by James Wyatt
“Janik, Maija hurt all of us. We were all her friends, we were all wounded by what she did. But we haven’t filled our hearts with bile and anger, Janik. You need to-”
“Don’t tell me what I need to do.” Janik interrupted her again. “You’ve filled your heart with Silver Flame hypocrisy. Don’t try to push it on me.”
For a moment, a hint of holy anger flared in Dania’s eyes-an almost visible fire of wrath. “Do not presume to judge what is in my heart, Janik! Has Maija poisoned you against everything? She was a cleric, so everything divine is hypocrisy-is that it?”
“No. It has more to do with what I’ve seen of your Church-especially in Sharn.” Janik was almost smiling. “It didn’t take Maija to convince me that the Silver Flame clerics in Sharn were hypocrites. And practically the first words out of your precious Keeper’s mouth yesterday were bribes.”
“Bribes? Perhaps you heard her wrong, Janik.”
“‘It will be worth your while to return there,’ she said. I said I didn’t want to go, and she said she’d make it worth my while.”
“She wasn’t talking about money.” Dania’s wrath had settled down to simple anger.
“Sure she wasn’t.” Janik scoffed.
Dania threw up her hands. “Forget it, Janik. Just forget it. It’s like arguing with a dragon. Just come to see her again tomorrow. If she doesn’t convince you then, fine. Go back to Sharn and your teaching and your comfortable retirement from dangerous adventures. Twiddle away your days until Krael’s fangs finally close on your throat. I don’t care.” She stalked to the door and opened it, then turned back. “Just come tomorrow. Mathas, it was wonderful to see you again.” She smiled warmly at the elf, cast one final glare in Janik’s direction, and stormed out, closing the door firmly behind her.
Janik threw himself down in the chair Dania had vacated, holding his head in his hands. Mathas hadn’t moved from his seat, and he slowly stroked his chin as he gazed at his friend. Silence settled over the room for several moments.
“Well,” Mathas said at last, “wasn’t it nice of her to stop by? It was so pleasant to have the three of us together again.”
“Oh, shut up,” Janik said, still staring at the floor.
“She always was a hotheaded girl.”
“Sea of Fire, yes!” Janik sat back, draping his arms over the sides of his chair. “And now she’s got holy fire to back it up!” He returned Mathas’s smile.
“She has a wisdom beyond her years, too.”
“Shut up again, Mathas.” Janik’s smile didn’t waver.
“Hmm.” Mathas stared over Janik’s shoulder at the door.
“Yeah, ‘hmm.’ Plenty of ‘hmm.’” Janik rubbed his forehead.
They sat in silence for a long time.
Servants delivered a fine dinner to their room, which Janik and Mathas ate together without much conversation. Mathas settled into bed early for his elven rest, despite his long meditation in the morning. Janik sat awake for hours, not bothering to light a lamp when the sun faded from the sky, going over his conversation with Dania in his mind over and over again.
Countless times he had imagined seeing her again and planned what he might say to her, but the encounter never played out in his mind the way it had earlier that day. He had planned to apologize and he’d never gotten the chance. He had started to, but she interrupted him to say it didn’t matter. Of course, he had started the conversation off on a bitter note, flushed with anger after being attacked in the city.
The last thing he’d expected was to find that Dania had become a paladin of the Silver Flame. That, more than anything, had thrown him off. Dania had never been a religious person. She had been a soldier-initially, a willing participant in the Last War, not because she believed in Breland’s cause or King Boranel’s claim to the throne of the shattered empire, but because the war got her away from the expectations placed on the daughter of a noble family. The war had made her hard-at least on the outside, though Janik had always suspected that the horrors of the battlefield had scarred her soul more deeply than she ever revealed.
Now that he thought about it, maybe her new place as a paladin wasn’t that surprising after all. He had always sensed that her greatest difficulty with the war was that she didn’t see any right or wrong in it. She didn’t believe in Boranel’s cause, and if Breland wasn’t fighting for what was right, then it followed that the other nations weren’t in the wrong. That, in her mind, made the whole war meaningless, a futile exercise of human arrogance and stupidity. And that made the whole thing feel wrong, including her participation in it.
