Planeswalker (25 page)

She left her sword in the corpse and took up his
instead. Of the two remaining Efuands, one was on his knees
fussing with the ambulator while the other stood guard over
him. Black on black patterns flowed across the portal's
surface. Xantcha didn't dare run across it.

She could smell Phyrexia as the Efuand beat aside her
first attack. He was the best of the men she'd faced so far
and respectful. He stayed calm and balanced behind his
sword, not in any hurry. Xantcha was in a hurry, and led
with her empty, off-weapon hand, seizing his sword midway
down the blade. It was a risky move. Urza's armor couldn't
make her bigger or heavier than she naturally was. She
couldn't always maintain her grip, and more than once she'd
wound up with a dislocated shoulder.

This time, surprise and luck were with her, at least
long enough to plunge her sword in the swordsman's gut
before she shoved him backward, off the blade and into the
black pool. She kicked the kneeling Efuand in the chin, not
a crippling, much less a killing blow, except that he, too,
fell backward, into the now seething ambulator.

Two more exploding artifacts arrived. One was simply
loud and hurled her backward, away from the ambulator, but
still the last direction she wanted to move. The other was
fire that spread evenly across the black surface.

Xantcha staggered back to the place where the last
Efuand had been kneeling, the place where she expected to
find a palm-sized panel with seven black jewels. The
priests had changed the design. There was neither panel nor
jewels. In their place Xantcha saw a smooth black stone,
like Urza's magnifying lens, or like the ambulator itself.
The fire still burnt. Nothing had emerged. She brought her
sword down on the stone.

The sword shattered.

The fire vanished as if someone had inhaled it.

And the black on black patterns had turned silver.

"Run, Ratepe!" she shouted as loud as the armor
permitted, and ignored her own advice.

A Phyrexian emerged from the black pool moments later.
It was a priest of some sort. There was too much metal, all
of it articulated, for it to be anything less than a
searcher, definitely not the scrap-made tender or teacher
Xantcha had expected with a band of sleepers. It had a
triangular head with faceted eyes, a bit like Urza's
gemstone eyes, though large enough that she couldn't have
covered one with splayed fingers. The design needed
improvement. The priest raised a nozzle-tipped arm and
exterminated a flying bird an instant after it was fully
erupted, but ignored Xantcha who crouched unmoving some
three paces from the ambulator's edge.

The nozzle arm was also new to Xantcha. She thought
she'd seen a thin black thread reach out to the bird, but
the attack had been so quick that she couldn't be sure of
anything except the bird had disappeared in a burst of red
light. Nothing, not even a feather, had fallen from the
sky.

No doubt Xantcha would find out exactly what it could
do, and since the priest's arms were mismatched, what
surprises lurked on its right side. Urza's armor had never
failed.

"Over here, meatling!" Few epithets would get a
priest's attention quicker than calling it a newt. Xantcha
stood up, brandishing her broken sword.

The nozzle weapon sent something very sharp, very hot
at the hollow of Xantcha's neck, and she felt as though it
had come out through her spine. Urza's armor flashed a
radiant cobalt blue, astonishing both her and the priest.

"What is your place?" the priest demanded through
mouth-parts hidden within its triangle head. It was not an
avenger, modeled after fleshly predators, it was, despite
its weapons, a thinker, a planner. "Xantcha."

The right arm came up and shot forth a segmented cable,
the tip of which was a fast-spinning flower with razored
petals. It struck Xantcha's face. She felt bones give, but
the flower took greater damage. Steel petals clattered to
the ground, and pulses of glistening oil spurted from the
still-spinning hub. Xantcha struck quickly with the broken
sword, enveloping the cable and yanked hard. It had two
metal legs and a top-heavy torso. In the Phyrexia she
remembered, such bipedal priests had a tendency to topple.

