The tyranny of ghosts

CHAPTER TEN

They followed the foothills of the Seawall Mountains for several days before descending into the lowlands. Once out of the mountains, it was an easy matter to keep their distance from the scattered farmholds and clanholds of southern Darguun. They traveled through a landscape that was mostly barren, studded here and there with ancient ruins from the age of Dhakaan, but also with the remains of much more recent habitation by the humans of the vanished nation of Cyre. Charred, smashed, and overgrown, the rubble of Cyran farms and villages gave mute testimony to the upheaval the region had seen only thirty years before. This was the land where Haruuc had started his revolution before sweeping north. This was the land where the dream of Darguun had been born.

For the first time in her life, Ekhaas rode past the ruins and felt no pull to investigate them or learn their stories. As much as she tried to conceal the wrenching pain in her spirit, she couldn’t fool herself. She wasn’t entirely successful in fooling the others, either. As she exchanged watch duties one night with Geth, the shifter paused before sliding into his bedroll.

“It can’t be easy leaving your clan and your family,” he said.

She held her head high. “My clan exiled me, Geth,” she said, “and I don’t have a family anymore.” The words came out too harsh. She tried to soften them. “I know what you mean. I wish Ashi was here. She knows what it’s like to lose a clan.”

“She found a place in Deneith. You’ll find your place too.” Geth pulled his blankets up over himself. “You already have a family in us.”

She couldn’t help snorting. He turned to look at her, his eyes reflecting the firelight like an animal’s. “I could tell you a dozen stories where someone says just that,” she said.

“And what happens in them?”

“Usually everybody ends up dead.”

Geth propped himself up on one elbow. “Goblin stories can be bloody depressing. Did you know that?”

“Raat shi anaa. ‘The story continues.’” She sat back against the trunk of a scraggly tree. “Sleep well, Geth.”

“Stay alert, Ekhaas.” He lay down again. Within moments, his breathing had fallen into an easy, regular rhythm. Ekhaas leaned her head back and looked up at the moons, closer to her than Volaar Draal.

4 Vult

Two weeks after leaving the towering gates of the City of the Word behind, they passed into the village of Arthuun. The contrast was… striking to say the least, Ekhaas thought. The gates were formed of massive, rough-cut logs hung from walls that were themselves a mix of dressed stone and improvised patches. Tenquis, staring at the walls as they rode through the gates, simply shuddered.

“I’m no mason,” he said, “but I could do better than that.”

“It stands up and keeps things out,” said Geth. “I think that’s all the people here are interested in.”

Ekhaas was inclined to agree with him. Built on wet ground between the broad Torlaac River and the green wall of the Khraal Jungle, Arthuun was a ramshackle place. Like most of the villages and towns in Darguun, it was cobbled together from the ruins of an earlier Cyran settlement and rough structures thrown up by its new Darguul inhabitants. Arthuun seemed to have a particularly transient quality, as if people and buildings alike were just passing through on their way somewhere else.

Fortunately, there were enough non-dar-mostly ragged, tough-looking humans, but a few half-elves and one grime-stained warforged as well-on the muddy streets that no one paid much attention to Geth and Tenquis. Ekhaas had worried that Tariic might have put a bounty on their heads and circulated their description across Darguun. If such a description had reached Arthuun, it didn’t show. Marrow drew more looks than they did, mostly of deep unease and healthy respect. The worg seemed to enjoy the attention, and when they found a grubby building that advertised itself as an inn, she lay down on the porch, putting herself on display like some disconcerting sculpture.

“Be careful,” Chetiin warned her. “These are hard people. Bite them and they’ll bite you back.”

Marrow just whuffed and thumped her tail against the porch boards.

The innkeeper who came hustling across the common room to meet them was a halfling. Although a certificate by the door proclaimed the inn approved by the standards of House Ghallanda, Ekhaas had her doubts that any member of that dragonmarked house had ever set foot in the establishment.

“Two rooms,” Geth told him, “and information. We’re looking for a guide, someone who knows the Khraal.” He flipped the innkeeper a silver coin.

