"A story, Xantcha-what I want is the truth! The hard- edged truth."
She squared her shoulders. "The truth is, this is not the victor's world. I could have told you that before the sun set twice."
"And how could you have done that?"
"No one here knows a word for war."
Urza stiffened. A planeswalker didn't have to listen with his ears. He could skim thought and meaning directly off the surface of another mind and drink down a new language like water. As a result, Urza seldom paid attention to the actual words he heard or spoke. He handled surprise poorly, embarrassment, worse. His breathing stopped, and his eyes shed their mortal illusion.
"I have encountered a new world," he snapped after a pensive moment. Equilor. His lips hadn't moved.
Xantcha didn't disbelieve him, although Equilor wasn't a word that she remembered hearing on this or any other world. "Is it a name?" she asked cautiously.
"An old name. The oldest name. The farthest plane. It belongs to a plane on the edge of time."
"Another created world, like Phyrexia or Serra's realm?"
"No, I think not. I hope not."
She'd wager, if she'd ever been the wagering sort, that Urza hadn't learned of Equilor from the elves of the forest world but had heard of it years ago and forgotten it until just now when she'd challenged him.
They set out at once, with no more preparation than Urza made for any between-worlds journey. He explained that preparation and, especially, directions weren't important. 'Walking the between-worlds wasn't like walking down a path. There was no north or south, left or right, only the background glow of all the planes that were and, rising out of the glow, a sense of those planes that a 'walker could reach in a single stride. By choosing the faintest of the rising planes at each step, Urza insisted they would in time arrive at Equilor, the plane on the edge of time.
Xantcha couldn't imagine a place where direction didn't matter, but then, for her the between-worlds remained as hostile as it had been the first time Urza dragged her through it. For her the between-worlds was a changeless place of paradox and sheer terror.
At first, the only evidence she had that Urza was doing anything different was indirect. Her armor crumbled, the instant Urza released her, in the air of the next, new world. There was breathable air in each new world they 'walked to, as if he'd at last given up the notion that the Phyrexians could have begun on a world without air. And Urza himself was exhausted when they arrived. He would go into the ground and sleep as much as a local year while she explored.
They were some thirty worlds beyond the elven forest
world when Urza announced, as Xantcha shook herself free of flaking armor:
"Here you do not need to look for Phyrexians. Here we will find others of my kind."
Urza didn't mean that he'd brought her to Dominaria. Every so often, he journeyed alone to the brink of his birth-world to assure himself that it remained safe within the Shard they'd discovered long ago. Urza meant, instead, that he'd broken an age-old habit and set them down on a plane where other 'walkers congregated.
He'd never insinuated that he was unique, at least as far as 'walking between-worlds. Serra was a 'walker and so, Xantcha suspected, had been the Ineffable. But Urza had avoided other 'walkers until they came to the abandoned world he called Gastal.
"Be wary," he warned Xantcha. "I do not trust them. Without a plane to bind them, 'walkers forget what they were. They become predators, unless they go mad."
Knowing Urza fell in the latter category, Xantcha stayed carefully in his shadow as they approached a small, fanciful, and entirely illusory pavilion standing by itself on a barren, twilight plain, but the three men and two women they met there seemed unthreatening. They knew Urzaor knew of him-and welcomed him as a prodigal brother, though Xantcha couldn't actually follow their conversation: planeswalkers conversed directly in one another's minds.
But Urza was not the only 'walker who tempered his solitary life with a more ordinary companion. Outside the pavilion, Xantcha met two other women, one of them a blind dwarf, who braved the between-worlds on a 'walker's arm. Throughout the balmy night, the three of them sought a common language through which to share experience and advice. By dawn they'd made progress in a Creole that was mixed mostly from elven dialects from a hundred or more worlds. Xantcha had just pieced together that Varrastu, a dwarf, had heard of Phyrexia when Urza emerged to say it was time to move on.
Xantcha rose reluctantly. "Varrastu said that she and Manatar-qua have crossed swords with folk made from flesh and metal-"
Words failed as a second sun, yellowish-green in color, loomed suddenly high overhead. The air exploded as it hurtled toward them. Xantcha had the wit to be frightened but hadn't begun to guess why or to yawn Urza's armor from the cyst, when the pavilion burst into screaming flames, and Urza seized her against his chest. He pulled her between-worlds. Without the armor to protect her, she was bleeding and gasping when they re-emerged.
Urza laid her on the ground then cradled her face in his hands. "Don't go," he whispered.
It seemed an incongruous request. Xantcha wasn't about to go anywhere. The between-worlds had battered her to exhaustion. Her body seemed to have already fallen asleep. She wanted only to close her eyes and join it.
"No!" Urza pinched her cheeks. "Stay awake! Stay with me!"
Power like fire or countless sharp needles swirled around her. Xantcha fought feebly to escape the pain. She pleaded with him to release her.
"Live!" he shouted. "I won't let you die now."
Death would have been preferable to the torture flowing from Urza's fingers, but Xantcha hadn't the strength to resist his will. Mote by mote, he healed her and dragged her back from the brink.
"Sleep now, if you wish."
His hand passed over her eyes. For an instant, there was darkness and oblivion, then there was light, and Xantcha was herself again. She exhaled a pent-up breath and sat up.
"I don't know what came over me."
"Death," Urza said calmly. "I nearly lost you."
She remembered the yellow-green sun. "We must go back, Varrastu-Manatarqua-"
"Crossed swords with the Phyrexians. Yes. Manatarqua was the pavilion. She died on Gastal."
A shudder raced down Xantcha's spine. There was more that Urza wasn't saying. "How long ago?"
"In the time of this plane, nearly two years."
Xantcha noticed her surroundings: a bare-walled chamber with a window but not a door. She noticed herself. Her skin was white. It cracked and flaked when she moved, as if her armor clung in dead layers around her. Her hair, which she always hacked short around her face, hung below her shoulders. "Two years," she repeated, needing to say the words herself to make them true in her mind. "Long years?"
"Very long," Urza assured her. "You've recovered. I never doubted that you would, if I stayed beside you. You'll be hungry soon. I'll get food now. Tomorrow or the next day we'll move on toward Equilor."
Already Xantcha felt her stomach churning to life-after two empty years. Food would be nice, but there was another question: "At Gastal, Manatarqua-you said she 'was the pavilion." Do you mean that she was Phyrexian and that you slew her?"
"No, Manatarqua was a 'walker like myself, but much younger. I have no idea why she presented herself as an object. I didn't ask, it was her choice. Perhaps she hoped to hide from her enemies."