They came to a swamp with cone-shaped insects as long
as her forearm and an abundance of frogs, not Xantcha's
favorite sort of place. It reminded her of Phyrexia's First
Sphere, but she could breathe and eat and the water, though
brackish, didn't make her sick.
"This is far enough for me," she announced when Urza
held out his hand. "I don't need to visit every world."
"Only a few more," Urza protested.
He'd begun to pace. Since Phyrexia, his restlessness
had steadily worsened until he could scarcely stand still.
He didn't even try to sleep.
"I'm tired," she told him.
"You slept last night."
"Last night! When was last night? Where was last night?
The world with the yellow trees or the one with two suns? I
want to stay put long enough see the seasons change."
"Farmer," Urza chided her, a distinct improvement over
'child' and the truth as well. She'd spent too much time
scratching in Phyrexia's sterile soil not to appreciate
worlds where plants grew naturally.
"I want a home."
"So do I." An admission she hadn't expected. "It's
here, Xantcha. Dominaria ... home. I can feel it each
time we 'walk, but at every step, a darkness blocks me. The
darkness was here the last time, before I found you. It was
like nothing I'd encountered before. I was sure it would
pass, but it hasn't. It's still here, and stronger than
before."
"Like a knife?" she asked, remembering the rumors of
newts trapped on the nether side of broken portals.
"A knife? No, it is as if multiverse itself had
shattered, as if Dominaria and all the planes that are
bound to it have been broken apart. I have 'walked all
around, approaching it from every vantage, yet each time it
is the same. There is a darkness that is also cold and
repels me. I've been making a map in my mind, a shape
beyond words. When it's done, I will know that Dominaria is
completely sealed from me and Phyrexia.
"It is my fault, you know. It's not merely vengeance
that I require from Phyrexia. I require atonement The
Phyrexians corrupted and destroyed my brother; that's
vengeance. But we, my brother and I, let them back into
Dominaria when we destroyed the Thran safeguards. The land
itself has not forgiven me, won't forgive me until I have
atoned for our error by destroying Phyrexia. Dominaria
locks me out, as it locks out the Phyrexians. I cannot go
home until I have done what not even the Thran could do:
destroy Phyrexia!
"I want to go home, Xantcha. You, who cannot remember
where you were born, cannot know true homesickness as I
know it. I had not thought it would be so difficult. The
land does not forgive. It has sealed itself against me. But
it has sealed itself against Phyrexia, too, and though my
heart aches, I am content with my exile, knowing that my
home is safe."
Xantcha rubbed her temples. There was truth, usually,
tangled through Urza's self-centered delusions. "Searcherpriests
don't "walk between-worlds," she said cautiously,
when she thought she had the wheat separated from the
chaff. When conversation touched Mishra, Dominaria or the
mysterious Thran, Urza's moods became less predictable than
they usually were. "They use ambulators, but I don't know
how they set the stones to find new worlds. Maybe you can't
be quite certain that Dominaria is safe?"
"I'm certain," he insisted.
Her thoughts raced along a bright tangent. "You figured
out how to set the stones on my ambulator?"
"Yes. I set it for Dominaria, and it was destroyed."
Xantcha's mind went dark. There was much she could have
said and no reason to say any of it. She turned away with a
sigh.
"When I know, beyond doubt, that Dominaria is
inaccessible, then I will look for a hospitable plane. I
mean to take your advice, Xantcha. I will build an army
three times the size of Phyrexia, and ambulators large
enough to transport them by the thousand! I examined your
ambulator quite thoroughly before it was destroyed. I can
make you another once I find the right materials, and can
make it better."
Urza expected her to rejoice, so she tried. She took
his arm and followed to a "few" more worlds, thirty-three,
before he was satisfied that Dominaria was inaccessible
behind what he called a shard of the multiverse. Urza
insisted that, compared to the mul-tiverse, a thousand
worlds could be properly termed a "few" worlds. The
multiverse meant little to her. Urza's efforts to explain
the planes and nexi that comprised it meant less. But the
fact that Urza did try to explain it meant a lot.
"I need a friend," he explained one lonely night on a
world where the air was old and nothing remained alive. "I
need to talk with someone who has seen what I have seen,
some of it, enough to listen without going numb from
despair. And, after I have talked, I need to hear a voice
that is not my own."
