Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [48]
“Knight-Captain, I don’t think that’s such a good—”
“Head back to the castle. Get clerics. Whoever you can find. And a body sling. Make haste.” “Right away.”
There was a jangle of reins, a squeak of saddle leather, and a crunching of hooves on gravel, and the other knights were off.
The cat-man blinked up at her, then his muscles seemed to relax. His eyelids settled shut.
“I’m not sure you can understand this, or even hear this,” said Elspeth. “But I’m going to tell it to you anyway. You’ve arrived. You’ve made it off your tortured world, and I’d like to be the first to congratulate you.”
“You’re too late for that,” the creature muttered.
“You’ve made it,” continued Elspeth. “Whatever place you were in before, whatever world did all this to you, your suffering is now over. You’ve come to paradise, a plane called Bant.” She knelt down near Ajani’s head. “They’ll take care of you here. Even if you’re an outsider, they’ll accept you for who you are. You can leave behind your fears and memories of the evils that went before.”
The cat-man’s eyes opened briefly, and then fluttered closed again. He appeared to be having a hard time holding onto consciousness.
“Lie still. Help will be coming soon. Though I’m young, I’ve spent time on several worlds. None has been so perfect, so welcoming as this. For the first time, I’ve found a place I can love and trust. I belong here. And you will too. You’ll be able to do what you’ve always wanted, like I have.”
The leonin stirred. Ajani said something, but his voice was too low to hear.
“What?” said Elspeth. “Yes? You can tell me. What is it you want to do here?”
“Leave,” said Ajani.
Ajani tried not to groan. The healers had used more needle and thread than the young human woman had told him, and less magic. Every day they would rewrap his left arm and dress his wounds anew, and say a few low chants. The wounds were closing day by day, and his bones were knitting, but his pain went largely untreated. In the jungle, Ajani thought, they would make a bitter drink from the sap of the wandili frond, and the pain would be gone as he healed. But his caretakers seemed to regard the pain as good for his progress. They used his pain diagnostically, prodding him in places they knew would hurt, just to gauge the degree of his reaction. At times, he reacted very badly.
His caretakers, along with the rest of the people on the world, spoke in a strange dialect. It was unfamiliar and droning to his ears, but understandable, which surprised him. It was as if their language and Ajani’s own had been birth-brothers, twins, but had become isolated from each other, and had grown up segregated for so long that they were almost strangers to one another. He often had to repeat himself several times to be understood, which led him to use only simple words. He felt like an idiot doing that, so most of the time he said nothing. The clerics brought him what they thought his body needed, and he didn’t argue.
They fed him strange things. He ate salty gourds and cakes made from coarse grains. There were fruits, but they weren’t the succulent jungle fruits that he was used to. Most of them were hardy and fibrous, with tough skins. He tried one and stopped trying. He relished the meat they brought, but wondered what strange animals it might be made from.
He saw the knights’ steeds—hooved, quadrupedal cats. They looked like ancient pack-beast versions of his own family. He tried talking to one once, but it didn’t meet his gaze, and doing so only caused the knights nearby to snicker. Ajani felt overwhelming pity for the creatures, seeing them harnessed and saddled as they were. He wondered