Planeswalker

by Lynn Abbey

  The youth, remarkably sobered by his pain, immediately shouted, "Help! Thief! He's taken my purse and my father's sack! Help! Stop him before he gets away!"

  Xantcha had no intention of running or of surrendering the spider-filled sack. She had a fighting knife and could have put a swift end to her attacker, but they'd drawn attention, and the middle of a mob was a dangerous place to make a defensive stand, even with Urza's armor. If she'd been alone, Xantcha would have used her sphere and made a spectacular exit. She wasn't alone, though, Urza was a few steps away in the midst of his own fracas, so she yawned out her armor instead and hoped he'd get them free before too many revelers got hurt.

  Justice was swift and presumptive. A bystander grabbed her from behind again and put a knife against her throat. He'd probably guessed that something wasn't quite right before she stomped and elbowed him as she'd done with her first attacker, but everyone knew she was more than she seemed when they saw that the knife hadn't drawn blood. Most folk retreated, making ward-signs as they went, but a few rose to the challenge. One of challengers, a thick-set man in long robes and pounding a silver-banded ebony staff against the cobblestones, was also a sorcerer.

  "Urza!" Xantcha shouted, a name that was apt to get everyone's attention anywhere in Dominaria. It didn't matter what language she used after that to add, "Let's go!"

  The sorcerer cast a spell, a serpentine rope of crimson fire that fizzled in a sigh of dark, foul-smelling smoke when it touched the armor. He'd readied another when Urza ended the confrontation.

  Urza had abandoned his merchant's finery for imposing robes that made him seem taller and more massive. He didn't have his staff-it was absolutely real and couldn't be hidden-but Urza the Artificer didn't need a staff. Mana flowed to him easily. Even Xantcha could feel it moving beneath her armored feet, in such abundance that he could afford to target his spells precisely: small, but not fatal, lightning jolts for the three troublemakers and a mana-leaching miasma for the sorcerer who'd intervened on the wrong side of a brawl.

  Then Urza clapped his hand around Xantcha's and 'walked with her into the between-worlds.

  "Between us and the spiders, everyone in Narjabul's going to remember this year's mid-summer festival," Xantcha laughed when her feet were on solid ground outside the cottage.

  Urza grimaced. "They'll remember my name. The sleepers and who knows what else might get suspicious before tomorrow night. I didn't want to be connected with this, not yet. I want Phyrexia to know that Dominaria is fighting back, not that Urza has returned to haunt them."

  "I'm sorry. I'd had a knife at my throat, there was a sorcerer taking aim at me, and a crowd about to get very unpleasant. I wasn't thinking about consequences."

  "I never expect you to."

  Ratepe came out of the workroom. They hadn't seen each other for seventeen hectic days, but when Xantcha kept her greeting restrained, he caught the warning and did likewise until they were alone in the other room.

  "Did Urza tell you, we're going to watch the spiders from Efuan Pincar!" He lifted Xantcha off the floor and spun her around.

  "He said he was going to leave us there."

  Ratepe set her down. "I told him that you'd given me your word that I could go back to my old life. I called it 'the life I had before Mishra awoke within me.' He'd started talking about making big artifact-sentries, just like you'd said. He didn't quite come out and say that he wanted to make room for a new Mishra, too, but I understood that's what he meant."

  "I keep thinking about the Weakstone."

  Ratepe shook his head. "If Urza paid attention to the

  Weak-stone, he'd have an aching head, but he's less attuned to it now than he was when I got here. He is putting the past behind him. I decided to make it easier for myself. If he leaves me in Pincar City, I'm no worse off than I was a year ago. Better, in fact, since I've learned some artifice." Ratepe tried to sound optimistic and failed.

  Xantcha opened the chest where she kept her supply of precious stones and metals. "Wouldn't hurt to be prepared." She handed him a heavy golden chain that could keep a modest man in comfort for life.

  "He'll change his mind about you, Xantcha. He's never going to send you away," Ratepe insisted, but he dropped the chain over his head and tucked it discreetly beneath his tunic.

