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.
"They hate each other, with a deep, blinding hate that gives no quarter. But I'll tell you honestly, in the images I've gotten of their war, I can't tell one side from the other. The Thran weren't flesh and blood, no more than the Phyrexians. Even Mishra's just something the Weakstone uses. Urza's notion that the Thran sacrificed themselves to save Dominaria, maybe that's the Mightstone's influence, but it's not true. My world's better off without both of them, Thran and Phyrexians together."
They'd wandered away from their gear. Xantcha headed back. "Maybe Urza will succeed someday in "walking between times as easily as he 'walks between worlds. I'd like to know what really happened back there at Koilos. I'd like to see it for myself. It's a shadow over everything I've ever known, all the way back to the vats."
Ratepe corrected her pronunciation of Koilos, reducing the three syllables to two and moving the accent to the first.
"I heard it from Urza and he's the one who named it," she retorted.
"I guess language drifts in three thousand years. It's still there, you know-well, it was three hundred years ago
when the ancestors left Argive."
Xantcha stopped short. "I thought it wasn't recorded where the first Efuands came from. That's part of your myth."
"It is ... part of the myth, that is. But Father said our language is mostly Argivian and the oldest books, before the Shratta burnt them, had been written in Argivian. And, if you look at a map, Efuan Pincar is about as far away from Argive as you can get without sailing right off the edge."
"And Koilos?" Xantcha stuck with Urza's pronunciation. "It's still there in Argive?"
"It's not in Argivia. It never was, but folk knew where it was three hundred years ago. It's like The Antiquity Wars, something that's not supposed to be forgotten. I guess it was inaccessible for most of the Ice Age, but when the world got warmer again, the kings of Argivia and their neighbors sent folk up on the Kher to make sure the ruins were still ruins."
"Urza's never mentioned them. I just assumed Koilos vanished with Argoth."
"You've seen a map of what's left of Terisiare?"
Xantcha shrugged. There were maps in her copies of The Antiquity Wars. She'd assumed they were wrong and paid no attention to them.
"We'd have to go over the Sea of Laments. We'd never make it there and back in nine days," Ratepe said with a smile that invited conspiracy. Waste not, want not. If Gix hadn't lied about the young Efuand, they were all doomed.
"We'd make landfall on Argivia in two very cold days and colder nights. Getting back would be more difficult, but it's that or go back to the cottage and tell Urza that I saw Gix in Pincar City."
"He wouldn't be pleased to see us."
The journey over the Sea of Laments was as uneventful as it was unpleasant. They'd traded for blankets and an oil-cloth sail in a village on Gulmany's south coast. The fisherman who took Xantcha's silver thought she was insane; a little while later, both Ratepe and Xantcha agreed with him, but by then it was too late. They were in the wash of a roaring wind river and remained there until they saw land again. For two days and nights there was nothing to do but huddle beneath blankets and the sail.
"Don't you have to keep one hand free?" Ratepe had shouted early on, as they struggled to wrap the blankets evenly around their feet.
"Tack across this?' she shouted back. "We're here for the ride."
"How many times have you crossed the sea?"
"Once, by mistake."
"Sorry I asked."
Misery ended after sunrise on the third day. There was land below, land as far as the eye could see. Xantcha thought down and thrust her hand through the sphere for good measure. Her hand turned white as they plummeted down to familiar altitudes.
As her hand began to thaw, Xantcha asked, "Now, which
way to Koilos?"
"Where are we?"
"Don't you recognize anything from your maps?"
"Avohir's sweet mercy, Xantcha, maps don't look like the ground!"
They found an oasis and a goatherd who seemed unfazed by the sight of two strangers in a place where strangers couldn't be common. He spoke a language neither of them had heard before but recognized the word Koilos in its older, three-syllable form. He rattled off a long speech before pointing to the southeast. The only words they recognized, beside Koilos, were Urza and Mishra. Xantcha traded a silver-set agate for all the food the youth was carrying. He strode away, whistling and laughing.
"What do you think he said?" Xantcha asked when they'd returned to the gulch where their gear was hidden. "Other than that we're fools and idiots."
"The usual curses against Urza and Mishra."