Planeswalker (15 page)

Suddenly, Urza's arm hung at his side again. Xantcha

reeled backward, fighting for balance while Rat collapsed.

"There is nothing in his mind. I sought the answers
that have eluded me: when did the Phyrexians come for him?
Did he fight? Did he surrender willingly? Did he call my
name? He has no answers, Xantcha. He has nothing at all. My
brother's mind is as empty as yours. I do not understand. I
found you too late; the damage had already been done. But
how and why has Mishra come back to me if he is not
himself, if his mind is not alive with the thoughts I know
should be there."

Xantcha knew her mind was empty. She was Phyrexian, a
newt engendered in a vat of turgid slime. She had no
imagination, no great thoughts or ambitions, not even a
heart that could be crushed by humiliation, whether that
humiliation came from Urza or Oix.

Rat was another matter. He lay face-down in a heap of
awkwardly bent limbs. "He's a man," Xantcha snarled. She'd
caught her balance, but kept her distance. Another step
closer and she'd be a child looking up to meet Urza's eyes.
She was too angry for that. "His mind is his own. It's not
a book for you to read and cast aside!"

Xantcha couldn't guess whether Rat was still alive,
even when Urza put his foot against the youth's flank to
shove him onto his back.

"This is only the first. There will be others. The
first is never final; there must always be refinements. If
I have learned nothing else, I have learned that. I was
working in the wrong direction- thinking that I'd have to
reach back through time to find Mishra and the truth. And
because I was not looking for Mishra, he could not find me,
not as he must find me. But his truth will come to me once
I have refined the path. I can see them, Xantcha: a line of
Mishras, each bearing a piece of the truth. They will come
and come until one of them bears it all." Urza headed to
his open door. "There is no time." He stopped and laughed
aloud. "Time, Xantcha ... think of it! I have finally
found the way to negate time. I will start again. Do not
disturb me."

He was mad, Xantcha reminded herself, and she'd been a
fool to think she could outwit him. Unlike Rat, Urza never
changed his mind. He interpreted everything through the
prism of his obsessions. Urza couldn't be held responsible
for what had happened.

That burden fell on her.

Xantcha had never kept count of those she'd slain or
watched die. Surely there were hundreds ... thousands, if
she included Phyrexians, but she'd never betrayed anyone as
she'd betrayed Ratepe, son of Mideah. She knelt beside him,
straightening his corpse, starting with his legs. Ratepe
hadn't begun to stiffen; his skin was still warm.

"There will be no others!" Urza turned around. "What
did you say?" "I said, this was a man, Urza. He was a man,
born and living until you killed him. He wasn't an artifact
on your table that you could sweep onto the floor when you
were finished with him. You didn't make him-" She
hesitated. Burdened with guilt, she saw that her clever
plan to have Ratepe pose as Mishra required confession.
"That tabletop didn't reach through the past. I went
looking for a man who resembled your brother, I found him,
and I brought him here.

"I won't do it again, so there won't-"

"You, Xantcha? Don't speak nonsense. This was my
brother- the first shadow of my brother. You could not have
found him without me."

"I'm not speaking nonsense! You had nothing to do with
this, Urza. This was my idea, my bad idea. His name was
never Mishra. His name was Ratepe, son of Mideah. I bought
him from a slaver in Efuan Pincar."

Urza appeared thunderstruck. Xantcha leaned forward to
straighten Ratepe's other leg. Efuands buried their dead in
grass-lined graves that faced the sunrise. She'd helped dig
several of them. There was a suitable spot not far from her
window where she'd see it easily and lament her folly each
time she did.

Unless she left ... soared back to Efuan Pincar to do
battle with the Phyrexians in Ratepe's name. If the cyst
would still respond to her whims. If Urza didn't destroy
her when his thoughts finally made their way back to the
world of life and death.

She reached for Ratepe's crooked arm.

