by Lynn Abbey
to have to let go of the sphere."
"No!" Ratepe's plea should have been a shout; it was a barely coherent moan instead.
"I'll make another-"
"Too sick. Can't float."
She tried to ignite his spirit. "A little seasickness won't kill you."
"Can't."
"Waste not, want not. I'm the one who can't swim! I'm counting on you to keep me afloat until I can make another sphere."
Ratepe slumped beside her. His face was gray and sweaty. His eyes were closed. Whatever strength he had left was dedicated to fighting the spasms in his gut. A little bit of seasickness would kill them both if she released the sphere. And if she didn't release it?
Xantcha tried to make it rise, but lifting the sphere had always been something that simply happened as it formed and not anything she'd ever consciously controlled.
"Urza," Ratepe said through clenched teeth. "Urza'll come.
Your heart."
Urza had come when she'd nearly blown herself up with the Phyrexian ambulator, but now she wasn't in any immediate danger. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue, and the sphere bobbed like a driftwood log.
"Sorry, Ratepe. If he didn't pull us out of that storm we were riding, then he's not going to pull us out of here. I'm not close enough to dying to get his attention."
"Gotta be a way."
Xantcha peeled Ratepe's sweat-soaked hair away from his eyes. He'd said he loved her, in a moment of sheer panic, of course, but there was a chance he'd been telling the truth. Sexless, parentless newt that she was, Xantcha didn't imagine she could love as born-folk did, but she felt something for the miserable young man beside her that she'd never felt before, something worth more than all her
books and other treasures.
"Hold on," she urged, grasping his hand. "I'll think of something."
Xantcha couldn't think of anything she hadn't already tried, and the sphere remained mired in the water. The waves had lessened, and she enjoyed the gentle movement, but Ratepe was as miserable as when the storm had dropped them, and by the way he was sweating out his misery, he'd be parched before long, too.
"Come morning, we'll be late," she said as the sky darkened. "Maybe Urza will come looking for us, but maybe not right away."
"Can't you ... do something ... to make him look?" Ratepe asked.
A whole sentence exhausted him. He rested with his eyes closed. Xantcha tried to tell Ratepe that the motion would bother him less if he sat up and looked at the horizon, as he'd learned to do when they were soaring. Ratepe insisted the motions were totally dissimilar and refused to try.
"How does ... Urza know when you ... need him?"
"He doesn't," Xantcha answered. "When we were dodging Phyrexians we stayed close, but the rest of the time, I never gave much thought to needing Urza, and he certainly never needed me."
"Never? Three thousand years ... and you never ... needed each other?"
"Never."
Ratepe sighed and curled around his knees. He began to shiver, a bad sign considering how warm the Sea of Laments was in the summer. Xantcha tucked their blankets around him, then, because she'd worked up a sweat herself, and stripped off her outer tunic. It got tangled in her hair and in the thong of a pendant she'd worn so long she'd forgotten why she wore it.
"You can hit me now," she said, breaking the thong.
"What?"
"I said, you can hit me now ... or you can wait until after we find out if this thing still works."
"What?"
"A long time ago-and I mean a long time ago-Urza did make me an artifact that would get his attention. I used something like it just once, before Urza invaded Phyrexia. I have to break it."
That time Xantcha had crushed the little crystal between two rocks. This time she tried biting it and broke a tooth before it cracked. Waste not, want not. At least she'd been farsighted enough to use her back teeth which grew back quicker than the front ones.
That time, between the rocks, there'd been a small flash of light as whatever power or sorcery Urza had sealed within the crystal was released. This time Xantcha neither saw nor felt anything, and when she examined the broken pieces, they were lined with a sooty residue that didn't look promising.
"How long?" Ratepe asked.
"A day before he got there with his dragon."
Ratepe groaned, "Too long."
Xantcha was inclined to agree. Urza must have come back to the forest before he went after the dragon. He wouldn't have taken the chance that the Phyrexians might get away,
and after he'd finished with the diggers, he'd known where the ambulator was. If Urza was going to haul them out of the Sea of Laments, they'd be on dry land before moonrise. If the crystal hadn't lost its power. If Urza recognized its signal and remembered what it meant.