"But you never listen to me!"
"I always listen, Xantcha. You are rarely correct. I
cannot replace what the Phyrexians took away from you. Your
mind is mostly empty, and what isn't empty is filled with
Phyrexian rubbish. You recite their lies because you cannot
know better. Your advice, child, is untrustworthy, but you,
yourself, are my friend."
Urza hadn't called her child since they "walked away
from Dominaria, and Xantcha didn't like to think that after
so much time together, he continued to distrust her, but an
offer of friendship, true friendship, was a gift not to be
overlooked.
"I will never betray you," Xantcha said softly, taking
his hand between hers.
It was like stone at first, flexible stone. Then it
softened, warmed, and became flesh.
"I want nothing more than to be your friend, Urza."
He smiled, a rare and mortal gesture. "I will take you
wherever you want, but I would rather you wanted to remain
with me until we find a plane that satisfies both of us."
Late that night, when the fire was cold and Urza had
gone wandering, as he usually did while she slept, Xantcha
sharpened her knife and made an incision in her left flank,
the side opposite the cyst. She tucked her amber heart into
the gap, sealed it with a paste of ashes, then bound it
tightly with cloth torn from her spare clothes.
Urza knew immediately. She'd been a fool to think he
wouldn't.
"I swallowed it my own way," she told him, in no mood
for a lengthy argument. "It's part of me now, where it
belongs. I'll never lose it, no matter where you take me."
* * *
Xantcha wanted a world where she could pretend she'd
been born. Never mind that by their best guess, she was
living near the end of her sixth century and no more than
seven decades younger than Urza himself. Urza wanted a
plane where he could recruit an army. Their wants, she
thought, should not have been incompatible, and perhaps
they wouldn't have been, if Urza had been able to sleep. To
give him his due, Xantcha granted that Urza tried to sleep.
He knew he needed to dream, but whenever he attempted that
treacherous descent from wakefulness, he found nightmares
instead, screaming nightmares that spread like the stench
of rotting fish on a summer's day. Until anyone within a
half-day's journey could see the flames of Phyrexia and the
metal and flesh apparition that Urza called Mishra.
Strangers did not welcome them for long. Recruiting an
army was impossible. When she was lucky, Xantcha nursed a
single harvest from the ground before they went 'walking
again. When they found a truly hospitable world with
abundant, rich soil, a broad swath of temperate climates
and a wealth of vigorous cultures, Xantcha suggested that
Urza build himself a tower on the loneliest island in the
largest sea. He could 'walk to such a tower without
difficulty and sleep, she'd hoped, without disturbing
anyone.
Urza called the world Moag, and it became the home
Xantcha had dreamed about. He built a sheer-walled tower
with neither windows nor doors and filled it with
artifacts. Within a decade, its rocky shores had become a
place of prophecy and learning where
Urza warned pilgrims of Phyrexian evil and laid the
foundations for the army he hoped eventually to raise.
Xantcha built a cottage with a garden, and in the
seasons when it didn't need tending, she yawned and went
exploring. Urza had made her another summoning crystal,
which she wore in friendship but never expected to use.
They met at his island whenever the moon was full, nowhere
else, no other time. They'd become friends who could talk
about anything because they knew which questions to avoid.
For thirty years, life-Xantcha's apparently immortal
life- could not have been better. Until the bright autumn
day on Moag's most intriguing southern continent when
Xantcha caught the unexpected, unforgettable scent of
glistening oil. She followed it to the source: the newly
refurbished temple of a fire god with a taste for gold and
blood sacrifice.
A born-flesh novice sat beside a burning alms box. For
the hearths of the poor, he said, and though it looked like
extortion, Xantcha threw copper into the flames. She yawned
out her armor before entering the sanctuary. Trouble found
her, one Phyrexian to another, before she reached the fire-
bound altar.
Wrapped in concealing robes, it showed only its face
which had the jowls and grizzled beard of a mature man and
the reek of the compleated. In its gloved hand it carried a
gnarled wooden staff that immediately roused Xantcha's
suspicion. She had a small sword on her hip. A mace would
have been more useful, but out of keeping with the rest of
her dandy's disguise.
"Where have you been?" it asked in a Phyrexian whisper
that could have been mistaken for insects buzzing.
