Planeswalker (20 page)

The self-proclaimed dead man stopped beside the bacon
platter and ate a rasher.

"I'm not dead."

"No, you're Phyrexian," Ratepe retorted between
swallows. "You weren't born, you were immortal when you
were decanted. How could you ever be dead?"

Xantcha ignored the question. "A year, Ratepe, or less.
As soon as Urza turns away from the past, I'll take you
back to Efuan Pincar. You have my word for that."

Silence, then: "Urza doesn't trust you."

That stung, even if Ratepe was only repeating something
that Xantcha had heard countless times before. "I would
never betray him... or you."

"But you're Phyrexian. If I believe you, you've never
been anything but Phyrexian. They're your kin. My father
once told me not to trust a man who led a fight against his
kin. Betrayal is a nasty habit that once acquired is never
cast aside."

"Your father is dead." When it came to cruelty, Xantcha
had been taught by masters.

Ratepe stiffened. Leaving the last rashers of bacon on
the platter, he walked a straight path away from the
cottage. Xantcha let him go. She banked the fire, ate the
last of the soggy bacon, and retreated to her room. Her
treasured copies of The Antiquity Wars offered no solace,
not against the turmoil she'd invited into her life when
she'd bought herself a slave. And though there was no
chance that she'd fall asleep, Xantcha threw herself down
on her mattress and pillows.

She was still there, weary, lost in time, and wallowing
in an endless array of painful memories, when she sensed a
darkening and heard a gentle tapping on her open door. "Are
you awake?"

If Xantcha hadn't been awake, she wouldn't have heard
Ratepe's question. If she'd had her wits, she could have
answered him with unmoving silence and he might have gone
away. But Xantcha couldn't remember the last time anyone
had knocked on her door. Sheer surprise lifted her onto her
elbows, revealing her secret before she had a chance to
keep it.

Ratepe crossed her threshold and settled himself at her
table, on her stool. There was only one in the room.
Xantcha sat up on the mattress, not entirely pleased with
the situation. Ratepe stiffened. He seemed to reconsider
his visit, but spoke softly instead.

"I'm sorry. I'm angry and I'm scared and just plain
stupid. You're the closest I've got to a friend right now.
I shouldn't've said what I said. I'm sorry." He held out
his hand.

Xantcha knew the signal. It was oddly consistent across
the planes where men and women abounded. Smile if you're
happy, frown when you're not. Make a fist when you're
angry, but offer your open hand for trust. It was as if men
and women were born knowing the same gestures.

She kept her hands wrapped around her pillow. "Betrayed
by the truth?"

He winced and lowered his hand. "Not the truth. Just
words I knew would hurt. You did it, too. Call it square?"

"Why not?"

Xantcha offered her hand which Ratepe seized and shook
vigorously, then released as if he was glad to have the
ritual behind him. A suspicion he confirmed with his next
remark.

"Urza's gone. I knocked on his door. I thought I'd talk
to him and ask his advice. I know, that was stupid, too.
But, the door opened... and he's not in there."

Xantcha spun herself off the bed and toward the door.
"He's gone "walking."

"I didn't see him leave, Xantcha, and I would've. I
didn't go far, not out of sight. He's vanished."

"Planeswalking," she explained, leading the way to the
porch and the door to Urza's larger quarters. "Dominaria's
a plane, Moag, Vatraquaz, Equilor, Serra's realm, even
Phyrexia, they're all planes, all worlds, and Urza can
'walk among them. Don't ask how. I don't know. I just close
my eyes and die a little every time. The sphere that I
brought you here in started off as armor, so I could
survive when he pulled me after him."

"But? You're Phyrexian. The Phyrexians ... how do
they get here?"

"Ambulators ... artifacts."

Xantcha put her weight against the door and shoved it
open. Not a moment's doubt that Urza was gone, but one of
surprise when she saw that the table was clear.

"You said you saw him working at the table?" Ratepe
barreled into her, keeping his balance only by grabbing her
shoulders. He let go quickly, as he had when their hands
had touched. "It was a battlefield, "The Dawn of Fire." Can
you tell where he's gone?"

