Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [100]
His body was a cage of agony. He had tumbled as he had fallen out of the sky, and the gusts around the maelstrom had thrown him a wind shear that had sent him sideways, so he had fallen awkwardly. Not since he was a fledgling had he fallen so badly. Thanks to his light bones, he hadn’t crushed himself in the impact, but everything was thoroughly bruised, and his left talon was twisted. His tentative attempt to move his wing was punished by pain. The wing was ruined; there was nothing coming out of that shoulder but a blackened branch of bone. There would be no flying out of there.
With supreme effort, he lurched onto his good leg. He tested himself with a step, which ended in a graceless limp. He lurched a few more steps, wincing in pain, and fell.
He pushed himself up again. Someone still had to warn Bant of Malfegor’s approach. If I have to stagger for miles on foot to do it, he thought, then that’s how it would have to be done.
BANT
Aarsil the Blessed came down to the palace courtyard in her sleeping robe. It was late at night in Valeron. Crickets chirped, and the stars shone in constellations shaped like angels. She wouldn’t have been awake at this hour except that Aarsil’s guards had called her. They had detained a man, a human of Mortar caste, who looked hysterical.
Aarsil rubbed her eyes in annoyance. “All right, I’m here, I’m awake. What is it?”
“This man says there’s an emergency,” said a guard.
“Highness, please, I beg your help. I’m the wagon driver for Sir Mubin. It’s Mubin, Highness. He sent away your guards, and opened the gates—the trees. Please come to the court grounds, quickly!”
She was fully awake. “What in Asha’s name has he done?”
They raced out to the courtyard of the Twelve Trees. Aarsil gasped in horror, covering her hand with her mouth.
The tremendous roots of one of the majestic trees lay exposed, twisted and clogged with mud. The branches of the tree lay along the ground, with the trunk lashed to Mubin’s wagon team of four mighty leotau.
And down in the pit where the tree’s roots had been torn free lay Mubin, covered in dirt. He had a network of ropes wrapped around him, and there was a shovel to one side. He sat in the mud of the pit he had created, cradling a metallic object in his arms.
“Mubin!” shouted Aarsil.
The rhox knight looked up. He held up the object he was holding. The light of the stars glinted hard and true in the edge of a shard of steel.
“I found one of them,” Mubin said. “It’s a fragment of the Sword of Asha.”
Aarsil’s Skyward Eye advisor came running up. “What is going on?” he cried.
Aarsil turned to him, a grim vein bulging in her forehead. “Go and fetch twenty Mortar caste, ropes, and a dozen more steeds. And a blacksmith.”
Aarsil’s face was a storm of concentration. Her brow furrowed in rage, and she opened her mouth to say something—but then she closed it again. She looked at the glinting metal of the sword fragment.
“What’s he done?” the advisor whispered. “What do you mean, you want … You’re not going to—”
“Go and fetch what Mubin needs,” said Aarsil the Blessed. “Now.”
GRIXIS
Ajani, Kresh, and the warriors moved through Grixis as secretly as they could. It wasn’t easy—to the blood-tuned senses of the creatures of Grixis, their life force glowed like a beacon. After a rash of battles with the undead, rot and ichor clung to them. But they marched on.
“Cat-man, you’re unstoppable,” said Kresh in tired admiration. “You haven’t rested in days. We’ve run out of clean food, and you’re withering away, and yet you walk on.”
“I can’t stop,” said Ajani. “ The killer must be nearby. I’m smelling the same smell as the creatures that killed my brother. We’re almost there, I think. I can feel it.”
“We might be,” said Kresh. “Or we might be lost in the land of the dead. Everything here smells like this. I support your mission of vengeance, I do. It’s every man’s right to die in battle, slumped over the corpse of his hated enemy. But this is no way to go, for us or for you. I won’t watch you die of walking around.”
Ajani’s teeth showed as he spoke.