Jaska tumbled through raging waters, scraping the canyon walls. Though wide horizon and starry sky appeared at the canyon’s end, he gave up. Much of his blood now flowed within the Gasrah and willpower could carry him no further.
But as he sank, the White Tigress shot from the muddy north bank. Water surged around her as she navigated the currents. She reached Jaska, grabbed his arm gently, despite her massive jaws, and pulled him ashore.
The White Tigress licked his face and pawed at his chest but to no avail. So she channeled some of her spirit into him until he breathed again, hoping her gamble would pay off.
Water poured from his mouth. Wounded tissues knitted together. His eyelids fluttered then opened.
“Do you know who you are?”
“Jaska Bavadi … a palymfar …” He touched his neck where his qavra should have been. His fingers slid along a layer of soft scar tissue. His wounds, instead of searing with pain, were cold and numb.
“I have sealed your wounds with magic, but you will still need rest and a healer’s care.”
“Why-Why did you save me?”
“Because I need your help. Because we should be allies.”
“But you’re a demon.”
“Are you still certain that I am evil?”
“I-I don’t know. My head isn’t clear, and the world … Everything looks different to me. Like …”
“Like a shadow has been lifted? You are free now. The templar’s sword severed the chains binding your mind. Your qavra is gone and with it Salahn’s power over you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“If a goddess can be bound, a man would pose no great difficulty.”
“But why would Salahn bind me?”
“Eighteen years ago, a prophecy told him you would threaten him one day. But he could not bring himself to kill you. You were everything he wanted in a son except that you were incorruptible. So to harness your unprecedented natural talent, Salahn defied Fate and bound you with sorcery. You became his pawn and believed your every misdeed to be noble.”
Jaska shook his head.
“You must realize the truth, Jaska. The sooner you wake to reality, the better for us all.” The White Tigress rested her head between her paws. “I am weary. Everything hinges on you. For the moment you are free from Salahn’s power, but a connection yet remains and only you can sever it.”
Jaska scowled. “All of this… It can’t be true.”
“Think back over your career. What did you do to your enemies? To their families? Recall a single mission where you confronted some evildoer in his household. What happened to him and his family?”
Instantly, he thought of Lordhak Mul, a powerful merchant lord. Jaska had led forty palymfar into Lordhak’s keep and returned with only twenty-three. It had proved, nevertheless, a resounding victory. Yet the details eluded him. Warily he described what little he recalled to the White Tigress. “My injuries are clouding my memories.”
“Can you remember the day you met Salahn?”
“Yes. Of course.” He pictured it vividly in his mind. “That was the most important day of my life.”
“What about the second, third, and fourth days?”
“In complete detail.”
“What did you do in the weeks after your initiation, after you gained your qavra?”
“I suppose I trained.”
“You did not celebrate in any way?”
“Not that I remember.”
“What about your first mission as a full-fledged palymfar? Surely you remember that.”
But he didn’t. The same held true for Mardha, his pledged life-mate and Grandmaster Salahn’s daughter. He remembered when they first met, but he couldn’t recall a first kiss or a first night together.
He told her more about the assault on Muhl’s keep.
“So you remember wounding Lordhak in the leg then disarming him, but what came next?”
“I think … I killed him. Enemies of the people are slain.”
“According to the old code, palymfar set men on trial whenever possible.”
Jaska’s face blanked. “I’m sure necessity required such action that night.”
“What happened to Lordhak’s family?”
“I don’t recall. Perhaps he sent them away during the attack.”
The White Tigress sighed a low, sad growl. “Jaska, you tortured and then slaughtered them before Lordhak’s eyes.”
Jaska tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t bear him up. “I’d never do such a thing!”
The silver eyes of the White Tigress flared. “It is true that Jaska Bavadi would never commit such an act, but Salahn’s Slayer would. Ask anyone in Hareez. The events are legend. You made the servants watch and sent them away to spread word of what happens to those who resist the palymfar. Afterward, you became a legend of terror.”
“I didn’t do any of those things! It’s not possible.”
“Jaska, I gained this knowledge through Grandmaster Salahn. I have seen everything through his eyes, including you. And I have scanned your memories. I know what happened.” The White Tigress paced around him. “Lordhak had a daughter with long, sable hair twisted into a braid that fell over her right shoulder.”
