The first of the shatter spiders did its damage as a section of the Red-Stripe barrack collapsed. She could see the destruction from the roof, which was higher than the first of several walls that encircled the palace. The folk in the plaza wouldn't have seen anything, but they might have heard the walls fall, or the inevitable shouts as flames poked through the rubble. Overturned lamps and such finished what the shatter-spiders had begun.
In all, Xantcha thought, it was going very well. She was surprised that Ratepe wasn't visibly jubilant. She tried to ask him with gestures and the old hand code that she and Urza had devised and that, lacking foresight of this moment, she'd failed to teach him. Ratepe pointed toward Avohir's temple, where the shatter-spiders had yet to produce any obvious damage and no priests, sleeper or otherwise, were visible in the pools of torchlight.
Could Gix have ordered a search that had removed her handiwork? The Phyrexian presence in Avohir's temple had been noticeably less tainted with the glistening oil scent when Xantcha had made her second visit to Pincar City and all but absent this past afternoon.
But if the demon had scoured the temple walls, wouldn't he have checked the Red-Stripe barracks, too, or the plaza itself? Were compleat Phyrexians truly lacking in suspicious imagination?
There was a flurry around the dais. The holy readers were no longer reciting, and other priests had joined them, getting in one another's way as they closed the great book
and made haste to get the litter poles beneath it. That would explain Ratepe's distress. He didn't want Avohir's book inside the sanctuary when-if-the altar collapsed.
But there was more she should worry about: Red-Stripes cadres had spilled from the barracks and the temple. They began, ruthlessly, to restore order in the swirling crowd. Their only opposition came from those other Red-Stripes who'd turned on the disabled sleepers when the spiders began to scream. It seemed that some sleepers and Phyrexians hadn't been affected by Urza's artifacts or, even more incredibly, that some Efuands had so embraced Phyrexian aspirations that they pursued them even after the Phyrexians had fallen.
Xantcha grabbed Ratepe's sleeve and made him face her.
"What's happening down there?" she demanded. "Is it over? Can I unplug my ears?"
He shrugged helplessly and, consumed by frustration, Xantcha stuck a finger in one ear.
The spiders hadn't stopped screaming, and breaking the seal that protected her from their power was an instant, terrible mistake. Xantcha lost all awareness and sense of herself until she was on her back. Ratepe knelt over her, pressing his fingers against her ears. One hand was bloody when she felt strong enough to push them both away. Ratepe helped her stand.
The situation had changed in the plaza. Some of the second wave of Red-Stripes had succumbed to the spiders' screaming. They were literally torn apart by the Efuand mob, and gruesome though that was to watch, it was also instructive. The resistant Red-Stripes were more compleat than Xantcha or the already fallen sleepers. Beneath their seemingly mortal skins they had bones of metal, wired sinews, and veins that spilled glistening oil onto the cobblestones.
The oil did truly glisten in malevolent shades of green and purple until someone discovered, as Urza had discovered a very long time ago, that glistening oil burned.
A slow-moving question that was not her own passed through Xantcha's mind, and Ratepe's, too-he staggered and might have fallen from the roof, if Xantcha hadn't grabbed him. Across the plaza, most Efuands were not so fortunate, though they had less far to fall. All whom Xantcha could see shook themselves back to their senses and stood up unharmed. None of the Efuands, including Ratepe, could know what had happened, but Xantcha, who knew a demon's touch when she felt it, looked for a strand of ruby red light and found it sweeping through the smoke above the burning oil.
Gix.
Xantcha's hand rose to her throat. She broke the crystal. Ratepe watched her do it; he asked questions she couldn't hear, and she answered with the demon's name.
Avohir's sweet mercy! She read the prayer from Ratepe's lips.
In the plaza, the frantic priests of Avohir had finally slung the litter poles beneath the holy book in position to carry the volume back to the sanctuary. That building had still to show any signs of damage from the shatter'Spiders. The sanctuary might not show such damage to observers on the guild-inn roof. They hadn't expected or intended to bring the great outer walls down, merely the altar and a
dormitory cloister behind the sanctuary. And, of course, the spiral stairway down to the crypt.
Xantcha didn't know whether to relax or ratchet her apprehension tighter when the priests successfully navigated through the plaza throng, and Avohir's holy book disappeared into the sanctuary. Ratepe was obviously more anxious, but his lips moved too quickly for her to read his words, even after she'd asked him to slow down and speak distinctly.
Then something happened to make Ratepe put his hands over his ears. All across the plaza, Efuands hitherto unaffected were reacting to a painful noise, but there were no Red-Stripes-no Phyrexians-to take advantage of them. All of them, sleepers and compleat, those already dead and those still alive, simply exploded, bursting like sun- ripened corpses. Sound, as Urza had promised, with the power to shake glistening oil until it pulled apart. The Glimmer Moon had struck its zenith. Everything until that moment had been mere forewarning.
Xantcha's whole body tingled from the inside out. If Urza's armor failed, she'd be dead before she knew she was endangered. She tried to imagine the scenes in all the other cities where she and Urza had planted the spiders. Born Dominarians on their knees, as Ratepe was, perhaps spattered with blood that glistened malevolently in the moonlight. All of them wondering if it were their turn to die.
The Red-Stripe barracks collapsed and, through her feet, Xantcha heard the ground wail. A cloud of dust as large as the guild inn billowed through sanctuary doors, a cloud that rose quickly to hide the temple and half the plaza from Xantcha's view. When dust had settled some, she and every Efuand saw that the great dome above the altar and the gong tower-shadows in the night moments earlier- were both missing.
From his knees, Ratepe lowered his hands and pounded the roof with his fists. A god who couldn't protect his book or his sanctuary was apt to lose the faith of his worshipers. Xantcha didn't know the depth of Ratepe's faith, but she guessed it had been shaken to its roots.
It was shaken further when an intense red glow filled Avohir's sanctuary, overflowing through the open doors, the windows, and the roof. Xantcha saw the wotd fire on Ratepe's lips, but the light wasn't fire. It was Gix.
Xantcha broke the chain that had held Urza's pendant around her neck. She held the crystal up in the crimson light. Very clearly, it was broken and, just as clearly, Urza wasn't coming. He hadn't said where he'd go to watch the Glimmer Moon strike its zenith. He could have gone to the Glimmer Moon itself or he could have remained in the Ohran Ridge cottage.
Or Urza's absence could mean that Gix was not the only demon on Dominarian soil and that Urza was already in a desperate brawl. Urza could 'walk anywhere, but even he couldn't be in two places at once.
The red light within Avohir's sanctuary grew brighter, larger. It fluctuated and emitted serpentine flares that faded slowly in the night. The smell of Phyrexia grew steadily stronger. Xantcha imagined Gix burning and battering his way up from the catacombs. She wondered if he
had the power to destroy a city and didn't doubt for a heartbeat that the demon would, if he could.