“Why are we going toward the ruins?” Auftane asked.
“We need to get there eventually,” Janik said. “And given the number of zakyas out looking for us, I’m hopeful that the ones remaining in the city will be caught off-guard.”
Their brisk pace staved off the chill of the desert night, and five nearly full moons lit their way across the barren land. They traveled well into the night, until the disks of the moons silhouetted the walls of Mel-Aqat in front of them. They approached the walls under a cloak of shadow. Moving slowly and as quietly as they could manage, they crept up to the ruins without hearing any sign that they had been detected.
Janik led them to the base of the wall. He ran his hand over the stone, looking up. It appeared that the rakshasas had, as Mathas described, simply rearranged the crumbling stone blocks of the ruins, forming them into a ring around the city and then stacking another layer on top of the first. From where he stood, Janik thought he could see a gap between the blocks forming the upper layer above him, allowing access to the city—if they could get over the lower block.
“I’m pretty sure I can climb this,” he said, turning to his companions. “If I get up there and drop a rope down, will the rest of you be able to make it up?”
“Of course,” said Dania. Mathas nodded, though he looked almost too tired to speak.
Auftane looked uncertainly at the stone block, but then he nodded as well.
“Up I go,” Janik said.
He slid one hand up the wall until he found a good handhold in the worn rock, then did the same with one foot. A moment later he was sliding up the side of the wall like a spider. He only slipped once and caught himself quickly. He reached the top of the block and squeezed into the gap between the two upper ones. He checked above him, still not seeing any guards, and peered down the length of the gap. It narrowed considerably at the other end.
“Wait there,” he hissed down to the others. “I want to make sure we can get through the other side before you all climb up here.”
Turning sideways, he crept along between the two stone blocks until he was sure he could fit in the gap all the way through. He peered out the narrow space at the far end and gasped as he got his first look at Mel-Aqat in over three years.
It had changed considerably, as Mathas had said. On their last visit, only the merest suggestion of ancient buildings marked what had once been a great city, with the exception of the towering ziggurat in its center. Janik and his companions had dug away some of the parched earth to reveal more of the crumbling walls in places, and they had found one ancient vault underground that was almost completely intact—and there they had found the Ramethene Sword. But above ground, nothing had stood—barely two stones stacked on top of each other.
This time, in addition to the reconstruction of the wall, there were strange, crumbling towers erected in various places around the central ziggurat. They were nothing more than huge stone blocks in haphazard stacks, like the constructions of a young child’s toy blocks, but on a much larger scale. Some leaned far to one side, while others buckled in the middle and then righted themselves. For a moment, Janik almost thought he saw some pattern to their arrangement around the ziggurat, but it escaped him and he made a mental note to consider the question later. He needed to help his friends over the wall—and quickly, before any guards appeared.
He pulled a coil of fine silk rope from his backpack and looked for a good place to tie it as he moved back to the outside edge of the wall. The worn stone surface offered no large protrusions—barely more than the narrow fingerholds he had used to climb the lower blocks. He reached the outer edge and threw one end of the rope down.
“Wait another second,” he whispered. “I need to secure this end.”
He tied a large knot in the other end of the rope as he made his way back along the narrow gap. On the inside edge, he crouched down and worked the rope in between the upper and lower blocks so that the knot would catch in place. He pulled hard on the rope to make sure it was secure, checked one more time for guards, and, seeing none, went back to the other end of the gap.
“Come on up,” he said.
Dania tested the rope with her weight and then handed it to Mathas. The old elf glanced at the rope, then handed it back to Dania.
“I’ll do it my way,” he said, and cast a quick spell. Looking up at Janik, he started to float upward. At the top, Janik reached out and pulled him over to stand on the wall, laughing quietly.
“I don’t think there’s room for you to get past me,” he said to Mathas.
Janik backed into the gap, making enough room for Mathas and Auftane, who was walking up the wall, pulling himself along with the rope. Dania held the rope at the bottom to keep him from swinging. Mathas tried to help Auftane clamber up over the edge, almost causing them both to tumble back down onto Dania.
Dania came up last, pulling herself quickly hand over hand and easily finding her feet on the top of the wall. She pulled the rope up behind her and handed it to Auftane, who passed it to Janik. Janik led the way through the gap and pulled the knot free from the crack where he had wedged it.
“Uh-oh,” he said, ducking his head to the side just as an arrow whizzed past his ear. Mathas cursed in pain behind him. Janik pulled his head farther into the gap while searching the ground below for the source of the arrow.
Mathas spotted the rakshasa first, ignoring the arrow’s cut and sending a blast of magical fire to engulf a figure crouching in the shadows below them. The zakya roared and loosed another arrow, which clattered harmlessly off the stone block behind Mathas.
“Well, I’m no use up here,” Janik muttered. He dropped the rope behind him and jumped to the ground, landing on his feet and running over to the zakya. It dropped its bow and pulled out a heavy, toothed sword. Too late, Janik remembered how the other fiends had resisted the bite of his blade, and he wished he had been less impulsive.
The zakya’s fur was partly burned away by Mathas’s fiery blast, and Janik saw pink, blistered flesh beneath it. He could see the pain in its eyes, but its mouth was twisted into something like a snarling grin as it anticipated cutting into Janik with its sword.
Good, Janik thought, it expects me to be easy.
The fiend led with a sweeping blow that would have knocked Janik flat on his back while it opened a gash in his belly—if Janik had been in its path. He tumbled down and to his right, staying ahead of the blade and enticing his foe to extend the swing, reaching too far out. Planting his feet at the end of his roll, Janik hurled his whole body at the zakya, leading with the point of his sword. The blade entered the fiend’s body below its arm and bit deeply despite the creature’s preternatural toughness. Janik ended his roll facing the wall, where Mathas was floating to the ground, and he saw Auftane fumbling with the rope to get himself safely down.
The fiend wheeled to face Janik and adopted a more cautious stance, holding a blood-drenched hand to the wound beneath its sword arm and snarling in anger.
“Janik, watch out!”
Janik was barely conscious of Mathas’s shouted warning, but instinctively dodged to the side just as another rakshasa’s blade swung down where his head had been. In the same instant that Janik dodged, a massive bolt of crackling lightning stretched from the elf’s fingertips to engulf both fiends. The one in front of him fell, tiny arcs of lightning flaring in its fur. The second fiend roared and charged past Janik toward Mathas, beginning to raise its sword for a deadly blow.
“Ignore me, will you?” Janik muttered. As the zakya passed him, his sword darted out and sliced into the fiend’s leg, sending it sprawling on its face on the dusty earth. Janik sprang forward to kill it before it could rise, but it rolled over and slammed its shield into Janik, knocking him aside. He tried to roll with the blow and come up on his feet, but the blow had upset his balance and he joined the rakshasa sprawled in the dust, staring up at the sky.