by Lynn Abbey
"What were you going to do? Strangle me? Bash my head?"
Another shrug. "I didn't get that far. You started having your nightmare. It looked like a bad one, so I woke you-you don't believe that Shratta nonsense about dreams and your soul?"
"No." Xantcha knew little about the Shratta's beliefs, except that they were violently intolerant of everyone else's. Besides, Urza had said she'd lost her soul in the vats.
"Then why are you so cross-grained? I'm still here, and you're not dreaming a miserable dream."
Xantcha stretched herself upright. Assor's basket was where she'd left it, exactly as she left it, not a crumb unaccounted for. She separated another meal and tossed Rat a warning along with his bread.
"I don't need anyone taking care of me. Don't want it either. When we get to the cottage, your name becomes Mishra, and Urza's the one who needs your help."
Rat grunted. Xantcha expected something more, but it seemed that he'd discovered the virtues of silence and obedience, at least until she told him to sit beside her.
"There's no other way?" he asked, turning pale. "Can't we walk? Even with the chain, I'd rather walk."
Xantcha shook her head and Rat bolted for the bushes. After trying unsuccessfully to turn himself inside out and wasting his breakfast, Rat crawled back to her side.
"I'm ready now."
"I've never fallen from the sky, Rat. Never come close. You're safer than you'd be in a wagon or walking on your
own two feet."
"Can't help it-" Rat began then froze completely as Xantcha yawned and the sphere spread from her open mouth.
He started for the bushes again. Knowing that his gut was empty and that she'd be the one who'd be vomiting if she had to bite off the sphere before it was finished, Xantcha grabbed the back of Rat's neck and held his head in her lap until the sphere was rising.
"The worst is over. Sit up. Don't think so much. There's always something to see. Watch the clouds, the ground."
Ground was the wrong word. Cursing feebly, Rat clung to her for dear life. If he couldn't relax, it was going to be a painful journey for both of them. Xantcha tried sympathy.
"Talk to me, Rat. Tell me why you're so afraid. Put your fears into words."
But he couldn't be reassured, so Xantcha tried a less gentle approach. Freeing one arm, she set the sphere tumbling, then yelled louder than his moans:
"I said, talk to me, Rat. You're giving in to fear, Rat." She thought of her feet touching ground, and the sphere plummeted; she thought of playing among the clouds and the sphere rebounded at a truly dizzying speed. "You haven't begun to know fear. Now, talk to me! Why are you afraid?"
Rat screamed, "It's wrong! It's all wrong. I can feel the sky watching me, waiting. Waiting for a chance to throw me down!"
He was sobbing, but his death grip loosened as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
Xantcha diumped Rat soundly between the shoulders. "I won't let the sky have you."
"Doesn't matter. It knows I'm here. Knows I don't belong. It's waiting."
She thumped him again. Rat's complaint was too much like her own in the early days, when Urza would drag her between-worlds. Urza had the planeswalker spark; the fathomless stuff between the multiverse's countless world- planes bent to his will. Xantcha had been, and remained, an unwelcome interloper. The instant the between-worlds furled around her, she could hear the vast multi-verse sucking its breath, preparing to spit her out.
The planeswalker spark was something a mind either had, or didn't have. Xantcha didn't have it; Urza couldn't share his. The cyst was the only stopgap that he'd been able to devise. It didn't leave Xantcha feeling any less like an interloper, but it did give promise that she'd be alive when the multiverse spat her out. She'd ask Urza to implant a cyst in Rat's belly-in Mishra's belly-but until then, there was nothing she could do except keep him talking.
The sky above Efuan Pincar wasn't nearly as hostile as the between-worlds. There was a chance he'd talk himself out of his fears. She nudged him into another telling of his life story. The details differed from the second tale he'd told in Assor's wagon, but the overall spirit hadn't changed. When he came to the part where he'd found religious denunciations written in blood on the walls of his family's home, the intensity of his feelings forced Rat to sit straight and speak in a firm, steady voice.
"If the Shratta are men of Avohir, then I spit on
Avohir. Better to be damned than live in the Shratta's fist."
