Planeswalker

CHAPTER 4

Chaotic air currents rising above a patchwork of

cultivated fields seized Xantcha's sphere. For several panicked heartbeats, as she battled the provisions bouncing around inside the sphere, Xantcha didn't know where she was or why. After more than three thousand years, she needed that long to climb out of her memories.

The disorientation had passed before disaster could begin. Xantcha was in control before the sphere brushed the bank of a tree-shadowed stream. It collapsed around her, a warm, moist film that evaporated quickly, as it had countless times before, but thoughts of what might have happened left her gasping for air.

Xantcha hadn't intended to lose herself in her memories. The past, when there was so much of it crammed into a single mind, was a kind of madness. She dropped to her knees and wiped the film from her face before it had a chance to dry. Between coughs, Xantcha took her bearing from the horizons: sun sinking to the west, mountains to the south, and gentle hills elsewhere. She'd come to her senses over inner Efuan Pincar, precisely the place she'd wanted to be. Luck, Xantcha told herself, and succumbed to another round of coughing.

Xantcha never liked to rely on luck, but just then, thoughts of luck were preferable to the alternatives. She'd been thinking of her beginnings, as she rarely did. Worse, she'd been thinking of Gix. She'd never forgotten that blue-green spark. Despite everything, she worried that the demon's mark might still be lurking somewhere within her skull.

She made herself think about Urza and all that they'd survived together. He could look inside her and destroy her if she became untrustworthy. So long as he didn't, Xantcha believed she could trust herself. But thoughts of Gix were no reason to fear Gix. Nothing escaped the excoriations of Phyrexia's Seventh Sphere. Even if the blue-green spark remained, the demon who'd drilled it into her was gone.

Urza insisted that she steer clear of Phyrexians, once she scented them. He didn't want his enemies to know where he was or that he'd returned to the land of his birth. They both knew that if she ever fell back into Phyrexian hands, they'd strip her memories before they consigned her to the Seventh Sphere, and she knew too many of Urza's secrets to justify the risk.

The Phyrexian presence on Dominaria had been growing over the past fifty years. Morvern and Baszerat were only two among a score of places where Xantcha had once scrounged regularly, but were-or soon would be-off limits. Efuan Pincar was not, however, among them. The little realm on the wrong side of the great island of Gulmany was so isolated and unimportant, that the rest of what had once been Terisiare scarcely acknowledged its existence. It was the last place Xantcha expected to scent a Phyrexian. If she'd succumbed to thoughts of Gix while soaring over Efuan Pincar, it wasn't because a Phyrexian had tickled her mind, but because she'd begun to doubt Urza.

True, he'd go to the places where she'd scented sleepers, and he'd find them, but he wouldn't do anything about them. Newts disguised as born-folk weren't enough to goad Urza into action. Xantcha thought it would take death for that. She'd been perversely pleased when she'd found a war in Baszerat and Morvern. She thought for sure that

would overcome Urza's obsession with the past, and perhaps it had; he'd never come so close to striking her.

Kayla Bin-Kroog hadn't mentioned Efuan Pincar in her epic. Efuand chroniclers explained that omission by proclaiming that their land had been empty until three hundred years ago, when a handful of boats had brought a band of refugees to Gulmany's back side. Xantcha doubted that there'd ever been enough boats in Terisiare to account for all the living Efuands, but scribes lied, she knew that from her Antiquity Wars collection. What mattered to Xantcha was that among any ten men of Efuan Pincar, at least one matched Kayla's word picture of Mishra, and another had his impulsive temperament. To find better odds she'd have to soar across the Sea of Laments, something she'd done just once, by mistake, and had sworn she'd never try again.

Xantcha knew her plan to bring Urza face to face with a dark, edgy youth who might remind him of his long-dead brother, wasn't the most imaginative strategy, but she was Phyrexian, and as Urza never ceased telling her, Phyrexians lacked imagination. Urza himself was a genius, a man of great power and limitless imagination, when he chose to exercise it. Once she had him face-to-face with her false Mishra, Xantcha expected Urza's imagination would repair any defects in her clumsy Phyrexian strategy.

