Lynn Abbey - Planeswalker

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."