The doom of Kings

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

She began singing before the camp came into sight over the last rise of the trail. The song was an ancient one, gentle and soothing, a song for lingering afternoons, composed in a time when the emperor of Dhakaan was the sun and the long night of the empire’s fall was something not even imagined. She took her time, walking up the trail in time to the song. When she reached the crest of the rise and stepped into the vale, the bugbears guarding the crude camp had already turned eyes and ears in her direction.

Her first sight of the camp brought a silent curse of disgust. It really was as foul as Geth had described. How far, Ekhaas thought, the dar have fallen!

The disgust never reached her voice or her face. She kept walking with a measured pace, still focused on the bugbears and singing to them as if each one were an emperor. None of them moved as she approached. They just stared at her, caught in the beauty of her song.

Ekhaas had found the music when she was thirteen, though sometimes she felt as if the music had found her. The duur’kala had taken her for training in her eleventh year, recognizing a quick mind and a zeal for the great history of Dhakaan. Not all of the children chosen for training with the mothers of the dirge found the music, but Ekhaas learned later that there had been very high expectations of her talent almost from the first. On the day that those expectations had been fulfilled, she had been singing a lament of the Haata Dynasty for one of the mothers when something had begun to resonate within her. She’d lost herself in the music, the words of the lament fading into the pure sorrow beneath. The performance had left the mother with tears in her eyes and Ekhaas forever tuned like the strings of a kiirin to the music of the ages. In her waking moments she could feel it in her bones; when she slept, she thought she heard it in her dreams.

After years of training, drawing it up to fill her songs and stories with power was as natural as the simple act of singing.

She stopped when she was close enough to the camp that the smell of pine pitch that bubbled in the firepit almost covered the fetid reek of rot. Bugbears had the most famously sensitive noses of all the goblin races, and she wondered how the tribe could stand their own stench. The guards still stared at her, unspeaking, big ears cupped in relaxation. There were no sounds from the other crude buildings of the camp-if the other members of the camp heard her song in their sleep, they would only drift farther into their dreams. Ekhaas focused on the largest of the three guards and wove a suggestion into her song.

“Rest,” she said. “This is a daydream. You see nothing.”

The guard’s eyelids drifted down until they were half closed and a contented smile spread across his face.

Ekhaas looked to the next guard and pointed at the peak that rose behind the camp. “Listen to the bird that sings on the mountain. Isn’t it beautiful? You see nothing.”

The second guard turned to look up at the mountain’s slopes, scanning them with rapt attention for a bird that didn’t exist. Ekhaas fought back a smile and sang to the last guard, “The sun is warm and your friends are watching for danger. Sleep and see nothing.”

The final guard’s head sagged down so quickly he must already have been half asleep before her song had caught him. Still singing to the bugbears, Ekhaas raised her hand in a signal.

She heard the quiet rush of feet as the others left the cover of the trail to slip past the camp and down into the valley. There were no hoofbeats-they’d left the horses in the forest, blindfolded to keep them calm, guarded by Marrow to keep them safe. Ekhaas winced at the speed with which the others moved in spite of her warnings. The trance brought on by the song was fragile-any hint of a threat, even fast movement, could break it-but it was also more subtle than the focused power of a spell. It seemed an eternity until she heard the soft birdcall that indicated all of the others were out of sight once more. Ekhaas risked a glance over her shoulder to be sure she was going in the right direction, then backed away from the camp. None of the guards showed any sign of breaking free of her suggestions, but she still kept singing.

Her heels found the steep slope of the valley, and hands reached up to help her keep her balance. Ekhaas took a few more paces backward before crouching below the valley’s rim. The camp and the guards disappeared from sight. On her left, Geth nodded. Ekhaas let her song fade. Quiet descended on the afternoon once more. She, Geth, and Dagii on her other side waited, listening.

A loud snore broke the silence. It was followed by a curse and a reprimand for sleeping on duty. There were a few grumbles of discontent, a muttered comment about snoring loud enough to scare birds on the mountain, then the guards were silent again. Geth grinned at her before creeping down the slope. Dagii touched her hand lightly, and she glanced at him.

