Planeswalker (33 page)

Xantcha rose reluctantly. "Varrastu said that she and
Manatar-qua have crossed swords with folk made from flesh
and metal-"

Words failed as a second sun, yellowish-green in color,
loomed suddenly high overhead. The air exploded as it
hurtled toward them. Xantcha had the wit to be frightened
but hadn't begun to guess why or to yawn Urza's armor from
the cyst, when the pavilion burst into screaming flames,
and Urza seized her against his chest. He pulled her
between-worlds. Without the armor to protect her, she was
bleeding and gasping when they re-emerged.

Urza laid her on the ground then cradled her face in
his hands. "Don't go," he whispered.

It seemed an incongruous request. Xantcha wasn't about
to go anywhere. The between-worlds had battered her to
exhaustion. Her body seemed to have already fallen asleep.
She wanted only to close her eyes and join it.

"No!" Urza pinched her cheeks. "Stay awake! Stay with
me!"

Power like fire or countless sharp needles swirled
around her. Xantcha fought feebly to escape the pain. She
pleaded with him to release her.

"Live!" he shouted. "I won't let you die now."

Death would have been preferable to the torture flowing
from Urza's fingers, but Xantcha hadn't the strength to
resist his will. Mote by mote, he healed her and dragged
her back from the brink.

"Sleep now, if you wish."

His hand passed over her eyes. For an instant, there
was darkness and oblivion, then there was light, and
Xantcha was herself again. She exhaled a pent-up breath and
sat up.

"I don't know what came over me."

"Death," Urza said calmly. "I nearly lost you."

She remembered the yellow-green sun. "We must go back,
Varrastu-Manatarqua-"

"Crossed swords with the Phyrexians. Yes. Manatarqua
was the pavilion. She died on Gastal."

A shudder raced down Xantcha's spine. There was more
that Urza wasn't saying. "How long ago?"

"In the time of this plane, nearly two years."

Xantcha noticed her surroundings: a bare-walled chamber
with a window but not a door. She noticed herself. Her skin
was white. It cracked and flaked when she moved, as if her
armor clung in dead layers around her. Her hair, which she
always hacked short around her face, hung below her
shoulders. "Two years," she repeated, needing to say the
words herself to make them true in her mind. "Long years?"

"Very long," Urza assured her. "You've recovered. I
never doubted that you would, if I stayed beside you.
You'll be hungry soon. I'll get food now. Tomorrow or the
next day we'll move on toward Equilor."

Already Xantcha felt her stomach churning to life-after
two empty years. Food would be nice, but there was another
question: "At Gastal, Manatarqua-you said she 'was the
pavilion." Do you mean that she was Phyrexian and that you
slew her?"

"No, Manatarqua was a 'walker like myself, but much
younger. I have no idea why she presented herself as an
object. I didn't ask, it was her choice. Perhaps she hoped
to hide from her enemies."

"Phyrexians?"

"Other planeswalkers. I told you, they-we-can become
predatory, especially toward the newly sparked. I was
nearly taken myself in the beginning-Meshuvel was her name.
She was no threat to me. My eyes reveal sights no other
'walker can see. Until Serra, I avoided my own kind. They
had no part to play in my quest for vengeance. I'd been
thinking about 'walkers since leaving Serra's realm. I
thought I might need someone more like myself."

"But they died."

"Manatarqua died. I suspect the others escaped
unharmed, as I did. They prey on the young and the mortal
because a mature 'walker is no easy target. But I had made
up my mind almost from the start. I don't need another
"walker. I need you. To finally realize that and then feel
you die so soon afterward-it was almost enough to make me
worship the fickle gods."

Xantcha imagined Urza on his knees or in a temple. She
closed her eyes and laughed. He was gone when she reopened
them, and she was too stiff yet to climb through the
window. Her saner self insisted that Urza wouldn't abandon
her, not after sitting beside her for two years, not after

what he'd just said about needing her. Then this world's
sun passed beyond the window. Sanity's voice grew weaker as
shadows lengthened. Of all the ways Xantcha knew to die,
starvation was among the worst. She had dragged herself to
the window and was hauling herself over the sill when she
felt a breeze at her back. The breeze was thick with fresh
bread, roasted meat, and fruit. Urza had returned.

