Roaring like a windstorm, the tiger-man leaped full-length and soared through the air. Like a great striped bird, near a thousand pounds of destruction hurtled at the crone. Claws flicked from massive paws to tear the woman to shreds. Jedit never even noticed that he burst two poles supporting an awning, or that his whipping tail upset a stack of dried gourds, or that a small cart of watermelons collapsed as one foot brushed it like a hammer blow. The tiger saw only his enemy, and he clawed the air to do or die.
At the same time, the old woman seemed to melt like a candle, blurring as if seen through water. Her form flowed upward like volcanic smoke issuing from a fissure. The basket fell to earth and rolled away. White hair blew away like dandelion fluff. Faded red robes flushed a vivid plum-purple. The crone's mottled brown skin turned ruddy red and was immediately covered with black stripes like a tiger's pelt. Tall reared the figure, no longer ascetic and bony like some desert hermit but lean and dangerous as a bloodied knife blade.
In Palmyra's marketplace stood the real Johan, Tyrant of Tirras, Emperor of the Northern Realms, foremost wizard of all Jamuraa. A travesty of a human, he was twisted by the marks of arcane sorcery: red skin, black tattoo stripes, a dark V between hairless brows, and living horns jutting from his chin and downtuming from his temples. He was clad in a slithery robe of iridescent purple like the skin of some giant lizard.
Worst, his eyes glistened coal black, mercilessly prepared to kill. Johan hissed an arcane spell as he whisked together red-black hands to warm a small stone plucked from the ground. Between his palms suddenly crackled a ball of lightning.
"Beware, Jaeger!" shouted Sister Wilemina.
Too late, for the great cat had already leaped in the air. Jedit Ojanen heard a brief snort, the only laugh Johan would allow himself, then the sizzling rock struck him with a blow to cripple an elephant.
Simone and Wilemina had suffered from the same spell earlier, so both flinched as the scorching sphere walloped Jedit in mid-air. Punished by magic, Jedit yelped. Yet the tiger managed to twist in the air faster than a human eye could follow. The crackling sphere smacked Jedit on his striped shoulder. Hair frizzled and caught fire, skin charred and curled. Jedit was seared across his shoulder and down his back, then the glowing miniature sun spanked off his lean hip and burned the tip of his thrashing tail. The sizzling spike sailed on to punch an adobe wall.
At the vicious stroke, enough power to kill a dozen men, Jedit Ojanen was blown from the sky. Knocked spinning, the tiger crashed on a heap of rugs. So hot did his fur burn that sparks set fire to red- and blue-patterned rugs that smoked with a dusty odor. Rolling, almost panicked by an animal's instinctive fear of fire, Jedit rolled over and over, smashing into a cart, bowling over a table, crushing baskets in a tangle of split wicker.
Running, Simone and Wilemina both chirped "Jaeger!" Still clutching swords, they plied callused hands to flip baskets and rugs and awnings aside. Revealed were orange-black stripes smeared red with bright blood.
Wilemina wailed, "He must be dead! He took the full force-"
"Get after Johan!" Simone pointed her cutlass at the purple-robed man who again fled. "He mustn't-whoa!"
A roar like a hurricane made the woman recoil. Jedit Ojanen exploded from the wreckage like a phoenix from a funeral pyre. The tiger bled freely from a long hideous slash down his beautiful hide, but he was hale and hearty-and fighting mad.
As the tiger launched past the two pirates, Sister Wilemina bleated, "Lady Caleria protect us all!"
The archer's amazed cry made Johan turn in his flight. Glancing over a shoulder, the ruddy mage glimpsed a vast expanse of snow-white belly and throat, white fangs long as his fingers, and black claws curving like a condor's talons, all not ten feet behind.
Johan gulped. "Impossible! It can't be."
Only a lurch and wild leap saved Johan's life. Claws swept by his scalp and shoulder, ticking his robe and skin and pricking bright drops of blood. A fold of lizard-skin robe was sheared away like lamb's wool by five razor talons. In one stroke, Johan stumbled half-stripped, so his bony red ribs and one arm were exposed to the rising desert sun. The mage actually shuddered, for that blow had come as close as the kiss of death, the closest chance ever of destroying Johan's mortality. Staggering against a shelf of leather purses and vests, Johan fumbled at shreds of clothing, his mind temporarily rattled past all reasoning. The tiger should be dead! Yet the creature raised a fearsome right paw to tear off Johan's horned head — and halted. Johan hardly dared breathe in case some unseen spell had been cast upon the cat. Blind with battle lust, the tiger should have torn Johan apart, for he cowered small and helpless as a blind monkey. Black claws were upraised to slash the mage's red skin from his bones. Yet clearly, Johan could see, some strange sight had frozen Jedit's hand in mid-air. Jungle rage warred with a human's keen mind in the tiger's skull as he stared at Johan's shoulder. — Flustered, the sorcerer glanced down to find his robe in shreds. Amid rags gleamed a round buckle or medallion. Big as a man's palm, the half-circle of twisted white metal formed a double-spiraled emblem like a stylized ram's head and horns.
A broken sigil. Any mystic power the emblem had contained must have dissipated, for Johan recalled how he himself had driven a dagger through the buckle and into Jaeger's hide. That, he hoped, would put an end to the cursed cat who dogged his trail and haunted his dreams. Yet here was another such animal-man poised to take his life.
"My father's emblem," rumbled the cat man, still with one hand curled to strike.
Johan flinched as realization struck in the tiger's mind. Quivering all over, like a geyser set to explode, Jedit muttered, "You could gain that symbol in only one way! You did kill my father!"
"Kill him!" screamed Simone, not ten feet behind.
Blind with rage, Jedit lashed out with both paws.
Fear gave Johan wings. Wrenching backward in desperation, the magician lost more robe as sweeping paws ripped the air before his nose and chest. Johan crashed to the ground painfully and kicked backward like a crab. His shoulders bunched in cloth and table legs as market items clattered and clinked on his bare chest and legs. Still the battle-mad tiger lurched to rip him apart, and Johan had no place left to retreat.
Better die than surrender, thought the mage. With no other hope, he reached into distant memory and plucked forth a spell once glimpsed in an arcane book so horrid he'd suffered nightmares for months. There were many places among the infinite planes of Dominaria so frightening that even to imagine them drove seasoned mages insane with horror. One land was so volatile that even to breathe its air would blister a man to ashes. Yet desperate times called for desperate measures.
"Unleash," Johan gasped, already recoiling from horrors to come, "the beasts of Bogardan!"
Flaming hell descended on Palmyra's marketplace.
Chest-high, the creatures were part goat, part hellhound, and part dragon with twin rows of scales down their spines. They carried part of Bogardan with them, for flames licked at their nostrils. One second Johan was crawling like a half-naked crab through the dust of the marketplace, about to be torn to flinders by a raging man-tiger, and the next instant thirty-odd beasts appeared in a circle around the mage and stampeded toward anything that moved. Nor were the goat-beasts the only creatures to escape Bogardan, for a flock of long-winged bats circled and peeped and dove at folks' heads with ivory teeth seeking blood. Most fearsome were two black beasts like great apes. Tentacles whipped the air behind their shoulders, and red flame shone in mad eyes.