"A slaver? You sought my brother's avatar in a slaver's
pens?"

Avatar-a spirit captured in flesh. Xantcha recognized
the word but had never consciously used it; it was the
right word, though, for what she'd wanted Ratepe to become.
"Yes." She straightened Ratepe's elbow. "Mishra was a
Fallaji slave."

"Mishra was advisor to the qadir."

"Mishra was a slave. The Fallaji captured him before
you got to Yotia; they never freed him-not formally. It's
in The Antiquity Wars. He told Kayla, and she wrote down
his words."

Xantcha had never told Urza about her chest filled with
copies of his wife's epic. He hadn't asked, hadn't
volunteered any sense of his past here in his home, except
what arose from his tabletop artifacts. He didn't appear
pleased to hear Kayla's name falling off her tongue.
Xantcha sensed she was living dangerously, very
dangerously.

She took Ratepe's hand. It was stiff; rigor had begun.
Gently, she uncurled his fingers.

They resisted, tightened, squeezed.

Before she could think, Xantcha jerked her hand away-or
tried to. Ratepe didn't let go, and she stayed where she
was, kneeling beside him, breathless with shock. She looked
down. He winked, then kept both eyes shut.

"Waste not, want not," she whispered and cast her
glance quickly in Una's direction but Urza was elsewhere.

"I did not tell you to read that story." His voice came
from a cold place, far from his heart. "Kayla Bin-Kroog
never knew the truth and did not write it, either. She
chose to live in a mist, with neither light nor shadow to
guide her. You cannot believe anything in The Antiquity
Wars, Xantcha, especially about Mishra. My wife saw her
world through a veil of emotions. She saw people, not
patterns, and when she saw my brother ..." He didn't
finish his thought, but offered another: "She didn't mean
to betray me. I'm sure she thought she could be the bridge
between us; it was too late. I honored Harbin, but after
that, it was all lies between us. I couldn't trust her. You

can't either."

Before Xantcha could say that Kayla's version of the
war made more sense, Ratepe sat bolt upright.

"I've heard it said that there's no way a man can be
absolutely certain that his wife's child is his and only
one way he can be cer-tain that it's not. Kayla Bin-Kroog
was an attractive woman, Urza, and wiser than you'll know.
She did try to become a bridge, but not with her body. She
was tempted. I made certain she was tempted, but she never
succumbed, which, my Brother, begs one almighty question:
How and why are you so certain Harbin was not your son?"

Suddenly, they were all in darkness as Urza's golden
light vanished.

"You've done it now," Xantcha said softly and with more
than a little admiration. She'd never gotten the better of
Urza that way. "He's gone 'walking."

But Urza hadn't 'walked away, and when the light
returned it flowed from an Urza that Xantcha had never seen
before: a youthful Urza, dressed in a dirt-laborer's dusty
clothes and smiling as he reached out to take Ratepe's
hands.

"I have missed you, Brother. I've had no one to talk
to. Stand up, stand up! Come with me! Let me show you what
I've learned while you were gone. It was Ashnod, you know-"

Ratepe proved he was as consistent as he was reckless.
He folded his arms across his chest and stayed where he
was. "You've had Xantcha. He's not 'no one.' "

"Xantcha!"

While Urza laughed, Xantcha got to her feet.

"Xantcha! I rescued Xantcha a thousand years ago-no,
longer than that, more than three thousand years ago. Don't
be fooled by appearances, as I was. She's Phyrexian-cooked
up in one of their vats. A mistake. A failure. A slave.
They were getting ready to bury her when I came along;
thought she was Argivian at first. She's loyal ... to me.
She's got her own reasons for turning on Phyrexia. But her
mind is limited. You can talk to her, but only a fool would
listen."

Xantcha couldn't meet Ratepe's eyes. When they were
alone and Urza belittled her, she could blame it on his
madness. Now there were three of them standing outside the
cottage. Urza wasn't talking to her, he was talking about
her, and there were no excuses. All their centuries
together, all the experiences no one else had shared, and
he'd never conquered his distrust, his disdain.