  Xantcha hauled out coins as well and a serviceable knife with a hidden compartment in its sheath.

  "It's the Festival of Fruits," Ratepe protested, refusing to accept the weapon.

  "There's going to be chaos for sure and who-knows-what for us afterward." She took his hand and lightly slapped the knife into it.

  "What about a sword, then?" he asked, eyeing her rafter-hung collection.

  "I was wrong to have a sword in Medran. Efuan Pincar doesn't have a warrior cult, and your nobility averted its eyes about ten years ago. We'll try to be part of the crowd. Knives are a common man's weapon."

  "You're nervous?" Ratepe asked with evident disbelief.

  "Cautious. You and Urza, you're acting as if this is going to be some victory celebration. We don't know what's going to happen, not in a whole lot of ways."

  "You don't want to go?"

  "No. I want to see what happens, and Urza's made up his mind. I haven't survived all this time by being careless, that's all."

  "You're nervous about being with me? About taking care of me, 'cause you think I can't take care of myself?"

  Xantcha pulled up her pant leg and buckled an emergency stash of gold around her calf. She didn't answer Ratepe's question.

  "I know Pincar City," he said petulantly. "It's my home, and I can keep my own nose clean, if I need to. Avohir's mercy, it's the damned Festival of Fruits-seven days of berries! All music and bright colors. Parents bring their children!"

  Unimpressed, Xantcha handed him a smaller knife to tuck inside his boot, then closed the chest on her treasures wondering if she'd ever look at Kayla's picture again.

  CHAPTER 23

  Urza 'walked them to the royal city shortly before sundown. Knowing that Pincar was crowded with revelers and that the journey would leave Ratepe incapacitated, Urza strode out of the between-worlds near the orchard where Xantcha had battled the Phyrexian priest. Other than birds and insects, there were no witnesses to the trio's arrival. Few signs of the previous year's skirmish remained. Trees still sported scorched and unproductive branches, and there was a gap in the geometric rows where a broken tree had

  been removed.

  Ratepe was stunned and shivering. Urza knelt beside him, heal' ing him with warm, radiant hands and saying nothing about the small fortune in gold hung around his neck.

  "You'll be careful getting over the walls," Urza said to Xantcha while Ratepe finished his recovery.

  "Of course," she replied, irritable because she was suddenly anxious about entering the city.

  Neither of them had asked her if she wanted to watch the spiders scream from the plaza of Avohir's great temple, not far from the catacomb where she'd encountered Gix. Xantcha knew she would have lied even if they had. She'd never told Urza about the demon before, and events had moved too swiftly since Narjabul to tell him now. Besides, she hadn't expected to be anxious. If the demon had wanted to find her, he could have found her. Phyrexian demons were many terrible things, but they weren't shapechangers the way Urza was. If Gix hadn't pursued Xantcha to any of the out-of-way places she'd been since their encounter, she didn't expect him to simply appear in the middle of Pincar City's crowded plaza.

  "You'll need these," Urza offered her two lumps of milk-white wax.

  She hesitated before taking them and asked the question, Why? with her eyes.

  "You're vulnerable, and the armor might not be enough protection. Plug your ears first. You'll know when, and you'll have time. Don't fret about it."

  He must think the spiders themselves were what made her jumpy, and he might have been right, if it weren't for Gix. "I won't worry," she lied and tucked the wax in the hem of her sleeve. Then she asked the questi
on she'd been avoiding. "Afterward? Should I break the crystal?" She still had the one he'd given her for Narjabul.

  "I'll find you."

  Xantcha dipped her chin. After three thousand years, it would end without even a good-bye. She could see Kayla frowning in her mind's eye. The Antiquity Wars should have prepared her for this.

  Urza 'walked away. She and Ratepe waited silently for sundown. Their lives were unraveling, pulled apart between the past and future. Xantcha wanted to hold the present tight. This past year with Ratepe was as close as she had ever come to forgetting that she hadn't been born. She sensed that once the present became the past, regardless of whatever lay in the future, these moments wouldn't be recaptured.

