In the Claws of the Tiger (32 page)

The effect was far more dramatic than a physical push. Dania flew backward over Janik’s head and landed behind him in a clatter of steel.

“And so the end begins,” Maija whispered.

Curling her hands into twisting arcane gestures, she reached toward Janik, purple-black lightning sparking around her hands. Zakyas appeared in four of the archways around the chamber, and zakya archers stepped onto the other balconies, pulling back their bowstrings and taking aim.

Janik heard roars and shouts, the clamor of weapons and shields, the rattle of arrows hitting stone and armor. But he saw only Maija, her hands extended to him and her eyes locked on his. He felt as if her hand were locked around his throat.
For a moment, he thrilled at the imagination of her touch as he stared into her eyes—his mind could almost imagine it as a loving caress. He stared into her eyes as the edges of his vision went black. A glint of red in her brown eyes was the last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed him.

He was lying on his back. The first thing he became aware of was the hard floor beneath him, and then a throbbing pain slammed through his head. His eyes struggled to open and he became vaguely aware of a face bending over his own. Then he recognized the face and rolled away from it, finding his back against a stone wall.

“Krael!”

“About time you woke up,” the vampire said, grinning. “I’m not sure how much longer I could have held off my hunger.”

Janik looked around. They were in a small stone chamber with a heavy iron door—no windows, not even a grate through which light or fresh air might come. His lantern lay in the middle of the floor, its bright beam casting weird shadows on Krael’s face. Krael’s warforged lieutenant stood impassively behind Krael. The still forms of Janik’s three companions were heaped on the floor around them.

Without a word, Janik turned his back on Krael and knelt beside Dania. She was battered and coated in dried blood, but he surmised that much of the blood was not hers, for her breathing was steady and her pulse strong.

“They’re all alive and reasonably healthy, Janik,” Krael said. “But I find it touching that you checked on Dania first. I’m sure your concern would warm her heart.”

Ignoring Krael, Janik moved beside Mathas next, then
Auftane. As the vampire had said, they were alive and seemed all right.

“You know, the whelp she found in Karrnath was nothing at all like you, Janik,” Krael went on. “He was a Sentinel Marshal, definitely a step up on the social ladder, but so very bland. Even his blood lacked spice. I told her as much when I first met him.”

Janik clenched his jaw and pretended to study Auftane’s wounds more closely, though they were obviously not serious. He wanted to leap on Krael and rip out his throat with his bare hands to shut him up, but he decided that ignoring the vampire was the more prudent course.

For the moment.

“As for you—well, I have to say, I always thought far more of Dania than of your bitch Maija. I was pleasantly surprised by Maija when she gave me the Ramethene Sword, but she definitely took a turn for the worse after we—”

Janik couldn’t contain himself any more. “Stop it!” he roared, lunging at Krael, grabbing at his throat and clawing at his eyes. “Shut up!” His fingers were useless against the vampire’s cold flesh, so he began pummeling Krael’s face and head with his fists, punctuating each word with a blow. “Don’t ever defile their names with your mouth again!”

It struck him as strange that Krael didn’t fight back, and his rage began to subside. As his head cleared a little, he realized that Krael’s hands were bound behind him, and the vampire had been completely unable to defend himself from Janik’s furious assault. Neither had the warforged moved, though Janik could not see any restraint on him.

Janik got shakily to his feet, leaving Krael prone and smirking on the floor. He turned his back on the vampire and the warforged.

“Janik?” Dania murmured, and Janik rushed to her side.

From the corner of his eye, Janik saw the warforged step forward to help Krael get upright again. He caught a glimpse of strange blue manacles binding Krael’s hands, but he turned his full attention to Dania.

“I’m here, Dania,” he whispered, clasping her hand.

“Is Mathas—? I saw him fall.”

“He’s fine, Dania, we’re all alive.”

“What’s that—” her nose wrinkled and her brow furrowed as she blinked several times to clear her eyes. Then she sat upright. “Krael!”

“Dania,” the vampire said, flashing his sharp teeth in a wide smile.