And it nearly did, though nearly was worse than not at
all. Xantcha had simply pulled it closer, and it lashed the
severed cable of its right arm around her waist. It began
using its metal arms as clubs. Xantcha could neither
retreat nor make good use of her sword. Her right elbow got
clobbered and broken within the armor. She managed to get
the sword free of the cable and transferred to her left
hand before her right went numb within the armor. Xantcha
took the only stroke she had, a sideswipe at the priest's
right eye.

Two more of Urza's canisters rained down. One was
concussive; the other screamed so loud Xantcha's ears hurt
through the armor. Together, the canisters jarred something
loose inside the priest. Glistening oil poured from the

downward point of its triangle head. It struck one final
time, another blow to her already mangled elbow-they truly
had no imagination-before it expired.

He'd saved her life.

Ratepe, son of Mideah, had saved her life.

The damn fool either hadn't heard her shout or, most
likely, had ignored it.

Xantcha writhed free of the cable. Numbness had spread
up her right arm to her shoulder. She'd survive. Urza
himself had said that a Phyrexian newt's ability to heal
itself was nothing less than miraculous, but she wasn't
looking forward to releasing the armor and wouldn't
consider doing it until she'd dealt with the ambulator.

She got down on her knees and cursed. New designs or
no, the black pool in front of her was definitely the
nether end of an ambulator, and unless she wanted to poke
her head into Phyrexia to loosen the prime end, there was
no way Xantcha could destroy it completely. But she could
make it very dangerous to use, if she could get it rolled
and find some way to break or reset the black lens. She had
half the rim unanchored when yet another pair of canisters
showered her with glass and fire.

"Enough, already!"

She moved on to the next anchor.

Ratepe arrived moments later. "Xantcha!"

"Stay away!" she warned harshly. The pain was bearable
but numbness was making her groggy. She could have used
help, but not from someone who was pure, mortal flesh.
"It's not done. Not yet. I told you to run!"

"Xan-"

Xantcha realized she must look bad, broken bones
bruising her face, her right arm, mangled and useless.
"Don't worry about me.

I'll be fine in a couple of days. Just... get away
from here. More can come through, even now. Make yourself
unnoticeable. I've to create an inconvenience."

"I'll help-"

"You'll hide."

She popped another anchor. The pool rippled, black on
black. Ratepe retreated, but not far. She didn't have the
strength to argue with him.

"There, by the priest, you'll see a little black glass-
circle thing. Don't touch it! Don't touch anything. But
think about breaking that glass." Xantcha crawled to the
next anchor.

"Priest? Shratta?"

"No." She pointed at the heap of metal that had been
the Phyrexian and went back to work on the anchor. Another
eight or ten, and she'd have it loose.

"Merciful Avohir! Xantcha, what is it?"

"Phyrexian. A priest. I don't know what kind, something
new since I left. That's what we're fighting. Except,
that's a priest and not a Phyrexian meant for fighting."

"Not like you, then-"

Xantcha looked up. He was bent over, reaching out. "I
said, don't touch it!" He straightened. "And I'm not a
fighter. I'm not anything, a newt, nothing started, nothing
compleated. Just a newt."

"The six-I killed the last one, myself, with those
coins you left me." She hadn't heard the explosions. Well,

there'd been other things on her mind. "They called this
... a priest? They invited it here, to Efuan Pincar?"

"Big trouble, just like you said. And don't kid
yourself. Assume they've got more ambulators." She
remembered the upright disk in the Moag temple. "Assume
they've got worse. Assume that some of the sleepers are
awake, that there are priests inside the palace, and that
some of your own have been corrupted, starting with your
king." Xantcha released another anchor. "Look at the glass,
will you? My sword broke when I hit it."

A moment or two of silence. She was down to her last
three anchors when Ratepe said, "I've got an idea," and ran
into the trees.

He came back with the firepots and the rest of Urza's
canisters. "We can put it in one of the pots with the
bangers, put one pot on top of the other and let it rip."

All the anchors were up and Xantcha had no better idea,
except to send Ratepe to the far end of the orchard before
she followed his suggestions.

Afterward, she remembered flying through the air and
landing in a tree.

It had happened before in the between-worlds: a
sensation of falling that lasted until Xantcha opened her
eyes and found herself looking at nothing familiar.

