Planeswalker (36 page)

Ratepe was uncommonly good at guessing and choosing. "I
don't know any other kind."

"Avohir's mercy! You and Urza didn't find demons
anywhere else, did you?" "I didn't."

"Why Efuan Pincar? If a Phyrexian demon was going to
come to Dominaria, why come to Efuan Pincar. We keep to
ourselves. When our ancestors left Argive, they never
looked back. They settled on the north shore of Gulmany
because it's so far away from everywhere else. We're not
rich. We don't bother our neighbors, and they've never
bothered us. We don't even have an army-which is probably
why we had trouble with the Shratta and the Red-Stripes,
but why would that interest Phyrexia? I don't understand.
Do you?"

"I told you, demons frighten me. I didn't ask
questions, just... just got away." She stripped another
handful of leaves. Xantcha wanted to tell Ratepe
everything, but the words to get her started weren't in her
mind.

"The day you bought me, I told you that you were a
lousy liar. You may be three thousand years old, Xantcha,
but my eight-year-old brother could fib better than you.
When he got into trouble, though, I could guess what he was
hiding, 'cause I'd hidden it myself. I can't guess about
demons."

Xantcha scattered the leafy bits and faced Ratepe. "It
was Gix. I smelled sleepers in the sanctuary, I followed
the smell, planting spiders as I went, yours and Urza's
both. I wound up way underground, in the dark. There was a
passageway, one of the big, old, upright ones, and there
was Gix."

"You said Gix had been killed in the Sixth Sphere."
"The Seventh. He was excoriated, consigned to endless
torment. We were taught that nothing escapes the Seventh
Sphere." "Another Phyrexian lie? You're sure it was Gix,

not some other demon?"

"Yes." One answer for both questions. "Did he hurt
you?"

Ratepe never failed to ask the question Xantcha wasn't
expecting. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"Then, what's got you so riled? Why were we headed
'nowhere'? Unless ... wait, I get it now. Urza's sent you
off with the mere mortal. He's not that crazed. He knows
what I am, who I'm not. He's going back after Gix, and
you're here with me instead of-"

"I didn't tell Urza." The words belched out of her.

"You found a Phyrexian demon under Avohir's temple and
you didn't tell Urza?"

She turned away in shame.

"Of course," Ratepe sighed. "He'd yell at you and blame
you, just as I've yelled at you and blamed you. And you are
a lot like my little brother when you get accused of
something that's not your fault. And Gix. Gix was the one
who got Mishra. Mishra didn't know-not until it was too
late. Strange thing. They fought over those two stones that
are Urza's eyes now, but I don't think either brother could
hear the stones sing."

Xantcha took a deep breath. "Do you wonder why you can
hear them."

"I can't hear them. I only hear Mishra's stone. I don't
know for sure that the Mightstone sings, but-yes, I do
wonder. I think about it a lot, more than I want to. Why?
Did Gix say something about the stones?"

"Yes. He said he made them, and then he said something
about you." And Urza, Xantcha's mind added, but not her
tongue.

Ratepe was pale and speechless.

"He could have gotten your name out of my mind. I was
careful what I gave him, enough to keep him from digging
too deep. But I got in trouble. Serious trouble." Xantcha's
hands were shaking. She clasped them together behind her
back. "He had me, Rat. I was walking toward the passageway.
I would've gone into Phyrexia, and that would've been the
end of me, I'm sure. Then, suddenly, all I could think of
was you."

"Me?"

"You're the first 'mere mortal' I've gotten to know.
You've..." Blood rushed to Xantcha's face. She was hot,
embarrassed, but she stumbled on. "Thinking about you
pulled me back. But Gix was in my mind when I did, so he
could have taken your name and made a lie around it.
Everything he said could've been lies ... probably was
lies." And why share Gix's lies with anyone? "He didn't
tell me anything I didn't know, except, maybe, about the
Thran. And, well, Mishra knew some things about the Thran."

Though Xantcha could feel the blood draining from her
own face, Ratepe's was still dangerously pale.

"Tell me what Gix said about me, then what he said
about Mishra and the Thran. Maybe I can tell you if it's
lies or not."

"Gix said he wondered if I'd found you, as if he'd
planned that we were supposed to meet."

"And about the Thran?"

