Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [52]
Ajani started when he heard his name, and looked up to see Jazal swinging the double-bladed axe, and to see his colorful flower headdress melt into a red liquid. The circle of dancers sped up to frightening speed, tearing the ground with their claws as they danced and leered at Ajani. Jazal was still speaking, but Ajani couldn’t hear his brother’s garbled voice through the cascade of blood pouring down from the top of his head. It cascaded over his face, dripping into his eyes and streaking down his body. Then suddenly Jazal began making thrashing motions with the double-bladed axe and yelling Ajani’s name, over and over again.
Ajani awoke, his heart pounding. His name was still echoing in his head. As he sat up, he realized the cool dark cavern where he lay, although not his lair, was a familiar place.
In the gloom, he saw the burnished blades of two axes leaning up against the cavern wall: one of a dark metal, its handle broken but repaired; and one a gleaming silver, catching the light from the entrance despite the bloodstains it bore. It was Jazal’s lair. The axes were his and his brother’s, identical but for their color.
“You’ll never use this again, brother,” said Ajani, taking the silver blade.
“It’s yours now,” said Jazal’s voice.
Ajani took his own axe, rickety with its repaired handle. He held Jazal’s axe, head down, and with a quick blow, sliced into the end of its handle. Then he unwrapped the bindings around his own axe head. The axe’s original leather lashings were tight, mortared together with years of dust, resin, and blood, but they came apart little by little, spilling dried fragments of old battles onto the floor. The dark-metal axe head came loose, and Ajani turned it over in his hands. There were nicks and dents all over it, but overall the surface was still smooth. The metal held the records of so many moments with Jazal.
“Isn’t there something you should be remembering?” said Jazal’s voice.
Tenoch. Ajani remembered his words from before he traveled to Bant. The bastard Tenoch had mentioned that his mother knew more about the night Jazal died.
I have to pay her a visit, he thought.
The bindings around his axe head proved to be a single, long leather string. He shoved the axe head deep into the end of Jazal’s handle with a satisfying solidity, creating a double-headed axe. Ajani began the process of rewrapping the bindings, pulling each loop tight with little tugs that dug into his fingers.
ESPER
The lighthouse at the Cliffs of Ot was one of the most solitary and desolate places on Esper. The lighthouse keeper was an old vedalken mage, his etherium enhancements relatively minor and simple compared to the extensively filigreed archmages in Vectis or Palandius. He only had bracers of the metal built into his forearms, and a bit more at the small of his back. Still, even that small amount of the alloy had extended his life a generation longer than his race historically lived. So when his assistant called up to him saying that they not only had visitors, but important dignitaries from the vedalken city of Palandius, he had an impressive stretch of years against which to compare the visit’s peculiarity.
The lighthouse keeper lived a simple life on Esper. He didn’t know what a planeswalker was, and he had never heard of such a creature as a dragon. Nevertheless, he was about to become an important part of the plans of the dragon planeswalker, Nicol Bolas.
His assistant’s tone was clear. “Sir, they’re members of the Seekers of Carmot,” he said.
The Seekers of Carmot were a relatively recent layer to the labyrinthine strata of the Esper magocracy, but a significant one. As the supply of etherium on Esper waned, the Seekers of Carmot urged the need for a large-scale search for the reddish stone known as carmot, an essential ingredient in the creation of new etherium. Although some dismissed them as alarmists and doomsayers, the Seekers of Carmot had gained an almost