“Dania,” the vampire said, flashing his sharp teeth in a wide smile.
Dania’s hand grasped wildly at her belt before she realized her sword was not there. Krael shrugged to emphasize his own helplessness, and Dania calmed somewhat.
“What’s going on?” she said. “Where are we?”
“I’m not sure—” Janik began.
“Look around,” Krael interrupted. “We’re in a cell in the ziggurat at the heart of Mel-Aqat. Doesn’t it stagger the imagination? This very room might have been used fifty thousand years ago to hold prisoners of the giants before they were sacrificed.”
“Any idea where our weapons are?” Dania growled, provoking a harsh laugh from Krael.
“How do you know we’re in the ziggurat, Krael?” Janik said.
“Unlike you lot, I was awake when they dragged me in here,” Krael said with a sly grin. “Which means I know the way out.”
“So why haven’t you pulled your cloud of vapors trick and slipped out under that door?”
Krael scowled and turned his body so Janik could see the manacles clasped around his wrists. They were forged of a strange blue steel, and Krael’s movements made small blue sparks crackle around them.
“A particularly fiendish invention,” Krael said. “They prevent me from altering my form in any way. Sever’s tried everything he can think of, but he’s been unable to get them off me.”
“I’ve heard of such things,” Auftane said, sitting up and pressing a hand to his battered head. “But I’ve never seen them. I’d very much like to examine them … once my head stops spinning.”
Krael laughed. “If you can figure out how to get them off me, you can examine them all you want, dwarf. You know Janik, you never did introduce me to your new companion back in Stormreach. Very rude of you.”
“His name is Auftane,” Janik grunted.
“Auftane Khunnam,” the artificer said. “I’ve heard so much about you, Krael.”
“I expect you have,” Krael said. He sighed. “And I’m sure none of it was good.”
Auftane looked reflective. “Yes, that’s true.”
“Auftane,” Janik said, “will you look at Mathas and see if you can do something to wake him up?”
“How neglectful of me,” Krael said. “I haven’t introduced my lieutenant here,” he jerked his head at the warforged. “Well, Janik, I gather you have met Sever, but I don’t think your friends have. Sever, the lovely Dania ir’Vran, the unconscious Mathas Allister, and our new acquaintance, Auftane Khunnam.”
“How pleasant to see you again, Martell,” Sever said, the sarcasm in his voice sharply contrasting with his emotionless face.
“You’re quieter when Krael’s around,” Janik said to the warforged. “Or is it because you don’t have a sword in your hand?”
“Take your pick, Martell.”
“Well,” Janik said, getting to his feet, “if we’re cooped up here and forced to talk to each other, we might as well make it productive. I want to know what in the Nine Seas is going on with Maija.”
“By the Flame, Janik,” Dania said, “her evil overwhelmed me. I have never encountered another creature so strongly stinking of it. Not even Krael—”
“That’s enough, Dania.”
“Janik,” Dania insisted, “not even Krael makes my senses reel the way she did. She commands these fiends! Can’t you see it? Do you still not believe that she’s beyond redemption?”
Janik sighed deeply. “Do you remember what you said to me back in Stormreach? That you wouldn’t stand by and watch a friend die, ever again? That’s what this is to me, Dania. I can’t turn away while Maija dies. I can’t give up on her. I’ve got to fight for her, even if I have to fight a legion of fiends under her command, even if it means fighting her. I can’t just accept it, damn it. I will not be a bystander to her destruction.”
“You’ll have to hold me back, then,” Krael said.
“That’s what I was going to say,” Dania said, glaring at Krael while looking a little uncomfortable at sharing the vampire’s opinion.
“Why, Krael?” Janik asked, wheeling on the vampire. “What did she do to you?”
Krael snarled at Janik, baring his long fangs, for a moment looking like a ravenous beast furious at being caged. Janik didn’t flinch, but held Krael’s stare. After a moment, the vampire spoke.
“All right, Janik. Let me tell you a story. I believe you know the beginning—or shall I go over it for the benefit of those who weren’t present?”
“I’ve heard it,” Auftane said over his shoulder. He was busy tending to Mathas, but clearly paying attention to the conversation. Janik noted that Mathas’s eyes were open, but he looked very weak.
“As have I, Captain Kavarat,” the warforged said.
“Well, then,” Krael continued. “Maija traveled with us back to Stormreach and from there directly to Korth by airship. Along the way, she played with my affections, as I presume she did with yours, Janik. Except I did not fully trust her, so I was not swayed by her charms. Her considerable charms.”
Janik almost leaped at Krael again, but the vampire’s grin told him Krael was trying to provoke him, and he didn’t want to provide that satisfaction.
“She made up a story—that another Emerald Claw agent had contacted her and swayed her to our side, and worked out a deal in which she’d hand a treasure over to me in order to prove her loyalty to the Emerald Claw. She kept up the lie for quite a while. Once we reached Karrnath, she claimed to have had another meeting with this agent, who told her to keep working with me. I knew she was lying, and my superiors confirmed my suspicion, but they ordered me to play along, to find out what she was trying to accomplish. I admit to some curiosity about what she was doing, trying to bluff the Order of the Emerald Claw.”
Krael cracked his neck before continuing.
“That went on for about a year,” he said. “We spent most of that time in Karrnath, sneaking around the agents of the damned king to get the work of the Order done. She seemed genuinely committed to working with the Order, and I was just starting to believe that she was really on our side. Then she came to me and announced that she’d been assigned to look for the Tablet of Shummarak. You know what the Tablet is, Janik?”
“Of course.”
“Well, that caught the interest of my superiors, and they told me to keep working with her. They assigned a priest to accompany us, a simpering idiot named Mudren Fain. They wanted me to get the Tablet if we managed to locate it. Well, it took us a year of searching, and the hunt led us around Khorvaire, briefly to Xen’drik, and finally back to Atur in Karrnath—which is where I saw Dania, of course.”
Janik was getting sick of Krael’s sarcastic grin and mocking tone, but the vampire was telling him new information—new pieces of the puzzle were taking shape in his mind. He glanced at Dania, who seemed to be keeping her anger in check by thinking hard about what Krael was telling them.
“We returned to Atur because we had traced the Tablet of Shummarak to its last known owner, a shifter vampire called Havoc. Mudren finally proved himself useful by discovering the location of Havoc’s crypt. We found him in his crypt, where a bunch of idiots had left him for dead before the Last War. They drove a stake through his heart and left, figuring the job was done. Well, when Mudren Fain pulled the stake out of the shriveled remains of Havoc’s heart, we quickly discovered that the job was not done.”
“Havoc came back,” Dania said blankly.
“Havoc came back,” Krael repeated. “He grabbed Mudren Fain by the throat and drank every last drop of blood out of the damned fool’s body while dear Maija stood there, licking her lips. Oh, and did I mention? I would have stopped Mudren from pulling out the stake, but Maija had cast a spell on me to hold me helpless.”