The doom of Kings

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The sound of the feasting trolls urged them to a faster pace. With the monsters behind them-for the moment at least-they abandoned caution and all but raced through the forest. It seemed to Ashi that they were back at the scene of their first battle with the troll in almost no time at all, then through the trees and standing at the top of the stairs with only a few steps more. When they’d come upon the stairs the first time, there’d been only moonlight, and all she had been able to see was the dim form of the steps. With torchlight, she got a better look and marveled at the carved gray stone, perfectly preserved in spite of its age. No one else seemed much interested in the stairs this time, though. Even Midian scarcely glanced at the carvings in the stone. The party paused at the top of the long flight.

“Go ahead,” Chetiin said. “The way is clear.”

Geth’s first step onto the stairs was almost tentative, but he bared his teeth and his pace became bolder as he led the way down into the pit. Ashi thought she could feel the same thing he had. The stairs were ancient and imposing, but once she was walking on them, they felt like any others. Steep maybe, and subtly higher and wider than normal steps, but ordinary stairs just the same.

Then the edge of the torchlight fell on the massive trees that reached up out of the pit. Ekhaas had described them to her before, but even a duur’kala’s description didn’t do the size of them justice. The trunks were as big as small towers. The thin moonlight that had given some illumination to the upper stairs vanished behind the unseen branches. Darkness closed in, with all the eerie silence and tension of the valley focused, it seemed, on the small pool of light that crept along the stairs.

“There are trees in the Eldeen Reaches that are almost this big,” Geth said, “and they didn’t get that way naturally. How much farther, Chetiin?”

“Not much.”

Just a little farther along, the wet canvas smell of trolls rose to meet them. On each side of the stairs, deep pockets had been gouged into the living wood of the trees and lined with an assortment of leaves and fern fronds. Chetiin gestured for them to keep going. “It’s the troll nest,” he said. “We’re almost at the bottom.”

Ashi studied the dens dug into the trees. Each looked big enough for one troll to sleep curled up inside, but there weren’t just nine pockets for the nine trolls. There were dozens, some disappearing into the shadows high above. The majority, however, seemed abandoned. They had no linings, and the scarred wood had long healed into puckers of bark. Makka had described the valley as being a cursed place since the mountains were young. Ashi wondered how long trolls had been living here.

Beyond the nest was the bottom of the stairs-and the bottom of the pit. The ground leveled out among the roots of the great trees in an expanse of dense, black soil. Somewhere else, Ashi might have called it a small clearing. Here it felt like a kind of void. On its far side rose a sheer rock face. Built against the rock was the front of a simple shrine, fashioned from the same gray stone as the stairs and carved with a band of the same twisting shapes. Through a narrow doorway, the interior of the shrine extended into the rock as the trolls’ dens extended into the trees.

“Aureon’s blue quill,” said Midian. “It’s in perfect condition.”

“Pre-Dhakaani?” Dagii asked.

“Pre-Dhakaani,” Midian confirmed. He stepped off the stairs and walked across the bare earth to hold his torch up before the structure. Illuminated, the carvings sprang into sharp relief. Ashi thought she could see animals in the swirls. Animals, plants, maybe even figures that could have been members of the goblin races. As the others came to join him, Midian frowned and stepped closer, examining the carvings up close. “This isn’t possible,” he said. “The grooves and edges haven’t weathered at all.”

“They’d be well protected down here,” Ashi pointed out. “And you said there was probably some preserving magic on the stone of the stairs. Wouldn’t it have been applied to the shrine as well?”

“Preserving magic doesn’t work that well. There was lichen on the stairs and some weathering, and I thought that was amazing.” He touched a carved swirl. “These are more than fifteen thousand years old, and they might have been carved yesterday.”

“It’s here, though,” said Geth, his voice excited. They all turned to look at him. He was standing in front of the shrine’s door, his eyes bright, and he held Wrath out in front of him with both hands, as if trying to keep a grip on the sword. “The rod is here, in the shrine. If you’re finished looking at carvings, let’s go get it!”

“It’s not going anywhere, Geth,” Ekhaas said. “We’ll go in when we’re ready.”