That was the sort of fatal, futile sentiment that Xantcha understood, but she was less pleased to hear Rat declare, "When your Urza's done with me, I'll make my way to Pincar City and join the Red-Stripes. They've got the right idea: kill the Shratta. There's no other way. They'd sooner die than admit they're wrong, so let them die."
"There are Phyrexians among the Red-Stripes," Xantcha warned. "They're a much worse enemy than any Shratta."
"They're not my enemy, not if they're fighting the Shratta."
"Mishra may have thought the same thing, but it is not so simple. Flesh cannot trust them, because Phyrexia will never see flesh as anything but a mistake to be erased."
Rat watched her quietly.
"Flesh. We're flesh, you and I," Xantcha pinched the skin on her arm, "but Phyrexians aren't. They're artifacts. Like Urza's, during the Brothers' War ... only, Phyrexians aren't artifacts. Their flesh has been replaced with other things, mostly metal, according to the Ineffable's plan. Their blood's been replaced with glistening oil. So it should be. Blood cannot trust Phyrexians because blood is a mistake."
His eyes had narrowed. They studied a place far beyond
Xantcha's shoulder. Urza talked about thinking, but he rarely did it. Urza either solved his problems instantly, without thinking, or he sank in the mire of obsession. Rat was changing his mind while he thought. Xantcha found the process unnerving to watch.
She spoke quickly, to conceal her own discomfort. "Flesh, blood, meat-what does it matter? Phyrexia is your enemy, Rat. The Brothers' War was just the beginning of what Phyrexia will do to all of Dominaria, if it can. There are Phyrexians in the Red-Stripes, and you'd be wiser, far wiser, to join the Shratta in the fight against them."
"It's just ..." Rat was thinking even as he talked. His mind changed again and he met Xantcha's eyes with an almost physical force. "You said you smelled Phyrexians among the Red-Stripes. My nose is as good as my eyes, and I didn't smell anything at all. You said 'flesh cannot trust them,' but everybody was flesh, even Tucktah and Garve. On top of all, your talk about me pretending to be Mishra, for someone you call Urza. Something's not true, here."
"Do you think I'm lying?" Xantcha was genuinely curious.
"Whatever you smelled back in Medran, it scared you, because it was Phyrexian, not because it was Red-Stripe. So, I guess you're telling the truth, just not all of it. Maybe we're both flesh, Xantcha, but, Avohir's truth, you're not my sort of flesh."
"I bleed," Xantcha asserted, and to prove the point drew the knife from her boot and slashed a fingertip.
It was a deep cut, deeper than she'd intended. Bright blood flowed in a steady stream from finger to palm, from palm over wrist, where it began to stain her sleeve.
Rat grimaced. "That wasn't necessary," he said, pointedly look-ing beyond the sphere; the first time he'd done that. Eventually a person would face his fears, provided the alternatives were worse. "You'd know where to
cut yourself."
Xantcha held the knife hilt where Rat would see it. He turned further away.
"You were thinking murder not long ago," she reminded him. "Bashing me so you could escape."
Rat shook his head. "Not even close. When my family left
Pincar City ... My father learned to slaughter and butcher meat each fall, but I never could. I always ran away, even last year."
He shrank a little, as if he'd lost a bit of himself by the admission. Xantcha returned the knife to her boot.
"You believe me?" she asked before sticking
her bloody finger in her mouth.
"I can't believe you, even if you're telling the truth. Urza the Artificer. Mishra. Smelling Phyrexians. This ... this thing-" He flung his hand to the side, struck the sphere, and recoiled. "You're too strange. You look like a boy, but you talk ... You don't talk like anyone I've ever heard before, Xantcha. It's not that you sound foreign, but you're not Efuand. You say you're not an artifact and not Phyrexian. I don't know what to believe. Whose side are you on?"
"Urza's side ... against Phyrexia." Her finger hadn't stopped bleeding; she put it back in her mouth.
"Urza's no hero, not to me. What he did thirty-four hundred years ago, his gods should still be punishing him for that. You throw a lot of choices in front of me, all of them bad, one way or another. I don't know what to think."
"You think too much."
"Yeah, I hear that all the time... ." Rat's voice trailed off. Whoever had chided him last had probably been killed by the Shratta. All the time had become history for him, history and grief.
