by Doug Beyer
The cat-man’s eyes opened briefly, and then fluttered closed again. He appeared to be having a hard time holding onto consciousness.
“Lie still. Help will be coming soon. Though I’m young, I’ve spent time on several worlds. None has been so perfect, so welcoming as this. For the first time, I’ve found a place I can love and trust. I belong here. And you will too. You’ll be able to do what you’ve always wanted, like I have.”
The leonin stirred. Ajani said something, but his voice was too low to hear.
“What?” said Elspeth. “Yes? You can tell me. What is it you want to do here?”
“Leave,” said Ajani.
Ajani tried not to groan. The healers had used more needle and thread than the young human woman had told him, and less magic. Every day they would rewrap his left arm and dress his wounds anew, and say a few low chants. The wounds were closing day by day, and his bones were knitting, but his pain went largely untreated. In the jungle, Ajani thought, they would make a bitter drink from the sap of the wandili frond, and the pain would be gone as he healed. But his caretakers seemed to regard the pain as good for his progress. They used his pain diagnostically, prodding him in places they knew would hurt, just to gauge the degree of his reaction. At times, he reacted very badly.
His caretakers, along with the rest of the people on the world, spoke in a strange dialect. It was unfamiliar and droning to his ears, but understandable, which surprised him. It was as if their language and Ajani’s own had been birth-brothers, twins, but had become isolated from each other, and had grown up segregated for so long that they were almost strangers to one another. He often had to repeat himself several times to be understood, which led him to use only simple words. He felt like an idiot doing that, so most of the time he said nothing. The clerics brought him what they thought his body needed, and he didn’t argue.
They fed him strange things. He ate salty gourds and cakes made from coarse grains. There were fruits, but they weren’t the succulent jungle fruits that he was used to. Most of them were hardy and fibrous, with tough skins. He tried one and stopped trying. He relished the meat they brought, but wondered what strange animals it might be made from.
He saw the knights’ steeds—hooved, quadrupedal cats. They looked like ancient pack-beast versions of his own family. He tried talking to one once, but it didn’t meet his gaze, and doing so only caused the knights nearby to snicker. Ajani felt overwhelming pity for the creatures, seeing them harnessed and saddled as they were. He wondered what the humans would think about some of the slow-witted, apelike behemoths of his own world.
The horizons took the most getting used to. There were no large mountains, and hardly any trees to interrupt the view, so the world seemed to go on and on. The sky was an overwhelming dome of relentless blue, rarely obscured by foliage. And he never failed to be dazzled by the luminous sea. Buildings soared, more shrines to winged women than they were residences, so vertical as to be seemingly weightless. He expected there to be graffiti along the bases of them, or at least creeping vines running up their steep sides, like the human-made buildings in his native jungles. There weren’t. Everything looked pristine. Ajani had frequent childish urges to smear mud on things, just to mess them up a little.
The human Elspeth pushed him the most. She wanted him to walk again, so that he could see all the things that enthralled her about Bant. She was a planeswalker, like he was himself and like Sarkhan had been, but seemed committed never to leave the world she had come upon.
“Do the others know that there are other worlds?” he asked her one day.
“No,” said Elspeth. “That I will never tell them. I only hope they don’t find out on their own.”
“How would they do that? I didn’t know myself, until a short time ago.”
“Well, you’re a bad precedent, for example.”
“But I’m a traveler from … the nation of ‘Jhess,’ wasn’t it?”
“A poor lie on my part. Jhessian refugees travel here frequently, and they look nothing like you.” “You could have just killed me.”
“That’s not what we do here. Although I think some of my knights were tempted. And anyway, even dead, you would still have been hard to explain. If you’re going to be evidence of something strange, you might as well be alive to prove you’re nothing to worry about.”
“How could you be sure I wouldn’t tear everybody’s throats out?”
She chuckled, looking over all of his bandages. “I’ve been meaning to thank you for that.”
Ajani frowned. “I’m still a threat. Maybe not with my claws. But a threat to what your people think and believe.”
“It’s true. That’s why you haven’t gone far without me. And I hand-picked the clerics who’ve been taking care of you, did you know that? They’re all people I trust, people who I know won’t take your wild tales too seriously, or spread them around, should you tell any.”
“I haven’t.”
“Thank you. I’m happy you’ve been so comfortable here.”
“Who says I’ve been comfortable here?”
“Well, aren’t you? The clerics say you’ve been an agreeable patient. They’re excited to treat you, even—you should hear the way they talk about you. I’d say you were doing some magic on them, if they weren’t apparently made so happy by it.”
“They’re good people, for humans. It’s no magic. But I’m only here because I can barely move, and because there’s no better help back on my own world. I’ve told you—I don’t intend to stay. When my wounds disappear, so will I.”
“And I’ve told you—you need to stay away from that world. You’ll just be inviting whatever happened to you there to happen again. Stay. I could always use another knight.”
He had to admit, it was nice to be part of a family. He wasn’t treated as a freak on Bant, white fur or no. And at least the humans didn’t seem inclined to hunt him. But as far as he could tell, he was the only nacatl. Jazal’s voice hadn’t spoken to him at all since his planeswalk, which put him on edge. He had to go back.
