In the Claws of the Tiger

by James Wyatt

  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.”

  “I
worry about his soul,” Dania said softly.

  “So do I,” Mathas said. “Losing Maija seems to have driven him away from the Sovereign Host.”

  “And he seems quite uncomfortable every time I mention the Silver Flame.”

  “Yes, though I suspect that has as much to do with his experience of your church in Sharn as it does with the overall state of his soul.”

  “The church in Sharn is hardly a fair representative of the church as a whole. I mean, it has its share of corrupt patriarchs—”

  “And pompous asses,” Auftane interjected.

  “And people like Kophran, yes,” Dania said. “But I am convinced there is no greater force for good at work in the world. Mathas, when I went to Karrnath, I was as ruined as Janik is. My past felt like an enormous weight on my shoulders. We were hunting these vampires, and for a while I was convinced that I was as bad as they were. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the people I killed during the war. Kophran didn’t help that, of course—he treated me as though I were not quite a person. But there were two things that got me out of that. One was the realization of what vampires are—they’re warped by pure evil stronger than anything that grows in human hearts. And the other was my taste of the Silver Flame, my experience of pure good. I felt it wash over me when Kophran drove Krael away.”

  “So how do you account for the evil you say has grown in Maija’s heart?” Mathas said. “You said she was not a vampire.”

  “No, but I am not convinced that she is human any more.”

  “What do you mean?” Mathas’s brow furrowed, spreading deep wrinkles over his face.

  “I’m not sure. It’s possible that she has made a pact with some demon, or one of the Dark Six. Perhaps it is her use of evil magic that has so deeply corrupted her. Maybe both, and those two things could certainly be related.”

  “But not human?”

  “I don’t know, Mathas. She’s not a vampire. She’s still alive, near as I can tell, but she’s more evil than anyone I’ve encountered since. She’s the only living person whose evil was almost tangible like that—like what I could feel from the vampires. That’s what I mean.”

  Dania looked at the dwarf beside her, who had been sitting quietly through most of her conversation with Mathas. “I’m sorry, Auftane,” she said. “We seem to spend a lot of time talking about the past.”

  “I suppose it’s a good thing I find such topics interesting,” Auftane replied with a smile.

  “Damn it, why do we spend so much time talking about Maija?” Dania threw her hands in the air. “It’s been three years since she walked out on us.”

  “The topic of Krael, at least, seems relevant to our current expedition,” Auftane said.

  “True, and it is hard to separate one from the other,” Mathas observed. “They left Mel-Aqat together, and you encountered them together in Karrnath, Dania. I’m not sure that Maija is completely irrelevant, either. Perhaps it was only by chance that we did not meet her on the street tonight.”

  “That would have been ugly,” Dania said. “Janik was bad enough after seeing Krael.”

  Janik strode along the darkened streets of Stormreach toward the inn. Half of him hoped he would run into Krael again, while the other half knew it would mean almost certain death, at least if Krael was still with Sever and Tierese and his other half-dozen allies. One on one, Janik figured it would be an even match, vampire or no vampire.

  Like his friends, Janik wondered if Maija were here as well. But he kept coming back to Krael’s scornful comment, “Her, you can have back, as far as I’m concerned.” So it seemed likely that Maija was not here with him. But Krael had said he was here for revenge—and not against Janik. Was he looking for Maija to take revenge against her? Had she turned on Krael as well? In that case, perhaps she was here on her own. Perhaps she had taken the Tablet of Shummarak from Krael and brought it to Xen’drik, hoping to release a demon lord. Perhaps she was taking it to Mel-Aqat, the Place of Imprisonment.

  But if she was no longer working with Krael, then why was she doing any of this? If she didn’t work for the Emerald Claw any more, who did she work for? Why would she be trying to free an imprisoned fiend, if not on Emerald Claw orders? Could Dania be right—that Maija had become irredeemably evil?

  “No!” Janik shouted aloud, drawing some alarmed stares from passersby on the street. Scowling, he lowered his head and kept his eyes on the cobblestone street, quickening his pace toward the inn. He gritted his teeth. He simply could not accept that he would never have Maija back, that she was forever lost to him.

  He reached the inn, stumbled up to his room, and collapsed in his bed.

  Dawn’s light and a gnawing hunger woke Janik early, and he looked blearily around his room. He jumped to his feet when he realized that the contents of his pack were strewn across the floor near the door. He couldn’t be absolutely certain, but he was fairly sure that they had been neatly in place when he returned to his room the night before.

