"Far enough," she whispered. Her voice had been wrecked by the bad air of four different worlds. "I've got to rest."
"It's not safe! I hear him, Yawg-"
Xantcha cringed whenever Urza started to say that word. She seized the crumbling substance of his ornately armored tunic. "You're calling the Ineffable! Never say that, never do that. Every time you say that name, the Ineffable can hear you. Of all the things I was taught in the Fane of Flesh, that one I believe with all my strength. We'll never be safe until you burn that name from your memory."
Sparks danced across Una's eyes, which had been a featureless black since he'd dragged them away from Phyrexia. Xantcha didn't know what he saw, except it had him spooked, and anything that unnerved Urza was more than enough for her.
Urza took her suggestion to heart. Heat radiated from his face. Waste not, want not, if he could literally burn something from his memory, he could probably survive it, too. Still, she put more distance between them, leading him by the wrist to a rock where he could sit.
"Water, Xantcha. Could you bring me water?"
He was blind, at least to real things. His vision, he'd said, was all spots and bubbles, as if he'd stared too long at the sun. There'd been no sun above the Fourth Sphere, but the dragon had been the target of all the weapons, sorcerous and elemental, that the demons could aim.
"You'll stay right here?" she asked.
"I'll try."
Xantcha didn't ask what he meant. She'd set her feet on enough worlds to have a sharp sense of where she could survive and where she couldn't. Phyrexia and the three worlds after Phyrexia were inhospitable, but this three- moon world was viable. She had her cyst, her heart, and, tucked inside her tunic, an ambulator. If Urza vanished before she returned, it wouldn't be the end of her.
Heavy rains had fallen recently. Xantcha saw water at the base of the hill where they emerged from between- worlds. Carrying it was another matter. She quenched her thirst from her own cupped hands, but for Urza she stripped off her tunic, sopped it in the water, and carried it, dripping, up the hill.
Urza's attempt to remain seated atop the rock had been successful. Silhouetted against the softly lit night sky, his shoulders were slumped forward, and his chin had disappeared in the shadows of his armored tunic. His hands lay inert in his lap.
"Urza?"
His chin rose.
"I've brought you water, without grace or dignity."
"As long as it is wet."
She guided his hand to the sopping cloth. "Quite wet."
Urza sucked moisture from the cloth, then wiped his face. When he'd finished, he let her tunic fall. Xantcha sat at his feet.
"Is there anything more I can do for you? Will you eat? Food might help. I smell berries. It's summer here."
He shook his head. "Just sit beside me. Sleep, if you can, child. Morning will come, a summer morning."
Xantcha fought into her tunic. The night was cool, not cold. The garment was uncomfortable, nothing worse. Discomfort was nothing unfamiliar. She got comfortable against the rock. Urza shifted his hand to the top of her head.
"I told you to stay behind."
"I did, for a little while."
"You could have been hurt. I might have left you in Phyrexia forever."
Urza was Urza, at the very center of his world and every other. On a night like this, after the day they'd survived, his vainglory was reassuring. Xantcha relaxed.
"It went otherwise, Urza. I was neither hurt nor left behind."
"I'd still be there but for you."
"You'd be dead, Urza, if you can die, or in the Seventh Sphere, if you can't, wishing that you could."
"The Seventh Sphere is the place where-" He hesitated. "Where the Ineffable punishes demons?"
"Yes."
"Then I should thank you."
"Yes," Xantcha repeated. "And you should have listened to me when I told you what waited in Phyrexia."
"I will build another dragon, bigger and stronger. I know where
Phyrexia is now, tucked across a fathomless chasm. I would never have seen it 'walking. I wouldn't see it now, but I know and I can go back. They will die, Xantcha. I will reap them like a field of overripe grain. The day of Mishra's vengeance is closer today than yesterday."
Xantcha swallowed an ordinary yawn. "You were surrounded, Urza. The fourth leg went right after I climbed it. You'd destroyed hundreds of Phyrexians, and yet there were as many around you at the end as there had been at the beginning."
"I will change my design."
"A thousand legs wouldn't be enough. You can't destroy every Phyrexian by fighting. You'll need allies and an army three times the size of Phyrexia. Tactics. Strategy." Xantcha thought of the heart vault. "Or, the perfect target for a stealthy attack."
"And since when did you become my war consul, child?"
Urza could be disdainful. Strategy and tactics indeed. She'd need be careful when she mentioned the heart vault. Tonight, while Urza was blind and she was exhausted, wasn't the right time to reveal her discoveries. Another yawn escaped, entirely normal. Without the mnemonic, the cyst was just a lump in her stomach.
"Sleep, child. I am grateful. I underestimated my enemy. I'll never do that again."
Xantcha was too tired to celebrate what little victory she'd achieved. She fell asleep thinking she'd be alone when she awoke.
She was, but Urza hadn't gone far. With nothing more than grass, twigs and small stones, Xantcha's companion had recreated the Fourth Sphere battleground in an area no more than two-paces square. His dragon, made from twigs and woven grass, towered over the other replicas in precisely the proportions she remembered. She expected it to move.
"I'm awed," she admitted before her shadow fell across Urza's small wonders. "You must be feeling better?"
"As good as a fool can feel."
It was a comment that begged questions, but Xantcha had learned to tread softly through confusion. "You can see again?"
"Yes, yes." He looked up: black pupils, hazel irises, white sclera. "You had the right of it, Xantcha. Burn that name out of my mind.
As soon as I did, I began to feel like myself again, ignorant and foolish. No one was hurt. No planes were damaged."
"A few spheres. The priests will be a long time repairing the damage. And you destroyed a score of their dragons and wyverns. Better than I expected, honestly."
"But not good enough. If I'd come down here-" Urza touched the ground behind the stone-shaped furnaces then quickly rearranged the delicate figures-"I'd have had a
wall of fire at my back, and they couldn't have encircled me."
Xantcha studied the new array. "How would that be better? With the furnaces behind you, you'd have been held in one place almost from the start." Urza gave her a look that sparkled. She changed the subject. "Are we staying here while you build another dragon?"
"No. The multiverse is real, Xantcha. At least every plane I'd ever found before was real, until yesterday when I found Phyrexia. Going there and leaving, those were 'walking strides like I've never taken before. It was as if I'd leapt a vast chasm in a single bound. The chasm, I realize now, is everywhere, and Phyrexia is its far side. No matter where we are, we're only one leap away from our enemy and it from us. Even so, I'll feel better when I've put a few knots in my trail."
She had no argument with that plan. "Then what? Another dragon? An army? Allies? I found something yesterday, Urza, something I thought was probably lies. I found my heart."
Xantcha slid her hand into her boot. The amber continued to glow. She offered it to Urza.