James Wyatt - In the Claws of the Tiger

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!”

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.