Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [36]
Ajani felt hollow.
The jungle lianas felt like teasing fingers, reaching out to prod and pinch him as he wandered. His fur was grubby, and his mane was speckled with burrs. Instinctively he turned uphill, walking any slope that led upward, without thinking anything but a dim sense of wanting to move away from his own footprints.
As he climbed in elevation, the roots and cloddy dirt turned to mud. The oppressive humidity turned to rain. The first heavy droplets plunked on the leaves and made them shudder around him. When they dropped onto his body, they broke apart into steam, cooling and soothing him.
In the distance he heard the low rumbles of gargantuans’ voices over the beginnings of the rain. The colossal beasts’ voices carried for miles—which was good, because being in earshot didn’t mean being in range of their huge feet. Jazal used to say that their ancient minds held the secrets of another age. When they were boys, the two brothers would strain their ears to listen to the gargantuans’ voices, but they could never understand the words. It was a music of pain, Ajani thought, part of the deep rhythm of Naya. Sometimes as he slept in their camp, he fell asleep to the long, low, rumbling sighs of the gargantuans, and fell into dreams where the stars were singing sad songs to him.
The rain was clattering, and Ajani was soaked in moments. He usually had a tarp to keep him out of the afternoon rain, but without one, the water just ran down his body in rivulets, chasing streaks of ash from the Jund volcano. That was exile, pridelessness, he thought. The inability to get out of the rain.
The slope was getting steeper. Ajani didn’t know if he was trying to reach a destination, but he recognized where he was. The canopy opened up to reveal a clearing, in which sat the ruins of a nacatl city. Huge broken slabs of white granite jutted up at odd angles from the earth. A temple supported a network of climbing vines twisting over its steep, moss-covered steps. Birds alighted on shrines and headless statues. The rain gave the ruins an even more deserted feeling—no one was there to protect any of its structures. It was naked to the elements.
It was a forbidden place. They were the ruins of Antali.
“You shouldn’t be here,” said a delicate voice.
Ajani whirled around. A very old nacatl woman stood before him in shaman’s dress, not looking up into his eyes. Her fur was dark gray, like the coal tips of hardwood after an evening’s fire, but now matted with rain. Her pupils were huge, almost filling her entire eyes. She didn’t seem to be using them.
“You shouldn’t be here, but I suspect you’re meant to be. You’re here to read the Coil, I suppose?”
“No, I—”
“Come along, then.”
Ajani looked around. The rain was moving on, rolling along the grassy square of Antali like a cloud. Mist soon enveloped the ruins. The old woman was so silent of foot that Ajani had to hurry to keep sight of her in the fog.
“This is where the hero Marisi led his uprising, you know,” said the old woman. “You’ve heard the story? You should, young thing like you. They should teach you the stories. Marisi was a great man—he freed the minds of the nacatl who lived here. The city was decadent. No one remembered their inner natures here. They had gone soft, because life was too easy up here. Peace and law for generations—it made everyone fat and vile.”
The woman was leading Ajani through the fog. Ajani wondered how her steps were so sure, given her obviously failing sight. There was a rough trail that led up a bit higher.
“They pulled down the Coil, smashed it to rubble. But you can still read the scratchforms. You’ll see.”
Ajani had heard mention of the Coil in the hadu, during the yearly Feast of Marisi. The memory stung him—Jazal. He wished he remembered more of what Jazal’s speeches were supposed to teach him.
“What exactly is the Coil?” he asked.
“The Coil was Law,” said the old woman. “One hundred twenty-one guiding principles, scratched into granite by the Cloud Nacatl. One hundred twenty-one shackles on our minds. The high-minded