Planeswalker (14 page)

Rat shook his head vigorously. "It's more than his
hands. He's clean-shaven. The Shratta never cut their
beards."

Xantcha ran through her memory. Since she'd arrived in
Efuan Pincar the only clean-shaven men she'd seen had been
in Medran, wearing Red-Stripe tunics, and here where the
men she'd fought and the man Rat had killed were beardless.

"So, it's not the Shratta after all? It's Red-Stripes
pretending to be Shratta?" she asked.

And knowing that the Phyrexians had invaded the Red-
Stripe cadres, Xantcha asked another, silent, question: Had
the Phyrexians created their own enemy to bring war and
suffering to an obscure corner of Dominaria? If so, they'd
learned considerable subtlety since Oix destined her to
sleep on another world.

Rat's head continued to shake. "I've seen the Shratta
cut through a family like ripe cheese. I saw them draw my
uncle's guts out through a hole in his gut: they'd said
he'd spilled dog's blood on the book. I know the Shratta,
Xantcha, and this is what they'd do, except, this man
isn't-and can't be-Shratta."

Keeping her voice calm, Xantcha said, "You said you
were gone when the Shratta came through your village. You
didn't see anything. It could have been the Red-Stripes."

"Could've," Rat agreed easily. "But I saw my uncle get
killed, and I saw it before we left Pincar City, and it was
the Shratta. By the book, by the true book, Xantcha. Why
would Red-Stripes do this? No one but the Shratta support
the Shratta. The people here ... at home, what was home . .
. the Shratta would come, real Shratta, and they'd tell us
what to do, which was mostly give them everything we had
and then some; and they would kill if they didn't get what
they wanted." Rat shuddered. "My family were strangers,
driven out of Pincar City, but everyone hated the Shratta
as much as we did. We'd pray ... we'd all pray, Xantcha, to
Avohir to send us red-striped warriors from the cities. The
Red-Stripes were our protectors."

"Be careful what you pray for, I guess. It sounds like
the Red-Stripes may have been doing the Shratta's dirty
work, and leaving behind no witnesses to reveal the truth."

Rat had reached a similar conclusion. "And if that's
true, they're not finished with this place. They're waiting
outside. They won't have gone away. Everyone here is dead,
you and me, too, unless we can kill them all."

"It's worse than that, Rat. Somebody's gone. Somebody's
running a report back somewhere." To a Phyrexian sleeper,
saying he'd seen a dark-haired youth hovering in a sphere?
No, she'd killed the thug who'd seen them in the sphere.
But she'd shaken off an arrow. Phyrexians might lack
imagination, but they had excellent memories. Somebody
might remember Gix's identical newts, especially since
Dominaria was the world Phyrexia coveted above all others,
the world of her earliest dreams. Urza was right, as usual.
She'd lost her temper, and the price could be very high.
"We've got to leave."

"Everyone will die!"

"No deader than they'd be if we'd never set foot here."

"But their blood will be on our hands-on my hands,
since you don't seem to have a conscience. I'm not
leaving."

"There's no point in staying."

"The Red-Stripes will come back. We'll kill them, then
we can leave."

"I told you, there's no point. They'll have sent a
runner. This village is doomed."

Rat paced noisily. "All right, it's doomed. So after we
kill the Red-Stripes that are still outside the village,
you take these people, one by one, to other villages, where
they can spread the truth and disappear. By the time the
runner leads more Red-Stripes here, this place will be
empty. It can be done."

"You can't be serious."

But Rat was, and Xantcha had a conscience. It could be
done. First came a long, violent night roaming the fields
outside the village with her armor and a sharp knife,
followed by three days of burying the dead and another five
of ferrying frightened survivors to places where they could
"spread the truth about the Shratta and the Red-Stripes
then disappear." But it was done, and on the morning of the
tenth day, after leaving Rat's fetters draped across the
defiled altar, they resumed their journey out of Efuan
Pincar.

Xantcha guided the sphere with a rigid hand. The
Glimmer Moon hung low in the night sky, painfully bright
yet providing little illumination for the land below. A
dark ridge loomed to the south. On the other side of that
ridge there was a familiar cottage with two front doors and
the bed in which she expected to be sleeping before
midnight.

