Don Bassingthwaite - The tyranny of ghosts

Ekhaas pressed her lips together and drew down her ears, trying to suppress the thought. She kept her eyes open, though, drinking in everything around her-until the cavern simply ended in empty space, the edge of a great chasm cutting through the rock.

“Khaavolaar.” Ekhaas slowed as they approached and studied the chasm’s edge. It seemed stable. In fact, an old gantry of heavy timbers stood right at the edge. Ekhaas looked up and saw that the void of the chasm extended above them, too, a vast natural shaft. She had no idea where the shaft opened above them, but she could guess at its use. “This must be how particularly large artifacts are brought down into the vaults.”

“Something like a big stone stela couldn’t exactly be brought down all the stairs we took, could it?” said Tenquis. A final iron marker was planted at the edge of the chasm. He strode right up to it and leaned over, holding out his rod. “There are stairs going down the wall of the shaft,” he announced, then stretched a little farther. “I think I can see-”

His words were cut off in a sudden choking breath as he started to topple forward. Arms wheeling, he fought for balance.

Geth was behind him in an instant, grabbing the back of his vest and hauling him onto solid ground. The ghostlight rod wasn’t so fortunate. It slipped from the tiefling’s grip and plummeted into the chasm. Chetiin stuck his head over the edge and watched calmly as it fell. After a moment, he drew back. “About a hundred paces, maybe a hundred and twenty to the bottom.”

Geth glared at Tenquis, who had the decency to look ashamed as well as frightened. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m still getting used to not having a tail to balance me. Thank you.”

“Try not to do it again,” Geth said.

The loss of one rod made the darkness around them seem that much thicker. Ekhaas didn’t relish the idea of climbing down the old stairs of the vault without better illumination. Fortunately, that was something she could take care of. Handing the last rod to Geth, she reached into herself and drew up a song. It was a simple magic, but useful; as her song rippled out, blossoms of light unfolded on the air in three floating globes.

Geth stiffened. “There!” he said. “You hear that?”

This time she did hear it-an echo to her song. Except that it was more than an echo. It was similar to her song, but darker and more of a counterpoint. The globes of light flickered like candles in a wind-but then the song was gone and the lights were steady.

Geth, Chetiin, and Tenquis all looked to her. Her ears went back. “Stay alert.” With a flick of her fingers, she directed the globes to hover over her, Tenquis, and Geth, then cautiously led the way down into the shaft.

Ekhaas didn’t normally have a problem with heights, but being suspended on the stairs as they switched back and forth along the wall of the gloomy void was unnerving. The dim glow of Tenquis’s dropped rod seemed slow to draw near, and she half-convinced herself that she could still hear that eerie echo of her song over the sound of shuffling feet.

Then Chetiin, leading the way as the most surefooted of them, called back, “The shaft ends.”

They were still well above the fallen torch. Ekhaas sent a globe of light drifting forward to Chetiin. It shone briefly on the rock wall of the shaft… then nothing. The shaft wall arced away, leaving the stairs to hang suspended in the air.

Just ahead of them, an arch curved above the stairs. On it was the symbol of a circle with a slit down the middle.

“Welcome to the Vault of the Eye,” said Ekhaas.

Tenquis, still shaken by his near fall above, squeezed the narrow rail of the stairs so hard his knuckles turned pale. “Your ancestors couldn’t have built the entrance at floor level?”

Seemingly undaunted by the dark space around them, Geth moved ahead to where the stairs emerged beneath the ceiling of the vault and leaned out over the rail. “It would be easier to know where we were going if we could see from up here,” he said. He looked back at Ekhaas. “Can you make a brighter light?”

Her ears flicked. “I can,” she said. “I’m not sure I should. Those echoes came when I sang magic.”

“Maybe you can sing the spell softly?”

Ekhaas pursed her lips for a moment, then walked carefully forward to what she hoped was a good position. She drew a slow breath, let it out just as slowly, then drew another and sang a soft note. In her mind, she focused on building the song gradually, bringing it forth like dawn creeping across a mountain valley. Gray half-light first, then a pearly pink glow. Ekhaas held the song there for a moment, listening for the strange echo, but there was nothing. She let the magic flow again and pearly glow became red blush-then finally golden light flowed into the Vault of the Eye as if the sun itself had risen beneath Volaar Draal. The song faded into silence.

And there was still no hint of an echo. Ekhaas breathed easily and looked down.

Twenty paces below them, the artifacts of the Vault of the Eye spread out in a chaotic jumble. Her guess that the shaft had been used to lower large artifacts into the vaults seemed correct-massive statues, incredibly preserved war chariots, and huge chunks of masonry that must have been dragged away from Dhakaani ruins spread out around a clear space at the bottom of the shaft. The main vault was actually smaller than she’d expected, certainly smaller than the Vault of the Night-Sun, but the number of paths that led through the stored artifacts looked like the web of a very large spider. Passages and crevices opened in every wall of the vault.

“Grandfather Rat,” muttered Geth. “It’s going to take a long time to search through that.”

“Maybe not,” said Ekhaas. The Register entry had said that the stela was carved from white stone. Most of the collected artifacts below were the gray of weathered stone, or black or red, the colors typically favored by the dar for monuments. But across the vault, her conjured light reflected from a sliver of white nearly hidden behind a black obelisk.

“There,” she said.

Once they were on the floor of the vault, the sense of vast space Ekhaas had felt above was replaced almost instantly by a feeling of being crowded by the large artifacts that towered over her. She pushed the sensation away, though, and hurried along the path that looked to lead most directly to the sliver of white. It turned and branched, but she used the black obelisk as a guide. Soon it loomed ahead of them, dominating the view ahead, until the path twisted around it. White stone flashed as they rounded the obelisk, then grew-and grew.

The Reward Stela of Giis Puulta was taller than the obelisk that had hidden it. It rested in a deep hollow in the floor of the vault, and while nearly a quarter of its full height was below the level of Ekhaas’s feet, the rest of it towered the height of three tall hobgoblins over her head. The stone was a dazzling white that would have shone like a beacon under true sunlight. Ancient masons had cut it into a slab as wide as her outstretched arms but not even as deep as the blade of a shortsword. It was no wonder the effort had been made to transport it to the vaults-most such stela would have cracked into pieces over the centuries. At the top of both sides of the stela was an inscription in Goblin:

GIIS PUULTA

Emperor of Dhakaan Sixth lord of the Second Puulta dynasty rewards those who served him against the Rebellion of Lords.

Below the inscriptions, text carved in letters a finger’s-length high marched down the two faces of the stela. Ekhaas’s ears twitched back. There were dozens of names on the stela, each with a description of deeds performed and rewards granted, some with carved pictures and symbols as well. There was no telling where the historian Shaardat had found the passage regarding the breaking of muut.