The tyranny of ghosts

CHAPTER SIX

16 Aryth

“No!” Ekhaas staggered to her feet. What were they? Some kind of spirits, but she’d heard no stories of ghosts in the vaults. “We’re not thieves. I’m not a trespasser. I’m Kech Volaar.” She thrust a hand back at Geth-Chetiin was urging him and Tenquis to their feet. “He bears Aram, the Sword of Heroes. He is worthy-”

“Defilers,” said the ghost again, and this time the others echoed her in a hiss like a bow drawn across the strings of some otherworldly instrument. “Defilers! Defilers!”

The word rose into a crashing wave of song so powerful it almost drove Ekhaas back down to her knees. With it came a wave of shame and despair. She was a thief and a violator of these sacred vaults. She was a traitor to her clan. To her race. To all of the dar.

Somewhere behind her, Tenquis cried out, and Geth shouted her name. Ekhaas squeezed her hands into fists and ground her teeth together. No, she was neither thief nor traitor; none of them were. Face down as if she were walking into a blizzard, she breathed in through her teeth, then raised her head, and sang back at the ghosts.

She chose an anthem of Dhakaan, a song that spoke of need and valor. Her voice clashed with the chorus of the ghosts like a lone warrior taking on a squad of swordsmen. For a moment, the two songs struggled against each other, then the song of the ghosts rose in strength and volume, pushing Ekhaas back. She staggered under the power of it. The glowing figures drifted forward, shrouded feet not quite touching the ground. Ekhaas clenched her fists, laid her ears back, and focused both her will and her voice.

Her song rose over the ghosts’, hung in the air, then slashed down.

The ghosts’ song vanished into silence. The spirits went with it, like a candle snuffed out or a chime muffled. The Vault of the Eye was still and-except for the heaving of her breath-silent once more.

It was so sudden that Ekhaas almost stumbled. Could she really have defeated the phantoms so easily?

Then, far off, she heard their song rise again. The ghosts had been dispersed but not destroyed.

“Horns of Ohr Kaluun,” said Tenquis. “What are they?”

An idea had sprung into Ekhaas’s head as she sang against the ghosts. “Duur’kala,” she said, her voice rough from the effort she’d put into her song. “Long ago, we were buried in the vaults. But I had no idea…” She turned. “Chetiin-the inscription?”

The goblin was helping Geth to his feet, but one hand dipped into the front of his shirt and produced a piece of paper that was dark with charcoal. Ekhaas slid back down the slope of the hollow and snatched it from him. The paper was badly creased and the charcoal had been rubbed over it in haste, but it carried a clear imprint: part of the description of the reward given to Tasaam Draet, two of the three notched rings, half of another, and the words that had been inscribed beneath them.

THE NOBLES OF DHAKAAN NO LONGER HAVE A SHIELD TO HIDE BEHIND, FOR MUUT IS IN THE KEEPING OF TASAAM DRAET.

Her heart leaped. References to the shattering of muut and to a shield for nobles couldn’t be a coincidence.

“What does it say?” demanded Geth.

Ekhaas read the inscription aloud. The shifter looked confused, then understanding flashed in his eyes. “The shattered pieces of the Shield of Nobles,” he said. “Tasaam Draet had them. His fortress-you said the ruins still stood. It could still be there.”

Ekhaas nodded. “It’s the best hope we’ve had so far!” Her ears twitched with the desire to climb back up the stela and see if anything else was recorded on it Another voice joined the ghostly chorus, this time from a different direction in the darkness. Far more than six ancient duur’kala had been buried in the vaults. Ekhaas swallowed her curiosity, roughly folded the paper once more, and stuffed it into a pouch on her belt. “We have to go.”

They circled the stela and climbed up the side of the hollow closest to the path through the Vault of the Eye. Ekhaas paused briefly on the edge, watching and listening, then gestured for the others to follow. The echoing chorus of the ghosts was drawing slowly closer, and, she suspected, in greater numbers than they’d initially confronted. Would the ghosts follow them? She hoped not-they’d seemed attracted to her songs, which meant that their best weapon against the spirits would only draw more of them. If she didn’t sing, maybe they would converge on the stela, and she and the others could slip away.