For a moment she stared directly into his shadow gray eyes, then he lowered his gaze and dipped his ears in recognition. She gave him a brief nod in return before hurrying after Geth as quickly as the slick grass that covered the slope would permit.

Ashi, Chetiin, and Midian were waiting just a little farther down, close enough to come charging to their aid if the guards had woken from the song with any suspicion that intruders had come past them. No one said anything, though, until they were all well down the slope and out of sight of the camp, then everyone clustered around her to murmur congratulations. Ekhaas accepted their praise with nods, but reserved a sharp glance for Chetiin. “How did you know I was able to do that?” she asked him.

His ears twitched. “There’s an old saying among the Silent Clans: Know your friends as you know your enemies. I’ve heard stories of duur’kala singing their way across battlefields.”

“Do you believe all the stories you hear?”

“I heard that!” said Midian. The gnome gave Ekhaas a crooked smile. “I knew the duur’kala had to have a bit of sense when it came to stories.”

“I know a story about a gnome, a duur’kala, and a dull knife that I’d believe,” Ekhaas said. Through their journeys she’d found Midian to be a better companion than she had expected when he’d joined them at Sterngate, but the researcher could still grate on her.

Dagii put an end to the conversation. “Enough. Let’s get out of the open. If one of those guards happens to look into the valley, we could still be seen.”

The steep grassy slope that led into the valley gave way to thick bushes where the valley floor grew level and broad. Bushes quickly turned into trees. Ashi, looking far more like the hunter Ekhaas had first encountered nearly a year before than the scion of Deneith she’d found in Karrlakton, led the way. The bushes were dense and thorny, difficult and painful to squeeze past. Ashi slipped through easily, Chetiin and Midian with only a little less difficulty. Ekhaas, Dagii, and Geth had to pick their way carefully, always trying to be quiet. They weren’t far enough away from the bugbear camp that thrashing about in the bushes wouldn’t attract the attention of the guards. At least Dagii had armor to protect him from the thorns. Ekhaas wished she could sing the plants aside.

The bushes continued under the first ranks of trees at the forest’s edge, where light from above was still plentiful. The farther they went, however, the taller the trees became and the denser the canopy that their branches formed. When the brambles finally fell away, the gloom under the trees was deep enough that Ekhaas was grateful for the sensitive eyesight of her people.

“These trees are old,” said Midian. He touched the trunk of one that was easily half again as wide as he was tall.

“I doubt anyone has ever come cutting timber here,” Dagii answered him.

“Not even the bugbears? Doesn’t that seem odd?”

“There are easier slopes to the south and west and plenty of timber above their camp, too,” Ekhaas said. “They don’t need to come down here.”

Geth bared his teeth. “You really think that’s all it is?”

Ekhaas shook her head. The song of ages had sunk back to a dull beat in her gut. Geth growled and drew Aram. The sword pointed along the valley floor and down. Without saying anything, he returned Aram to its sheath. His hand, however, didn’t leave the weapon’s hilt. Ekhaas found her hand on her sword as well.

The trees became even older, shaggy with moss and fungi. Smaller trees were mixed among them, starved of sunlight and the soil’s richness by towering siblings. They found a place where one of the giants had come crashing down, allowing for new growth. Sunlight raked across the canopy, drifting down in a white-gold haze over the great fallen corpse that rotted slowly among bushes, ferns, and saplings left spindly by the opportunity for sudden growth. It came to Ekhaas that for all the forest in the valley was alive, passing under its deep green roof and between its great pillars felt more like walking through some ancient tomb.

“The sun is going down,” said Ashi. “It’s going to be dark as Khyber here when that happens.”

Dagii looked to Geth.

The shifter shook his head. “We’re close. I can feel it.”

Midian spoke for all of them. “I’d rather keep going in the dark than spend a night sitting still in this place.”

“Ban,” said Dagii. “We go on.”

Soon enough, the darkness under the trees was so complete that Ashi could see nothing. Ekhaas and Chetiin led the way now. Geth and Midian, their nightvision reduced but better than blindness, followed. Ashi walked with one hand on Geth’s shoulder, her face tense with the mingled expression of concentration and uncertainty that all humans adopted when forced to struggle in the dark.

