James Wyatt - In the Claws of the Tiger

“But this isn’t.” She emphasized her point by slamming one fist into her palm. “Look, you’re even right that for fifteen years we’ve pursued this thing with Krael largely out of the same damned pride and hatred. But that changed in Mel-Aqat, Janik. You haven’t seen it yet-maybe Krael hasn’t even fully realized it, and he’s still pursuing his idea of revenge. But we’re not here just to beat Krael to some ancient ruins, just to get one up on him or pay him back for beating us last time.”

“That’s exactly why I’m here,” Janik interrupted. “You think I give a damn what the Keeper of your Flame says about evil spirits and saving the world?”

Dania looked like she’d been stabbed in the stomach. Her mouth hung open, her brow furrowed as she stared at him, her eyes flicked back and forth between his. Then she closed her eyes, shaking her head sadly.

“I guess I hoped you did,” she said, and turned back to the door. She did not turn around as she walked, dripping with rain, into the hut, but quietly said, “Good night, Janik.”

Janik stood in the rain, puddles forming in the mud around his bare feet. He glanced at the sky, then looked at the water on his arms. He held up one hand and rubbed his thumb across his fingertips. The water felt oily.

“That doesn’t make it evil,” he said to himself. “Just unnatural.”

He cast another dark look at the sky and followed Dania into the hut. He crawled back into his bunk, but did not sleep any more that night.

For three more weeks they marched through the rain along the river, which swelled more and more with each day. Dania’s task grew more difficult as the once-dry scrub drank up the foul rain and sprouted prickly leaves. The mud sucked at their boots, slowing them. They mostly walked in silence, and sat down to eat in the evening sullen and soaked to the bone.

They saw no further sign of Krael and his allies until they reached the Sky Pillars and turned away from the river, south toward the great golden desert called Menechtarun.

During the last week of their journey along the river, the mountains drew nearer and nearer on their right side, and the Fangs of Angarak rose up on the horizon ahead of them. Eventually, the river bent away from the Sky Pillars, veering due east toward the distant Fangs, and Janik led them south. Around mid week, the rain stopped, then the sky grew clear, and by the next morning, the sun shone hot on their skin and dried their clothes. The vegetation was dry, brittle scrub again, and it became more widely scattered across the dry earth.

Early the next morning, Mathas spotted a crumbling tower rising above the foothills to their right, as if it had been built to watch the narrow passage they were following between the two mountain ranges.

“I think I saw someone up there, moving around,” he said. He seemed older with every passing day as the strain of the journey took its toll on him, but he never complained-and he remained alert.

“If you saw him, he probably saw us,” Auftane said.

“You underestimate Mathas’s eyes,” Janik said. “And we still have some cover here, as long as these bushes hold out.”

Dania pointed into the hills above the ruined structure. “We could head up here and circle around above it. You can see there used to be a wall that would have blocked our way, but it’s long gone.”

Janik tried to follow Dania’s pointing finger, blinking several times as he tried to make out the wall she was talking about. “I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “But we need to stay out of sight of the tower as much as we can. Let’s start by getting behind that ridge.” He started walking, crouched low in the bushes, and the others followed, doing their best to stay out of sight.

They reached the cover of the ridge and heard no suggestion that they had been spotted. Mathas slowly climbed the ridge and peered up at the tower, and even his keen eyes saw no one moving there. They kept the ridge between themselves and the tower as they made their way up into the hills.

“Churning Chaos!” Dania exclaimed. “What is that?”

Janik’s eyes had been fixed on the top of the tower, just coming into view over the ridge, and he turned around to see Dania. She was looking up and ahead of them, and he followed her gaze to a stretch of level ground at the base of a short cliff. For a moment he had no idea what had prompted her exclamation. Then he noticed that what he had taken for rubble collected at the bottom of the cliff was not rubble at all.

It was a field of bones. Skulls, helmets, breastplates, swords, arm bones, leg bones, and ribs made a jumble of death and ruin.

Dania rushed ahead and Janik followed close behind, keeping one eye on her and the other on the tower. He crested the rise, pleased to see that Dania was crouched near a large boulder, keeping out of sight of the tower as she surveyed the field of death before her. Janik crouched beside her. Behind him, Mathas and Auftane stayed under the cover of the ridge, looking up at the scene.

Janik quickly noticed what Dania had seen from below. These were not the sun-bleached bones of a centuries-old battle. Many of them still hung together, sprawled as they had fallen in battle. Cloaks, boots, the leather straps of armor-all lay intact. And the armor bore the insignia of a grasping green claw.

“The Emerald Claw?” he breathed. “What in the world?”

Dania pointed toward the base of the cliff, and Janik saw a piece of fabric stirring in a slight breeze. Carefully moving closer, he saw broken beams of wood, more of the Emerald Claw skeletons, and a single hand jutting up from the wreckage of what he guessed had been a palanquin. Unlike all the other bones in this place, the hand was still clothed in flesh, dry and shrunken, but otherwise intact.

With a glance at the tower, Janik picked his way over a few skeletons and leaned over where the corpse lay. He was startled to see a face grinning up at him, its eyes wide open but dark. Its lips were shrunken back from its teeth.

“Sea of Fire,” he muttered.

The dead man was draped in robes of emerald and black, with a sparkling ruby and onyx amulet around his withered neck. The hand Janik had seen from afar was outstretched in front of the body, while the other was folded beneath its owner’s back at an unnatural angle. The legs and lower torso were crushed beneath the palanquin, while the upper body was nested on sumptuous black cushions.

“Mathas,” Janik called, “would you come here, please?” “What is it, Janik?” Dania asked as the elf started toward them.

“I’m guessing we’ve got a cleric or necromancer here, and I want Mathas to check him out.”

“Is it possible that whatever killed these soldiers somehow stripped the flesh from their bones? Some vile spell?” Dania asked.

“Anything’s possible.” Janik turned to Mathas as the elf reached them. “Mathas, would you take a look at that body? Tell me anything you can about him and the spells he might have been casting.”

As Mathas bent to examine the robed man’s corpse, Janik turned his attention to the ground around them.

“Well, it’s easy enough to see the prints of the soldiers’ boots,” he said. “They fought in close ranks, but their opponents pushed them all around the field. They were clearly overpowered, but that’s not a big surprise-the four of us would probably have overpowered this rank and file.” He looked more closely at the ground near the shattered palanquin. “Their foes did not wear boots,” he pronounced. “Looks like clawed toes … and fur.”

“Some kind of animal?” Dania asked.

“Two legs. Not very big.”

“Based on the scrolls in his pouches, this gentleman was clearly a necromancer,” Mathas announced. “I would hazard a guess that these soldiers were dead long before they reached this place.”