urza mocked her. "For one like you, yes, I suppose it would be. What would you see? A cave, some ruins? What did my brother see? He isn't quite himself yet. The next one will be better, stronger. I expected it would be several Mishras before I'd take one back to Koilos."

"There won't be another Mishra, Urza."

Urza turned away. He puttered at his worktable, scraping up residues and dumping them in a bucket. He'd been working on something when the crystal struck his mind. Xantcha's anger, always quick to flare, was also quick to fade.

"Thank you for picking us out of the ocean."

"I didn't know at first. It took me a moment to remember what it was that I was hearing. I made that crystal for you so long ago, when I still thought I could invade and destroy Phyrexia. My ambitions have grown smaller. Since Equilor, it's all I can do to protect Dominaria from them. I'll make you another."

"Make it easier to break. I lost a tooth on this one. Make one for Ratepe, too."

"Ratepe?" Urza looked up, puzzled, then nodded. "When this is over, when I've exposed the sleepers and put Phyrexia on notice that Dominaria is prepared to fight them, it will be time to talk about the future. I've thought about it while you were gone. This cottage isn't big enough. I've begun to envision permanent defenses for all Dominaria, for Old Terisiare and all the other great islands. Artifacts on a scale to dwarf any that I've made before. I'll build them in place, and when I've finished one of my new sentries, I'll move on to the next. I'll need assistants, of course-"

"Other than me and ... ?" Xantcha left her thought dangling.

"What I've planned will take a generation, maybe ten before it is complete. And the assistants I have in mind will become the guardians of my sentries. They'll become the patriarchs and matriarchs of permanent communities. You understand that can't include you. As for him, he is mortal, not like you or me. We are what the Phyrexians made

us. I can't change that, or him. I wouldn't, even if I could. That would be adding abomination to abomination. But he-Ratepe, my brother-will age and die. I thought, I hoped you would choose, while you were together these last few days, to remain together, with him-"

"Somewhere else?"

"Yes. It would be best. For me. For what I have to do."

Urza wasn't mad, not the way he'd been mad and locked in the past for so long. Bringing him face-to-face with Mishra had set him free to be the man Kayla Bin-Kroog had known: self-centered, self-confident, and selfish, blithely convinced, until the world came to an end, that whatever he wanted was best for everyone else.

Xantcha was too weary for anger. "We'll talk," she agreed. Maybe she'd tell him what she'd learned at Koilos. More likely, she wouldn't bother. Urza was immune to truth. "Do you still need either of us, or should we make ourselves scarce again?" she asked.

"No, not at all! I have work for you, Xantcha." He gestured toward one wall where boxes were piled high. "They've all got to be put in place. I'll 'walk you there. You know, it's quite fortunate, in a way, that you broke that crystal. I'd forgotten them completely; I'll make up a score by dawn. Think of it, no more waiting, no more wasted time. As soon as you're finished, you can summon me, and I'll 'walk you to the next place!"

"Tomorrow," she said, heading for the door. Xantcha had gotten what she wanted; if she'd been born with true imagination, she would have known that getting what she wanted wouldn't be the same as what she had expected. "Tonight I've got to rest."

Ratepe was waiting for her in the other room. "Did you tell him?"

Xantcha shook her head. She sat down heavily on her stool. The chest with her copies of The Antiquity Wars caught her eye. What would Kayla have said? Urza never really changes. His friends never really learn.

"There wasn't any need to tell Urza anything. He's got his visions, his future. Nothing I'd tell him would make any difference, just like you said. We're going to be busy until the Glimmer Moon goes high. I am, at least. He's got a pile of spiders for me to plant and great plans for that crystal I broke. Watch and see, by tomorrow Urza will have decided that it was his idea for us to get stuck in the Sea of Laments."

Ratepe stood behind her, rubbing her neck and shoulders. It had taken only a year, after more than three thousand, to become dependent on the touch of living fingers. She'd miss him.

"I should've stayed?" he asked. "I hoped if I took the blame-if I made Mishra take it-he'd calm down quicker. Guess I was wrong."

"Not entirely. You had a good idea, and you handled it well." She shrugged off his hands and stood. "Has Urza ever told you that he thinks you're the first of many Mishras who're going to walk back into his life?"

"Never in those words, but, sometimes I know he's frustrated with me. Scares me sometimes, because if he decided he didn't want me around, there'd be nothing I could do about it. But I've gotten used to not having

charge of my own life. I've forgotten Ratepe. I'm just Rat, trying to live another day and not always sure why ... except for you."

Xantcha studied her hands, not Ratepe's face. "Maybe you should think about taking charge of your life again."

"He's decided it's time for a new Mishra? Do I get to help find my replacement?"

"No." That didn't sound right. "I mean, I'm not going to look for another Mishra." She took a deep breath. "And I won't be here if another Mishra comes walking over the Ridge."

