In the Claws of the Tiger (18 page)

“It’s so nice to see you all together again. Mathas too! Aren’t you going to introduce me to the dwarf?”

“Shut up, Krael,” Janik spat. The vampire’s words stung, making Janik painfully aware that they were not all together again. He felt Maija’s absence as if it were a wound. “You sent your warforged assassin after me twice, you robbed my apartment, and stole our ship. Stop talking like you’re some long-lost friend.” Janik was close enough that he didn’t need to shout, and he could see Krael’s allies closing in on both sides. Dania was close on his right, but not close enough to get in the way of his sword arm. He heard Mathas and Auftane right behind him.

“Don’t forget that I took your Maija away,” Krael said, grinning. Then the smile vanished from his face. “Her, you can have back, as far as I’m concerned.”

“What are you here for, Krael?”

Krael gave a small shrug, but a spasm of anger on his face belied his feigned indifference. “Revenge.”

“That makes two of us, then,” Janik said, pulling his sword from its sheath in a flash of steel. Like a ripple of water, steel flashed all around the ring of Krael’s allies. Dania drew her longsword. Only Krael, Mathas, and Auftane stood empty-handed.

“You misunderstand me, Janik,” Krael said. “You are not the one I want revenge against. Although I suppose it would be pleasant enough to watch you die.”

“This is a bad idea, Janik,” Dania whispered at his elbow. “Krael is strong, to say nothing of his friends here.”

“Put those weapons away!” Several of Krael’s allies turned to see Stormreach guards hurrying up the street toward them. Janik and Krael were frozen, each waiting for the other to make a move. Around the semicircle of Krael’s Emerald Claw lackeys, a few swords and flails found their way back to belts. Glancing behind Krael, Janik could see why. Stormreach
didn’t entrust the task of keeping order in the city to roughnecks pulled from the farms and dressed up in uniforms. The Stormreach guards were highly trained soldiers, mostly former officers from the armies of the Five Nations, and included some real muscle in the form of ogres and an occasional hill giant. One of those giants walked up behind Krael at that moment, and the great hulk of a vampire stood only as high as the giant’s waist. Sever, the warforged assassin, tugged at Krael’s arm, looking back at the approaching giant and his two human compatriots.

Janik felt sure that the giant and the two humans could wipe the street with him, his friends, Krael, and all the Emerald Claw thugs. But he didn’t care. He had nursed this hatred and anger for three long years. He gripped his sword tightly. He wanted so badly to plunge it into Krael’s body, to hurt and kill him and make the bastard pay for what he’d done. Janik didn’t care what happened to him in the process. It didn’t matter that Krael was a vampire, it didn’t matter that the warforged next to Krael had nearly killed him twice already, and it didn’t matter that a hill giant was standing behind Krael, lifting a tree trunk over his shoulder, getting ready to clear the street with it. He didn’t care that he couldn’t win—he just wanted to fight.

Dania still clutched her sword and Janik could feel the tension in her. He suspected she was having the same kinds of thoughts. What had happened when she met Krael in Karrnath? He realized he didn’t know, but it had stirred up the same degree of hatred in her heart, and her newfound devotion to the Silver Flame had done nothing to diminish the rage she felt toward Krael. He stole a sidelong glance at her and caught a glimpse of the fire in her eyes. She would stand behind him.

“Janik?” Mathas said. “I am inclined to believe this is not the time and place for this confrontation.”

Janik didn’t respond, but Dania shifted her stance slightly.

“I think the elf is right,” Auftane whispered. “I think we could take the lackeys, and you can leave the warforged to me, but I’m worried about the vampire. To say nothing of the giant.”

Dania turned toward Janik.

“It would be unfortunate if we were forced to harm well-meaning members of the Stormreach guard in the course of battling our foes,” Mathas added.

“They’ve got a point,” Dania said. “We’ll have our shot at Krael, I’m sure.”

“You’re right,” Janik said. “Let’s get out of here.” He shifted his sword to his left hand and slid it into its sheath while raising his other hand to point at Krael. “Some other time, Krael!” he called.

