Planeswalker (38 page)

"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.