A ghost of an image appeared within Jaska’s mind. “I-I remember her, vaguely.”
“She couldn’t speak. Not a sound would come from her.”
Bile stirred within Jaska’s stomach. His heart pounded.
“You remember something terrible now, don’t you?” Jaska looked away and nodded. “You cut lines across her flesh with your bagh nakh. You said you would hurt her until she screamed, knowing she could not.”
“But I would never harm a child!”
“Her mouth contorted, her eyes pleaded. She swung at you, scratched and bit, and you continued to torture her while her parents watched and the other palymfar laughed.”
Jaska saw a flash of frightened, innocent eyes and blade-scored flesh. A mouth that tried to scream and failed. His hands trembled.
“You still carry a scar where she bit you.”
He raised the sleeve of his right arm and looked at two small sets of scars an inch apart that curved in toward one another. He tried to deny what she said, but memories surfaced matching her words. He wept and the White Tigress curled up against him. He didn’t resist her. Her presence was comforting.
“Everything happened as I said, Jaska, and you will spend the rest of your life tormented by the evils you committed. Over the next few weeks, the memories of what you did will begin to return, as long as you do not replace your qavra.
“When the nightmares threaten, you must call on resources deep within where your purity remains. Do not seek solace with Salahn or Mardha, no matter their promises.”
Suddenly, the White Tigress sprang up and then thrashed about as if something had fallen onto her. As if chains weighted her neck and shoulders …
Panting, she spoke quickly. “You must overcome your past. You must defeat Salahn. Zyrella and Ohzikar will help you free Hareez from Salahn’s terror. But only you can stop him. If you do not, he will grow in power until he rules the Shadowland, and then he will open the Underworld Gates to retrieve someone lost to him long ago. In doing so, he may destroy the world as we know it.”
The White Tigress roared and struggled. She turned translucent, and her form blurred at the edges. Jaska reached out to her and spoke the only truth he felt certain of. “I know you’re not evil and that something is wrong with me. I promise I will seek the truth and follow the palymfar way.”
“Then go to my friend, the Farseer of Vaalshimar. She can help you. I am certain of that. If I had listened to her decades ago, none of this would–”
The White Tigress suddenly winced and flattened her ears.
“What’s wrong?”
Moaning in pain, she replied, “Your master is binding me, and no matter how hard I fight it, I cannot stop him.”
“Why do you struggle if it’s hopeless?”
“I must make Salahn disperse me entirely or else I may take memories of what I have done here back to him. Unfortunately, I do not think I have the strength to hold out long enough.”
Jaska wrapped his arms around the White Tigress, and it seemed as if he held nothing more solid than cotton. “I will struggle with you.”
“Against your master?”
“On behalf of the truth, whatever it might be. This is my gift to you in return for saving my life.”
Within minutes, her form had nearly dissipated. “May the spirits of all the greater deities be strong in you, Jaska Bavadi.”
Then, with a savage roar, the White Tigress disappeared.
~~~~
Two decades of demented sacrificial acts had profaned the Grand Temple of the White Tigress in Kabulsek. This morning’s bloodletting was the worst. Not a flagstone remained without a drop of innocent blood or bits of bone, skin, and hair. A temple once revered for sweet jasmine incense now smelled worse than a slaughterhouse.
Grandmaster Salahn knelt at the altar. Unhinged sigils described in blood sprawled across his skin. The most devoted of his palymfar lined the walls beneath monochrome stained glass windows. His daughter Mardha paced the sanctuary. Her ebony hair hung free over a black gossamer shift that clung to her voluptuous figure. Blue-grey tattoos decorated skin as uncommonly pale as her mother’s had been. Salahn admired the sway of her hips. She was like her long-departed mother, only warped into being everything he could desire.
Having steeled himself for the final requirements, Salahn drew in a deep breath and focused on the ritual’s completion. After a half-hour of chanting, a drop of dark liquid fell through the skylight and splattered onto a marble statue of the White Tigress. The statue melted, and the mix erupted into a spinning, coruscant cloud.