Midian had his everbright lantern at the ready. The rest of them had left their packs with the horses, but Midian had insisted on bringing his store of magical trinkets. “Better burdened than naked,” he’d said.

Dagii, however, had refused to allow him to open the lantern and release its light. “Better half-blind,” he’d said, “than a target.”

The chief of the Mur Talaan moved at the end of their party, ostensibly to keep an eye on Ashi. Ekhaas knew he was also watching behind them. Night in the valley was as quiet and still as the day had been. They all walked with their weapons drawn.

In Geth’s grasp, Aram pointed sharply downward. The rod was somewhere still ahead, but also somewhere below. Underground? In a cave? Ekhaas and Chetiin watched for holes, gaps, chasms- anything that might lead beneath the ground. They had to be close to the far end of the valley, Ekhaas thought. Maybe there would be a cave entrance on the valley wall. She didn’t relish the idea of scrambling across the steep slopes hunting for a cavern, but the thought of getting out of the valley was deeply appealing.

“So,” whispered Midian into the silence, “Dabrak Riis, the Shaking Emperor who lost the rod. I don’t think I’ve read about him in the histories.”

“There wouldn’t be much to read,” said Ekhaas. “He belonged to the Riis Dynasty, the last dynasty of the empire, when the blood of the Six Kings had run thin, been reinvigorated, and run thin again. From what I learned from Senen Dhakaan, he ruled for about ten years. If he hadn’t lost the Rod of Kings, the most significant thing about him would have been that he lived in fear every day of his life.”

“In fear of what?”

“Everything. Closed spaces, open spaces, insects, snakes, monsters, being assassinated, strangers, friends.” She gestured around them. “The dark, even though he could see in it. His fears were why he was called the Shaking Emperor, a name that shamed him. One day he left his palace with a troop of guards, declaring that he would face the source of his fears and return to rule as an emperor should. His heir, a cousin, wasted no time in declaring himself regent, and that was when the disappearance of the rod was discovered. They tried to find Dabrak but without success. It turned out that the one thing he had a talent for was eluding pursuit. Rumors of sightings of him and his guards sprang up across the empire, but he was never located. The regent became an emperor, and life carried on.”

“And that’s when people started hunting for the rod?” asked Geth.

“Almost,” said Ekhaas. “They looked, of course, but with no idea where Dabrak really was, there wasn’t much they could do. Then fifty years after Dabrak vanished, a body was discovered floating down the Torlaac River-a body that was identified as one of Dabrak’s guards, not looking a day older than when he’d ridden from the palace with the Shaking Emperor. Hunts for the rod had died down by that point, but with a solid if unexplained clue before them, hunters swarmed the entire Torlaac watershed for another century before the fervor cooled off again. The last emperors sent out expeditions every so often for generations after that, but as the empire passed into the Desperate Times, people had other things to worry about. Eventually even the rod itself was all but forgotten. Raat shan gath’kal dor,”

“You said we’re not far from the headwaters of the Torlaac River,” said Ashi. “We’re only a day’s travel from a Dhakaani road. Could the hunters have come this way?”

“I’d be surprised if they didn’t,” Ekhaas told her. “But the mountains and the forest aren’t likely to have changed much. Between them and the position of the valley-and with the rod underground-it would be easy to miss something.”

“Even something,” asked Chetiin, pausing beside a massive old tree ahead, “like this?”

His scarred voice was tight. Ekhaas’s fist clenched around her sword. She stepped up to stand beside him and instantly understood what he meant.

Beyond the tree, the valley floor dropped away into a vast pit.

The slope was at least as long and steep as that from the bugbear camp into the valley, and the bottom of the pit lay beyond the range of her sight. Trees grew up from the pit, however, and if the trees of the valley were old, the trees of the pit were truly ancient. As deep as the pit was, the trees in it reached almost to the height of the valley’s canopy, their branches as thick and luxuriant as a forest in themselves. Anyone looking into the valley from above would have seen no hint of the pit save perhaps a dip in the treeline.

But once there had been people here. The canopy thinned above the slope and moonlight reached through to shine on the lichen-stained stone of a staircase that plunged into the pit. Big blocks, hollowed with age, formed the steps, with long narrow blocks making borders to each side. If the steps were worn, though, the borders were practically untouched, rounded on top and heavily carved in a style that was almost but not quite familiar. Unlike the road through the mountains, the stairs were whole and unbroken.

