Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [40]
The goblins cheered. The dragon neared.
NAYA
It had taken days for Ajani to recover his bearings and travel back to his pride’s valley. It was dawn as he approached, and he moved as carefully and as silently as possible. He stepped on stones when he could, bare dirt when he couldn’t, and only on foliage as a last resort. As far as he was concerned, the pride was a nest of enemies—he didn’t want to give away his return if he could help it.
The den was silent, nearly deserted in the early morning. He smelled burnt wood—had they lit another bonfire? What were they doing, feasting after Jazal’s death?
No. It was a funeral pyre. Jazal’s funeral. They had cremated his brother without him.
Ajani approached the pyre. Almost nothing recognizable was left of Jazal; every hair and claw was incinerated.
“I don’t look good, do I?” said Jazal’s voice.
“No, you don’t, brother,” said Ajani. “They should have done rites to calm you after death. They burned you as a kha, but they should have burned you as an unavenged spirit.”
“I’m a spirit, then, am I?”
“If you’re not, I’m going crazy.”
“Well, yes, that is what I’d be implying.”
Ajani ignored that. The ash was still warm to the touch. He cupped his hands and grabbed great handfuls of the ash, and wiped streaks of it down his chest. It was Jazal, he thought. Those were flecks of his actual burned body. The image he had of his brother in his mind—the strong nacatl with the knowing smile—had no basis in reality anymore. Jazal wasn’t on a trip somewhere, off in the jungle, about to arrive back home to him again at any moment. That was it. Those streaks of ash were his brother.
There was an object in the pit, something dark and round, made of a strange material. Ajani reached to pick it up, but a voice that stopped him—one outside his own head.
“Ajani, what are you doing?”
He whirled around. Zaliki stood there, her face elongated with shock.
“Are those Jazal’s …?”
“Zaliki, I—”
“Ajani, I don’t know where you’ve been the last few days. And I know you’ve been through a lot. It’s something horrible that I can scarcely imagine. But look at yourself. There are children around here. Think of the example you’re setting. Touching the ashes of the dead?”
“I know. I know it’s … wrong. But look, Zaliki, I’m going through something. Jazal’s … presence. It’s with me. Maybe you feel it too.”
“No. Get away from me with those hands!”
“Okay, don’t worry. I’ll clean all this up. Just don’t go,” said Ajani. “I could use someone to talk to.”
Zaliki turned her head, as if looking for an escape route. But she stayed. “All right,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Ajani.
Ajani’s eyes drifted back to the pyre, and the object he saw there. He couldn’t help himself—he reached into the ash and pulled it out. It was in the shape of a hemisphere: a bowl. It was filthy; every surface was coated in fine gray dust.
“Ajani, please—”
Ajani turned the bowl over in his hands. The ash fell from it as he turned it, revealing a dull, dark, hard material underneath. He wiped the grime away, and the surface shone a glittering black. His gold-white paw looked bluish and distended in the curve of the bowl.
“Wh—what is that thing?” asked Zaliki.
As he wiped more ash away from the bowl, he noticed the traceries of interlocking shapes. They were scales. He had seen scales like them before. They weren’t like the hides of gargantuans. They weren’t like the smooth silver of trout in the streams.
They were dragon scales.
“I don’t know,” said Ajani. “It’s a bowl of some kind, but to hold what I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a talisman, an artifact. It might be connected to the creatures that emerged that night.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. The way it shines, I guess. What’s it made of?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he muttered. “Something that doesn’t burn in fire,” he said out loud.
All the dragons he had seen on Jund were bright