Read Online Planeswalker by Lynn Abbey - Free Book Online Page B

up to the gate. The Red-
Stripes were in for a surprise if they drew their swords
against her.
    Good sense prevailed. They let her pass, though Xantcha
figured to keep an eye for her back. Even with a sword, a
slight, beardless youth in too-fine clothes was a tempting
target, especially when the nearest protectors were also
the likeliest predators.
    Xantcha followed the widening streets until they
brought her to a plaza, where artisans and farmers hawked
produce from wagons. She gave the horse to the farmer with
the largest wagon in exchange for black bread and dried
fruit. He asked how an unbearded swordsman came to be
peddling a nag in Medran-town. Xantcha recited her made-up
tale. The farmer wasn't surprised that Shratta would have
slain her purported companions.
    "The more wealth a man has, the less the Shratta
believe him when he says he abides by the book. Strange,
though, that they'd risk a party as large as the one your
uncle had assembled. Were me, I'd suspect the men he'd
hired weren't what they'd said they were."
    Xantcha shrugged cautiously. "I'm sure my uncle thought
the same ... before they killed him." Then, because the
    farmer seemed more world-wise than the villagers, she
tempted him with a thought that had nagged her from the
beginning. "He'd hired Red-Stripes. Thought it would keep
us safe. Shratta never attack men with Red Stripes on their
tunics."
    The farmer took her bait, but not quite the way she
expected. "The Red-Stripes don't bother the Shratta where
they live, and the Shratta usually return the favor. But
where there's wealth to be taken, every man's a target,
especially to the ..." He fingered the hem of his own
tunic. "I won't speak ill of your dead, but it's a fool who
trusts in stripes or colors."
    Xantcha walked away from the wagon, thinking that it
might be better to get out of Medran immediately. She was
headed toward a different gate than the one she'd entered
when she spotted a knot of men and women, huddled in the
shade of a tavern. With a second glance Xantcha saw the
bonds at their necks, wrists, and ankles. Prisoners, she
thought, then corrected herself, slaves.
    She hadn't seen slaves the last time she visited Efuan
Pincar, nor had she seen any in the beleaguered villages,
but it was a rare realm, a rarer world that didn't
cultivate slavery in one of its many forms. Xantcha took a
breath and kept walking. She could see that a swaybacked
horse found a good home, but there was nothing she could do
for the slaves.
    Xantcha continued walking, one step, another ...
misery stopped her before she took a third. Looking back
over her shoulder, she caught the eyes of a slave who
stared at her as if his condition were indeed her
responsibility. Though they were at least a hundred paces
apart, Xantcha saw that the slave was a dark-haired young
man.
    I asked my husband's brother how he'd come to lead the
Fallaji horde, Kayla had written in The Antiquity Wars.
Mishra replied that he was their slave, not their leader.
He laughed and added that I, too, was a slave to my people,
but his eyes were haunted as he laughed, and there were
scars around his wrists.
    In all the times Xantcha had read that passage, she'd
followed Una's lead and blamed Phyrexia for Mishra's scars
and bitterness. But the Fallaji had been a slave-keeping
folk, and looking across the Medran plaza, Xantcha suddenly
believed that Mishra had told Kayla a simple, unvarnished
truth.
    Xantcha believed as well that she'd found her Mishra.
With Urza's armor still around her, she strode over to the
tavern.
    "Are they spoken for?" she asked the only unchained man
she saw, a balding man with a eunuch's unfinished face.
    He wasn't in charge, but after a bow he scurried into
the tavern to fetch his master, who proved to be a giant of
a woman, garbed, like Xantcha, in men's clothing, though in
the slave master's case, the effect was intimidation rather
than disguise.
    "They're bound