Planeswalker by Lynn Abbey Read Free Book Online

Phyrexian newts remembered the first
opening of their eyes. Only Phyrexian newts remembered, and
understood, the first words-threats- they heard. In her
beginning, there was only the Fane of Flesh, and she obeyed
without question, writhing across the stone floor because
she hadn't the strength to walk.
    Xantcha's bones hardened quickly. She learned to tend
herself and perform such tasks as were suited to newts.
When she had mastered those lessons, the vat-priests led
her to the teacher-priests, who instructed the newts as
they were transformed from useless flesh into compleat
Phyrexians. The teacher-priests with their recording eyes
and stinging-switch arms told her that she was Xantcha.
    Xantcha wasn't a name, not as she later came to
understood names. When Urza had asked, she had explained
that Xantcha was the place where she stood when newts were
assembled for instruction, the place where she received her
food, and the box where she slept at night.
    If days or nights had played a part in her early life.
    Phyrexia was a world without sun, moon, or stars. Deep
in the Fane of Flesh, priests called out the march of time:
    when she learned, when she ate, when she slept; there was
no time for rest, no place for companionship. When she was
returned to her box for sleeping, Xantcha dreamed of
sunlight, grass and wind. She might have thought it strange
that her mind held images of a place so clearly not
Phyrexia, if she'd thought at all.
    Even now, more than three millennia after her first
awakenings, Xantcha didn't know if she'd been the only newt
who'd dreamed of a green, sunlit world, or if the Ineffable
had commanded the same dreams and longings for every newt
that learned beside her.
    You are newts, and newts you will remain, the teacher-
priests had taught her. You are destined to sleep in
another place and prepare the way for those who will
follow. Listen and obey.
    There were many other newts in the Fane of Flesh,
organized into cadres and marched together through their
educations. All newts began the same way, with meat and
bones and blood-filled veins, then-according to their place
in the Ineffable's design- tender-priests excised their
flesh and reshaped their bodies with tough amalgams of
metal and oil, until they were compleated. After each
reshaping, the priests sent the excised flesh and blood to
the renderers; eventually it was returned it to the vats.
When the newt was fully reshaped, the tenders immersed it
in the glistening oil; a Phyrexian's first time in the
great fountain outside the Fane of Flesh. When it emerged,
the newt was compleat and took its destined place in the
Ineffable's grand plan for Phyrexia.
    Xantcha remembered standing in her place on a Fane
balcony, as fully reshaped newts were carried to the
fountain. She remembered the cacophony as newly compleated
Phyrexians emerged into the glare and glow of the Fourth
Sphere furnaces. To the extent that any newt felt hope, it
hoped for a good compleation, a privileged place. The
knowledge that she would be forever bound in a newt's body
was greater pain than any punishment the priests ever
lashed across her back.
    Hatred had no place in Phyrexia. Contempt replaced
hatred and looked down on the special newts, whose destiny
was to sleep in another place. Xantcha looked forward to
the moments when she was alone in her box with her dreams.
    Once she went to sleep, dreamed her dreams, as she'd
always done, and awoke beneath the bald, gray sky of the
First Sphere. There were different teacher-priests tending
her cadre. The new priests were larger than those in the
Fane of Flesh. More metal than leather, they had four feet
and four arms. Their feet were clawed, and each of their
arms ended in a different metal weapons. They were supposed
to protect the newts from the dangers of the First Sphere.
Newts had never dwelt on the First Sphere, but the four-
armed teachers were not honored by their new