"Ah, awake at last."

The voice was not quite a man's voice, yet deeper than
most female voices and quite melodious, though Xantcha
suspected that an acid personality powered it. She could
almost picture a Phyrexian with that voice, though this
place wasn't Phyrexia. Not a whiff of glistening oil
accompanied the voice, and the air was quiet. There was
music, in the distance, music such as might be made by
glass chimes or bells.

Xantcha remembered the wind-crystal on another world.

She realized she was not in a bedroom, not in a
building of any sort. The wall to her left and the ceiling
above were a shallow, wind-eroded cave. Elsewhere, the
world was grass. Grass with a woman's voice?

"Where am I? How did I get here? Urza? Where's Urza? We
were together on the ice, fighting Phyrexians." She propped
herself up on one elbow. "I have to find him." She was
dizzy. Xantcha was rarely dizzy.

"As you were!"

By its tone, the voice was accustomed to obedience.

Xantcha lay flat and returned to her first question.
"Where am I?"

"You are here. You are being cared for. There is
nothing more you need to know."

She'd been so many places, picked up so many languages.
Xantcha had to lie very still, listening to her thoughts
and memories, before she could be sure she did not know the
language she was speaking. It was simply there in her mind,
implanted rather than acquired by listening. Another reason
to think of Phyrexia.

Xantcha considered it unlucky to think of Phyrexia once
before breakfast and here she'd thought of it three times.
She realized she was very hungry.

"If I'm being cared for, I'd like something to eat, if
you please."

Urza said manners were important among strangers,
especially when one was at a stranger's mercy. Of course,
he rarely bothered with such niceties. With his power, Urza
was never at a stranger's mercy.

Xantcha remembered the turtles, the Phyrexians they'd
been fighting before-before what? She couldn't remember how
the skirmish had ended, only a bright light and a sense
that she'd been falling for a long time before she woke up
here, wherever here was.

"The air will sustain you," the voice said. "You do not
need to fill yourself with death."

Another thought of Phyrexia, where compleat Phyrexians
neither ate nor breathed but were sustained by glistening
oil.

"I need food. I'll hunt it myself."

"You'll do no such thing!"

Xantcha pushed herself into a sitting position and got
her first look at the voice: a tall woman, thin through the
body, even thinner through the face. Her eyes were gray,
her hair was pale gold, and her lips were a tight,
disapproving line beneath a large, but narrow nose. She
seemed young, at least to Xantcha. It seemed, as well, that
she had never smiled or laughed.

"Who are you?" Xantcha asked. Though, what are you? was
the question foremost in her mind.

The multiverse might well contain an infinite number of
worlds, but it had no more than two-score of sentient
types, if Xantcha followed Urza's example and disregarded
those types that, though clearly sentient, were also
completely feral and without the hope of civilization. Or
nearly four-score, if she followed her own inclination to
regard men and women of every type as distinct species.

Urza's type was the most common and with the arrogance
of the clear majority. He called himself simply a man where
others were elf-men, or dwarf-men, or gremlin-men. His
wife, Kayla Bin-Kroog had been a woman, a very beautiful
woman. When Xantcha had asked Urza for a single word that
united men and women, as elves united elf-man and elf-
woman, he'd answered mankind, which seemed to her a better
way of uniting all the men, common and rare rather than
common men with their wives and daughters.

When she'd demanded a better word, Urza had snarled and
'walked away. Xantcha wondered what he'd make of the woman
standing in front of her. Wonder sparked a hope he was
still alive, and that she'd find him here, but another
thought crowded Urza from Xantcha's mind. She and the
stranger were both dressed in long white gowns.

Where had her clothes gone? Her sword and knives? The
shoulder sack filled with stew and treasure? Except for the
gown, Xantcha was naked. She wondered if the stern-faced
woman was naked, if she was really a woman after all. Her
voice was quite deep, and her breasts were a far cry from
generous.