Then Xantcha caught herself thinking about other notoriously failed strategies: Gix and thousands of identical sexless newts.

"What if I'm wrong?" she asked the setting sun; the same question that Urza asked whenever she tried to prod him into action.

The sun didn't answer, so Xantcha gave herself the same answer she gave Urza, "Dominaria's doomed if Urza does nothing. If he thinks his brother's come back to him, he might do something, and something-anything-is better than nothing."

Xantcha watched the last fiery sliver of sunlight vanish in the west. Her sphere had dried into a fine white powder that disappeared in the breeze. By her best guess, she'd been aloft without food, water, or restful sleep for two and a half days. There was water in the stream and more than enough food in her shoulder sack, but sleep proved elusive. Wrapped in her cloak, Xantcha saw

Gix's toothsome face each time she closed her eyes. After watching the stars slide across the sky, she yawned out another sphere as the eastern horizon began to brighten.

Xantcha hadn't thought she'd find her Mishra in the first village she visited. Though experience on other worlds had convinced her that every village harbored at least one youth with more ambition than sense, it had stood to reason that she might need to visit several villages before she found the right combination of temperament and appearance. But temperament and appearance weren't her problems.

In the twenty years since her last visit, war and famine had come to Efuan Pincar. The cultivated field in

which she'd spent her first sleepless night had proved the exception to the new rules. The first village that Xantcha approached was still smoldering. The second had trees growing from abandoned hearths. Those villages that remained intact did so behind palisades of stone, brick, and sharpened stakes.

She approached the closed gates warily, regretting that she'd disguised herself as a cocky and aristocratic youth. It was an easy charade, one that matched her temperament and appearance, but throughout their wandering, she and Urza had come across very few wars that couldn't be blamed on aristocratic greed or pride.

The war in Efuan Pincar, however, proved to one of the rare exceptions. The gates swung open before she announced herself. The whole village greeted her with pleading eyes. They'd made assumptions: She was a young man who'd lost his horse and companions to the enemy. She needed their help. But most of all, they assumed she'd come to help them. Outnumbered and curious, Xantcha made her own assumption. She'd learn more if she let them believe what they wanted to believe.

"You will go to Pincar City and tell Tabarna what is happening?" the village spokesman asked, once he had offered her food and drink. "We are all too old to make the journey."

"Tabarna does not know," another elder said, and all the villagers bobbed their heads in agreement.

"He cannot know. If Tabarna knew, he would come to us. If he knew, he would help us. He would not let us suffer." A multitude of voices, all saying the same thing.

A man named Tabarna had governed Efuan Pincar twenty years ago. Part priest, part prince, he'd been an able ruler. If the villagers' Tabarna were still the man Xantcha remembered, though, he'd be well past his prime, and beloved or not, someone would be taking advantage of him. Usually, that someone would be a man dressed as she was dressed, in fine clothes and with a good steel sword slung below his hip. Xantcha couldn't ask too many questions, not without compromising her disguise, but she promised to deliver the villagers' message. Red-Stripes and Shratta were terrorizing the countryside.

The village offered to give her a swaybacked horse for her journey. Xantcha bought it instead with a worn silver coin and left the next day, before her debts grew any higher. The elders apologized that they couldn't offer her the escort a young nobleman deserved, but all their young men were gone, swept up by one side or the other.

As she rode away, Xantcha couldn't guess how the Shratta had gotten involved in a war. Twenty years ago, the Shratta had been a harmless sect of ascetics and fools. They preached that anyone who did not live by the two hundred and fifty-six rules in Avohir's holy book was damned, but no one had taken them seriously. She had no idea who or what the Red-Stripes were until she'd visited a few more villages. The Red-Stripes had begun as royal mercenaries, charged with the protection of the palaces and temples that the suddenly militant Shratta had begun threatening, some fifteen years ago.

Oddly enough, in none of the tales Xantcha listened to did she hear of the two groups confronting each other.

Instead, they roamed the countryside, searching out each others' partisans, making accusations when nothing could be proved, then killing the accused and burning their homes.

