Planeswalker

CHAPTER 18

There were other discussions, some less volatile, a few that had the three of them storming off in different directions, but in the end Ratepe and Xantcha fell in with Urza's plan to broadcast the screaming spiders-Ratepe named them-throughout Old Terisiare and anywhere else that Urza or Xantcha might sniff a Phyrexian in the air.

They had about three seasons to get the spiders arrayed on dusty walls and ceilings. By Urza's calculations the Glimmer Moon would strike its zenith above Old Terisiare a few days short of next year's midsummer's eve. Xantcha had little time for visiting unfamiliar places or searching out new Phyrexian infestations. The windstreams weren't fast enough. Urza 'walked her to realms where glistening oil tainted the air. Then he left her with a cache of spiders while he 'walked on with several thousand more. Nine days later, he'd examine her glowing amber heart, find her, and take her back to the cottage where Ratepe waited for them.

In a compromise between delusion and practicality, Urza had decided his brother's talents were uniquely suited to constructing spiders. Ratepe had tried to argue his way out of the responsibility, but Urza's instructions were clear and, aside from charging the white mana crystals, making the small artifacts was more tedious than difficult. Every nine days, when they were together at the cottage, Urza banished Ratepe and Xantcha from his workroom while he grew

and charged the crystals.

Summer ended, autumn vanished, winter came, all without disrupting their cycles.

"Not that you couldn't do it," Urza would say, the same words every time he and Xantcha returned, as if they were written on the instructions he'd given Ratepe. "But you've been alone all this time, and Xantcha likes to talk to you. And I've got another idea or two I'd like to tinker with. I can make them better, make them louder, wider, more powerful. So, you two go on. Let me work. Go next door. Talk, eat, do as you like. I'll be busy here until tomorrow night."

"He's as mad as he ever was," Xantcha said as Ratepe put his weight against the workroom door, cracking the late-winter ice that had sealed it since Urza and Xantcha had left nine days earlier.

"He was mad long before the real Mishra died," Ratepe said lightly and regretted his nonchalance as he lost his footing on the slick wood. "You didn't really think anything was going to change that, did you?"

Like Urza, the two of them had fallen into habits and scripts, at least until they'd lit the oil lamp and the brazier and warmed the blankets of Xantcha's old bed. They seldom talked much or ate after that until the lamp needed replenishing.

"I want a favor from you," Ratepe said while Xantcha re-lit the lamp with a coal from the brazier.

Xantcha looked up silently.

"It's getting on toward a year."

She'd been expecting that. Winter lingered on the Ridge. It was spring in the lowlands, a bit more than two months shy of the year she'd asked of Ratepe in Medran. She and Urza were three-quarters through the workroom maps, but their chances of finishing the job before midsummer were nil, and none if Ratepe demanded the freedom she'd sworn to give him.

"You want to go back to Efuan Pincat." A statement, not a question. She made tea from the steaming water atop the brazier.

"No, I can count as well as you-better, usually. Urza needs me here until midsummer, at least. I have my doubts, so do you, but nobody knows what happens next. We agreed to take the risks."

"So, what's the favor?"

"I want you to go back to Efuan Pincar."

"Me?"

"Everywhere else the Phyrexians are all sleepers- everywhere, except Baszerat and Morvern, and they'll keep fighting each other with or without Phyrexian meddling. But I'm still worried about Efuan Pincar and the Shratta. We never went back-"

She interrupted. "I did. I plastered the walls of Medran and seven other towns while Urza did Pincar City. You said midsummer's the biggest holy day of Avohir's year and everybody goes to the temples, so I put a few spiders in the sanctuaries, just in case, but I didn't smell anything suspicious. My guess is that the Red-Stripes wiped out the Shratta years ago. Maybe they had Phyrexian help, maybe not. It's history now."

"I figured that, and that's why I want a favor. I've

tinkered with the spiders-studied the changes that Urza's made since last summer, even made a few of my own and tested them, too."