She moved as fast as she dared, trying to reverse the way back to the great shaft and the precarious stairs up to the Vault of the Night-Sun. Artifacts she’d made a point of marking in her mind looked strange from the other direction and under the thin light of the drifting globes. More than once, she had to turn around and walk backward to render them familiar. And always she was alert for the unnatural shimmer or approaching song of a ghostly presence. A dim glow appeared ahead, and her first instinct was to press herself into the shadow of a statue in case she could hide from the spirit. It took her a moment to realize that it was the ghostlight rod that Tenquis had dropped.

They’d made it back to the stairs. Ekhaas stepped out into the open, scanned the area one last time, then gestured for the others to go up the stairs ahead of her.

The chorus of the ghosts, muted, remained distant. As they reached the spot where the stairs met the ceiling of the vault, she looked back out onto the darkness, searching for the glowing forms, but there were none.

“Ekhaas!” rasped Chetiin. She whipped around. The others stood just below a narrow landing in the stairs, the first of the switchbacks as the stairs ascended. Ekhaas leaped up the last few stairs to join them.

Ahead of them was the arch over the stairs that marked the Vault of the Eye. Floating in silence beneath the arch was another duur’kala ghost. It watched them like a sentinel. Slowly a skeletal hand rose to point at them. A shroud-wrapped jaw opened “No,” said Tenquis. “Not this time.” His hands vanished into pockets on his long vest. One drew forth a slim wand. The other emerged with a pinch of silvery dust squeezed between his fingers. Taking a quick step forward, Tenquis flicked the dust at the ghost as his wand wove an arcane pattern.

For an instant Ekhaas smelled a sharp tang on the air, then the pinch of dust blossomed into a cloud around the ghost. Tiny flashes of lightning erupted in a miniature storm that lit up the ghost’s translucent form from within.

It didn’t even give the phantom pause. As song emerged from its gaping mouth, it swooped forward and stroked a hand along Tenquis’s face in a gesture that seemed almost gentle.

There was nothing gentle in Tenquis’s reaction, though. The tiefling staggered as if he’d been struck hard. He might have collapsed backward down the stairs if Geth hadn’t been there to catch him. As the ghost pressed forward, Chetiin slipped past them, a dagger in his hand. Ekhaas caught the flash of the blue-black crystal embedded in the weapon’s gray blade. It was the dagger he kept sheathed on his right forearm, the one called Witness that would trap a creature’s soul when it struck a killing blow. But could it affect something that was already dead? The ghost swiped at Chetiin. He moved aside with graceful ease. The dagger darted out.

And passed through the spirit with no more effect than Tenquis’s spell. Chetiin’s face tightened, and he slid away from another blow. “Ekhaas…” he said.

There was no choice. Ekhaas reached into herself and sang a counterpoint to the ghost’s song. Ekhaas thought she saw a look of surprise on the ghost’s withered face. It struggled, trying to match Ekhaas’s song, but alone its hollow voice was no match for hers. The spirit twisted in on itself and vanished like a wisp of smoke.

But down in the vault, the chorus surged with renewed energy, a pack of spectral hounds on the trail. Ekhaas grabbed Tenquis’s arm and helped haul him to his feet. His skin was cool to the touch, and his golden eyes were wide.

“Can you climb?” she asked him. He nodded. “Then do it.”

The descent of the stairs along the shaft had been unnerving. The climb back up was grim, step after step, staying ahead of the song that pursued them. At first they raced, taking the stairs as quickly as they could. It couldn’t last. Chetiin ran lightly, and Geth bounded on, his stamina extended by shifter-granted toughness, but Ekhaas and Tenquis tired. Every step became a cliff to be scaled. Ekhaas’s legs and throat burned. After a time, Geth looked over the stair rail and back down the shaft.

“They’re coming,” he said.

“I can tell,” said Ekhaas. The ghosts’ song had swelled until it echoed in the shaft. “How fast?”

“Slow.” He grimaced. “But they won’t get tired.”

