There was nothing Xantcha could do to stop Gix, and until she was sure that the spiders were exhausted, there was nothing she dared do to spirit herself and Ratepe away.
Vast crimson fingers leapt from the roofless sanctuary. They soared into the sky, then arched toward the plaza. Looking up, Xantcha and everyone else saw that the fingers were hollow, filled with darkness and fanged like serpents. The darkness resembled the upright passageway to Phyrexia that she'd seen in the crypt. Xantcha feared they'd all be sucked into the Fourth Sphere. Ratepe put his arms around her, and Xantcha wrapped hers around him. She wanted to feel his warm, mortal flesh with her fingers and wouldn't have cared if the spiders killed her, except that she wouldn't force Ratepe to watch her die.
She saw a ribbon of silvery light emerge from the center of palace. Diving and soaring, the palace light pierced each serpent and drew them all together with a choking knot before dragging them over the north wall and out to sea.
Xantcha shouted, "Urza!" at Ratepe who needed a few more heartbeats before he could shape his lips around the name.
Gix fought back, but as Xantcha had always suspected, Urza was more than a match for a Phyrexian demon ... or a Thran one. Neither duelist was visible from the plaza or the roof, though they each knew exactly where the other was. They fought with light and fire, with artifacts and creatures that defied naming in any language Xantcha knew. Gix would have lost quickly if the demon had not aimed most of his destruction at the Efuand survivors in the plaza and thereby forced Urza to defend the innocent.
Then Urza loosed two weapons at once: bolts of lightning to counter Gix's last cowardly thrust and a dragon shaped like the one he'd ridden into Phyrexia, but shaped from golden light. Stars shone through the dragon's wings, but its power was anything but illusory. A jet of intense blue fire shot from its mouth as it began a stoop that would take it into Gix's sanctuary lair.
Gix didn't die fighting; nor did he retreat to Phyrexia. Instead he abandoned Pincar City altogether: a relatively small green-gold streak racing to the south, a half-breath ahead of the dragon's flame.
Xantcha expected the dragon to pursue Gix over the horizon, but it continued its stoop into the ruined sanctuary. She braced herself for the physical shock wave of a crash that never came. A heartbeat, and another, and the dragon lifted into flight again, showing first its wings, then its spidery torso, and at last, clasped in a pair of legs, a book that recently had seemed very large and now looked quite small. The dragon beat its translucent wings twice for altitude. Then it stooped again and set Avohir's holy book on the battered dais before climbing back into the sky.
The dragon circled out to sea-Avohir's home according to myth-and the Efuands still standing, including Ratepe, set up a cheer in its wake, but Urza wasn't finished. He brought the dragon back (Xantcha would have sworn he shrank it just a bit, too) for a gentle glide over the palace
roofs. Through its bright, shifting light, Xantcha wasn't sure it had picked something up until it was almost overhead and she could see a frail old man getting the ride of his life.
It was a miracle of another sort that Tabarna's heart didn't fail before the dragon set him down beside Avohir's book. The dragon flew straight up after that and disappeared among the stars.
The Efuands who'd cheered the survival of their book, went wild when they saw their king. Xantcha couldn't get Ratepe's attention no matter how hard she pounded his back or how loudly she shouted, "Is it over? Can I release Urza's armor?"
Yes, it's over, Xantcha. Urza's voice spoke to Xantcha's thoughts.
You heard! she replied, releasing the armor and pulling the wax out of her ears. You came! The cheers of the crowd, after total silence, were as deafening as the spiders.
Xantcha had trouble hearing Urza when he said, still in her mind, I've been here all along, keeping my eyes on Gix. I didn't want to frighten you.
Waste not, want not. How long had Urza known?
Xantcha hadn't kept her thoughts private. Urza pulled the question from her mind and answered it. Since the priest in the orchard. I went back to all the haunted places. I saw how the Phyrexi-ans had crept into my world again. I found Tabama in a ceil beneath the palace-he was quite mad, but still himself. The Phyrexians needed to trot him out periodically, and they could only do what they did to Mishra because he carried the Weakstone. So I stole Tabarna from them and hid him on another plane.
That, I confess, was the act that brought Gix here to Pincar City. Since then, everything I've done-everything I've had you do-has been building toward this moment. I healed Tabama. Madness, you know, sinks deep roots in a man's soul once he's seen sights and thought thoughts no man should see or think. There are some moments he'll never remember again, moments such as I wish I could forget, Xantcha. The Shratta could not be deceived, so they were killed while Tabama watched. But he'll live another ten years and sire another son or two. I guarantee it.
Xantcha had warned her slave, assume that if you've thought about it Urza knows it. Then she had failed to remember her own advice.
"You've had reason to be suspicious, Xantcha. There's never been anyone who could do for me what I've done for Tabarna."
Urza was on the roof with them, looking very ordinary. He had no trouble getting Ratepe's attention but was unprepared when Ratepe threw himself into a joyous, tearful embrace.
The affection Efuands had for their elderly king-whose speech none of them could hope to hear through their shouting- was nothing Xantcha wanted to understand, though it was also clear that Urza had done exactly what was necessary to insure that the realm would recover from its long battering.
Xantcha stood a bit apart from Ratepe and Urza, giving herself a few moments to consider all that she'd just learned. She stayed apart when Urza extended his hand.
"What happens next?" she demanded thinking deliberately of Gix.
"I go to Koilos."
She folded her arms. "Not alone. Not if you're going after Gix."
Urza frowned, then sighed. "No, I suppose not." He turned to Ratepe. "And you, Brother, I suppose you'll want to come, too."
CHAPTER 24
The sun just had risen over the Kher Ridge, far to the east of Gulmany island and Efuan Pincar. It would be a summer day with clear air and high clouds that wouldn't come close to raining on these desert-dry stones. Koilos, the Secret Heart, was on the other side of the mountain where Xantcha and Ratepe rested, waiting for Ratepe to recover from the three-step 'walk from Pincar City. Urza was already at the cavern. He'd sworn he wouldn't go looking for Gix until they arrived, unless Gix came looking for him.
Ratepe sat on the ground, chafing his arms and legs against the morning chill and the shock of healing.
"You think he knows everything?"
Xantcha had just finished telling him what had passed between her and Urza on the guild-inn roof not an hour earlier. She was impatient to yawn out the sphere and get into the air, even though she knew there'd be no part for her or Ratepe to play in the coming fight. More than three thousand years ago she'd watched as other demons thrust Gix down a fumarole to punishment that had proved less than eternal. She expected Urza to do a better job and wanted to watch him doing it.
"He's still calling you Mishra."
Ratepe nodded several times. "True enough. But he was something in the sky last night over Pincar City-a little while ago- whenever. I got used to the idea that he was the crazed, foolish man who lived on the other side of the wall. I let myself forget what I knew he was, through the Weakstone. He was the man who came within an hour of destroying the world."