“Khaavolaar,” she breathed. Chetiin was right. Perhaps hunters for the rod might have missed seeing the pit from above, but if they’d passed through the valley, how could they not have seen it and the stairs?

The others moved up to join them. Ashi was still almost blind, but Geth and Midian blinked at the moonlight as if they’d stepped into the sun. Geth stared down the length of the steps and slowly raised Aram. The twilight blade pointed straight along the stairs and into the pit.

Midian, however, dropped to his knees beside the carved borders. “By the quill,” he said, his voice quivering. “These are pre-Dhakaani-and in such perfect condition…” His words trailed off into a wet moan of excitement.

“Pre-Dhakaani?” asked Ashi. She squinted into the dark in Midian’s direction. “Ekhaas, what’s here?”

Ekhaas described the stairs to her and explained the gnome’s excitement. “Before Jhazaal Dhakaan united the Six Kings to form the empire, there were independent goblin kingdoms scattered across southern Khorvaire. The carvings on the stones are in the style of one of the kingdoms that ruled in this area. These stairs are older than the Dhakaani Empire.”

“If they’re that old, how come the forest hasn’t swallowed them?”

“Some kind of preservation magic most likely,” said Midian. “There were dashoor before the empire. Sage’s shadow, what I wouldn’t give for a better look at these carvings!” He looked up at Dagii and waved his everbright lantern hopefully.

“No,” Dagii said firmly. He caught Midian’s arm and pulled him to his feet. “I don’t like this. If as many people hunted for the Rod of Kings as the stories say, we can’t possibly be the first to find this place.”

“The stories also say,” Ekhaas said, “that many of those who set out to search for the rod were never seen again. Maybe the stairs have been found before. Maybe the people who found them were among the hunters who didn’t return.”

Geth’s eyes narrowed. “How long do you think the bugbears have been camped above the valley?”

“No more than a generation,” said Chetiin. “Maybe two.”

“There was a place on the rim of the valley that looked like they’d been throwing garbage down. If they’ve been dumping garbage here for that long, shouldn’t we have seen or smelled a heap when we came down?”

Ekhaas looked at the shifter. “Something’s been happening to their garbage?”

“Nothing has happened to their garbage. It’s all still lying around their camp.”

“Sacrifices.” Dagii’s ears, protruding through holes in the helmet that he wore, pulled back flat. “They’ve been feeding something down here.”

“If something has been down here for thousands of years, it doesn’t need to be fed,” said Midian. “On the other hand, it isn’t unknown for one creature to take over another’s abandoned den.” The polished metal baton of his pick was in his free hand. He flicked his wrist and the narrow head flipped out to lock into place. The click it made seemed loud, but there was no echo. The forest consumed it.

“We need to know what’s at the bottom of that pit,” Dagii said. “Chetiin, scout it. We’ll wait in the forest.”

“Mazo.” The goblin turned away.

“Wait,” said Geth. “I’ll come too.”

Chetiin shook his head. “Not this time.” Avoiding the stairs, he took a step down the slope and seemed to vanish into a patch of shadow.

Geth wore an expression of disappointment as Dagii led them away from the edge of the pit and under the thick canopy of the forest once more. Ekhaas moved close to him. “You wouldn’t be able to see down there,” she murmured. “And as stealthy as you can be sometimes, you’re not one of the shaarat’khesh. Let Chetiin do what he came to do.”

“I know,” Geth said. “But I should be doing something more than pointing the way.”

Ashi had her hand back on his shoulder, following his guidance. She gave a low laugh. “Don’t worry, Geth. I’m sure you’ll still have your chance.”

Back among the trees, Geth gave Ashi over to Midian’s care while he checked the straps and buckles of his great gauntlet. Dagii was crouched against the trunk of one of the valley’s shaggy old trees, his eyes darting around at the night. Ekhaas sheathed her sword and crouched beside him. “What do you think is down there?” she asked.

“I don’t know. My mind buckles at the possibilities. Undead. Some creature of Khyber. A dragon? All I can think of are the stories of duur’kala.” Dagii grimaced, exposing his teeth. “Your guess is likely better than mine. The histories of the Kech Volaar say nothing of this place?”

