by James Wyatt
“You were right,” Mathas said. He was not watching the water raging past them, but gazing to the southeast. “This is not a natural storm.”
“From bad to worse,” said Janik. “Could it be Krael, trying to shake us off his trail?”
“It could be anything,” Mathas said. “Could be Krael, could be one of the hundreds of random magical effects left over from the end of the Age of Giants. It could be an elemental storming in the mountains, or even a giant.”
“Whatever it is, it’s damned inconvenient.” Janik kicked a loose stone into the churning water. “It means we’re traveling on the riverbank now, which means scrub and brambles. It also means we’re more visible, without the cover of the banks on either side.”
“Maybe,” Dania said, “but we’re also less vulnerable. We could have been ambushed by archers on the banks at any time in the last week.” She smiled. “I’m actually a little relieved that I can stop looking up every five steps.”
“Great,” Janik said, rummaging in his pack. He pulled out a short, thick sword, not ideal for combat but designed for cutting through the growth of a jungle. He held the leather scabbard and extended the heavy hilt to Dania. “You can put all your extra energy to use in clearing us a path.”
It was slow going compared to the relatively open riverbed, but Dania cut through the brittle scrub and led them at a steady pace, without showing any sign of tiring. They camped before the sun went down, since the moons no longer offered much light and their path was harder to see in the pale golden light of the Ring of Siberys. Around midnight, Janik woke to the sound of rain pelting the thatched roof of Mathas’s conjured hut. He rolled out of his bunk and stood in the doorway, watching the huge drops of rain making tiny craters in the dry ground, quickly turning the dust to mud.
Somewhere far in the distance, a horn blew one long, low note. It barely reached the edge of his hearing, so Janik felt it more than heard it, below the splattering of the raindrops on the ground.
“Mathas is right.”
Dania’s soft whisper at his shoulder startled Janik, but he recovered quickly and did not turn around.
“This is not a natural storm,” she said. “It has a malign air about it, as if …” she trailed off, searching for a way to explain it.
“Now rainstorms have the stink of evil about them, too?” Janik demanded, his voice a harsh whisper as he turned to face her. “Aren’t all destructive storms the work of the Devourer? That’s what my mommy always told me.”
Dania just looked at him, her face draped in shadow. Her red hair stuck out from her head at all angles, a mess that had always appealed to him—particularly on their last trip through Xen’drik, when he would awaken in her arms every morning. But there was a set to her jaw that he had not seen before, a sternness that hadn’t been present in the younger woman he had allowed to love him those years ago. What had she become? A paladin stood before him—he could see it even in the little hut’s darkness, full of strength and righteous fury and conviction.
Conviction that, to Janik, seemed utterly misplaced.
He shook his head and turned to look at the rain. An evil storm! he thought. He almost envied Dania the simplicity of her vision. The storm was evil. Krael was evil. Maija was evil. All that evil—as if it somehow gave a larger meaning to their conflict. Dania believed she stood on the side of good, opposed to all this evil. As if she were part of some great, cosmic struggle.
“No,” Janik whispered more quietly, almost to himself. “This isn’t about some war between the light and the darkness, Dania. It’s us against Krael. A hatred born out of fifteen years’ rivalry. We hate him, he hates us, we’ll each do anything in our power to destroy the other. That doesn’t make us right and him wrong, us good and him evil. We’re human, that’s all.”
“No, Janik, he’s not human.”
“Right, he’s a vampire. And he drinks the blood of ship captains for his nightly cordial. But he was always that kind of a bastard. He’s got fangs and spooky powers now, but as far as I can tell, he’s the same damned bastard. He hates my guts as he always has—and fair enough, the feeling’s mutual—only now he’s got a little more muscle to back it up.”
“His soul is gone, Janik,” Dania’s voice grew slightly louder. “In its place is a shred of the Endless Night, a shard of pure destruction. He is not like us—he is most certainly not like me.”
“Because your soul’s been bathed in the Silver Flame now? Which makes you pure and perfect, holy and righteous. You’re good and he’s evil.”
“I’m not saying I’m perfect, Janik.”
“We’re all just bastards at each other’s throats,” Janik said. “Predator and prey, or lions fighting over territory. You fought in the Last War, Dania, you know what I’m talking about.”
“This isn’t the same.”
“Why? It’s still us against Krael, just like it was during the war. Only now he’s a vampire and you’re a paladin, is that what you’re saying? Seems to me you changed and he changed, but I don’t see how that means our conflict is suddenly all about good and evil.”
Dania thrust a finger toward Janik’s chin and opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself. She drew a deep breath, slowly lowered her hand to her side, and lowered her voice to a whisper. She took Janik’s arm and led him out into the rain, pulling the hut’s door almost closed behind her.