He called the meal a celebration and ate with her, at
least until a more ordinary sort of tiredness drove Xantcha
back to the bed where she'd lain for so long. She awoke
with the sun. There was a door beside the window, more food
and, somewhere beyond the sun, near the edge of time, a
world called Equilor.

Later, after they'd gotten to Dominaria, when Xantcha
sorted through her memories, the largest pile belonged to
the years they had searched for Equilor. Every season, for
much more than a thousand Dominarian years, she and Urza
wandered the multi-verse, taking other worlds' measure.
There were surprises and excitement, mostly of the minor
variety. After Serra's realm, Phyrexia seemed to lose
interest in them-or, at least, had lost their trail. Though
they sometimes found evidence of searcher-priests and
excavations. Eventually, everything they found was long
abandoned.

"I'm headed in the right direction," Urza would say
whenever they came upon eroded ruins no one else would have
noticed. "I'm headed toward the world that cast them out."

Xantcha was never so confident, but she never
understood how Urza found anything in the between-worlds,
much less how he distinguished hospitable worlds from
inhospitable ones, near from far. She was content to follow
a path that led endlessly away from the Phyrexia she knew
and toward the vengeance that seemed equally distant. Until
the day when they came to a quiet, twilight world.

"The edge of time itself," Urza said as he released
Xantcha's wrists.

She shed her armor and filled her lungs with air that
was unlike any other. "Old," she said after a few moments.
"It's as if everything's finished-not dead, just done
growing and changing. Even the mountains are smoothed down,
like they've been standing too long, but nothing's come to
replace them." She gestured toward the great, dark lump
that dominated the landscape like a risen loaf of bread.
"Somehow, I expected an edge to have sharp angles."

Urza nodded. "I expected a plane where everything had
been put to use, not like this, neglected and left fallow."

Yet not completely fallow. As twilight deepened, lights
winked open near the solitary mountain. There was a road,
too: a ribbon of worn gray stone, cut in chevrons and
fitted so precisely that not a blade of grass grew between
them. Urza insisted he had no advance idea of what a new
plane was like, no way at all of selecting the exact place
where his feet would touch the ground, yet, more often than
not, he 'walked out of the between-worlds in sight of a
road and a town.

They began to travel down the road.

A carpet of bats took flight from the mountain, passing

directly over their heads. When their shrill chirping had
subsided, other noises punctuated the night: howls, growls
and a bird with a sweet, yet mournful song. Stars appeared,
unfamiliar, of course, and scattered sparsely across the
clear, black sky. No moon outshone them, but it was the
nature of moons to produce moonless nights now and again.
What surprised Xantcha was the scarcity of stars, as if
time were stars and the black sky were itself the edge of
time.

"A strange place," Xantcha decided as they strode down
the road. "Not ominous or inhospitable, but filled with
secrets."

"So long as one of them is Phyrexia, I won't care about
the rest."

The light came from cobweb globes hovering above the
road and the three-score graceful houses of an unfortified
town. Urza lifted himself into the air to examine them and
reported solemnly that he had not a clue to their
construction or operation.

"They simply are," he said, "and my instinct is to
leave them alone."

Xantcha smiled to herself. If that was Urza's instinct
then whatever the globes were, they weren't simple.

A man came out to meet them. He appeared ordinary
enough, though Xantcha understood how deceptive an ordinary
appearance could be, and it bothered her that she hadn't
noticed him leave any one of the nearby houses, hadn't
noticed him at all until he was some fifty paces ahead and
walking toward them. He wore a knee-length robe over loose
trousers, both woven from a pale, lightweight fiber that
rippled as he moved and sparkled as if it were shot with
silver. His hair and beard were dark auburn in the globe
light and neatly trimmed. A few wrinkles creased the outer
corners of his eyes. Xantcha placed him in the prime of
mortal life, but she'd place Urza there, too.

