by Doug Beyer
“I see. Well,” said Hazid.
Oh holy angel in the heavens, he thought. He was going to be arrested by the most decorated knight in the world. And by some rhox.
“And I am Mubin, knight of the Order of the Reliquary,” said the rhox, his voice as deep as a gravel pit.
“You’re under arrest,” said Rafiq.
“I’ve done nothing,” said Hazid, and threw his glass at Rafiq’s face.
Rafiq dodged the glass and liquid both, and struck Hazid clean across his face with his open hand in the same motion. The glass shattered uselessly somewhere behind them.
The blow rang in Hazid’s head. The pain took several seconds to sink in, but then it blossomed into a full, electric injury. There must be glowing fingermarks across his cheek, he thought. His next thought came in clear, simple words, as clear as the wine glass shattered on the ground: This man must now die.
Hazid had enough sense to keep that thought from spilling out of his mouth. “I’ll go quietly, gentlemen,” he said.
JUND
There was no warning, no sense of transition. Ajani was no longer in Jazal’s cavern, and no longer hanging in space. He was no longer breathing the smoke of the torches outside his brother’s lair. The light had changed—he was outdoors, and the sky was a burnt orange. The air had changed—it was dry and hot, with a stiff sulfur undertone. The terrain had changed—he was standing on the slope of a mountain of rust-streaked stone.
Nightmare? Hallucination? Hell?
He didn’t feel asleep. It didn’t seem like a hallucination—everything felt crystal-sharp, detailed, and immediate. And if he had died of grief and gone to some kind of afterlife, it certainly wasn’t what he had expected.
He stood there gaping. The least reasonable hypothesis, which seemed increasingly likely to be the case, was that he was simply, inexplicably, somewhere else.
The sense of remoteness was unmistakable. Beyond not recognizing anything he saw before him, he knew he was far from his pride’s den—far, in fact, from anywhere he had ever been in his life. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he knew.
He grasped at straws. Maybe it was another life. Maybe it was the distant past.
Maybe Jazal wasn’t really dead.
“These thoughts are useless,” he muttered. If it was in any way real, he thought, then he needed to be home.
Before he had time to begin formulating a plan of how to get home again, a stream of chittering, furry creatures appeared from around a bend in the trail. Their eyes were beady and ferocious, and their claws and teeth as sharp as needles. They hissed as they saw him, and swarmed directly toward him.
Ajani had never seen creatures like them. They were short, just above waist-high, with broad heads, pointed ears, and light brown fur. Their hands were clawed, and they wore simple furs and beads. There were about two dozen of them. He absorbed all in a flash as he made the quick decision to turn and run in the opposite direction. Did every species have to enjoy hunting him?
Ajani outpaced the creatures around the next bend, but they were gaining fast. He wished he had another direction to run, but the heights were dramatic—to his left, the rusty stone wall of the mountain was almost vertical. To his right, there was empty air—a sheer drop-off. The narrow path between them was Ajani’s only option, so he took it.
But it was no use. The diminutive monsters were catching up with him. Perhaps he could fight them, or scare them off. Ajani stopped and spun around, but before he could take an attack stance or bring his axe to bear, they were abreast of him … and running right past.
The creatures clicked and chittered excitedly as they streamed past him. They weren’t chasing him at all. They were fleeing.
Ajani looked back in the direction they had come from, and saw what they were trying to flee. There was a whoosh of wind that almost blasted Ajani off his feet.
A dragon came soaring around the mountain, and with it came a roar that caused the mountain itself to shudder.
BANT
I think I’ll slit your throat and plant flowers in there, thought Hazid.
“How much longer?” he asked.
“I’m surprised you’re so anxious, Hazid,” said Rafiq as they rode back to civilization. “You’ll face severe justice when we deliver you to the courts in Valeron.”
“I just want to know how long I have,” said Hazid.
“It’ll be another couple of hours,” said Mubin.
Hazid had nothing against the rhox especially, except that he was an especially unlikable person.