"The Shratta," a weary villager explained, "tell us they are the wrath of Avohir and they punish us if we do not live closely by Avohir's holy book. Then, after the Shratta have finished with us, the Red-Stripes come. They see that the Shratta didn't take everything, so they take what's left."

"Every spring, it begins again," one of the old women added. "Soon there will be nothing left."

"Twice we sent men to Tabarna, twice they did not come back. We have no men left."

Then, as in the other villages, the survivors asked Xantcha to carry their despair to Tabarna's ear. She nodded, accepted their food, and left on her swaybacked horse, knowing that there was nothing she could do. Her path would not take her to Pincar City, Tabarna's north coast capital. She'd begun to doubt that it would take her to a suitable Mishra either. With or without pitched battles, Efuan Pincar had been at war for nearly a decade, and young men were in short supply.

Xantcha's path-a rutted dirt trail because her sphere wouldn't accommodate a horse-took her toward Medran, a market town. A brace of gate guards greeted her with hands on their sword hilts and contempt in their eyes: Where had she been? How did a noble lad with fine boots and a sword come to be riding a swaybacked nag?

Xantcha noticed that their tunics were hemmed with a stripe of bright red wool. She told them how she'd ridden into the countryside with older, more experienced relatives. They'd been beset by the Shratta, and she was the sole survivor, headed back to Pincar City.

"On a better horse, if there's one to be found."

Xantcha sniffed loudly; when it came to contempt, she'd learned all the tricks before the first boatload of refugees struck the Efuan Pincar shore. She'd also yawned out her armor before she'd ridden up to the gate. The Red- Stripes were in for a surprise if they drew their swords against her.

Good sense prevailed. They let her pass, though Xantcha figured to keep an eye for her back. Even with a sword, a slight, beardless youth in too-fine clothes was a tempting target, especially when the nearest protectors were also the likeliest predators.

Xantcha followed the widening streets until they brought her to a plaza, where artisans and farmers hawked produce from wagons. She gave the horse to the farmer with the largest wagon in exchange for black bread and dried fruit. He asked how an unbearded swordsman came to be peddling a nag in Medran-town. Xantcha recited her made-up tale. The farmer wasn't surprised that Shratta would have slain her purported companions.

"The more wealth a man has, the less the Shratta believe him when he says he abides by the book. Strange, though, that they'd risk a party as large as the one your uncle had assembled. Were me, I'd suspect the men he'd hired weren't what they'd said they were."

Xantcha shrugged cautiously. "I'm sure my uncle thought the same ... before they killed him." Then, because the

farmer seemed more world-wise than the villagers, she tempted him with a thought that had nagged her from the beginning. "He'd hired Red-Stripes. Thought it would keep us safe. Shratta never attack men with Red Stripes on their tunics."

The farmer took her bait, but not quite the way she expected. "The Red-Stripes don't bother the Shratta where they live, and the Shratta usually return the favor. But where there's wealth to be taken, every man's a target, especially to the ..." He fingered the hem of his own tunic. "I won't speak ill of your dead, but it's a fool who trusts in stripes or colors."

Xantcha walked away from the wagon, thinking that it might be better to get out of Medran immediately. She was headed toward a different gate than the one she'd entered when she spotted a knot of men and women, huddled in the shade of a tavern. With a second glance Xantcha saw the bonds at their necks, wrists, and ankles. Prisoners, she thought, then corrected herself, slaves.

She hadn't seen slaves the last time she visited Efuan Pincar, nor had she seen any in the beleaguered villages, but it was a rare realm, a rarer world that didn't cultivate slavery in one of its many forms. Xantcha took a breath and kept walking. She could see that a swaybacked horse found a good home, but there was nothing she could do for the slaves.

Xantcha continued walking, one step, another ... misery stopped her before she took a third. Looking back over her shoulder, she caught the eyes of a slave who stared at her as if his condition were indeed her responsibility. Though they were at least a hundred paces apart, Xantcha saw that the slave was a dark-haired young man.

I asked my husband's brother how he'd come to lead the Fallaji horde, Kayla had written in The Antiquity Wars. Mishra replied that he was their slave, not their leader. He laughed and added that I, too, was a slave to my people, but his eyes were haunted as he laughed, and there were scars around his wrists.