The halfling plucked it out of the air. “You want a hunter, then. Any of them that carry grinders will do.” He pointed to a rusty sword hung on one wall in a feeble attempt at decoration. The blade was wider than Ekhaas’s palm, but shorter than a typical sword and sharpened on only one edge, more like a farmer’s implement than a fighting weapon.

“Grinders?” asked Tenquis.

“Swing one of those against jungle vines for a morning, and you’ll know why.” The innkeeper pointed to another wall, this one hung with a spear. “You see a hunter carrying one of those, he hunts across the river in the moors. You see someone carrying both weapons, you walk away-he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“If you were traveling into the Khraal, who would you want leading the way?” Geth asked him.

The halfling squinted and looked them over, then said, “Tooth. He’s a bugbear. You’ll probably find him at the Rat’s Tail over by the east wall.”

“Tavern?” said Geth. The innkeeper just smiled. Geth grunted and tossed him a second silver coin, then a third. “The last one’s for meat,” he added. “Take it to the worg on the porch.”

They found the Rat’s Tail without difficulty. It turned out to be less of a tavern than a kind of open-air drinking hall, the “walls” made of reed mats rolled up to allow the humid air of the village to circulate. Under the roof, though, it was as busy as any tavern Ekhaas had been in, with many of the same features: arguments, gambling, and drunkards.

Only one of the bugbears in the place wore an enormous fang more than a handspan long around his neck. Chetiin confirmed his identity with a harried goblin server just to be certain. It was Tooth.

He sat at a table, playing some sort of dice game with several other dar. Ekhaas studied him as they approached. His thick hair was streaked with pale stripes, and one of his big ears was ragged, a good-sized chunk apparently bitten out. His dark, glittering eyes seemed half-hidden by heavy lids-from beneath which, she realized as they got closer, the hunter was watching them.

They paused a few paces from the table. Tooth’s eyes flicked back and forth between them and the dice. Finally he gave a slight nod, then announced in Goblin, “Last throw for me.” His voice was a rumble. He scooped up the dice, shook them, and rolled them across the tabletop.

One of the hobgoblins crowed in victory and swept up a small heap of copper coins and shiny odds and ends. Bugbears and hobgoblins thumped their chests at each other. Tooth stood up, and Ekhaas saw that he was surprisingly short for a bugbear, no taller than she was. He was massively muscled through the shoulders and chest, though, and when he picked up a belt from which two broad-bladed grinders dangled, she could easily picture him wielding the tools as weapons.

“You want to talk to me,” he said.

A statement, not a question. Ekhaas took the lead. “Yes,” she said. “Do you speak the human tongue?”

Tooth glanced at Geth and Tenquis, then said in that language, “I do.”

“Good.” They’d decided there was no need to reveal the magic in Wrath unless they had to. “We want to hire a guide to take us into the Khraal.”

He must have already assessed and judged them as fit to venture into the jungle because he didn’t hesitate before asking, “Where exactly?”

Ekhaas found an empty table and gestured for him to sit down. Tooth joined them without comment. Ekhaas leaned forward, dropping her voice. “Have you heard of the ruins of a place called Suud Anshaar?”

With generations of mothers using it to frighten their children, the name of Tasaam Draet was common enough among the Dhakaani clans. The tales of his downfall and haunted fortress were more esoteric, though, and Ekhaas didn’t know how well the legends might be known among the lowland Darguuls.

Tooth just narrowed his eyes. He looked like he might spit. “The Wailing Hill,” he said. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. I’ve never laid eyes on it, but hunters tell stories.”

“You know where it is?”

“I know to stay away from it. Anything that howls when it shouldn’t is warning you not to get any closer.” Ekhaas thought he might sit back, then, and declare their conversation over. But he didn’t. “They say people have come looking for it before. Hunters take them in-good hunters who know the Khraal-but nobody comes out. Packs of varags live in that part of the jungle, and they don’t go near the place.”

“What are varags?” asked Geth.

“Savages related to hobgoblins the way shifters are related to lycanthropes,” said Tooth. “Completely fearless-usually.”

“When was the last time someone came looking for Suud Anshaar?” Ekhaas asked.