It was a clear night reminiscent of winter. The air was
dead-calm and freezing within the sphere. Her feet had been
quietly numb since sundown. Beside her, Rat hadn't said a
word since the first stars appeared. She hoped he was
asleep.

And perhaps he was, but he awoke when the sphere
pitched forward and plummeted toward a black-mirror lake
Xantcha hadn't noticed. He'd had nearly two weeks to learn
when to tuck his head and keep his terror to himself, but
in the dark, with food and whatnot tumbling around them,
Xantcha didn't begrudge Rat a moment of panic. In truth,
she scarcely noticed his shouts; the plunge caught her
unprepared. It was several moments before she heard
anything other than her own heart's pounding.

By then Rat had reclaimed his perch atop the sacks.
"You could set us down for the night," he suggested.

"We're almost there."

"You said that at noon."

"It was true then, and it's truer now. We're almost to
the cottage."

Rat made an unhappy noise in the back of his throat.
Xantcha gave him a sidelong glance. Through the dim light
she could see that he'd hunched down in his cloak and
pulled the cowl up so it formed a funnel around his face.

She'd collected Rat's new clothes as she'd ferried Red-
Stripe survivors to other Efuand villages. They were
nothing like the clothes Mishra would have worn- nothing
like the travel-worn silks and suedes Xantcha herself wore-
but they were the best she'd been able to find, and Rat had
seemed genuinely grateful for them.

He'd cleaned up better than Xantcha had dared hope.
Their first full day in the ruined village, while she'd
been talking relocation with the elders, Rat had persuaded
one of the women to trim his hair. He'd procured a handful
of pumice the same way and spent that afternoon scrubbing
himself-and being scrubbed-in the stream-fed pool where the
women did laundry.

"You didn't have to bother the villagers." Xantcha had
told him when she'd seen him next, all pink and raw,
especially on the chin. "I could have loaned you my knife."

He'd looked down at her, shaking his head and half-
smiling. "When you're old enough to grow whiskers, Xantcha,
you'll realize a man doesn't have to cut his own hair."

Xantcha had started to say that with or without
whiskers Rat would never be as old as she was, but that
half-smile had confused her. Even now, when she couldn't
see through the dark or the cowl, she suspected he was
half-smiling again, and she didn't know what to say. Once
washed and dressed in clothes that didn't reek, he'd proved
attractive, at least to the extent that Xantcha understood
mortal handsomeness. Rat didn't resemble any of Xantcha's
Antiquity Wars portraits, and there was a generosity to him
that softened the otherwise hard lines of his face.

Rat had healed almost as fast as a newt. His bruises
were shadows now, and the sores around his neck, wrists,
and ankles shrank daily. Every morning had seen a bit more
flesh on his bones, a bit more swagger in his stride. He'd
become Mishra: charming, passionate, unpredictable, and
vaguely dangerous. Kayla Bin-Kroog would have known what to
say-Kayla had known what to say to Urza's brother-but
Xantcha wasn't Urza's wife, and, anyway, Rat thought of her
as a boy, a deception that, all other things considered,
Xantcha thought she might continue after they returned to
the cottage ... if Urza cooperated.

She touched his shoulder gingerly. "Don't worry, we'll
be there tonight."

Rat shrugged her hand away. The cowl fell, and she
could see his face faintly in the moonlight. He wasn't
smiling. "Tonight or tomorrow morning, what difference can
it make?"

"Urza's waiting. It's been more a month since I left.
I've never been gone this long."

"You'll be gone forever if you don't stop pushing
yourself. Even if he were the real Urza, he'd tell you to
rest before you hurt yourself."

Rat didn't know Urza. Urza was inexhaustible,
indestructible; he assumed Xantcha was too, and so,
usually, did she.

"We're almost there. I'm not tired, and I don't need to
rest." The words were no sooner said than the sphere caught
another downdraft, not as precipitous as the first one, but
enough to fling them against each other. "You're making
mistakes."

"You know nothing about this!" Xantcha shot back. She

tilted her hand too far, overcorrected, and wound up in
Rat's lap.

