Lynn Abbey - Planeswalker

He retreated when she glowered.

"You had a nightmare."

Images shook out of Xantcha's memory: the damp world of insect artifacts, her last beating at Phyrexian hands, Urza hurling fire and sorcery to rescue her. Those were moments of her life that Xantcha would rather not dream about. Between them and anger, she was in a sour mood.

"You didn't take advantage?" she demanded.

Rat answered, "I considered it," without hesitation. "All night I considered it, but I'm a long way from anywhere, I've got a chain between my feet, and even though you may be stronger than me and have that thing that makes us fly, you're still a boy. You need someone to take care of you."

"Me? I need someone to take care of me?" Of all the reasons she could think of to find herself in possession of a slave, that was the last she'd expected. "What about your word?"

He shrugged. "I've had a night to think about it. When I woke up ... at first I thought you were pretending to be asleep, waiting for me to run. But if I were going to run- walk-" Rat rattled the chain. "I'd have to make sure you couldn't catch me again."

"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."