“I can’t stay,” said Ajani.
“You know, your torturing yourself won’t fix anything,” said Elspeth. “It’ll just cause your gifts to be wasted.” “You don’t understand. There are things I need to do.”
“Oh, I understand. You’re an idiot. You’re anxious to be away, to throw away all you’ve lucked into.” “Elspeth, wait.”
In his bandages, Ajani couldn’t stop her. She walked away.
A rhox monk led the chant. A circle of human clerics repeated after him. Ajani just lay still in the center. Their benevolence was embarrassing, but the healing was necessary.
“When the world’s body shakes, the hand of Asha is steady,” intoned the monk in a full-bodied Akrasan accent. The clerics repeated his words verse by verse. “When the world’s head burns, the hand of Asha is cool. When the world’s stomach churns, the hand of Asha is soothing.”
It was a prayer of healing, but unsettlingly dressed in the language of apocalypse. It made Ajani think of his vision during his planeswalk, of the five worlds, their edges blurring in the seething aether, their colors bleeding together. Was their truth in what he saw? Were the five worlds, including Elspeth’s and his own, becoming, somehow, one? He tried to brush the thought away. Worry about your wounds, he thought. Keep it simple. Focus on what you can actually change.
But the chant was so rhythmic, and its imagery so evocative, that Ajani’s mind strayed. He found himself visualizing the end times described in the prayer, a time of strife and cultural and geological upheaval. He imagined clashes of armies too vast to number, and great swaths of civilization swept under a deluge of destruction. He saw mages both familiar and strange, offering up feeble spells to the tide of war, draining their souls to conjure magics powerful enough to stop the monstrosity of war. He saw young soldiers take up arms and rally behind banners of hope. He saw creatures of every ilk massing at continental frontiers, bracing for the charge of a blast of e
vil. But in the end, it all came to nothing. Legions perished. Mighty leaders fell. Spells fell impotent against the surge of power that rushed outward from … from something.
“… the hand of Asha is gentle,” finished the monk, and the clerics repeated the final line of the chant after him.
The abrupt silence of the end of the chant jarred Ajani out of his reverie. He sat up, stretching muscles that hadn’t been flexed in many days.
“That’s all for today,” said the monk to the other clerics. They took turns bowing and smiling at Ajani, and filed out.
“Thank you,” said Ajani to them.
“Thank you, my friend,” said a feminine voice.
The rhox monk bowed to Elspeth at the door, and left.
Ajani looked up at her, still on the floor in the middle of the inscribed healing circle. “On my world, healing magic is faster. But it usually hurts more.”
“ ‘The hand of Asha is gentle,’ ” said Elspeth with a smile.
“My spine wasn’t fractured, is the latest news—I had cracked ribs, and blood loss, and damage in all kinds of bad places. They told me the whole list, but I lost track as they were speaking. But you should have seen me earlier—I was walking around. I’ll be dancing in no time.”
“That I would pay to see.”
“Elspeth, I—”
“It’s fine.”
“No. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful. I’m very grateful, and I’m sorry that I didn’t … That I don’t …”
“It’s all right. It’s my fault for pushing the issue. You have your reasons—it’s selfish for me to try to keep you here. You’re of course free to go.”
“If I had time, I would stay. There’s so much I could learn here. I just have to get back to my life, back home. Things are difficult right now. I just don’t have time to …”
“Waste. Here.”
“Right, no time to waste. You understand. I have to get back. I mean, even a Knight-Captain like you must feel attachments, things that call you to return home again?”
Her answer was quiet. “No.”
“Never?”
“Bant is my home now.”
“Well, I wish it all the best.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” “Nothing. I don’t know.”
“No, what is it? You meant something.”
Ajani stretched his muscles. The bandages pulled tight against the motion, but it felt good and strong to push himself again. “I meant … I assume you know …”
Elspeth’s face was blank.
“Maybe not,” said Ajani. “Have you seen what’s around here? Have you seen the … other parts of this world?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, other parts? I know there are other worlds.”
“No. I mean, there are other worlds connected with this one, each one different. I felt it on my way here: yours, mine, and—”
Elspeth’s face was grave. “What do you mean, ‘connected’?”
“I … don’t know what I mean. They seemed to move together, or belong together. When was the last time you traveled beyond here?”
“Well, it’s been over two years since I found Bant, and I haven’t planeswalked at all since then.”
“Oh. Maybe since then, they’ve—”
“What? What have you seen?”
“I … should turn in. It’s late.”
“Tell me.”
Ajani sighed. “Something is … changing, I fear,” he said. “Our worlds are related. In some sense, they’re close.”
“Hmm, no, they couldn’t be. If they were that near to each other, I would have sensed your world when I traveled here.”
“And they’re growing closer. The first time, when I went to one of the others, the world called Jund—”
“What others?”
Ajani looked at her blankly. “The other planes. There are five of them, your world, my own, and three others.”
“Five?”
