Alara Unbroken

by Doug Beyer

  Ajani struggled, but claws gripped his limbs and turned him, slamming him onto his back. Tenoch’s gang held Ajani’s arms and legs fast, leaving his torso open and vulnerable. The dust of the brawl did little to obscure his stark white fur—it shone in the jungle shade as it always had.

  Tenoch leaned over him, his face hanging upside down above Ajani’s own. He brandished Ajani’s axe handle, retrieved from the beast. He held it near the head, wielding the long handle like a bloody, pointed club.

  “What’s the matter?” said Tenoch. “Scared of your own stick? Scared of a little trouble? What’re you going to do? Run to your brother, and tell him how scared you were of your own pridemates? Oh, I know. You’ll probably have him punish us, won’t you?”

  Ajani’s face was pure intensity. “I won’t,” he said.

  “Oh, I think you will. I can see it in your eyes! You’ll have the kha punish us. You’ll have us banished as part of your celebration of Marisi, you little freak! And that’s why we have to defend ourselves.”

  Tenoch brought the axe handle up above his head, and with a crazy look in his eye, beat Ajani in the chest.

  Ajani couldn’t evade the blow, and it struck true and deep, punishing his already battle-weary body. He choked on tiny breaths, clenching his gut muscles in an attempt to find air. There would be pain later, but Ajani only felt the sense of drowning. It was like falling into a pit, and seeing the sun dwindle away into the vertical distance—except that Tenoch’s face stayed right in front of him, upside down and smirking.

  “He can’t take it, men. He’s going down from just one. Imagine what two will do?”

  There was another blow, a dull thud that reverberated through his organs. It felt like his chest was breaking in two. As he gasped for air, Ajani stared into Tenoch’s eyes. The vertical pupils danced up and down as Tenoch laughed, the sound stabbing like knives. In the center of each eye Ajani could see tiny reflections of his own white furred face, which gave him the odd sense that he was falling into them, falling into Tenoch’s mind.

  In a flash, Ajani saw past the eyes. He saw past the soft tissue of the orbs, past the skull and the wrinkly matter behind it. He saw Tenoch’s essence, the pith of his character, as if it were written plainly in the air above him. He felt the recurring rhythms of Tenoch’s life, a series of tests of his honor and integrity, beating around his own mind like the throbbing of crickets. He experienced Tenoch’s suffering, his guilt, and the crushing expectations of his mother. He felt Tenoch’s pangs of envy at every success enjoyed by those more capable than him—including Jazal and Ajani. Tenoch’s soul was a sculpture, carved away from a state of amorphous youth into the person he was, day by day and choice by choice. His soul was a masterpiece, just as beautiful as any work of art Ajani had ever seen.

  Ajani’s breath had finally returned. He lay there, heaving breaths, little jabs of pain striking through his lungs on every inhale.

  Tenoch looked at him, frowning. “What is it, freak?”

  How could he tell him what he had seen?

  Ajani couldn’t help but smile a little smile. “Tenoch, I see you,” he said.

  Tenoch’s head reared back slightly, then his eyes flared. “What the hell did you just say to me?” Tenoch demanded.

  “I see you,” said Ajani. “The truth inside you.”

  That was the wrong thing to say, of course. It was too strange, too intimate a thing for the victim to say to his bully, and Ajani knew it as he said it. The beating that followed was all the more brutal because of it. But the blows felt almost irrelevant next to the vision. As unconsciousness gripped him, Ajani tried to recreate it. The more he tried to call back the images, the more they faded. The pain from the thrashing took over, and darkness followed.

  When he woke, Tenoch and his gang were gone. The behemoth was a stripped carcass, all the best meat taken. His axe was lying next to him, its handle in splinters. His whole body throbbed with pain, and there were patches of his own blood staining his white fur.

  Even in the teeming paradise of Naya, he was alone yet again. There was nothing to do but take up his broken axe and head back to the den.

  BANT

  It’s not every day you get to be the hand of prophecy, thought Gwafa Hazid.