“Grandfather Rat, how much more ready can we be? Chetiin, Ashi, are you with me?”

Ashi-and Chetiin as well-glanced at Ekhaas before answering. The duur’kala’s ears stood up, but after a moment, she nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go. Just be careful.”

Chetiin went through the door first with Geth and Midian after him. Ashi would have followed, but Ekhaas caught her arm. “Has Geth seemed more impetuous than usual to you lately?” she asked quietly.

Ashi considered the question for a moment, then shook her head. “He always throws himself into a fight.”

“Yes, but generally only the ones he knows he can win.”

“Maybe it’s the strain of our quest,” said Dagii from behind them. “He has been our only guide and his task is nearly complete.”

“Maybe.” Ekhaas didn’t sound convinced.

“Coming?” Geth’s voice echoed out of the door.

Ekhaas’s ears stood even taller and her eyes looked into Ashi’s, then Dagii’s. “Watch him,” she said, “both of you.”

Ashi nodded, then stepped into the shrine. A rough-walled passage extended beyond the door, no taller or wider than the door itself. She could just barely squeeze through-looking back, she saw that Dagii had to turn sideways to get in. A few paces ahead, Geth and the others were already out of the passage, the light of their torches spreading to illuminate a larger space. She hurried after them and emerged into a small chamber that was partly worked stone and partly natural rock. When all six of them were standing in the chamber, it felt nearly as crowded as the narrow passage.

And there was a stillness to it, as well. Eerie like the valley and tense like the pit, but moreso. Ashi felt a foreboding, as if the stillness had a physical form and was standing somewhere just behind her. There was something else about it as well… something she couldn’t identify at first-or at least couldn’t describe.

“Do you feel that?” she asked.

The others nodded. Silently, Geth pointed with Wrath to the wall opposite the passage. It was the most natural of the chamber’s walls, split by a wide crack and untouched by tools except for a grate of iron bars that had been placed across it. Once the gate must have blocked the crack. Now it hung open.

Litter lay on the ground beyond in a jumble of strange objects: cups and knives and trinkets of all sorts, most similar in design and decoration to the carvings on the shrine and the stairs.

“Offerings,” said Ekhaas quietly. “When the grate was closed, they would have been shoved through into the darkness.”

“Offerings to what?” Dagii asked.

Ekhaas spread her hands. “I don’t know. Whatever power is in this place.”

Midian held out his torch. “They’ve been sorted.”

Ashi looked again. The gnome was right. The jumble actually lay in several heaps, separating small objects from large, moderately valuable from worthless. There seemed to be nothing of great worth, though she had a feeling that perhaps there once had been.

A clear path led between the heaps. The back of the crack opened into another passage, a little wider than the first.

“Leave the pitch pots,” said Dagii. “They’ll just get in the way.”

They left the clay pots in a heap, carefully extinguishing the ones they had lit, then stepped, one by one, into the crack. Ashi scanned the heaps of offerings for a weapon she could use and selected a long knife that was only a handspan away from being a short sword. Ekhaas glanced at it as she picked it up, then looked again more sharply.

“That’s not pre-Dhakaani,” she said. Ashi passed her the dagger and she turned it over in her hands, cursed under her breath, and held it out for Midian to see. The gnome’s eyebrows rose.

“Riis Dynasty,” he said. “The time of the Shaking Emperor.”

No one said anything else. Ashi took the dagger back and tested the edge. Still sharp.

The new passage hadn’t been worked at all. It was wide enough that Ashi didn’t feel cramped, but she had to watch closely for projections from the walls and raised stones underfoot. It twisted from time to time, turning or dropping suddenly. She had the feeling that they were generally going deeper. At least there were no side passages. No way to go but forward and back.

The foreboding stillness grew with every pace. Sounds seemed muffled. Ashi fought the urge to reach back and take Ekhaas’s hand, just for the reassurance of knowing that it was the duur’kala behind her and not someone or something else.

She was the first to notice that the torches had stopped flickering, suddenly becoming as steady as everbright lanterns. Ashi looked up at her torch and saw that the flame was still. Not merely steady, like a candle protected by a lantern, but still, like a piece of bright orange-yellow glass. All of the torches they carried were still.

