Lynn Abbey - Planeswalker

Urza nodded. "I expected a plane where everything had been put to use, not like this, neglected and left fallow."

Yet not completely fallow. As twilight deepened, lights winked open near the solitary mountain. There was a road, too: a ribbon of worn gray stone, cut in chevrons and fitted so precisely that not a blade of grass grew between them. Urza insisted he had no advance idea of what a new plane was like, no way at all of selecting the exact place where his feet would touch the ground, yet, more often than not, he 'walked out of the between-worlds in sight of a road and a town.

They began to travel down the road.

A carpet of bats took flight from the mountain, passing

directly over their heads. When their shrill chirping had subsided, other noises punctuated the night: howls, growls and a bird with a sweet, yet mournful song. Stars appeared, unfamiliar, of course, and scattered sparsely across the clear, black sky. No moon outshone them, but it was the nature of moons to produce moonless nights now and again. What surprised Xantcha was the scarcity of stars, as if time were stars and the black sky were itself the edge of time.

"A strange place," Xantcha decided as they strode down the road. "Not ominous or inhospitable, but filled with secrets."

"So long as one of them is Phyrexia, I won't care about the rest."

The light came from cobweb globes hovering above the road and the three-score graceful houses of an unfortified town. Urza lifted himself into the air to examine them and reported solemnly that he had not a clue to their construction or operation.

"They simply are," he said, "and my instinct is to leave them alone."

Xantcha smiled to herself. If that was Urza's instinct then whatever the globes were, they weren't simple.

A man came out to meet them. He appeared ordinary enough, though Xantcha understood how deceptive an ordinary appearance could be, and it bothered her that she hadn't noticed him leave any one of the nearby houses, hadn't noticed him at all until he was some fifty paces ahead and walking toward them. He wore a knee-length robe over loose trousers, both woven from a pale, lightweight fiber that rippled as he moved and sparkled as if it were shot with silver. His hair and beard were dark auburn in the globe light and neatly trimmed. A few wrinkles creased the outer corners of his eyes. Xantcha placed him in the prime of mortal life, but she'd place Urza there, too.

"Welcome, Urza," the stranger said. "Welcome to Equilor. We've been waiting for you."

Xantcha had understood every word the auburn-haired man had said, an unprecedented happening on a new world. She dug deep into her memory trying to recognize the language and missed the obvious: the stranger spoke Argivian, the sounds of Urza's long-lost boyhood and of her newtish dreams, the foundation of the argot she and Urza spoke to each other. But if this were Dom-inaria, then Urza would have recognized the stars, and if the stranger were another 'walker with the power to absorb languages without time or effort, then why had he said, We've been waiting?

The stranger touched his forehead, lips, and heart before embracing Urza, cheek against cheek. Urza bent into the gesture, as he would not have done if he were suspicious.

"And you're ... Xantcha."

The stranger turned his attention to her. He'd hesitated before stating her name. Taking it from her mind? Not unless he were much better at such things than Urza was; she'd felt no violation. Once again the stranger touched himself three times before embracing her exactly as

he'd embraced Urza. His hands were warm, with the texture of flesh and bone. His breath was warm, too, and faintly redolent of onions.

"Waiting for us?" Urza demanded before asking the stranger's name or any other pleasantry. "Before sunset I was elsewhere, very much elsewhere. And until now, I did not know for certain that I had found the place I have been seeking for so long."

"Yes, waiting," the stranger insisted, keeping one hand beneath Xantcha's elbow and guiding Urza toward one of the houses with the other. "You 'walk the planes. We have been aware of your approach for quite some time now. It is good to have you here at last."

Xantcha glanced behind the stranger's shoulders. Urza had devised a code, simple hand and facial movements for moments when they were among mind-skimmers. She made the sign for danger and received the sign for negation in response. Urza wasn't worried as the stranger led them through a simple stone-built gate and into a tall, open- roofed atrium.

There were others in the atrium, a woman at an open hearth, stirring a pot of stew that was the source of the onions Xantcha had smelled earlier, two other women and a man, all adults, all individuals, yet bound by a familial resemblance. An ancient sat in a wicker chair-wrinkled, toothless, and nearly bald. Xantcha couldn't guess if she beheld a man or a woman. Beyond the ancient, in another atrium, two half-grown children dangled strings for a litter of kittens, while a round-faced toddling child watched her from behind the banister at the top of a stairway.

Of them all, only the toddler betrayed even a faint distrust of uninvited guests. Where moments earlier Xantcha had warned Urza of danger, she now began to wonder why the household seemed so unconcerned. Didn't they see her knives and sword? Had they no idea what a 'walker could do- especially a 'walker named Urza?

"There is a portion for you," the hearth-side woman said specifically to Xantcha, as she ladled out a solitary bowl and set it on the table that ran the length of the atrium. Like the man who'd met them on the road, she spoke Argivian, but with a faint accent. "You must be hungry after your journey here."

Xantcha was hungry. She caught Urza's eyes again and passed the general sign that asked, What should I do?

"Eat," he said. "The food smells delicious."

But a second bowl wasn't offered-as if they knew a 'walker never needed to eat.

Xantcha sat in a white chair at a white table, eating stew from a white bowl. Everything that could have had a chosen color, including the floors and the walls, was white and sparkling clean. Except for the spoon in the bowl. It was plain wood, rubbed until it was satin smooth. She used it self-consciously, afraid she'd dribble and embarrass herself-both distinct possibilities, distracted as she was by conversations between Urza and the others that she couldn't quite overhear.

The stew was plain but tasty. If there was time, she'd like to see the garden where they grew their vegetables and the fields where they harvested their grain. It was a

meatless stew-somehow that didn't surprise her-with egg drizzled in the broth, and pale chunks, like cubes of soft cheese, a bit smaller than her thumb, taking the place of meat. The chunks had the texture of soft cheese, but not the taste; indeed, they had no taste that Xantcha could discern, and she was tempted to leave them in the bowl until the woman asked her if the meal was pleasing to a wanderer's palate.

The auburn-haired man's name was Romom, the cook was Tessu, the other names left no impression in Xantcha's mind, save for Brya, the toddler at the top of the stairs. When Xantcha had finished her second bowl of stew and a mug of excellent cider, Tessu suggested a hot bath in an open, steaming pool. Xantcha had no wish to display her newt's undifferentiated flesh before strangers and declined the offer. Tessu suggested sleep in a room of her own

"Facing the mountain."

It was a privilege of some sort, but Xantcha declined a second time. She pushed away from the spotless white table and took a cautious stride toward the pillow-sitting knot of folk gathered around Urza. Opposition never materialized. The family made room for her between the two women whose names Xantcha couldn't remember. Urza gave her the finger sign for silence. The family discussed stars and myths. They used unfamiliar names, but all the other words were accented Argivian with only a few lapses of syntax or vocabulary. It wasn't their native language, yet they'd all learned it well-enough for an esoteric conversation that couldn't, in any meaningful sense, include her or Urza.