So perhaps it made sense that with the war over and her adventuring career with Janik cut short, she had found a way to fight for something she thought was right. Better the Church of the Silver Flame than the Order of the Emerald Claw, Janik supposed-though on the other hand, perhaps it was better to be evil without pretense than to cover a corrupt heart with a veneer of holiness.
And now she was trying to draw Janik into her holy crusade. Why? If she had found meaning and purpose in her life without him, why drag him back into it? She knew he had no love for the Silver Flame, not after growing up in Sharn. But certainly what she had said was true: no one knew more about Mel-Aqat than Janik Martell. Maybe she genuinely needed his help.
So what about this evil spirit? Janik turned his thoughts to his years of research into the history of Mel-Aqat. He himself had argued that a passing mention in the Serpentes Fragments to a “place of imprisonment” referred to Mel-Aqat, and that one of the great princes of the ancient demons was imprisoned deep beneath the ruins. But if they had released something like that when they were in Mel-Aqat, Janik was sure he would have noticed-and the world would have felt the impact by now.
Thinking this through felt like entering ruins that had lain abandoned for years. Janik had been writing, publishing articles about Mel-Aqat, but he realized now that he’d been coasting, letting the momentum of his discovery carry him through article after article, that all of them really argued little of substance. He had not thought this deeply in years, and he was a little surprised at how good it felt.
I need my books, he thought. I don’t remember half of what matters.
With that thought, he got up from his chair and stumbled in to bed.
It was not Tierese but the other knight from the previous day who came after breakfast to escort Janik to the Cathedral.
“Janik,” Mathas called as Janik started out the door behind the knight.
“Yes?”
“Hear her out.”
“I’ll try.”
“Thank you.”
Janik followed the knight out of the palace and into the Cathedral. They walked to the same sitting room, but the knight did not ask Janik to wait. He walked to the door leading to the audience chamber and held it open for Janik to walk through.
No attendants flanked the throne this time. The Keeper of the Flame sat on her ornate chair, and Dania stood in front of her, to Janik’s right. Both smiled as Janik entered.
“Welcome, Janik Martell,” Jaela Daran said again. “Thank you for returning.”
“I am grateful for your hospitality,” Janik said with a bow. He caught Dania’s gaze as he straightened, and held it for a long moment before Dania looked back to the Keeper of the Flame.
The girl spoke again. “Dania tells me that you uncovered a spy among the Knights of Thrane who serve our Cathedral. I am grateful for this information, and deeply sorry for the trouble she caused you. This woman, Tierese, has fled Thrane, but we will continue in our efforts to bring her to justice.”
“Thank you,” Janik said.
“We think she’s heading for Sharn, Janik,” Dania said. “Which suggests that Krael is there.”
Janik started to respond, but the Keeper cut him off. “Dania tells me that you are still reluctant to return to Mel-Aqat, Janik.”
“Reluctant is putting it rather mildly,” Janik said.
“Janik, listen,” Dania said. “Maybe you don�
�t care about this evil spirit we released, or fixing the harm we’ve done. I find that hard to believe. But think about what we left there.”
“Half those ancient passages still lie unexplored,” Jaela said, “untouched by any human hand. You found the Ramethene Sword in the ruins, and it might have changed the course of the Last War. What else might still be in there?”
“It would be unusual to discover more than one artifact of power at a single site,” Janik said. “And we explored more than half the ruins. At least, I think we did. No telling how much is left, really.”
“Should we leave it to Krael to find out?” Dania said. “Will you let him pillage the ruins? He’s got the Ramethene Sword already, thanks to Maija. What if there are other relics there? Do you want more artifacts in his hands?”
“And what makes you think he’s going there?” Janik was starting to feel the solid ground shift beneath his feet.