  As his caravan crept its way over a hill, he saw the four white spires of the castle—their destination—emerging into view. The pace was annoying him, so he gave an extra whip-crack to the leotau pulling his wagon. The lion-headed steed looked back at him with something resembling resentment, so he whipped it one more time. It dropped its head and pulled the wagon. Yes, a day of prophecy. A day when he, Gwafa Hazid, would deliver a spell that would kick-start the fate of the entire world. It was a good day.

  The checkpoint had been troublesome business. A knight-inspector’s corpse was not exactly the cargo Hazid wanted cluttering up his caravan. And perhaps he had been rash to leave his man Ghedi all alone, bound to a horse, in the middle of the Akrasan plains. But these were details, mere insects when compared to the giant stature of his plan. How could he question his own judgment at this point? Every detail folded together perfectly. It wouldn’t be long before every one of his choices throughout his life would be vindicated.

  Couldn’t this blasted cat go any faster? “We’re approaching the castle, sir,” said one of his guards on horseback.

  “Good,” said Hazid. “Ready the chanters.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The castle rose into view like a white whale breaching the surface of the sea. Glimmering buttresses capped with towers of gold reached for the sun, and the wind pushed waves of brilliance across Akrasa’s ocean of brown grass. It was among Akrasa’s first citadels, and was still the largest. The four towers supported a central stronghold, and lifted it high off the ground to symbolize the elevated nature of the higher castes. Hazid had no problem with that notion of social order; he got what he wanted out of it by preying on the rules upon which it ran. In effect, Hazid’s entire career was based on identifying those strong, supporting towers upon which all of society rested. Once those foundational supports were breached, the spoils were always left hanging, defenseless, in the middle of the open air.

  “Sir, a contingent of knights approaches from the castle,” said Hazid’s guard.

  “What’s the status of the chanters?”

  “Ready, sir.”

  “Fine, then. Begin forming the circle. Direct the knights to me.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  He saw them: humans and rhoxes, their armor gleaming in the sun, riding in formation across the grass to his wagon. He made a point of waving cheerfully. Meanwhile, the other wagons in his caravan, dozens of them, split off and began encircling the castle. They had to drive off the road, and many of the horses and leotau stumbled as they broke into the high grass. But their wheels cut lines through the fields, and began forming a curve.

  “Halt, please, sir,” said the lead knight, a young woman of about twenty.

  “Yes, of course. Good day, my dear,” said Hazid. He halted his wagon. “The famous Giltspire Castle. It’s more beautiful than the last time I was in Akrasa—how could this be? Could the Amesha have blessed the citadel recently? I must say, the shine on the towers is intoxicating.”

  “Manifest, please,” said the knight.

  “Of course, of course. Here you are, my dear. Signed and stamped by your own Sir … Hadadir, was it?”

  The knight squinted at the stamp. “You saw Sir Hadadir? He hasn’t checked in for some time.”

  “Such a pity, that! And he was so punctual with our inspection.”

  “Can you tell me what happened when you obtained this stamp?” asked the knight.

  Careful, thought Hazid. Ghedi may have been discovered already; or worse, the insolent dolt may have sought help himself, and told the whole story. Still, Hazid couldn’t resist a little embellishment. “My old servant Ghedi, that misguided bastard, decided that your Hadadir was the man who’d had a fling with his wife. No tr
uth to it, you understand—although cuckoled he was, that part’s true—but Ghedi got it in his head that the border man was the one. That’s Ghedi for you. I knew he’d come to nothing. He took one look at that Sir Hadadir and went for him with a blade the size of my arm. Hadadir ran off, and we left Ghedi behind.”

  The knight inspected the seal on the manifest, then looked up at Hazid’s rapidly expanding caravan. The farthest wagons had already looped halfway around the castle, but approaching them were rhino-faced rhox knights bearing pikes and axes. “This is a serious matter,” she said. “I’m going to have to ask you to step down from the wagon, Mr. Hazid. Please tell your caravan drivers to halt their wagons, now.”