"Welcome, Urza," the stranger said. "Welcome to
Equilor. We've been waiting for you."

Xantcha had understood every word the auburn-haired man
had said, an unprecedented happening on a new world. She
dug deep into her memory trying to recognize the language
and missed the obvious: the stranger spoke Argivian, the
sounds of Urza's long-lost boyhood and of her newtish
dreams, the foundation of the argot she and Urza spoke to
each other. But if this were Dom-inaria, then Urza would
have recognized the stars, and if the stranger were another
'walker with the power to absorb languages without time or
effort, then why had he said, We've been waiting?

The stranger touched his forehead, lips, and heart
before embracing Urza, cheek against cheek. Urza bent into
the gesture, as he would not have done if he were
suspicious.

"And you're ... Xantcha."

The stranger turned his attention to her. He'd
hesitated before stating her name. Taking it from her mind?
Not unless he were much better at such things than Urza
was; she'd felt no violation. Once again the stranger
touched himself three times before embracing her exactly as

he'd embraced Urza. His hands were warm, with the texture
of flesh and bone. His breath was warm, too, and faintly
redolent of onions.

"Waiting for us?" Urza demanded before asking the
stranger's name or any other pleasantry. "Before sunset I
was elsewhere, very much elsewhere. And until now, I did
not know for certain that I had found the place I have been
seeking for so long."

"Yes, waiting," the stranger insisted, keeping one hand
beneath Xantcha's elbow and guiding Urza toward one of the
houses with the other. "You 'walk the planes. We have been
aware of your approach for quite some time now. It is good
to have you here at last."

Xantcha glanced behind the stranger's shoulders. Urza
had devised a code, simple hand and facial movements for
moments when they were among mind-skimmers. She made the
sign for danger and received the sign for negation in
response. Urza wasn't worried as the stranger led them
through a simple stone-built gate and into a tall, open-
roofed atrium.

There were others in the atrium, a woman at an open
hearth, stirring a pot of stew that was the source of the
onions Xantcha had smelled earlier, two other women and a
man, all adults, all individuals, yet bound by a familial
resemblance. An ancient sat in a wicker chair-wrinkled,
toothless, and nearly bald. Xantcha couldn't guess if she
beheld a man or a woman. Beyond the ancient, in another
atrium, two half-grown children dangled strings for a
litter of kittens, while a round-faced toddling child
watched her from behind the banister at the top of a
stairway.

Of them all, only the toddler betrayed even a faint
distrust of uninvited guests. Where moments earlier Xantcha
had warned Urza of danger, she now began to wonder why the
household seemed so unconcerned. Didn't they see her knives
and sword? Had they no idea what a 'walker could do-
especially a 'walker named Urza?

"There is a portion for you," the hearth-side woman
said specifically to Xantcha, as she ladled out a solitary
bowl and set it on the table that ran the length of the
atrium. Like the man who'd met them on the road, she spoke
Argivian, but with a faint accent. "You must be hungry
after your journey here."

Xantcha was hungry. She caught Urza's eyes again and
passed the general sign that asked, What should I do?

"Eat," he said. "The food smells delicious."

But a second bowl wasn't offered-as if they knew a
'walker never needed to eat.

Xantcha sat in a white chair at a white table, eating
stew from a white bowl. Everything that could have had a
chosen color, including the floors and the walls, was white
and sparkling clean. Except for the spoon in the bowl. It
was plain wood, rubbed until it was satin smooth. She used
it self-consciously, afraid she'd dribble and embarrass
herself-both distinct possibilities, distracted as she was
by conversations between Urza and the others that she
couldn't quite overhear.

The stew was plain but tasty. If there was time, she'd
like to see the garden where they grew their vegetables and
the fields where they harvested their grain. It was a

meatless stew-somehow that didn't surprise her-with egg
drizzled in the broth, and pale chunks, like cubes of soft
cheese, a bit smaller than her thumb, taking the place of
meat. The chunks had the texture of soft cheese, but not
the taste; indeed, they had no taste that Xantcha could
discern, and she was tempted to leave them in the bowl
until the woman asked her if the meal was pleasing to a
wanderer's palate.