“If he’s in Sharn, you know what that means,” Dania said. “He’s heading to Xen’drik. He’s going back there.”
“Which is why he has sent assassins after you,” Jaela said. “He wants you out of the way so his path is clear.”
Janik looked at the Keeper of the Flame, surprised at the poise and authority this child brought to her position. He had to admit that she was impressive, and he no longer suspected her of delivering lines that had been scripted for her.
“We don’t know whether Krael’s interest has anything to do with the spirit we released there,” Dania said. “Maybe the two events are completely unrelated, though I doubt it. But that makes two good reasons for us to return to Mel-Aqat.”
Something stirred in Janik’s heart. It had started with the merest trickle the night before, a sense that he wanted to plunge deeper into his research, think harder about the issues his visit to Mel-Aqat had raised. Now that trickle was building to a flood. For three years, the name of Mel-Aqat had conjured a single thought, like a dagger in his mind. Now other images were reawakening. He recalled the sight of the ruins looming before them for the first time as they crossed the desert. He felt the thrill of moving through the ancient halls, shining his lantern on inscriptions that verified all his theories and speculations. He remembered fighting shoulder to shoulder with Dania, keeping a pack of insectlike waste-dwellers away from Mathas and Maija. I’ve missed this, he thought. Maybe I could go back …
“For us to return?” he asked Dania. “You would come?”
Dania smiled. “Of course I’ll come, Janik. You think I’d miss it?”
Janik knew exactly what she meant. Another image forced itself into his mind: Krael’s superior smirk as Maija handed him the sword.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll go.”
The three companions boarded an airship the next morning, destined for Sharn. Janik spent the bulk of the first day pacing the deck, casting a wary eye at the skies all around the ship. He slept fitfully, Krael’s warforged assassin featuring prominently in his dreams and usually living up to his name-Sever, Tierese had called him.
He rose early the next day and resumed his pacing. Dania approached as he stood at the stern, following his gaze out at a speck in the distant sky.
“It’s a dragonhawk,” she said.
“Too far east,” Janik replied.
“I don’t know anything about their range,” Dania said, “but I know a dragonhawk when I see one.”
“You’re just saying that because you know it’ll never come close enough for us to be sure.”
“It is close enough for me to be sure.” Dania smiled. “The fact that your inferior human eyes can’t make it out doesn’t make it false.”
Janik grinned. They had shared this argument many times, playing endless variations on essentially the same lines of dialogue. “So if it’s a dragonhawk, and it’s flying over southern Thrane, does that mean someone’s riding it?”
“No,” Dania replied. “No one is on its back.”
“I hope your superior half-elf eyes are right.” He turned around and leaned back on the railing. “It’s good to see you again.”
“It is good,” she replied, still watching the circling dragonhawk. “And good not to be arguing.”
“Dania,” Janik said seriously, “I never apologized.”
“No, you never did.”
“I am sorry for everything.”
She gave him a sideways glance. “I already told you it’s all forgiven.” She smiled, then looked outward. “Look, it’s diving!”
Janik saw the distant speck plummet earthward, pulling up an instant before colliding with the ground. He imagined he could see the beating of powerful wings as it climbed back into the sky, but it was like seeing the twinkling of a star.
“It caught a sheep,” Dania said. “That will be one unhappy farmer.”
“You’re making this up.”
She turned to him and smiled. “Hey, Mathas is down there having breakfast. Let’s join him. We can talk about what we need to do in Sharn.”
“I guess I could eat breakfast.”
They walked together across the deck and went below to the elegant dining room. Mathas, as usual, sat gazing out a window on the starboard side. Janik pulled a chair from a nearby table while Dania sat across from the old elf.
“It’s the most remarkable thing,” Mathas said. “I just watched a dragonhawk grab a sheep. It’s unusual to see them this far east.”
Dania burst out laughing, and Janik scowled at them both.
“I don’t know how you did it,” Janik said, “but somehow you two planned that.”
Dania laughed harder, but Mathas was utterly bewildered. Janik glared at them as he accepted a menu from a waiter.