Xantcha raised her eyebrows as she strained the tea.

"It's not like you didn't experiment with the cyst after Urza gave it to you," Ratepe retorted.

Xantcha decided not to pursue the argument.

"Urza doesn't count the crystals. I think he expects me to damage a few-and, anyway, we know the crystals work. It's the other part that I modified."

"You're not trying them out on me." She slammed the straining bowl on the table for emphasis.

"No, they're not like that, but I did change the sound they make. The way Urza had them set, the sound makes things boil. What I did makes solid things like rocks and especially mortar break down into sand and dust. And I want you to plant my spiders in the foundation of the Red-Stripe barracks and under the high altar of Avohir's temple in Pincar City. When the Glimmer

Moon passes overhead, the sound will rattle the stones until they come apart."

It would work, but, "Waste not, want not-why? Even if I could do it, why? Not that I care, personally, but Avohir is your god. Why would you want to turn Avohir's altar into rubble?"

"And the Red-Stripe barracks. Both. I want to make a sign for every Efuand to see that whatever strikes down the sleepers strikes down the Shratta, too. If there's any left anywhere, I don't want some bearded fanatic to take advantage of what we've done. All right, the Shratta didn't kill my family, but they drove us out of the city. They burnt the schools and the libraries. If the Phyrexians got rid of them, well, that's a mark in their favor, but I don't want to take the chance. Will you do it, Xantcha? For me?"

She followed the steam rising from her mug. "I'll talk to Urza."

"Urza can't know."

"Ratepe! I'm not just wandering out there. I 'walk out of here with Urza and nine days later I 'walk back with him. What am I supposed to do, yawn and hightail it up to Efuan Pincar the moment he sets me down and then hightail it back again?"

"That's what I thought you'd do."

"And when he asks about the spiders I was supposed to be planting?"

"I thought of that. You'll tell him they didn't feel right so you didn't spread 'em around. I've learned how to make duds, too. If he gets angry, he'll be angry at me for being careless."

"Wonderful."

"You'll do it?"

"Let me think about it. Lying to Urza. I can get angry with him, I can yell at him and keep secrets, but I don't know if I can outright lie to him."

Ratepe didn't push, not that night, but he asked again the next time they were together and alone. If he'd gotten her angry, just once, she'd have put the whole cockeyed notion behind her, but Ratepe was too canny for that. Passionate, yet totally in control. Xantcha wondered what

Kayla Bin-Kroog would have thought. She wondered whether Kayla would have stood under the stars as she herself did a few visits later and said:

"We're getting to the end. He's taking me to Russiore tomorrow. It's not infested with sleepers. More important, it's not far from Efuan Pincar. I can get down the coast to Pincar City, plant your spiders and cover Russiore, too."

Ratepe lifted Xantcha off the ground and, before she had a chance to protest, spun on his heels, whirling her around three times while he laughed out loud. She was gasping and giddy when her feet touched down.

"I knew you would!"

He kissed her, a kiss that began in joy and ended in passion as he lifted her up again.

The next evening, when Urza took her wrist for "walking, Xantcha was sure that he knew she had extra spiders in her sack and deceit in her heart. She couldn't meet his eyes at their most ordinary.

"There is no shame to it, Xantcha," Urza said moments later when they stood on a hillside above the seacoast principality of Russiore. "He is a young man and you prefer yourself as a woman. I heard you laughing with him last night. I racked my memory but I don't think I've ever heard you or him so happy. It does my old bones good. After Russiore, I shall go off and leave you two alone together."

Urza vanished then, which was just as well, Xantcha needed to breathe and couldn't until he was gone.

Una's bones, she thought with a shudder. Urza doesn't have any bones, she chided herself and yawned out the sphere.

The sphere rose swiftly through the ground breezes until the ocean windstreams caught it and threw it south, an abrupt reminder-as if Xantcha needed one-that she made mistakes when she was distracted. She wove her hand through the wind, pushing the sphere to its limit. Dawn's light revealed Efuand villages. Morning found her walking the market road into Pincar City.

