The doom of Kings

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Geth blinked.

The night was silent-and complete. The sun had set, and even the last red smudge was gone from the horizon. The duur’kalas song had ended. Still kneeling, he twisted to look behind him. The rooftop was empty. It was also completely black. The charcoal of the circle had crept over every stone, leaving only its interior, where he knelt, clear.

In the east, the first two moons of the night were rising, the pale gray twins of Therendor, big and bulky, and Barrakas, a third its size but twice as bright. Geth stood and stepped out of the clean circle with a caution that struck him as ridiculous. Aaspar had said he could move about the roof after they’d left. He made certain he kept a tight hold on Wrath, though.

His knees were already stiff and protesting the time spent kneeling on the bare stone. He could feel the cool of the night creeping through the thin linen robe, and his hunger was a constant nagging. The night wouldn’t be pleasant, but that was the point of vigils, wasn’t it? At least he was allowed to move. He jumped and stretched, easing some of the pain and warming his body a little, then went to peer over the edge of the tower.

He immediately wished he hadn’t. The view down onto the moonlit sprawl of the city, the Ghaal River and its first cataract flashing in the distance, seized the light-headed feeling he’d had climbing the stairs of Khaar Mbar’ost and set it spinning. Geth stepped back from the edge and crouched until the spinning stopped. He considered trying it again, to see if he could get used to the view, but decided against it. There was enough to see by looking out and up at the unfettered view of the sky. He sat down as comfortably as he could with the stones of the roof chilling his backside, held Wrath to him, and looked up into the night.

Think on the history of the sword that you hold.

Geth tried to remember what he could of the stories Ekhaas had once told him of the Dhakaani family named Kuun whose history had been tied to the sword. It was easier to think of the story that Senen had told only a few nights before, of Taruuzh and the forging of Wrath from the byeshk of Khaar Vanon. He wondered about the Rod of Kings and the Shield of Nobles. What had the shield been like? Did the rod still exist? He tried to envision Taruuzh laboring over his creations. He’d seen Taruuzh after a fashion. He’d been to the ruins of Taruuzh Kraat and seen the massive sculpture of the dashoor that stood there. In the ancient caves beneath Taruuzh Kraat, he’d seen the wizard-smith’s effigy atop his tomb and faced his ghost through a storm of unnatural cold…

He blinked again and jerked his head upright before he could fall asleep. “Grandfather Rat’s naked tail,” he muttered. The night seemed colder than it should. It would be far too easy to nod off. He got back up onto his knees, kneeling once more. It took effort to stay upright. That would, he hoped, make it easier to stay awake as well. He bent his thoughts back to Wrath, forcing himself past Taruuzh.

Taruuzh had given the sword to Duulan Kuun, the first to carry it, but the name that had always stuck in Geth’s mind was Rakari Kuun, who had been the last to carry it. He’d always felt an affinity for the hobgoblin hero who had destroyed a terrible evil but in the process lost his birthright. Geth had walked where Rakari had walked and had fought the evil-or a phantom of the evil- that Rakari had fought. Sometimes he still woke to nightmares of Jhegesh Dol, the Place of Cuts. In his dreams he could hear the sound of knives and bone saws and the screams of tortured orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins. He could see their mutilated ghosts and the horrible spectacle of their amputated limbs given a terrible, vengeful life of their own. He imagined what it must have been like for Rakari Kuun to enter Jhegesh Dol when it wasn’t an ethereal remnant of the past but a real place, full of pain and horror. He imagined the hero’s fear at facing the lavender-eyed monster that had been the lord of Jhegesh Dol, one of the alien daelkyr, his fingers replaced with living blades as long as swords, as sharp as axes, so sharp they cut light itself…

And in Geth’s mind, for what seemed like an instant, he was Rakari Kuun, plunging Wrath into the lord of Jhegesh Dol, forced to flee as all the blades of Jhegesh Dol fell like a steel rain.

Heart racing, Geth’s eyes opened wide, and he was back on the roof of Khaar Mbar’ost. Time had passed-the twin moons had risen higher and another moon was reaching over the horizon-but he was certain that he had not fallen asleep. The memories that had played in his head had simply belonged to someone else.

He lifted Wrath into the air and stared at the sword. Did it shine a little brighter? Was there a depth to the twilight metal that hadn’t been there before?