Chains of crimson energy bound the cloud as it congealed into the White Tigress. She roared, hissed, and clawed but couldn’t break the chains. Grandmaster Salahn laughed with the thrill of victory, bounded up the dais, and stepped into the White Tigress. The goddess screamed as she lost cohesion. Her energies swirled around Salahn, striking and firing through him. Organs and skeleton glowed beneath transparent skin. Lightning blazed within his eyes and mouth and lashed his chest and back. Blood and smoke oozed from the welts.
Salahn had lived eleven years beyond a century and appeared to be in his sixties. But he would look old no longer. His forked grey beard blackened to the tips, and had he wished it, his bald head would have grown new hair. The wrinkles in his swarthy skin smoothed away. His scars disappeared. Bones strengthened. Muscles and tendons healed of old injuries and grew stronger than ever before.
Blood poured away to reveal on his chest and back, realistic tattoos of the White Tigress within which she was trapped forever. “Now, I am a god!” Salahn shouted. “Victory will be ours across Pawan Kor and throughout the world. Whatever we wish, we will have. You shall all live as kings, and I will be the King of Kings!”
The palymfar cheered and chanted their leader’s name. Salahn stalked around, reveling in his new body. With his physical and sorcerous capabilities doubled, no man could match him now, not even Jaska.
Mardha took his arm. “You’re more handsome than before, Father.”
“It is the beauty of power that attracts you,” he said, smiling. “And as we spread the White Tigress cult through every land we conquer, that power will grow stronger. In a few years, I will be able to bestow immortality upon you as well. And soon, the Gates of the Underworld will open at my command.”
He began to tremble, and Mardha grabbed his hand. “You should rest now.”
She led him to the throne he had placed in an alcove behind the dais. Adynarh, a tall, dour man who ranked above all palymfar save Jaska, joined them.
While Mardha wiped sweat and blood from Salahn’s body, he considered the sensations he had experienced as he absorbed the White Tigress, trying to figure out what she had done during her brief freedom.
“Jaska was near to the White Tigress when she broke away,” Salahn said, “but she has hidden the knowledge of what she did deep within her mind.”
“Can you not force her to give up the information?” Mardha asked.
“Yes, but if I fully open myself to her thoughts and experiences, her personality could corrupt me. This may be a trap to that end. For now, let us concentrate on finding out what Jaska knows. Whatever plans the White Tigress initiated must be stopped, and her priestess must be killed, if Jaska has not seen to this already.”
“I will signal him to make contact,” Mardha said, and she went off to the high tower chamber they used specifically for that purpose, where finely attuned crystals enhanced their sensing capabilities.
Adynarh brought Salahn cold meats, bread, and cheese. By the time he finished them, Mardha returned with vexation on her face and trepidation in her normally precise movements. She said in a distant, stricken whisper, “I couldn’t find him, not even a trace.”
Adynarh’s jaw fell. “Is that possible?”
“Anything is possible,” Mardha said. “Even that.”
Salahn sat upright, his hunger forgotten. “You made no mistakes?”
“I performed the contact ritual three times with as much power as I could wield but found no signature. Either his qavra is destroyed or Jaska … is dead. I couldn’t find his students either, but since I don’t have a bond with them, the distance is probably too great.”
“The White Tigress must have killed him,” Adynarh said.
Mardha paced. “But what would that gain her?”
“I will search for Jaska myself,” Salahn said. Hands arranged into complex mudras, he entered a deep trance. As he strained, the signature of his qavra’s sibling came to him faintly. Jaska’s spirit did not resonate through it. Salahn broke off his trance. “Just his qavra,” he said in disgust. “Nothing else.”
“Maybe he took it off,” Adynarh said.
“Jaska would never remove it.” Salahn locked eyes with Mardha and through their qavra sent a message to her mind. “My sorceries prevent him from removing the qavra and even if he did the magic would call him back. He cannot resist it.”
“Perhaps if he were injured,” she thought back. “A blow to the head or the neck.”
“Perhaps, but he would want it back quickly.” Aloud he said, “I am afraid that they have somehow, as impossible as it seems, defeated Jaska. Adynarh, contact the groups closest to Mount Barqeshal. Send them to find out what happened.”
