Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [32]
A dragon came soaring around the mountain, and with it came a roar that caused the mountain itself to shudder.
BANT
I think I’ll slit your throat and plant flowers in there, thought Hazid.
“How much longer?” he asked.
“I’m surprised you’re so anxious, Hazid,” said Rafiq as they rode back to civilization. “You’ll face severe justice when we deliver you to the courts in Valeron.”
“I just want to know how long I have,” said Hazid.
“It’ll be another couple of hours,” said Mubin.
Hazid had nothing against the rhox especially, except that he was an especially unlikable person.
“Until then, why don’t you tell us why you destroyed Giltspire Castle?” added Mubin.
Case in point, Hazid thought. There was no subtlety to the rhox, at all.
What kind of flower would grow best out of their necks? he wondered. That’s what he really wanted to know. Maybe he would go with roses. Hazid hoped they would grow thick with thorns as they grew out of his captors’ necks. And he hoped those thorns would tear their way free of his captors’ skins, and bury roots deep in their guts. That’s the only way he could possibly repay them both for the injustice they’d done to him. None of it was his fault, after all.
“I didn’t. It wasn’t me. I was only there on business. Some mages in my caravan—whom I had nothing to do with—cast a spell or something, and the next thing I knew, the castle was tumbling down.”
“You’d better start getting used to telling the truth,” said Mubin. “The courts have magic that’ll pry it out of you, but if it doesn’t match your words, your punishment will be much worse.”
“What’s wrong with the steeds?” said Rafiq suddenly.
The leotau slowed to a halt. They clopped their hooves on the stones of the road and huffed and snorted. A breeze swayed the ancient, twisted olive trees in the orchards around them; the steeds tilted their heads to and fro and sneered into the wind.
Hazid rolled his eyes. “They probably just smell a deer.”
“No. They’re fed. They smell something else,” said Mubin.
Then for a long moment, the three men made no noise.
The sky rumbled and thudded, and the ground shuddered under the steeds. The trees shook in ways that wind would never have moved them, and they shed perfectly green leaves. The leotau arched their backs suddenly and hissed at the air, causing Hazid to jump in his saddle.
“What in the blessed—”
“Shh!” said the knights.
They would have called the phenomenon a herald of an evening thunderstorm, if they had ever heard thunder. They would have called it a minor earthquake, if they had ever felt the earth quake. But Bant had never felt such forces. Instead the men sat quietly, struck dumb by the experience. The wind felt strange and thick, and the air had an earthy perfume to it, like rich soil. Thunder danced toward them, resounding in weird echoes from the horizon, and the clouds had an unnatural gray color to them.
Hazid thought he saw lights in the clouds on the horizon, but as he squinted to focus on them, the lights evaded his eye. Was he going mad? Or had the angels discovered his sin?
Then the ground stopped moving. Hazid’s leotau shook its mane and casually licked its front leg, as if nothing had happened.
The men looked at each other. Mubin was frowning, cautious and concerned as any of his race. The knight-captain’s face was full of wonder, as if it had been some sort of play with jesters and refreshments. Hazid was just painstakingly trying to hide his panic.
“Okay, so what was that, gentlemen?” asked Hazid. “Any clues?”
“It was a sign,” said Rafiq.
“It was something unique,” said Mubin. “A sign, yes, but from whom, and of what? Have you ever seen anything like that, Hazid?”
“Me? Why would I have seen anything like that?”
Mubin was a stone wall. “Try to calm down.”
“My caravan has been from one side of this land to the other and I have never—I mean, never—seen anything so … so … No. I have not.”
“I’m sure the explanation, once it’s discovered, will be reasonable,” said Mubin.
Rafiq toyed absently with one of the sigils hanging from his