"I think-" Ratepe began, and Xantcha forced herself to
catch his attention.

She mouthed the single word, Don't. It didn't matter
what Urza thought of her, so long as he stopped playing
with his tabletop gnats. Xantcha mouthed a second word,
Phyrexia, and made a fist where Ratepe could see it. She
hoped she'd told him what mattered, and that it wasn't her.

Ratepe cleared his throat. He said, "I think it is not
the time to argue, Urza," and made the words sound sincere.
"We have always done too much of that. I always did too
much of that. There, I've admitted it, and the world did
not end. Not yet; not again. You think we made our fatal
mistake on the Plains of Kor. I think we made it earlier.
After so long, it doesn't matter, does it? It was the same
mistake either way. We couldn't talk, we could only

compete. And you won. I see the Weakstone in your left eye.

Have you ever heard it singing to you, Urza?"

Sing?

Anyone who'd read The Antiquity Wars would know that
Urza's eyes had once been his Mightstone and his brother's
Weakstone. Tawnos had brought that scrap back to Kayla.
Ratepe claimed he'd read Kayla's epic several times, and
between two stones and two eyes, he could have made a lucky
guess. The Weakstone had, indeed, become Urza's left eye.
But sing? Urza had never mentioned singing.

Xantcha couldn't guess what had fired Ratepe's all-toomortal
imagination, but as Urza frowned and stared at the
stars, she guessed it had propelled him too far.

Then Urza began to speak. "I hear it now, faintly,
without word, but a song of sadness. Your song?"

Xantcha was stunned.

Urza continued: "The stone we found-the single stone-
was a weapon, you know: The final defense of the Thran,
their last sacrifice. They blocked the portal to Phyrexia.
You and I, when we sundered the stone, we opened the
portal. We let them back into Dominaria. I never asked you
what you saw that day."

Ratepe grinned. "Didn't I say that we made our mistake
much earlier?"

Urza clapped his hands together and laughed heartily.
"You did! Yes, you did! We've got a second chance, brother.
This time, we'll talk." He opened his arms, gesturing
toward the open doorway. "Come, let me show you what I've
learned while you were gone. Let me show you the wonders of
artifice, pure artifice, Brother-none of those Phyrexian
abominations. And Ashnod! Wait until I show you Ashnod: a
viper at your breast, Brother. She was their first
conquest, your biggest mistake."

"Show me everything," Ratepe said, walking into Urza's
embrace. "Then we'll talk."

Arm in arm, they walked toward the cottage. A few steps
short of the threshold, Ratepe shot a glance over his
shoulder. He seemed to expect some gesture from her, but
Xantcha, unable to guess what it should be, simply stood
with her arms limp at her sides.

"And when we're done talking, Urza, we'll listen to
Xantcha."

The door shut without a sound. The light was gone, and
Xantcha was left with only moonlight to help her haul the
food supplies.

Cold fog rolled down from the mountains. Xantcha's
fingers stiffened, and the rest of her grew clumsy. When
she wasn't tripping over her feet, she dropped bundles and
cursed loudly, not caring if she disturbed the two men on
the other side of the wall.

She didn't disturb them. Urza had a new audience for
his table-top. He wouldn't notice the world if it ended.
And Ratepe? Ratepe was playing the dangerous game Xantcha
had told him to play and playing it better than she'd dared
hope. She'd all but told him not to pay any attention to
her; she could hardly begrudge obedience-or fail to notice
that Urza's door was unwarded. She could have left the

sacks where the sphere had scattered them.

Ratepe-Rat-Mishra-would have defended her right to join
them. Xantcha was tempted to walk through the door, if only
to hear what the young Efuand would say, which, considering
all that hung in the balance was a selfish temptation. She
resisted it until the last of the supplies was stowed in
the pantry and the fog had matured into an ice-needle rain.