Xantcha shrugged and hurried to the table. No dust, no
silver droplets, no gnats stuck in the wood grain or
stranded on the floor. She tried to remember another time
when Urza had cleaned up after himself so thoroughly. She

couldn't. "Phyrexia?" Ratepe asked, at her side again. "He
wasn't ready for a battle, and there'll be a battle, if he
ever goes back to Phyrexia. No, I think he's still here,
somewhere on Dominaria."

"But you said 'among worlds.' "

"The fastest way from here and there on Dominaria is to
go between-worlds. Did he mention Baszerat or Morvern?"

Ratepe made a sour face. "No. Why would anyone mention
Baszerat and Morvern?"

"Because the Phyrexians are there, on both sides of a
war. I told him to go and see for himself. With all the
excitement last night, I forgot to ask him what he
learned."

"That the Baszerati are swine and the Morvernish are
sheep?" After so many worlds and so many years of
wandering, Xantcha tended to see similarities. Ratepe had a
one-worlder's perspective, which she tried to change. "They
are equally besieged, equally vulnerable. The Phyrexians
are the enemy; nothing else matters. It was smelling them
in Baszerat and Morvern that convinced me the time was
right to go looking for you. Urza's got to hold the line in
Baszerat and Morvern or it will be too late."

Ratepe sulked. "Why not hold the line in Efuan Pincar?
The Phyrexians are there, too, aren't they?"

"I haven't talked to him about Efuan Pincar."

"I did." He saw her gasp and added, "You didn't say I
shouldn't."

When Xantcha had hatched her scheme to end Urza's
madness by bringing him face-to-face with his brother,
she'd imagined that she'd be setting the pace, planning the
strategies until Urza's wits were sharp again. Her plans
had been going awry almost from the beginning, certainly
since the burning village. While she came to terms with her
error, Ratepe attacked the silence.

"He didn't seem to know our history, so I tried to tell
him everything from the Landings on. He seemed interested.
He asked questions and I answered them. He seemed surprised
that I could, because he said my mind was empty. But he
paid the closest attention toward the end when I told him
about the Shratta and the Red-Stripes. Especially the
Shratta and Avohir and our holy book. I told him our family
wasn't religious, that if he really wanted to know, he
should visit the temples of Pincar and listen to the
priests. There are still wise priests in Pincar, I think.
The Shratta can't have gotten them all."

"Enough, Ratepe," Xantcha said with a sigh and a finger
laid on Ratepe's upper lip. He flinched again. They both
took a step back. The increased distance made conversation
a little easier; eye contact, too, if he'd been willing to
look at her. "It's not your fault."

"I shouldn't have told him about the temples?"

Xantcha raised her eyebrows.

Ratepe corrected himself. "I shouldn't have told him
about the Phyrexians. I should have asked you first?"

"And I would have told you to wait, even though there's
nothing I want more than to get Urza moving. You did what
you thought was right, and it was right. It's not what I
would have done. I've got to get used to that. I warn you,
it won't be easy."

"He'll come back, won't he? Urza won't just roar

through Efuan Pincar, killing every Red-Stripe Phyrexian he
can find."

With a last look at the table, Xantcha headed out.
"There's no second guessing Urza the Artificer, Ratepe-but
if he did, it wouldn't be a bad thing, would it?"

"Killing all the Red-Stripes would leave the Shratta
without any enemies."

Xantcha paused beside the door. "You're assuming that
there aren't any Phyrexians among the Shratta. Remember
what I told you about the Baszerati and the Morvernish-the
sheep and the swine? I wouldn't count on it."

She left Ratepe standing in the empty room and had
gotten as far as the wellhead, beyond the hearth, before he
came chasing after her.

"What do we do now?" Ratepe's cheeks were red above the
dark stubble of a two-day beard. "Follow him?"

"We wait." Xantcha unknotted the winch and let the
bucket drop.

"Something could go wrong."

"All the more reason to wait." She began cranking.
"We'd only make it worse."

"Una hadn't ever heard of Efuan Pincar. He didn't know
where it was. He doesn't know our language."