Ratepe pushed air through his teeth. "He's sending us both away because we went to Koilos?"

She shook her head. "Because my plan worked. Urza's not thinking about the past anymore, and you and I, we're part of his past."

"I'll go back to Efuan Pincar, to Pincar City," Ratepe spoke aloud, but mostly to himself. "After we expose the sleepers and all, Tabarna's going to need good men. If Tabarna's not a sleeper himself. If he is, I don't know who'll become king, and we'll need good men even more. What about you? We could work together for Efuan Pincar. You're smarter than you think you are. You leap sometimes, when you should think, as if a part of you is as young as you look. But you know things that never got written down."

Xantcha walked to the window. "I am part of the past, Ratepe, and I'm tired. I never realized just how tired."

"It's been a too-long day and the worst always falls on you." He was behind her again, rubbing her shoulders and guiding her toward the bed.

Xantcha's weariness wasn't anything that sleep or Ratepe's passion could cure, but she wasn't about to discuss the point.

Urza 'walked her to Morvern shortly after dawn. He left her with two sacks of improved spiders, explicit instructions for where they should be placed, and a plain- looking crystal he promised wouldn't break her teeth. Four days later Xantcha took no chances and crushed the crystal between two stones. Una 'walked her to Baszerat, then to other sleeper-ridden city-states on Gulmany's southern and eastern coasts. There wasn't time, he said, for side trips to the cottage. They had eighteen days until the Glimmer Moon struck its zenith.

"What about Efuan Pincar?" she asked before he left her and a sack of spiders in the hills beyond another southern town. "Will there be time to put the new ones there?"

"You and him!" Urza complained. "Yes, I've taken care of that myself. When the night comes, that's where you'll be, in the plaza outside the palace in Pincar City. I wouldn't dare suggest any place else! Now, you understand what has to be done here? The spiders in that sack, they're for open spaces, for plazas, markets, and temple precincts. You've got to put them where there are at least twenty paces all around. Less and the vibrations will start to cancel each other out. And make sure you put them where they won't attract attention or be trampled. You understand, that's important. They mustn't be trampled. They might break, or worse, they'll trigger prematurely."

They'd come a long way from screaming spiders. Xantcha supposed she'd find out exactly how far in Pincar City.

Until then, "Twenty paces all around, no attention, no big feet. How long?"

"Two days, less, if you can. There are some places in the west that we've missed, and it wouldn't hurt to put a few across the sea in Argivia-"

"Urza, we've never even looked for Phyrexians there!"

"It couldn't hurt, if there's time."

With that, Urza 'walked away.

Seventeen days later, the eastern city of Narjabul in which Xantcha was planting spiders had begun to fill with revelers for the coming mid-summer festival. Finding the privacy she needed to plant them was becoming more difficult by the hour. At last a tall, blond-haired man stepped out of the crowd and said, "I think there's nothing more to be done. Let's 'walk home."

The man was Urza, looking like a man in his mid- twenties and dressed in a rich merchant's silks that felt as real as they looked.

Xantcha hadn't expected to see him for another day. She hadn't felt she could break the crystal before then. "I'm nowhere near finished," she confessed. "There aren't enough rooms. The crowds just stay on the streets. It's been difficult, and it's getting worse. They sleep in the plazas where I'm trying to plant the spiders."

"No matter," Urza assured her. "One spider more or less won't win the day, or the night. There's always next month, next year."

He was in one of his benign and generous moods. Xantcha found herself instantly suspicious.

"Has something gone wrong?" she asked. "With the spiders? At the cottage?" She hesitated to say Ratepe's name.

"No, no ... I thought you and he might want to celebrate. I thought I'd 'walk you both to Pincar City and leave you there tonight."

Urza had his arm draped across Xantcha's shoulder and was steering her through the crowd when they were accosted by three rowdy youths, considerably worse for the wine and ale that flowed freely in the guild tents pitched across plaza. The soberest of the trio complimented Urza's wide- cuffed boots while one of his companions grabbed Xantcha from behind and the third tried to steal Urza's coin pouch. Xantcha stomped her boot heel on her attacker's instep and rammed her elbow against his ribs to free herself.

The youth, remarkably sobered by his pain, immediately shouted, "Help! Thief! He's taken my purse and my father's sack! Help! Stop him before he gets away!"

Xantcha had no intention of running or of surrendering the spider-filled sack. She had a fighting knife and could have put a swift end to her attacker, but they'd drawn attention, and the middle of a mob was a dangerous place to make a defensive stand, even with Urza's armor. If she'd been alone, Xantcha would have used her sphere and made a spectacular exit. She wasn't alone, though, Urza was a few steps away in the midst of his own fracas, so she yawned out her armor instead and hoped he'd get them free before too many revelers got hurt.