The auburn-haired man's name was Romom, the cook was
Tessu, the other names left no impression in Xantcha's
mind, save for Brya, the toddler at the top of the stairs.
When Xantcha had finished her second bowl of stew and a mug
of excellent cider, Tessu suggested a hot bath in an open,
steaming pool. Xantcha had no wish to display her newt's
undifferentiated flesh before strangers and declined the
offer. Tessu suggested sleep in a room of her own

"Facing the mountain."

It was a privilege of some sort, but Xantcha declined a
second time. She pushed away from the spotless white table
and took a cautious stride toward the pillow-sitting knot
of folk gathered around Urza. Opposition never
materialized. The family made room for her between the two
women whose names Xantcha couldn't remember. Urza gave her
the finger sign for silence. The family discussed stars and
myths. They used unfamiliar names, but all the other words
were accented Argivian with only a few lapses of syntax or
vocabulary. It wasn't their native language, yet they'd all
learned it well-enough for an esoteric conversation that
couldn't, in any meaningful sense, include her or Urza.

Xantcha twisted her fingers into an open question, and
Urza replied with the sign for silence. Silence wasn't
difficult for Xantcha, unless it was imposed. She fidgeted
and considered joining the youngsters still playing with
the kittens until Tessu shuttled them upstairs. The
conversation began to flag and for the first time since
they'd entered the austerely decorated atrium, the air
charged with anticipation. Even at the edge of time there
were, apparently, conversations that could be held only
after the children had gone to bed.

Tessu and Romom together brought the ancient to what
had been Romom's place on Urza's right. Then everyone
shuffled about to make room for the pair-who Xantcha had
decided were husband and wife, if not lord and lady-on the
opposite side of the circle.

"You have questions," the ancient said. The voice gave
no clues to the grizzled figure's sex, but the accent was
thick. Xantcha had to listen closely to distinguish the
words. "No one comes to Equilor without questions."

Urza made two signs, one with each hand, silence and
observe, before he said, "I have come to learn my enemies'
weakness."

The two men exchanged glances, one triumphant, an
ongoing dispute settled at last. Against all reason, these
folk had been expecting them, exactly them: Urza from
Argive and a companion who'd been glad of a hot meal at the
end of a long day. But they hadn't known for certain why,
and that made less sense. If you knew Urza well enough to
know his name and where he was headed, then surely you knew
what had driven him through the multiverse to Equilor.

The men, however, said nothing. Like Xantcha, they

seemed relegated to silence, waiting for the ancient to
speak again.

"Equilor is not your enemy. Equilor has no enemies. If
you were an enemy of Equilor, you would not have found us."

Another created plane like Phyrexia and Serra's realm,
accessible only across a fathomless chasm-which Urza hadn't
mentioned?

"I am a seeker, nothing more," Urza countered, as
formal and constrained as Xantcha had ever heard him. "I
sensed no defenses as I 'walked."

"We would not intimidate our enemies, Urza. We would
not encourage them to test their courage. We knew you were
a seeker. We permitted you to find what you sought. The
elders will see you."

By which the ancient implied that he, or she, was not
one of the elders. Perhaps the term was an honorific, not
dependent on age. Xantcha would have liked to ask an
impertinent question or two, but Urza's fingers remained
loosely in their silence and observe positions.

"And I will ask them about Phyrexia. Have you heard of
it?"

There was considerable movement in the circle. Xantcha
couldn't observe it all, but Phyrexia was not unknown to
the household.

The ancient said one word, "Misguided," which seemed
sufficient to everyone but Urza and Xantcha.

"More than misguided," Urza sputtered. "They are a
force of abomination, of destruction. They have set
themselves against my plane, and I have sworn vengeance
against them in the name of my brother, my people, and the
Thran."

That word, "Thran," also brought an exchange of
glances, less profound than what had followed Phyrexia.

"Misguided," the ancient repeated. "Foolish and doomed.
The elders will tell you more."

