by Doug Beyer
Jazal jabbed the coals violently with the end of his axe handle. The fire hissed and popped, sending a cloud of sparks into the night air. Ajani had never seen Jazal make this kind of dramatic flourish, but it was stirring. Ajani watched the cinders rise up and mingle with the stars.
“Marisi’s heart burned with wildness,” Jazal said, beginning the recitation of the hadu. “When the leaders at Antali tried to stop him, he declared war on the leaders. When the strictures of the Coil tried to contain him, he declared war on the Coil. When the kha tried to condemn him, he declared war on the kha, and on every nacatl who denounced his wild way of life. Others saw his example and saw the truth of it. They saw how they could be more than they were, how the Coil had eaten away at their insides. They saw the truth in him, and they followed him. Marisi and his Claws, as his warriors were known, tore through the laws and through flesh alike. They created a revolution, and allowed the nacatl nation to break into two. On the one side, the Cloud Nacatl still cling to the broken stone words of the Coil, up in the misty mountains. On the other, the Wild Nacatl, to which we belong”—many of the pride cheered and raised their gnawed bones at this—“keep the animal soul alive in the nacatl heart.”
It struck Ajani that although the tale of Marisi was going well, Jazal seemed preoccupied. He was gesturing wildly with his axe, which Ajani thought the pride must be taking as warrior spirit. But Ajani knew that Jazal never swung a weapon recklessly, and that it must mean something was bothering him.
“The two can never be severed from one another,” said Jazal. “The Nacatl people are both head and heart. Although tonight we honor Marisi, fallen hero of the Breaking of the Coil, we must also think of those who live up in the cloud jungles on the mountain slopes, and thank them for their contribution to our identities.”
The pride cheered again, but uncertainly, as Jazal’s words veered from the usual Festival traditions. Jazal didn’t look down at the crowd, Ajani noticed, but up at the night sky.
Jazal had proven himself time and again as a fierce fighter, but in some ways, he was the furthest from being a Marisian hero of anyone in their pride. In his private moments with Ajani, Jazal shared insights that revealed the profound depths of his mind—doubts about the heroism of Marisi, and doubts even about the schism that had divided the Nacatl race.
Someone else seemed distracted as well. Ajani noticed that his shaman friend Zaliki had not cheered with the others, which was strange—the Festival was her favorite celebration of the year. Even stranger, she rose and slipped away into the darkness, going off by herself in the middle of the hadu, the pride’s greatest moment of community.
Something was troubling Zaliki—perhaps it was Ajani himself. Ajani knew he had been short with her before, ungrateful in the face of her healing and advice. As Jazal continued to speak, Ajani decided to follow her.
She moved up and up, climbing the trails that zigzagged back and forth across the cliff face that formed the pride’s den. Ajani followed her, watching her pass the cavern entrances of lair after lair. She moved with her usual grace and silence, the deep auburn stripes on her back crisscrossing in the torchlight.
Zaliki entered the cavern set highest into the cliff-side—Jazal’s lair. Again, that was strange. When he entered, Ajani startled her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I saw you leave from the fireside. Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I merely wanted to … retrieve this, my talisman.” She held one of her shamanic talismans in her hand, the one that Jazal had given her, braided with the fur from his own mane. “I was counseling the kha earlier, and … I left it here.”
Ajani cocked an eyebrow at her. “Not enjoying the speech tonight?” he asked.
“No, no, it’s not that. Just the talisman. And to get some fresh air. Look … Ajani … I should go. I need to be alone. You go back and enjoy the hadu. I’ll talk to you again later.”
“All right,” was all Ajani managed before she left. As she swept past him, she bumped into some of Jazal’s belongings, knocking them over onto the cave floor. She paused, but left in a hurry.
Ajani could see that she was not her graceful self—something was definitely wrong. But if she didn’t want to open up to him about it, there wasn’t much Ajani could do.