She found the description for the stillness that had eluded her earlier. It was “stopped.” It felt as if their little party moved through a world in which all other motion had ceased. She bit down on her alarm, instead lowering the stopped torch to show Ekhaas. The duur’kala’s ears pulled back flat.

At the head of the party, Chetiin and Geth went around another twist in the passage-then were back and pressed up against the wall. The hair on Geth’s arms and neck was standing up. His eyes were wide. “We’re here,” he said.

“What is it?” Ashi asked.

“I think you need to see for yourself.” Geth took a deep breath and slowly stepped around the corner. Chetiin followed. Midian, Ashi, Ekhaas, and Dagii looked at each other, then Ashi braced herself and went after Geth.

Beyond the twist, the passage went a couple of paces more, then opened up into a cavern. The floor was reasonably level and the cavern itself was quite broad, spreading twenty paces or so in any direction from the passage. The ceiling was low, though. Ashi could have reached up and scraped it with the tip of her newly acquired knife. It made the cavern feel much smaller than it really was, crushed by the weight of the mountains above.

More disturbing than the low ceiling, however, were the symbols that spread across the rock. They were on the ceiling, the walls, and the floor-dozens of them, each an armslength across and shining with a greenish light that gave a soft glow to the entire cavern. Seen from the corner of her eye, they almost seemed to move, but looked at directly they were steady and unchanging. In a way, they resembled dragonmarks. Her stomach churning, Ashi stretched out her hand and looked from the marks on the wall to the marks on her skin. The strange light made her blue-green mark look as black as darkness, yet also weirdly bright and reflective. She let her hand fall with a shudder.

“There are seven caves in the north of the Seawall Mountains,” Ekhaas said, standing beside her and staring in fascination, “that are said to look like this, save that the signs move and spell out the future for those who know how to read them.”

“Do those caves have occupants?” asked Chetiin quietly. “Look here.”

They turned. Partway across the chamber, a strange rock formation stuck up from the floor. Chetiin and Geth were on the other side of it, staring. Geth still held Wrath, but loosely, and the purple of the byeshk blade gleamed through the green glow. Ashi went to join them. As she drew closer, she realized the formation wasn’t rock at all, but wood and cloth-a heavy chair draped with fabric. And as she passed around the chair, she realized that it wasn’t empty.

A hobgoblin, or what was left of him, sat in it. The body was wizened, orange-tinged flesh wrinkled and dry like a withered pumpkin, but the hobgoblin’s face was calm and his eyes closed. The cave’s air-or perhaps its strange power-must have mummified him upon his death. The garments of a larger man were draped around his skeletal frame. Ashi had never seen anything quite like them in style, but the fabric was fine and dyed with rich colors of gold and red. His hair, longer than she’d ever seen a male hobgoblin wear it and held back by a wide band of gold, was still thick and dark. He hadn’t been old when he died. His feet were raised on a small stool that was as heavy as the chair. His hands, covered in gloves studded with gems, rested in his lap.

They were wrapped around a purple rod of byeshk, as long as her forearm and as thick as her wrist, its polished surface carved with strange symbols.

Ekhaas drew a deep, slow breath. “The story stops but never ends,” she said solemnly in Goblin. “Guulen, the Rod of Kings, is found again, and the fate of Dabrak Riis, the Shaking Emperor, is known at last.”

“Taat,” rasped the hobgoblin on the throne. Red-brown eyes opened to glare at Ekhaas and lips drew back from sharp, white teeth. “I am Dabrak Riis, but I shake no more! Bow before your emperor!”

Ekhaas jerked back.

Ashi heard Geth curse. She saw Chetiin and Dagii raise their weapons and step back as well. She didn’t step back. With reflexes honed in the practice yards of Sentinel Tower, she snatched the long knife from her belt and lunged forward, thrusting the blade straight into the seated hobgoblin’s heart. His eyes opened wide in shock-

— then he shoved her away with a strength that sent her flying into the cavern wall.

Ashi pushed herself up and stared as Dabrak Riis, Emperor of Dhakaan, tugged the knife out of his chest.