“The Kech Volaar see the greatest glory in the legacy of Dhakaan,” Ekhaas said with a shake of her head. “Tales of the time before the union of the Six Kings are almost as scarce and unreliable as tales of the Desperate Times. Maybe some mention of ancient stairs in the wilderness exists in the archives of Volaar Draal but if it does, I’ve never seen it, and it has never been linked to the legend of the Rod of Kings. The stairs would have been here in the time of Dabrak Riis, though.”

“Assuming they really are pre-Dhakaani.”

Ekhaas’s ears stood up. “You don’t think they are?”

Dagii’s eyes remained on the darkness of the forest. “I’m a soldier, not a duur’kala, Ekhaas. I can’t always accept that things are what they appear to be. The stairs may be carved in a pre-Dhakaani fashion, but isn’t it possible they were fashioned some time later?”

She turned to look at him. “You’ve been talking too much with Midian!” she said.

“Cho, but Midian is even more enamored with the age of the steps than you are,” he said with a snort. “I’m looking at alternatives. Why should the steps be as old as you say?”

“You’ll be doubting the existence of the rod next.”

“I don’t doubt the existence of the rod. The existence of Aram proves part of your story, and Aram is pointing to something.” He tilted his head to the side and looked at her. “I won’t follow the past like a slave following his master. Haruuc is lhesh because he saw beyond the way things have always-”

Ekhaas saw his gaze slip beyond her for an instant. She saw his eyes go wide-and in the next moment, Dagii had dropped his sword and lunged at her. His arms wrapped around her and his armored torso slammed into her body, knocking her backward and along the ground.

“Toh!” he roared, and through the shower of dirt and leaf litter that accompanied their roll, Ekhaas saw the massive clawed hand that had dug into the ground where she’d been crouching.

She followed it up, past a bizarrely long arm to powerful shoulders and a hideous drooping face. Behind clumped hair, and dark eyes stared down with baleful hunger. The moment seemed to slow. The clawed hand lifted, scattering dirt as it rose, ready to strike again.

The moment of shock ended. Time resumed its frantic pace as the hand fell. Ekhaas and Dagii acted in unison this time, pushing away from each other. The claw came down between them, so close Ekhaas could smell a stink like wet and moldering canvas. “Troll!” shouted Dagii, rolling to his feet and grabbing for his sword.

It wasn’t the only one. Two more of the creatures burst out of the forest as if the trees were giving birth to them. Their thick hides were as knotted and warty as mossy bark, and they were tall, easily half again as tall as Ashi or Dagii. They wailed and howled, and the night that had been so silent was suddenly loud.

But Dagii’s warning had been enough. Geth met the attack of one troll with sword and gauntlet. Midian tumbled away from another, drawing it after him. Ashi, blind, put her back against a tree and sank into a defensive crouch, her head darting in the direction of every noise, trying to track the battle by sound. Dagii’s sword was back in his hand-he rose just in time to meet another blow from the first troll. Claws raked across metal, and if Dagii hadn’t been armored he probably would have been eviscerated. Ekhaas drew her sword and slashed at the troll, trying to drive it back. Confronted with two attackers, it paused for a moment, then pushed on with its attack. Dagii was ready for it this time, though, and slid under its wild swing.

The troll that Geth fought howled, and from the corner of her eye, Ekhaas saw it smash at the shifter with both hands. Geth leaped aside, and a look of concentration passed across his face as he called on his heritage and shifted.

His hair grew even thicker and more coarse, his skin tougher and hide-like. When he looked at the troll again, there was fury in his eye that would have given any other creature pause. The troll went after him once more, claws slashing for his belly. Geth twisted, letting the full force of the blow slide off him. The troll’s claws caught in his shirt and tore the fabric apart, but Ekhaas saw only shallow scratches on Geth’s skin as he answered the blow. Turning inside the troll’s reach, Geth swung Aram in an arc that cut halfway through the monster’s torso. He whipped the sword free and dark blood sprayed out after it-then stopped.

Like two pieces of clay pressed together, the edges of the terrible wound merged and sealed. The troll staggered for a moment, then threw itself right back at Geth.