Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [53]
The lighthouse keeper didn’t know that the Seekers were secretly the minions of Bolas. But he did know that they were important dignitaries, and that a contingent of them wanted into the most remote lighthouse of the most desolate, barely-navigable shoreline of the region of Ot.
“I should have paid more attention to the stars of late,” muttered the lighthouse keeper. “There must have been signs of the occasion written on the skies.”
“Don’t touch the door, I’ll get it,” he called as he descended the spiraling stairs. “Meanwhile, I want you to shine up my orreries and astrolabes. I don’t want to miss another event of this magnitude. Use the good cleansing spell, too—I don’t want to hear them so much as squeak.”
He opened the door.
“My lords, please come in,” he said.
There were three of them. Two of them were vedalken mages, their skin hairless and bluish gray, their etherium enhancements elaborate. The other was a tall, longhaired human man in strange garb. They said nothing, but handed him a small courier’s capsule. He read the missive as they walked around the lighthouse, measuring and murmuring to one another.
According to the missive, the lighthouse was theirs for the next three days. And he was to become their telemin during that time. He knew what the word meant, but could only guess what it truly meant for him.
What was clear was that his life was about to change dramatically.
“You can stop bothering with the orreries,” he called up to his assistant.
The assistant came down to him. “Why?” he said.
The lighthouse keeper betrayed no emotions. “In fact, your services will no longer be required. Please get your things and go.”
“I don’t understand. What are they … Are they shutting us down?”
“I told you, you are done. You no longer work here. Please get out of my lighthouse, now.”
The assistant searched for some clue in the lighthouse keeper’s face, but found only a level stare. The Seekers of Carmot were just as silent and ineffable. He frowned, gathered his possessions, took one last look at his old vedalken mentor, and left.
I’m sorry, and goodbye, thought the lighthouse keeper as his assistant walked out of his life.
NAYA
Ajani knew Tenoch’s mother, Chimamatl. She was a suspicious old witch, a thin, gray-furred jaguarhag who rarely left her lair in the hills high above the den. She had always wanted her son to become kha, and therefore had always hated the popular leader Jazal and, by extension, Ajani. Her schemes rarely worked because Tenoch was so unlikable, but still, she vowed that before her bones withered away, she would see her son as leader of the pride. Whether that was due to a mother’s twisted love, or a streak of power-lust in her own heart, Ajani could only guess.
Knowing that Tenoch was likely to have claimed leadership over the pride, Ajani’s steps were quick. He knew that the steep path up to Chimamatl’s lair would be riddled with spells and traps, but he didn’t care. Thorny snares snapped at his ankles and tripped him prone, but he tore through them with his claws and moved on. Ward-spells of sun-bright incandescence blinded him, but he blundered ahead with his hands on the rock face until his vision returned.
When he sensed a presence, though, he stopped. A thicket of dry brush hid the corner of the next switchback up the hill—a perfect place for an ambush. If Chimamatl, or one of her protectors, was waiting for him, then she would attack him there. He approached the hiding-place of dry hedge slowly.
He took out his axe and shined the flat side of the blade against the fur of his forearm. He tilted the axe over the broad patch of brush, using the axe as a rough mirror.
Nothing. No one was hiding back there. And yet he was almost sure he had felt something lurking at that point in the trail.
The thicket did something that surprised him—it stood up, crackling and popping as it unfurled its arms and legs of jagged wood into a roughly humanoid shape. It wasn’t a hiding place for Chimamatl’s guardian, Ajani thought—it was Chimamatl