"You're more like Mishra than I am." Ratepe wrapped his
arms around her. "Must've been something Gix poured in your
vat."
He was jesting, but the joke made Xantcha's heart skip
a beat. What had Oix said on the First Sphere plain? She
remembered the spark and walling herself within herself,
but the words hung outside of memory's reach. What had
happened to Mishra's flesh? Flesh was rendered, never
wasted. Had she been growing in the vats while Urza and
Mishra fought? She'd thought she had.
Xantcha leaned back against Ratepe's arms and saw the
thoughtful look on his face.
"Don't," she said, a plea more than a command. "Don't
say anything more. Don't think anything more."
Arms tightened around her, one at her waist, the other
cradling her head. She couldn't see his face, but she knew
he hadn't stopped thinking.
Xantcha hadn't either, though there was neither joy nor
satisfaction in any of her conclusions.
"We've got to leave," she said many silent moments
later. "Someone's going to wonder what happened to the
riders."
"If we're lucky, someone. Something, if we're not."
Xantcha grimaced. Ratepe's humor was missing its mark,
and her arm, compressed between them, kept her edgy with
its throbbing. "Whichever, we're going to have to leave
this for someone else to sort out. I should've shoved the
priest through before we destroyed the ambulator."
"Then there wouldn't have been anything for Urza to
look at."
"Not sure whether that was good or bad."
Ratepe let her go and did most of the work assembling
their supplies in a pile for the sphere to flow around. One
look at his face and Xantcha knew he was disappointed that
they weren't returning to Pincar City, but he never raised
the subject. Her elbow had swollen to the size of a winter
melon and her arm, from the shoulder down, looked as if it
had been pumped full of water.
Her fingers resembled five purple sausages. Her arm was
rigid, too. It had been centuries since she'd had an injury
Urza hadn't healed, She'd almost forgotten how newts
stiffened when they broke their bones.
If Xantcha had the nerves Ratepe had been born with,
she would have been curled up, whimpering, on the ground.
As it was, she was grateful for Ratepe's company, sought
the calmest wind-streams through the air, and brought them
down frequently.
Twice over the following several days they spotted
gangs of bearded men riding good horses through the summer
heat. She grit her teeth and followed them, still hoping to
find a Shratta stronghold, but both times the men ended
their treks peaceably in palisaded villages. Either the
religious fanatics had gone to ground or they'd gone from
dreaded to welcome in little more than a season. She
thought of going up to the gates and inviting herself into
their councils, as she had scarcely a season earlier. Her
arm kept her from acting on those thoughts.
"It was your idea to disperse those villagers, let them
spread the word that it was Red-Stripes who were killing
and burning in the Shratta's name," Xantcha reminded Ratepe
as she guided the sphere to its prior course. "You're the
one who told me that I was a friend because I was the enemy
of your enemy. What did you expect?"
"Not this," Ratepe replied with a scowl. "Maybe I'm
wiser now. The enemy of my enemy still has his own plans
for me."
Xantcha let the provocative comment slide.
High summer was a season of clear, dry weather on
Gulmany's north coast. They rounded the western prong of
the Ohran Ridge without excitement and hit the first of the
big southern coast storms at sunrise the next day. For
three days they camped in a bear's hillside den waiting for
the rain to stop. Xantcha's arm turned yellow. Her fingers
came back to life, knuckle by spasmed knuckle.
Xantcha was in no hurry to get back to the cottage.
Once her elbow recovered from its battering, she could
enjoy Ratepe's company, and his attentions. There was
always a bit of frustration. She simply didn't have the
instincts for romance, or even pleasure, that Ratepe
expected her to have. They loved and laughed and argued,
walked as much as they soared the windstreams. They didn't
see the cottage roof until the moon had swung twice through
its phases, and there was a hint of frosts to come in the
mountains' morning air.
"He's there," Ratepe said, pointing at the lone figure.
Xantcha blinked to assure herself that her eyes weren't
lying, but it was Urza, tall, pale-haired and stripped to
the waist beside the hearth, vigorously stirring something
that bubbled and glowed in her best stew pot.
