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.
Ratepe and Urza were watching her.
"They have to die," she said quickly, defensively. "There's no place for them...." A shiver ran down her back. Place, one of the oldest words in her memory. Her cadre never had a place. They were oxen, deprived of everything except their strength, used ruthlessly, discarded as meat when there was nothing left. "I'll do it," she snarled. "Don't worry. Waste not, want not. I'll do whatever has to be done until Phyrexia is rolled up like an ambulator and disappears." Her voice had thickened as it did when she yawned, but her throat was tight with tears, not armor. "But it's not true that no one will die."
Urza strode toward her. "Xantcha," he said softly, insincerely. The open door beckoned. She ran through it. Urza tried to call her back:
"Xantcha, no one's talking about you ... !" She ran too far to hear the rest.
CHAPTER 18
There were other discussions, some less volatile, a few that had the three of them storming off in different directions, but in the end Ratepe and Xantcha fell in with Urza's plan to broadcast the screaming spiders-Ratepe named them-throughout Old Terisiare and anywhere else that Urza or Xantcha might sniff a Phyrexian in the air.
They had about three seasons to get the spiders arrayed on dusty walls and ceilings. By Urza's calculations the Glimmer Moon would strike its zenith above Old Terisiare a few days short of next year's midsummer's eve. Xantcha had little time for visiting unfamiliar places or searching out new Phyrexian infestations. The windstreams weren't fast enough. Urza 'walked her to realms where glistening oil tainted the air. Then he left her with a cache of spiders while he 'walked on with several thousand more. Nine days later, he'd examine her glowing amber heart, find her, and take her back to the cottage where Ratepe waited for them.
In a compromise between delusion and practicality, Urza had decided his brother's talents were uniquely suited to constructing spiders. Ratepe had tried to argue his way out of the responsibility, but Urza's instructions were clear and, aside from charging the white mana crystals, making the small artifacts was more tedious than difficult. Every nine days, when they were together at the cottage, Urza banished Ratepe and Xantcha from his workroom while he grew