The vampire hadn’t moved, but was still staring at Janik and Dania. Janik turned his back on Krael, took Dania’s arm, and hurried down the block toward a nearby tavern. Mathas and Auftane followed. Janik refused to look back at Krael—he couldn’t stand to see that satisfied smirk again. A group of people had gathered outside the tavern door to watch the confrontation, alerted by the call of the Stormreach guard. Janik ignored their laughs and whispers and pushed through. He led his friends to a table near the raging fire, and they all sat down.

“So tell me about Karrnath, Dania,” Janik said when they all had drinks in their hands and the hubbub had died down.

Dania scowled and stared into her tankard. She was silent
for a moment, collecting her thoughts, then took a deep breath. “I went there to work for a friend of my late father’s,” she said, “an exorcist of the Silver Flame named Kophran ir’Davik. He was a pompous ass, as I believe I might have mentioned before.” Mathas grinned and nodded. “Along with a Sentinel Marshal, Gered d’Deneith—”

“Krael mentioned him,” Auftane interjected.

“Yes. The three of us tried to fight the influence of evil in Atur.” She paused and sighed again. “It was a bit like trying to put out a forest fire by spitting on it. Atur has earned its nickname, the City of Night. Anyway, one evening we went to a house where every inhabitant had been brutally murdered. Blood and bodies were strewn everywhere. Gered determined that two vampires were involved, one a shifter, and one a human—well, that one turned out to be Krael. Gered and I followed a trail away from the house and encountered Krael in an alley. We talked for a little while before Gered and I realized he was one of the vampires we’d been hunting, and then—” She broke off suddenly, swallowing hard.

“He killed Gered?” Mathas said softly.

Dania breathed a deep sigh. “Not quite. He started drinking Gered’s blood, but then Kophran came back.” She took another steadying breath. “Kophran filled the alley with silver light, and that drove Krael away.” Her voice trailed off and a half smile lingered on her lips.

“What about Maija?” Janik’s voice was barely audible above the din of the tavern.

“Well, it turned out that Krael and Maija had awakened this old shifter vampire named Havoc as part of their search for the Tablet of Shummarak.”

“You mentioned that on the ship,” Mathas said. “What is that tablet?”

Janik answered the elf’s question. “It’s an important serpent text from Xen’drik, dealing with the legendary war between the dragons and the fiends in the first age of the world. Specifically, it describes how the allies of the dragons, the couatls, bound the lords of the fiends deep within Khyber.”

“Sacrificing their own physical forms to trap the fiends within their spiritual coils,” Dania added, repeating what Kophran had told her. “And supposedly the Tablet of Shummarak goes on to reveal a means by which the bonds of the couatls’ coils might be broken, releasing the lords of the demons upon the earth again.”

Janik raised his eyebrows, wishing he had discussed the Tablet with Dania earlier.

“So Krael and Maija were hoping to find the Tablet and destroy the world?” Auftane asked.

“Undoubtedly part of some Emerald Claw plot,” Janik said.

“So we tried to learn more about this vampire, Havoc. He was rumored to have owned the Tablet some time before the Last War. And we managed to track him down—we found all three of them in a little shrine beneath the city. Havoc, Krael, and Maija.” She swallowed hard again. “That’s when Gered died. Maija cast a horrible spell, and he just … went out. Like pinching a candle.” She shook her head. “Kophran killed Havoc—or forced him to turn to mist, or something. I guess you can’t really kill a vampire. Maija disappeared—teleported away, I think, and Krael ran as well. Kophran figured Havoc was in charge of the operation, and insisted we take steps to finish him off. We ended up chasing a cloud of mist through half the sewers and catacombs under the city until it reached Havoc’s original crypt. Then we were able to destroy him for good, or Kophran said we had. But I didn’t see Krael or Maija
again. We hunted for them for a long time, but as far as we could tell, they both left Karrnath entirely.”

“Did she … did Maija say anything?” Janik asked.

“Quite a bit, actually, considering that we were doing our level best to kill each other.”

“You fought her?” Somehow this seemed impossible to Janik. Some part of him, he realized, had long assumed that there was just some misunderstanding that would all be resolved the next time he saw Maija. That was why he had rebelled so strongly against Dania’s assertion that Maija was beyond redemption. And to imagine Dania actually trying to kill her, so convinced that Maija was lost to evil that she would take her life—his head started to swim.

