The Doom of Kings: Legacy of Dhakaan - Book 1

by Don Bassingthwaite

  Ashi started. “You want me to die? Here? But that’s—”

  “Impossible. Yes.” He sat back. “But those are my terms. You die and I’ll give you the Rod of Kings. I’ll even release your friends.

  She stared at him—then felt a flood of inspiration. “Done,” she said. “I accept. But I’ll need a sword and I’ll need her.” She pointed at Ekhaas a second time.

  Dabrak smiled again. “Very well. She’s yours.” He gestured with the rod and Ekhaas sagged abruptly, then caught herself and looked at him with hatred in her eyes.

  Ashi caught her arm and pulled her to her feet. “Not now,” she said in the duur’kala’s ear. “Have you heard what I’ve said?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Ashi shook her head, cutting her off. “Don’t argue. I need you to hold a rhythm for me.”

  Ekhaas’s ears and eyebrows rose at the same time.

  Ashi smiled. “You saw the sword dance at Sentinel Tower. While we were in the guard station, you clapped some of the drum rhythm from memory. Can you do that again for the whole dance? Slow opening, quick first part, slow second part, quick third part, slow end. Watch me for cues if you need to.”

  “I can sing the viol part if you need me to. What are you doing, Ashi?”

  “What Vounn had me trained to do. Give me your sword.”

  Ekhaas started to draw the weapon, but Dabrak coughed like a courtier. “Not that sword,” he said. He pointed across the cavern to Wrath. “That one.”

  Ashi looked at the twilight blade, then at Dabrak. Geth had put her hand on the sword once so that she could use its gift of understanding Goblin. That wasn’t exactly the same as trying to wield the weapon. Would the sword let her use it? She could only try. Bracing herself, she went over to the sword. Geth was still huddled and trembling beside it. She tried to ignore him, dropping her torch on the ground and bending over the sword. “Wrath,” she murmured. “I need to use you to help Geth and the others, and to get the rod. Please accept my touch.”

  She felt stupid talking to the weapon, but her first light touch on the sword’s hilt was still tentative. Nothing happened. She curled her fingers around it and raised it, offering a mock salute to Dabrak. The emperor, risen from his chair to stand and watch her, looked disappointed. Ashi walked to an open part of the cavern and nodded to Ekhaas. It was time to see who had been right all those weeks ago in Sentinel Tower: Vounn, who’d said she couldn’t do it, or her old instructor Baerer, who’d believed she could.

  Ekhaas took a deep breath and raised her voice in a long, clear note. Ashi swept into the rigid first position of the sword dance, held it for a long moment, then dropped her blade and walked around it.

  Wrath wasn’t the best sword for the dance. A proper human sword would have been slimmer, with a pointed blade instead of the broad, forked tip of hobgoblin swords. At least the ancient weapon was well-balanced and surprisingly light for its size. She completed the walk-around without letting the blade waver at all.

  In Sentinel Tower, the difficult step would have earned applause. Dabrak gave no reaction at all. Ashi ignored him and focused on the music. The hardest part of the dance was yet to come.

  Ekhaas’s hands began to clap along with the rise and fall of her voice. Ashi moved into the attack phase of the dance, lunging and stamping her way across the cavern. Baerer had made this part of the dance look light and precise. She couldn’t match that precision. Instead, she threw herself into the raw energy that Baerer had said was her greatest strength.

  She imagined that a sea of enemies stood between her and her goal. As they came rushing at her, she met each one, cutting her way through them. She could almost let herself go, could almost lose herself in the dance as Baerer had taught her. Her body knew what to do. She couldn’t do that this time, though. She kept her focus, and when Ekhaas’s song and rhythm slowed, she was ready. She entered the second part of the dance, the battle, as easily as stepping into real combat.

  The unseen fight slowed along with Ekhaas’s song, but in Ashi’s mind it only became more intense. Each blow was deliberate, drawn out so that the audience could appreciate the sweep of the blade, the unfolding of a bent arm into an elbow strike, the long lines of her body as it extended into a kick. The battle was grace and power combined. Ashi didn’t look to see Dabrak’s reaction. She concentrated on the battle as if her life depended on it—which, in a way, it did.

