The Doom of Kings: Legacy of Dhakaan - Book 1

by Don Bassingthwaite

  She could feel every gaze inside and around the court, human and goblin, turn to follow her. It only fuelled her anger. Was she some delicate flower in need of protection? Clenching her teeth, she marched straight across the court, heading directly for the passage that would take her to the gate and out of Sentinel Tower.

  Straight across the court was also straight through the massed Darguuls. One of them, a hobgoblin, came to meet her as she approached. “I am Aruget,” he said. Unlike Tariic, he had a heavy Goblin accent that drew out the middle of his words and bit off the end. “I serve Tariic, who serves Lhesh Haruuc. Go around our lines.”

  Ashi stopped and glared at him. “I am Ashi d’Deneith. I am angry. Get out of my way.”

  Aruget’s eyes were deep brown flecked with orange, and he had the ritual scars across his forehead that Ashi had learned were a sign of the Rhukaan Taash clan. He stared at her and she stared back, neither of them blinking. For a very long moment, the only sound and movement in Venture Court came from the jumping, snapping flames in the big fire bowl.

  The hobgoblin was the first to look away, his gaze lifting and going over Ashi’s head. “You may pass,” he growled softly and moved out of her way.

  “Ta muut,” Ashi said as she passed. It was a Goblin phrase she had learned from Ekhaas. Roughly translated, it meant “you have honor,” but Ekhaas had explained that it was the proper way to say thank you without implying weakness or debt. She didn’t look back to see Aruget’s reaction to being spoken to in his own language. She kept her eyes on the Darguuls ahead, walking without hesitation. Hobgoblins, bugbears, and goblins stepped aside to let her by. As she passed one knot of goblins, she heard a thin murmuring break out in her wake. She looked over her shoulder, her hand hovering near her sword briefly before falling away. One of the goblins was trying to suppress laughter—not at her, but to judge from the nervous glances of those with him, at Aruget. The hobgoblin’s face darkened, and he bore down on the laughing goblin like a storm, snarling rapid words that made the goblin stop snickering very quickly.

  It felt good to see someone else on the receiving end of trouble for a change, Ashi decided. It felt good to have her way in an argument, too. A little of her anger lifted from her, and her step was lighter as she passed into the shadows of the passage on the other side of the court.

  No one in the outer zone of Sentinel Tower stopped her or even bothered to give her a second glance. The gate she had chosen was a grubby thing, used mostly for the movement of supplies and mercenary troops into and out of the tower. The higher ranking members of House Deneith almost never came this way. She paused for a moment before approaching the gate and covered up her dragonmark as best she could. Gloves hid the backs of her hands, and a carefully folded and tied scarf masked her forehead and the lower part of her face. Within Sentinel Tower, her Siberys Mark gained her respect. Beyond, it just as often aroused suspicion and superstition. It also identified her. Even covered, she felt a knot in her belly as she walked under the stone arch, half-expecting that word from Vounn might have reached the guards ahead of her and that at any moment they would call out for her to stop.

  They didn’t. She left Sentinel Tower and walked out into the city of Karrlakton.

  There was little to reveal at first that she had left the tower, aside from open sky and crooked streets instead of straight passages. The area outside the gate was all but an extension of the area inside, bustling with evening trade. There was a sense of greater freedom out of the tower, though, a more relaxed tone in the voices of traders and carters who dealt with the great house but didn’t serve it. The farther she went from the tower and the more evening slid into night, the lighter the traffic in the streets became. The tension between Ashi’s shoulders eased a bit more.

  It was impossible to escape Deneith entirely, however. The House didn’t rule in Karrlakton, but it certainly dominated every aspect of the city. As vast as Sentinel Tower was, Deneith’s activities spilled out of it. Training grounds and barracks, workshops and warehouses, even ordinary houses—every third building that Ashi passed bore the crest of Deneith. The roots of Deneith went even deeper, Ashi knew. Warlords who carried the Mark of Sentinel had ruled the area of what would become Karrlakton before the founding of the ancient kingdom of Karrnath, even before the creation of House Deneith proper. The city had grown under the gaze of the House. Parts of it were as old as parts of Sentinel Tower. For many centuries, Deneith money had built roads, walls, and shrines.

