Planeswalker Read Online Free PDF Page B

I possessed the
Mightstone. The stones have equal power, Xantcha, but the
power is different. The Weak-stone is weakness, the
Mightstone is strength, and the Phyrexians never dared my
strength. Ah, the evil that day, Xantcha. If they had not
driven us apart, there would have been no war, except
against them... . You see that, Xantcha. You see that,
don't you? My brother and I together would have driven them
back to Koilos. They knew our power before we'd begun to
guess it."
    They and them. They and them. With Urza, it all came
back to they and them: Phyrexians. Xantcha knew the
Phyrexians for the enemies they were. She'd never argue
that they hadn't played a pivotal role in Urza's wars.
Perhaps they had suborned Mishra and Ashnod, too. But while
Urza played with gnats on a tabletop, another wave of
Phyrexians, real Phyrexians, had washed up on Dominaria's
shores.
    "It makes no difference," she protested. "Mishra's been
dead for more than three thousand years! It hardly matters
whether you failed him, or Ashnod destroyed him, or the
Phyrexians suborned him, or whether it happened before "The
Dawn of Fire" or after. Urza, you're creating a past that
doesn't matter-"
    "Doesn't matter! They took my brother from me, and made
of him my greatest enemy. It matters, Xantcha. It will
always matter more than anything else. I must learn what
they did and how and when they did it." He breathed, a slow
sigh. "I could have stopped them. I must not fail again."
He held his hands above the table. Xantcha didn't need the
lens to know that Mishra's gnat shone bright. "I won't,
Mishra. I will never fail again. I have learned caution. I
have learned deception. I will not be tricked, not even by
you!"
    Before Urza had brought Xantcha to Dominaria, she'd
been more sympathetic to his guilt-driven obsessions. Now
she said, "Not even you can change the past," and didn't
care if he struck her down for impudence. "Are you going to
stand by and play with toys while the Phyrexians steal your
birthplace from you? They're back. I smelled them in
Baszerat and Morvern. The Baszerati and the Morvernish are
at war with each other, just as the Yotians and the Fallaji
were, and the Phyrexians are on both sides. Sound
familiar?"
    Her neck ached from staring up at him and braving his
gem-stone stare. Xantcha had no arcane power to draw upon,
but nose to nose, she was more stubborn. "Why are we here,"
she asked in the breathless silence, "if you're not going
to take a stand against the Phyrexians? We could play games
anywhere."
    Urza retreated. He moistened his lips and made other
merely mortal gestures. "Not games, Xantcha. I can afford
no more mistakes. Dominaria has not forgotten or forgiven
what happened last time. I must tread lightly. So many
died, so much was destroyed, and all because I was blind
and deaf. I did not see that my brother was not himself,
that he was surrounded by enemies. I didn't hear his pleas
for help."
    "He never pled for help! That's why you didn't hear,
and you can never know why he didn't, because you can never
talk to him again. No matter what happens in this room, on
that table, you can't bring him back! Now you've got Ashnod
outside the tent. You've made her into another Phyrexian,
pulling Mishra's strings. The Yotians were planning an
ambush, the Phyrexians were planning an ambush, and you
weren't wise to either plot. Waste not, want not, Urza-if
the Phyrexians had Ashnod before "The Dawn of Fire," how
did she manage, thirty years later, to send Tawnos to you
with the sylex? Or was that part of a plot, too? A compleat
Phyrexian doesn't have a conscience, Urza. A compleat
Phyrexian doesn't feel remorse; it can't. Mishra never
did."
    "He couldn't. He'd been suborned," Urza shouted.
"Usurped. Corrupted. Destroyed! He was no longer a man when
I faced him in Argoth. They'd taken his will, flensed his
flesh and stretched it over an abomination!"
    "But they didn't take