Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [114]
Mubin recognized the snarl of the leotau first, coming in through the window. Then he recognized the particular jounce of metal armor and sigils as the man climbed off the steed. Then he recognized the voice.
“Mubin?” the voice called. “Are you in here?”
It was Rafiq, the so-called hero. He’d finally come back from the war.
“You old bastard,” Mubin said to the paladin as he entered. “I owe the clerics a bag of coin now—the errant knight has returned.”
“That’s Knight-General to you,” Rafiq said.
“Oh ho, is it now? No, I think I should call you Knight-Idiot for the stunt you pulled. That mission to Esper was ours. I was supposed to go with you, and when I got hurt—” He stopped.
“It doesn’t matter anymore, Mubin,” said Rafiq, full of cheer. “I’ve done it. I have it. I’ve returned with the etherium. It’s the only good thing to come out of this war—you’ll be able to walk again.”
Mubin allowed his spirits to jump for a moment. “You did?”
Could he actually have done it? Mubin wondered. He mouthed the gasp of hope that he wanted to breathe. Still, even in his rising mood, he felt the weight of guilt. “You risked your neck unnecessarily,” he said. “Anybody could have been sent to do this.”
“Nobody more motivated,” said Rafiq dismissively. “We’ve got everything we need out in the cart. I’ve already got the clergy working on the incantations.”
Mubin felt wary. An alien form of magic, intruding his body? A ritual using borrowed words and components from a world away? But if he refused to try, Rafiq would never see him walk again. Worse, Mubin’s immobile limbs would serve as an eternal reminder of his friend’s error—and of the rift between them. If he never got out of his bed, it would make Rafiq’s arduous mission all for nothing.
“So,” Mubin said finally. “When can we start?”
Rafiq’s laugh filled the room, and released a soul’s worth of pent-up hope.
JUND
Sarkhan reached back and snapped an arrow shaft that jutted from between his shoulder blades. As he walked, he tried to excavate the arrowhead out from his back with a knife. Elves make good quality arrows, he thought; they dig deep and clutch at you from the inside. He wondered whether the arrowhead lodged in his back was carved from the bone of some great Naya beast. He imagined the bone shard sizzling as it came in contact with his blood, the blood that was corrupted by drops from the veins of his master, Bolas.
The battle had not gone well for Sarkhan, and he was not eager to seek out the ancient dragon, wherever he had gone, and face his judgment. He was not eager to explain that his mana bonds were shorn from him by a neophyte planeswalker, and that he fled, the authority over his flight of dragons dwindling as his mana left him, all the way back to Jund.
He dug at the skin on his back, wincing slightly, and finally wrung the arrowhead free. He stopped walking up the trail for a moment and looked at it in his hand. It was no mighty bone shard; it was just a chipped stone triangle in a handful of blood. It struck him that it was his allegiance to Bolas, he thought. That was his fate, to be a weapon drowned in another’s blood. He had the brief, bizarre impulse to plunge the arrowhead into his eyeballs. The thought made him chuckle, and the chuckle turned into uncontrolled laughter that went on until he was hoarse.
Keep your mind together, he warned himself. But he thought of Bolas’s black silhouette on the sky, and couldn’t think of a reason why he should.
He walked to the edge of the Sweltering Cauldron, the volcanic caldera where he had taught a cat-man about fire and rage. The lava bubbled below him, oppressively hot, blackening his feet through his boots. He wondered what it would be like to be lowered, bit by bit, into that glowing red sludge.
He chortled crazily, and then planeswalked away from Alara.
BANT
I’m told this isn’t often done this late in life,” said the healer, a middle-aged human woman.
Mubin lay on the bed in the cleric’s temple, a broad protection circle surrounding the bed. The