Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [56]
Stop it, he thought. I want to stop. I want the spell to end.
His body didn’t listen. As the mentalist traced intricate patterns in the air, the lighthouse keeper—her telemin, her mage puppet—continued to strap on the weighted vest. He tightened the buckles around his chest and between his legs. As he moved, hundreds of small reflectors hanging from the vest rotated and glittered in the light.
Great sphinxes of Esper, he thought. What were they going to do to him?
Don’t worry, said a feminine voice in his head. It’ll be over soon.
It was the mentalist. Oh, telepathy now? He wished he could cover his ears, or somehow block her out. Is this what all you do to all your telemins? Taunt them while they’re helpless?
No, said the voice. But your task is of vital importance. I must be in contact with your thoughts throughout the performance.
Enough of this. You can have the lighthouse, he thought. Send me to the courts in Palandius if you want. Get out of my mind.
Thank you for being a willing participant, the mentalist’s voice said.
With that, the lighthouse keeper took a deep, involuntary breath, and felt his body dive over the cliff into the bottomless, gray waves of the sea.
NAYA
Another day, another sin, thought Marisi. It was shameful work for a nacatl warrior-hero, a living legend of Naya, to do the errands of an otherworldly dragon. But what choice did he have?
Marisi turned a small sphere of dark scales around and around in his hands. It glittered in the filtered Nayan daylight, glossy like a snake’s body. It was heavy for its size, and sloshed gently as though it were filled with a thick liquid. It would be dark soon, so he resumed climbing down out of the misty mountain heights toward the lush valley of the Sacellum, the realm of the elves.
He was getting too old for such tasks. The pads on the bottom of his feet were cracked, and his bones complained at every step. The errand was as ridiculous as they always were, but it was better, all things considered, than being eaten by his draconic master. What would that feel like, when he failed Bolas? Would the dragon’s teeth puncture his life-sustaining organs, so he bled to death, or would the palate crush him first? Or would he be swallowed in one gulp, and die in the sizzling acid of the stomach?
None of those, he decided. In truth, he would die of whatever ached in his bones, or some other disease of the old—but without any trace of his faculties. He had seen Bolas end lives before, and it was always by the destruction of the mind, not the body. It was cruelly impersonal, he thought. All the might and majesty of dragonhood, and Bolas would sit casually back on his haunches, stare down at his victim, and barely move as the deed was done. No snap of bones. No pillar of flame. Marisi’s renown on Naya had come from being a hero full of rage and action, the force that broke the Coil and severed the nacatl people into warring factions. But when Marisi’s end came, it would not come by the sword and claw, but by the aloof dismissal of his mental faculties at the whim of a dragon, and the revelation of the evil behind his legend. Maybe that’s what being monstrous truly was, he thought—not devouring a person’s body, but his legacy.
He wondered whether success was really required on his task—which was a relevant concern, since there was no chance he would succeed. A little illusion magic would never motivate the elves to war. Killing was an easier errand, something with a beginning and an end, but his task was more complex. But would a good, honest try buy him enough time to find a way to escape Bolas for good? Or should he just give up, and sink into the jungle floor, and let his bones finally rest?
He was venerable