Lynn Abbey - Planeswalker

Xantcha thought a moment, then nodded. Urza 'walked up a few moments later.

"The future's ended before it began," he began, talking to her, talking to the household and talking to himself equally. "I cannot stay to lead you, and Keodoz has already begun to waver in the face of stagnant opposition. But they have lifted me into the night and shown me a frightening sight. The fortress I made around the planes where I was born has been brought down by a misguided fool! As my brother and I undid the Thran, so I have been undone by ignorance. But I can go back, and I will go back.

"Equilor, however, is on its own. You will have to complete my visions without my guidance."

The household made a fair show of grief. From Pakuya to Brya, they said how sorry they were that they wouldn't get to live the future Urza and Keodoz had promised them. The entire community flattered Urza's righteousness and strength of character. They wished him well and offered to make him a feast in honor of his departure for Dominaria. Xantcha was relieved when Urza declined. She didn't think she'd have the stomach for an extended display of insincerity.

Tessu had been right. It was for the best that Urza left Equilor thinking the decision had been his own.

It took them a hundred Dominarian years to 'walk the between-worlds from Equilor to Dominaria, but in the spring of the 3,2I0th year after Urza's birth, Xantcha finally stood on the world where she'd been destined to sleep.

"If Gix could find me, he would find me. He would have found me before I left Pincar City. He would have come for me while I slept. If he didn't want to be seen, he would have sent sleepers after me."

Eight days after her narrow escape, Xantcha sat in the branches of a oak tree. The sun would set sometime during the thunderstorm that was bearing in from the ocean. She'd been watching the clouds pile up all afternoon, watching the lightning since she left Russiore with the day-traders. Her armor tended to attract lightning even as it protected her from the bolts, and a big, old tree, standing by itself on a hillside, wouldn't be a good hiding place much longer.

Once the storm struck, Xantcha figured she'd find a saner place to wait for Urza. With all that metal and exposed sinew, Gix wasn't apt to come looking for her in the rain.

"He didn't know we were here. He didn't recognize me until he found the spark in my mind."

The spark. She'd had a headache the first day away from Pincar City, but her back had ached, too, along with her neck and jaw and every other part of her body: the aftermath of total terror.

There were uglier beasts in the multiverse, meaner ones, and possibly more dangerous ones. None of them had a demon's malignant aura. Born-folk had a word, rape. It occurred on every world, in every language. In Phyrexian, as Xantcha understood it, the word for rape was Gix.

Xantcha had scrubbed her skin raw even though Gix hadn't touched her because she couldn't scour her mind. She'd rehearsed a score of confessions, too, and her greatest fear as the wind whipped the branches around her wasn't that Gix would find her but that he'd already found Urza ... or Ratepe.

Urza could take care of himself. Xantcha had to believe that; she couldn't let herself believe, even for a heartbeat, that Gix had told the truth when he'd said "I made the brothers, too, and then I made you." And if she believed that Urza's mind was his own, then she could be confident it would take the Ineffable to challenge him in single combat. But whatever she managed to believe about herself and Urza, it didn't help when she thought of Ratepe, alone and unsuspecting on the Ohran ridge. Rat wouldn't have a chance, whether Gix came to kill or corrupt.

And when all those memories of Ratepe's face had freed her from Gix's thrall, surely some of them had given away the cottage's location, if Gix were inclined to find the man who went with that face.

"Gix doesn't care," she told the oak tree. "Phyrexians have no imagination."

Rain pelted, driven by the wind, and Xantcha was drenched in an instant. Urza's armor was strange that way. It would protect her from fire or the complete absence of breathable air, but it was entirely vulnerable to plain water. Xantcha clambered down a branch or two, then dropped straight to the ground. She found an illusion of shelter among the briar bushes tangled at the bottom of the hill.

Urza would find her no matter where she hid. Her heart, he said, pulled him between-worlds. He'd grumble about the

rain, if he arrived before the storm died out. Not that any weather affected him; Urza simply didn't like surprises. He wouldn't like her confession.

The storm moved south without clearing the air. A steady rain continued to fall, as a starless night closed in around the briars. Xantcha tried to stay awake, but it was a losing struggle. She hadn't slept much in Russiore. She'd been busy, for one thing, distributing nine days' worth of screaming spiders in less than eight and afraid to close her eyes for the other. The briars were secure and friendly by comparison and the rain's patter, a lullaby.

Xantcha had no idea how long she'd been asleep when Urza awoke her with her name.

"Over here!" she called back.

The rain had stopped, save for drips from the leaves around her. A few stars shone through the thinning clouds, silhouetting Urza as he strode down the hill.

"Ready to go home?" He sounded cheerful. Xantcha told herself that confession would be easier with Urza in a good mood. "No sacks?" He cocked his head at her empty hands and shoulders. "You couldn't get his food and such?" Urza generally avoided choosing a name for Ratepe.

"Urza, I have to talk to you-"

"Problems in Russiore? Are they in the midst of a famine?"

"Not exactly. I didn't have time to scrounge supplies. Something came up-"

"Not to worry. I have other plans, anyway. We'll talk at the cot-tage."

He seized Xantcha's wrist, and before she could protest they were between-worlds. The journey was swift, as always. Two strides through nothing, and they were on the Ohran ridge. It was also, as always, disorienting. Urza stepped out several hundred paces from the cottage to give Xantcha a chance to gather her wits before they greeted Ratepe.

Xantcha's nerves reassembled themselves slowly, in part because she had to assure herself that the cottage was unharmed. Urza had gotten ahead of her. She ran to catch up.

"Urza, I said we have to talk. There's a problem. You. Ratepe. Your brother. The spiders-" All her carefully rehearsed statements had vanished in the between-worlds.

"I've thought it through. I can do the work of all three of us for the next nine days. I'll distribute the artifacts that he's made for us, yours and mine together, and get the next batch assembled. It's another aspect of time: I'll live a little faster. It's good practice, crawling before walking. The spiders won't end this war, Xantcha. They'll only buy time until I solve the Phyrexian problem at its source."

Urza had gotten over his obsession with righting his brother's fate, but he still talked of traveling back in time, much further back in time. Urza wanted to meet the Thran and fight beside them in their final battle against the Phyrexians. He thought they might know enemy's true home and, although he didn't say it, Xantcha believed Urza hoped go behind the Thran, all the way to the Phyrexians' first world to annihilate rather than exile them.

Gix had said the Thran were waiting. The demon could have rummaged the name out of her memories or out of Mishra

during the war. Almost certainly Gix wasn't telling the truth; at least not the important parts of it, but Urza needed to know what had happened in the catacomb beneath Avohir's temple in Pincar City.