  Ashi turned toward one of the oldest sections of the city. The sense of history appealed to her. It was soothing to be among things that had stood for centuries, unchanged and unaffected by the small frustrations of everyday life. When she was gone—when Vounn was gone—they would still be there. As old as Sentinel Tower was, she couldn’t feel the same thing there. Everything was too busy, too imprinted with the ordinary. The oldest areas of the tower were forbidden to all but the most senior members of the House, as if the stones held some dreadful secret. The only peace she had found was in the archives, where books replaced stone, and if they weren’t quite as permanent and unchanging, they had even more fascinating stories to tell as her ability to read grew.

  She had found her grandfather in the archives. All she’d known of him before she met Singe was that his name had been Kagan and that the hunters of the Bonetree had found him in the Shadow Marches, badly injured and clutching his fine sword. Too deeply wounded ever to fight again, he had been brought into the clan and had fathered many children for the Bonetree over several years—until he’d gone mad and murdered all of them save one, who had become Ashi’s father, before taking his own life.

  In the archives of Sentinel Tower, she’d discovered a different man, a hero of the Sentinel Marshals. He had been awarded an honor blade, the same bright sword that rode her hip, for bringing to justice a pair of notorious murderers. The archive’s record ended with his final assignment: the pursuit of one of the pair after her escape. To the best knowledge of House Deneith, neither he nor his quarry had ever been seen again.

  After reading the record of Kagan, Ashi had promised herself that she would become a Sentinel Marshal. She’d mentioned the idea to Vounn. The lady seneschal had answered her with a silence that spoke louder than words. Ashi carried the Siberys Mark of Sentinel. She was too valuable to be allowed to roam far from the reach of the House.

  She clenched her teeth as she reached Karrlakton’s old quarter. Anger rose in her again, replacing the calm she should have felt in the shadow of the ancient buildings. She was more than her dragonmark, no matter what people might think, whether they were people like Vounn who expected her to use the mark for the profit of Deneith, or people like the anonymous House guard who saw her only as a scion of the house, or people in the street who reacted to a Siberys Mark with superstitious unease, or people like Aruget and the other Darguuls who—

  Ashi paused in midstride, breaking her pace as she broke her silent rant. How had Aruget reacted to her? The Darguuls had to know what dragonmarks were—they were dealing with House Deneith—and they must have known that the larger the mark, the more powerful it was. Aruget had recognized her as a lady of Deneith, but it had been her hard stare that had forced him to back down, not the sight of her mark. Maybe her mark didn’t matter to them. No dragonmarks manifested among the goblin races, a mystery that had always puzzled sages who cared about such things. Maybe to goblin eyes, the mark on her face was no more unusual than the piercings in her lip or the scars across Aruget’s forehead.

  “Rond betch!” Ashi muttered, for the first time keenly disappointed that she was missing the opportunity to meet Tariic. If he’d reacted as Aruget had, she would have enjoyed watching Vounn’s dismay. Ashi smiled to herself.

  If she hadn’t been standing still and her mind hadn’t been, for the moment, clear, she might have missed the quiet, muffled sound of breaking glass. And if she hadn’t immediately and instinctively turned to look for the source of the sound, she would have m
issed seeing the figure that slipped through a narrow window high on one of the ancient buildings nearby.

  A thief. There could be no other explanation for someone climbing up and breaking a window to gain access to a building. Ashi glanced around her. Only a few of the ancient structures that lined the lanes of this area were residences, and all of the windows in them were dark. The only light came from the moons that peered down into the narrow old streets. The folk of the neighborhood were in their beds, dreaming of another day’s work to come. There was no sign of the night watch. Ashi and the thief were the only ones abroad.

  Ashi knew the building the thief had entered. She’d visited it during a rare and closely supervised excursion into the city. It was a shrine of sorts, erected by some long ago lord of Deneith in remembrance of a great campaign in the distant south long before even the beginning of the Last War. The importance of battle and lord were almost forgotten, but the memorial remained, seldom visited but maintained by the House, like dozens of others in Karrlakton, out of a sense of duty. A Deneith memorial, a Deneith responsibility.