“Of course I fought her, Janik.” Dania’s voice was gentle but firm. “Have you heard what I’ve been saying? She was working with a pair of vampires. She killed Gered—a Sentinel Marshal and a good man. As far as I could tell, she was trying to release the lords of demonkind and set them loose on the world. Of course I fought her.”

Janik nodded but turned aside, staring into the fire.

“What did she say, Dania?” Mathas asked.

Dania paused, trying to remember the details of their intense fight beneath the streets of Atur. “She mocked me. Every damned word was a mockery. She was so full of … of spite, malice, contempt. She said the vampires had grown tiresome or outlived their usefulness, and I asked her if that was what had happened at Mel-Aqat—whether she just tired of us. That’s when she cast the spell that killed Gered—it was like a wave of death crashing over me.”

As Dania spoke, a series of memories raced through Janik’s mind. They started, as thoughts of Maija always did, with Mel-Aqat—as she took the Ramethene Sword from Janik’s
hand and ran over to Krael, offering it to him hilt first. Krael had seemed taken aback—he took a defensive stance as she approached, as if he thought she would attack him with the sword. When she handed him the weapon, Janik couldn’t hear what they said, but Krael still seemed suspicious. She had been mocking then, too—shouting back at him as she disappeared into the wilderness with Krael.

“Sorry about this, Janik,” she had said, not sounding sorry at all, “but when the opportunity for something bigger and better comes along, you need to take it.”

Dania fell into silence and no one else said anything. Janik was lost in his memories—remembering that a sardonic edge had crept into Maija’s voice before they left the ruins. Mathas had asked in the airship approaching Sharn whether something had happened in the ruins, and now Janik realized that something had. He couldn’t identify what it was or when it happened, but Maija had said several things that had irritated him as they departed the ruins. At the time, he blamed the strain of travel and the stress of their days exploring Mel-Aqat. But she had always been the one who bore up the best under pressure—she would soothe their frayed nerves with inspiration and comfort that sometimes seemed to come straight from the Sovereign Host—from Olladra’s hearth or Boldrei’s embracing arms.

A now-familiar ache seized Janik’s chest as he remembered lying in her arms in the ruins at night. The touch of her hands always seemed to soothe away the aches and bruises and hurts of the day even more than her spells of healing did. Her love for him had always felt like tangible proof of the Sovereigns and their divine love. She had been his priest in a very real sense—standing between him and the Host, bringing his prayers to them and delivering their responses, whether
in the form of divine magical power or in the soft words she whispered to him at night.

And he had lost that. Their last night in the ruins, she had held him, but her hands had no comfort and her words were biting. Instead of soothing away his worries and fears, she had mocked them—gently, but the words had stung when he needed reassurance and consolation.

“A wave of death,” he said into the silence, echoing Dania’s words. “Why does that sound like an omen of things to come?”

“Well, thank you for that cheerful thought,” Dania said.

“If it’s an omen,” Mathas said, “perhaps it’s a warning of the consequences of failure. If we released something from Mel-Aqat, perhaps that something is the reason that Maija and Krael were looking for the Tablet of Shummarak. Maybe the thing we released is seeking to release something greater. If one fiend-lord were released from its prison, waves of death might be a very accurate description of what would come next. If they were all released …”

“They won’t be,” Dania said firmly. “We’re here to make sure of that. I seem to have steered this conversation toward predictions of doom, and I’m sorry. Gered’s death was terrible, and Maija will pay for it, but her evil spell is
not
a portent of our future or the world’s. The Silver Flame has called me to this work and empowered me for it, and I will not fail.” She slammed her fist on the table, a little harder than she intended, and Auftane started in surprise.

“Of course we won’t,” the dwarf said. “You think it’s safe to head to the restaurant now?” Dania and Mathas laughed.

Janik stood up, his face grim. “I’m not hungry. I’ll see you all in the morning.” He turned and walked out of the tavern, his companions too surprised to call after him.

“Mathas, did I say something out of line?” Dania asked.

“No, no,” Mathas said, patting her hand. “You just have to understand that Maija is still a fresh wound for Janik.”

“It’s been three years!”

“Well, then an open, festering wound. He has never bandaged it or treated it—he’s like an animal who keeps biting at a wound so it can’t heal. Maija was his healer, caring for his body and soul. Without her, he doesn’t know how to heal the wound in his heart.”