Justice was swift and presumptive. A bystander grabbed her from behind again and put a knife against her throat. He'd probably guessed that something wasn't quite right before she stomped and elbowed him as she'd done with her first attacker, but everyone knew she was more than she seemed when they saw that the knife hadn't drawn blood. Most folk retreated, making ward-signs as they went, but a few rose to the challenge. One of challengers, a thick-set man in long robes and pounding a silver-banded ebony staff against the cobblestones, was also a sorcerer.

"Urza!" Xantcha shouted, a name that was apt to get everyone's attention anywhere in Dominaria. It didn't matter what language she used after that to add, "Let's go!"

The sorcerer cast a spell, a serpentine rope of crimson fire that fizzled in a sigh of dark, foul-smelling smoke when it touched the armor. He'd readied another when Urza ended the confrontation.

Urza had abandoned his merchant's finery for imposing robes that made him seem taller and more massive. He didn't have his staff-it was absolutely real and couldn't be hidden-but Urza the Artificer didn't need a staff. Mana flowed to him easily. Even Xantcha could feel it moving beneath her armored feet, in such abundance that he could afford to target his spells precisely: small, but not fatal, lightning jolts for the three troublemakers and a mana-leaching miasma for the sorcerer who'd intervened on the wrong side of a brawl.

Then Urza clapped his hand around Xantcha's and 'walked with her into the between-worlds.

"Between us and the spiders, everyone in Narjabul's going to remember this year's mid-summer festival," Xantcha laughed when her feet were on solid ground outside the cottage.

Urza grimaced. "They'll remember my name. The sleepers and who knows what else might get suspicious before tomorrow night. I didn't want to be connected with this, not yet. I want Phyrexia to know that Dominaria is fighting back, not that Urza has returned to haunt them."

"I'm sorry. I'd had a knife at my throat, there was a sorcerer taking aim at me, and a crowd about to get very unpleasant. I wasn't thinking about consequences."

"I never expect you to."

Ratepe came out of the workroom. They hadn't seen each other for seventeen hectic days, but when Xantcha kept her greeting restrained, he caught the warning and did likewise until they were alone in the other room.

"Did Urza tell you, we're going to watch the spiders from Efuan Pincar!" He lifted Xantcha off the floor and spun her around.

"He said he was going to leave us there."

Ratepe set her down. "I told him that you'd given me your word that I could go back to my old life. I called it 'the life I had before Mishra awoke within me.' He'd started talking about making big artifact-sentries, just like you'd said. He didn't quite come out and say that he wanted to make room for a new Mishra, too, but I understood that's what he meant."

"I keep thinking about the Weakstone."

Ratepe shook his head. "If Urza paid attention to the

Weak-stone, he'd have an aching head, but he's less attuned to it now than he was when I got here. He is putting the past behind him. I decided to make it easier for myself. If he leaves me in Pincar City, I'm no worse off than I was a year ago. Better, in fact, since I've learned some artifice." Ratepe tried to sound optimistic and failed.

Xantcha opened the chest where she kept her supply of precious stones and metals. "Wouldn't hurt to be prepared." She handed him a heavy golden chain that could keep a modest man in comfort for life.

"He'll change his mind about you, Xantcha. He's never going to send you away," Ratepe insisted, but he dropped the chain over his head and tucked it discreetly beneath his tunic.

Xantcha hauled out coins as well and a serviceable knife with a hidden compartment in its sheath.

"It's the Festival of Fruits," Ratepe protested, refusing to accept the weapon.

"There's going to be chaos for sure and who-knows-what for us afterward." She took his hand and lightly slapped the knife into it.

"What about a sword, then?" he asked, eyeing her rafter-hung collection.

"I was wrong to have a sword in Medran. Efuan Pincar doesn't have a warrior cult, and your nobility averted its eyes about ten years ago. We'll try to be part of the crowd. Knives are a common man's weapon."

"You're nervous?" Ratepe asked with evident disbelief.

"Cautious. You and Urza, you're acting as if this is going to be some victory celebration. We don't know what's going to happen, not in a whole lot of ways."

"You don't want to go?"

"No. I want to see what happens, and Urza's made up his mind. I haven't survived all this time by being careless, that's all."

"You're nervous about being with me? About taking care of me, 'cause you think I can't take care of myself?"

Xantcha pulled up her pant leg and buckled an emergency stash of gold around her calf. She didn't answer Ratepe's question.

"I know Pincar City," he said petulantly. "It's my home, and I can keep my own nose clean, if I need to. Avohir's mercy, it's the damned Festival of Fruits-seven days of berries! All music and bright colors. Parents bring their children!"

Unimpressed, Xantcha handed him a smaller knife to tuck inside his boot, then closed the chest on her treasures wondering if she'd ever look at Kayla's picture again.