"I heard something, not with my ears, but inside my head." He stopped and faced her, confusion painfully evident on his face. "I called it singing, 'cause that's the best word I had. And it came from his left eye." He sat down on the ash bucket, staring at his feet. "Do you want to know how I knew which eye was which?"
Measured by his expression, she wouldn't like the answer but, "Go ahead, enlighten me."
"It told me. It told me what it was and that it had been waiting for someone who could hear it. When Urza said Harbin wasn't his son, it was, it was .. ," Ratepe made a helpless gesture that ended with his fingertips pressed against his temples. "Not pain, but like the feeling that comes after pain." He stopped again and closed his eyes before continuing. "Xantcha, I heard Mishra. Well, not quite heard him. It was just there, in my mind, from the stone. I knew what Mishra thought, what he would have said. Not his words, exactly. My words." His eyes opened. He stared at Xantcha with only a shadow of his usual cockiness. "I know who I am, Xantcha.
I'm Ratepe, son of Mideah, or, just Rat now, 'cause I lost everything when I became a slave. I was born almost eighteen years ago in the city of Pincar, on the sixth day after the Festival of Fruits in the sixth year of Tabarna's reign. I'm me. But, Xantcha, pretending to be Mishra, the way you asked me to-" He broke the stare. "It's not pretend. I could get lost. I could wind up thinking I am Mishra before this is over."
Xantcha bit her lip and sighed. Ratepe wasn't looking, didn't seem to have heard. "Right now, while you're sitting there, can you hear the Weakstone singing Mishra's thoughts in your mind?"
He shook his head. "Only when I'm looking at Urza's eyes, or when he's looking at me."
She began another sigh, of relief this time, but she began too soon.
"I'm worried, Xantcha. It's so real, so easy to imagine him, and that's after just one night. By next year when I'm supposed to go back to Efuan Pincar ... ? You should've warned me."
Trust Rat-or Ratepe-or Mishra-or whatever he wanted to call himself to go for the guilt. "I didn't know about the singing. I knew about Urza's eyes, where they came from anyway, and I did warn you about that. But singing and Mishra? Beyond The Antiquity Wars, I don't know anything but what Urza's told me, and I guess there's a lot he didn't."
The rest of Xantcha's anger went with that admission. She leaned against a porch post, grateful that no one was looking at her. All those times Urza had glowered at her, eyes ablaze-had the voice of Mishra's Weakstone tried to make itself heard in her mind? Why, really, had she gone in search of a false Mishra? What had drawn her to Ratepe? She'd known he was the one to fulfill her plans before she'd gotten a good look at him.
"Can I trust myself?"
Xantcha had no assurances, not for herself or for him. "I don't know."
Ratepe folded his arms tightly across his ribs and shrank within himself. Xantcha had spent all her life with
Phyrexians or Urza. She wasn't accustomed to expressive faces and wasn't prepared for the gust of empathy that blew from Ratepe to her. She tried to shake it off with a change of subject and a touch of humor.
"What were the three of you talking about all night?"
Ratepe wasn't interested. "A year from now, will there be anything left of me? Will I be myself?"
"I'm still me," Xantcha answered.
"Right. We talked, some, about you."
She should have expected that, but hadn't. "I haven't lied to you, Ratepe, not about the important things. The Phyrexians are real, and Urza's the only one with the power to defeat them."
"But Urza's wits are addled, aren't they? And you thought you'd cure him if you scrounged up someone who'd remind him of his brother. You thought you could make him stop living in the past."
"I told you that before we left Medran."
"Are you as old as he is?"
Xantcha found the question surprisingly difficult to answer. "Younger, a bit... I think. You're not the only one who doesn't know who or what to trust inside. He told you I was Phyrexian?"
"Repeatedly. But, since he thinks I'm Mishra, he's not infallible."
The bacon was burning. Xantcha scraped the charred rashers onto the platter and made of show of eating one, swallowing time while she decided how to answer.
"You can believe him." She took a deep breath and recited-in Phyrexian squeals, squeaks, and chattering, as best she could remember them-the first lesson she'd learned from the vat-priests. "Newts you are, and newts you shall remain. Obey and learn. Pay attention. Make no mistakes."
Ratepe gaped. "That day, in the sphere, when you cut yourself-If I'd taken the knife from you-"
"I'd bleed no matter where you cut me. It would have hurt. You could have killed me, you were inside the sphere. I'm not Urza. I don't think Urza can be killed. I don't think he's alive, not the way you and I are."
"You and I, Xantcha? No one I know lives for three thousand years."
"Closer to thirty-four hundred, I think. Urza believes I was born on another plane and that the Phyrexians stole me while I was still a child then compleated me the way they compleated Mishra.
But that can't be true. I don't know what happened to Mishra, but with newts, we've got to be compleated while we're still new. Urza's never accepted that I was dragged out of a vat in the Fane of Flesh."
"So, in addition to everything else, Phyrexians are immortal?"
"To survive the compleation, newts have to be very resilient, immortally resilient. But Phyrexians can die, especially newts, just not of age or anything else that born-folk might call natural."
"And after thirty-four hundred years, Urza still doesn't believe you?"
"Urza's mad, Ratepe. What he knows and what he believes aren't always the same. Most of the time it doesn't make any difference, as long as he acts to defeat Phyrexia and
stops trying to recreate the past on a tabletop."
Ratepe nodded. "He showed me what he was working on."
"Again?" Xantcha couldn't muster surprise or indignation, only weariness.
"I guess, if you say so. Funny thing, with the Weakstone, I get a sense of everything that happened to Mishra." He fell silent until Xantcha looked at him. "You're half-right about what happened. Urza's half-right, too. Phyrexians wanted the Weakstone. When Mishra wouldn't surrender it, one of them tried to kill him. The Weakstone kept him alive then and even when they took him apart later, but it couldn't keep him sane." Ratepe strangled a laugh. "Maybe burning his own mind was the last sane thing Mishra did. After that, there're only images, like paintings on a wall, and waiting, endless waiting, for Urza to listen."
"And now Mishra, or the Weakstone, or both of them together have you to speak for them."
"So far, I listen, but I speak for myself."
"What does that mean?"
Ratepe began to pace. He made a fist with his right hand and pounded it against his left palm. "It means I'd do anything to have my life back. I wish I'd never seen you. I wish I was still a slave in Medran. Tucktah and Garve only had my body. My thoughts were safe. I didn't know the meaning of powerless until I looked into Urza's eyes. I'm as dead as he is, as Mishra, as you."
The self-proclaimed dead man stopped beside the bacon platter and ate a rasher.
"I'm not dead."
"No, you're Phyrexian," Ratepe retorted between swallows. "You weren't born, you were immortal when you were decanted. How could you ever be dead?"