Magic the Gathering: Planeswalker (Artifacts Cycle) by Lynn Abbey

Author:Lynn Abbey [Abbey, Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wizard of the Coast
Published: 2002-02-08T23:00:00+00:00

They had about three seasons to get the spiders arrayed on dusty walls and ceilings. By Urza's calculations the Glimmer Moon would strike its zenith above Old Terisiare a few days short of next year's midsummer's eve. Xantcha had little time for visiting unfamiliar places or searching out new Phyrexian infestations. The windstreams weren't fast enough. Urza 'walked her to realms where glistening oil tainted the air. Then he left her with a cache of spiders while he 'walked on with several thousand more. Nine days later, he'd examine her glowing amber heart, find her, and take her back to the cottage where Ratepe waited for them.

In a compromise between delusion and practicality, Urza had decided his brother's talents were uniquely suited to constructing spiders. Ratepe had tried to argue his way out of the responsibility, but Urza's instructions were clear and, aside from charging the white mana crystals, making the small artifacts was more tedious than difficult. Every nine days, when they were together at the cottage, Urza banished Ratepe and Xantcha from his workroom while he grew and charged the crystals.

Summer ended, autumn vanished, winter came, all without disrupting their cycles.

"Not that you couldn't do it," Urza would say, the same words every time he and Xantcha returned, as if they were written on the instructions he'd given Ratepe. "But you've been alone all this time, and Xantcha likes to talk to you. And I've got another idea or two I'd like to tinker with. I can make them better, make them louder, wider, more powerful. So, you two go on. Let me work. Go next door. Talk, eat, do as you like. I'll be busy here until tomorrow night."

"He's as mad as he ever was," Xantcha said as Ratepe put his weight against the workroom door, cracking the late-winter ice that had sealed it since Urza and Xantcha had left nine days earlier.

"He was mad long before the real Mishra died," Ratepe said lightly and regretted his nonchalance as he lost his footing on the slick wood. "You didn't really think anything was going to change that, did you?"

Like Urza, the two of them had fallen into habits and scripts, at least until they'd lit the oil lamp and the brazier and warmed the blankets of Xantcha's old bed. They seldom talked much or ate after that until the lamp needed replenishing.

"I want a favor from you," Ratepe said while Xantcha re-lit the lamp with a coal from the brazier.

Xantcha looked up silently.

"It's getting on toward a year."

She'd been expecting that. Winter lingered on the Ridge. It was spring in the lowlands, a bit more than two months shy of the year she'd asked of Ratepe in Medran. She and Urza were three-quarters through the workroom maps, but their chances of finishing the job before midsummer were nil, and none if Ratepe demanded the freedom she'd sworn to give him.

"You want to go back to Efuan Pincat." A statement, not a question. She made tea from the steaming water atop the brazier.

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