"When I said that Urza would finish what the Thran had
started against the Phyrexians, he laughed and said the

Thran were waiting for Urza and that they'd take back what
was theirs. Gix was thinking about Urza's eyes-at least, I
started thinking about Urza's eyes and how they were the
last of the Thran powerstones. Gix laughed louder, and the
next thing I knew, I was thinking about you and not walking
toward the portal. What he said about you and what he said
about me, they're lies. Even if Mishra was compleated in
Phyrexia... even if his flesh and blood were rendered for
the vats ... I was one of thousands. We were exactly alike.
We don't even scar, Ratepe. We couldn't tell ourselves
apart!"

"Lies," Ratepe said so softly that Xantcha wasn't sure
she'd heard him correctly and asked him to repeat himself.
"Lies. The Weakstone's a sort of memory. Mostly it's
Mishra's memory, but I've been hit with some Thran memories
and some of Urza's, too, though not as strong. With Mishra,
there's personality. I'm thankful I never met him while he
was alive. He'd've killed me for sure. With the Thran and
Urza, it's like faded paintings. But if you were Mishra-if
any part of you was Mishra-the Weakstone would have
recognized him in you, even though you're Phyrexian. And if
I'd been touched by Gix, I'd be dead. The Weakstone doesn't
like Phyrexians, Xantcha, and it especially doesn't like
Gix."

"Urza's eye doesn't like me?"

Ratepe shook his head, "Sorry, no. It sees you,
sometimes, but if Urza doesn't trust you, the Weakstone
could be responsible because it doesn't trust you."

"The Weakstone has opinions?"

"Influence. It tries to influence."

Xantcha considered Urza's eyes watching her and Ratepe
each time they retreated to her side of the wall. "It must
be overjoyed when we're together."

Color returned to Ratepe's face in a single heartbeat.
"I'm not Mishra. I make my own opinions."

"What do you know from Mishra and the Weakstone about
the Thran and the Phyrexians?" Xantcha asked when Ratepe's
blush had spread past his ears.

"They hate each other, with a deep, blinding hate that
gives no quarter. But I'll tell you honestly, in the images
I've gotten of their war, I can't tell one side from the
other. The Thran weren't flesh and blood, no more than the
Phyrexians. Even Mishra's just something the Weakstone
uses. Urza's notion that the Thran sacrificed themselves to
save Dominaria, maybe that's the Mightstone's influence,
but it's not true. My world's better off without both of
them, Thran and Phyrexians together."

They'd wandered away from their gear. Xantcha headed
back. "Maybe Urza will succeed someday in "walking between
times as easily as he 'walks between worlds. I'd like to
know what really happened back there at Koilos. I'd like to
see it for myself. It's a shadow over everything I've ever
known, all the way back to the vats."

Ratepe corrected her pronunciation of Koilos, reducing
the three syllables to two and moving the accent to the
first.

"I heard it from Urza and he's the one who named it,"
she retorted.

"I guess language drifts in three thousand years. It's
still there, you know-well, it was three hundred years ago

when the ancestors left Argive."

Xantcha stopped short. "I thought it wasn't recorded
where the first Efuands came from. That's part of your
myth."

"It is ... part of the myth, that is. But Father said
our language is mostly Argivian and the oldest books,
before the Shratta burnt them, had been written in
Argivian. And, if you look at a map, Efuan Pincar is about
as far away from Argive as you can get without sailing
right off the edge."

"And Koilos?" Xantcha stuck with Urza's pronunciation.
"It's still there in Argive?"

"It's not in Argivia. It never was, but folk knew where
it was three hundred years ago. It's like The Antiquity
Wars, something that's not supposed to be forgotten. I
guess it was inaccessible for most of the Ice Age, but when
the world got warmer again, the kings of Argivia and their
neighbors sent folk up on the Kher to make sure the ruins
were still ruins."

"Urza's never mentioned them. I just assumed Koilos
vanished with Argoth."

"You've seen a map of what's left of Terisiare?"

Xantcha shrugged. There were maps in her copies of The
Antiquity Wars. She'd assumed they were wrong and paid no
attention to them.

"We'd have to go over the Sea of Laments. We'd never
make it there and back in nine days," Ratepe said with a
smile that invited conspiracy. Waste not, want not. If Gix
hadn't lied about the young Efuand, they were all doomed.