It was only after she had left that Ajani saw the markings on the wall of Jazal’s lair, revealed when Zaliki had knocked down a fur hanging. They were simple chalk sketches of a white lion’s face. As he looked, he saw several versions of the white lion in a stack of scrolls on the floor of Jazal’s lair, each one bearing strange notes in Jazal’s hand. Every sketch had the same distinguishing features: white fur, and a missing left eye. And there was an older scroll on the floor, yellowed and aged, bearing markings written in human script. It showed the symbol of the one-eyed white lion’s face too. His face—as if the humans truly had been hunting him in particular.
There was another scroll in Jazal’s script, apparently a translation of the humans’ one.
The gods’ anger shook all of Naya, and the gods stampeded through the jungle. The people offered breadnut and guava, but the gods’ anger remained, and the gods stampeded over the mountains. The next day the people offered jade and the feathers of griffins, but the gods’ anger remained, and the gods stampeded across the lowlands. The next day the people offered the pelt of the white lion, and the gods were satisfied, and rested once more.
It was as if the humans thought Ajani was part of their religion, some symbol of appeasement for the gargantuans they worshipped. Ajani knew the gargantuans weren’t gods—they were just overlarge, dumb beasts. Still, he wasn’t surprised that the furless ones wished for some way to appease them. The humans had elaborate cities of stone and wood, and the gargantuans had never made accommodating neighbors.
Ajani had never seen those things before, all that research. Jazal must have been collecting the items for years, and keeping them from him. His mind fought with itself, trying to piece together what he was seeing while avoiding coming up with an answer. His confusion and evasion turned to anger. What was it all? What was Jazal hiding from him? Why would his brother lie?
JUND
Kresh peered over the rocky ledge, down into the volcanic cavern. It was hard to see the dragon at first, despite its size; its scales matched the texture and color of the rocky cavern floor, and its body snaked between huge stalactites and basalt columns. Vents smoldered throughout the cavern, offering windows down into the lava only a short distance below the floor. Only once Kresh saw the subtle rhythm of the dragon’s breathing was he able to determine its contours.
He felt excitement in his veins. He had never seen a dragon so large before. Even thin splinters of its teeth would make grand trophies to weave into his braids.
He motioned for the others to draw nearer. Rakka, the newcomer Sarkhan Vol, and the rest of his warriors approached to get a look for themselves.
“Is it asleep?” whispered Rakka.
Kresh stifled a laugh, and saw Sarkhan grin, too. “Dragons this big don’t sleep,” Kresh whispered at her. “Its skin drinks the essence of fire from the mountain. It probably knows we’re here already.”
“Then why hasn’t it attacked?” Rakka asked.
“We’re no threat,” said Kresh, looking down at the mighty beast. “Yet.”
“If you’re going to summon us some help,” said Sarkhan in a low voice, “now would be the time.”
Rakka nodded and began removing components from her bag.
Kresh motioned for his warriors to fan out, and they began creeping along the ledge. They spread in an arc across quarter of the cavern, and each of them readied a spear with a tip of obsidian, which gleamed like frozen smoke. Kresh swelled with pride at the sight of his warriors. Other humans cowered in the low valleys when dragons threatened their territory, but his clan took the fight directly to the source, without fear or hesitation.
Sarkhan had his staff held horizontally, and was chanting under his bre
ath. It was handy to have another warrior along, Kresh thought, especially one who had some magic in his heart. Kresh had watched Sarkhan on their journey through the mountains, and knew that the stranger’s role was going to be as important as Rakka’s in their fight. He wasn’t as adept with forming creatures from fire and stone as Rakka, but his presence seemed to stir the coals inside warriors’ hearts even more than Kresh himself. It was no cause for envy; it was going to take a powerful fury for their fleshy human bodies to overcome the armor-scaled beast down below, and if Sarkhan could provide that fury, so it would be.
The dragon stirred. Its tail wound around one of the floor-to-ceiling columns, and Kresh thought he could see its nostrils flaring slightly. Its nose would be full of their scent.
Kresh shot a look at Rakka. She was still assembling her spell components. “Aren’t you ready yet?” he hissed at her.
Her body language was frantic. “Go,” she whispered. “Start without me.”