  But when Xantcha looked at Ratepe, staring northwest, toward the city of his past and future, she had nothing to say to him until the sky darkened and the first stars had appeared.

  "It's time," she said.

  They sat together as Xantcha recited her mnemonic and the sphere formed around them.

  Country folk who didn't want to pay for a room within the city had pitched tents in the fields and fairgrounds beyond the walls. Between the smoke from their cookfires and a scattering of clouds overhead, Xantcha had no trouble getting the them over the walls and above the southeast

  quarter of the city. Ratepe said he knew the area and provided directions to a quiet street and the long- abandoned courtyard of a burnt-out house.

  "You lived here?" Xantcha asked when the sphere had collapsed.

  He pointed at a gaping second-story window. "Last I saw, it was burning. My mother was yelling at my father, telling him to carry me and forget about his precious books."

  "Did he?"

  "Yes." Ratepe put his arm on a charred door. It opened partway, then struck a fallen roof beam. "We weren't poor. I'd've thought that by now someone would've taken advantage of our misfortune."

  Xantcha took his hand, tugging him toward the alley that led back to the street. "Remember how you said everything was smaller since Urza's war? Everything's even smaller in Pincar City."

  She and Urza weren't the only ones letting go of their pasts. Xantcha could almost hear Ratepe's disillusionment as they made their way to the wide plaza between the royal palace and Avohir's temple. There were as many empty houses as occupied ones, and those that were inhabited had shuttered windows, despite the summer humidity. Their doors were strapped with iron.

  Ratepe didn't see anyone he might have recognized because they didn't see anyone at all. The sounds of the festival came filtered over the rooftops, along with the faint scent of sleepers, but the neighborhoods were locked tight.

  When they got to the great plaza between Tabama's palace and Avohir's temple, they understood why, and saw why so many festival-goers had chosen to pitch tents outside the city walls. The crowd was sullen and mean- spirited, looking for fights and, by the sounds of it, finding them with each other. Most of them were men dressed as Ratepe and Xantcha were dressed in the nondescript garments of the countryside. The few women whom Xantcha could see didn't appear to be anyone's wife, mother, daughter, or sister-not quite the family gathering Ratepe had promised.

  He didn't said a word when the crowd surged and parted, giving them a glimpse of eight grim-faced men coming through a palace gate, headed for Avohir's temple. The men were uniformed in black-dyed leather and chain mail, except for their sleeveless surcoats, which bore a broad red stripe above the hem. Two of them carried torches that could double as polearms, the other six carried short halberds-wicked weapons with a crescent ax facing one direction and a sharpened gut-hook going the other way. Xantcha knew the kind of damage such weapons could do against a mostly unarmored mob; she hoped she wasn't going to witness it again.

  The crowd reformed in the Red-Stripe wake, watchful and not quite silent. Someone muttered fighting words, but not loud enough for Red-Stripe ears. That would come later. Xantcha figured her hopes were futile. Both sides wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than bloodshed.

  "I-I don't know what's happened," Ratepe stammered. "Sleepers?"

  He wanted an affirmative answer, which Xantcha couldn't give. There was oil in the air, the smell faint and mostly coming from the temple or the palace, both still secure within their separate walls. "We happened," Xantcha replied, as grim as the Red-Stripe faces. "We made sure the truth got out, didn't we? These are all your folk, Ratepe, ordinary Efuands, the ones who got caught up with the Red- Stripes and the ones who didn't. Now everybody's got a grudge."

  Screaming spiders and Phyrexians would just get in the way.

  "I was afraid of what would happen if we just took out the Red-Stripes and the Phyrexians, but this is worse than I imagined it could ever be," Ratepe said. His hand rested momentarily on her shoulder, then fell away.

  Closer to the temple, the plaza erupted in shouts and screams. Ratepe succumbed to gawking curiosity as he eased past Xantcha for a better look at the skirmish. She grabbed his arm and rocked him back on his heels.

  "Unless you know a better place with food and beds," she snapped, "I say we go to ground in your family's old courtyard." They were traveling light on everything but gold. "This will be calmer come daylight, or the whole city could be in flames," she added.