Dania’s hand grasped wildly at her belt before she realized her sword was not there. Krael shrugged to emphasize his own helplessness, and Dania calmed somewhat.

“What’s going on?” she said. “Where are we?”

“I’m not sure—” Janik began.

“Look around,” Krael interrupted. “We’re in a cell in the ziggurat at the heart of Mel-Aqat. Doesn’t it stagger the imagination? This very room might have been used fifty thousand years ago to hold prisoners of the giants before they were sacrificed.”

“Any idea where our weapons are?” Dania growled, provoking a harsh laugh from Krael.

“How do you know we’re in the ziggurat, Krael?” Janik said.

“Unlike you lot, I was awake when they dragged me in here,” Krael said with a sly grin. “Which means I know the way out.”

“So why haven’t you pulled your cloud of vapors trick and slipped out under that door?”

Krael scowled and turned his body so Janik could see the manacles clasped around his wrists. They were forged of a strange blue steel, and Krael’s movements made small blue sparks crackle around them.

“A particularly fiendish invention,” Krael said. “They prevent me from altering my form in any way. Sever’s tried everything he can think of, but he’s been unable to get them off me.”

“I’ve heard of such things,” Auftane said, sitting up and pressing a hand to his battered head. “But I’ve never seen them. I’d very much like to examine them … once my head stops spinning.”

Krael laughed. “If you can figure out how to get them off me, you can examine them all you want, dwarf. You know Janik, you never did introduce me to your new companion back in Stormreach. Very rude of you.”

“His name is Auftane,” Janik grunted.

“Auftane Khunnam,” the artificer said. “I’ve heard so much about you, Krael.”

“I expect you have,” Krael said. He sighed. “And I’m sure none of it was good.”

Auftane looked reflective. “Yes, that’s true.”

“Auftane,” Janik said, “will you look at Mathas and see if you can do something to wake him up?”

“How neglectful of me,” Krael said. “I haven’t introduced my lieutenant here,” he jerked his head at the warforged. “Well, Janik, I gather you have met Sever, but I don’t think your friends have. Sever, the lovely Dania ir’Vran, the unconscious Mathas Allister, and our new acquaintance, Auftane Khunnam.”

“How pleasant to see you again, Martell,” Sever said, the sarcasm in his voice sharply contrasting with his emotionless face.

“You’re quieter when Krael’s around,” Janik said to the warforged. “Or is it because you don’t have a sword in your hand?”

“Take your pick, Martell.”

“Well,” Janik said, getting to his feet, “if we’re cooped up here and forced to talk to each other, we might as well make it productive. I want to know what in the Nine Seas is going on with Maija.”

“By the Flame, Janik,” Dania said, “her evil overwhelmed me. I have never encountered another creature so strongly stinking of it. Not even Krael—”

“That’s enough, Dania.”

“Janik,” Dania insisted, “not even Krael makes my senses reel the way she did. She commands these fiends! Can’t you see it? Do you still not believe that she’s beyond redemption?”

Janik sighed deeply. “Do you remember what you said to me back in Stormreach? That you wouldn’t stand by and watch a friend die, ever again? That’s what this is to me, Dania. I can’t turn away while Maija dies. I can’t give up on her. I’ve got to fight for her, even if I have to fight a legion of fiends under her command, even if it means fighting her. I can’t just accept it, damn it. I will not be a bystander to her destruction.”

“You’ll have to hold me back, then,” Krael said.

“That’s what I was going to say,” Dania said, glaring at Krael while looking a little uncomfortable at sharing the vampire’s opinion.

“Why, Krael?” Janik asked, wheeling on the vampire. “What did she do to you?”

Krael snarled at Janik, baring his long fangs, for a moment looking like a ravenous beast furious at being caged.
Janik didn’t flinch, but held Krael’s stare. After a moment, the vampire spoke.

“All right, Janik. Let me tell you a story. I believe you know the beginning—or shall I go over it for the benefit of those who weren’t present?”