In all the times Xantcha had read that passage, she'd followed Una's lead and blamed Phyrexia for Mishra's scars and bitterness. But the Fallaji had been a slave-keeping folk, and looking across the Medran plaza, Xantcha suddenly believed that Mishra had told Kayla a simple, unvarnished truth.

Xantcha believed as well that she'd found her Mishra. With Urza's armor still around her, she strode over to the tavern.

"Are they spoken for?" she asked the only unchained man she saw, a balding man with a eunuch's unfinished face.

He wasn't in charge, but after a bow he scurried into the tavern to fetch his master, who proved to be a giant of a woman, garbed, like Xantcha, in men's clothing, though in the slave master's case, the effect was intimidation rather than disguise.

"They're bound for Almaaz," the slave master said. Her breath was thick with beer, but she wasn't nearly drunk. "You know it's against the law to sell flesh here."

By her posture, the slaver was right about the law and ripe for negotiation.

"I have Morvern gold," Xantcha said, which was true enough; money was never a problem for a planeswalker or his companion.

The slave master hawked and spat. "Mug's getting warm."

Xantcha thought fast. "For ransom, then. I recognize a distant cousin in your coffle. You've kept him safe, no doubt. I'll pay you for your trouble and take him off your hands."

"Him!" The slaver laughed until she belched.

There were women in the slave string, and Xantcha was disguised as a young and presumably curious man.

"A cousin," Xantcha repeated, showing more anxiety than she felt. Let the slaver laugh and think what she wanted. Xantcha had the other woman's attention, and she'd have the slave, too. "For ransom." She unslung her purse and fished out a gold coin as big as her nose.

"Five of those," the slaver said, smashing her open hand between Xantcha's shoulder blades. "For ransom!"

If she were truly in the market for a slave, Xantcha would have protested that no one was worth five golden nari, but she'd been prepared to split twelve of the heavy Morvern coins between a likely youth and his family. She dug out another four and handed them over to the slaver, who bit each one. Xantcha knew the coins were true but was relieved when they passed the slaver's test.

"Which one's your cousin?"

Xantcha pointed to the dark-haired youth, who didn't blink under scrutiny. The slaver, whose eyebrows remained resolutely skeptical, shook her head.

"Pick another relative, boy. That one will eat you alive."

"Blood's blood," Xantcha insisted, "and ours is the same. I won't leave with another."

"Garve!" the slaver shouted the eunuch to her side. She held out her hand, and Garve surrendered a slender black rod. The slaver took it and turned back to Xantcha. "Another nari. You're going to need this."

Would ancient Ashnod be pleased by the all the improvements Dominarian slavers and torturers had brought to her pain-inflicting artifacts in the centuries since her death? Xantcha bought the thing, if only to keep the slaver or Garve from ever using it again.

"Cut him out," the slaver told Garve and added, while Garve walked among the slaves, "Have fun, boy."

"I intend to," Xantcha assured her, then watched as Garve seized the leather band around the youth's neck and jerked him roughly to his feet.

Garve gave the band a vicious twist, so it choked the youth and kept him quiet while the eunuch snapped the rivets that bound

Xantcha's new slave to the others. The youth's face became red. His eyes rolled.

"I want him alive," Xantcha warned in a low voice, that promised her threats were as good as her gold.

Her new slave dropped to one knee when Garve suddenly released him. Hacking spittle, he got himself upright before the eunuch touched him again. Riveted leather manacles bound his wrists close behind his back; he couldn't clean his lightly bearded chin. A short iron chain ran between his ankles. He could walk, barely, but not run.

As he came closer, watching his feet, Xantcha counted the sores and bruises she hadn't noticed while he was staring.

Xantcha hadn't been comfortable owning a horse; she didn't know what she'd do with a slave. The thought of grabbing the arm's length of leather hanging from the band around his neck repelled her, though that was what everyone, including the youth, expected her to do.