That was very nearly a fifth Phyrexian thought before
breakfast, and since the stranger had given no indication
that she was going to answer any of her questions, Xantcha
got her feet under her and pushed herself upright. Another
bout of dizziness left her grateful for the nearby rock.

She rested with her back against the stone and took a
measure of the world where she'd awakened. It was a golden
place of rolling hills and ripened grasses, all caught in
the afterglow of a brilliant sunset, with clear air and
layers upon layers of clouds overhead. It was difficult,
though, to discern where west lay. Urza had explained it to
her in the earliest days. Wherever men dwelt, the sun set
in the west and rose in the east. In all quarters the
horizon was marked with dazzling amber peaks that might
have been mountains or might have been clouds. It was
achingly beautiful and almost as strange.

On impulse, Xantcha looked for her shadow and found it
huddled close by her feet, where she'd expect to find it at
high noon. Curiosity became suspicion that got the better
of her manners, "Does this world mark time by the sun?" she
asked with a scowl, a sixth Phyrexian thought. "Or do you
live in immortal sunset?"

The stranger drew back and seemed, somehow, taller. "We
think of it as sunrise."

"Does the sun ever get risen ?"

"Our Lady has created all that you can see, each cloud,
each breeze, each stone, each tree and blade of grass. She
has created them all at their moment of greatest beauty.
There is peace here and no need for change."

Xantcha let out a long, disbelieving breath. "Waste
not, want not."

"Exactly," the stranger replied, though Xantcha had not
intended the Phyrexian maxim as a compliment.

"Are we alone?"

"No."

"Where are the others?"

"Not here."

Xantcha's dizziness had passed. If there were others
elsewhere, she was ready to look for them. She took a deep
breath, opened her mouth, and yawned.

"Not here!" the woman repeated, an emphatic command
this time.

Listen and obey the vat-priests had told Xantcha in the
beginning, and despite the passage of time, she still found
it difficult to disobey, especially when the cyst felt
heavy in her gut, heavy and oddly unreliable. She swallowed
the lump that was part unemerged sphere and part rising
panic.

"How did I get here?"

"I don't know."

"How long have I been here."

"Since you arrived."

"Where am I?"

"Where you are."

Panic surged again, and this time Xantcha couldn't
fight it down. "What manner of world is this?" she shouted.
"The sun doesn't rise or set. You give me answers that
aren't answers. Is this Phyrexia? Is that it? Have I been
brought back to Phyrexia?"

The stranger blinked but said nothing.

"Can I leave? Is Urza here? Can I find Urza?"

More silence. Xantcha wanted to run. She was lucky she
could walk. Her legs had become the legs of a lethargic
stranger. Every step required concentration, calculation,
and blind faith as she transferred weight from one foot to

the other. After ten strides, Xantcha was panting and
needed to rest. She didn't dare sit down for fear she
wouldn't have the strength to stand again, so she bent from
the hips and kept her balance by bracing clammy, shaking
hands on her gown-covered knees.

The stranger wasn't following her. Xantcha pulled
herself erect and started walking again. She took nearly
twenty cautious steps before her strength gave out. The
stranger hadn't moved at all.

Urza! Xantcha thought his name with the same precision
she used with her mnemonics when she yawned. Urza had never
admitted that he was open to her thoughts, but he'd never
denied it, either. Urza, I'm in a strange place. Nothing is
all wrong, but it's not right, either and I'm not myself.
If you're nearby-?

She stopped short of begging or pleading. If he had
survived their last battle ... and Xantcha was unwilling
to believe that she had outlived Urza the Artificer, and
she certainly couldn't have gotten here on her own. If Urza
weren't busy with problems of his own, then he would come.
Until then, she would walk.

The heaviness and lethargy didn't go away as the
dizziness had, but Xantcha became accustomed to them, as
she would have accustomed herself to the rise and fall of a
boat's deck. Xantcha might not know where she was or where
she was going, but when she looked over her shoulder, she'd
left a clean line through the ripe grass.