Xantcha let go of the winch. "What language do you
think you two have been speaking since you got here?"
Ratepe's mouth fell open, but no sound came out, so she
went on. "I don't know why he says our minds are empty.
He's willing to plunder them when it suits him. Urza
doesn't know everything you know. You can keep a secret by
just not thinking about it, or by imagining a wall around
it, but in the beginning-and maybe all the time-best think
that Urza knows what you know."

Ratepe stood motionless except for his breathing, which
was shallow with shock. His flush had faded to waxy pale.
Xantcha cranked the bucket up and offered him sweet water
from the ladle. Most of it went down his chin, but he found
his voice.

"He knows what I was thinking? The Weakstone and
Mishra? How I thought I was outwitting Urza the Artificer?
Avohir's mercy ..."

Xantcha refilled the ladle and drank. "Maybe. Urza's
mad, Ratepe, He hears what he wants to hear, whether it's
your voice or your thoughts, and he might not hear you at
all-but he could. That's what you've got to remember. I
should've told you sooner." "Do you know what I'm
thinking?" "Only when your mouth is open."

He closed it immediately, and Xantcha walked away,
chuckling. She'd gone about ten steps when Ratepe raced
past and stopped, facing her.

"All right. I've had enough ... You're Phyrexian. You
weren't born, you crawled out of a pit. You're more than
three thousand years old, even though you look about
twelve. You dress like a man-a boy. You talk like a man,
but Efuand's a tricky language. We talk about things as if
they were men or women-a dog is a man, but a cat is a lady.
Among ourselves, though, when you say 'I did this,' or 'I
did that,' the form's the same, whether I'm a man or woman.
Usually, the difference is obvious." He swallowed hard, and
Xantcha knew what he was thinking before he opened his
mouth again. "Last night, Urza, when he'd talk about you,

he'd say she and her. What are you, Xantcha, a man or a

woman?"

"Is it important?"

"Yes, it's important."

"Neither."

She walked past him and didn't break his arm when he
spun her back to face him.

"That's not an answer!"

"It's not the answer you want." She wrenched free.

"But, Urza ... ? Why?"

"Phyrexian's not a tricky language. There are no
families, no need for men or women, no words for them,
either-except in dreams. I had no need for those words
until I met a demon. He invaded my mind. After that and
because of it, I've thought of myself as she."

"Urza?" Ratepe's voice had harshened. He was indignant,
angry.

Xantcha laughed. "No, not Urza. Long before Urza."

"So, you and Urza ... ?"

"Urza? You did read The Antiquity Wars, didn't you?
Urza didn't even notice Kayla Bin-Kroog!"

She left Ratepe gaping and closed the door behind her.

Urza was an honorable man, and an honest one. Even when
he'd been an ordinary man, if the word ordinary had ever
applied to Urza the Artificer, Urza had had no great use
for romance or affection, but he'd tolerated friendship,
one friend at a time.

After Xantcha had pushed him out of Phyrexia, he'd
accepted her as a friend.

In the three thousand years since, Xantcha had never
asked for more nor settled for less.

They'd stumbled through three worlds before the day
during which Urza had ridden his dragon into Phyrexia,
ended. Xantcha was seedier than Urza by then, which meant
they were leaning against each other when Xantcha released
her armor to the cool, night mist. There were unfamiliar
stars peeking through the mist and a trio of blue-white
moons.

"Far enough," she whispered. Her voice had been wrecked
by the bad air of four different worlds. "I've got to
rest."

"It's not safe! I hear him, Yawg-"

Xantcha cringed whenever Urza started to say that word.
She seized the crumbling substance of his ornately armored
tunic. "You're calling the Ineffable! Never say that, never
do that. Every time you say that name, the Ineffable can
hear you. Of all the things I was taught in the Fane of
Flesh, that one I believe with all my strength. We'll never
be safe until you burn that name from your memory."

Sparks danced across Una's eyes, which had been a
featureless black since he'd dragged them away from
Phyrexia. Xantcha didn't know what he saw, except it had
him spooked, and anything that unnerved Urza was more than
enough for her.

