Don Bassingthwaite - The tyranny of ghosts

It took willpower to keep the knife at Tooth’s throat steady. “That’s enough,” Midian said. He looked around at all of them. “Well played.”

“You’re not going to get away this time, Midian,” Geth growled.

“I think I will.” He flicked the knife, drawing a bead of blood to remind them all of what was at risk. Tooth gave a little whimper. “This isn’t over.”

“You’re not going to surprise us again.”

“I won’t surprise you as easily,” Midian corrected him. “I don’t need Makka. Tariic wants you dead. You’ve only delayed it.” He glanced around at them all. At Geth, at Chetiin, at Tenquis, and especially at… Ekhaas?

The hobgoblin was still staring at him, as intent as if he’d sprouted a pig’s nose. Was that pity in her gaze? His anger rose again. Maybe Tariic’s enemies had won this round, but he could still hurt them. In her left hand Ekhaas held the Dhakaani disk, fingers clenched tight around it. Midian held out his hand. “Give me the shaari’mal.”

She blinked and sudden alarm replaced pity in her eyes. Her ears flicked back. “No.”

Midian pressed the tip of his knife to Tooth’s broad throat again and smiled at her. “I think Tariic is going to want to see it,” he said, “and I don’t want to take the chance that you’ll try to hide it before we catch you again. Give it to me.”

Ekhaas bared her teeth and clutched the disk close. Midian let his grin grow.

Tenquis’s golden eyes darted between them, then he blurted, “Do you really think Tariic will want it?” The tiefling plunged a hand deep into a large pocket in his vest that must have been magically concealed. Midian was certain there’d been no pocket there before. “Because if he does, I think he’d really want these.”

He pulled out two more shaari’mal.

Midian actually felt his heart skip in surprise. Ekhaas hissed sharply. “Tenquis, don’t!”

The tiefling flipped the two disks so that he held one in each hand and lifted them up, wiggling them on either side of his head. “How about it, Midian? Does Tariic want these?”

Rage burned cold in Midian’s gut. “Give those to me, Tenquis.”

The tiefling’s face tightened. “Go and get them.” His hands snapped forward and the shaari’mal skimmed through the air. Midian’s head jerked up as he followed them.

It was no random throw; he saw that in an instant. One disk went to Geth, the other to Chetiin. Midian twisted back around in time to see Tenquis thrust his suddenly empty hands out in the gestures of a spell. Magic rippled through the air, trying to wrap itself around Tooth like some sort of shield. The tiefling was quick, but not quick enough. Midian stabbed down through the still gathering force

Ekhaas saw Tenquis reach into his pocket and knew what he was doing before he’d even pulled out the other two shaari’mal. Fear raced through her. Before, when the disks had seemed like nothing more than hunks of metal, she’d been willing to use one as a distraction. But with one pulsing softly in her hand, the thought of tempting Midian with them was just wrong.

How could the tiefling not feel the power in the disks? “Tenquis,” she said, “don’t!”

He already had them raised beside his head. “How about it, Midian? Does Tariic want these?”

The gnome’s face twisted. “Give those to me, Tenquis.”

“Go and get them.” He flung the disks away-to Geth and Chetiin. For an instant, all Ekhaas felt was a sense of relief, even if she already knew in the back of her mind that Tenquis’s defiance had doomed Tooth.

Then Chetiin’s hand closed on the flying shaari’mal.

— and the tickle at the edge of Midian’s mind tore wide open. Hard-edged clarity rose up from inside him and shattered into a hundred jagged, conflicting emotions.

Tariic was his master.

Tariic had stood over him with the Rod of Kings and commanded him to rip open his own belly.

He’d do anything to please Tariic.

Tariic wanted him dead.

He served his lhesh and Darguun.

His soul belonged to Zilargo. He’d killed for his country. He’d killed one king for Zilargo and tried to kill another.

Hurled stones found him as he tried to flee. An agent of the Trust, brought down by a mob. When he returned to consciousness, it was already too late for him. Tariic raised the rod. “Sit still and be quiet.” He had no choice. The power that had once belonged to the emperors of Dhakaan gripped like a wolf’s jaws. He sat still and was quiet.

Later, in the privacy of his chambers with only Pradoor to watch and cackle and Ashi d’Deneith to stare in horror, Tariic tore Midian’s mind to pieces-and put it back together again in a way that pleased him.

Midian screamed until his new master commanded him to stop.

He screamed again and fell back away from Tooth as the work of the Rod of Kings unraveled. Every memory of that tortured night came rushing back over him. Irresistible. Undeniable.

The warmth and power that Ekhaas felt in her shaari’mal exploded the moment that Chetiin took hold of his. The sense of purpose became an unwavering certainty-not of the shaari’mal telling her what to do, but of it telling her to do what she knew she had to.

Telling her to follow her muut.

Understanding came between one blink and the next.

Geth had said that the Sword of Heroes showed him memories of those who’d wielded it before, guiding him along their path. The quality of heroes was wrath. Aram. The Rod of Kings, Ekhaas knew, taught its holder to rule with the uncompromising power of the emperors of Dhakaan. The quality of kings was strength. Guulen.

Heroes inspired. Kings commanded. And nobles… served. They did their duty. Their muut.

But muut had two sides, didn’t it? Tuura Dhakaan had said she had muut to the Kech Volaar, that she led them and protected them “as it had been since the Age of Dhakaan.” And what had Senen Dhakaan once said of the Shield of Nobles when she’d told the tale of the three artifacts? That the ancient daashor Taruuzh had given it into the care of the lords and ladies of Dhakaan, that it represented both the fealty that the nobles owed to the emperor and the protection that was their responsibility to the people.

Muut wasn’t something that could rest in the hands of just one person.

There’d never been an actual Shield of Nobles in the way there was a Sword of Heroes and a Rod of Kings, Ekhaas realized abruptly. There had never been fragments for them to find. The shield, the protection that the nobles owed to the people of Dhakaan, had shattered because the nobles had failed in their duty. But muut couldn’t truly be destroyed-though it could be forgotten, just as stories could be confused and misinterpreted.

Like stories of what Taruuzh had created for the nobles of Dhakaan and what they had lost to Tasaam Draet. The Dhakaani had known at least some of the truth. Giis Puulta had carved three shaari’mal into his Reward Stela. Maybe later emperors had deliberately let memories of the Shield of Nobles, of Muut, fade, just as they let Suud Anshaar lie abandoned. Maybe as the empire slid toward the Desperate Times, the emperors didn’t like the idea of a shield standing between their power and the people.

A shield between their power and the people.

The disk in her hands shifted at that thought, and a feeling of clarity flooded through her. She remembered the sense of Tariic’s eyes staring out from behind Midian’s.

Ekhaas met Chetiin’s gaze and knew that he’d felt the same thing she had. Why didn’t Geth? Why hadn’t Tenquis? Maybe because they weren’t dar. Maybe because they didn’t live with muut as the Dhakaani had. She raised the shaari’mal, the ancient symbol of Dhakaan that Taruuzh had chosen to represent the collective muut of the empire’s nobles, and opened herself up to it. Chetiin did the same.