She'd always thought of Urza as a scholar, a man whose
strength came from his mind, not his body, though Kayla had
written that her husband built his own artifacts and had
the stamina of an ox. Over the centuries, Urza had become
dependent on abstract power, using sorcery or artifice
rather than his hands whenever possible. The sight of a
tanned, muscular, and sweating Urza left Xantcha
speechless.
She would have preferred to approach this unfamiliar
Urza cautiously from the side, but he spotted the sphere
and waved.
"He seems glad to see us." Ratepe's voice was guarded.
Maybe it wasn't that Phyrexians had no imagination, but
that their imaginations never prepared them for the truth.
Xantcha reminded herself that Urza had her heart on a
shelf. He'd followed it to Efuan Pincat. He could have
found her again or crushed the amber stone in his fist.
She brought the sphere down beside the well. Urza ran
toward them-ran, as a born-man might run to greet his
family. He embraced Ratepe first, slapping him heartily on
the back and calling him "brother." Xantcha turned away,
telling herself she'd learned her lesson in the apple
orchard. Urza didn't have to be sane, he didn't have to see
anything except as he wished to see it, as long as he
fought the Phyrexians. She hadn't quite finished the self-
lecture when Urza put his hands on her shoulders.
"I've been busy," he said. "I went back to all those
places I'd been before. I trusted my instincts. If I
thought it was Phyrex-ian, I believed it was Phyrexian. I
didn't need outside proof.
They have a new strategy, Xantcha. Instead of fighting
their own war, or pulling the strings on one big war,
they've stirred a hornet's nest of little wars just in Old
Terisiare alone. I have no notion what they might be doing
elsewhere.
"But I'll find out, Xantcha. I know Dominaria less well
than I know a score of other planes, but that's going to
change, too. Come, let me show you-"
He pulled Xantcha toward the cottage. She dug in her
heels, a futile, but necessary protest.
"No, Xantcha, this time-this time I swear to the Thran,
it is not like before." He gestured to Ratepe. "Brother!
You come too. I have a plan!"
Urza did have a plan, and it truly was like nothing
he'd done before. He'd drawn maps on his walls, maps on the
floor, a map on the worktable, and maps on every other
reasonably smooth surface in the workroom. No wonder he was
working outside. The many-colored maps were annotated with
numerals she could read and a script she couldn't. None of
them made particular sense until she recognized the
crescent-shaped capital of Baszerat on their common wall.
After that she recognized several towns and cities, drawn
upside down by her instincts, but accurate, so far as she
could remember. She guessed the annotations included the
number of sleepers he'd found in each city and asked:
"Are you going to drive the sleepers back to Phyrexia?"
"Yes, in proper time. The first time no one was left
and the message was lost. The last time, no one knew what
we faced until the very end and as you pointed out-" Urza
included Ratepe in the discussion-"nobody believed the
message. This time I will take no chances. The Phyrexians
have chosen to fight a myriad of wars. I will fight them
the same way, with a myriad of weapons. I will expose them!
Watch!"
Urza left her and Ratepe standing in the middle of the
room while he fussed with a tattered basket. His eagerness
and delight would have been contagious, if Xantcha hadn't
watched too many times before. She'd exchanged a worried-
hopeful glance with Ratepe when the world erupted into
chaos.
The chaos was a sound like Xantcha had never
experienced, sound more piercing than the howling winds
between-worlds. She tried to draw breath to yawn out her
armor, but the sound had taken possession of her body. It
shook her as a dog shook its fur after the rain and threw
her to the floor. Her bones had turned to jelly before it
reached into her skull and shook her mind out of her brain.
Control and reason returned as suddenly as they had
departed. Except for a few bruises and a badly bitten
tongue, Xantcha was no worse than dazed. She knew her name
and where she was, but the rest was muddled. Ratepe stood a
little distance away. Xantcha realized he hadn't been
affected by the attack, but before she could consider the
implications, Urza was beside her, cupping her chin in his
hands, taking the pain away.
"It worked!" he exalted before she could stand. "I'm
sorry, but there was no other way, and I had to be sure."
"You? You did that to me?" She propped herself up on
one elbow.