  “I’d love to, but I’m afraid they’re stone deaf, and willful besides,” said Hazid. Hurry up, he thought. Get that circle in place, and we can make history with this spell. If the wagons didn’t get into place soon, they were in danger of missing their chance, and Hazid would never rule his own country. “Listen, if I could just ask you, what the market hours are in Giltspire? I was hoping we could—”

  “Quiet, Mr. Hazid. Knight-Sergeant! Stop those wagons. Strike down anyone who refuses.”

  “Now or never,” muttered Hazid. He leaped onto the leotau at the front of his wagon, picked up the reins, and slashed the bindings that held the animal to the wagon with his sword. The leotau roared and bucked, but Hazid dug his heels into its ribs and held on. With one good whip of the reins, the leotau took off at a full gallop.

  The chanters droned loudly, their mouths fully open all around the circle. Human and rhox knights threatened them with sharpened steel, but never advanced. The chanters’ spell held them in a sort of dazed inaction, and besides, their kind of mass disobedience was unheard of, and more than a little frightening.

  Hazid rode hard around the circle, whistling sharply. It was all coming together. One by one, mages inside the wagons threw off the tarps after hearing the signal. Inscribed in the wood inside each wagon was a mystic circle, and after exposing them to the light, each mage sat inside his or her circle and began casting the spell that would propel Hazid into history.

  That’s when the castle began to crack.

  Hazid didn’t notice the destruction at first. He was too excited, riding at a full gallop around to each of his mages, and wrapped up in the idea that he was actually going to pull the spell off. But it was unmistakable once he saw an enormous slab of one of the white cylinders break off and crash to the ground. Fractures chased one another up the towers. One by one, all but one collapsed in on itself. The citadel that was suspended by the four towers fell with them, exploding in a cloud of pulverized stone.

  All the knights and mages fell silent and watched in horror. Hazid pulled his leotau to a stop. His jaw sagged open, and spittle collected in his mouth. The impact reached them in a wind of dust and noise blasting past, and little flecks of the castle peppered Hazid’s face. After the wind subsided and the cloud dispersed, the castle was gone. Only one tower remained; or rather, a sharp, brilliantly white, conical obelisk remained—a structure which must have been hidden under the northwest spire for centuries.

  It can’t be happening, thought Hazid.

  “What have I done?” he said aloud.

  He dropped the reins and looked at his hands, turning them over and over, looking for an answer he would never find.

  JUND

  It was dawn, a state recognizable by a dim red glow through the ashchoked skies over Mount Jhal. Insects the size of Rakka’s arm buzzed by in force. Her satchel of herbs and sangrite paints jangled on her back, making her shoulders ache, but there was a long way to go before she could put it down.

  The clan had already made it deep into Palehide Thrash territory under cover of darkness. Although they hadn’t seen any viashino yet, already the undergrowth had given way to crunchy volcanic pebbles. It was exhausting to constantly slip in the pebble-slides, so they kept their footing with spiked saurid-leather boots and hiking staves.

  They walked a thin trail between two vast, bubbling tar pits, so large that the opposite sides were invisible in the fumes of the morning. The foul stench burned Rakka’s lungs.

  “Shh,” hissed Kresh suddenly. The clan stopped and huddled down on the thin strip of land between the tar pools. Watchers scanned the skies, but saw no reptilian silhouettes.

  “What is it?” whispered Rakka.

  The viashino heads looked like large bubbles at first. The tar bloated and spat forth a dozen steaming viashino warriors. Only their eyes and onyx axes were visible through the oily muck.

  “Ambush!” Kresh barely had time to say.

  The viashino hissed like volcanic vents and pounced on the clan. Three of the watchers were dragged down screaming in seconds. Kresh swung with his sword, cleaving a viashino clean in half and grimacing as hot tar spattered his chest.

  Rakka snarled at an attacker that had crept up from behind. Its tongue oscillated in its mouth; its teeth were a hundred barbs. Rakka put her back to the rest of the clan, protecting her satchel of spell components, and brandished her hiking staff. The lizard man tested her with a quick snap of its axe. She deflected the blow and returned it with a sharp crack to the creature’s forward leg. It shuffled back along the strip of land between the tar pools.