“At least they’re not flying,” said Tenquis.

Geth dropped back to climb with them. “You’ve used magic to help us march faster before,” he said to her.

She’d thought of the spell, too, and dismissed it. “They’re drawn to my songs. We’d only have to fight more of them.”

“Not if you can make us faster than they are.”

Ekhaas pressed her lips together for a moment-then nodded. “Stay close,” she warned.

She’d sung spells in battle many times. She’d sung spells in stealth. She’d sung a spell to inspire an entire army and had almost turned the tide of a battle. Somehow, though, summoning up a song as she climbed the long stairs seemed harder than anything she’d ever done before. Her chest already ached at every breath. Darkness and the weight of a mountain pressed down around her. The angry spirits of ancient duur’kala pursued her, and the lives of three of her friends depended on her magic.

And yet she felt a strange flush of satisfaction as she focused her will and sang. She might never be welcome among her clan again, but she was doing something no Kech Volaar had dared to do before. If she and the others could break free, the tiny piece of knowledge that she carried might be the key to saving a nation.

Slapping her hands to set the rhythm and stomping down with every footfall to reinforce it, Ekhaas let the magic flow out of her. She didn’t try to sing against the chorus of the ghosts this time. Instead she sang with it, as if their song were a wind and she were a boat running before it. Her climbing pace quickened. So did the others’ as the magic swept them up. The stone steps raced past beneath them until it seemed as if even the floating globes that she had conjured for light might have trouble keeping up.

And if the chorus of the ghosts grew even stronger in response to her song, it just pushed them along a little faster. The whole shaft echoed and rang with the power of the songs sung within it.

Then they were breaking over the edge of the shaft like a wave breaking on a beach. The transition from racing up the stairs to running across the floor of the cavern made Ekhaas stumble a bit, but she recovered without losing the cadence of her song. They ran on, a little more slowly as the rough floor forced them to watch their steps and the twisting paths among the artifacts once again forced Ekhaas to try and recall the way through the vault back to the stairs that would lead them to safety. Which way to turn at the iron markers? Here left. There right.

She didn’t even notice that the ghostly song they’d left behind in the shaft had been renewed until Geth shouted. She felt the hard grip of his gauntlet on her shoulder, thrusting her aside. A shimmering mask of death, mouth open in song, eyes sealed by untold ages, whirled past her. The ground seemed to rise up and slam into the entire length of her body.

The rhythm broke. The song ended-and another wailing song, angrier than ever, took its place. Ekhaas sucked in a gasping breath and rolled over, looking for the others. Tenquis and Chetiin hung back, wand and dagger at the ready, as they peered off into the darkness, but Geth…

Geth stood with Wrath drawn and poised. Before him, one of the ghosts swayed back and forth as if looking for an opening in his defense. Its fingers stroked the air. Its song sank down and wavered like a breeze.

It struck.

But Geth struck faster. Wrath spun in his grasp, cutting a sweeping arc through misty arm and insubstantial body. Radiance like fading twilight burst from the purple byeshk, the ancient magic of the blade biting deep. The ghostly duur’kala’s song rose in an inharmonious screech as the phantom crumpled in on itself and vanished. It was different from the way the ghosts slid away in reaction to her songs-there was a finality about it. This ghost would not be returning.

Geth shook cobwebby threads from Wrath’s blade and grinned at Ekhaas, showing all his teeth. “At least we know Wrath can hurt them.”

“Getting out is still a better option.” The songs of more ghosts rose from all sides, converging on them. The ghosts had been the same ones that had pursued them from the Vault of the Eye or they might have belonged to the Vault of the Night-Sun-Ekhaas had no desire to find out. She spun around, trying to regain her bearings. They stood at an intersection of paths. The one carrying the moon symbol of the eye marked the way they had come. The way back to the stairs lay along…

She spun around again. And cursed. “Khaavolaar!”

“Which way, Ekhaas?” asked Chetiin tightly.

“Straight ahead!” said Tenquis. “I remember passing that war chariot.”