He pushed her away. "What more do I need to know? Put
it down."

"I didn't argue with you when you said those villagers
needed to be rescued."

"I'm not arguing with you. I know you want me to meet
Urza. You think there's not a moment to lose against the
Phyrexians, but not like this, Xantcha. This is foolish, as
foolish as buying me in the first place, only I can't help
you keep this damn thing in the air."

"Right-you can't help, so be quiet."

And he was, as quiet as he'd been that first night out
of Medran. Xantcha hadn't believed it was possible, but
Rat's silence was worse than Urza's, because Rat wasn't
ignoring her. He wasn't frightened, either; just sitting
beside her, a cold, blank wall even when she pushed the
sphere against the wind. There were moments when she could
believe that Rat was Urza's real brother.

"You don't have to be Mishra, not yet."

Another of Rat's annoyed, annoying noises. "I'm not
being Mishra. Mishra wouldn't care if you killed yourself
getting him to Urza and, if you asked me, the real Urza
wouldn't either. The real Urza didn't care about anything
except what he wanted. The way you're acting, I'm starting
to think you believe what you've been telling me. It's all
over your face, Xantcha. You're the one who's worried
because you're afraid. More afraid of the man you call
Urza, I think, than of any Phyrexian."

It was Xantcha's turn to stare at the black ridge on
the southern horizon and convince herself that Rat was
wrong. The ridge was beneath them before she broke the
silence.

"You don't believe anything I've told you."

"It's pretty far-fetched."

"But you've come all this way with me. There were so
many times, when I was ferrying the villagers about, that
you could have run away, but you didn't. I thought you'd
decided I was telling you the truth. Why did you stop
trying to run away, if you didn't believe anything I said?"

"Because six months ago I would've sworn on my life
that I'd never leave Efuan Pincar, not with some half-wit
boy whose got a thing in his belly. I'd've sworn a lot of
things six months ago, and I'd've been wrong about all of
them. I'm getting used to being wrong and I did give you my
word, freely, when you agreed to get those villagers to
safety, that I'd play your game. You weren't paying
attention, but I was. You saved them because I asked you
to, and that makes you my friend, at least for now."

"You've got to believe, Rat. If you don't believe, Urza
won't, and I don't know what he'll do-to either of us-if he
thinks I've tried to deceive him."

"I'll worry about Urza the Artificer," Rat said
wearily.

He was patronizing her, despite everything she'd told
him. All the lessons in language and history she'd given to
him after dark in the village, Rat didn't believe.

He continued, "You worry about that shadow coming up. I
think it's another lake, and I think we're going to go rump
over elbows again if you don't wriggle your hand around

it."

Rat was right about the lake. Xantcha wove her hand to
one side, and another unpleasant moment was averted. It had
taken her decades to learn the tricks that air could play
on her sphere. Rat was quicker, cleverer than she'd ever
been. There was a chance he was right about Urza, too,
especially when she saw eldritch light leaking through the
cottage windows after the sphere cleared the ridge.

"He's locked himself in," she muttered, unable to keep
disappointment out of her voice.

"You didn't think he'd be waiting by the door, not in
the middle of the night? A locked door isn't a bad idea, if
you're alone and you've got the sorcery to make it stick. A
man gets tired," said Rat.

"Not Urza," Xantcha said softly as the sphere touched
down and collapsed.

Without the sphere's skin to support them, their
supplies rearranged themselves across the ground. It was
quicker than the chaos they endured when the sphere tumbled
through the air, but quite a bit more painful on the hard
ground; a wooden box corner came down squarely on Xantcha's
cold ankle.

She was still cursing when the eldritch locks vanished.
Urza appeared in the open doorway.

"Xantcha! Where have-?"

He'd noticed Rat. His eyes began to glow. Xantcha
hadn't considered the possibility that Urza might simply
kill any stranger who appeared outside his door.

"No!" Xantcha wanted to get herself between the two
men, but her feet wouldn't cooperate. "Urza! Listen to me!"

She'd no sooner gotten Urza's attention than Rat
wrested it away again with a single, soft-spoken word:

"Brother ..."