“Five worlds all in a cluster, creeping toward one another, blurring their edges among one another. I believe they’re colliding, Elspeth. The five worlds: Naya, Bant, Jund, and two others are becoming one. You, as a planeswalker, must know this.”
“Stop it.”
“What?”
“I am not amused by this little game of yours.” “It’s not a game, Elspeth, I’m telling you the truth.” “I said stop it.”
“Look for yourself. If you want to lie to yourself and hide from it, that’s your right. But things are coming to pass. I don’t pretend to understand them, but I don’t think they’re going to be good. That’s why I’m in such a hurry to return. I have to get back to my—well, my family—before they occur.”
Elspeth was staring at the ground. Her breaths seemed heavier. Her mouth looked like she was whispering something, but no sound came.
“Look, if I can help in any way—”
Elspeth shook her head.
“It’s late,” Ajani said. “I should get back to my room. Thank you for all your help.”
She didn’t hear him leave. For a long while she just stared at the floor, at the intricate tiled mosaic forming symbols of castles, sunbursts, and olive trees. Then her gaze slid up the wall to the main window in the little temple, a simple round window inlaid with stained glass. The glass portrayed one of the minor angels, a Celebrant at best, rising up above a mass of impish creatures. The angel held out her hand in a calming gesture, her fingers splayed out above the creatures’ heads as they tore each other apart. She had probably seen the window hundreds of times, and each time had felt it signified a moment of peace, of the angel bringing tranquility to the battling beasts. But at that moment she saw it as a scene of hopelessness, a divine figure unable to end the machinations of war.
When she went to Ajani’s chamber to ask him about the changes he had seen, he had already gone. Stained bandages hung from an empty hammock. In the wall next to the hammock were twelve notches from a leonin’s claw.
NAYA
The planeswalk had taken a lot out of Ajani, but he had managed to end up where he wanted. He emerged in darkness, but it was a comforting darkness, a cool cave interior swept with breezes of his native Naya. It wasn’t his own lair, and he didn’t know how far he was from the den of his pride, but it would do. Drained, he slipped into a dream of a time long past.
“We Wild Nacatl need to reach out,” Jazal was saying. “Reach into the white mists that enshroud the mountains, and touch the hands and minds of the Cloud Nacatl on the other side. That mist is a blade. It divides us. It wounds us every day that we are two peoples instead of one.”
Ajani was rolling his eyes, trying to find anywhere else to look besides his brother, the droning kha. Jazal wore a headdress of vibrant jungle flowers and carried a long, double-bladed axe. Other nacatl danced around him in a circle, each holding the tail of the next.
“The nacatl were one race once, one unified tribe of cats across all of Naya. The revolutionary Marisi came and led us astray. He was wise in that he believed in the fundamental goodness of our wild hearts. But in breaking the Coil, he broke with it everything that was good about its precepts. In its teachings, our souls were purified. Our minds were fluid, full of ideas and magic. Marisi brought change, but at the price of rage. He brought revolution by way of destruction. The palaces of Antali are gone now, ruined and haunted in the high places beyond the mists. You can no longer go there, Ajani.”
Ajani started when he heard his name, and looked up to see Jazal swinging the double-bladed axe, and to see his colorful flower headdress melt into a red liquid. The circle of dancers sped up to frightening speed, tearing the ground with their claws as they danced and leered at Ajani. Jazal was still speaking, but Ajani couldn’t hear his brother’s garbled voice through the cascade of blood pouring down from the top of his head. It cascaded over his face, dripping into his eyes and streaking down his body. Then suddenly Jazal began making thrashing motions with the double-bladed axe and yelling Ajani’s name, over and o
ver again.
Ajani awoke, his heart pounding. His name was still echoing in his head. As he sat up, he realized the cool dark cavern where he lay, although not his lair, was a familiar place.
In the gloom, he saw the burnished blades of two axes leaning up against the cavern wall: one of a dark metal, its handle broken but repaired; and one a gleaming silver, catching the light from the entrance despite the bloodstains it bore. It was Jazal’s lair. The axes were his and his brother’s, identical but for their color.
“You’ll never use this again, brother,” said Ajani, taking the silver blade.
“It’s yours now,” said Jazal’s voice.
Ajani took his own axe, rickety with its repaired handle. He held Jazal’s axe, head down, and with a quick blow, sliced into the end of its handle. Then he unwrapped the bindings around his own axe head. The axe’s original leather lashings were tight, mortared together with years of dust, resin, and blood, but they came apart little by little, spilling dried fragments of old battles onto the floor. The dark-metal axe head came loose, and Ajani turned it over in his hands. There were nicks and dents all over it, but overall the surface was still smooth. The metal held the records of so many moments with Jazal.
“Isn’t there something you should be remembering?” said Jazal’s voice.
Tenoch. Ajani remembered his words from before he traveled to Bant. The bastard Tenoch had mentioned that his mother knew more about the night Jazal died.
I have to pay her a visit, he thought.
The bindings around his axe head proved to be a single, long leather string. He shoved the axe head deep into the end of Jazal’s handle with a satisfying solidity, creating a double-headed axe. Ajani began the process of rewrapping the bindings, pulling each loop tight with little tugs that dug into his fingers.