“Until then, why don’t you tell us why you destroyed Giltspire Castle?” added Mubin.
Case in point, Hazid thought. There was no subtlety to the rhox, at all.
What kind of flower would grow best out of their necks? he wondered. That’s what he really wanted to know. Maybe he would go with roses. Hazid hoped they would grow thick with thorns as they grew out of his captors’ necks. And he hoped those thorns would tear their way free of his captors’ skins, and bury roots deep in their guts. That’s the only way he could possibly repay them both for the injustice they’d done to him. None of it was his fault, after all.
“I didn’t. It wasn’t me. I was only there on business. Some mages in my caravan—whom I had nothing to do with—cast a spell or something, and the next thing I knew, the castle was tumbling down.”
“You’d better start getting used to telling the truth,” said Mubin. “The courts have magic that’ll pry it out of you, but if it doesn’t match your words, your punishment will be much worse.”
“What’s wrong with the steeds?” said Rafiq suddenly.
The leotau slowed to a halt. They clopped their hooves on the stones of the road and huffed and snorted. A breeze swayed the ancient, twisted olive trees in the orchards around them; the steeds tilted their heads to and fro and sneered into the wind.
Hazid rolled his eyes. “They probably just smell a deer.”
“No. They’re fed. They smell something else,” said Mubin.
Then for a long moment, the three men made no noise.
The sky rumbled and thudded, and the ground shuddered under the steeds. The trees shook in ways that wind would never have moved them, and they shed perfectly green leaves. The leotau arched their backs suddenly and hissed at the air, causing Hazid to jump in his saddle.
“What in the blessed—”
“Shh!” said the knights.
They would have called the phenomenon a herald of an evening thunderstorm, if they had ever heard thunder. They would have called it a minor earthquake, if they had ever felt the earth quake. But Bant had never felt such forces. Instead the men sat quietly, struck dumb by the experience. The wind felt strange and thick, and the air had an earthy perfume to it, like rich soil. Thunder danced toward them, resounding in weird echoes from the horizon, and the clouds had an unnatural gray color to them.
Hazid thought he saw lights in the clouds on the horizon, but as he squinted to focus on them, the lights evaded his eye. Was he going mad? Or had the angels discovered his sin?
Then the ground stopped moving. Hazid’s leotau shook its mane and casually licked its front leg, as if nothing had happened.
The men looked at each other. Mubin was frowning, cautious and concerned as any of his race. The knight-captain’s face was full of wonder, as if it had been some sort of play with jesters and refreshments. Hazid was just painstakingly trying to hide his panic.
“Okay, so what was that, gentlemen?” asked Hazid. “Any clues?”
“It was a sign,” said Rafiq.
“It was something unique,” said Mubin. “A sign, yes, but from whom, and of what? Have you ever seen anything like that, Hazid?”
“Me? Why would I have seen anything like that?”
Mubin was a stone wall. “Try to calm down.”
“My caravan has been from one side of this land to the other and I have never—I mean, never—seen anything so … so … No. I have not.”
“I�
��m sure the explanation, once it’s discovered, will be reasonable,” said Mubin.
Rafiq toyed absently with one of the sigils hanging from his armor, listening for any further sign of the rumbling.
“And you two,” continued Hazid, “have me strapped to this lion, which is, by the way, not safe. I could complain to the courts about the way I’m being treated.”
“It was just like the prayer, Mubin, wasn’t it?” said Rafiq. “Asha’s Prophecy. Like the Order of the Skyward Eye say.”
“Rafiq,” said Mubin.
“ ‘When the world’s body shakes. When the world’s stomach churns.’ We felt it shake! We heard it churn! I never imagined it would be so literally true.”
“Rafiq, I don’t want you to get your belief tangled in your optimism. It’s just a cleric’s prayer.”
“I don’t know, Mubin. I’m starting to think it may be something. Why couldn’t it be true? We’re in a historic time foretold by ancient sages. The events and records we’ve seen as knights of the Reliquary—the words we’ve heard—they’re coming true. We’re seeing it unfold before our eyes. This may be the time of the return of Asha.”
