Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [55]
Please don’t let the feeling go, he thought. He needed it. It was the power he needed to kill Jazal’s murderer.
He ran up the trail to the lair of Chimamatl.
Chimamatl’s patchy snarls of gray fur were shrouded by a rough green robe. When she turned to see him, her expression went from shock, to confusion, to caution.
“You’re alive,” she said finally.
“No thanks to your son,” said Ajani.
She shrugged and flashed a snaggle-toothed smile. “Accidents happen,” she said.
“Accidents? I’m starting to wonder what other ‘accidents’ you and Tenoch might have been involved in.”
“Accusation is a dull weapon. Don’t come in here unarmed.”
“I know you’re guilty. Your son, in a moment of weakness, told me you knew about Jazal’s murder.”
“Guilt and knowledge—they are not kin. They wouldn’t even recognize each other in the dark jungle. Why would I be the one to bring those creatures to our den? My goals are plain: for Tenoch to come into his own, and to rule the pride as kha. Why would I do anything to harm the pride he sought to rule?”
The thought turned Ajani’s stomach. “Because it resulted in the kha’s death. You knew there would never be an opportunity for your vicious, simple-minded son, unless Jazal was out of the picture.”
“You’ve always been a little cat. Your thoughts are too tiny. With your mind that size, you’ll never fit into it what you desire to know.”
“Then tell me. If you’re not the killer, tell me what I need to know to find who it was.”
She noticed the thin, red slashes in Ajani’s arms.
“You fought my elemental,” she said looking outside the lair. “Why didn’t it chase you up here?”
“It perished.”
“You destroyed it? But it’s been months since I’ve had a visitor other than Tenoch. It should have been hungry enough to swallow you in a single bite.”
Ajani’s eyes narrowed. “Someone visited you? Who?”
She peered at him. Her eyes widened. “You’re a storm of rage inside, aren’t you? My, you’ve grown little cat. Maybe you do have room in your heart-cage for the truths you’re hunting.”
“Someone visited you. You said before. Who was it?”
“An old friend, and a hero,” she said.
ESPER
The spell felt surprisingly nonintrusive to the lighthouse keeper, if it was working at all. His thoughts were his own. His body moved normally. He was able to walk out the lighthouse door and toward the sea-cliffs all under his own power. The mentalist, a young vedalken woman of the Seekers of Carmot, followed behind him, performing dancelike gestures, but he didn’t see anything in her movements that indicated he was part of anyone’s performance. Maybe they had failed at the spell without knowing it. Or maybe he had overestimated the amount of control it conferred over him; maybe he was free to do whatever he willed after all.
But it was when he decided to walk all the way to the edge of the sea-cliffs that he realized the spell had worked as intended. He had never walked so close to the edge—the ragged coastline and the open sea joined there in a way that had always made him uncomfortable. He always admired the serene, gray regularity of the sea, but looking straight down the Cliffs of Ot reminded him too much of a wild animal, of forces unshackled by reason.
He was putting something on, he realized. One of the other Seekers, the tall, wild-haired human man, had handed him a vest of some kind, and the lighthouse keeper had taken it and was putting his arms through it. His movements were so effortless, his kinesthetic experience so natural, that he believed he was doing it all on his own. But he didn’t want to do it. The vest