Xantcha left him alone. Her finger was pale and wrinkled. At least it had stopped bleeding. They'd been soaring due west in the grasp of a gentle, drifting wind. Clouds were forming to the north. So far the clouds were scattered, fluffy and white, but north of Efuan Pincar was the Endless Sea where huge storms were common and sudden. Xantcha used her hands to put the sphere on a southwesterly course and set it rising in search of stronger winds.
Belatedly, she realized she had Rat's undivided attention.
"How do you do that?" he asked. "Magic? Are you a sorcerer? Would that explain everything?"
"No."
"No?"
"No, I don't know how I do it. I don't know how I walk, either, or how the food I eat keeps me alive, but it does. One day, Urza handed me something. He said it was a cyst, and he said, swallow it. Since it came from Urza, it was probably an artifact. I don't know for sure because I never asked. I know how to use it. I don't need to know more, and neither will you."
"Sorry I asked. I'm just trying to think my way through this." "You think too much."
She hadn't meant to repeat the comment that had jabbed his memory, but before she could berate herself, Rat shot back: "I'm supposed to be Mishra, aren't I?"
He'd changed his mind again. It was possible that a man, a true flesh-and-blood man, not like Urza, couldn't think too much.
The sphere found the stronger winds and slewed sideways. Xantcha needed full concentration to stop the tumbling. Rat curled up against her with his head between his knees. To the north, clouds billowed as she watched. It was unlikely that they could outrun the brewing storm, but they could cover a lot of territory before she had to get them to shelter. There would, however, be a price.
"It's going to be fast and a little bumpy while we run the wind-stream. You ready?"
Taking Rat's groan for assent, Xantcha angled her hand west of southwest, and the sphere leapt as if it had been shot from a giant's bow. If she'd been alone, Xantcha would have pressed both hands against the sphere's inner curve and let the wind roar past her face. She figured Rat wasn't ready for such exhilaration and kept her guiding hand sheltered in her lap. The northern horizon became a white mountain range whose highest peaks were beginning to spread and flatten against an invisible ceiling.
"Somebody's going to get wild weather tonight," Xantcha said to her unresponsive companion. "Maybe not us, but someone's going to be begging Avohir's mercy."
She guided the sphere higher. Beneath them, the ground resembled one of Urza's tabletops, though flatter and emptier: a few roads, like rusty wire through spring-green fields, a palisaded village of about ten homesteads tucked in a stream bend. Xantcha considered her promise to replace Rat's rags and, implicitly, to have his fetters removed.
If she set the sphere down, the storm might keep them down until tomorrow. If she kept the sphere scudding, they'd cut a half-day or more off the journey. And by the amount of smoke rising from the village, the inhabitants were burning their fields-hardly a good time for strangers to show up asking favors. Xantcha swiveled her hand south of southwest, and the sphere bounced onto the new tack.
"Wait!" Rat shook Xantcha's ankle. "Wait! That village. Can't you see? It's on fire."
She looked again. Rat was right, fields weren't burning, roofs were. All the more reason to stay on the south by southwest course away from trouble.
"Xantcha! It's the Shratta. It's got to be. Red-Stripes come looking for bribes but don't destroy the villages. We can't just leave-You can't! People are dying down there!"
"I'm not a sorcerer, Rat. I'm not Urza. There's nothing I can do except get myself-and you-killed."
"We can't turn our backs. We're no better than the Shratta, no better than the Phyrexians, if we do that."
Rat had a real knack for getting under Xantcha's skin, a dangerous mixture of arrogance and charm, just like the real Mishra. Xantcha was about to disillusion her companion with the revelation that she was Phyrexian when he heaved himself toward the burning village. The sphere wasn't Rat's to command. It held to Xantcha's chosen course-as he must have known it would. Rat didn't seem the sort who'd sacrifice himself to prove a point, but he set the sphere tumbling. Everything was knees, elbows, food, and a sword before Xantcha got them sorted out.
"Don't you ever do that again!"
Rat accepted the challenge. This time Xantcha split his upper lip and planted her knee in his groin before she steadied the sphere.
"We're going home ... to Urza. He's got the power to settle this."
"Too damn late! People are dying down there!"
