The tyranny of ghosts tlod-3 Read online

  She put one foot into it and pushed off from the ground with the other. For a perilous moment her feet joined Tenquis’s on Geth’s shoulders. Then she grasped the tiefling’s shoulders, wrapped one leg around his waist, and climbed up over his back. He groaned and breathed even harder than Geth had.

  “Easy,” Ekhaas whispered. “You can do it.” She got one knee on his shoulder, then the other. His horns made the maneuver difficult.

  “Just hurry,” he wheezed.

  She put her palms against the cool stone of the stela, digging her fingertips into the shallow grooves of the carved letters-Muurazh who led the defense of the dungeons is rewarded with two swords from the emperor’s hand and land before the walls of Zaal Piik-before drawing up one foot…

  At the bottom of their pile, Geth lurched suddenly. Ekhaas grabbed onto the stela, as did Tenquis below her. Geth gasped as he tried to recover, and without thinking, Ekhaas sang.

  It was a reflexive action, with less magic about it than inspiration. She sang strength and steadiness, focus and will. Geth sucked in a great breath and managed to stand straight once more. So did Tenquis-she could feel him grow steadier under her, and she seized the opportunity to climb all the way up onto his shoulders.

  But with the song came the echo, and this time it was distinctly louder and more insistent. And when she stopped singing, it persisted as if it had taken on a life of its own.

  “Ekhaas!” said Geth through his teeth.

  “I know.” She ducked her head and peered under one arm at Chetiin. “Up!”

  The goblin swarmed over Geth, then Tenquis as easily as if he were climbing a tree. When he passed over Ekhaas, she barely felt it. Then he was on her shoulders-and cursing.

  “This is worse than from below,” he said. “The angle is wrong.”

  The haunting song had drawn closer in just a few moments. It had changed, too, Ekhaas realized. It wasn’t just one voice singing anymore. It was several, blended into an eerie chorus. It took all of her will not to turn her head and look around. “Chetiin,” she said, fighting to stay calm, “can you climb from-”

  Before she could finish, the summoned light that had lit the vault flickered and vanished. Darkness cloaked the cavern beyond the glow of her drifting orbs. The chorus seemed to grow stronger, and even the orbs flickered briefly. Tenquis hissed between his teeth.

  “Don’t move!” Ekhaas snapped. “Chetiin, how much farther?”

  “A dagger’s length. Hold still.” One foot left her shoulder and planted itself on top of her head. Ekhaas stiffened her neck as Chetiin changed his perch as easily as if he were a bird. Ekhaas heard paper slapped onto stone and a rapid rubbing sound.

  “Hurry,” said Geth, his voiced strained. She felt him shift, trying to hold their weight.

  “I almost have it,” said Chetiin. Ekhaas counted heartbeats. One. Two. Three. Four “Done!” Chetiin said.

  “Jump!” Geth gasped, and an instant later his support dropped out from under them. Ekhaas felt Chetiin’s weight leave her head. She heard Tenquis yelp again and the unseen chorus rise as if in excitement. Guessing at where the edge of the hollow had been, she tried to push off from Tenquis’s shoulders, from the stela, from anything that would push her away from the collapse.

  It almost worked. Her back slammed into the slope of the hollow, driving the wind out of her. Her legs came down across someone else’s back. For a moment, all Ekhaas could do was lie still, staring at sparks of light that had nothing to do with her floating globes and everything to do with a hard impact.

  At least it was quiet. The haunting chorus was gone. The vault was silent.

  A small shadow hovered over her. It touched her face and then-none too gently-slapped her. Ekhaas blinked and sucked in air. She rolled over-all of her limbs obeyed her and there was no sharp pain, which was a good sign-and glared briefly at Chetiin before looking down at the body under her legs. It was Tenquis. She felt a surge of relief to see that he was also rolling over. She looked for Geth and found him on his hands and knees at the base of the stela, chest heaving from exertion. She started to rise and go to him, but Chetiin grabbed her.

  “No,” he said. “Look!” He spun her around so that she faced up and out of the hollow.

  It took her an instant to recognize what she saw. Six figures stood looking down at them. Six hobgoblin women wrapped in tattered lengths of linen. Six hobgoblin women as thin as bones, their flesh translucent and shimmering with its own cold light.

  One of them raised a skeletal hand and pointed at her. “Trespasser,” she said in Goblin, in a voice that seemed like an echo of a song. “Thief. Defiler!”

  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 cou
ld 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 so
ng 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.”