Xantcha had scattered spiders all wintet without once breaking

a sweat, but she was damp and pasty-mouthed when a Red- Stripe guard asked her particulars at the city gate. He had a mortally unpleasant face, a mortally unpleasant smell.

"Ratepe," she told him, "son of Mideah of Medran." Despite anxiety, Xantcha's accent was flawless, and the coins of Russiore were common enough along Gulmany's northern coast that she could offer a few as a bribe, if needs be.

"Here for?"

"I've come to pray before Avohir's holy book on the fifth anniversary of my father's death."

Ratepe had said there was no more solemn obligation in a Efuand son's life. No born Red-Stripe would question it, and no Phyrexian would last long if it did.

"Peace go with you," the Red-Stripe said and touched Xantcha on both cheeks, a gesture which Ratepe had warned her to expect. "May your burdens be lifted."

Xantcha went through the gate in peace, her burdens

hung from her shoulder, exactly as she'd packed them. She knew where the garrison barracks were and that they'd be swarming with Red-Stripes most of the day. That left the temple, which might be just as busy but was open to anyone who needed Avohir's grace. Ratepe had taught her the necessary prayers, when and where to wash her hands, and not to jump if anyone sprinkled seawater on her head while she was on her knees.

Three thousand years, more worlds than she could count, and always-always-an outsider.

The square altar was as tall as a man and stood on a stairway dais that was almost as high. Xantcha could barely see the holy book laid open atop it, although it was the largest book she'd ever seen-bigger than her bed. A huge cloth of red velvet covered the altar from the book to the dais. As Xantcha watched from the back of the sanctuary, an old man climbed the dais steps on his knees. At the top he lifted the velvet over his head and shoulders. He was letting Avohir dry his tears; she would be affixing Ratepe's spiders.

Xantcha claimed a space at the end of the line of mourners, petitioners, and cripples shuffling along a marked path to the dais where a red-robed priest guarded the steps. She was under the great dome, halfway to the altar, when a second priest came to take the place of the first. The second priest also wore a red robe with its cowl drawn up. His beard, as black as Ratepe's hair, spilled onto his chest.

Shratta, Xantcha thought, remembering what Ratepe had told her in the burning village.

He'd been at his post a few moments before the air brought her the scent of glistening oil.

Xantcha tried to get a look within the priest's cowl as her turn on the dais stairway neared. The oil scent was strong, but no stronger than with other sleepers. She didn't expect to see glowing or lidless eyes and his-itshands, which she tried unsuccessfully to avoid, had a fleshy feel around hers.

"Peace be with you," he said, more sincere than the guard. Xantcha held her breath when he touched her cheeks. "May your burdens be lifted."

The path was clear, as simple as that, as simple as Ratepe had promised it would be. She hobbled on her knees, like everyone else, raised the velvet drape and flattened an artifact against the dark stone. A second spider on the opposite side would be a good idea, four would be better. Xantcha gazed up into the dome as she left, looking for a sphere-sized escape hole.

There were no holes in the roof, but there was one in the wall-an archway into a cloister where a few laymen in plain clothes appeared to be continuing their prayers. Xantcha took the chance and joined them. No one challenged her, and after she bruised her knees a while longer, she yawned out Urza's armor and left the cloister through a different door.

The smell of oil was stronger in the corridor beyond the cloister. Not a great surprise. She was in the priests' private quarters now. The corridors were poorly ventilated, and under such circumstances she'd expected the taint to thicken, but there was something more. Xantcha palmed a

handful of screaming spiders from her sack, affixed them to the wall, and pressed deeper into the tangled chambers behind the sanctuary. The scent grew stronger and more complex. She suspected there was an ambulator nearby, or perhaps one of the vertical disks she'd seen so long ago in Moag.

We call them priests, she reminded herself, although there were no gods in Phyrexia, only the Ineffable, and blind obedience wasn't religion.

