Xantcha thought she understood. "You drew the prime end through itself to bring me to this place?" She hesitated, but this man who had rescued her deserved the truth. "If you unanchored the ambulator, I don't know if I can take you to Phyrexia. I've seen the searcher-priests set the stones for Phyrexia, but I've never set them myself. I don't know what our fate will be if I set them wrong, but I'll go first."
"No, child, you will not go first," he said, grim and serious. "Though you have every reason to condemn Phyrexia, you have become a traitor to them, and traitors can never
be trusted, must never be trusted."
Traitor. The word roused a hundred others from Xantcha's dreams. She supposed it was a truthful word, though not as truthful as it would have been if she weren't a newt who'd never been compleated. Insofar as kin pricked her conscience, it was safe to say that she had none.
"I was Orman'huzra when you found me, second of the dodgers. What is my position now? What is yours? What do I do, if I cannot be trusted and I cannot go first?"
The man paced the small, stark chamber in which she'd awakened. His eyes burned as he walked, reminding Xantcha of Gix. She lowered her head when he stopped in front of her. He put his hand beneath her chin to raise it. Her instinct was to resist, to avoid those eyes as she had avoided the eyes of Gix, but he overcame her resistance. Her rescuer had a demon's strength.
"Orman'huzra. That is not a name. What is your name?"
"In my dreams, I am Xantcha."
The answer failed to please him. Fingers tightened on either side of her jaw. She closed her eyes, but that made no difference. The many-colored light from his eyes burnt like fire in her thoughts.
"Your mind is empty, Xantcha," he said after an agonizing moment. "The Phyrexians took it all away from you."
He was wrong. Were it not for what the Phyrexians-Gix in particular-had done to her, Xantcha was sure she would have died right then. She didn't correct her new companion, no more than she'd corrected Gix, and took no small satisfaction in the knowledge that the sanctuary she'd created, when Gix had confronted her, remained intact.
"What is my place? What is yours?" she asked for the second time. "What do you dor
"My place was Lord Protector of the Realm, and I failed to do what I should have done. You may call me Urza."
There were images for the word Urza, hideous images. Xantcha heard the voice of a teacher-priest: If you meet Urza, destroy him. The man in front of her didn't resemble the image. Even if he had, Xantcha would have denied the imperative. She wasn't about to destroy an enemy of Phyrexia.
"Urza," she repeated. "Urza, I will show you what I know of the ambulators."
Xantcha tried to rise from her pallet. The ambulator had to be beyond the chamber's closed door. It was too large for the chamber itself. She got as far as her knees. In addition to feeling light, she was weak. But there were no marks on her body. Her wounds had healed. Xantcha didn't understand; she'd been weak before, but never without wounds.
"Rest," Urza told her, offering her the corner of the blanket. "You have been very sick. Many days-at least a month-have passed since I brought you here ... but not through any ambulator. I did, as you suggest, let the searcher get away. My error, Xantcha. I did not suspect your ambulators and seeing your kind on that other plane, I thought you had 'walked there. My grievous error: the emptiness between the planes is no place for a child without the necessary spark. You were less than a breath, less than a heartbeat, from death before I got you here
which is not where I'd intended to bring you.
"Do not touch that door!" he warned, then had an inspiration and pointed his forefinger at it.
The wood glowed and became dull, gray stone, like the rest of the chamber.
"The Phyrexians changed you Xantcha, and I could not undo their changes, but without what they did, you would not have lived long enough for me to do anything at all. This place is safe for you. It has air and a balance of heat and cold. Outside, there is nothing. Your skin will freeze and your blood will boil. Without the spark, you will not survive. Do you hear me, Xantcha? Can your empty mind understand?"
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.