  Ekhaas’s voice rose again. The slap of palm on palm became increasingly rapid. It was different from dancing to viol and drum, but that was good. It was more primal, more suited to Ashi’s style of dance. Baerer had been elegant like the viol. She was unshaped, like a wild song. The battle she fought in her imagination took place on an open hill beneath the light of many moons. Wind lifted her hair, and the smell of churned soil filled her nose. Her enemies came at her faster and faster, in time with the rhythm of Ekhaas’s clapping. Ashi fought them off, but her movements become tighter as they pressed at her. She backed across the battlefield in the dance’s third phase, the defeat. Her enemies pursued her. She blocked their blows, feeling the impact. The song whirled faster. Her enemies crowded in close, so close she couldn’t move. Her sword rose, perhaps in an effort to parry once last attack, before a body that stood rigid once more. The dance was almost over—

  Now, she told herself, and broke free of the movements Baerer had trained into her. In Deneith tradition, the sword dance ended with defeat, the warrior caught among the blades of his opponents. Ashi had to take it one step farther. In her imagination, a sword thrust up into her breast. Cold metal pierced flesh, forced ribs aside, and buried itself in her heart. Her eyes went wide. Her mouth opened slightly. Her rigid body arched backward.

  And she died. Ekhaas’s song rose briefly into a keen of mourning, then fell away like a fading wind.

  Ashi held her pose in silence, then gulped air and straightened up. Across the cavern, Ekhaas stood still, but her eyes were shining and her ears were tall. The dance had been perfect. Ashi could feel it. She turned and looked at Dabrak. The withered hobgoblin watched her with undisguised appreciation.

  “In my palace,” he said, “I had twenty-five dancing slaves. I don’t believe any of them ever danced like that. The performance was flawless.”

  Breathing hard, Ashi walked to Geth’s curled form, laid Wrath beside him, and retrieved her torch. She held her hand out to the emperor. “The rod, marhu.”

  Dabrak’s shriveled ears twitched. “No,” he said. He gathered his robes around himself and turned back to his chair.

  “No?” Ashi’s voice cracked with disbelief and she stalked over to confront him. “We had a deal, Dabrak!”

  “We did. We agreed that if you died here in the Uura Odaarii, I would give you the rod.” He sat down. “Did you really think that a trick of dance would satisfy me? It was a pretty illusion, nothing more.” His face was hard. “Take your friends—I give you their freedom as a reward for your performance—and get out.” The rod flicked once, then vanished into the folds of Dabrak’s robes as his hands dropped into his lap.

  Around Ashi, the others fell out of their kneeling postures. Midian gasped and gingerly worked a jaw that had been clamped shut. Near Ashi’s feet, Geth groaned and moved as well, rising slowly to hands and knees. Ashi kept her eyes on Dabrak, though, as if she could burn him with her anger. “You put no conditions on our agreement!” she protested. “I died!”

  “You made a pretty show, but you did not die,” Dabrak said harshly. “I know what death looks like, and you’re not dead.”

  “But I can’t die here. You said yourself, it’s impossible.”

  The ancient emperor sat forward. “Of course, it’s impossible! That’s why I asked. It’s not my fault you agreed.” His lips curled back from his teeth. “This is the Uura Odaarii, you fool. There is no future here. There is no death. Nothing changes!”

  Ashi’s hand thrust out to point at him. “You’ve changed,” she snarled without thinking.

  Dabr
ak stared at her in surprise for a moment, then spat. “No, I haven’t.”

  “You have!” The truth of what she had just said spread into Ashi. Her hand fell back. “You changed when you used the power of the cavern. It made you wither. If time has no effect in the Uura Odaarii, then you should look the same as you did when you entered. But you don’t. You’re all shriveled up.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dabrak thrust out his hands. “I’m not shriveled. I’m strong!”

  “Maybe you are,” said Chetiin. “But you’re wearing gloves.”

  Dabrak looked at his hands as if seeing them for the first time, then grabbed at the fingers of one glove and pulled it off.

  The hand that emerged was like a bundle of crooked twigs with orange skin hanging loose. Dabrak stared at it as though it didn’t belong at the end of his arm. “What is this?” he croaked. The hand crept up to his face, and he gasped as it encountered the wrinkles and folds there. “This is a trick.”

