"I can't believe they're all gone but that one I scented last night with the litter," Xantcha mused when Ratepe had finished taking her on a brief tour of the

sanctuary. "Maybe Gix had pulled the sanctuary sleepers back. It doesn't take much practice to be a bully like a Red-Stripe, but a priest has to do things right."

"You put the spiders where they live-"

"I'd feel better if I'd seen that they were still in place."

"We'll find out soon enough," Ratepe replied with the sort of fatalism Xantcha herself usually brought to any discussion.

They were on the temple porch, looking down at the plaza from a different angle and gazing north at an afternoon storm. There was time for one more bowl of berries before the storm swept over the palace. Xantcha was indifferent to sweets, but Ratepe would have eaten himself sick. She saw what they did with Avohir's book when it rained. A team of priests who'd obviously worked together before scrambled to get the great book closed and covered with a bleached sail.

"It's going to get wet and ruined sooner or later," she pointed out as she and Ratepe climbed the five flights of narrow, rickety stairs to the garret.

"Sooner."

"But isn't it too precious to be mistreated like that?"

"It used to be there was a new Book every five years. I think the one they've got is maybe older than that. But it's not any one specific copy of the Book that matters, it's the idea of Avohir's book and the wisdom it contains. When a new Book's brought into the temple, the old one is cut up and passed out. Some people say if you burn a piece of the Book on New Year's Day, you'll have a better year, but some people-my father, for one-kept his scraps in a special box." Ratepe fell silent and stared out the window at the rain.

"Lost?" Xantcha asked.

"We brought it with out of the city. I didn't even think about it after the Shratta." He went back to staring.

"Should I buy a duck?" Xantcha asked, quite serious.

"A duck?"

"Six days after the Festival of Fruits, you'll be nineteen. I made sure I remembered. You said your mother roasted a duck."

"We'll see after tonight."

The festival crowds never recovered from their afternoon soaking. Hundreds of Efuands had returned to their tents beyond the walls, and the rowdy, mean-spirited element took over the plaza long before the midsummer sun was ready to set. Xantcha and Ratepe were spotted standing on the roof, silhouetted by the sun. The innkeeper, a man as burly as the sanctuary Red-Stripes reminded them in no uncertain terms that they'd rented the garret. For an additional two silver bits they rented the roof as well. The innkeeper offered to send up supper and another jug of berry wine.

Xantcha had had her fill of berries. They ate with the other guests in the commons, another leisurely, overpriced meal, then retreated to the roof for the spectacle. The western sky was blazing, and there were two brawls in the plaza, one strictly among the revelers, the other between the revelers and what appeared to be a cornered pair of Red-Stripes. A different, more strident set of gongs was

struck, and a phalanx of mounted warriors thundered out of the palace, maces raised and swords drawn.

She couldn't decipher the details of the skirmish from the rooftop, but it wasn't long before three corpses were dragged away and a handful of men, bloodied and staggering, were marched into the palace. One of the prisoners wore an empty sword belt. He wasn't a Red-Stripe; that besieged pair had vanished back into the cadres. By his straight posture and arrogant air, even in defeat, the prisoner looked to be a nobleman, the first of that breed Xantcha had seen since arriving in Pincar City.

The nobleman's appearance crystallized a conclusion that had been lurking in Xantcha's thoughts. "Efuan Pincar has lost its leaders," she suggested to Ratepe. "Wherever I look, whether at the Red-Stripes, the temple, or that mob down there, I don't see anyone taking charge. If there are leaders, they're giving their orders in secret and then watching what happens from a distance, but they're not leading from in front."

Ratepe had an explanation for that absence. "Efuan Pincar's not like Baszerat and Morvern and places like that where every man, woman and child answers to a lord. Our Ancestors left that way behind at the Founding. It's written in Avohir's book. We have a season for making decisions, wintertime, when the harvest's been gathered and there's time to sit and talk-"

" Where's your king? Where's Tabarna? When I came here twenty years ago, he was visible. If there'd been riots outside his palace, the way there've been last night and tonight, he'd have been out here. If not him, then someone, a high priest, a nobleman, even a merchant. There were men and women who could speak louder than the mob. Look down there. Folk have been killed, and there's no true reaction. There's anger everywhere, but nobody's gathering it and turning it into a weapon."

"Efuands aren't sheep. We think for ourselves." Ratepe countered quickly, a reply that had the sound of an overleamed lesson.

"Well, it's strange, very strange. It's not like anything I've seen before, and that doesn't happen very often. And it's not the way Efuand Pincar was twenty-odd years ago. Your king or someone would be visible. Efuands may not be sheep, Ratepe, but without leaders to stop them, I don't wonder that the Red-Stripes and Shratta were able to cause such trouble for you."

"Are you saying Phyrexians were with the Shratta and the Red-Stripes from the start?"

Ratepe was incredulous, sarcastic, but as soon as Xantcha thought about her answer, she realized, "Yes, I am. I found Gix in Avohir's crypt, but I probably could have found him in the palace just as easily."

"Do you think he's still here?"

"He might be. That passageway I saw wasn't like an ambulator. But Gix was too big to chase me up the stairs. If he's here, he's not going to come walking through the sanctuary doors."

Ratepe said nothing as the sunset aged from amber to lavender. Then, in little more than a whisper, he said, "In the war, Urza and Mishra's war, the Brotherhood of Gix made themselves useful to both sides. They pretended to be

neutral. Neither Mishra nor Urza questioned them, but they answered to Gix, didn't they? The Gix in Avohir's temple. The Gix who made you. He controlled the brotherhood, and the brotherhood manipulated the brothers. Avohir's sweet mercy, Gix-the Phyrexians-did control that war. Kayla Bin- Kroog said never to forget the mistakes we made, but she didn't suspect the real rot..." His voice trailed off, then returned. "It's happening again, isn't it? Here and everywhere. And nobody's seeing it come."

"Urza has." Xantcha let out a pent-up breath. "Urza's mad in a thousand different ways, but he does remember, and he has learned. He knows to fight this war differently. He knows not to make the old mistakes. I've been listening to him, but I wasn't watching him. Urza lies to himself as much as he lies to you or me, but that hasn't stopped him from doing what has to be done. Until now. I've got to go back, Ratepe, after tonight. I've got to find him and tell him about Gix and about the Thran. There's a part of him that needs to know-deserves to know-everything that I know."

"You won't go alone, will you?"

"Efuan Pincar's going to need true leaders."

"True, but for Efuan Pincar's sake, Urza needs a Mishra that I can trust."

The Glimmer Moon was the evening star this midsummer season, far brighter than the star Ratepe called the Sea- Star and Xantcha called Berulu. It pierced the deepening twilight like a faintly malevolent diamond. Every world that Xantcha remembered where sentient races came together to talk and create societies, folk looked overhead and recited myths about the stars, the moon, and the wanderers.