Hazid blinked and kicked in the stirrups nervously.
“Be cautious,” said Mubin. “Don’t overinterpret. It could be a coincidence.”
“Yes,” said Hazid. “My friend here has made an excellent point. It is just the weather. A little trick of the wind. Nothing ‘angelic’ or ‘prophetic’ about it.”
Please don’t let me be the hand of prophecy, thought Hazid. He didn’t want to be the hand of prophecy anymore. He didn’t want it to mean anything, because if it did—the consequence would be too horrible to contemplate.
“Oh, I think the archangel has finally made herself known,” said Rafiq, nodding into the wind. His eyes seemed to look into infinity. “There’s finally hope for us all.”
The angels can’t see me, can they? worried Hazid. They can’t see into my soul, to see what I have done? The clouds weren’t enough protection, he thought. The open sky was full of their eyes. Where could a man get a roof over his head when he needed one?
“Can we just hurry up and get to the courts?” said Hazid.
JUND
Ajani had never seen a dragon, and didn’t know the term. But he didn’t need to know what to call it to run from the beast. Nor did he know the term for goblins, but he followed the furry creatures’ example, and ran.
If Ajani could have stopped and contemplated the anatomy of the dragon, he might have likened it to one of Naya’s enormous gargantuans in size, except that none of the gargantuans had wings. He might have thought of some of the elves’ ancient carvings of hydras, and of primitive drawings he had seen in caves. He might have pieced together that, while no dragons had lived on Naya in centuries, a dim cultural memory of such a beast lingered in the dark pockets of his home. He might even have considered that the presence of the dragon was strong evidence that he was no longer, in fact, in Naya. However, circumstances being what they were, he had no time for such thoughts. He just ran.
The wingbeats of the dragon hurled boulders of air at Ajani’s back, and he wobbled, using his leather-strapped axe as a counterweight to keep his balance. Several of the furry goblins were swept right off the cliff by the gusts of air, and tumbled off the edge and out of sight. Most of the little creatures were quite surefooted, however, and scrambled into narrow caves, disappearing into the mountainside. Ajani wasn’t accustomed to the terrain or the height, and he stumbled. His legs slipped out from under him, and he slid over the edge.
Ajani caught himself, but barely. His legs dangled over the cliff, and his claws clung precariously onto his axe and the cliff’s edge. The dragon pulled up, hovering with mighty wingbeats in the air next to the mountain, and rearing its head back to strike.
“Back!” said a voice. “This is not your meal, old boy.”
A broad-chested human man stood on the cliffside. He grinned at Ajani, a crazed gleam in his eye.
The man thrust his staff into the air and brought it down, hard, onto the stone ground. The impact let loose a blast of sizzling sparks that spiraled toward the dragon. The spell burst harmlessly on the dragon’s nose, but startled it.
“Go on, Karrthus,” the man called into the gale of the dragon’s wings. “Feast on the blood of some other beast! This is my dinner.”
The dragon hesitated, looking once at Ajani. Then it turned and dived into the valley adjacent to the mountain. It swooped along the chasm floor, then with a series of powerful flaps of its wings, soared up and over the next cliffs and out of sight.
The man helped Ajani up. “I’m Sarkhan Vol,” he said. His accent was strange, thick and guttural, like no human speech Ajani had ever heard.
“Ajani. Ajani Goldmane.”
“You’re a long way from home, Ajani Goldmane.”
“What … place is this?”
“This world is Jund,” said Sarkhan. “A savage, primordial land. It’s my home, for now. And yours, if you’d like it to be.”
“This is not my home,” said Ajani. “I’m from the Qasali Valley, which is—” Ajani broke off and looked around. He didn’t know which direction to look.
“Not on this plane,” Sarkhan finished. “You don’t know, do you?” he asked. Ajani had trouble reading the man’s expression. Was his smirk amused, or devious?
“Know what? What does that mean?”