  “Damn you, Krael,” he muttered as he knelt on the floor. Without touching anything, he took inventory of the items—the pack was empty, but nothing seemed to be missing. Then he noticed that several items lay right in front of the door, which opened inward. The door could not have opened since the gear was spread over the floor. That meant two things. First, someone had definitely been in the room while Janik was sleeping. Second, that someone had not left by way of the door. Janik drew his sword and thoroughly searched the room. It was small, and there was no place to hide. The window was directly over the bed, which meant that someone using it to leave the room would have had to step right over Janik as he slept. He was a fairly heavy sleeper, but he was confident that would have awakened him.

  “Now you’re just showing off,” he said. Shaking his head, he stowed his gear back into his pack.

  “Turned to mist,” Dania said. They were walking to the dock—Janik hoped they could encourage Breddan to set sail early, staying ahead of Krael. “Gered told me that vampires can turn to mist, and I saw Havoc do it in Atur.”

  “That’s probably it,” Mathas said. “He could have turned to mist outside your door—or anywhere, really—and slipped through the crack under the door. Then he returned to solid form inside your room, spread out your belongings to let you know he had been there, and left the same way.”

  “He’s just trying to scare you,” Dania added.

  “Well, it damn well worked!” Janik said. “There was a vampire in my room while I slept last night! I made sure to check for bite marks when I got dressed this morning.”

  “Did you find any?” Auftane asked. He looked genuinely worried.

  “No, I did not. And the point is, he could have done anything he wanted.”

  “That’s exactly the point he was trying to make,” Mathas said. “He wants you to think he’s in control, that he’s the one with the power.”

  “He’s driving home the point that I walked away from our little encounter last night, not him,” Janik said. “Rubbing his victory in my face.”

  “That wasn’t a victory, Janik,” Dania said. “And walking away from a confrontation in the street is not a defeat. We have more important work than brawling with Krael, Janik. Don’t let him intimidate you.”

  “I’m not worried about him intimidating me. I’m worried about him drinking my blood while I sleep! But he can’t do that while we’re sailing across the Phoenix Basin … can he?”

  “No,” Mathas said, “he won’t be able to move as fast as the ship travels. Unless he’s stowed away on the ship.”

  “Or Breddan’s ship is more of a wreck than you let on,” Auftane said, drawing laughter from everyone.

  “Janik, if he had wanted to kill you, or drink your blood, he would have done it last night,” Dania said.

  “Maybe he got in there and realized he wasn’t hungry,” Janik said. “It doesn’t matter. I just want to leave town as quickly as we can, whether Krael has any designs on my blood or not. The fact that he’s here means
he has caught up to us. We need to stay a step ahead of him, so we need to leave now. And,” he added, pointing at Mathas, “we need to make sure he isn’t stowed away on the ship. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m going to inspect the ship’s stores crate by crate before we weigh anchor. If you would help me, I’d appreciate it—I’m not sure I’d recognize a vampire who had turned to mist.”

  “He would have a hard time concealing his presence from me,” Dania said. “The stink of his evil is as strong as Maija’s. I’ll help you look.”

  “Thank you. Oh, look at this.” They reached the docks, and Janik was leading them toward Breddan’s berth. But he pointed now at a different ship—Hope’s Endeavor. “It’s Nashan’s ship—the one Krael stole out from under us. Let’s have a word with Captain Nashan, shall we?”

  “A word,” Dania said firmly. “There’s no need to hurt him.”

  “You don’t think so?” Janik said, but he smiled. “Don’t worry, Dania. I am capable of restraining my temper. We’ll just have a civil conversation.” He stepped onto the gangplank leading up to the ship’s main deck. “Ho there, Hope’s Endeavor!” he called. “Permission to come aboard!”

  No one moved on the deck or in the rigging. Janik looked at his friends, then walked up the gangplank to the deck. “Anyone here?” The ship creaked and water lapped at its sides, but no one answered Janik’s call.

  “They must have all gone ashore,” Auftane said, making his way slowly up the gangplank.

  “And left the ship unguarded?” Dania replied. “Unlikely. I’d say something is definitely wrong.”

  Janik moved to the forward cabin and pushed the door open. “Sea of Fire! Nashan!” Ducking his head, he rushed into the dark cabin.

  Shutters were closed over all the portholes, and the cabin smelled of illness and death. The ship’s captain lay on the floor, his legs and arms spread-eagled, blank white eyes staring up at the ceiling. Janik kneeled beside him, and Nashan took a long, painfully slow, rasping breath.

  “Should’ve … waited … for you,” he wheezed. His skin was chalk-white, and as Janik looked him over he quickly noticed the angry red wound at his neck. The skin was puckered and the twin punctures were white inside.