He groped for another story, the tale of Mazaan Kuun and the Hundred Elves. What had Ekhaas said of Mazaan Kuun? That he’d been a great strategist in the days when the Empire of Dhakaan had clashed with elves from the island-continent of Aerenal who had attempted to create a colony on the mainland. Mazaan had stood alone on the plains against a hundred elves, each wearing the spirit of an ancestor like a mask…

And he was Mazaan Kuun, luring the elves into a river-washed canyon where the stones split into a maze and where smoking fires turned friends into enemies. Wrath rose and fell only fifty times, but in the end, all of the hundred elves were dead. Half had been killed by their own kind in the frenzy of battle.

The moons had moved even more when he saw them again. Time had passed as he remembered the story. No, as he had lived the story. There had been details in the memories that Ekhaas had never conveyed in her story. The sound of horses, the sight of one hundred massed elf riders he might have imagined, but he couldn’t have imagined the unfamiliar smell of the smoke with which Mazaan had filled the canyon.

“You,” he said to Wrath. “Tiger and Wolf, you’re doing this.”

He tried to remember one of Ekhaas’s stories of Duulan Kuun and found that he all but plunged into it. Duulan fought a roaring giant, taller than a hill, by climbing up the monster’s back and thrusting Wrath-newly forged-into its ear. He leaped clear of the dying creature and swept up the woman, a princess of the beautiful city of Paluur Draal, who would become his wife.

Moons barely flickered before his eyes as the next story came over him. Duulan turning the tide of a battle against cackling gnoll tribes. And the next story, Duulan grieving over the grave of his wife, then riding into the Eternal Forest in pursuit of the dark fey creature that had killed her.

The stories came without interruption. Duulan’s twin sons, Nasaar and Vanon, who wielded Wrath in turn, and all the great deeds they did with it. Mekiis, the youngest of Duulan’s great-grandchildren, who took up the sword when she was a child and killed the assassin who would have killed her, who later became a duur’kala and the wife of an emperor. Biish, who was her nephew and became an outlaw as one dynasty of emperors fell and another began.

Geth was aware of the flow of time, of moons that seemed to rush and stutter across the sky. He was aware of the pain in his joints and the cold in his muscles. He had vague hints that he sometimes stood and staggered about the roof, trying to warm himself, but there was always the flow of stories. Some of them, like the ribald adventures of Jhezon “One-Eye” Kuun, he was certain Ekhaas had never told him, but they played out in his mind all the same.

He thought he laughed. He was certain he shouted in rage and in excitement. When Wrath once again plunged into the heart of the lavender-eyed lord of Jhegesh Dol and was abandoned by Rakari Kuun, when everything went dark as if there were no more stories and no more heroes, he cried.

But then the darkness lifted and a new story began. The story of a strange new creature not of the name of Kuun, not hobgoblin at all and almost as much beast as man, but still a hero who carried Wrath out of Jhegesh Dol and into a new age…

He heard music.

Geth opened his eyes to see Ekhaas, Senen, and Aaspar singing. This time, though, they stood with their backs to him, facing the rising sun as they sang the day into existence. Their song of dawn was as exquisitely beautiful as the song of dusk, ascending into something powerful but still ethereal.

Wrath was still in his hands, still raised before him. His arms ached and trembled with the effort of holding the sword, but they held firm. Beneath his fingers, Wrath seemed to pulse and surge in a way that it never had before. He felt a bond to the sword and to all those of the name of Kuun who had carried it in the distant past. With Wrath in his grasp, he felt like he could do anything.

His spirit might have been flying with the duur’kalas song, but his legs weren’t taking him anywhere. They were numb. When he looked down, he saw that he was kneeling exactly where he had started within the charcoal circle, once more shrunk back to only a line on the stones of the roof.

The song of the duur’kala peaked as the lower curve of the sun cleared the horizon and morning came to Rhukaan Draal. The three singers turned to face Geth. Ekhaas and Senen continued to sing, but Aaspar looked at him and spoke.

“Stand,” she said, the word like music. Even her speech was song-how had he not heard that before?

Geth stood, rising awkwardly. His legs felt like wood at first, then they felt like they were on fire as sensation returned to them in a rush of tingling agony. He twisted and almost fell, catching himself at the last moment-but not before his gaze had turned away, just for a moment, from the duur’kala.