“We can’t,” said Kresh. “After we throw, we need to rush for its belly. Your rock-men were going to help us down there.”
“I’ll figure something else out,” Rakka said. “Just go, before it decides we’re a threat and blasts us out of here. I’ll get you down there one way or another.”
“Fine with me,” said Kresh. He glanced at Sarkhan. “You?”
Sarkhan grasped his staff tightly and gave a sharp nod.
Without warning, Kresh let out a scream that shook the cavern. The dragon tensed, and its claws gripped big chunks of the cavern floor. Kresh launched his spear down at it, and the rest of his warriors all screamed and followed suit. A hail of black-tipped spears rained down on the dragon as it snapped its wings out, forming a curving, scaly shield.
Most of the spears glanced off the scales and bounced away, but a few of them pierced through its wings. The hellkite made a furious inhaling sound and gathered up its body and breath to attack, knocking through several stalactites with its limbs.
Sarkhan finished his spell with a primitive shout. Kresh felt his heart explode with passion, a feeling of breathless fervency, a feeling that he could rip the dragon apart with his bare hands. He saw his warriors light up with the same surge of emotion as they all drew swords.
With his vision tinged by the craze of Sarkhan’s spell, Kresh was not bothered about the height of the ledge. He and his warriors ran straight over the edge as if time and gravity had no meaning, screaming at the top of their lungs, propelled horizontally by the force of their fury to meet the dragon.
Only after his feet had pushed off from the ledge did Kresh have an impulse to turn his head back at Rakka—not out of concern for the small problem of gravity and the fifty-foot drop, but to share eye contact in the instant of breathless glory. And what he saw was Rakka as he had never seen her: eyes ablaze, hair floating in a tornadic tangle, her mouth bent in a terrible grimace, her hands stretched out as if to push the warrior clan over the ledge by the sheer force of her will.
BANT
Mubin stepped forward into the arena and brandished his prized mace. His opponents, the squires of the three mercenaries Rafiq would fight, stepped forward as well. As they advanced, the audience fell quiet, allowing Mubin to hear the crunch of the gravel below his feet.
The Jhessians circled the great rhinolike rhox, their distance from him proportional to their respect for his abilities. Mubin allowed himself a deep grunt of satisfaction. He was proud of his membership in the Order of the Reliquary—as few rhoxes could claim—and the Order praised his scholarly contributions to the research of ancient relics. But standing on his own two feet, with a weapon and shield in his hands, glowering at three foes who were determined to destroy him, he was truly in his element. He hadn’t as many sigils as Rafiq of the Many, of course, but the ones he wore were well deserved. He knew that the young Jhessians had been spared little by not having to face his companion.
The youths spread out around him, trying to trap him in a triangle. His bulk should have made him slower than the young humans, but they were unused to their front-fitted armor, while his strength let him maneuver easily. He tested them, striking at one of them sideways with his mace, but the Jhessian stepped just enough to let her armor deflect the blow. One of them lunged at Mubin with a sharp sword, but Mubin was able to snap his shield into place to protect his flank. Metal sparked against metal.
One Jhessian yelled out and charged Mubin. Mubin turned, yielding no ground and setting for the attack. It was a ruse—the other two ran around to Mubin’s flank and pounced on his weapon arm. Mubin let the mace fall from his fingers and focused on the charging combatant. Instead of deflecting the charger’s attack with his shield, he thrust forward with his free hand, grabbed his foe’s sword arm and twisted the sword free. As he disarmed the man, he followed through by bringing his elbow up into the Jhessian’s jaw. There was a mighty crunch, and the youth fell away, disarmed and clutching his face. Mubin turned and, using his rotation to build momentum, threw the newly-acquired sword at a second foe. It sailed end over end and struck its target full in the chest with the pommel, knocking her down. He then charged at the third foe, who was trying to lift Mubin’s fallen mace. Mubin put his head down and listened as he charged. He heard the crunch of the man’s boots and the scrape of the mace against the gravel, and aimed for the noise. He ran full-bore into the Jhessian, denting the man’s ceremonial armor deeply with his nose horn and lifting him up and over his head as he charged underneath. The Jhessian landed roughly on his shoulder and rolled in pain.
