"You won't have to do anything at all," Urza assured her. "After I've used the ambulator once, I'll know where Phyrexia is, and I'll 'walk the dragon there. You'll wait, safe and snug, until I return. Now, watch!"
Between blinks, Urza shifted from beside Xantcha to the dragon's saddle-seat. It came to life. No, not life, Xantcha reminded herself, never life! The dragon was an artifact, the tool of Urza's vengeance against the abominations of Phyrexia. Never mind that its eyes went from dark to blazing or that a ground-shaking roar accompanied each lightning bolt. The dragon was merely a tool that took aim at an already blackened hill and reduced it to slag in less time than it would have taken Xantcha to eat her breakfast.
"Do you still have doubts?" Urza asked when he'd returned to her side.
"Mountains don't defend themselves."
Urza took her words for a jest. His laughter rang between-worlds as he whisked her back to the forest cottage.
With the dragon finished, there was little to do but wait for the Phyrexians to return, and for Urza, waiting was difficult. Though he'd long since pried every story she was willing to tell from her memory, he continued to quiz her. How high were the First Sphere mountains? Where were the Fanes, the arenas? Which priests were the most dangerous and where did they dwell? Were the iron wyverns solitary creatures or pack hunters? In the Fourth Sphere, were the furnaces clumped together or did each stand alone? And were the fumaroles wide enough to allow his dragon to descend directly to the interior, or would he have to dismantle Phyrexia like a puzzle box?
Worse than the questions were the nights, about one in four or five, when Urza closed his eyes. Urza's terrible dreams were too large for his mind. His ghosts walked the forest when he slept, recreating a silent drama of anger and betrayal. Xantcha had built the cottage to protect herself from his dreams, but no wall was thick enough to insulate her from his anguish.
Urza's call for vengeance was something a Phyrexian could understand. From the beginning Xantcha's life had been full of threats and reprisals, broken promises and humiliation, but Urza needed more than vengeance. When his nightmares reached their inevitable climax, he'd cry out for mercy and beg someone he called Mishra to forgive him.
Urza wouldn't talk about his nightmares, which got worse once the dragon was complete. He wouldn't answer Xantcha's questions about the ghosts or their world or, especially, about Mishra, except to say the Phyrexians would pay for what they'd done to Mishra, or through
Mishra-Xantcha couldn't be sure which. Whenever she dared mention the nightmare name, Urza would fly into a bleak rage. Ten or twelve days might pass without a word, without even a gesture. Then, without warning, he'd rouse from his stupor, and the questions would begin again.
Xantcha began to look forward to the times when restlessness got the better of Urza and he'd head off between-worlds, still hoping to stumble across Phyrexia, or an excavation team with its precious ambulators. He'd be gone for a month, even a season, and her life would be her own.
Long before the dragon was finished, Xantcha had learned how to control the substance that emerged from her cyst and expand it into a buoyant sphere instead of the clinging armor Urza had intended. Seated in the sphere, she'd traveled an irregular circuit of the hamlets and farms surrounding the forest, learning the local dialects and trading with women who accepted her claim that she lived with "an old man of the forest."
She still visited the local women, albeit carefully, lest they notice that she wasn't growing older the way they were, but with Urza gone for longer periods of time Xantcha gradually expanded her horizons. She was, after all, following Urza's orders. He didn't want her to remain near the cave while he was gone. Urza reasoned that Phyrexians might take her by surprise, extract his secrets from her empty mind, then ambush him when he returned. He designed an artifact that was attuned to his eyes. Though small enough to be worn as a sparkling pendant, the artifact could send a signal between-worlds.
"Come back frequently," he'd told Xantcha when he hung the jewel around her neck. "If they've returned, hide yourself far, far away from here, then break the crystal and I will return for my- for our-vengeance. Above all, once you've seen a Phyrexian, stay away from the forest until I come for you. Don't let your curiosity lead you into foolishness. If they find you, they will reclaim you, and you will betray me. You wouldn't want that to happen."
Twelve winters, twelve summers, and Urza still spoke to her as if she couldn't think for herself or hear through his lies. She swore she'd do as he asked. Whatever his reasons were, Xantcha didn't want to come face-to-face with anything Phyrexian, even though she suspected Urza wouldn't come back for her after he dealt with Phyrexia.
Urza's demands weren't a burden. The chaos and subtleties of born-folk societies fascinated her. Giving herself to the world's wind, Xantcha explored whatever struck her curiosity, so long as it didn't reek of Phyrexia's glistening oil. She learned to speak the born- folk languages, to read their writing, when it existed. The warrior-cave had a hundred different names, all of them archaic, all of them curses. In the world's larger towns, where more folk knew their history, she discovered it was better to invent a completely false history for herself than to admit she had roots near the warrior-cave.
After a few narrow escapes and near disasters, Xantcha decided that it was better to disguise herself as well. Born-folk had definite notion about the proper places of young men and women in their societies, and no place at all for a newt who was neither. An incorrigible lad, a rogue in
the making, was an easier disguise than a young woman. At best when she wore a young woman's clothes, good- intentioned folk wanted to swallow her into their families. At worst... at worst, she'd been lucky to escape with her life. But Xantcha did escape and, hardened by Phyrexia, there was nothing in a born-folks' world that daunted her for long.
The forest world had one moon, which went from full to new to full again in thirty-six days. The born-folk marked time by their moon's phases, and Xantcha did, too, returning to the cave twice each month. Sometimes there was a message from Urza in the ruins of the neglected cottage. Sometimes he was there himself, waiting for her, eager to whisk her between-worlds to witness his latest accomplishment or discovery.
Urza had no one else. Although he said there were others who could walk between planes, he avoided them and bom-folk alike.
Without Xantcha, there were only ghosts to break his silence. If anything would lure Urza back to her after Phyrexia, Xantcha expected it would be loneliness.
She pitied Urza; it seemed he'd lost more to his nightmares than he believed she'd lost to the Phyrexians. His artifact pendant was her most precious possession, a constant reminder that never left her neck. Yet, she was always a little relieved when she found the forest deserted, and except for one nagging worry, she would not have mourned the loss if Urza never reappeared in her life.
The worry was her heart, the lump Xantcha had held in her hand when the vat-priests decanted her, the lump they'd taken from her moments later, as they took it from every other newt. It had slipped through her memory sometime after she'd become a dodger, but it resurfaced when she encountered the Trien.
The Trien believed that their hearts could hold only so many misdeeds before they burst and consigned them to hell. To defend against eternal torment, the Trien purged their hearts of error through bloodletting and guilt dances. Urza had no more blood within him than a compleated Phyrexian, but she'd thought the guilt dance might defeat his nightmares, so she danced with the Trien-to test her theory-and in the midst of hysteria and ecstasy she'd remembered her own heart.