In the Claws of the Tiger

by James Wyatt

  “Binding the rajah?” Dania said.

  “I can’t tell their exact purpose, but binding is possible. On the other hand, this structure seems to be designed to focus the power lines. Why would the zakyas be building these towers up if they’re making the rajah’s prison stronger?”

  “Maybe something else is going on,” Janik said. “Could they be arranging these lines of magic power in a different way, maybe to weaken the bonds of the prison?”

  “Anything’s possible,” Auftane said with a shrug. “I would need to examine more of the structures, try to get a sense of the larger pattern to determine exactly what’s going on.”

  “So what should we do?” Janik said. “Should we check out the rest of the towers, or head underground and look for a way into the ziggurat? Dania, what’s your opinion?”

  “Underground.”

  “Mathas?” Janik said.

  “Underground, I think,” the elf said. “While I admit to some curiosity, I also cannot deny a feeling of urgency. I think we should try to get to the heart of the matter as quickly as possible.”

  “Auftane?”

  “I agree with Mathas. Curiosity be damned.”

  “Then we’re agreed,” Janik declared. “Let’s find the way underground.”

  They crouched low amid the rubble, trying to stay out of sight of any guards that might be stationed on the wall or patrolling the ruins. They rounded a heap of jumbled stone, and Janik pointed to another crooked tower ahead.

  “That tower should be at or near the passage entrance,” he said. “Let’s hope they haven’t covered it.”

  “Quite the contrary,” Auftane observed as they neared the tower. It displayed the most complete construction they had seen in the ruins: a carefully built keystone archway leading between two large blocks. Beyond the arch, they could see a stairway descending into the earth.

  “Oh, there are stairs now?” Janik said. “And I was looking forward to scaling that drop again.”

  “Stairs probably mean guards,” Dania warned. “If this is a well-used route, it will be watched.”

  “Weapons ready, everybody,” Janik whispered, and he saw Auftane shift his grip on his mace. “I’ll go first.”

  Janik stepped up to the archway and peered inside. He produced the glowstone from his pocket and shone its dim light ahead of him into the dark tunnel. Seeing no sign of guards, he motioned the others forward and stepped through the arch.

  Janik felt his foot tug a tripwire and he jumped forward in a flash, keeping just ahead of a dozen gleaming metal blades that arced out of the wall. He hit the floor in a roll and crouched low, ready to jump again if the trap had more to offer.

  “Wait!” he hissed. Auftane came up short just before crossing the tripwire. The blades slid back into the walls, disappearing so smoothly that Janik could see the slits only because he knew where to look.

  “There’s a tripwire,” he whispered to Auftane, “just in front of you.” He took a cautious step back toward the dwarf, who crouched down to look for the wire.

  “Ah, I see,” Auftane said. “Back up, out of reach of the blades. I’ll cut the line.”

  Janik took four steps back, checking carefully to make sure he was beyond the reach of the blades’ deadly arcs, and nodded to Auftane. The dwarf was examining the wire carefully and checking the walls around it.

  “If you want to do it right—” Janik began.

  “Tie off the ends so the tension isn’t released, I know,” Auftane interrupted. “But that’s a lot more work. Still,” he added, “best to be safe. Would you hold one side?”

  Janik stepped beside the dwarf, keeping his eyes on the wire in Auftane’s hand.

  “Hold it here and don’t let it move,” Auftane said. Janik grabbed the wire where the dwarf indicated. Auftane grabbed the line near the opposite end and used a small pair of clippers to snip it in the middle.

  Janik slowly let out his breath.

  The dwarf’s nimble hands quickly tied off one end of the wire against the wall, then he took the other end from Janik and did the same.

  “Should be safe now,” he announced, getting to his feet.

  Janik advanced carefully down the hallway, then turned and nodded to Auftane. “Well done,” he said as the dwarf followed him, waving Mathas and Dania forward.

  “Thank you.”

  Janik advanced cautiously down the stairs. Several times he tensed, ready to spring, before realizing that the movement beneath his feet was just the hasty workmanship of the stairs rather than a sophisticated pressure-plate trigger to another death trap.

  The stairs led them far underground, and before long Janik called a halt, set his pack on the stairs, and produced a lantern, stowing the glowstone in his coat pocket. He opened the lantern’s shutter just wide enough to light the width of the stairs ahead of him, shouldered his pack, and continued to the bottom.

  The stairs gave way to a huge vault, a grandly impressive chamber that remained well preserved through the centuries. It showed clear signs of its age, particularly in the stylized bestial faces carved in the walls—they were worn and barely recognizable as tigers. In places, the walls had crumbled away, and darkness hinted at open spaces beyond.