"You're too tall," she said at last, though he wasn't as tall as Urza. She hoped that wasn't going to be a problem further along in her plan. "You'll walk beside me until I can arrange something more... ." Xantcha paused. Phyrexians might not have imagination, but born-folk certainly did, and there was nothing like silence to inspire the use of it. "Something more appropriate."

She smiled broadly, and her slave walked politely beside her, his chain clanking on the plaza's cobblestones. Xantcha's thoughts were focused on the how she'd get them both out of Median without attracting trouble from the Red- Stripes. She wasn't expecting any other sort of trouble until the youth staggered against her.

Muttering curses no Efuand had ever heard before, Xantcha got an arm around his waist and shoved him upright. It wasn't a hard shove, but he groaned and made no attempt to start walking again. Sick sweat bloomed on his face. He'd burned through his bravery.

"Do you see that curb beside the fountain?"

A slight nod and a catch in his muscles; he was dizzy and on the verge of fainting.

"Get that far and you can sit, rest, drink some water."

"Water," he repeated, a hoarse, painful-sounding whisper.

Xantcha hoped his problems weren't serious. If Garve had damaged him, Garve wouldn't live to see the sun set. Her slave shoved one foot forward; she helped him with his balance. In five steps, Xantcha learned to hate that treacherous chain between his ankles. He fell one stride short of the fountain curb. Xantcha looked the other way while he dragged himself onto it. Then she drew a knife from the seam of her boot.

The blade was tempered steel from another world, and it made fast work of the wrist manacles. Xantcha gasped when she saw rings of weeping sores. Without a second thought she hurled the slashed leather across the cobblestones. Her slave was already washing his face and slurping water from the fountain. Xantcha thought it was a good sign, but wasn't surprised when her next question, "Are you hungry?" won her nothing more than another cold, piercing stare.

She retrieved a loaf of black bread, tore off a chunk, and offered it to him. He reached past her offering toward the loaf in her other hand.

"You're bold for a slave."

"You're small for a master," he countered and closed his hand over the bread he wanted.

Xantcha dropped the smaller piece and seized his arm. She didn't like the feel of open sores beneath her fingers, and she had every intention of giving him the whole loaf eventually, but points had to be made. She tightened her grip. Appearances, her still nameless slave needed to learn, could be deceiving. In Phyrexia, newts were soft, useless creatures, but on most other worlds, Xantcha was as

strong as a well-muscled man half again her size. With a groan, the slave let go of the larger portion, and when she'd released him, picked up the smaller portion from the ground.

"Slowly," Xantcha chided him, though she knew it would be impossible for him to obey. "Swallow, breathe, take a sip of water."

His hand shot out, while Xantcha wondered what she should do next. He captured the unguarded bread and held it tight. Only his eyes moved from Xantcha's face to the black prod she'd tucked through her belt.

"Ask first," she suggested but made no move for her belt.

Even if, by some miracle of carelessness, he stole the prod and struck her with it, Urza's armor would protect her.

"Master, may I eat?"

For a man still short of his final growth, Xantcha's slave had a mature grasp of sarcasm. He definitely had Mishra's attitude in addition to Mishra's appearance.

"I didn't buy you to starve you."

"Why did you, then?" he asked through a mouthful of bread.

"I have need of a man like you."

He gave Xantcha the same look the slaver and Garve had given her, and she began to think she'd gotten herself into the position of a fisherman who'd hooked a fish larger than his boat. Only time would tell if she'd bring him aboard or he'd drown her.

"Your name will be Mishra. You will answer to it when you hear it."

Mishra laughed, a short, snorting sound. "Oh, yes, Master Urza."

Despite what she'd told Urza, the details of Kayla BinKroog's Antiquity Wars weren't that widely spread across what remained of Terisiare. Xantcha hadn't expected her slave to recognize his new name; nor was she prepared for his aggressive insolence. I've made a mistake, she told herself. I've done a terrible thing. Then Mishra started choking. He tugged on the tight leather band around his throat and managed to gulp down his mouthful of bread. His fingers came away stained with blood and pus.

Xantcha looked at her own feet. She might have made a mistake, but she hadn't done anything terrible.

"You may call me Xantcha. And when you meet him, Urza is just Urza. He would not like to be called Master, especially not by his brother."

