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meant choosing their course, so they drifted into Kovria.

By mid-afternoon, the tall-grass prairies of the ridge had given way to badlands.

"Where are we going?" Ratepe asked, virtually the first full sentence he'd uttered since the sphere rose.

"Where does it look like we're going?"

"Nowhere."

"Then nowhere, it is. Nowhere's good enough for me."

"Put us down. You're crazed, Xantcha. Something happened in Efuan Pincar, and it's left you crazed. I don't want to be up here with you."

Xantcha brought them down on a plain of baked dirt and weedy scrub. They were both silent while the sphere collapsed and powdered.

"What went wrong?" Ratepe asked as he brushed the last of the white stuff from his face. "It's not just sleepers. Sleepers wouldn't frighten you, and you're afraid. I didn't think there was anything that could do that."

"Lots of things frighten me. Urza frightens me, sometimes. You frighten me. The between-worlds frightens me. Demons frighten me." Xantcha tore a handful of leaves off the nearest bush and began shredding them. Let Ratepe guess; let him choose, if he could.

"There was a demon in Avohir's temple? In the catacombs with the dead Shratta? A Phyrexian demon?"

Ratepe was uncommonly good at guessing and choosing. "I don't know any other kind."

"Avohir's mercy! You and Urza didn't find demons anywhere else, did you?" "I didn't."

"Why Efuan Pincar? If a Phyrexian demon was going to come to Dominaria, why come to Efuan Pincar. We keep to ourselves. When our ancestors left Argive, they never looked back. They settled on the north shore of Gulmany because it's so far away from everywhere else. We're not rich. We don't bother our neighbors, and they've never bothered us. We don't even have an army-which is probably why we had trouble with the Shratta and the Red-Stripes, but why would that interest Phyrexia? I don't understand. Do you?"

"I told you, demons frighten me. I didn't ask questions, just... just got away." She stripped another handful of leaves. Xantcha wanted to tell Ratepe everything, but the words to get her started weren't in her mind.

"The day you bought me, I told you that you were a lousy liar. You may be three thousand years old, Xantcha, but my eight-year-old brother could fib better than you. When he got into trouble, though, I could guess what he was hiding, 'cause I'd hidden it myself. I can't guess about demons."

Xantcha scattered the leafy bits and faced Ratepe. "It was Gix. I smelled sleepers in the sanctuary, I followed the smell, planting spiders as I went, yours and Urza's both. I wound up way underground, in the dark. There was a passageway, one of the big, old, upright ones, and there was Gix."

"You said Gix had been killed in the Sixth Sphere." "The Seventh. He was excoriated, consigned to endless torment. We were taught that nothing escapes the Seventh Sphere." "Another Phyrexian lie? You're sure it was Gix,

not some other demon?"

"Yes." One answer for both questions. "Did he hurt you?"

Ratepe never failed to ask the question Xantcha wasn't expecting. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"Then, what's got you so riled? Why were we headed 'nowhere'? Unless ... wait, I get it now. Urza's sent you off with the mere mortal. He's not that crazed. He knows what I am, who I'm not. He's going back after Gix, and you're here with me instead of-"

"I didn't tell Urza." The words belched out of her.

"You found a Phyrexian demon under Avohir's temple and you didn't tell Urza?"

She turned away in shame.

"Of course," Ratepe sighed. "He'd yell at you and blame you, just as I've yelled at you and blamed you. And you are a lot like my little brother when you get accused of something that's not your fault. And Gix. Gix was the one who got Mishra. Mishra didn't know-not until it was too late. Strange thing. They fought over those two stones that are Urza's eyes now, but I don't think either brother could hear the stones sing."

Xantcha took a deep breath. "Do you wonder why you can hear them."

"I can't hear them. I only hear Mishra's stone. I don't know for sure that the Mightstone sings, but-yes, I do wonder. I think about it a lot, more than I want to. Why? Did Gix say something about the stones?"

"Yes. He said he made them, and then he said something about you." And Urza, Xantcha's mind added, but not her tongue.

Ratepe was pale and speechless.

"He could have gotten your name out of my mind. I was careful what I gave him, enough to keep him from digging too deep. But I got in trouble. Serious trouble." Xantcha's hands were shaking. She clasped them together behind her back. "He had me, Rat. I was walking toward the passageway. I would've gone into Phyrexia, and that would've been the end of me, I'm sure. Then, suddenly, all I could think of was you."

"Me?"

"You're the first 'mere mortal' I've gotten to know. You've..." Blood rushed to Xantcha's face. She was hot, embarrassed, but she stumbled on. "Thinking about you pulled me back. But Gix was in my mind when I did, so he could have taken your name and made a lie around it. Everything he said could've been lies ... probably was lies." And why share Gix's lies with anyone? "He didn't tell me anything I didn't know, except, maybe, about the Thran. And, well, Mishra knew some things about the Thran."

Though Xantcha could feel the blood draining from her own face, Ratepe's was still dangerously pale.

"Tell me what Gix said about me, then what he said about Mishra and the Thran. Maybe I can tell you if it's lies or not."

"Gix said he wondered if I'd found you, as if he'd planned that we were supposed to meet."

"And about the Thran?"

"When I said that Urza would finish what the Thran had started against the Phyrexians, he laughed and said the

Thran were waiting for Urza and that they'd take back what was theirs. Gix was thinking about Urza's eyes-at least, I started thinking about Urza's eyes and how they were the last of the Thran powerstones. Gix laughed louder, and the next thing I knew, I was thinking about you and not walking toward the portal. What he said about you and what he said about me, they're lies. Even if Mishra was compleated in Phyrexia... even if his flesh and blood were rendered for the vats ... I was one of thousands. We were exactly alike. We don't even scar, Ratepe. We couldn't tell ourselves apart!"

"Lies," Ratepe said so softly that Xantcha wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly and asked him to repeat himself. "Lies. The Weakstone's a sort of memory. Mostly it's Mishra's memory, but I've been hit with some Thran memories and some of Urza's, too, though not as strong. With Mishra, there's personality. I'm thankful I never met him while he was alive. He'd've killed me for sure. With the Thran and Urza, it's like faded paintings. But if you were Mishra-if any part of you was Mishra-the Weakstone would have recognized him in you, even though you're Phyrexian. And if I'd been touched by Gix, I'd be dead. The Weakstone doesn't like Phyrexians, Xantcha, and it especially doesn't like Gix."

"Urza's eye doesn't like me?"

Ratepe shook his head, "Sorry, no. It sees you, sometimes, but if Urza doesn't trust you, the Weakstone could be responsible because it doesn't trust you."

"The Weakstone has opinions?"

"Influence. It tries to influence."

Xantcha considered Urza's eyes watching her and Ratepe each time they retreated to her side of the wall. "It must be overjoyed when we're together."

Color returned to Ratepe's face in a single heartbeat. "I'm not Mishra. I make my own opinions."

"What do you know from Mishra and the Weakstone about the Thran and the Phyrexians?" Xantcha asked when Ratepe's blush had spread past his ears.