Those were worries Xantcha kept to herself. The stars came out. Xantcha began to fear the worst, at least about Urza, and for Ratepe. They had enough food and water for two more days. Taking advantage of her newt's resilience, Xantcha could get to land either way. She wasn't sure about Ratepe.
It would be a stupid way for anyone to die, but the same could be said about most deaths.
Ratepe fell asleep. His breathing steadied, his skin grew warmer and drier. He might be over his seasickness by morning; he had adapted to soaring, and there was nothing to be gained by premature despair. Xantcha settled in around him. It was remarkable that two bodies could be more comfortable curled around each other than either was alone. She closed her eyes.
Xantcha woke up with a stabbing pain in her gut, water sloshing against her armpits, and Urza shouting in her ear:
"What misbegotten scheme put you in the middle of an ocean!" He had her by the nape of the neck, like a cat carrying a kitten, and held Ratepe the same way. The sphere was burst, obviously. Xantcha knew she should yawn out the armor, but Urza moved too fast. They were a split instant between-worlds, a heartbeat longer in the wintry winds of a nearby world, then back through the between-worlds to the cottage. Xantcha was gasping, mostly because Urza dropped her before turning his attention to Ratepe who'd turned blue during the three-stride 'walk. She knew his color because they'd traveled west and the sun wasn't close to setting behind the Ohran Ridge.
A bit of healing and a few sips from a green bottle off Urza's shelves brought Ratepe around.
"Change your clothes, Brother," Urza commanded in a tone that had surely started battles in their long-ago nursery. "Wash. Get something to eat. Xantcha and I need to talk."
Mishra, of course, stood his ground. "Don't blame Xantcha, and don't think you can ignore me ... again. I'm the one who wanted to see Koilos."
Ratepe pronounced the word in the old-fashioned way. Xantcha dared a glance at Urza's eyes, thinking her lover was getting advice from the Weakstone. Both of Urza's eyes were glossy black from lid to lid. She hadn't seen them like that since they'd left Phyrexia, which made her think of Oix and the Thran and a score of other things she quickly stifled. Xantcha tried to catch Ratepe's eye and pass him a warning to tread cautiously, if he couldn't figure that for himself.
With his bold remark, Ratepe had effectively changed the landscape of recrimination. If Xantcha could have seized control of the argument at that moment, she could have guaranteed there'd be no revelations about the fate of the Thran. If she could have seized control. She didn't catch Ratepe's eye, and Urza had lost interest in her as well.
"Koilos is dead. There's nothing left. We took it all,
Brother. Us and the Phyrexians," Urza said, leaving Xantcha to wonder if he'd visited the cave since his return to Dominaria.
"I needed to see it with my own eyes," Ratepe replied, a comment that, considering the circumstances, could have many layers of meaning. "You told me to go away for a while, so I did."
"I never meant you to go to Koilos. If it was Koilos you wanted, we could have gone together."
"That was never a good idea, Urza," Ratepe said with finality as he walked out the open
door, following the near-orders Urza had already given.
"You should have stopped him," Urza hissed at Xantcha when they were alone. "My brother is ... fragile. Koilos could have torn him apart."
"It's just another place, Urza," Xantcha countered, resisting the urge to add that Ratepe was just another man. Neither statement was true. After a year on the Ohran Ridge, Ratepe might not be Mishra, but he'd become more than a willful, onetime slave.
" 'Just another place,' " Urza mocked her. "For one like you, yes, I suppose it would be. What would you see? A cave, some ruins? What did my brother see? He isn't quite himself yet. The next one will be better, stronger. I expected it would be several Mishras before I'd take one back to Koilos."
"There won't be another Mishra, Urza."
Urza turned away. He puttered at his worktable, scraping up residues and dumping them in a bucket. He'd been working on something when the crystal struck his mind. Xantcha's anger, always quick to flare, was also quick to fade.
"Thank you for picking us out of the ocean."
"I didn't know at first. It took me a moment to remember what it was that I was hearing. I made that crystal for you so long ago, when I still thought I could invade and destroy Phyrexia. My ambitions have grown smaller. Since Equilor, it's all I can do to protect Dominaria from them. I'll make you another."
"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.