"Xantcha? What kind of name is that? If I'm Mishra and you work for Urza, shouldn't your name be Tawnos? You're a little bit small for the part. Grow out your hair and you could play Kayla-an ugly Kayla. By the love of Avohir, I was better off with Tuck-tah and Garve."

"You know The Antiquity Wars?"

"Surprised? I can read and write, too, and count without using my fingers." He held up his hand but saw something-the stains, perhaps, that she'd already noticed- that cracked his insolence. "I wasn't born a slave," he concluded softly, staring across the plaza at his memories. "I had a life ... a name."

"What name?"

"Rat."

"What?" she thought she'd misunderstood.

"Rat. Short for Ratepe. I grew into it." Another snorted laugh-or maybe a strangled sob. Either way, it ended when the neck leather brought on another choking spell.

"Hold still," Xantcha told him and drew out her knife again. "I don't want to cut you."

There wasn't even a flicker of trust in Rat's eyes as she laid the blade against his neck. He winced as she slid it beneath the leather. She had to saw through the sweat- hardened leather and pricked his skin a handful of times before she was done. The tip was bloody when it emerged on the other side, but he didn't make a grab for her or the weapon.

"I'm sorry," she said when she was finished.

Xantcha raised her arm to hurl the collar away as she'd hurled the manacles. Rat caught the trailing leash. The leather fell into his lap.

"I'll keep it."

Xantcha knew that in the usual order of such things, slaves didn't have personal property, but she wasn't about to take the filthy collar away from him. "I have a task for you," she said as he worried the collar between his hands. "I would have offered you the gold, if you'd been free. You will be free, I swear it, when you've done what I need you to do."

"And if I don't?"

While Xantcha wrestled with an answer for that question, a noisy claque of Red-Stripes entered the plaza from the east, the direction through which Xantcha had hoped to leave. She and

Rat were far from alone on the cobblestones, and she reasonably hoped that despite their mismatched appearance- him in rags and weeping sores, her with her boots and sword-they wouldn't draw too much attention. Rat saw the Red-Stripes as well. He snapped the leather against his thigh like a whip.

Red-Stripes, Xantcha guessed, had something to do with his transformation from free to slave. Considering his apparent education and remembering the farmer's gesture, she wondered if he'd once worn the sort of garments she was wearing.

"Hold it in," she advised him. "You've got a chain...." She left the thought incomplete as a gentle breeze brought her the last scent she ever wanted to smell: glistening oil.

One of the Red-Stripes was a sleeper, a newt like her, but different, too. Newts of this new invasion had born- folk ways and didn't clump together in cadres. In truth, they didn't seem to know they were Phyrexian. Xantcha didn't care to test her theory. She hunched on her knees as she sat, catching her breath in her hands, hiding the exhalations that might reveal her glistening scent. She couldn't relax or be too careful.

Beside Xantcha, Rat beat a counterpoint of curses and leather. There was a chance that the Red-Stripe sleeper could hear every word.

"Quiet!" Xantcha hissed a command as she clamped her hand over Rat's. "Quiet!" She squeezed until she felt the

sores and sinews pop.

"Afraid of the Red-Stripes?"

She took a deep breath and admitted, "They're not my friends. Quiet!"

Rat bent over to match her posture, blocking her view as well. He wouldn't stop talking. "And who are your friends-the Shratta? You keep strange company: Urza, Mishra, the Shratta. You're asking for trouble."

Xantcha ignored him. She hunched lower until she could see beneath Rat's arms. The Red-Stripes were heading into the same tavern where the slaver drank. "We've got to leave. Can you walk?"

"Why? I'm not afraid of the Red-Stripes. I'd join them right now, if they'd have me."

The elders in the first village had warned Xantcha that the young men had chosen sides, one way or another. It figured that her Mishra would have Phyrexian inclinations. She didn't have time to persuade him, so she'd have to out- bluff him. "Want to hobble over and try? You'd better hurry. Or do you think the eunuch's saved you a seat?"

"I'm not that stupid. I lost my chance the moment I got sapped and sold."

"Then stand up and start walking."

"Yes, Master."