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Ashnod's will? She sent the
sylex. Was her will stronger than your brother's?"
    Xantcha played a dangerous game herself and played it
to the brink. Urza had frozen, no blinking or breathing, as
if he'd become an artifact himself. Xantcha pressed her
advantage.
    "Was Ashnod stronger than you too? Strong enough to
double-deal the Phyrexians and save Dominaria in the only
way she could?"
    "No," Urza whispered.
    "No? No what, Urza? Once you start treating bom men and
women as Phyrexians, where do you stop? Ashnod skulking
outside your tent before the Dawn of Fire, Ashnod sending
Tawnos with the sylex? One time she's a Phyrexian puppet,
the next she's not? Are you sure you know which is which?
Or, maybe, she was the puppet both times, and what would
that make you? You used the sylex."
    Urza folded a fist. "Stop," he warned.
    "The Phyrexians spent three thousand years trying to
slay you, before they gave up. I think they gave up because
they'd found a better way. Leave you alone on a
mountainside playing with toys!"
    He'd have been a powerful man if muscle and bone had
been his strength's only source, but Urza had the power of
the Thran through his eyes, and the power of a sorcerer
standing on his native ground. His arm began to move. As
long as she could see it moving, Xantcha believed she was
safe.
    The fist touched her hair and stopped. Xantcha held her
breath. He'd never come that close, never actually touched
her before. They couldn't go on like this, not if there was
any hope for Dominaria.
    "Urza?" she whispered when, at last, her lungs demanded
air. "Urza, can you hear me? Do you see me?" Xantcha
touched his arm. "Urza ... Urza, talk to me."
    He trembled and grabbed her shoulder for balance. He
didn't know his strength; pain left her gasping. Her eyes
were shut when he made the transition, temporary even at
the best of times, back into the here and now. Something
happened to Urza when he cast his power over the worktable,
not the truth, but definitely real and definitely getting
worse.
    "Xantcha!" his hand sprang away from her as though she
were made from red-hot metal. "Xantcha, what is this?" He
stared at the crockery mountains as if he'd never seen them
before - though Xantcha had seen even that reaction more
times than she cared to remember.
    "You summoned me, Urza," she said flatly. "You had
something new to show me."
    "But this?" He gestured at his mountain-and-gnat
covered table. "Where did this come from. Not-not me. Not
again?"
    She nodded.
    "I was sitting on the porch as the sun set. It was
quiet, peaceful. I thought of-I thought of the past,
Xantcha, and it began again." He shrank within himself.
"You weren't here."
    "I was after food. You were inside when I returned.
Urza, you've got to let go of the past. It's not... It's
not healthy. Even for you, this is not healthy."
    They stared at each other. This had happened so many
times before that there was no longer a need for
conversation. Even the moment when Urza swept everything
off his table was entirely predictable.
    "It's started, Urza, truly started. This time there's a
war south of here," Xantcha said, while dust still rose
from the crumbled mountains, quicksilver slithered across
the packed dirt floor, and gnats by the hundreds scrambled
for shelter.
    "Phyrexians?"
    "I kenned them on both sides. Sleepers. They take
orders, they don't give them, but it's a Dominarian war
with Phyrexian interference on both side."
    He took the details directly from her mind: a painless
process when she cooperated.
    "Baszerat and Morvern. I do not know these names."
    "They aren't mighty kingdoms with glorious histories.
They're little more than walled cities, a few villages and,
    to keep the grudge going, a handful of gold mines in the
hills between them; something for the Phyrexians to
exploit. They're getting bolder. Baszerat and Morvern
aren't the only places I've scented glistening oil in the
wind, but this is the