“I’ve heard it,” Auftane said over his shoulder. He was busy tending to Mathas, but clearly paying attention to the conversation. Janik noted that Mathas’s eyes were open, but he looked very weak.

“As have I, Captain Kavarat,” the warforged said.

“Well, then,” Krael continued. “Maija traveled with us back to Stormreach and from there directly to Korth by airship. Along the way, she played with my affections, as I presume she did with yours, Janik. Except I did not fully trust her, so I was not swayed by her charms. Her
considerable
charms.”

Janik almost leaped at Krael again, but the vampire’s grin told him Krael was trying to provoke him, and he didn’t want to provide that satisfaction.

“She made up a story–that another Emerald Claw agent had contacted her and swayed her to our side, and worked out a deal in which she’d hand a treasure over to me in order to prove her loyalty to the Emerald Claw. She kept up the lie for quite a while. Once we reached Karrnath, she claimed to have had another meeting with this agent, who told her to keep working with me. I knew she was lying, and my superiors confirmed my suspicion, but they ordered me to play along, to find out what she was trying to accomplish. I admit to some curiosity about what she was doing, trying to bluff the Order of the Emerald Claw.”

Krael cracked his neck before continuing.

“That went on for about a year,” he said. “We spent most
of that time in Karrnath, sneaking around the agents of the damned king to get the work of the Order done. She seemed genuinely committed to working with the Order, and I was just starting to believe that she was really on our side. Then she came to me and announced that she’d been assigned to look for the Tablet of Shummarak. You know what the Tablet is, Janik?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that caught the interest of my superiors, and they told me to keep working with her. They assigned a priest to accompany us, a simpering idiot named Mudren Fain. They wanted me to get the Tablet if we managed to locate it. Well, it took us a year of searching, and the hunt led us around Khorvaire, briefly to Xen’drik, and finally back to Atur in Karrnath—which is where I saw Dania, of course.”

Janik was getting sick of Krael’s sarcastic grin and mocking tone, but the vampire was telling him new information—new pieces of the puzzle were taking shape in his mind. He glanced at Dania, who seemed to be keeping her anger in check by thinking hard about what Krael was telling them.

“We returned to Atur because we had traced the Tablet of Shummarak to its last known owner, a shifter vampire called Havoc. Mudren finally proved himself useful by discovering the location of Havoc’s crypt. We found him in his crypt, where a bunch of idiots had left him for dead before the Last War. They drove a stake through his heart and left, figuring the job was done. Well, when Mudren Fain pulled the stake out of the shriveled remains of Havoc’s heart, we quickly discovered that the job was not done.”

“Havoc came back,” Dania said blankly.

“Havoc came back,” Krael repeated. “He grabbed Mudren Fain by the throat and drank every last drop of blood out of
the damned fool’s body while dear Maija stood there, licking her lips. Oh, and did I mention? I would have stopped Mudren from pulling out the stake, but Maija had cast a spell on me to hold me helpless.”

“Licking her lips?” Dania asked.

“Licking her lying, cheating, blasphemous lips,” Krael said. “And then she struck her deal with Havoc. Anyone want to guess what she gave him in exchange for his help in finding the Tablet?”

“You,” Janik and Dania said at the same time.

“Exactly. Havoc grabbed me while I was still paralyzed by Maija’s spell. He drained Mudren dry and left him for dead, but Havoc turned me into
this
—
”
he bared his teeth again. “And until Dania and her friends so kindly obliterated him, I was forced to obey his commands. Which reminds me, Dania, I never did thank you.”

“Believe me, the pleasure was all mine,” Dania said. “I would have killed you, too, if I could have.”

“And if I can ever return the favor, I will. Anyway, I think Dania knows the rest of the story, or most of it. Havoc led us to the Tablet—”

“You found it?” Dania interrupted. “We were never sure.”

“Oh, yes. We found the Tablet right where Havoc had left it a hundred years ago. Maija spirited it away, breaking her word to Havoc. And Dania and her friends barged in right after that, when Havoc was about to tear Maija’s throat out.”