Read Online Planeswalker by Lynn Abbey - Free Book Online

omission by
proclaiming that their land had been empty until three
hundred years ago, when a handful of boats had brought a
band of refugees to Gulmany's back side. Xantcha doubted
that there'd ever been enough boats in Terisiare to account
for all the living Efuands, but scribes lied, she knew that
from her Antiquity Wars collection. What mattered to
Xantcha was that among any ten men of Efuan Pincar, at
least one matched Kayla's word picture of Mishra, and
another had his impulsive temperament. To find better odds
she'd have to soar across the Sea of Laments, something
she'd done just once, by mistake, and had sworn she'd never
try again.
    Xantcha knew her plan to bring Urza face to face with a
dark, edgy youth who might remind him of his long-dead
brother, wasn't the most imaginative strategy, but she was
Phyrexian, and as Urza never ceased telling her, Phyrexians
lacked imagination. Urza himself was a genius, a man of
great power and limitless imagination, when he chose to
exercise it. Once she had him face-to-face with her false
Mishra, Xantcha expected Urza's imagination would repair
any defects in her clumsy Phyrexian strategy.
    Then Xantcha caught herself thinking about other
notoriously failed strategies: Gix and thousands of
identical sexless newts.
    "What if I'm wrong?" she asked the setting sun; the
same question that Urza asked whenever she tried to prod
him into action.
    The sun didn't answer, so Xantcha gave herself the same
answer she gave Urza, "Dominaria's doomed if Urza does
nothing. If he thinks his brother's come back to him, he
might do something, and something-anything-is better than
nothing."
    Xantcha watched the last fiery sliver of sunlight
vanish in the west. Her sphere had dried into a fine white
powder that disappeared in the breeze. By her best guess,
she'd been aloft without food, water, or restful sleep for
two and a half days. There was water in the stream and more
than enough food in her shoulder sack, but sleep proved
elusive. Wrapped in her cloak, Xantcha saw
    Gix's toothsome face each time she closed her eyes.
After watching the stars slide across the sky, she yawned
out another sphere as the eastern horizon began to
brighten.
    * * *
    Xantcha hadn't thought she'd find her Mishra in the
first village she visited. Though experience on other
worlds had convinced her that every village harbored at
least one youth with more ambition than sense, it had stood
to reason that she might need to visit several villages
before she found the right combination of temperament and
appearance. But temperament and appearance weren't her
problems.
    In the twenty years since her last visit, war and
famine had come to Efuan Pincar. The cultivated field in
    which she'd spent her first sleepless night had proved the
exception to the new rules. The first village that Xantcha
approached was still smoldering. The second had trees
growing from abandoned hearths. Those villages that
remained intact did so behind palisades of stone, brick,
and sharpened stakes.
    She approached the closed gates warily, regretting that
she'd disguised herself as a cocky and aristocratic youth.
It was an easy charade, one that matched her temperament
and appearance, but throughout their wandering, she and
Urza had come across very few wars that couldn't be blamed
on aristocratic greed or pride.
    The war in Efuan Pincar, however, proved to one of the
rare exceptions. The gates swung open before she announced
herself. The whole village greeted her with pleading eyes.
They'd made assumptions: She was a young man who'd lost his
horse and companions to the enemy. She needed their help.
But most of all, they assumed she'd come to help them.
Outnumbered and curious, Xantcha made her own assumption.
She'd learn more if she let them believe what they wanted
to believe.
    "You will go to Pincar City and tell Tabarna what is
happening?" the village spokesman asked, once he had
offered