Smoke rose to the north. Great black clouds of it, twisting high up into the air to be pushed into leaning pillars by the morning breeze. There were other people on the roof, too. Chetiin, Midian, Dagii, Ashi. Munta the Gray. Tariic. Vanii. Haruuc.

The lhesh wore armor, heavy and spiked, with a helmet to take the place of his crown. Tariic and Vanii wore armor as well. Munta wore a grave expression.

“Don’t speak!” Aaspar said sharply. “Look at me!”

Geth turned back to her, the motion bringing new pain into his legs. Aaspar lifted her hand and Geth, instinctively, raised Wrath to match her. The old woman drew breath and began to sing again, her voice blending back into Senen’s and Ekhaas’s.

The song had changed. It was deep and dark, like a cave that had never seen daylight. There was a longing in it, a reminder of… Home? Friends? Family? Geth found himself thinking of a village in the northern Eldeen Reaches that he hadn’t thought of in years and of a man and a woman who had died long before. But he caught only the edge of the song. Aaspar was singing to Wrath.

He felt the sword’s response, and new images passed through his vision. Taruuzh with miner’s pick in hand, breaking rocks to expose the dark ore vein of Khaar Vanon. Taruuzh with a hammer before a forge. The song altered slightly and the image shifted to focus on a rod of byeshk, as long as Geth’s forearm and as thick as his wrist, that shone in the forge light as Taruuzh polished its rune-carved surface. A tremor passed through Wrath.

“Now,” said Aaspar, “turn and point the way!”

The voices of the duur’kala rose once more, then fell away, but the surging pulse in Wrath remained. With the certainty of a compass needle, Geth turned and pointed the sword south-southwest.

“There.” His voice was cracked and raw. “The rod is there.”

Aaspar clicked her tongue in satisfaction, then broke the charcoal circle with a brush of her foot. For a moment, the roof remained silent as if everyone watching Geth were afraid to say anything, then a look of annoyance crossed Aaspar’s face. “It’s over,” she said, turning away. “It worked.”

Voices broke out all around him with expressions of excitement and thanks. Ekhaas and Ashi were the first ones to reach him. As if the touch of their hands had severed ropes holding him up, Geth drooped back into their arms. Exhaustion, pain, and hunger washed over him. Senen held Wrath’s scabbard, and with her help, Geth guided the sword back into it. His fingers cramped, and he had to will them to open and release the sword’s hilt. The magic of the song was still in the sword-he knew that he could touch Wrath and he would feel the distant presence of the rod once more.

“I saw the stories of Kuun,” he croaked.

“I knew you would,” Ekhaas said. “I knew you were listening.”

“No, it was Wrath-Wrath remembers,” he said, but his dry throat seized and the words just came out as a rasp. Chetiin held out a cup of water. Geth took it with shaking hands and drank eagerly. Before he could try to repeat himself, though, Haruuc stepped in front of him.

“You know where the rod is? Do you know far?”

Geth shook his head. “I can feel a direction, but that’s all. It could be in Rhukaan Draal or it could be across the Thunder Sea in Xen’drik.”

Haruuc’s ears dipped but he nodded. “It is as much as I should have hoped for. Thank you, Geth.” He put a hand on Geth’s shoulder. “I would have given you a week to rest after this, but we don’t have that time. You have a day at most-you must leave tomorrow morning.”

“What? Why?” Geth asked, then remembered what he had glimpsed and twisted around against the hands that supported him to look at the smoke billowing into the northern sky. “What is that? What’s burning?”

“The fields on the far side of the Ghaal,” growled Haruuc. “The Gan’duur struck last night. They’re burning crops.”

“Grandfather Rat.”

“Cho. They’re getting too bold. I want you away in case they try to come south of the river.” The lhesh stepped back and put a fist to his chest. “Swift travel and great glory, Geth.”

He turned and left the rooftop with Tariic, Vanii, and Munta following him. Tariic turned and met Geth’s eyes, saluting him as his uncle had before going down the stairs. Dagii moved to face Geth. “I could have everything ready as early as tonight,” he said.

The tales he had seen in the night throbbed in Geth’s head. The heroes of Kuun wouldn’t have waited. Neither would he. Geth drew a deep breath, braced himself, and stood. A wave of dizziness came over him, but he fought it back and took Wrath when Senen offered the sword to him.

“Do it,” he told Dagii. “We ride at dusk.”