And he had lost that. Their last night in the ruins, she had held him, but her hands had no comfort and her words were biting. Instead of soothing away his worries and fears, she had mocked them—gently, but the words had stung when he needed reassurance and consolation.
“A wave of death,” he said into the silence, echoing Dania’s words. “Why does that sound like an omen of things to come?”
“Well, thank you for that cheerful thought,” Dania said.
“If it’s an omen,” Mathas said, “perhaps it’s a warning of the consequences of failure. If we released something from Mel-Aqat, perhaps that something is the reason that Maija and Krael were looking for the Tablet of Shummarak. Maybe the thing we released is seeking to release something greater. If one fiend-lord were released from its prison, waves of death might be a very accurate description of what would come next. If they were all released …”
“They won’t be,” Dania said firmly. “We’re here to make sure of that. I seem to have steered this conversation toward predictions of doom, and I’m sorry. Gered’s death was terrible, and Maija will pay for it, but her evil spell is not a portent of our future or the world’s. The Silver Flame has called me to this work and empowered me for it, and I will not fail.” She slammed her fist on the table, a little harder than she intended, and Auftane started in surprise.
“Of course we won’t,” the dwarf said. “You think it’s safe to head to the restaurant now?” Dania and Mathas laughed.
Janik stood up, his face grim. “I’m not hungry. I’ll see you all in the morning.” He turned and walked out of the tavern, his companions too surprised to call after him.
“Mathas, did I say something out of line?” Dania asked.
“No, no,” Mathas said, patting her hand. “You just have to understand that Maija is still a fresh wound for Janik.”
“It’s been three years!”
“Well, then an open, festering wound. He has never bandaged it or treated it—he’s like an animal who keeps biting at a wound so it can’t heal. Maija was his healer, caring for his body and soul. Without her, he doesn’t know how to heal the wound in his heart.”
“I worry about his soul,” Dania said softly.
“So do I,” Mathas said. “Losing Maija seems to have driven him away from the Sovereign Host.”
“And he seems quite uncomfortable every time I mention the Silver Flame.”
“Yes, though I suspect that has as much to do with his experience of your church in Sharn as it does with the overall state of his soul.”
“The church in Sharn is hardly a fair representative of the church as a whole. I mean, it has its share of corrupt patriarchs—”
“And pompous asses,” Auftane interjected.
“And people like Kophran, yes,” Dania said. “But I am convinced there is no greater force for good at work in the world. Mathas, when I went to Karrnath, I was as ruined as Janik is. My past felt like an enormous weight on my shoulders. We were hunting these vampires, and for a while I was convinced that I was as bad as they were. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the people I killed during the war. Kophran didn’t help that, of course—he treated me as though I were not quite a person. But there were two things that got me out of that. One was the realization of what vampires are—they’re warped by pure evil stronger than anything that grows in human hearts. And the other was my taste of the Silver Flame, my experience of pure good. I felt it wash over me when Kophran drove Krael away.”
“So how do you account for the evil you say has grown in Maija’s heart?” Mathas said. “You said she was not a vampire.”
“No, but I am not convinced that she is human any more.”
“What do you mean?” Mathas’s brow furrowed, spreading deep wrinkles over his face.
“I’m not sure. It’s possible that she has made a pact with some demon, or one of the Dark Six. Perhaps it is her use of evil magic that has so deeply corrupted her. Maybe both, and those two things could certainly be related.”
“But not human?”
“I don’t know, Mathas. She’s not a vampire. She’s still alive, near as I can tell, but she’s more evil than anyone I’ve encountered since. She’s the only living person whose evil was almost tangible like that—like what I could feel from the vampires. That’s what I mean.”
Dania looked at the dwarf beside her, who had been sitting quietly through most of her conversation with Mathas. “I’m sorry, Auftane,” she said. “We seem to spend a lot of time talking about the past.”
“I suppose it’s a good thing I find such topics interesting,” Auftane replied with a smile.
“Damn it, why do we spend so much time talking about Maija?” Dania threw her hands in the air. “It’s been three years since she walked out on us.”
“The topic of Krael, at least, seems relevant to our current expedition,” Auftane said.
“True, and it is hard to separate one from the other,” Mathas observed. “They left Mel-Aqat together, and you encountered them together in Karrnath, Dania. I’m not sure that Maija is completely irrelevant, either. Perhaps it was only by chance that we did not meet her on the street tonight.”
“That would have been ugly,” Dania said. “Janik was bad enough after seeing Krael.”
Janik strode along the darkened streets of Stormreach toward the inn. Half of him hoped he would run into Krael again, while the other half knew it would mean almost certain death, at least if Krael was still with Sever and Tierese and his other half-dozen allies. One on one, Janik figured it would be an even match, vampire or no vampire.
Like his friends, Janik wondered if Maija were here as well. But he kept coming back to Krael’s scornful comment, “Her, you can have back, as far as I’m concerned.” So it seemed likely that Maija was not here with him. But Krael had said he was here for revenge—and not against Janik. Was he looking for Maija to take revenge against her? Had she turned on Krael as well? In that case, perhaps she was here on her own. Perhaps she had taken the Tablet of Shummarak from Krael and brought it to Xen’drik, hoping to release a demon lord. Perhaps she was taking it to Mel-Aqat, the Place of Imprisonment.
But if she was no longer working with Krael, then why was she doing any of this? If she didn’t work for the Emerald Claw any more, who did she work for? Why would she be trying to free an imprisoned fiend, if not on Emerald Claw orders? Could Dania be right—that Maija had become irredeemably evil?
“No!” Janik shouted aloud, drawing some alarmed stares from passersby on the street. Scowling, he lowered his head and kept his eyes on the cobblestone street, quickening his pace toward the inn. He gritted his teeth. He simply could not accept that he would never have Maija back, that she was forever lost to him.
He reached the inn, stumbled up to his room, and collapsed in his bed.
Dawn’s light and a gnawing hunger woke Janik early, and he looked blearily around his room. He jumped to his feet when he realized that the contents of his pack were strewn across the floor near the door. He couldn’t be absolutely certain, but he was fairly sure that they had been neatly in place when he returned to his room the night before.
“Damn you, Krael,” he muttered as he knelt on the floor. Without touching anything, he took inventory of the items—the pack was empty, but nothing seemed to be missing. Then he noticed that several items lay right in front of the door, which opened inward. The door could not have opened since the gear was spread over the floor. That meant two things. First, someone had definitely been in the room while Janik was sleeping. Second, that someone had not left by way of the door. Janik drew his sword and thoroughly searched the room. It was small, and there was no place to hide. The window was directly over the bed, which meant that someone using it to leave the room would have had to step right over Janik as he slept. He was a fairly heavy sleeper, but he was confident that would have awakened him.