Ekhaas looked down the path ahead. She recognized the war chariot, too, but they hadn’t seen it from that angle before. She looked right, then left, then glanced at Geth. He shook his head.

“Go with your gut,” he said.

She turned and plunged down the path on the left. She heard Tenquis curse behind her. “That’s not the way!”

“It is!” Ekhaas snapped, then jumped back as another ghost came drifting out from behind a tall plinth, its song already merged with the others. Ekhaas heard Geth cry out, but the spirit swept down on her faster than she could move. A song swelled in her throat, and she sang back at it, wiping it away.

The chorus of ghosts swelled in response.

“I told you, not that way!” Tenquis started down the center path past the war chariot.

“There are ghosts everywhere, Tenquis,” said Geth. He grabbed for the tiefling’s arm, dragging him to a stop. “We need to follow Ekhaas’s lead.”

“And where has that gotten us? We’re lost!”

Doubt whirled in Ekhaas’s head. Was she heading the right way? Maybe Tenquis was right. The song of the ghosts went all the way through her, making it harder to think. The voices of her friends were almost drowned out by it.

Almost but not quite. “You’re both wrong,” Chetiin said harshly. “Blood of the clans, I don’t know why I bother with you clumsy, stupid tallfolk.”

For a moment, his words wiped away the song of the ghosts. Ekhaas turned to stare at her friends. She’d never heard Chetiin speak that way. Even if she suspected that was sometimes the way that the shaarat’khesh felt, she knew that he was too tightly disciplined to permit those feelings to show. Something was wrong. Geth and Tenquis had never argued like this before. And when had she ever felt such crippling doubt?

The song of the ghosts had changed, she realized abruptly. The spirits weren’t just mindless apparitions bent on punishment. There was a cunning about them. Earlier the ghosts had hit them with waves of despair and shame. That had failed so their attack had become more insidious, planting doubt and mistrust, turning them against each other.

Ekhaas drew two slow breaths, calming herself and shutting out the argument among Geth, Tenquis, and Chetiin. She listened to the song, trying to grasp the harmonies of it, the rise and the fall. Then she drew a third breath and sang.

The effort brought a fire to her chest. Her throat burned, but she forced herself to sing anyway. She didn’t waste energy pouring strength and volume into the song-this wasn’t a battle that would be won quickly. The ghosts had changed their tactics. She needed to change hers as well. She made her song bright and cheerful, a reminder of unity and hope. They would escape. The ghosts would not stop them.

Doubt fell away almost immediately, like a heavy pack stripped from her shoulders. She straightened, turned to the others, and extended her magic over them. The release from the ghosts’ song was visible in their faces. Geth and Tenquis blinked and looked at each other in surprise, as if their fight had been something happening to other people. Chetiin’s face tightened, expression wiped away, and Ekhaas could guess the shame he felt for what he’d said. She reached out to all three, gesturing urgently for them to follow her. Without the influence of the ghosts misleading her, she was certain that she’d chosen the correct path-and she had an uncomfortable feeling that the ghosts knew it too. Their song rose, clawing at the defenses she’d raised.

She denied them. It took all of her concentration to sing as she walked. Geth moved up to walk beside her, Wrath gripped tight in his hand, his eyes alert. Ekhaas didn’t look back to see what Chetiin and Tenquis were doing, but she could feel them close behind. She could see the ghostly duur’kala all around them, though. They drifted among the artifacts of the vault, hollow eyes upon her. Some of them whispered between the notes of their song.

Defiler. Thief. Traitor.

She could block the magic of their song, but it was harder to ignore the simple malignance of their words. She poured herself into her own song, reminding herself of why she was doing this and for whom, but the fate of Darguun and vengeance against Tariic seemed like distant things. Even if Tariic was defeated and Darguun saved, the Kech Volaar would not take her back. She would be alone.

No. A face rose in her mind-a gray-haired, gray-eyed young warlord who called her “wolf woman” and who shared his honor with her. She wouldn’t be alone because she would have Dagii.

A ghost hissed with sudden rage and lunged at her. Geth intercepted it, lashing out with Wrath. The wisp of a shroud fell to the ground and faded away.

