Shatter Spiders Activation

The first of the shatter spiders did its damage as a section of the Red-Stripe barrack collapsed. She could see the destruction from the roof, which was higher than the first of several walls that encircled the palace. The folk in the plaza wouldn't have seen anything, but they might have heard the walls fall, or the inevitable shouts as flames poked through the rubble. Overturned lamps and such finished what the shatter-spiders had begun.

In all, Xantcha thought, it was going very well. She was surprised that Ratepe wasn't visibly jubilant. She tried to ask him with gestures and the old hand code that she and Urza had devised and that, lacking foresight of this moment, she'd failed to teach him. Ratepe pointed toward Avohir's temple, where the shatter-spiders had yet to produce any obvious damage and no priests, sleeper or otherwise, were visible in the pools of torchlight.

***

Then something happened to make Ratepe put his hands over his ears. All across the plaza, Efuands hitherto unaffected were reacting to a painful noise, but there were no Red-Stripes-no Phyrexians-to take advantage of them. All of them, sleepers and compleat, those already dead and those still alive, simply exploded, bursting like sunripened corpses. Sound, as Urza had promised, with the power to shake glistening oil until it pulled apart. The Glimmer Moon had struck its zenith. Everything until that moment had been mere forewarning.

***

The Red-Stripe barracks collapsed and, through her feet, Xantcha heard the ground wail. A cloud of dust as large as the guild inn billowed through sanctuary doors, a cloud that rose quickly to hide the temple and half the plaza from Xantcha's view. When dust had settled some, she and every Efuand saw that the great dome above the altar and the gong tower-shadows in the night moments earlier were both missing.

From his knees, Ratepe lowered his hands and pounded the roof with his fists. A god who couldn't protect his book or his sanctuary was apt to lose the faith of his worshipers. Xantcha didn't know the depth of Ratepe's faith, but she guessed it had been shaken to its roots.

***

Chapter 23