  With no one else, no night watch, around, that made it her responsibility. Ashi felt her blood stir at the idea. A fight. A real fight, not sparring in the training ground, not rehearsed steps on the dance floor, but a real, dangerous fight—that’s what she had been missing for the last eight months. She smiled again, this time out of pure, fierce joy, and ran for the memorial.

  Ashi had been one of the most accomplished stalkers and trackers among the Bonetree. Whatever new skills and knowledge Vounn tried to force on her, those old skills remained. Moving like a ghost, she raced from shadow to shadow, staying out of the moonlight in case her prey happened to glance out of one of the memorial’s windows—or in case the thief wasn’t alone.

  The moons’ light fell full on the doors of the memorial, revealing heavy locks. There would be no entry that way, but Ashi had anticipated it. Her back against the stone wall, she slid around the building until she stood beneath the window through which the thief had entered. It was on the more shadowed side of the building, but up close, she could see the faint line of the rope that the thief had used to climb. Ashi adjusted and tightened the scarf around her head, took hold of the rope, and scaled the building as silently as she could. Just below the broken window, she stopped and listened. There was no sound from inside. She shimmied a little farther up the rope. The window had been made of small panes of glass held in place with lead strips. The thief had broken some of the panes and ripped back the leading to make a hole big enough to pass through. The hole was easily big enough for Ashi as well—the thief was at least her size. That was big, Ashi thought, for someone doing this kind of thing regularly. She shifted from the rope to the window sill and ducked in through the hole.

  The window was well above the nearest level surface. She had to twist around and lower herself down, then drop the last couple of feet. She tried to do it as silently as possible, but she still landed with a soft thump. She froze in a crouch, not even breathing, and listened again. Everything was quiet. Too quiet. Ashi scowled. Her drop had alerted the thief. He was listening now, too. She waited.

  Her patience was rewarded. Somewhere in the memorial, not too close, leather creaked as thief moved again. Ashi let out her breath. She hadn’t been discovered. She rose from her crouch, remembering everything she could of the memorial layout from her previous visit.

  The interior of the memorial was open, with two galleries rising above the ground floor. She stood on the second gallery. A shrine dedicated to Dol Arrah and Dol Dorn, the martial gods of honor and strength, stood in the very center of the ground floor, the focal point of the memorial. Spread out around the ground floor and lining the walls of both galleries, however, were the real reason the memorial’s few visitors might come: cabinet upon glass-fronted display cabinet of trophies taken during the campaign and of relics commemorating the fallen. Arching over the whole was a vaulted ceiling painted with an age-darkened image of what might have been the greatest battle of the campaign but to Ashi had looked like any other chaotic battlefield.

  By night, however, the painted ceiling was completely lost in shadow, along with most of the cabinets. The only light in the memorial came from four candles lit with magical cold fire on the shrine far below, supplemented by dim shafts of silver moonlight penetrating the windows on two walls of the building. Ashi had hunted by night before, however. It was enough light for her. She scanned the gallery for any signs of movement, but there were none. The creak of leather had come from below. Ashi walked to the edge of the gallery and peered down.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Moonlight fell across the stairs leading from the lower gallery down to the main floor. As Ashi watched, a figure moved through the patch of brightness. The pale light drained color and detail, but she could make out that the thief was tall and lean, wearing dark leathers and with a hood pulled up over his head. Down the stairs and onto the ground floor, he skirted the shrine and vanished again into the shadows. Ashi stepped back and made her way to the stairs as well, moving slowly and carefully to avoid stumbling over anything in the darkness. On the lower gallery, she paused again, assessing her options. She could just make out the thief as an indistinct figure moving from cabinet to cabinet as if looking for something inside one of them.

  The thief had no light—if he was examining the contents of the cabinets, he must have had some magic or natural ability allowing him to see in the dark. She would be at a disadvantage in the deeper shadows. She needed to get the thief into better light. Approaching across the ground floor would put her in danger of being spotted, either as she crept around the dim perimeter or as she crossed the open center through the candlelight of the shrine.