“I thought we could start planning our time in Sharn,” Dania said after she and Janik ordered their food.
“Good idea,” Mathas said, picking at his plate of fruit. “Janik, our passage to Xen’drik is all set?”
“Yes,” Janik said. “I stopped at the Sivis enclave and spoke with Captain Nashan before we left Flamekeep. It’s a good thing I did, and probably the first time of many that I will express my gratitude for the Church’s generous letter of credit. We’ll arrive in the city in the evening on Zol, then we’ll have only Wir and Zor to prepare before we leave on Far.”
“Only two days!” Dania said. “There’s a lot to do in a short time.”
“Yes. Of course, we’ll have as much time as we need to really stock up for the journey once we hit Stormreach.”
“Will we have trouble with the letter of credit there?” Mathas asked.
“We shouldn’t.” Janik answered. “House Kundarak still has a bank there, I think. I’ll check on that. I’ll also have to talk with the sahuagin to get us safe passage through Shargon’s Teeth.”
“Right,” Mathas said. “Is your contact-what’s his name? — still around?”
“Shubdoolkra,” Janik said, punctuating the sahuagin name with a weird popping sound around the D. “I don’t know. I’m completely out of touch. A lot can change in three years.”
“Speaking of change,” Dania said, “I hate to bring this up, but there are fewer of us than last time. Should we think about finding a fourth?”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Janik said.
“For all her faults,” Mathas said, “Maija proved very useful in certain areas. Healing, for example.”
“That’s true,” Dania said. “The Silver Flame has granted me some ability to heal wounds, but I would be happier with a cleric along.”
“Do you have contacts in the Church of the Silver Flame who might fill that role, Dania?” Mathas asked. “You were working with a cleric in Karrnath, were you not?”
“I’m not eager to work with Kophran ir’Davik again,” Dania said. “Pompous ass,” she muttered, and Mathas laughed.
The waiter returned, set plates of food in front of them, then bustled off to another table.
“My thought,” Janik said, “is that it might prove fruitful to find someone who
can cover a couple of weaknesses. I don’t want to go in there with more than four people-with too many, we’ll be stumbling through the ruins like a thunder-herder in Sharn. But in addition to healing, remember that we had trouble in Mel-Aqat with traps, as well as unsafe walls, ceilings, and floors.”
“Yes,” Mathas mused, “it would be fine with me if I did not get separated from the group by a collapsed wall this time.” Dania and Janik both laughed.
“We found you eventually, Mathas,” Dania said.
“Eventually.” Mathas scowled briefly.
“But that’s exactly the sort of thing I want to avoid,” Janik said. “My own skills only go so far, as Mathas will attest. So I was thinking about trying to recruit an artificer to join us.”
Mathas nodded, but Dania looked slightly skeptical. “That could be an ideal solution,” the old elf said. “An artificer would support all of our abilities-make us all better.”
“Maybe,” Dania said. “But three days to find someone we can trust makes me nervous.”
“It makes me nervous as well,” Janik admitted. “But believe me, I’m not going to accept anyone I don’t trust.”
“Well, we’ll see how that goes,” Dania said. “Let’s ask around while we’re making preparations and see who we can find.”
“Sounds good,” Janik replied. “You two will need a place to stay. You’re welcome to stay at my apartment, but …”
Mathas interrupted. “Thank you for your hospitality, but I will stay in Skyway as I always do. I prefer to stay as far above all those towers as I possibly can.”
“And I will find lodging with the Church,” Dania said. “I’ve seen your apartment.”
“I hired someone to clean the place weekly. I have every expectation that she’s been in twice while I’ve been away. I had no opportunity to dirty it up in between, so it must be sparkling right now.”
“That’s fine, Janik,” Dania said, “but all the same, I’ll stay with the Church.”
“Mathas, will you purchase our food for the trip to Stormreach?” Janik asked. “Nothing too extravagant, but I’d like to eat well enough on the ship to keep our strength up.”