Every night in the village Xantcha had sat up with Rat
telling him about Urza and Urza's obsessions. She'd warned
him about Urza's uncanny eyes and the tabletop where his
gnats recreated-refined-the scenes from Kayla's epic. She'd
taught him the rudiments of the polyglot language she and
Urza spoke when they were alone because it was rich in the
words he'd shared with Mishra, when they were both men.
She'd taught him the word for brother and insisted he
practice it until he got it right, but the word he'd said
was pure Efuand dialect.

For a moment the space between them was as dark as the
space between the stars overhead, then the golden light
that had been in the cottage flowed from Urza toward Rat,
who didn't flinch as it surrounded him.

"You wished to see me, Brother," he continued in
Efuand. "It's been a long, hard journey, but I've come
back."

Urza could absorb a new language as easily as a plowed
field absorbed the spring rains. Most of the time, he
didn't notice the switch, but Xantcha had thought Urza
might pay attention to Mishra's language, to the language
that anyone pretending to be Mishra spoke during the
critical first moments of their encounter. She was ready to
kill Rat with her own hands, if Urza didn't do it for her.
His eyes hadn't stopped glowing, and she'd seen those
jewels obliterate creatures vastly more powerful than an
overconfident slave from Efuan Pincar.

"Speak to me, Urza. It's been so long. We never
finished our last conversation, never truly began it."

"Where?" Urza asked, a whisper on a cold, cold wind. At
least he'd spoken Efuand.

"Before the blood-red tent of the warlord of Kroog. We
stood as far apart as we stand now. You said we should
remember that we were brothers."

"The tent was not red, and I said no such thing."

"Do you call me a liar, Brother? I remember less,
Brother, but I remember very clearly. I have been here all
the time, waiting for you; it would have been easier if
your memory were not flawed."

Urza's eyes took on the painful brilliance of the
Glimmer Moon. Xantcha was certain that Rat would sizzle
like raindrops in a bonfire, yet the light didn't harm him,
and after a few rib-thumping heartbeats she began to
petceive Rat's unexpected brilliance. The real Mishra had
been supremely confident and never, even in the best of
times, willing to concede a point to his elder brother.
Between Urza and Mishra, attitude was more important than
language, and Rat had the right attitude.

"It is possible," Urza conceded as his eyes dimmed to a
mortal color. "Each time I refine my automata, I learn what
I had forgotten. It is a short step between forgotten and
misremem-bered."

Raising his hand, Urza took a hesitant stride toward
Rat- toward Mishra. He stopped short of touching his
putative brother's flesh.

"I dreamed that in time, through time, I'd find a way
to talk to you, to warn you of the dangers neither of us
saw when we were alive together. I never dreamed that you
would find me. You. It is you, Mishra?"

Urza moved without moving, placing his open hand across
Rat's cheek. Even Xantcha, who knew Urza could change his
shape faster than muscle could move bone, was stunned. As
for Rat himself-Rat, who'd refused to believe her warnings
that her Urza was the Urza who'd become more like a god
than a man- he went deathly pale beneath Urza's long,
elegant and essentially lifeless fingers. His eyes rolled,
and his body slackened: he'd fainted, but Urza's curiosity
kept him upright.

"They took your skin, Mishra, and stretched it over one
of their abominations. Do you remember? Do you remember
them coming for you? Do you remember dying?"

Rat's limp arms and legs began to tremble. Xantcha's
breath caught in her throat. She'd never believed that Urza
was cruel, merely careless. He'd lived so long in his own
mad isolation that he'd forgotten the frailties of ordinary
flesh, especially of flesh more ordinary than that of a
Phyrexian newt. She was certain that once Urza noticed what
was he was doing, he'd relent. He could heal as readily as
he harmed.

But Urza didn't notice what he was doing to the youth
she'd brought from Efuan Pincar. Rat writhed like a stuck
serpent. Blood seeped from his nose. Xantcha threw herself
into the golden light.

"Stop!" Xantcha seized Urza's outstretched arm. She
might have been a fly on a mountain top for the effect she
had. "You're killing him."