Inside her room, with the shutters bolted against the
chill, Xantcha found herself too tired to sleep. Eyes open
and empty, she ay on her bed able to hear the sounds of
conversation beyond the wall without catching any of the
words. She piled pillows atop her face, pulled the blankets
tight, then threw everything aside. Before long, Xantcha
had wedged herself into the corner at the foot of the bed.
With her knees tucked beneath her chin and a blanket draped
over her head, Xantcha tried to think of other things....

Of her first conversation with Urza ...

"There is a shelter at the bottom of the hill. Take me
there. I'll show you the way to Phyrexia."

Urza frowned. Xantcha had rarely seen a face creased
with dis-pleasure. She expected his jaw to fall to the
ground But her rescuer was flexible-a newt like herself, or
one of born-folk, about whom she knew very little. When his
frown had sunk as much as it could, it rebounded and became
a bitter laugh.

She knew the meaning of that sound.

"It's the truth. I will show you the way. I will take
you to Phyrexia-though, it's only fair to tell you that
avengers stand guard around the Fourth Sphere ambulator
fields and we'll be destroyed on the spot."

"It's gone. It's gotten away," her rescuer said, still
laughing.

"The ambulator's nether end should be there-unless you
let the searcher get away. The diggers, they don't know how
to roll an ambulator, and the bearers can't."

Xantcha tried to rise and felt light-headed, felt light
all over. It was not an unprecedented feeling. Every time
she stepped into a new world there were changes: a
different texture to the air, a different color to the
light, a different sense between her feet and the ground.
She took a deep breath to confirm her suspicions.

"The hill and shelter are where I remember them, but I
am not any place that I remember?"

"Yes, my clever child, I brought you here, and I will
take you back. The hill is there, but the shelter and this
ambulator of which you speak, alas, is not."

Xantcha thought she understood. "You drew the prime end
through itself to bring me to this place?" She hesitated,
but this man who had rescued her deserved the truth. "If
you unanchored the ambulator, I don't know if I can take
you to Phyrexia. I've seen the searcher-priests set the
stones for Phyrexia, but I've never set them myself. I
don't know what our fate will be if I set them wrong, but
I'll go first."

"No, child, you will not go first," he said, grim and
serious. "Though you have every reason to condemn Phyrexia,
you have become a traitor to them, and traitors can never

be trusted, must never be trusted."

Traitor. The word roused a hundred others from
Xantcha's dreams. She supposed it was a truthful word,
though not as truthful as it would have been if she weren't
a newt who'd never been compleated. Insofar as kin pricked
her conscience, it was safe to say that she had none.

"I was Orman'huzra when you found me, second of the
dodgers. What is my position now? What is yours? What do I
do, if I cannot be trusted and I cannot go first?"

The man paced the small, stark chamber in which she'd
awakened. His eyes burned as he walked, reminding Xantcha
of Gix. She lowered her head when he stopped in front of
her. He put his hand beneath her chin to raise it. Her
instinct was to resist, to avoid those eyes as she had
avoided the eyes of Gix, but he overcame her resistance.
Her rescuer had a demon's strength.

"Orman'huzra. That is not a name. What is your name?"

"In my dreams, I am Xantcha."

The answer failed to please him. Fingers tightened on
either side of her jaw. She closed her eyes, but that made
no difference. The many-colored light from his eyes burnt
like fire in her thoughts.

"Your mind is empty, Xantcha," he said after an
agonizing moment. "The Phyrexians took it all away from
you."

He was wrong. Were it not for what the Phyrexians-Gix
in particular-had done to her, Xantcha was sure she would
have died right then. She didn't correct her new companion,
no more than she'd corrected Gix, and took no small
satisfaction in the knowledge that the sanctuary she'd
created, when Gix had confronted her, remained intact.

