Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [82]
The Prayer of Asha, he decided, asked for Bant to come together like fingers in a fist.
Mubin realized where he had heard the prayer before. The word choice, the meter, the imagery—it was familiar, And he finally grasped where he had seen it last.
He picked up the small copper bell on the side table and rung it. The noise was frustratingly pathetic.
He waited. No one came.
He had to get across the country, that day, he thought, and that was what he was reduced to? The little prayer bell mocked him. He was a grown rhox, hundreds of pounds of solid muscle, and he couldn’t walk to the door, get on his steed, and ride where he needed to go.
He looked up at the window. It was at eye level, for a standing person, across the room on the opposite wall. Daylight and a scene of serene trees shone through it, and the promise of being heard. That window was the key.
He threw the bell at the window. It bounced off the glass and landed on the floor with a jangling sound. The thin copper instrument just didn’t have enough mass to crack the glass.
He would have to drag himself across the floor, and then raise himself up somehow.
“I can do it,” he said to himself.
He leaned over the side of the bed and pulled on the headboard, lurching his body to the edge of the bed. He craned an arm out to reach the floor, and his weight slumped partway onto it He was poised delicately halfway out of the bed, halfway on the floor. The muscles in his arm strained.
By inching his arm farther out, he pulled his bulk closer to the verge of the drop-off. He lifted his hips, pulled them, and rested them again, so that they teetered on the edge.
He inhaled and exhaled, and steeled his resolve.
He pushed off the bed, letting his hips and legs fall. His lower body was dead weight; it free-fell to the hard wooden floor, smacking down loudly. He expected pain, but felt none—it just looked bad. His legs looked strange, having fallen haphazardly against each other. He straightened them with his hands, and then he collapsed, heaving breaths.
Why couldn’t they just hear the damned bell? On the other hand, why had he given up on the tiny, tinkling instrument so quickly? He could be resting comfortably in bed, ringing its little heart out, waiting for a cleric to come. Instead he was on the floor, and the bell was on the other side of the room somewhere.
He needed to go. There was no time for him to waste feeling sorry for himself.
He eyed the window. He pushed up on his elbows, then with a mighty shove, flopped himself over onto his stomach. He was facing the wall at the head of the bed, opposite the window. He did a push-up, then began moving hand over hand in a gradual arc around to the opposite wall.
His legs trailed after him. He was useless on land, he thought. He should just drag himself to the ocean and become a fish, flopping his tail about in the sea.
He pushed himself up onto his arms, then collapsed forward onto his face, gaining a few inches. He performed the ritual over and over again. When did he become so incredibly heavy?
Next came the hard part. His head was below the window, and the glass was high out of reach. Perhaps he should just gore the wall with his horn, he thought. If he missed the stud, he could probably make it through the layers of wood and shingle in an hour or so, and the sound might be enough to attract someone.
No good. It was the window or nothing.
He turned back to the bed, facing the foot, a few feet from the wall with the window. The bed’s nearest post was tall enough that if he could lift his weight on it, he could probably fall toward the wall and reach the window.
He grasped the bedpost, got a firm grip, and pulled.
The bed skidded toward him.
Mubin blurted out three select and deeply obscene words. For a moment, he actually hoped there were no clerics within earshot.
He would have to do it carefully. If he could lean in to the bedpost, and pull himself close enough to the post to push