Lynn Abbey - Planeswalker

Xantcha had had no sense of modesty, not so soon after leaving Phyrexia, and the air in the chamber was comfortably warm, yet she'd clutched the blanket tight around her naked flesh-the same as she clutched it millennia later in a cold, dark cottage room while sleet pelted the roof overhead. Her empty mind never had a problem understanding Urza's words. It was the implications that often left her reeling.

"I understand," she assured Urza. "This is my place and I will remain here. But I do not know about months. I know days and seasons and years. What is a month?"

Urza closed his eyes and, after a dramatic sigh, told her about the many ways in which born-folk measured time. Xantcha told him that Phyrexia was a place where time went unmeasured. There was no sun by day nor stars by night. The First Sphere sky was an unchanging featureless gray. All the other spheres were nested within the First Sphere. Gix had been dropped into a fumarole that descended to the Seventh Sphere. The Ineffable dwelt in the ninth, at Phyrexia's core.

"Interesting," Urza said. "If you're telling the truth. I have heard the name Gix before, on my own plane, where it was the name of a mountain god before the Phyrexians stole it. In fifty years of searching, I have heard the name Gix many times. I've heard the name Urza, too, and several that sound like Sancha. There are only so many sounds that our mouths can make, so many words, so many names. At best, language is confusion. If you are to be useful to me, you must never He. Are you telling me the truth, child?"

She nodded and added, truthfully, "I am not a child." The image was quite clear in her mind; the world for which she had been destined-the world to which she had not gone- had children. "Children are born. Children grow. Phyrexians are decanted by vat-priests and compleated by the tender- priests. When I was decanted, I was exactly as I am now. I was not compleated, but I was never a child. Gix said he made me."

Urza shook his head sadly. "It is tempting, very tempting to believe that there is only one Gix, but I have made that mistake before. It is just a sound, a similar sound, filled with lies. You do not remember what you were

before the Phyrexians claimed you, Xantcha, and that is just as well. To remember what you had lost..." He closed his eyes a moment. "You would not be strong enough. By your race, I'd say you were twelve, perhaps thirteen- " He shook a thought out of his mind and began to pace. "You were born, Xantcha. Life is born or it is not life. Not even the Phyrexians can change that. They steal, they corrupt, and they abominate, but they cannot create.

"You remember the decanting, and I am grateful that you remember nothing before that because I am certain that you were most horribly transformed. In my wanderings I have seen men and women in many variations, but I have never seen one such as you, who is neither."

Urza continued pacing the small chamber. He wouldn't look at her, which was just as well. Xantcha knew many words for madness and delusion, and they all described Urza. He had rescued her-saved her life-and he had strange powers, not merely in his glowing eyes, but an odd sort of passion that left her believing for a few distracted heartbeats that she had been born on the world at the bottom of her memories.

Xantcha ached in the missing places when Urza described her as neither man nor woman. After Gix's excoriation, while she'd hidden among the gremlins, she'd had opportunity to observe the differences between the two types of born-folk: men and women. If Urza was right, she had even more reason to wage war against Phyrexia.

But Urza had to be wrong. He didn't know Phyrexia. He'd never peeked into a vat to see the writhing shape of a half-grown newt. He'd never seen tender-priests throwing buckets of rendered flesh into those vats. Meat-sludge was the source of Xantcha's memories, meat-sludge and Gix's ambition. Nothing had been taken from her. She was empty, as Urza had told her, filled with memories that weren't her own.

Urza confirmed Xantcha's self-judgment as he paced. "Yes, it is better that you don't remember, better that your mind is empty and you have no imagination left that would fill it. Mishra knew what he had become, and it drove him mad. I will keep you, Xantcha, and avenge your loss as I avenge my brother. You will stay here."

Xantcha didn't argue. She was in a chamber that had neither windows nor doors. Her companion was a man-demon with glowing eyes. There was nothing at all to be gained by argument. Still, there was at least one question that had to be asked:

"May I eat?"

Urza stopped pacing. His eyes darkened to a mortal brown. "You eat? But, you're Phyrexian."

She shrugged and chose her words carefully. "They didn't take that. I ate from a cauldron when I was in Phyrexia, but I scrounged when I was excavating. I can scrounge here, if you'll show me where the living things are."

"Nothing lives here, Xantcha."

Urza muttered under his breath. His hands began to glow as his eyes had. He strode to the nearest wall and thrust his fingers into what had appeared to be solid stone. The glow transferred to the stone. The chamber filled with the hot, acrid smells Xantcha remembered from the furnaces. She

eased backward, blindly clutching the blanket, as if it could protect her. There was a hollow in the wall now, and a radiant mass seething in Urza's hands.

"Bread," Urza said when the seething mass had cooled.

Xantcha had scrounged bread on a few of the worlds the searcher-priests had sent her to. The steaming loaf Urza handed her looked like bread and smelled a bit like bread, a bit more like overheated dust. Its taste was dusty, too, but she'd eaten worse, much worse, and gorged without complaint.

"Do you want more?"

She didn't answer. Want was an empty notion. Newts didn't want. Newts took what they could, what was available, and waited for another opportunity-which might come soon, or might not. Urza faded until he was a pale, translucent shadow; then he was gone. A heartbeat later, the chamber's light was gone, too.

Every world Xantcha had seen had spun to its own rhythms, and though she hadn't acquired an instinctive sense of day becoming night, she'd learned enough about time to be desperately afraid of the dark. She was ravenous when Urza finally returned, exhausted because she'd feared to close her eyes lest she sleep through his reappearance, and bleeding where she'd pinched herself to keep awake. Taking all her risk at once, Xantcha sprang across the chamber. She clung ferociously to Urza's sleeve.

"I won't remain here! Bring back the door. Let me out or destroy me!"

Urza stared at her hands. "I brought you something. Swallow it, and I can, as you say, bring back the door."

He held out his free arm and opened his hand which held a nearly transparent lump about half the size of her fist. Xantcha had eaten worse meals in the Fane of Flesh, but she didn't think Urza was offering her supper.

"What is it?" she asked, not letting go with either hand.

"Consider it a gift. I went back to the plane where I found you. The Phyrexians were careful to clean up after themselves, but I was more careful looking for them this time. I found a place where the soil had been transformed with black mana, much as you have been. So, I believe you, Xantcha. You are almost what you say you are, almost a Phyrexian. You believe the lies they told because when they transformed you they took your memory and your potential. You are a danger to others and to yourself but not to me. I will unlock your secrets and find answers I need for my vengeance."

"I'll help," Xantcha agreed. She'd agree to anything to get out of the chamber. After that...

After that would take care of itself.