"What is my place? What is yours?" she asked for the
second time. "What do you dor

"My place was Lord Protector of the Realm, and I failed
to do what I should have done. You may call me Urza."

There were images for the word Urza, hideous images.
Xantcha heard the voice of a teacher-priest: If you meet
Urza, destroy him. The man in front of her didn't resemble
the image. Even if he had, Xantcha would have denied the
imperative. She wasn't about to destroy an enemy of
Phyrexia.

"Urza," she repeated. "Urza, I will show you what I
know of the ambulators."

Xantcha tried to rise from her pallet. The ambulator
had to be beyond the chamber's closed door. It was too
large for the chamber itself. She got as far as her knees.
In addition to feeling light, she was weak. But there were
no marks on her body. Her wounds had healed. Xantcha didn't
understand; she'd been weak before, but never without
wounds.

"Rest," Urza told her, offering her the corner of the
blanket. "You have been very sick. Many days-at least a
month-have passed since I brought you here ... but not
through any ambulator. I did, as you suggest, let the
searcher get away. My error, Xantcha. I did not suspect
your ambulators and seeing your kind on that other plane, I
thought you had 'walked there. My grievous error: the
emptiness between the planes is no place for a child
without the necessary spark. You were less than a breath,
less than a heartbeat, from death before I got you here

which is not where I'd intended to bring you.

"Do not touch that door!" he warned, then had an
inspiration and pointed his forefinger at it.

The wood glowed and became dull, gray stone, like the
rest of the chamber.

"The Phyrexians changed you Xantcha, and I could not
undo their changes, but without what they did, you would
not have lived long enough for me to do anything at all.
This place is safe for you. It has air and a balance of
heat and cold. Outside, there is nothing. Your skin will
freeze and your blood will boil. Without the spark, you
will not survive. Do you hear me, Xantcha? Can your empty
mind understand?"

Xantcha had had no sense of modesty, not so soon after
leaving Phyrexia, and the air in the chamber was
comfortably warm, yet she'd clutched the blanket tight
around her naked flesh-the same as she clutched it
millennia later in a cold, dark cottage room while sleet
pelted the roof overhead. Her empty mind never had a
problem understanding Urza's words. It was the implications
that often left her reeling.

"I understand," she assured Urza. "This is my place and
I will remain here. But I do not know about months. I know
days and seasons and years. What is a month?"

Urza closed his eyes and, after a dramatic sigh, told
her about the many ways in which born-folk measured time.
Xantcha told him that Phyrexia was a place where time went
unmeasured. There was no sun by day nor stars by night. The
First Sphere sky was an unchanging featureless gray. All
the other spheres were nested within the First Sphere. Gix
had been dropped into a fumarole that descended to the
Seventh Sphere. The Ineffable dwelt in the ninth, at
Phyrexia's core.

"Interesting," Urza said. "If you're telling the truth.
I have heard the name Gix before, on my own plane, where it
was the name of a mountain god before the Phyrexians stole
it. In fifty years of searching, I have heard the name Gix
many times. I've heard the name Urza, too, and several that
sound like Sancha. There are only so many sounds that our
mouths can make, so many words, so many names. At best,
language is confusion. If you are to be useful to me, you
must never He. Are you telling me the truth, child?"

She nodded and added, truthfully, "I am not a child."
The image was quite clear in her mind; the world for which
she had been destined-the world to which she had not gone-
had children. "Children are born. Children grow. Phyrexians
are decanted by vat-priests and compleated by the tender-
priests. When I was decanted, I was exactly as I am now. I
was not compleated, but I was never a child. Gix said he
made me."

Urza shook his head sadly. "It is tempting, very
tempting to believe that there is only one Gix, but I have
made that mistake before. It is just a sound, a similar
sound, filled with lies. You do not remember what you were

before the Phyrexians claimed you, Xantcha, and that is
just as well. To remember what you had lost..." He closed
his eyes a moment. "You would not be strong enough. By your
race, I'd say you were twelve, perhaps thirteen- " He shook
a thought out of his mind and began to pace. "You were
born, Xantcha. Life is born or it is not life. Not even the
Phyrexians can change that. They steal, they corrupt, and
they abominate, but they cannot create.