  Behind her she heard screams, clangs, and ugly wet crunching sounds. She pressed forward, intending to buy herself some space to summon a minion to give her a little advantage. Instead the viashino let her come, and another one grabbed her leg from the tar. Rakka gritted her teeth as her skin sizzled. “All right then,” she muttered. “No time to do this fancy. Let’s just bring the pain.”

  Rakka raised her staff, took a deep breath, and screamed two syllables of power into the air. Her staff broke into shards of obsidian, raining down all around her. The shards writhed where they fell on the volcanic ground or the surface of the tar. Each obsidian shard was expanding, adding new facets and edges to itself.

  She turned to the viashino at her leg and unsheathed a scimitar. Before she could swing at the creature’s wrist, though, it yanked hard on her leg, dropping her to within inches of the boiling tar. The viashino yanked again, dragging her across the volcanic pebbles to the other pool of tar.

  She kicked hard, catching the viashino full in the face with a satisfying thud, and it let go her ankle. She scrambled to her feet just in time to parry the axe of the first viashino that had attacked her.

  The shards of her staff were spiky clods of black crystal. Two of them had grown huge, sprouting limblike projections and were towering over the viashino despite standing in the tar.

  “Kill them!” Rakka commanded.

  The obsidian elementals had no heads or sensory organs to speak of. As such, they didn’t need turn to face the viashino attackers; instead, spikes of obsidian erupted in the direction of their master’s enemies, and the elementals simply lurched. Two viashino were impaled immediately.

  Rakka fell back and let the elementals close between her and the viashino. She hazarded a glance behind her, thinking she’d be in the center of the fray—but instead she saw that she’d been cut off and isolated from her clan, who battled back the viashino several paces off. A viashino leaped at her with an onyx-tipped spear, but she chopped hard, and shattered the spear into pieces. Weaponless, the viashino pounced on her. Its claws came down on her back and shoulders. She yelled out as it dragged open long gashes in her back, and sliced her satchel clean away. She turned quickly, adrenaline augmenting her strength. Her scimitar sliced the creature’s belly clean open, and it slumped into the tar, dragging her satchel with it.

  “No!”

  Rakka watched in horror as the satchel sank into the bubbling tar. She knew her obsidian elemental minions would puncture the thing if they tried to touch it, and its contents would mix hopelessly with the tar. She tried to steel herself to plunge her arm down to grab the satchel, but she already knew the pain of the boiling tar from her ankle, and she couldn’t make herself do it. Her miss
ion was sinking in a tar pit.

  “Get the herbs!” Kresh shouted.

  One of Kresh’s warriors screamed crazily and dived into the tar after the satchel. Rakka heard his flesh crackle. Somehow, in a wild, thrashing motion, the man tossed the satchel onto the pebbles at Rakka’s feet. He made no sound as a viashino submerged him.

  The satchel was smoking, the leather blackened through, but the contents were only singed. Rakka carefully pulled the herbs out, gathered them into a fresh piece of leather, and bound them up again. She gently tucked them into her shirt.

  After the last of the viashino had been finished off by Kresh’s warriors, Rakka’s elementals fell back into the tar and disappeared. She realized the survivors were all watching her. “How many did we lose?” she asked.

  “Many,” said Kresh. “Eight of our thirty. We’ll need to go back and get fresh men.”

  “No,” said Rakka. “The ritual. It … I need to summon the elementals today.”

  “You summoned five elementals just now, without the herbs!” said one of the warriors.

  “Those things killed my brother!” said another.

  Kresh was sizing her up, waiting for her response.

  “I … Those were just simple minions. I need to summon the elements of pure fury from under the mountain, in order to defeat the dragon.”

  The warriors murmured.

  “That’s enough,” snapped Kresh. The warriors fell silent. But his eyes were only on Rakka.

  BANT

  The arena was the finest in the nation of Jhess, a grand stadium with enough tiered benches to seat hundreds of well-wishers. Fine frescoes painted knights fighting mythical creatures such as dragons, gargoyles, and demons. The statue of an empty throne, a model of the sacred throne of the revered archangel Asha, crowned the flag tower, the statue’s white marble gleaming in the sunlight.