Midway down a spiral stairway, Xantcha encountered a priest rushing for the surface. Without a gesture or apology, he shoved her against the spiral's spine. She slipped down two, treacherously narrow, steps before catching her balance. The scent of glistening oil was heavy in his wake, but except in rudeness, he hadn't noticed her.

In her mind, Xantcha heard Ratepe muttering, Phyrexians: no imagination! Ratepe was young. He hid his fears in sarcasm. She put one of his stone-shattering spiders on the spiral's spine.

The stairway ended in a vaulted crypt. Light came from a pair of filthy lanterns and Phyrexian glows attached haphazardly to the stone ribs overhead. The sight of Phyrexian artifacts answered a wealth of questions and left her feeling anxious within Urza's armor. Xantcha thought again of Moag and wondered if she shouldn't scurry back to Russiore, confess her deceit when Urza came for her, and let him explore the crypt instead of her. But the truth was that Xantcha feared Urza's anger more than she feared Phyrexia.

Tiptoeing forward, Xantcha silently apologized to Ratepe. The crypt's air was pure Phyrexia. Not only was there some sort of passageway in Avohir's temple, it was wide open. She might have to tell Urza what she'd found, after she knew what it was, after she'd shared her discoveries with Ratepe, with Mishra.

Xantcha came to another door, the source of a fetid Phyrexian breeze. She hesitated. She had her armor, a boot knife and a handful of fuming coins, a passive defense and no offense worth mentioning. Wisdom said, this is foolish, then she heard a sound behind her, on the spiral stairs, and wisdom said, hide!

Three steps beyond the door the corridor jogged sharply to the right and into utter darkness. Xantcha put one hand behind her back and finger-walked into the unknown. The loudest sound was the pulsing in her ears. She had a sense that she'd entered a larger chamber when the breeze died.

She had a sense, too, that she wasn't alone; she was right.

"Meatling."

Thirty-four hundred years, give or take a few decades, and Xantcha knew that voice instantly.

"Gix."

Light bloomed around him, gray, heavy light such as shone on the First Sphere, light that wasn't truly light, but visible darkness. Xantcha thought the demon was the light's source and needed a moment to discern the upright disk gleaming behind him.

Gix had changed since the last time she'd seen him, corroded, crumbling, and thrust into a fumarole. He'd changed since the first time, too-taller. She looked at his

waist when she looked straight ahead; symmetric, altogether more man-shaped, though his metal "skin" didn't completely hide the glistening sinews and tubes-like a born-man's veins only filled with glistening oil- that wound over his green-gold skin. Gix's forehead was monumental and framed a rubine gem that was almost certainly a weapon. His skull seemed to have been pivoted open along his brow ridge. A black-metal serrated spike ran from the base of his neck to the now-raised base of his skull. From the side, it looked like the spike was rooted in his spine and attached to a red, blue, and yellow fish.

In another circumstance, the demon would have been ludicrous or absurd. Far beneath Avohir's altar, he was the image of malignity and horror. Xantcha stood transfixed as a narrow beam of blood-red light shone between her and Gix's bulging forehead. She felt surprise, then a command:

Obey. Listen and obey.

"Never." Urza's armor wasn't perfect protection against the demon's invasion of her mind, but added to her own stubbornness and to the walls she'd made ages ago. Xantcha defied the demon. "I'll die first."

Gix grinned, all glistening teeth and malice. "Your wish-"

He probed her mind again, brutally. Xantcha fed him images of his excoriation. The demon withdrew suddenly, his metallic chin tucked in a parody of mortal surprise.

"So old?"

Light sprang up in the portal chamber, a catacomb, with desiccated bodies heaped here and there, all male, all bearded. The Shratta, if not all of them, then at least a hundred of them, and probably their leaders. Replaced with Phyrexians or simply exterminated? Like as not, she'd never know. Whatever their crimes, Xantcha knew the Shratta would have suffered horribly before they died; that would have to suffice for Rat's vengeance.

