Lynn Abbey - Planeswalker

Xantcha twisted her fingers into an open question, and Urza replied with the sign for silence. Silence wasn't difficult for Xantcha, unless it was imposed. She fidgeted and considered joining the youngsters still playing with the kittens until Tessu shuttled them upstairs. The conversation began to flag and for the first time since they'd entered the austerely decorated atrium, the air charged with anticipation. Even at the edge of time there were, apparently, conversations that could be held only after the children had gone to bed.

Tessu and Romom together brought the ancient to what had been Romom's place on Urza's right. Then everyone shuffled about to make room for the pair-who Xantcha had decided were husband and wife, if not lord and lady-on the opposite side of the circle.

"You have questions," the ancient said. The voice gave no clues to the grizzled figure's sex, but the accent was thick. Xantcha had to listen closely to distinguish the words. "No one comes to Equilor without questions."

Urza made two signs, one with each hand, silence and observe, before he said, "I have come to learn my enemies' weakness."

The two men exchanged glances, one triumphant, an ongoing dispute settled at last. Against all reason, these folk had been expecting them, exactly them: Urza from Argive and a companion who'd been glad of a hot meal at the end of a long day. But they hadn't known for certain why, and that made less sense. If you knew Urza well enough to know his name and where he was headed, then surely you knew what had driven him through the multiverse to Equilor.

The men, however, said nothing. Like Xantcha, they

seemed relegated to silence, waiting for the ancient to speak again.

"Equilor is not your enemy. Equilor has no enemies. If you were an enemy of Equilor, you would not have found us."

Another created plane like Phyrexia and Serra's realm, accessible only across a fathomless chasm-which Urza hadn't mentioned?

"I am a seeker, nothing more," Urza countered, as formal and constrained as Xantcha had ever heard him. "I sensed no defenses as I 'walked."

"We would not intimidate our enemies, Urza. We would not encourage them to test their courage. We knew you were a seeker. We permitted you to find what you sought. The elders will see you."

By which the ancient implied that he, or she, was not one of the elders. Perhaps the term was an honorific, not dependent on age. Xantcha would have liked to ask an impertinent question or two, but Urza's fingers remained loosely in their silence and observe positions.

"And I will ask them about Phyrexia. Have you heard of it?"

There was considerable movement in the circle. Xantcha couldn't observe it all, but Phyrexia was not unknown to the household.

The ancient said one word, "Misguided," which seemed sufficient to everyone but Urza and Xantcha.

"More than misguided," Urza sputtered. "They are a force of abomination, of destruction. They have set themselves against my plane, and I have sworn vengeance against them in the name of my brother, my people, and the Thran."

That word, "Thran," also brought an exchange of glances, less profound than what had followed Phyrexia.

"Misguided," the ancient repeated. "Foolish and doomed. The elders will tell you more."

"So, you know of them! I'm convinced that they were banished from their natal plane before they created Phyrexia. I am looking for that plane. If it is not Equilor, I hope that you can tell me where it is. I have heard that whatever is known in the multiverse is known to Equilor."

The ancient nodded. "The ones you seek have never come to Equilor. They are young, as you are young. Youth does not often come to Equilor."

"They fought the Thran over six thousand of my years ago, and I myself have walked the planes for over two millennia."

The ancient fired a question to Romom in a language Xantcha couldn't understand.

Romom replied, in Argivian, "Shorter, Pakuya, by at least a third."

"You are old, Urza, for a young man, but compared to Equilor, you are scarcely weaned from your mother's breast. In Equilor, we began our search for enlightenment a hundred millennia ago. Do not wonder, then, that you could not see our defenses as you passed through them."

"You will think differently when the Phyrexians arrive!"

"They are a small folk with small ambitions, smaller dreams. We have nothing to offer them. Perhaps we were

wrong about you."

The ancient added something short and decisive in the other language. Watching Urza as closely as she watched the household, Xantcha realized that Urza couldn't skim the thoughts of these deceptively simple folk.

"It is late," Tessu said, putting a polite, yet unmistakable end to the discussion. She rose to her feet. Romom rose beside her. "Time to rest and sleep. The sun will rise."

The rest of the household stood and bowed their heads as Romom and Tessu helped the ancient from the atrium. Moments later, Urza and Xantcha were alone.

"This is the place!" Urza said directly in her mind.

"The old one said not."

"She is testing us. Tomorrow, when I meet with these elders, I will have what I have long wished to learn."

In her private thoughts, Xantcha wondered how Urza knew the ancient was a woman, then chided herself for thinking he could be right about such a small thing when he seemed so wrong about the rest. The ancient had talked to Urza as Urza often talked to her, but he hadn't noticed the slights.

"They have secrets," Xantcha warned but no reply formed in her mind, and she couldn't know if Urza had retrieved her thought.

Tessu and Romom returned. Romom said there was a special chamber where those who would speak to the elders waited for the sun to rise. For Xantcha, who was just as glad not be included, there was a narrow bedchamber at the end of a cloistered corridor, a change of clothes, and a worried question:

"You will bathe before sunrise?"

She answered in the same tone, "If I may bathe unobserved?"

"The mountain will see you."

There were no roofs over any of the chambers. Xantcha wondered what they did when it rained, but, "The mountain is not a problem."

"You have customs that inhibit you?"

Xantcha nodded. If that explanation would satisfy Tessu, she'd provide no other.

"I will not interfere, but I cannot sleep until you have bathed."

"Your customs?"

Tessu nodded, and with her clean clothes under her arm Xantcha followed her host to the dark and quiet atrium. If Tessu failed to contain her curiosity, Xantcha was none the wiser. As smooth and hairless as the day she crawled out of her vat, Xantcha eased herself into the starlit, steaming pool. A natural hot spring kept the water pleasantly warm. A gutter-white, of course, and elegantly simple-carried the overflow away. She'd scrubbed herself clean in a matter of moments and, knowing that Tessu waited in the atrium, should have toweled herself off immediately, but the mountain was watching her and she watched back.

It had many eyes-Xantcha lost count at thirty-threeand, remembering the bats, the eyes were probably nothing more than caves, still, the sense of observation was inescapable. After staring so intently at shades of black and darkness, Xantcha thought she saw flickering lights in

some of the cave eyes, thought the lights formed a rippling web across the mountain. Xantcha thought a number of things until she realized she was standing naked beside the pool, at which point all her thoughts shattered and vanished. She grabbed her clothes, both clean and filthy, and retreated into the atrium.

"You are unwell?" Tessu asked discreetly from the shadows as Xantcha wrestled with unfamiliar clasps and plackets.

"It did see me."

Tessu failed to repress a chuckle. "They will not harm you, Xantcha."