"You remember the decanting, and I am grateful that you
remember nothing before that because I am certain that you
were most horribly transformed. In my wanderings I have
seen men and women in many variations, but I have never
seen one such as you, who is neither."

Urza continued pacing the small chamber. He wouldn't
look at her, which was just as well. Xantcha knew many
words for madness and delusion, and they all described
Urza. He had rescued her-saved her life-and he had strange
powers, not merely in his glowing eyes, but an odd sort of
passion that left her believing for a few distracted
heartbeats that she had been born on the world at the
bottom of her memories.

Xantcha ached in the missing places when Urza described
her as neither man nor woman. After Gix's excoriation,
while she'd hidden among the gremlins, she'd had
opportunity to observe the differences between the two
types of born-folk: men and women. If Urza was right, she
had even more reason to wage war against Phyrexia.

But Urza had to be wrong. He didn't know Phyrexia. He'd
never peeked into a vat to see the writhing shape of a
half-grown newt. He'd never seen tender-priests throwing
buckets of rendered flesh into those vats. Meat-sludge was
the source of Xantcha's memories, meat-sludge and Gix's
ambition. Nothing had been taken from her. She was empty,
as Urza had told her, filled with memories that weren't her
own.

Urza confirmed Xantcha's self-judgment as he paced.
"Yes, it is better that you don't remember, better that
your mind is empty and you have no imagination left that
would fill it. Mishra knew what he had become, and it drove
him mad. I will keep you, Xantcha, and avenge your loss as
I avenge my brother. You will stay here."

Xantcha didn't argue. She was in a chamber that had
neither windows nor doors. Her companion was a man-demon
with glowing eyes. There was nothing at all to be gained by
argument. Still, there was at least one question that had
to be asked:

"May I eat?"

Urza stopped pacing. His eyes darkened to a mortal
brown. "You eat? But, you're Phyrexian."

She shrugged and chose her words carefully. "They
didn't take that. I ate from a cauldron when I was in
Phyrexia, but I scrounged when I was excavating. I can
scrounge here, if you'll show me where the living things
are."

"Nothing lives here, Xantcha."

Urza muttered under his breath. His hands began to glow
as his eyes had. He strode to the nearest wall and thrust
his fingers into what had appeared to be solid stone. The
glow transferred to the stone. The chamber filled with the
hot, acrid smells Xantcha remembered from the furnaces. She

eased backward, blindly clutching the blanket, as if it
could protect her. There was a hollow in the wall now, and
a radiant mass seething in Urza's hands.

"Bread," Urza said when the seething mass had cooled.

Xantcha had scrounged bread on a few of the worlds the
searcher-priests had sent her to. The steaming loaf Urza
handed her looked like bread and smelled a bit like bread,
a bit more like overheated dust. Its taste was dusty, too,
but she'd eaten worse, much worse, and gorged without
complaint.

"Do you want more?"

She didn't answer. Want was an empty notion. Newts
didn't want. Newts took what they could, what was
available, and waited for another opportunity-which might
come soon, or might not. Urza faded until he was a pale,
translucent shadow; then he was gone. A heartbeat later,
the chamber's light was gone, too.

Every world Xantcha had seen had spun to its own
rhythms, and though she hadn't acquired an instinctive
sense of day becoming night, she'd learned enough about
time to be desperately afraid of the dark. She was ravenous
when Urza finally returned, exhausted because she'd feared
to close her eyes lest she sleep through his reappearance,
and bleeding where she'd pinched herself to keep awake.
Taking all her risk at once, Xantcha sprang across the
chamber. She clung ferociously to Urza's sleeve.