"Yes, I remember you," Gix whispered. "One of the first, and still here?" His metal-sheathed shoulders jerked. "No. Not sent. I saved you back ... Waiting. Waiting ..." The demon's voice faded. The light in its forehead flickered. "Xantcha." He made her name long and sibilant, like a snake sliding over dried leaves. "My special one. Here ... in Dominaria?"

Before Gix had needed cables and talons to caress Xantcha chin. Now he used light and encountered Urza's armor.

"What is this?"

The light bored into her right eye, seeking Xantcha's past, her history. Defiantly, she threw out images of Urza's dragon burning through the Fourth Sphere ceiling.

"Yes. Yes, of course. Locked out of Dominaria, where else would you go? I gave you purpose and you pursued it. You pursue it still."

The light became softer. It caressed Xantcha's mind. She shivered within Urza's armor.

"I'll tell Urza that the demon who destroyed his brother has returned."

It was a guess on Xantcha's part, Ratepe had seen Gix in Mishra's Weakstone recordings, but he'd never said anything about the Phyrexians who'd undertaken Mishra's compleation. But it was a good guess.

"Yes," Gix sighed. "Tell Urza that Gix has returned. Tell him the Thran are waiting for him."

Xantcha didn't understand. The Phyrexians had fought the Thran. Her mind swirled with echoes of Urza's lectures about Koilos and a noble race that sacrificed itself for Dominaria's future.

Gix laughed. All the raucous birds and chittering insects of summer couldn't have equaled the sound. "Did he tell you that? He knows better. He was there."

The statement made no sense. Urza had found his eyes at Koilos and through them, remembered the final battle between the Thran and the Phyrexians, but he hadn't been there. Gix was toying with her, feeding on her confusion and terror, waiting for her to make the mistake that would let him into her secret places.

"You have no secrets, Xantcha." More laughter. "I made the stone the brothers broke, and I made the brothers, too, and then I made you."

"Lies," Xantcha shot back and remembered standing beside a vat. A body floated below the surface: dark haired, angular, sexless ... her. "There were a thousand of us," she shot back.

"Seven thousand, and only one like you. I looked for you ... after."

After he escaped the Seventh Sphere? "I have my own heart."

"Yes. You have done well, Xantcha. Better than I hoped. I had plans for you. I still have them. Come back. Listen and obey!"

Gix pulled a string in Xantcha's mind. She felt herself begin to unravel. Newts had no importance. Newts did what they were told. Newts listened and obeyed. She belonged with Gix, to Gix, in Phyrexia, her home. Gix would take care of her. The demon was the center. She would do as he wished.

Urza's armor was in the way....

Xantcha was about to release the armor when she thought of Ratepe. Suddenly there was nothing else except his face, laughing, scowling, watching her as she walked across the Medran plaza with a purse of gold on her belt. The sensations lasted less than a heartbeat, then Gix was back, but Xantcha hadn't needed a whole heartbeat to retreat from the destructive folly she'd been about to commit.

"So, you found him," Gix said after he'd retreated from her mind. "Does he please you?"

The red light continued to shine in her eye. Gix would pull another string, and this time there'd be no Ratepe, son of Mideah, to surprise the demon. Ratepe had given Xantcha a second chance, but she had to seize it. And Xantcha did, diving to her left, toward the corridor. Something hard and heavy struck her back. It threw her forward. She skidded face-first along the floor-stones, surrounded by red light, but the armor held. Xantcha scrambled to her feet and ran for her life. Demons weren't accustomed to defiance. They had no reflex response to stop a newt's desperate escape. Gix chased her, but he didn't catch her before she reached the spiral stairway.

He howled and clawed the stones, but the passage was too tight, too narrow. A fireball engulfed Xantcha in an acid wind. She clung to the spine until it passed, then ran

again, through the corridor, the cloister and into Avohir's sanctuary.

Night had fallen on the plaza. Xantcha wasted no time asking herself where the day had gone. She released the armor, yawned out the sphere as soon as she dared, and headed up the coast to Russiore.