  Midian had his arm up to his elbow in his pack. He pulled it out with a flat leather case clutched in his fingers and opened the case to reveal a polished steel shaving mirror. Jumping up onto the side of the chair, he thrust the mirror in front of Dabrak’s face. “Look for yourself!”

  Dabrak looked—and screamed. He slapped Midian away. The mirror spun across the cavern. Dabrak stood up, suddenly a strangely ridiculous figure in his loose, flapping clothes. “This isn’t possible! Nothing changes in the Uura Odaarii. Nothing!”

  “Maybe it’s your future catching up with you,” Geth said, rising to his feet. His voice was rough and shaky, but the hand that held Wrath was steady.

  Dabrak spun around and hurled the rod at him.

  Geth snatched the rod out of the air with his free hand. For a moment, he just stared at it in astonishment, then his fingers curled around it and he grinned.

  “Yes, take it!” spat Dabrak. “Take what you came for and get out!” He collapsed back on his chair, his body wracked with silent convulsions that might have been sobbing.

  No one needed a second invitation. “Twice tak, marhu!” Geth said and ran for the passage that led out of the weird cavern. Ashi followed him, pausing at the edge of the passage to make certain everyone else got out. Chetiin raced past, another torch in his hand to light the way for Geth. Midian, his pack clutched in his arms. Ekhaas and Dagii—Ashi flung herself after them, racing through the narrow twists of the passage. Her frozen torch began to hiss and flare as she ran, and she thought it was possibly the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.

  It wasn’t the only sound she heard though. A voice drifted suddenly out of the darkness below. “Wait! Wait, bring it back! Bring the rod back to me!” Dabrak’s voice rose to a roar. “I said bring it back!”

  Ashi glanced over her shoulder. The passage behind her was only dark as far as the last twist. Beyond that, a pale green glow was growing.

  “Khyberit gentis,” she breathed, then shouted, “Faster!”

  Up and down the rises and drops of the passage. Around corners. It seemed as if the darkness ahead wouldn’t end, and every time she dared to look back, the green glow was brighter. Dabrak’s angry roaring was constant—then suddenly it swooped up into a shriek of triumph. Ashi looked back once more and saw the undying emperor racing up the passage. The signs of the Uura Odaarii shone bright on his skin and his eyes were green flames.

  Then her feet were crunching and skidding among the offerings left at the grate in the shrine. She almost fell, but Dagii and Ekhaas reached back together and pulled her up. They burst into the little chamber of the shrine. Chetiin was trying to set fire to the pitch pots they had left there. “No time!” said Dagii and swept the goblin ahead of him into the narrow doorway of the shrine. Ekhaas plunged after them.

  Ashi paused. Chetiin had managed to light some of the pitch pots. Snatching them up by their leather straps, she whirled them around once, then let them fly back into the passage and the approaching green glow. She spun as soon as the straps left her fingers and thrust herself through the shrine’s narrow exit. Clay shattered, and there was a sudden whoosh of flame. Ashi felt a searing heat on her back, but then she was out and standing on the black soil at the bottom of the pit where the others were waiting for her.

  No, she realized. Not waiting. Clustered together, they faced the trolls that crouched like guard dogs on the ancient stone stairs. Dabrak’s voice rolled out of the shrine.

  “Bring back the rod!”

  Empty-handed, she turned to stare into the firelight that spilled from the shrine’s door—firelight that was swiftly blotted out by an intense green glow. Shining with power, untouched by the flames of the pits, a withered figure filled the doorway. Around it, the fine carvings of the ancient shrine became dull and dusty, as if the long delayed years of its preservation were being drawn away. Green light cast sharp shadows into the bottom of the pit. The low growling of the trolls rose into frightened mewling.

  Burning from within like a coal from a fire, Dabrak Riis, marhu of Dhakaan and twenty-third lord of the Riis Dynasty, stretched out his hand. “Give me the rod!” Time shivered at his words.

  But Ashi stared at his fingers.

  They were shriveling, shrinking away even as he opened them. His arm grew thin. It was a stick, then a switch, then a long, dry twig. Ashi looked up at his face and watched wrinkled skin draw tight over bone that became green ash. Dark hair sifted away. Silk crumbled. Gold flared bright, burning up as if it were paper.

