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!”
16
Revelations
“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.
Janik heard roars and shouts, the clamor of weapons and shields, the rattle of arrows hitting stone and armor. But he saw only Maija, her hands extended to him and her eyes locked on his. He felt as if her hand were locked around his throat. For a moment, he thrilled at the imagination of her touch as he stared into her eyes—his mind could almost imagine it as a loving caress. He stared into her eyes as the edges of his vision went black. A glint of red in her brown eyes was the last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed him.
He was lying on his back. The first thing he became aware of was the hard floor beneath him, and then a throbbing pain slammed through his head. His eyes struggled to open and he became vaguely aware of a face bending over his own. Then he recognized the face and rolled away from it, finding his back against a stone wall.
“Krael!”
“About time you woke up,” the vampire said, grinning. “I’m not sure how much longer I could have held off my hunger.”
Janik looked around. They were in a small stone chamber with a heavy iron door—no windows, not even a grate through which light or fresh air might come. His lantern lay in the middle of the floor, its bright beam casting weird shadows on Krael’s face. Krael’s warforged lieutenant stood impassively behind Krael. The still forms of Janik’s three companions were heaped on the floor around them.
Without a word, Janik turned his back on Krael and knelt beside Dania. She was battered and coated in dried blood, but he surmised that much of the blood was not hers, for her breathing was steady and her pulse strong.
“They’re all alive and reasonably healthy, Janik,” Krael said. “But I find it touching that you checked on Dania first. I’m sure your concern would warm her heart.”
Ignoring Krael, Janik moved beside Mathas next, then Auftane. As the vampire had said, they were alive and seemed all right.
“You know, the whelp she found in Karrnath was nothing at all like you, Janik,” Krael went on. “He was a Sentinel Marshal, definitely a step up on the social ladder, but so very bland. Even his blood lacked spice. I told her as much when I first met him.”
Janik clenched his jaw and pretended to study Auftane’s wounds more closely, though they were obviously not serious. He wanted to leap on Krael and rip out his throat with his bare hands to shut him up, but he decided that ignoring the vampire was the more prudent course.
For the moment.
“As for you—well, I have to say, I always thought far more of Dania than of your bitch Maija. I was pleasantly surprised by Maija when she gave me the Ramethene Sword, but she definitely took a turn for the worse after we—”
Janik couldn’t contain himself any more. “Stop it!” he roared, lunging at Krael, grabbing at his throat and clawing at his eyes. “Shut up!” His fingers were useless against the vampire’s cold flesh, so he began pummeling Krael’s face and head with his fists, punctuating each word with a blow. “Don’t ever defile their names with your mouth again!”
It struck him as strange that Krael didn’t fight back, and his rage began to subside. As his head cleared a little, he realized that Krael’s hands were bound behind him, and the vampire had been completely unable to defend himself from Janik’s furious assault. Neither had the warforged moved, though Janik could not see any restraint on him.
Janik got shakily to his feet, leaving Krael prone and smirking on the floor. He turned his back on the vampire and the warforged.
“Janik?” Dania murmured, and Janik rushed to her side.
From the corner of his eye, Janik saw the warforged step forward to help Krael get upright again. He caught a glimpse of strange blue manacles binding Krael’s hands, but he turned his full attention to Dania.
“I’m here, Dania,” he whispered, clasping her hand.
“Is Mathas—? I saw him fall.”
“He’s fine, Dania, we’re all alive.”
“What’s that—” her nose wrinkled and her brow furrowed as she blinked several times to clear her eyes. Then she sat upright. “Krael!”