  But there was another way. She left the stairs and crossed along the gallery in the direction of the thief, taking care to stay well back from the gallery’s edge. She was partway around the gallery, almost above the place where she had seen the thief, when she heard a soft murmur of satisfaction from below. The thief had found whatever he was looking for. Ashi paused and heard the scratching of metal on metal. He was trying to open the lock on a cabinet. She moved back to the rail of the gallery, then oriented herself on the thin sound. When she judged she was nearly directly over the thief, she glanced down. The floor below was empty. Ashi swung herself silently over the rail and, gripping tight, lowered herself hand over hand down its stout spindles until she dangled in the air. The thief was a few paces in front of her, hunched over his work.

  She took a quiet breath and dropped. The floor met her, but she rolled as she landed, coming up in a crouch and drawing her sword in one smooth movement. She caught a brief glimpse of the thief whirling in surprise. The cabinet behind him stood open.

  “Hold!” Ashi shouted. “Hold in the name of—”

  The words weren’t out of her mouth before the thief reached back into the cabinet, grabbed something, and hurled it at Ashi. She didn’t see what it was, but she jumped to the side to avoid it. Whatever the thief had thrown whistled past her to shatter on the floor. Even as she jumped, though, Ashi recognized it as a distraction. In the moment that she was off-balance, the thief’s hands shaped an arcane gesture and a husky, almost musical whisper rippled from his lips. A spell. The thief was more than he seemed! Ashi didn’t have any chance to dodge. The magical energy formed around her—

  Then slid away like beads of water on a hot iron as it met the shield of her dragonmark. A tingle passed across Ashi’s scalp, but nothing more. Gritted teeth turned into a grin and she flung herself at the thief with a shout. The only way to deal with a spellcaster was to stay too close to give him time to cast.

  The thief recovered quickly, though, drawing a heavy dagger and falling back into the shadows. Ashi aimed her first blow not at the thief—she wanted him alive—but at the dagger. If he faded too far into the darkness, the last thing she wanted was an unseen blade plunging between her ribs. Her honor blade flashed, reflecting w
hat little light there was, as it struck hard against the dagger, and the shorter weapon jumped out of the thief’s grasp. Ashi stepped in behind the blow to grab the thief’s shoulder. With a twist and a shove, she sent him staggering back toward the center of the memorial and the light that shone from the shrine.

  Except that he grabbed her arm as well, pulling her with him. He staggered into the light, but Ashi crashed into another display cabinet. Wood cracked, glass smashed, and artifacts from the cabinet rained to the floor in a metallic cascade. Ashi cursed and pulled herself free, turning to face the thief as he regained his balance. The light silhouetted him, obscuring his features further, but Ashi could see that he was, like her, wearing a scarf under his hood. Her glimpse was brief, however. Drawing himself up, he spat another musical word of magic.

  Like ink on wet paper, the outline of the thief’s body seemed to run and blur. Every movement left a confusing streak on the air. Ashi hissed under her breath and leaped at him, but what should have been a clean blow passed through empty air. A smudged leg lashed out and she skipped aside to avoid it. The thief whirled and dashed across the memorial—straight for a rack of old weapons, rusted polearms standing like aged soldiers in drill formation.

  “Betch.” Ashi ran after the thief, snatching up a wide-mouthed bronze vessel resting atop a low cabinet as she ran. She’d thought to hurl the vessel at her opponent or maybe hit him with it, but it was heavier than she expected, and it rattled when she grabbed it. Ashi glanced inside, then, instead of throwing it, grasped one side of the rim and scattered the contents across the floor.

  Hundreds of small knucklebones—soldiers’ dice—bounced on the stone, spreading out in a dry rattling wave that swept around and under the thief’s feet as he tried to stop and grab one of the polearms. Some of the old bones crunched into powder, but others held their strength and rolled. The thief’s momentum on the unsteady footing kept him moving forward and right into a cabinet with a very solid smack. Thief and cabinet slammed to the ground, dragging down half the rack of polearms as well. Ashi went around the treacherous field of bones and tangled staves with long strides. “In the name of Deneith,” she said hoarsely, “surrender!”