Tooth shrugged. “Before Lhesh Haruuc, before Arthuun belonged to us. Back when humans picked at the edge of the Khraal.” He looked them over again. “If you want to go there, it will cost you.”

“You’ll take us?” said Tenquis. “After all that?”

A grin showed all of Tooth’s sharp teeth. “Hunters tell stories. If I get you there and come back, I’ll be a legend.” He lowered his voice. “This is my deal: For what you pay me, I swear by Balinor’s blood to take you to Suud Anshaar, but I’m not going in. I’ll wait for you, guide you back, but if you don’t come out of the ruins, I’m leaving.”

Ekhaas understood immediately. If Tooth returned from Suud Anshaar-even if it was as the sole survivor of a doomed expedition-his reputation would be made. She looked to the others. Chetiin and Tenquis nodded, the tiefling a little more slowly than the goblin. Geth grinned.

“I like him,” he said with a nod at Tooth.

“Agreed then,” said Ekhaas.

Tooth’s grin grew even wider. “Good. Now let’s talk about how much I’ll charge you-”

“We’re inflexible on that,” said Chetiin. He held out a small fist. “But I believe this should do.” He opened his fingers to reveal three sparkling straw-colored topazes.

During their journey across Darguun, they’d realized that while they had some money between them, it wasn’t enough to persuade a guide to take them deep into the jungle in search of cursed ruins. Fortunately, Chetiin had the answer. Unraveling the stitching of his belt, he’d revealed a tiny, portable treasure. “For emergencies,” he’d said as he sewed the leather back up.

The grin on Tooth’s face faltered, his eyes going wide in its place. Chetiin closed his fingers again. “When do we leave?” he asked. “Sooner is better.”

Rain came down heavy on a night as black as a traitor’s soul. Deep eaves shielded the windows of the Talenta Hospitality, letting cool air circulate into the busy common room. Lanudo’s guests for the night had finally abandoned the dubious shelter of the open-air taverns for somewhere a little more protected-the halfling circulated through the crowd, making certain that the guests whose rooms leaked worse than usual got extra beer. Sufficiently drunk, they wouldn’t mind the additional damp in their beds.

He happened to be near the door when it opened to admit two figures. Late for travelers, Lanudo thought, but he’d never turned away potential guests before-and on such a miserable night, he could charge extra for a corner in the common room. He turned to greet them.

The greeting caught on his tongue.

The bigger of the two figures was a bugbear, bareheaded to the rain and looking as if he’d barely noticed the storm. There was a sprawling scar on his chest, a crude outline of a woman with the tail of a snake and outstretched wings. The sign of the Fury.

The smaller figure wore a magewrought cloak that shed water like a duck’s back. Lanudo expected to find a goblin underneath, but the figure threw back the cloak’s hood to reveal the smiling, nut-brown face of a gnome. Bright eyes fixed on him.

“Ah, innkeep,” said the gnome. “Tell me you can spare us going back out on a night like this. My name is Midian Mit Davandi, historian to the court of Lhesh Tariic Kurar’taarn. We’re trying to catch up to some colleagues: a hobgoblin duur’kala, a shifter, a tiefling, and a goblin mounted on a black worg. Quite a distinctive group. I wonder if you might have seen them.”

The gnome’s manner was friendly, and a lilt in his voice implied that Lanudo would be doing him a huge favor by helping him locate his friends. Lanudo’s gut told him differently. Midian’s bright eyes were hard with a sharp cunning. His smile was cold. The bugbear didn’t smile at all. One hand gripped the shaft of a heavy trident, fingers rubbing the wood. The other hand rested on his belt, uncomfortably close to a dangling clump of reddish hair and orange-brown flesh. It came to Lanudo that he’d been in Arthuun too long if he was able to recognize the scalp of a hobgoblin on sight.

He doubted very much if the gnome and the bugbear were merely trying to catch up with their “colleagues.” A better man than him might have tried to throw them off the trail.

A better man than him wouldn’t have lived long in Arthuun.