The stranger had told at least one truth. The air was
enough. Xantcha forgot her hunger and never became thirsty,
even though, she worked up a considerable sweat forcing
herself across the hills. Up and down and up again.
Eventually Xantcha lost sight of the stranger and the rock
where she'd awakened. There were other rocks along her
chosen path, all dun-colored and eroded into curves that
were the same, yet also unique.

Once, and once only, Xantcha saw a bush and veered off
her straight path to examine it. The bush was shoulder-high
and sprawling. Its leaves were tiny but intensely green-the
first green she'd found on this sunset-colored world. Pale
berries clustered on inner branches. Xantcha considered
picking a handful, then noticed the thorns, too, a lot of
them and each as long as her thumb.

The stranger had been appalled when she'd mentioned
hunting for her food, as if nothing here needed anything
more than air to survive. But if that were true, then why
the thorns, and why were there berries only on the inner
branches? The stranger had spoken of a Lady and of creation
and perfection. Someone somewhere was telling lies.

Xantcha left the berries alone. She rejoined her trail
through the grass. If there were predators, they'd have no
trouble finding her. The golden grass was ripe and brittle.
She'd left a wake of broken stalks and wished she still had
her sword or at least a knife. Aside from the stranger,
Xantcha had seen nothing living that wasn't also rooted in
the ground, no birds or animals, not even insects. A place
that had berries should have insects.

Even Phyrexia had insects.

Xantcha walked until her body told her it was time to
sleep. How long she'd walked or how far were unanswerable
questions. She made herself a grass mattress beside another

rock, because habit said a rock provided more shelter than
open grass. If the stranger could be believed, night never
fell, the air wouldn't turn cold, and there was no reason
not to sleep soundly, but Xantcha didn't trust the
stranger. She couldn't keep her eyes closed long enough for
the grass beneath her to make impressions in her skin and
after a handful of failed naps, she started walking again.

If walking and fitful napping were a day, then Xantcha
walked for three days before she came upon a familiar
stranger waiting beside a weathered rock. Even remembering
that she, herself, had been one of several thousand
identical newts, Xantcha was sure it was the same stranger.
The rock was the same, and a wake of broken grass began
nearby.

The stranger had moved. She was sitting rather than
standing, and she was aware that Xantcha had returned,
following her closely with her gray eyes, but she didn't
speak. Silence reigned until Xantcha couldn't bear it.

"You said there were others. Where? How can I find
them?" "You can't."

"Why not? How big is this world? What happened to me?
Did I trick myself into walking in a circle? Answer me!
Answer my questions! Is this some sort of punishment?"
Manners be damned, Xantcha threatened the seated woman with
her fists. "Is this Phyrexia? Are you some new kind of
priest?"

The woman's expression froze between shock and disdain.
She blinked, but her gray eyes didn't become flashing
jewels as Urza's would have done. Nor did she raise any
other defense, yet Xantcha backed away, lowered her arms,
and unclenched her hands.

"So, you can control yourself. Can you learn? Can you
sit and wait?"

Xantcha had learned harder lessons than sitting
opposite an enigmatic stranger, though few that seemed more
useless. Other than the slowly shifting cloud layers, the
occasionally rippling grass and the gray-eyed woman, there
was nothing to look at, nothing to occupy Xantcha's
thoughts. And if the goal were self-reflection ...

"Urza says that I have no imagination," Xantcha
explained when her legs had begun to twitch so badly she'd
had to get up and walk around the rock a few times. "My
mind is empty. I can't see myself without a mirror. It's
because I'm Phyrexian." "Lies," the stranger said without
looking up.

"Lies!" Xantcha retorted, ready for an argument, ready
for anything that would cut the boredom. "You're a fine one
to complain about lies!"

But the stranger didn't take Xantcha's bait, and
Xantcha returned to her chosen place. Days were longer
beside the rock. Sitting was less strenuous than walking
and despite her suspicions, Xantcha slept soundly with the
stranger nearby. They had a conversational breakthrough on
the fourth day of unrelenting boredom when a line of black
dots appeared beneath the lowest cloud layer.