  Four archways sculpted to resemble the gaping mouths of tigers led into passages extending farther beneath the ruined city. Above them, a number of small balconies overlooking the chamber suggested another level of passages higher up. Janik stood in a fifth archway, looking across the room at an elaborate sculpture. Set in an alcove, the statue depicted a dragon sprawled on its back, an expression of pain contorting its features. Janik reflected that he had barely looked at the statue the last time he was here—he had been completely focused on the blade that had been embedded in the stone dragon’s breast, the Ramethene Sword.

  Seeing this chamber stirred his memories powerfully, more so than simply reaching Mel-Aqat had. The room was exactly as he had left it three years ago, when he had wrested the sword out of the statue and carried it out of the chamber and up to the surface. Where Maija had abandoned him. Lost in his memories, he turned and looked behind him, toward the fateful spot where he had faced off with Krael. From the expressions on their faces, he could tell that Dania and Mathas were also feeling those memories rushing back.

  “Watch out!” Auftane yelled, his eyes wide. The dwarf grabbed Janik and pulled him to a crouch just as two arrows pierced the air where his head had been. The arrows clattered against the wall as Janik rolled backward into the chamber, gripping his sword tightly as he moved.

  A zakya stood in one of the archways, nocking two more arrows to a massive bow and beginning to draw the string back. Two more of the creatures started pushing past the first, swords and shields in their hands. Janik and Dania met them side by side. Mathas sent bolts of flame hurtling toward the archer.

  Janik fought almost automatically, his mind still swimming in his memories. His sword bit deep, thanks to Auftane’s magic, but in his mind it became the Ramethene Sword, an instrument of pure destruction flashing like lightning as it cut and jabbed. He could almost see the image of a grasping Emerald Claw on the shields of the fiends he fought, and he let out all the rage he had bridled for three years, let it empower his blade and give strength to his blows. Past and present flowed into one—but where he had been powerless before, standing dumbly as Maija took the sword from his hand, staring bewildered as she gave it to Krael, now he was powerful. He was fury given flesh, and the rakshasas felt his wrath.

  He was not aware of Mathas and Auftane, and only dimly aware of Dania as she moved beside him, maneuvered around their foes with him, gave him openings. Her sword flashed again and again with holy power, which felt to Janik like an elemental expression of the rage he felt.

  Only when he faced Dania over the kneeling form of the zakya archer, which had dropped its bow and hastily drawn a sword, did he see her face and realize that his face, too, was streaked with tears. Janik wrenched his sword out of the dying fiend’s shoulder
and stepped back, giving Dania room to cut its head from its neck.

  Janik blinked several times at the zakya’s helmet as it bounced on the floor, rolled drunkenly, and stopped. The fury still pounded in his chest, beat like a war drum in his temples, clenched in his jaw, and set his face like stone. But his stomach churned with something else—a disgust at this bloody work, a deep weariness that began to spread as an ache to his bones. Dania’s words surfaced in his storm-tossed mind.

  I just want peace, Janik.

  Dania’s gasp shook him from his reflection. Her wide eyes were focused on something over his shoulder, and he wheeled to face whatever new threat was upon them.

  A woman stood on one of the balconies, her hands clenching the stone railing in front of her as she leered down at them. “Hello, old friends,” she purred.

  Janik’s voice was hoarse in his throat. “Maija!”

  REVELATIONS

  CHAPTER 16

  Dear Janik,” Maija said into the deafening silence. “How have you been? Getting along without me?” Her voice grated on the stone and scraped across Janik’s heart, mockery oozing from every syllable. “Dania told me you were perhaps a little heartbroken. Poor thing.”

  “Damn you to the Outer Darkness, Maija Olarin,” Dania swore through clenched teeth.

  “Tsk. Didn’t your fat exorcist friend teach you not to use such strong language, Dania? Or if not him, then perhaps that sweet boy Gered?” Maija’s expression of feigned innocence twisted into a cruel smile. “Or did he die before he could teach you much of anything?”

  Janik saw Dania step in front of him, but she held her sword at her side. She stared up at Maija in silence, then staggered backward as if some invisible force had struck her. Roused from his stupor, Janik caught her before she fell on the floor and held her up as she struggled to regain her feet.

  “What did you do to her, Maija?”

  “Do? I did nothing.” Maija sneered. “Perhaps she asked a question and couldn’t handle the answer.”

  “What happened to you, Maija?” Janik cried. “What happened to the love we shared? Where is the touch of the Sovereigns in you?”

  “I very much doubt you can handle the answer to those questions, dear Janik.”

  “I can’t handle not knowing. I need to know. Damn it, I deserve an answer!”

  Maija’s smile stretched to a thin line. “I lied.”

  The words were barely more than a whisper, but the force of them nearly knocked Janik off his feet. His arms grew weak and Dania began to slip from his grasp, but she found her feet and lifted her sword.

  With a wordless shout, Dania ran forward, leaping into the air to grab the edge of the balcony where Maija stood. As she pulled herself up, Maija stepped back in surprise. She recovered quickly, though, and made a forceful gesture with her hand, as if to push Dania off the balcony.

  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.”