“You’ve missed them,” he said. “They stayed a night but rode out two days ago, heading into the Khraal. They didn’t say anything about where they were going in front of me, but they hired a guide, a hunter named Tooth. When he met them here, he looked like he was ready for a substantial expedition. If you want to know more than that, you should go to a tavern called the Rat’s Tail and ask there about what Tooth was up to.”

Midian raised his eyebrows. “Refreshing honesty. I appreciate that. Would the Rat’s Tail still be open tonight? No? How are your rooms, then?”

“Leaky and wet,” Lanudo said bluntly, “but I’ll give you the same rooms your colleagues stayed in if you want to search them.”

“Splendid,” said Midian. “How much?”

Lanudo charged him the same he would have on a dry night and, as the pair of them went upstairs, resolved to sleep in the bed of the handcart that the cooper three doors down kept behind his shop. Just to be safe.

12 Vult

A week after they left Arthuun, they heard the first shrieks in the night. Ekhaas sat beside their small fire and listened to the screams and wails as they rolled back and forth in the darkness. The jungle played tricks with distance. With rare exceptions, when a ridge or outcropping rose above the canopy and gave them a view of the green horizon, their world was limited to a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty paces in any direction. The shrieks had the same thin quality as distant thunder, but they could have been much closer.

“Suud Anshaar?” said Tenquis.

“Varags,” answered Tooth. “We’re on the edge of their territory now. Another day, then we’ll hear the Wailing Hill.”

“Is it possible the howls that are supposed to be Suud Anshaar are really just the howls of varags?” Geth asked.

“All of the hunter legends say there’s no mistaking the wails of Suud Anshaar for the cries of anything alive.” Tooth stirred the fire, then sat back. “Gives us another story, Ekhaas. Something to listen to besides varags.”

Though they’d tried to use false names at first, Tooth had figured out who they were within a day of leaving Arthuun. Word of events in Rhukaan Draal had filtered down to the south of Darguun after all. Tooth didn’t ask them for their version of the story, though-some sort of unspoken hunter’s courtesy, Ekhaas suspected. Maybe the bugbear had his own secrets.

And Tariic hadn’t, as they’d feared, put a bounty on them. Without a reward, Tooth didn’t have any incentive to turn on them. Rhukaan Draal was a long way away and the people of Arthuun had other things to worry about besides who ruled in Rhukaan Draal. As Tooth had put it, “Haruuc was a good chib. He traveled south sometimes. He paid attention to us. They say he hunted in the Khraal when he was a young warrior. This Tariic-what do we know about him? What’s he done? We hear stories of a victory in battle against the Valenar, but the stories don’t say that Tariic fought personally.”

With varags howling in the distance and Suud Anshaar only a couple of days’ travel away, Ekhaas felt emboldened. “Tooth,” she said, “how would you like to hear the real story of the Battle of Zarrthec from someone who was there?”

The bugbear cupped his big ears in interest. Ekhaas sat a little closer to the fire, closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, then opened her eyes again. “Raat shi anaa-the story continues. The sun rose on a battlefield covered with tattered fog, where an army of Darguun waited for an ancient foe…”

As the story of the battle, of Dagii’s cunning and his warriors’ bravery unfolded, Tooth sat up straighter and leaned forward until he might have fallen in the fire if he had lost his balance. Tenquis and Geth, who already knew the story, and Chetiin, who’d also been there, sat forward too. Even Marrow raised her head to listen, especially at the point where she and Chetiin arrived leading reinforcements of taarka’khesh, the wolf-riding cousin clan of the shaarat’khesh. Ekhaas downplayed her own part in the battle-how she’d rallied Dagii’s troops with her songs-but she couldn’t in all modesty leave it out entirely.

By the time she finished, eight of the twelve moons had risen, and the shrieks of the varags had moved even farther away. “… and with the last of the elves fleeing back to their hiding place in the Mournland, Dagii mounted the command hill and took up the Riis Shaari’mal, the ancient battle standard of Dhakaan under which he’d fought, waved it for his surviving warriors to see, and proclaimed the battle a victory. Raat shan gath’kal dor-the story stops but never ends.”