"Wind, words, they're both the same. Sound is merely
air in motion, like the sea. You said the priest collapsed
because of the whistling shot. I have made a new artifact,
Xantcha, a potent new weapon. It has no edge, no weight, no
fire. It is sound."
Urza opened his hand, revealing a lump roughly the size
and shape of a ceiling spider. Xantcha couldn't accept that
something so simple had laid her low.
"It's too small," she complained. "Nothing so small
could hurt so much."
"You gave me the idea when you said the oil was inside
the sleeprs. Sound, if it is the right sound, can move
things, break things. The sound this artifact makes is one
that shakes glistening oil until it breaks apart."
Xantcha would have said oil could not be broken if she
had not just endured a sound that had proven otherwise. "Do
we throw them at the sleeprs?"
"We plant them in all the places where Xantcha's
scented sleepers," Ratepe said from the wall where he had
studied several of the maps.
"Yes! Yes, exactly right, Brother!" Urza left Xantcha
on the floor. "We will scatter them like raindrops!"
"What will set them off? They're too small for a wick
or fuse."
"Ah, the Glimmer Moon, brother. A strange thing, the
Glimmer Moon. It has virtually no effect on tides, but on
sorcery- white-mana sorcery-it is like a magnet, pulling
the mana toward itself, sometimes strong, sometimes not so
strong, but strongest when the Glimmer Moon reaches its
zenith. So, very simple, I make a spindly crystal and
charge one end with white mana. I put the crystal inside
the spider, in a drop of water where it floats on its side.
When the Glimmer Moon goes high, it tugs the charged end of
the crystal, which stands up in the drop of water, and my
little spider makes the noise that affected Xantcha, but
not you or I. It is as good as an arrow!"
"But just a bit more complicated," Ratepe warned.
"Geometry, brother," Urza laughed. "Astronomy.
Mathematics. You never liked mathematics! Never learned to
think in numbers. I have done all the calculations." He
gestured at the writing-covered walls.
Xantcha had pulled herself to her feet. Her anger at
being tricked had vanished. This was the Urza she'd been
waiting for, the artifacts she'd been waiting for. "How
powerful are they? I was what, maybe four paces away? How
many will we need to flush out all the sleeprs in a city?
Hundreds, thousands?"
"Hundreds, maybe, in a town. Thousands, yes, in a city.
The more you have, the greater the effect, though you must
be very precise when you attach them to the walls. Too far
is bad, too close is worse. They'll cancel each other out,
and nothing at all will happen. I will show you in each
town we pass through. And I will continue to refine them."
Ratepe's face had turned pensive. Xantcha thought it
was because he'd play no part in Urza's grand plan, but he
proved her wrong, as usual.
"We could just make things worse. I know Xantcha's
Phyrex-ian, but when she fell just now I didn't guess she
fell because she was Phyrexian. You're going to have
something make a noise born-folks can hardly hear, but a
few are going to collapse on the ground. People won't know
why. They don't cut up corpses, they've never seen a
Phyrexian priest. They'll think it's a god's doings and
there's no guessing what they'll think after that."
"The sleepers will be gone, Brother. Dead. Lying on the
ground. Let men and women think a god has spoken, if that's
their desire. Phyrexia will know that Dominaria has struck
back; and that's what matters: the message we send to
Phyrexia. It is as good as saying that the Thran have
returned."
"I'm only saying that if no one knows why, no one will
understand, and ignorance is dangerous."
"Then, Brother, what would you have me do?" Urza
demanded. "Handwriting in the sky? A whisper in every
Dominarian ear? Would you have another war? Is that what
you want, Mishra- another war across Terisiare? This way
there is no war. The land is not raped. No one dies."
"The sleepers will die," Xantcha said.
In her mind's eye she saw the First Sphere and the
other newts, the other Xantcha with its orange hair. She'd
slain newts herself-she'd slain that other Xantcha when it
got between her and food-but when she thought about
vengeance against Phyrexia, she thought about priests and
demons, not newts or sleepers. Her head said they had to be
eliminated-killed. The artifact-spider's sound had gripped
her. She believed it could kill, but not quickly or
painlessly, and if her hunch was correct, that many of the
sleepers didn't know they were Phyrexian, they wouldn't
know why they suffered.