"We'd make landfall on Argivia in two very cold days
and colder nights. Getting back would be more difficult,
but it's that or go back to the cottage and tell Urza that
I saw Gix in Pincar City."

"He wouldn't be pleased to see us."

The journey over the Sea of Laments was as uneventful
as it was unpleasant. They'd traded for blankets and an
oil-cloth sail in a village on Gulmany's south coast. The
fisherman who took Xantcha's silver thought she was insane;
a little while later, both Ratepe and Xantcha agreed with
him, but by then it was too late. They were in the wash of
a roaring wind river and remained there until they saw land
again. For two days and nights there was nothing to do but
huddle beneath blankets and the sail.

"Don't you have to keep one hand free?" Ratepe had
shouted early on, as they struggled to wrap the blankets
evenly around their feet.

"Tack across this?' she shouted back. "We're here for
the ride."

"How many times have you crossed the sea?"

"Once, by mistake."

"Sorry I asked."

Misery ended after sunrise on the third day. There was
land below, land as far as the eye could see. Xantcha
thought down and thrust her hand through the sphere for
good measure. Her hand turned white as they plummeted down
to familiar altitudes.

As her hand began to thaw, Xantcha asked, "Now, which

way to Koilos?"

"Where are we?"

"Don't you recognize anything from your maps?"

"Avohir's sweet mercy, Xantcha, maps don't look like
the ground!"

They found an oasis and a goatherd who seemed unfazed
by the sight of two strangers in a place where strangers
couldn't be common. He spoke a language neither of them had
heard before but recognized the word Koilos in its older,
three-syllable form. He rattled off a long speech before
pointing to the southeast. The only words they recognized,
beside Koilos, were Urza and Mishra. Xantcha traded a
silver-set agate for all the food the youth was carrying.
He strode away, whistling and laughing.

"What do you think he said?" Xantcha asked when they'd
returned to the gulch where their gear was hidden. "Other
than that we're fools and idiots."

"The usual curses against Urza and Mishra."

The sphere flowed over them and they were rising before
Ratepe continued.

"Haven't you ever noticed how empty everything is? Even
in Efuan Pincar, which was as far from Argoth as it could
be, it's nothing to ride through wilderness and find
yourself in the middle of ruins from the time before the
ice and the war. Here in Argivia, according to the books
the Ancestors brought to Pincar, they were still living in
the shadows of the past-literally. They didn't have the
wherewithal to build the buildings like the old ruins. Not
enough people, not enough stone, not enough metal, not
enough knowledge of how it was done. Urza talks about the
mysteries of the Thran. The books my father studied talked
about the mysteries of Urza and Mishra. They all talk about
Koilos. It's the place in Terisiare, new or old, where
everything comes to an end. It's a name to conjure
darkness."

Xantcha caught a tamer wind stream and adjusted their
drift. "Does everyone in Efuan Pincar talk about such
things? Are you a nation of storytellers?"

Ratepe laughed bitterly. "No, just my father, and he
taught me. My rather was a scholar, and both my
grandfathers, too. The first things I remember are the
three of them arguing about men and women who'd died a
thousand years ago. I was ashamed of them. I hated lessons;
I wanted to be anything but a scholar. Then the Shratta
came. My grandfathers were dead by then, Avohir's mercy. My
father did whatever he had to do to take care of us. When
we got to the country, he learned farming as if it were a
Sumifan chronicle, but he missed Pincar. He missed not
having students to teach or someone to argue with. My
mother told me to sit at his feet and learn or she'd take
her belt to me. I never argued with my mother." Xantcha
stared at Ratepe who was staring at the horizon, eyes
glazed and fists clenched, the way he looked whenever he
remembered what he'd lost. Urza had buried Mishra beneath
layers of obsession, and there was little enough in
Xantcha's own life worth cherishing. Looking at Ratepe,
trying to imagine his grief, all she felt was envy.

The winds were steady, the sky was clear, and the moon
was bright. They soared until midnight and were in the air
again after a sunrise breakfast. By midday they saw the

reflection of a giant lake to their south, and by the end
of a long afternoon they were over the foothills of the
Kher Ridge. There were no villages, no roads, not even the
bright green dot of an oasis. Ratepe closed his eyes and
folded his hands. "Now what?" Xantcha asked. "I'm praying
for a sign." "I thought you knew!"