Tooth sat back, his breathing as quick as if he’d just fought the battle himself. His open hand slapped his chest in appreciation. “Paatcha, Ekhaas! Now that’s a story-and your Dagii sounds more worthy of respect than Tariic could ever be. I’d like to meet him.”

Ekhaas leaned back as well. Her blood sang with the euphoria of a story well told, and her heart ached-in a pleasant way-for Dagii’s absence. “If we’re successful in Suud Anshaar, maybe you will some day,” she said.

Tooth’s eyes flashed in the firelight. “I haven’t asked why you’re going there,” he said after a moment. “You hired me to get you there, not to take you inside, so I’ve held my tongue. But I’m curious. The stories say that the ruins have been untouched since before the fall of Dhakaan and that they hide a fabulous treasure. Emeralds as big as a goblin’s fist. Pearls as big as mine. Gold coins the size of dinner plates-”

“Nothing like that,” said Ekhaas. “I think the hunters of the Khraal have been making stories up. I suppose there could be a treasure in Suud Anshaar, but I haven’t heard of one. What we’re looking for is different, the remains of something that was broken long ago.”

“All this way for something broken?” Tooth snorted. “Are you even sure it’s there?”

The question brought back doubts that had plagued them all the way from Volaar Draal. Was one cryptic reference on a stela really enough evidence to venture into jungle ruins? They’d had less evidence when they had gone searching for the Rod of Kings for Haruuc, but they’d also had Geth and Wrath. Duur’kala songs had woken the connection the rod and the sword shared through their origin, allowing Geth to find the way. The shifter still felt that connection-he could draw Wrath and point the way to the rod in Rhukaan Draal without hesitation. He had no sense of the shield or its shattered fragments, though. Maybe because it was broken. Maybe because new songs were needed. Maybe because the fragments of the shield no longer existed in Suud Anshaar or anywhere else.

Ekhaas pushed back the doubt. After Volaar Draal, if they didn’t have hope of finding something in Suud Anshaar, they had nothing. She had nothing. “Absolutely certain,” she said.

Tooth shook his head, but then looked at Ekhaas hopefully. “If do you see any treasure, could you bring some back to me? Just to prove that I was here, of course.”

“Of course,” said Ekhaas.

The sun rose the next day to the kind of sticky, mist-shrouded morning they’d come to expect in the Khraal. They set off early, Tooth leading them with even more care than he normally did. About mid-morning, with the mist burned away, he paused to sniff the air, then cautiously pulled aside a big fern. Behind it were the gnawed and broken bones of a jungle boar-several boars, Ekhaas realized-all heaped up together. The bones were several days old, but there was a foul tang in the air that had nothing to do with rot.

“Varags,” said Tooth. “They piss on the remains of their kills.”

“There’s not much left for a scavenger to pick over,” observed Geth.

“They don’t piss on the remains to spoil them. They do it to mark their pack’s territory.”

Geth bared his teeth. “They sound more like animals than goblins.”

“They are more animal than dar,” Tooth said. He glanced sideways at Ekhaas. “There’s an old legend that the Dhakaani used magic to breed them out of hobgoblins and dire wolves.”

“That’s just a legend,” said Ekhaas stiffly. “Legends also say that before the rise of Dhakaan, hobgoblins bred bugbears as warriors and goblins as slaves.”

“Didn’t they?” asked Tenquis. “I’d heard that they did.”

Ekhaas gave the tiefling a dark look. So did Chetiin.

Marrow, sniffing around the bones, squatted beside it and sprayed her urine onto the stinking heap. Tooth noticed what she was doing too late to stop her. “No!” he snarled. “Balinor’s blood, if they come this way now, they’ll know we were here.”

The worg snarled back at him, and Chetiin clarified, “She says that if they mark their territory with scent, they’ll already know we were here when they come this way. Now they’ll also know this pack has a strong female with them.”

Tooth grimaced. “That isn’t likely to help. Keep going and stay alert. Varags spend most of the day sleeping, but when they hunt, they’re almost silent.”