"So, you know of them! I'm convinced that they were
banished from their natal plane before they created
Phyrexia. I am looking for that plane. If it is not
Equilor, I hope that you can tell me where it is. I have
heard that whatever is known in the multiverse is known to
Equilor."

The ancient nodded. "The ones you seek have never come
to Equilor. They are young, as you are young. Youth does
not often come to Equilor."

"They fought the Thran over six thousand of my years
ago, and I myself have walked the planes for over two
millennia."

The ancient fired a question to Romom in a language
Xantcha couldn't understand.

Romom replied, in Argivian, "Shorter, Pakuya, by at
least a third."

"You are old, Urza, for a young man, but compared to
Equilor, you are scarcely weaned from your mother's breast.
In Equilor, we began our search for enlightenment a hundred
millennia ago. Do not wonder, then, that you could not see
our defenses as you passed through them."

"You will think differently when the Phyrexians
arrive!"

"They are a small folk with small ambitions, smaller
dreams. We have nothing to offer them. Perhaps we were

wrong about you."

The ancient added something short and decisive in the
other language. Watching Urza as closely as she watched the
household, Xantcha realized that Urza couldn't skim the
thoughts of these deceptively simple folk.

"It is late," Tessu said, putting a polite, yet
unmistakable end to the discussion. She rose to her feet.
Romom rose beside her. "Time to rest and sleep. The sun
will rise."

The rest of the household stood and bowed their heads
as Romom and Tessu helped the ancient from the atrium.
Moments later, Urza and Xantcha were alone.

"This is the place!" Urza said directly in her mind.

"The old one said not."

"She is testing us. Tomorrow, when I meet with these
elders, I will have what I have long wished to learn."

In her private thoughts, Xantcha wondered how Urza knew
the ancient was a woman, then chided herself for thinking
he could be right about such a small thing when he seemed
so wrong about the rest. The ancient had talked to Urza as
Urza often talked to her, but he hadn't noticed the
slights.

"They have secrets," Xantcha warned but no reply formed
in her mind, and she couldn't know if Urza had retrieved
her thought.

Tessu and Romom returned. Romom said there was a
special chamber where those who would speak to the elders
waited for the sun to rise. For Xantcha, who was just as
glad not be included, there was a narrow bedchamber at the
end of a cloistered corridor, a change of clothes, and a
worried question:

"You will bathe before sunrise?"

She answered in the same tone, "If I may bathe
unobserved?"

"The mountain will see you."

There were no roofs over any of the chambers. Xantcha
wondered what they did when it rained, but, "The mountain
is not a problem."

"You have customs that inhibit you?"

Xantcha nodded. If that explanation would satisfy
Tessu, she'd provide no other.

"I will not interfere, but I cannot sleep until you
have bathed."

"Your customs?"

Tessu nodded, and with her clean clothes under her arm
Xantcha followed her host to the dark and quiet atrium. If
Tessu failed to contain her curiosity, Xantcha was none the
wiser. As smooth and hairless as the day she crawled out of
her vat, Xantcha eased herself into the starlit, steaming
pool. A natural hot spring kept the water pleasantly warm.
A gutter-white, of course, and elegantly simple-carried the
overflow away. She'd scrubbed herself clean in a matter of
moments and, knowing that Tessu waited in the atrium,
should have toweled herself off immediately, but the
mountain was watching her and she watched back.

It had many eyes-Xantcha lost count at thirty-threeand,
remembering the bats, the eyes were probably nothing
more than caves, still, the sense of observation was
inescapable. After staring so intently at shades of black
and darkness, Xantcha thought she saw flickering lights in

some of the cave eyes, thought the lights formed a rippling
web across the mountain. Xantcha thought a number of things
until she realized she was standing naked beside the pool,
at which point all her thoughts shattered and vanished. She
grabbed her clothes, both clean and filthy, and retreated
into the atrium.

"You are unwell?" Tessu asked discreetly from the
shadows as Xantcha wrestled with unfamiliar clasps and
plackets.

"It did see me."

Tessu failed to repress a chuckle. "They will not harm
you, Xantcha."