Rat set the apricot leather aside. "Who are you? What are you? The truth this time-like Assor said. Why me? Why did you buy me?" He took a deep breath. "Not that it matters. I've been as good as dead since the Shratta came."
"I must be a lousy liar, Rat, because I haven't lied to you. I'm Xantcha. I need you because Urza needs to talk to his brother, and when I saw you among the other slaves outside the tavern, I saw Mishra."
Rat stared at the flames. "Urra. Urza. You keep saying Urza. Do you mean the Urza? Urza the Artificer? The one who was born three thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven years ago? Avohir's sweet mercy, Xantcha, Urza's a legend. Even if he survived the sylex, he's been dead for thousands of years."
"Maybe Urza is a legend, but he's certainly not dead. The sylex turned the Weakstone and the Mightstone into his eyes; don't look too closely at them when you meet him."
"Thanks, I guess, for the warning, but I can't believe you. And if I could, it would only make it worse. If there were an Urza still alive he'd kill me once for reminding him of his brother and again because I'm not Mishra. I'm no great artificer, no great sorcerer, no great warrior. Sweet Avohir, I can't even fight you. The way you overpowered me and broke Tucktah's goad ... and that sphere. That I don't understand at all. What are you, anyway? I mean, there are still artificers-not as good as Urza was supposed to have been, and not in Efuan Pincar, but Xantcha, that's not an Efuand name. Are you an artifact?"
Of all the questions Rat might have asked, his last was one for which Xantcha had no ready answer. "I was neither made nor born. Urza found me, and I have stayed with him because he is ..." She couldn't finish that thought but offered another instead: "Urza blames himself for his brother's death, the guilt still eats at his heart. He won't fight you, Rat."
They both shivered, though the air was calm and warm around the little fire.
Rat spoke first, softly. "I'd always thought the one good thing that came out of that war was that the brothers finally killed each other. If they hadn't, it never would have ended."
"It was the wrong war, Rat. They shouldn't have fought each other. There was another enemy, the Phyrexians-"
"Phyrexians? I've heard of them. Living artifacts or
some such. Nasty beasts, but slow and stupid, too. Jarsyl wrote about them, after the war."
Rat knew his history, as much of it as had been written down, errors and all. "They were there at the end of the war, maybe at the beginning-that's what Urza believes. They killed Mishra and turned him into one of their own; what Urza fought was a Phyrex-ian. He thinks if he'd known soon enough, he could have saved his brother and together they could have fought the Phyrexians."
"So the man you call Urza thinks that he could have stopped the war." Rat stared at Xantcha across the fire. "What do you think?"
He had Mishra's quick wit and perception.
"The Phyrexians are back, Rat, and they're not slow or stupid. They're right here in Efuan Pincar. I could smell them in Medran. Urza's got the power to fight them, but he won't do anything until he's settled his guilt with Mishra."
Rat swore and stared at the stars. "These Phyrexians . . . Tuck-tah and Garve?"
"No, not them. They were with the Red-Stripes. I smelled them."
He swore a second time. "I'd've been better off staying where I was."
CHAPTER 6
They didn't talk much after that. Xantcha let the fire burn down, and Rat made no attempt to revive it, choosing instead to pull his borrowed cloak tight around his shoulders. As little as he seemed to want to talk, Rat seemed reluctant to give his body the rest it needed. Three times Xantcha watched him slump sideways only to jolt himself upright. Exhaustion won the fourth battle. His chin touched his chest, and his whole body curled forward. He'd find himself in a world of pain when he woke up.
Xantcha touched Rat's arm gently and when that failed to rouse him, eased him to the ground, which was dry and no worse than wherever he might have slept last. He pulled his arms tight against his chest. Xantcha tried to straighten them but met resistance. His fists and jaw remained clenched even in sleep.
She'd thought that kind of tension was unique to Urza, to Urza's madness, but perhaps Rat's conscience was equally guilt-wracked. Whatever lies he'd told her and Assor, he'd been through hard times. His stained and aromatic clothes had once been sturdy garments, cut and sewn so carefully that their seams still held. Not slave's clothing, no more than his shoes were a slave's shoes. They were missing their buckles and had been shredded where the fetters rubbed against them.
If Xantcha were wiser in the ways of mortal misfortune, she might have read Rat's true history in the moonlight. Xantcha knew more about the unusual aspects of a hundred out-of-the-way worlds than she knew about ordinary life anywhere. The two and a half centuries she and Urza had spent in Dominaria was the most time she'd spent in any single place, and though she'd taught herself to read and traveled at every opportunity, all she'd really learned was the extent of her ignorance.
Xantcha's day hadn't been so exhausting as Rat's. She could have stayed awake all night and perhaps tomorrow night, if there'd been any need. But the night was calm, and although Rat's plight proved that there were slavers loose in Efuan Pincar, tonight they were in empty country, far from towns or villages. Xantcha heard owls and other night birds. Earlier she'd heard a wild cat yowling, but nothing large, nothing to keep her from settling down near Rat's feet, one arm touching his chain so she'd know if he moved unwisely during the night.
Were their positions reversed, Xantcha wouldn't have tried to escape. In her long experience, the unknown had never proven more hospitable than the known. She hadn't thought of escape in all the time she was a newt among Phyrexians, although that, she supposed, had been different. A better comparison might be her first encounter with Urza... .
After Gix's excoriation, Xantcha had hidden among the Fourth Sphere gremlins, but they'd eventually betrayed her to the Fane of Flesh. The teacher-priests caught her and punished her and then sent her to the furnaces. Xantcha worked beside metal-sheathed stokers. The hot, acrid air had burned her lungs. She'd staggered under the impossible burdens they piled on her back. It was no secret, the remains of Gix's newts were to be used up as quickly as possible, but when Xantcha's strength gave out, it was a burnished stoker who stumbled over her fallen body and plunged into a crucible of molten brass.
The fire-priests wouldn't have her after that, so the Fane sent Xantcha to the arena, where Phyrexian warriors honed their skills against engines and artifacts made in Phyrexia or creatures imported from other worlds. She was assigned tasks no warrior would have dared: feeding the creatures, repairing damaged engines, and destroying those artifacts the warriors had merely damaged. Her death had been expected, even anticipated, but when the fearsome wyverns with their fiery eyes and razor claws went on a rampage that reduced a hundred priests and warriors to oil- caked rubble, Xantcha the newt had survived without a scratch.
Since she wouldn't die and they'd failed to kill her, the planner-priests decided that Xantcha had the makings of a dodger.
Before he'd closed his eyes in sleep, the Ineffable had decreed that Phyrexia must be relentless in its exploration of other worlds and in the exploitation of whatever useful materials, methods and artifacts that exploration uncovered. Exploration was the easy part. A compleat Phyrexian, sheathed in metal and bathed in glistening oil, was thorough and precise. It was incapable of boredom and, when ordered to examine everything, it did exactly that, as accurate at the end as it had been in the beginning.