The sun rose to its apex, and the stifling heat of the morning became oppressive. They saw and heard nothing more of the varags, though once or twice Ekhaas thought she caught a whiff of varag urine. Tooth’s wariness was contagious. Ekhaas found herself tensing up and frequently had to force her body to relax. Geth didn’t so much walk as prowl, hand never far from Wrath’s hilt, the hair on his neck and forearms as visibly ruffled as Marrow’s coat. Chetiin all but vanished into the undergrowth, invisible unless one knew where to look for him. Tenquis held his wand at the ready, twitching it at every unexpected noise or motion.

The end of the undergrowth was so sudden, it was startling. One moment they were among trees and ferns, and the next they were stepping out onto the hard surface of an ancient Dhakaani road. Trees grew together overhead, the canopy turning the road into a tunnel. In spite of its age, the road had survived remarkably well. The black paving stones had mostly remained level, and few plants broke through between them.

“The last landmark,” said Tooth. “Stories said there was a road running through the jungle to Suud Anshaar.” He looked to Geth and Ekhaas. “We can follow it and be there faster, but we’re more visible.”

“We’re not entirely silent when we have to chop our way through the jungle, either,” Geth pointed out. “Follow the road.”

Tooth answered with a tight nod and moved off into the gloom.

“We always seem to walk roads the Dhakaani laid down,” murmured Chetiin as they followed. “Here. On our journey to Darguun as we rode up to the Marguul Pass. In the Seawall Mountains when we sought the Rod of Kings. Even the road to Volaar Draal-built by Kech Volaar in imitation of the Dhakaani. We’re chasing the empire.”

“Everywhere we go, Dhakaan was there before us,” said Ekhaas. “It stretched from one side of Khorvaire to the other. From ruins in the Endworld Mountains in the east to Yrlag along the Grithic River in the west; from Ja’shaarat, the city that forms the foundations of Sharn, in the south, and north to-” She shrugged. “There are legends that say dar reached the Frostfell during the height of Dhakaan’s power. We live with the ghosts of the empire.”

“And under the rod’s influence, Tariic would re-create it.” Chetiin walked a few paces in silence before adding, “Do you think such a thing would be so bad?”

Ekhaas’s ears flicked. “For most of my life,” she said, “I have been devoted to the memory of the empire. As Kech Volaar, I wouldn’t have wanted anything more than the glories of Dhakaan reborn. But the cost?” She spread her hands. “Even with the power of the Rod of Kings behind him, Tariic would face a battle with every other nation of Khorvaire.”

“The rod pushes him, shows him how an emperor ruled,” said Chetiin. “He doesn’t see the world as it is anymore, only as it was. Without the rod-without Tariic…”

Geth, walking ahead with Tenquis, looked back at them. “Are you seriously talking about a new empire?” he asked incredulously.

“A dream doesn’t die so easily, Geth,” Ekhaas said. “Dhakaan is with dar every moment, every day, and”-she stamped the surface of the road-“everywhere we go. The reminders of our past surround us. They are us. The Dhakaani knew muut and atcha. They had duur’kala. They gave birth to the shaarat’khesh. Some records in the vaults of Volaar Draal suggest that the oldest of the lowland Ghaal’dar clans like the Rhukaan Taash, the Gantii Vus, and the Mur Talaan might have origins in companies within the imperial armies.”

“Six thousand years ago when the empire fell!”

“It’s hard to break from the traditions of millennia. The legacy of Dhakaan marks our lives in ways we can’t control. Honor and duty bind us. We don’t just live with ghosts-we live under the tyranny of ghosts.” Ekhaas let a crooked smile emerge onto her face. “Just because I don’t believe a return to the Age of Dhakaan is possible doesn’t mean I don’t still dream about it.”

“Haruuc could have done it,” Tenquis said suddenly. “I’m no goblin, but I would have followed him.”

“Cho,” agreed Tooth. The bugbear had also slowed to listen to their conversation. “Haruuc could have. If the Last War had ended differently-”

He didn’t have the chance to finish his speculation. Some change in the rising heat of the afternoon brought a sluggish breeze to stir the leaves along the side of the road. Marrow’s head snapped up and around, her nostrils flaring, a growl rumbling from her throat. Chetiin whirled. “Varags!”

The wind-stirred bushes behind them exploded.