Urza took her suggestion to heart. Heat radiated from
his face. Waste not, want not, if he could literally burn
something from his memory, he could probably survive it,
too. Still, she put more distance between them, leading him
by the wrist to a rock where he could sit.

"Water, Xantcha. Could you bring me water?"

He was blind, at least to real things. His vision, he'd
said, was all spots and bubbles, as if he'd stared too long
at the sun. There'd been no sun above the Fourth Sphere,
but the dragon had been the target of all the weapons,
sorcerous and elemental, that the demons could aim.

"You'll stay right here?" she asked.

"I'll try."

Xantcha didn't ask what he meant. She'd set her feet on
enough worlds to have a sharp sense of where she could
survive and where she couldn't. Phyrexia and the three
worlds after Phyrexia were inhospitable, but this three-
moon world was viable. She had her cyst, her heart, and,
tucked inside her tunic, an ambulator. If Urza vanished
before she returned, it wouldn't be the end of her.

Heavy rains had fallen recently. Xantcha saw water at
the base of the hill where they emerged from between-
worlds. Carrying it was another matter. She quenched her
thirst from her own cupped hands, but for Urza she stripped
off her tunic, sopped it in the water, and carried it,
dripping, up the hill.

Urza's attempt to remain seated atop the rock had been
successful. Silhouetted against the softly lit night sky,
his shoulders were slumped forward, and his chin had
disappeared in the shadows of his armored tunic. His hands
lay inert in his lap.

"Urza?"

His chin rose.

"I've brought you water, without grace or dignity."

"As long as it is wet."

She guided his hand to the sopping cloth. "Quite wet."

Urza sucked moisture from the cloth, then wiped his
face. When he'd finished, he let her tunic fall. Xantcha
sat at his feet.

"Is there anything more I can do for you? Will you eat?
Food might help. I smell berries. It's summer here."

He shook his head. "Just sit beside me. Sleep, if you
can, child. Morning will come, a summer morning."

Xantcha fought into her tunic. The night was cool, not
cold. The garment was uncomfortable, nothing worse.
Discomfort was nothing unfamiliar. She got comfortable
against the rock. Urza shifted his hand to the top of her
head.

"I told you to stay behind."

"I did, for a little while."

"You could have been hurt. I might have left you in
Phyrexia forever."

Urza was Urza, at the very center of his world and
every other. On a night like this, after the day they'd
survived, his vainglory was reassuring. Xantcha relaxed.

"It went otherwise, Urza. I was neither hurt nor left
behind."

"I'd still be there but for you."

"You'd be dead, Urza, if you can die, or in the Seventh
Sphere, if you can't, wishing that you could."

"The Seventh Sphere is the place where-" He hesitated.
"Where the Ineffable punishes demons?"

"Yes."

"Then I should thank you."

"Yes," Xantcha repeated. "And you should have listened
to me when I told you what waited in Phyrexia."

"I will build another dragon, bigger and stronger. I
know where

Phyrexia is now, tucked across a fathomless chasm. I
would never have seen it 'walking. I wouldn't see it now,
but I know and I can go back. They will die, Xantcha. I
will reap them like a field of overripe grain. The day of
Mishra's vengeance is closer today than yesterday."

Xantcha swallowed an ordinary yawn. "You were
surrounded, Urza. The fourth leg went right after I climbed
it. You'd destroyed hundreds of Phyrexians, and yet there
were as many around you at the end as there had been at the
beginning."

"I will change my design."

"A thousand legs wouldn't be enough. You can't destroy
every Phyrexian by fighting. You'll need allies and an army
three times the size of Phyrexia. Tactics. Strategy."
Xantcha thought of the heart vault. "Or, the perfect target
for a stealthy attack."

"And since when did you become my war consul, child?"

Urza could be disdainful. Strategy and tactics indeed.
She'd need be careful when she mentioned the heart vault.
Tonight, while Urza was blind and she was exhausted, wasn't
the right time to reveal her discoveries. Another yawn
escaped, entirely normal. Without the mnemonic, the cyst
was just a lump in her stomach.

"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.