"Sleep, child. I am grateful. I underestimated my enemy. I'll never do that again."

Xantcha was too tired to celebrate what little victory she'd achieved. She fell asleep thinking she'd be alone when she awoke.

She was, but Urza hadn't gone far. With nothing more than grass, twigs and small stones, Xantcha's companion had recreated the Fourth Sphere battleground in an area no more than two-paces square. His dragon, made from twigs and woven grass, towered over the other replicas in precisely the proportions she remembered. She expected it to move.

"I'm awed," she admitted before her shadow fell across Urza's small wonders. "You must be feeling better?"

"As good as a fool can feel."

It was a comment that begged questions, but Xantcha had learned to tread softly through confusion. "You can see again?"

"Yes, yes." He looked up: black pupils, hazel irises, white sclera. "You had the right of it, Xantcha. Burn that name out of my mind.

As soon as I did, I began to feel like myself again, ignorant and foolish. No one was hurt. No planes were damaged."

"A few spheres. The priests will be a long time repairing the damage. And you destroyed a score of their dragons and wyverns. Better than I expected, honestly."

"But not good enough. If I'd come down here-" Urza touched the ground behind the stone-shaped furnaces then quickly rearranged the delicate figures-"I'd have had a

wall of fire at my back, and they couldn't have encircled me."

Xantcha studied the new array. "How would that be better? With the furnaces behind you, you'd have been held in one place almost from the start." Urza gave her a look that sparkled. She changed the subject. "Are we staying here while you build another dragon?"

"No. The multiverse is real, Xantcha. At least every plane I'd ever found before was real, until yesterday when I found Phyrexia. Going there and leaving, those were 'walking strides like I've never taken before. It was as if I'd leapt a vast chasm in a single bound. The chasm, I realize now, is everywhere, and Phyrexia is its far side. No matter where we are, we're only one leap away from our enemy and it from us. Even so, I'll feel better when I've put a few knots in my trail."

She had no argument with that plan. "Then what? Another dragon? An army? Allies? I found something yesterday, Urza, something I thought was probably lies. I found my heart."

Xantcha slid her hand into her boot. The amber continued to glow. She offered it to Urza.

"That is-well, it's not your heart, Xantcha." He didn't take it. "Your heart beats behind your ribs, child. The Phyrexians lied to you. They took your past and your future, but they didn't take your heart." Urza guided her empty hand to her breastbone. "There, can you feel it?"

She nodded. All flesh had a blood-heart in its breast. Newts in the Fane of Flesh had hearts until they were compleated. "This is different," she insisted and described the vault where countless hearts shimmered. "We are connected to our hearts. We are taught that the Ineffable keeps watch over our hearts and records our errors on their surface. Too many errors and-" She drew a line across her throat.

Urza took the amber and held it to the sun. Xantcha couldn't see his face or his eyes but a strangeness not unlike the between-worlds tightened around her. She couldn't breathe, couldn't even muster the strength or will to gasp until Urza lowered his hand. His face, when he turned toward her again, was not pleased.

"Of all abominations, this is the greatest." Urza held the amber above her still-outstretched hand but did not release it. "I would not call it a heart, yet it falls short of a powerstone. I can imagine no purpose for it, except the one you describe. And you knew where the vault was?"

Xantcha sensed Urza had asked a critical question and that her life might depend on her answer. She would have lied, if she'd been certain a lie would satisfy him. "I knew it was somewhere in the Fane of Flesh."

"You didn't tell me?"

"I didn't want to die with all the rest of Phyrexia. I wasn't certain. I thought you'd laugh and call me a child again, and I would have been too ashamed to follow you."

Not quite an answer, but the truth and, apparently, satisfactory. Urza dropped the amber into her hand. Without conscious thought, Xantcha clutched it against her blood- heart.

"I wouldn't have-" Urza began, then stopped abruptly and looked down at his grass-and-twig dragon. "No, very

possibly your concerns were justified. I do not imagine abominations and have discouraged you, thinking you imagined them. I allowed myself to forget that your mind is empty. Phyrexians have no imagination." He crushed the dragon beneath his boot. "Another mistake. Another error. Forgive me, Mishra, I cannot see when I need most to see and opportunity slips away forever. If only I could relive yesterday instead of tomorrow."

"You can go back as soon as you've restored your strength. If I could find the vault..."

Urza shuddered. "They know me now. Your Ineffable knows me, I cannot return to Phyrexia, not without absolute certainty of success and overwhelming strength. For the sake of vengeance, I must be cautious. I cannot make any more mistakes. I would be found out before I set foot on your First Sphere."

Xantcha kept her mouth shut. It wasn't her First Sphere. Urza had powers that Phyrexia coveted, but he was oddly reluctant to use them. He had to overwhelm whatever lay before him, and when he made one of his mistakes, that mistake became a fortress.

"I could go. I have an ambulator." She lifted the hem of her tunic, revealing the small black disk tucked beneath her belt. "If you made a smaller dragon, I could turn it loose in the vault."

Urza smiled. "Your courage is laudable, child, but you couldn't hope to succeed. We will talk no more about it." He reached for the portal. Xantcha retreated, folding her arms defensively over her belly. "Come child, you have no need for such an artifact. It is beyond your understanding. Let me have it."

"I'm not a child," she warned, the least incendiary comment seething on the back of her tongue.

"You see, simply having a Phyrexian artifact so close to you taints you, as that name, yesterday, threatened to taint me. You haven't the strength to resist its corruption. You've become willful. Between that and your heart ... You're overwhelmed, Xantcha. I should take them both from you, for your own safety, but I will leave you your heart, if you give me the ambulator."

"It's mine!" Xantcha protested. "I rolled it up."

She'd seen born-children in her travels and recognized her behavior. Urza didn't have to say another word. Xantcha handed the ambulator over.

"Thank you, Xantcha. I will study it closely."

Urza held the ambulator between his fingertips where it vanished. Perhaps he would study it. Perhaps he would find a way to add its properties to her cyst. Whichever or whatever, Xantcha didn't think she'd see it again, but she kept her heart. Urza could have everything else, not that.

He 'walked through two more worlds that day and two more the next and the next after that, making knots in their trail. After two score worlds in half as many days, Xantcha swore the next would be her last, that she'd let go of his hands and remain behind. Any world would be better than another between-worlds passage. But the next world was yellow gas, wind, and lightning that seemed particularly attracted to her armor, and the world after that had no air. Urza made an underground chamber where Xantcha could breathe without her armor and catch up on her sleep.

They came to a swamp with cone-shaped insects as long as her forearm and an abundance of frogs, not Xantcha's favorite sort of place. It reminded her of Phyrexia's First Sphere, but she could breathe and eat and the water, though brackish, didn't make her sick.