Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [60]
“Is that … yours?” Ajani asked, gesturing to the bowl.
“It belongs to Progenitus. But no nacatl is allowed near the Relic,” said the elf girl.
“I don’t mean your Relic,” said Ajani. “I mean that black bowl.” If the elves knew something about it, then maybe it could help him find Marisi, or learn his plans. But even if they didn’t, the presence of the dragonscale bowl surely meant danger.
One of the elf attendants retrieved it. “Anima,” he said. “It’s a spell vessel.”
“What’s a spell vessel?” Ajani asked. The attendant had called her the Anima, Ajani realized. He knew little of elf culture, but he knew that the Anima was a place of honor among the elves—a leader, but not like a kha, more like a high shaman. The elves, particularly the Anima, were said to know far stranger mysteries than even the eldest nacatl shamans. “If you’re the Anima, then you might know something about it that I don’t,” said Ajani.
The Anima took the bowl and inspected it with a frown on her face. Her eyes had a light gray haze over them. Ajani wondered if she could see at all, but then she looked straight at him—coldly “I am Mayael, Wild Nacatl Ajani,” she said. “The current Anima. But I suspect you know more than I about this. A spell vessel is an artifact used to hold magical energies and to spread them. But I’ve not seen one like this. Have you brought it to our valley?”
“No,” said Ajani hastily. “But I’ve seen one that’s similar. It caused evil magic among my people. I fear it will do the same among yours.”
“Or it already has,” said Mayael. “How do we know that its magic hasn’t caused these earthquakes? That you haven’t planted it here to harm us, or to learn our secrets?”
Ajani spread his hands. “Listen, I don’t mean to pry into your affairs. The vessel was not my doing, but I believe it was the nacatl who I sought earlier who put it here. He’s dangerous, and so I believe is this artifact—I think we should all leave this valley, and soon.”
“We cannot, and will not,” said Mayael. “We have been culling the signs since the last moon, and we must stay here until we learn the truth. We must consult Progenitus for guidance, here and now. So you must leave. And take your artifact with you.”
They handed Ajani the dragonscale bowl and his axe, and sent him out of the valley. He wished they would listen. The oily, interlocking scales of the bowl—a spell vessel, the elf had called it—were of otherworldly origin; of that he was convinced.
Ajani walked up the slope out of the elves’ valley, despondent. Things were unraveling for him day by day. Jazal was gone. The “warrior hero” of legend, Marisi, was alive, but was somehow involved in Jazal’s death, and a lying fraud. There were four worlds just beyond the edges of his own, and for reasons he feared to contemplate, his world was experiencing earthquakes greater than the footfalls of the gargantuans.
He could chase Marisi into the mountains and try to find out more about his role on the night Jazal had died. He could trudge back to the den and pore over more of Jazal’s documents. After a moment, Ajani remembered: among his frantic words, Marisi had said a name. Nicol Bolas. He looked down at the black-scaled bowl in his hands.
NAYA
The elf prophetess Mayael knelt on the ground in front of the Relic of the hydra god, Progenitus. Her attendants arranged the train of her embroidered gown carefully on the grass, and sprinkled passion flower petals in a circle around their mistress. Two of the farseers, the young girls who were candidates to become Anima one day, began singing the traditional mantra to Progenitus.
Mayael had only traveled to the relic in person a few times, and felt strangely shy around it. It felt as if the red eye of Progenitus could see right into her soul.
There was no use feeling cowardly. She was the leader of the elves, and the prophetess for an entire world. The world was changing, and her people needed answers—and if anyone was meant