Ekhaas kept walking and singing. She could feel sweat cold on her forehead and through her hair. Where were the stairs?

Then she spotted the nightmare figure of the stuffed dolgaunt and felt a moment of hope. Beyond the creature’s unmoving tentacles stood the strange armor of stone and crystal. Beyond that, the monument to Jhazaal Dhakaan. And beyond that…

A line of ghostly duur’kala, spectral flesh even more decayed than that of the ghosts who harried them. The dark arch of the stairs leading up out of the vaults pierced the wall just behind the silent ghosts, but it might has well have been leagues away. There was an air of tremendous age about the spirits, and Ekhaas knew, somewhere deep in her gut, that in life these duur’kala had been among the first to store their secrets in the vaults, had been the first to dwell in Volaar Draal, had perhaps been the first to call themselves Kech Volaar.

And they hadn’t yet joined in the chorus of their sisters.

Geth saw them too. “Tiger’s blood,” he murmured. He turned and looked behind them. “They’re all around us, Ekhaas.”

One of the ancient duur’kala raised a withered hand.

The chorus of the ghosts ended. For a moment, Ekhaas sang alone in the dark, her song thin in the sudden silence. The ancient duur’kala stepped forward. Ekhaas braced herself for their song, her own trailing off into a whisper. Geth raised Wrath, ready to attack. In unison, the old ghosts opened their mouths — and instead of singing, they drew breath.

It was like being caught in a gale that pulled at her rather than pushed. Ekhaas felt the air sucked right out her lungs. She choked and struggled to catch her breath, but there was no air to breathe-it rushed past her into the gaping mouths and bottomless, undead lungs of the ghosts. Dark spots filled her vision almost instantly. Tenquis wheezed and stumbled against her. Geth lifted Wrath and charged but only managed a couple of steps before his legs buckled and gave out. Ekhaas struggled to stay on her feet, fighting panic as she tried to think of some defense.

Nothing came, and still the ghosts consumed the air of the vaults. Ekhaas’s eardrums popped, and sounds became muffled and distant. Her vision became more dark than bright. Even the glowing specters became shadowy silhouettes, outlined by what seemed a brighter glow from behind them.

A glow that came from the archway. A glow with figures-real, solid figures-in it.

“By the glory of Dhakaan, cease!” The throbbing in Ekhaas’s ears rendered the ringing words as hollow echoes. “I speak for the Kech Volaar. Great mothers of the dirge, cease!”

As her vision dimmed to darkness, Ekhaas saw Tuura Dhakaan and, at her side, the black-robed figure of Diitesh. The High Archivist had her arms raised, a curiously carved block of stone clutched in her hands. “I hold the Seal of the Eternal Bond!” she screamed, trying to match Tuura’s rolling tones-and failing. “Great mothers, cease. The vaults are safe.”

However weak Diitesh’s command might have been, it was effective. The terrible pull ended. Air rushed in to fill the vacuum. Ekhaas drew in a shuddering breath and blinked, trying to clear the spots from her eyesight so she could see what was happening. The ancient ghosts had turned to regard Tuura and Diitesh and the handful of others who stood behind them. Guards, Ekhaas saw, and archivists. They huddled back, leaving only Tuura and Diitesh to face the ghosts. Diitesh raised the thing in her hands again.

“Go!” she commanded. “Begone.”

Tuura’s voice became more soothing. “Great mothers, you do your duty. Return to your rest.” She bent her head before the ancient ghosts, and, after a moment, they returned the gesture.

Then they were gone, fading back into the shadows and all of the ghosts along with them. When Tuura looked up, her eyes were squarely on Ekhaas. They narrowed. Her ears flattened, and her lips pulled back in anger.

Ekhaas’s heart sank.

A figure moved out from among the soldiers and archivists and took up a position at Diitesh’s side. Scorn and triumph twisted Kitaas’s face. “As I told you,” she said to Tuura.

The leader of the Kech Volaar said nothing, just flicked one finger. Before Ekhaas and the others could even stand, they were surrounded. Again.