  Without much confidence, Ratepe said that the better inns were on the western side of the plaza. Xantcha, who hadn't eaten since the previous night in Narjabul, was game, though she had to grab Ratepe's arm again to keep him from striking off through the middle of the plaza.

  "Forget you ever knew this place, all right? Pay attention to what you see, not what you remember," she advised as they headed north, toward the sea and the palace.

  They were on the cobblestones near the Red-Stripe barracks, doing their best not to attract attention, when the temple gongs rang out. This time Xantcha expected the worst and would have bolted for any shadow large enough to contain the sphere if Ratepe hadn't held her back.

  "There's a procession every night," he said. "That's what everyone's here for, what they're supposed to be here for. The high priests march the Book around and put it on the dais until midnight."

  Xantcha noticed the hulking white-draped platform in the middle of the plaza for the first time. "Every night?" she asked, thinking of tomorrow night when the spiders would scream.

  Ratepe nodded.

  She nodded, too, seeing to the heart of his requests. "You've been thinking about this from the moment Urza started talking about exposing the sleepers with the Glimmer Moon! So, why, exactly, put shatter spiders on the altar?"

  "Because the Book won't be there when the altar's destroyed. I figured it would shame the Shratta, whatever's left of them and I wanted the Shratta shamed at the same time the Red-Stripes were exposed. I didn't expect Red- Stripes to be leading the procession."

  He cocked his head toward the temple where what he'd described was happening: the same eight armed men they'd seen earlier marched at the head of a short parade whose

  focal point was an ornately shrouded litter bearing Avohir's holy book. The tome's container was borne on the shoulders of four priests, at least one of whom reeked oil. Xantcha glanced up at the sky.

  The Glimmer Moon had risen, but though she knew the habits of the larger moon and its phases, she'd always regarded the smaller moon as a nuisance, sometimes there, sometimes not, never welcome. She didn't know if it rose earlier or later each day and wasn't completely clear on the whole "striking its zenith" moment that Urza was counting on.

  "They just carry the Book out to the dais and then carry it back at midnight? A couple thousand paces. You're not hoping for something to happen while they're carrying it, are you?" If Ratepe had wanted to shame the Shratta, she couldn't imagine anything more effective than having a sleeper collapse while the holy book's litter was sitting on his shoulder.

  "No," Ratepe replied, but before he could specify which question he'd answered, the nearest palace gate swung open. More armed and armored Red-Stripes emerged.

  A sleeper
marched in the second octet. He passed so close that Xantcha was sure she knew which of the eight it was: a cleanshaven young man, not apparently much older than Ratepe and not handsome either. His mouth and nose were too big for his face, his eyes too small. When he turned and stared, Xantcha's blood cooled. She forced her head to remain still and her eyes to lose focus. He might not be able to tell she'd been watching him. Xantcha held her breath, too, though that surely was too late. When the octet had passed, she started walking again.

  The dais was still unburdened when they reached the western plaza where the guild inns, each a little fortress, stood behind their closed-gate walls. Ratepe handled the negotiations with the guild guards while Xantcha watched the procession go round and round the plaza. The joint guild of barbers and surgeons had a room behind the kitchen for which they wanted an exorbitant amount of copper and silver but not in any of the forms Xantcha or Ratepe carried it. Fortunately-but not, she suspected, coincidentally- there was a money changers' booth butted up against the barber's watchtower.

  "Festival robbery," Ratepe said dramatically as he collected the devalued worth of a golden ring. "Tabarna shall hear of this!"

  "Avohir, he knows," the money changer replied, pointing to the lead seals dangling from a silk ribbon overhead.

  The room behind the kitchen had been let to another traveler. They wound up in a dust-choked garret that Xantcha was sure had been home to a flock of pigeons earlier in the day.

  "The food will be good," Ratepe promised once they'd claimed their quarters.

  "Don't say another word. You've been wrong about everything else. If you keep quiet now, the meal may at least be edible!" She was jesting, resorting to the rough humor that worked well on the Ohran Ridge and floundered here in the city.