Mubin pulled up, and turned around to face his three foes once more.
“We yield,” they said to the judge.
The judge raised his hand and looked to Aarsil the Blessed. She nodded. “The first encounter goes for the defendant,” said the judge. “Plaintiff’s champions and defendant’s champion, please step forward for the final encounter of the match.”
NAYA
Ajani returned to the bonfire to hear Jazal finishing the hadu.
“Antali was the capital of all nacatl in the world,” Jazal was saying. “And the Claws of Marisi destroyed it. Now our race has no capital, no center of oppression. We are once again wildcats of the jungle, free, as in times of old. We have no stone columns supporting roofs to come between us and the stars. We have no metal spikes to anchor down artificial floors, to come between us and the earth. Marisi swept that all away, leaving a glorious ruin in his wake, for the sake of all of us. And for him, in turn, we remember the hadu.” Then, as the pride waited for the final phrase, Jazal’s voice became a low, grinding snarl. “To Marisi.”
“To Marisi!” chanted the crowd, and they cheered and ate.
Ajani joined Jazal as he stepped down from the dais, and clapped him on the back in a forced gesture of camaraderie. Ajani tried to look him in the eyes, to see if he could find a trace of the secrets Jazal had kept from him.
“To Marisi, eh, brother?”
Instead Jazal nodded, his mind elsewhere. “Right, yes,” he said. “To the glory of the hero Marisi.”
Ajani pressed him. “What’s on your mind, brother? Something you want to tell me?”
“No, it’s nothing, Ajani. You’re a good brother. But it’s late, and I’m just tired from the speech. I’m going to turn in. Have a good time at the rest of the festival.”
Jazal left him and went back to his lair. Ajani had all the pride around him, except for the only ones he considered his family. He decided he deserved some of that roast behemoth after all. He tore a piece off and took it back to his lair, where his sleep was tortured by evil dreams.
BANT
Rafiq felt the weight of the ceremonial breastplate like the rough embrace of a tarnished soldier, one that wore ruts in his shoulders that grew deeper every year. It yanked down on him with every step as he advanced into the arena, and caused his dozens of small, burnished sigil medallions to jounce and glitter in the morning light. It was what it meant to be a paladin, he thought: honorable combat on the field o
f battle; the chance to become the instrument of the angels in the cause of justice; the chance to put one’s mettle and faith on the line in a struggle that would end in defeat or glory.
As the crowd cheered, Rafiq looked around at the frescoes that lined the arena, and imagined himself fighting the mythical creatures depicted there, as those brave, two-dimensional knights did. Instead he was fighting three Mortar-caste youths who were fighting for little more than a meal and could barely walk in their armor. Well, he thought, not every battle was for supreme glory. Perhaps that was part of the life of a paladin as well.
The three Jhessian champions stepped forward and bowed, then assumed battle stances. Rafiq followed suit, and the audience went silent. The three youths stood shoulder-to-shoulder in formation, each one covering the defensive gaps of the others, creating a kind of pointy armored object with their three polished swords sticking out. As he neared, Rafiq could see that their swords were indeed enchanted. Their edges looked razor sharp, and glowing glyphs played up and down the blades. If that wasn’t blunting magic, then the combatants were in blatant violation of the rules.
Before Rafiq had a chance to hail for an inspection, the Jhessian champions burst forth in a flurry of attacks. They broke their formation oddly, one of them going to Rafiq’s left flank while another retreated several paces, while the third plunged straight into Rafiq’s sword range. Rafiq gave ground, parrying and defending with his shield while preventing the flank attack. He tried a counterattack at the Jhessian who had charged him, but his opponent’s sword was already back to defend, an almost instantaneous parry. The Jhessian swiveled his wrist in a bold attempt to disarm Rafiq while the one to his left lunged strongly. Rafiq dealt with both by rotating his body, bringing his shield up to deflect the blow and to bash the other in the chin, sending them both reeling back.