  And like a coal from a fire, Dabrak’s power consumed its fuel. Without speaking again, the last living emperor of Dhakaan collapsed in a winking shower of green sparks that were dark before they hit the ground.

  Darkness fell over the pit once more, and its silence was broken by the wailing of the trolls as they fled. Ashi and all of the others stared at the black dust that had been Dabrak as it slowly trickled from the featureless ruins that had been a perfectly preserved pre-Dhakaani shrine.

  Then they turned to look at Geth. The shifter held out the Rod of Kings. “We have it,” he said.

  Dawn came as they climbed back up the stairs from the pit. Like the shrine, the ancient stonework had crumbled, but the same weird stillness remained in the air. The Uura Odaarii still held its power, even if some of it seemed to have been drawn back. Midian even recovered enough to moan about the loss of the astounding artifacts.

  Ashi and the others were less interested in the crumbled stairs than in the trees and the forest around them. How much time had passed while they were in the green cavern? Had a night turned into a year as in Geth’s story of fairy glades? It was hard to tell. The air felt different than it had in the night, but that could just have been the breaking day. The forest in the valley seemed as it had the day before, but what was there to tell one day in the forest from the next? There was no sign of the terrified trolls.

  The hedge of thorns, when they reached it, still had the fresh smell of trampled plants, though. Above the slope of the valley, the remains of the bugbear camp still smoldered. Marrow was even waiting for them, still licking red blood from her black muzzle. She yipped and growled at Chetiin.

  “She says the bugbears have fled into the mountains to the west. She’s disappointed we came back, though. She wanted to find out what a magebred horse tastes like.”

  Midian let out a hiss of relief. “One night,” he said. “One night was one night.”

  “Cho,” said Ekhaas, “and I don’t want to have another one like it.” She gestured to the south, where they’d left the horses. “Let’s get back out to the Dhakaani road and make camp there. We’ll start back to Rhukaan Draal tomorrow.”

  “Wait—how far have the bugbears fled?” Geth asked. He looked at Marrow. “Was Makka, the chief, still with them? Is there any chance we could catch him and get Ashi’s sword back?”

  Marrow snarled an answer. “Beyond this mountain,” Chetiin translated. “Beyond the length of the valley before Marrow stopped following them, but they were still
running. They probably won’t stop until night falls again. Makka was with them when they left. Whether he is still is uncertain—the pack has turned on the leader.”

  “Bugbears move fast, especially in their own territory, and they’ll be alert for pursuit.” Dagii’s ears bent down. “I doubt that we’d be able to catch them without spending days to do it. The sword is lost.”

  Geth’s jaw tightened.

  Ashi felt the loss of Kagan’s honor blade all over again, but it wasn’t the only thing making a knot inside her. “I know,” she said. “Thank you for considering it. There’s something else, though.” She swallowed, not quite certain how to say what she knew in her gut needed to be said. She threw herself into it. “Should we take the rod back? Haruuc sent us to retrieve a symbol of power. We’re bringing him real power. Should we put that in his hands—or anyone’s hands?”

  She looked around at the others and nearly bit her tongue when she saw the same concern written on their faces. “I’ve thought about that,” said Dagii.

  Chetiin and Midian nodded as well. So did Ekhaas, but more slowly. “Dabrak said that it took him centuries to unlock the powers of the rod,” she said. “For generations of emperors, it was nothing more than a trinket. Dabrak is gone.”

  Geth held out the rod again. Unlike the other things that had been preserved by the Uura Odaarii, it had remained whole and untouched by the withdrawal of the cavern’s power. Its surface did seem duller, though, not quite so bright as it had while Dabrak held it. “I think it might even be asleep,” Geth said. “The way Wrath was when I found it.”

  “But Wrath had powers even when it was asleep.”

  “Speaking languages and fighting monsters.”

  “Have you tried to do more with it?”

  “Why should I?”

  Chetiin raised his hand. “That may be our solution,” he said. They all turned to him and he spread his fingers. “If we keep the true power of the rod to ourselves, there’s nothing to hint at what it can do. The tales preserved by the Kech Volaar said nothing. Haruuc wants his symbol. Let him have his symbol.”