Rat flung himself, but Xantcha was ready this time and the sphere scarcely bounced.
"I'll drop you if you don't settle yourself."
"Then drop me."
"You'll die."
"I'd rather be dead on the ground than alive up here."
Rat grabbed the scabbarded sword and, with his full weight behind the hilt, plunged it through the sphere. Xantcha reeled from the impact. She hadn't known damage to the sphere meant sharp pain radiating from the cyst in her gut. She could have lived another three thousand years without that particular bit of knowledge. She cocked her fist for a punch that would shatter Rat's jaw.
"Go ahead," he snarled defiantly. "Tell your precious Urza that you killed his brother a second time."
Xantcha lowered her hand. Maybe she was wrong about his willingness to sacrifice himself. By then they were drifting away from the village and nothing but Xantcha's will put them on a course for the flames. The closer they got, the clearer it was that Rat had been right. The north wind brought screams of pain and terror. Born-folk were dying.
When they were still several hundred paces from the wooden palisade, a young woman ran through the broken gate, her hair and hems billowing behind her, a sword-wielding thug in pursuit. Woman and thug both stopped short when they saw two strangers hovering in midair.
"Waste not, want not!" Xantcha muttered. She thought Collision and Now! The cyst in her stomach grew fiery spikes, but the sphere plunged like a stooping hawk. It collapsed the instant it touched the gape-mouthed thug, leaving Xantcha to strike with sufficient force to knock him unconscious. She bounded to her feet and crushed the now-defenseless man's skull with her boot heel, deliberately splattering Rat with gore. If he wanted death; she'd show him death. The village woman screamed and kept running. Xantcha seized the sword from the tangle of bodies and spilled baskets. "All right!" She thrust the hilt toward Rat. When he didn't take it up, she poked him hard. "This is what you wanted! Go ahead. Go in there. Save them!"
"I-I can't use a sword. I don't know how. ... I thought-"
"You thought!" Xantcha angled the sword, prepared to clout him with the hilt. "You think too much!"
Rat got to his feet, stumbling over his chain. He stared at the iron links as if he hadn't seen them before. Whatever nonsense he'd been thinking, he hadn't remembered his fetters.
"I can't... You'll have to-"
She shook he
r head slowly. "I told you, I'm no damn sorcerer, no damn warrior. This is your idiot's idea, your fight. So, you choose: them or me."
It was the same ominous, otherworldly tone Xantcha had
used with Garve and Tucktah. She cocked the sword a second time, and Rat grabbed the hilt. He couldn't run, so he skipped and hopped toward the gate.
"Lose the scabbard!" Xantcha shouted after him then muttered Phyrexian curses as Rat stumbled through the gate brandishing a scabbarded sword.
Rat was a fool, and fools deserved whatever harm befell them, but Xantcha's anger faded as soon as her nemesis was out of sight. She reached into her belt-pouch and finger- sorted a few of the smallest, blackest coins.Then, with them clutched loosely in her hand, she yawned out Urza's armor and followed Rat into the besieged village. Not being a sorcerer wasn't quite the same as not having any sorcerous tricks in her arsenal, and not being a warrior was a statement of preference, not experience. There weren't many weapons Xantcha didn't know how to use or evade. On other worlds she'd routinely carried several of them.
But not on Dominaria. She'd given her word.
"I know your temper," Urza had said after they arrived. "But this is home-my home. My traveling years are over. I'm never leaving Dominaria, and I don't want you starting brawls and drawing attention to yourself ... or me. Promise me you'll stay out of trouble. Promise me that you'll walk away rather than start a fight."
"Waste not, want not-I did not start this, Urza. Truly, I did not."
A gutted corpse lay one step within the gate, but it wasn't Rat's. Xantcha leapt over it. A man bearing a bloody knife ran out of a burning cottage on her left. She slipped a coin into her throwing hand, then stayed her arm as a second, similarly armed, man burst out of the cottage.
Villagers or Shratta thugs? Was one chasing the other? Were they both fleeing? Or looking for more victims?
Xantcha couldn't tell by their clothes or manner. Few things were more frustrating or dangerous than barging into a brawl among strangers. After cursing Rat to the Seventh Sphere of Phyrexia, she entered the cottage the men had abandoned.