Don Bassingthwaite - The tyranny of ghosts

However weak Diitesh’s command might have been, it was effective. The terrible pull ended. Air rushed in to fill the vacuum. Ekhaas drew in a shuddering breath and blinked, trying to clear the spots from her eyesight so she could see what was happening. The ancient ghosts had turned to regard Tuura and Diitesh and the handful of others who stood behind them. Guards, Ekhaas saw, and archivists. They huddled back, leaving only Tuura and Diitesh to face the ghosts. Diitesh raised the thing in her hands again.

“Go!” she commanded. “Begone.”

Tuura’s voice became more soothing. “Great mothers, you do your duty. Return to your rest.” She bent her head before the ancient ghosts, and, after a moment, they returned the gesture.

Then they were gone, fading back into the shadows and all of the ghosts along with them. When Tuura looked up, her eyes were squarely on Ekhaas. They narrowed. Her ears flattened, and her lips pulled back in anger.

Ekhaas’s heart sank.

A figure moved out from among the soldiers and archivists and took up a position at Diitesh’s side. Scorn and triumph twisted Kitaas’s face. “As I told you,” she said to Tuura.

The leader of the Kech Volaar said nothing, just flicked one finger. Before Ekhaas and the others could even stand, they were surrounded. Again.

17 Aryth

Tariic wanted to break her spirit. Ashi knew it from the way he watched her. Whenever they were in the same room, his eyes were on her like the eyes of a dragon. There is no escape, said that gaze. Your resistance only makes the wait more interesting.

The possibility that he might succeed frightened her. Usually the sickening dread of it went away each morning as the renewed clarity of her dragonmark’s power settled over her mind. On the days that it didn’t, she did her best to ignore the possibility. Tariic wanted to see her proud and angry, like a great cat pacing the confines of a cage. Ashi found it easy to give that to him. She stalked the halls of Khaar Mbar’ost, fury surrounding her like a cloud. Even her hobgoblin escorts took to following a pace or two back. Everyone else slipped out of her way, finding somewhere else to be. When she was called on to perform the duties that Breven d’Deneith had placed upon her, she performed with detachment. What did it matter? Warlords and clan chiefs were all under the spell of the Rod of Kings anyway. They cared about the bond between Darguun and Deneith only as much as Tariic told them to.

No one commented on the bright silver cuffs she wore. No one except Pradoor.

“I’m told you have been presented with jewelry,” the old goblin priestess had cackled when Ashi had come across her one afternoon. “Come here. Let me touch them and feel the cool metal.”

Ashi had been tempted to let her feel the cool metal in a blow across her withered face. The cuffs prevented her from attacking Tariic, but would they prevent her from attacking his associates? She’d restrained herself, though. Anything she did would find its way back to Tariic. Let him think he’d won this small victory. She’d held out her arm and let Pradoor run gnarled fingers over the silver.

On rare days she ventured out of Khaar Mbar’ost. If anyone noticed that she did so only under the hard gaze of the warrior Oraan, they didn’t say anything.

It was surprisingly easy to stop thinking of Aruget as “Aruget” and to take up calling him Oraan. His personality had altered along with his face-in imitation of the true Oraan, she supposed. It was difficult even in their private conversations to get him to acknowledge his former identity. “Why did you come back?” she’d asked him once. “Tariic knows you’re a changeling. Midian told him everything.”

“Tariic knows Aruget was a changeling and a Dark Lantern of Breland. Someone like that would have fled back to his masters. That’s what Tariic will expect. Will he think of looking for another changeling under his nose? I’ve never met Aruget. I had nothing to do with him.”

The first time they left Khaar Mbar’ost, they were followed. “Don’t look,” Oraan had said as they walked down one of Rhukaan Draal’s busy, twisting streets. “Midian’s on our trail.”

Ashi had made no effort to evade him or even to pick him out of the crowd. The whole day’s expedition was only a show anyway. She wandered the streets, strolled through Rhukaan Draal’s infamous Bloody Market. The city had changed in the short time since Tariic had taken the throne of Darguun. Under Haruuc, all manner of races had walked shoulder to shoulder with dar in the streets. They were still there-elves, halflings, humans, dwarves, even an occasional warforged or eladrin-but they walked with caution while the goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears carried themselves with a pride that bordered on arrogance.

“Tariic doesn’t need to use the Rod of Kings for it to have an influence,” she’d remarked softly. She glanced sideways at Oraan. “Don’t you feel it?”

“I feel it,” he said, almost without moving his lips. “But unless he gives me a direct order, I can resist it.”

“I could protect you from it.”

“No. Better that my reactions are genuine. If Tariic suspects anything, he’ll act. He has to believe he’s cut you off from allies and has you in his power. Head down to the river and look across it. Let Midian see you pining for escape.”

The next time Ashi saw Midian and Tariic together, they both seemed triumphantly jovial. The next time she and Oraan left Khaar Mbar’ost, they were trailed again, but not by Midian. The third time they went out into the city, they weren’t trailed at all.

A thin fog had risen from the river overnight and settled over the city. From her window, Ashi could see Rhukaan Draal only as a ghost of itself, gray and damp under a weak sun that struggled to break through the clouds. She would have enjoyed going out anyway, but when Oraan entered her chambers to begin his turn as her guard, his eyes flicked meaningfully to her boots.

She straightened. “I will go walking today.”

The distaste that wrinkled his face and curled his ears seemed startling genuine. “I obey the lhesh’s command,” he said sullenly.

They weren’t followed. Ashi’s trips out of Khaar Mbar’ost had apparently become innocuous in Tariic’s eyes. Still, Ashi waited until the red fortress had become an indistinct shape in the mist before she asked Oraan, “Where are we going?”

“To inspect potential mercenaries.”

She let the mysterious answer pass. Guided by signals from Oraan-who still checked the thin crowds behind them for signs of pursuit-they followed a winding route through the streets. Ashi would have been entirely lost except for the smell of the river growing slowly stronger as they walked. The buildings around her were unfamiliar. This wasn’t an area of the city she had visited before. She heard a sound she recognized, though-the clash of weapons, of warriors training.

It came from the other side of a high, featureless wooden palisade that Oraan followed. Whatever the structure was, they seemed to be on the back side of it. Then a narrow door emerged from the fog and with it the figure of a hobgoblin warrior. A warrior she recognized, though she had never met him in person.

Keraal, warlord of the rebellious Gan’duur clan until Dagii had defeated him and who came to serve the young lord of Mur Talaan, glanced at her without surprise, then moved out of her way. The chain that he had adopted as his personal weapon and that he carried wrapped around his torso clanked softly, but he said nothing.

“Enter,” said a familiar voice from behind her. Ashi looked over her shoulder to find Aruget wearing Oraan’s armor. The changeling had changed his face as they walked. He flicked his ears at her. “We’re expected.”