Don Bassingthwaite - The doom of Kings

“The land of the people.”

“Does Darguul mean the same thing as guul’dar then?”

Ekhaas laughed again, but this time with genuine humor, and stood straight. “No. It just means someone from Darguun.”

“Ah,” said Ashi.

The duur’kala smiled. “And do you remember back in the watch station, when you said shaat’aar instead of chaat’oor?”

Ashi nodded.

“A shaat’aar is a kind of sweet bun with honey cream in the middle. They’re different.”

Above her scarf, Ashi’s eyes lit up with a smile. “I’ll say.” She jerked her head back in the direction of the arrogant merchant. “I’ll bet she hasn’t had honey cream in her middle in a long time.”

Ekhaas’s laugh was so loud it brought the Thrane guards’ heads-and Tariic’s and Vounn’s-around. Ekhaas, still chuckling, just waved at them.

Fortunately, the members of House Orien who were the staff and crew of the lightning rail system found a customer’s money more important than their race. As soon as the soldiers of Thrane had delivered their charges, the station master saw to it that Tariic, Vounn, Ashi, and the other important members of the delegation were settled in the station’s private lounge while water and food were brought for the common soldiers. Tariic had rented three private lightning rail carts on the northward journey and left them at the station for the return trip. While these were brought back around to wait for the next coach running south, the station master apologized profusely for their rude treatment at the hands of the port officials, insisting that House Orien would lodge a complaint.

They were enjoying a lunch of spicy Thrane cuisine when the shriek of a whistle signaled the arrival of a lightning rail coach. Flamekeep was the terminus of the line; the coach would reverse direction for the journey back south. Not long after the scream of the whistle, the coach came into the station, sliding grandly past the windows of the lounge. The distinctive humped shape of the crew cart was first, fins along its side still cracking with the power of the bound elemental that drove the rail. Passenger carts with eager faces pressed to the window and sealed cargo carts followed, the whole gradually slowing until it came to a stop with a last crackling sigh of dissipating energy. Within moments, the station was filled with passengers disembarking and porters rushing to unload cargo.

The station master appeared again. “We’ll connect your carts as soon as the train is unloaded. The coach departs again at the seventh bell this evening, but you’ll be able to board your carts whenever you wish.”

There seemed to be a consensus among the delegation that they would prefer to wait several hours on board the cart rather than go back into the city. Ekhaas was certainly in agreement. Besides which, the carts-or at least the cart that Tariic had hired for himself and the other senior members of the delegation-were remarkably comfortable. When the time did finally come to board, she heard Ashi gasp as she climbed up into the cart.

“By Kol Korran’s golden bath, this is amazing!”

“Stop staring, Ashi,” said Vounn, pushing past. “You look like a peasant in a cathedral.”

Ashi didn’t stop staring, and Ekhaas couldn’t blame her. The interior of the cart was as luxurious as a fine House Ghallanda inn, with thick carpets, soft couches, and cabinets of books and good wine. “Didn’t you travel to Karrlakton on the lightning rail?” Ekhaas asked.

“Not like this,” said Ashi.

“We travel as representatives of Darguun,” Tariic said. “The lords of any other nation would travel in the same way. To accept less would only confirm everything people like that merchant say about us.”

Other passengers on the southbound coach appeared over the course of the afternoon, settling into the passenger carts or waiting in the terminal until the coach was ready to depart. Together with Ashi, Ekhaas wandered the platform, peering into the other coaches and resolutely ignoring the hostile glares that many of the Thrane passengers directed at her. The Darguul soldiers had been settled into the two other private carts hired by Tariic. They traveled in far more modest conditions than the senior members of the delegation, especially the cavalry riders who shared a cart with their tiger mounts and the delegation’s baggage. The great tigers dozed in their cages. Ashi studied them with a healthy respect, going right up to the bars before stepping back.

“I wouldn’t want to face one of those in the middle of a battle,” she said. She looked around. “There’s a lot of room still in this cart. Couldn’t Tariic have hired one less?”

“The tigers need space,” Ekhaas lied. “No one wants to sleep too near a cage.” So close and still not able to tell Ashi the truth! She gestured. “We should go back to our cart. It’s almost time for the coach to depart.”

Precisely at the seventh bell in the evening, the elemental bound to the crew cart snapped and crackled into activity. Leaning out the window of their cart, Ekhaas and Ashi saw the ring of lightning that was the manifestation of the elemental’s power spitting and hissing around the crew cart. A shudder ran through the entire coach. On the platform, the station agent blew a last piercing whistle to signal that all passengers were aboard. The crew answered with a shriek from the coach’s whistle. As smooth as milk poured from a pitcher, the carts of the coach began to move, sparks of lightning arcing between their undersides and the conductor stones laid out in a straight path below. They moved slowly at first, and the evening lights of Flamekeep crept by, but as the coach left the city behind, it gathered speed until they were fairly flying through the falling night.

They would take it, Ekhaas knew, all the way to Sterngate near the border of Breland and Zilargo, the homeland of the gnomes, before transferring to horses for the final journey to Rhukaan Draal-the lightning rail would carry them four times the distance of that final leg in only a quarter of the time.

But there would be, she knew as well, one interruption to their journey.

The first stop on the line south of Flamekeep was the city of Sigilstar, and when they arrived there in the middle of the next morning, Tariic summoned a station agent. “Have our carts disconnected from the coach,” he said. “We’ll stay overnight and take the morning coach tomorrow.”

The station agent nodded and left. Vounn-and most of the senior Darguuls-looked at Tariic with puzzled expressions. The lady seneschal of Deneith, however, gave voice to their curiosity. “Why the delay?”

“We’re waiting for someone,” Tariic said. His gaze took in all of them. “Stay close to the carts. Someone pass that order to soldiers, too. No one is to go wandering off.”

The Darguul carts were pulled out of the coach and towed by a small work cart off down a side line in the lightning rail yard. The day was hot, and the motionless carts rapidly grew warm in the sun. The distractions offered by the cart, well-stocked though it was, faded quickly and the members of the delegation were reduced to sitting around fanning themselves. Like the tigers in their cages, Ashi fell into a languid doze. Tariic and Vounn retreated to the private compartments that their rank afforded them. Ekhaas wished she could do the same, but the best she could manage was to sit in a sliver of the meager shade outside the cart and hope for a wind. Some of the Darguuls begged her for a tale from her store as a duur’kala to pass the time, and she put in a half-hearted effort. Inspired by the reliquary in her pack, she gave them a story of Duural Rhuvet and his battles against the nomadic halfling tribes that had harried the edges of the Dhakaani Empire as it faded into the lean centuries of the Desperate Times. Her enthusiasm grew in the telling of the tale, though, and when the story was over, she gave her audience another, then another, eating up the day. The soldiers lifted their ears to listen as well, and she told more tales, this time of the heroes of Dhakaan at its height-Kamvuul Norek, the slayer of illithids; Moorn Basha, who sang an island out of the sea; and Duulan Kuun, the first of the name Kuun and the hero who founded a line of heroes.