“It means you’re no longer on Naya. You’ve traveled to an entirely different world, planeswalker.”
The man was making no sense.
“Deal with all that later,” said Sarkhan. “Karrthus won’t stay away for long. Come on.”
Ajani followed Sarkhan around the ledge, climbing higher and higher up the mountain. The heat rose as they went. Should he turn around and leave this strange man’s company? He had no better plan than to follow him, and try to learn what he should do.
“What’s your purpose, planeswalker?” Sarkhan asked him. “What fuels you? What drives you to do more than you ever could?”
Ajani paused. “Revenge.”
Sarkhan laughed vigorously. “That’s about the best answer you could have given. Who wronged you?”
“I don’t know. Someone murdered my brother. I don’t even know if it was real.”
“Your anger is real. Don’t worry. You’ll have ample opportunities to nurture that anger, and eventually, when you find the right target, to express it.”
As they walked, Ajani’s fists shook. “I feel like I could explode.”
Sarkhan stopped and turned back to look at him. “No. That’s not the right road, my friend. It’s not that you want to burst into pieces yourself—what does that get you? This murder, it’s not your fault. It’s the outside world that is the target of your rage. You feel it encroaching on you, pressing down on your identity. What you’re feeling is the need to push the world back.”
“How can I do that?”
“By believing in your own instincts. By letting your ferocity out of its cage of despair and self-doubt. By being the animal you are.” He grinned broadly, showing his teeth. “My destination is ahead. Come, tell me of your story as we walk.”
They walked farther up the mountain pass. The winds were balmy blasts, thick with sulfur and the taste of soot, and Ajani had to wait for pauses in order to speak. He found it odd to tell the stranger of his world and the events that led to his plight, but the human seemed to understand, and with the understanding came a measure of comfort.
The heat became intense as they ascended, and Ajani was struck by the pulsing perception of mana nearby. It was mana of fire, mana of bitter rage, mana of immediacy and freedom and chaos. It was alluring, glorious. Ajani’s heart raced, and his breathing quickened.
As he finished his story, Ajani saw flares of molten lava bursting up above the ridge ahead.
“What the hell are we—”
“This is what I wanted you to see, my friend! This is the Sweltering Cauldron, my fav
orite source of mana on Jund. I needed to come here to recharge my spirit, and it may inspire you as well.”
The trail ended at the rim of a volcanic caldera, filled almost to the brim with seething red lava. The air above the caldera wobbled and distorted, and the entire front side of Ajani’s body was bathed in almost unbearable heat. The mana that flowed around and through the caldera was abundant and intoxicating. He felt like his fur was burning, but he couldn’t look away.
“You want to know how I pushed Karrthus away?” Sarkhan asked.
Ajani nodded.
“The key is this: you don’t force away a greater threat. You appeal to its passions, its—”he thumped his chest with his fist— “innermost desires. You give it something that it wants more than killing you.”
“How did you know what it wanted?”
Sarkhan laughed. “Dragons always want the same thing,” he said.
With that, Sarkhan turned to the caldera. He raised his arms and staff high in the air.
“What do they want?” Ajani started to ask, but he stopped short.
A pillar of lava shot straight up out of the center of the caldera. It streamed vertically into the air, disappearing into the ashen clouds high above. Sarkhan’s face was red in the glare of the enormous beam of fire. His eyes reflected the pillar as two glowing, vertical stripes.
There was a roar high above. Ajani looked up to see a dragon circling the pillar—a different one from the one who had chased him—its wings almost grazing the surface of the lava stream. Then another dragon approached and began wheeling around it. And then another, and another. Soon the air was filled with dragons, all attracted to Sarkhan’s molten pillar of pure rage. They stacked up in tiers in the sky, in what looked to Ajani like a bizarre dance of giants.
Sarkhan turned his head back to Ajani. The man’s smile was too wide, his eyes too unfocused. “I see it now—I see what Rakka was after. There’s a greater power at work here, across your world and mine. This power can be yours, as well,” he said.