"Waiting," Xantcha replied with a newt's soft
inflection. Waiting to see what would happen next.
It came faster than she'd expected. There was a priest
of some new type inside those robes, and its staff was as
false as its face. A web of golden power struck her armor.
The priest wasn't expecting surprises, not from a newt.
Xantcha kicked it once in the mid-section and again on the
chin as it fell. Its head separated from its neck, leaving
its flesh-face behind. Xantcha understood instantly why
Urza could not purge his brother's last memory from his
mind. She reached for the not-wooden staff and realized,
belatedly, that there'd been witnesses.
Phyrexian witnesses. Four of them were surging out of
the recesses to block her path. They all had staves, and
she'd lost the advantage of surprise. The sanctuary roof
had a smoke vent above the altar. Xantcha grabbed the
priest's head instead of its staff as she braced herself
for the agony of wringing a sphere from the cyst while the
armor was still in place around her. There was blood in the
sphere, but it resisted the efforts of the Phyrexians and
their staves to bring it down as it expanded and lifted her
out of immediate danger.
Willpower got Xantcha drifting silently just above the
rooftops south of the temple. But willpower couldn't lift
her high enough to catch the winds that would carry her to
true safety beyond the walls. The cyst couldn't maintain
both the sphere and the armor for long. Already, knife
pains ripped through her stomach, and her mouth had filled
with blood.
Woozy and desperate, Xantcha went to ground in the
foulest midden she could find: a gaping pit behind a
boneyard. She thought she'd die when the sphere dissolved
on contact with the midden scum, and she found herself
shoulder-deep in fermenting filth. With a death grip on the
metal-mesh head-if she dropped it, she'd never have the
courage to fish it out-Xantcha released her armor as well
and hoped that uncontrolled nausea wouldn't prevent the
cyst from recharging itself.
By sunset, when swarms of insects mistook her for their
evening meal, Xantcha was ready to surrender to any
Phyrexian brave enough to haul her out of her hiding place.
She thought about gods and the inconvenience of not
believing in any of them, then filled her lungs for a yawn.
With a single, sharp pain that threatened, for one horrible
moment, to fold her in half, the cyst discharged. Xantcha
gasped her way through the mnemonic that would create the
sphere, and just when she thought she had no endurance
left, it began to swell.
She was seen-certainly she was scented-rising above the
shambles' roofs, slowly at first, then faster as fresh air
lifted her up. There were screams, clanging alarms and,
from the open roof of the fire god's temple, a diaphanous
gout of black sorcery that fell short of its moving target.
The winds blew westward, into the sunset. Xantcha let them
carry her, until the moon was high, before she began the
long tacks that would take her to Urza's tower.
The moon was a waxing crescent when Xantcha set down on
the tower roof five nights later. Urza wasn't expecting her
and wasn't pleased to have her within his tower walls.
Xantcha had abandoned her clothes and scrubbed herself raw
with sand and water without quite ridding herself of the
midden's aroma. But Urza reserved his greatest displeasure
for the metal-mesh head she stood on his work table.
"Where did you find that?" he demanded and stood like
stone while Xantcha raced through an account of her
misadventure in the southern city.
"You struck it down, before witnesses? And you brought
it here, as a trophy? What were you thinking?"
Urza's enraged eyes lit up the chamber. The air around
him shimmered with between-worlds light. Xantcha thought it
wise to armor herself, but when she opened her mouth Urza
enveloped her in stifling paralysis. Naked and defenseless,
she endured a scathing lecture about the stupidity of newts
who exposed themselves to their enemies and jeopardized the
delicate plans of their friends.
"I smelled glistening oil," Xantcha countered when,
toward dawn, Urza released her from his spell. She was
angry by then and incautious. "I was curious. I didn't know
it came from Phyrexian priests. Maybe it was just a
coincidental cooking sauce! I didn't plan to destroy a
Phyrexian, but it seemed better than letting it kill me,
and as for witnesses, well, I am sorry about that. I didn't
notice them standing there until it was too late. And I
brought the head because I thought I'd better have proof,
because I wasn't sure you'd believe me without, it. Should
I have let myself be killed? Or captured? Maybe they could
have dropped my head on the roof before they attacked!
Would that have been better? Wiser, on my part?"