“Look, Janik,” she said calmly, “I know you’re having a hard time accepting what I told you about Maija.”
“We’re not talking about Maija. We’re talking about Krael, and I’m not even sure how we started that. We were talking about the weather until you turned it into a force of evil.”
“You’ve been talking about Maija since the word ‘evil’ first came out of your mouth. You think I’m lying to you about Maija’s aura of evil, or trying to make more out of this whole thing than it deserves. And I tell you, I’m not.”
Janik opened his mouth, but she held up her hand and cut him off.
“Listen! You’re right that most of the war and hatred in the world boils down to human stupidity. We can be a lot like animals, fighting over territory or mates or—or nothing in particular, just for the sake of fighting. Nobody knows that better than I do, Janik, nobody. Like you said, I fought in the Last War—I know this—anyone who was part of the army knows it. For a hundred years the Five Nations tore themselves apart over idiocy and vanity and pride. You’re right, Janik, you’re right—that wasn’t about good and evil. That wasn’t about anything more than people being stupid and killing each other because it seemed like the thing to do at the time.
“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.
THE FIEND-LORD’S DOMAIN
CHAPTER 13
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.”
“Dead before?” Janik said, looking up at Mathas. “Undead?”
“Krael and the necromancer probably killed them all at the first dawn,” the elf answered. “So they could keep marching day and night.”
“Carrying the necromancer in the palanquin,” Dania added. “And probably carrying Krael as well, at least during the day.”
“And the warforged could walk forever without getting tired,” Janik said, “just like these poor bastards.” He kicked absently at a shield near his feet. “I guess the ones we killed on the beach really did have the easy job.”
“So now we know how they got so far ahead of us,” Auftane said, still hanging back at the edge of the carnage. He looked at Janik. “We should move along now, shouldn’t we?”
Janik laughed. “Why, Auftane! What are you doing back there? Come on into the thick of things.”
“Well, you didn’t give me any instructions, so I figured I’d … keep watch?”
Nearly drowning out the dwarf’s last words, a horn blasted a loud, low note from the ruined tower. At the same time, two brawny figures leaped down from the cliff above them, heavy swords flashing in the sunlight. Janik recognized the sound he had heard in the rain three weeks before. But he had little time to think about it as a sword flashed toward him.
Dania sprang forward and interposed her shield between the scimitar and Janik’s head, and Janik reeled backward, getting his first good look at their attackers. They stood a hand’s length taller than him, and were clad in heavy armor formed of overlapping metal scales. Their swords had cruel teeth along one edge, and their shields bore spiked edges, making them as much weapons as defensive tools. Beneat
h their pointed helmets, the faces of tigers snarled in a blood fury.
Janik glanced at Mathas and saw that the elf was deep in concentration on a spell. Dania’s sword was dancing furiously with the blade of one creature, and she seemed to have the duel under control. Meanwhile, the other had charged toward Auftane, who was startled and stumbling backward, away from the creature’s assault. Janik raced to help the artificer.
Despite his reluctance to enter the field of bones and his initial surprise at the creature’s charge, Auftane recovered by the time Janik reached him and was battling in fine form. He swung his mace hard at the creature’s head just as Janik arrived, and Janik drove his short sword into a gap in the creature’s armor at its shoulder.
The blow should have drawn a huge gout of blood and crippled the creature’s sword arm. Janik felt his thrust pushed back, however, almost as if some magic within the thing’s body repelled the metal of his sword. It bled, so Janik knew it was a living creature, but he could tell he would need more than a few well-placed blows to take it down. Auftane’s hard swing also seemed less damaging than it should have been.
As the creature roared and sidestepped away from him and the dwarf, Janik stole a quick glance over his shoulder at Dania. She was having a little more luck piercing her foe’s hide, but not much. Mathas seemed to have done better—the other creature looked a little scorched from one of the elf’s spells.
“What are we dealing with here?” Auftane called out.
The faces of tigers. Something fell into place in Janik’s mind, and he shouted, “These are fiends of Khyber!”
As he turned his attention back to the fiend nearer to him, Janik heard Dania say, “Then let’s see how you like a taste of holy power, fiend!” Her sword struck like a peal of thunder against her opponent, and the creature roared in pain and rage.
Janik dodged a great sweep of his foe’s sword, but the clawlike spikes on the creature’s shield raked his arm as he tumbled out of the way. “Damn!” he muttered as he thrust his sword toward the fiend’s shield arm. His blow was almost an afterthought and barely grazed the creature’s orange fur.
