Don Bassingthwaite - The doom of Kings

Ekhaas’s voice rose again. The slap of palm on palm became increasingly rapid. It was different from dancing to viol and drum, but that was good. It was more primal, more suited to Ashi’s style of dance. Baerer had been elegant like the viol. She was unshaped, like a wild song. The battle she fought in her imagination took place on an open hill beneath the light of many moons. Wind lifted her hair, and the smell of churned soil filled her nose. Her enemies came at her faster and faster, in time with the rhythm of Ekhaas’s clapping. Ashi fought them off, but her movements become tighter as they pressed at her. She backed across the battlefield in the dance’s third phase, the defeat. Her enemies pursued her. She blocked their blows, feeling the impact. The song whirled faster. Her enemies crowded in close, so close she couldn’t move. Her sword rose, perhaps in an effort to parry once last attack, before a body that stood rigid once more. The dance was almost over-

Now, she told herself, and broke free of the movements Baerer had trained into her. In Deneith tradition, the sword dance ended with defeat, the warrior caught among the blades of his opponents. Ashi had to take it one step farther. In her imagination, a sword thrust up into her breast. Cold metal pierced flesh, forced ribs aside, and buried itself in her heart. Her eyes went wide. Her mouth opened slightly. Her rigid body arched backward.

And she died. Ekhaas’s song rose briefly into a keen of mourning, then fell away like a fading wind.

Ashi held her pose in silence, then gulped air and straightened up. Across the cavern, Ekhaas stood still, but her eyes were shining and her ears were tall. The dance had been perfect. Ashi could feel it. She turned and looked at Dabrak. The withered hobgoblin watched her with undisguised appreciation.

“In my palace,” he said, “I had twenty-five dancing slaves. I don’t believe any of them ever danced like that. The performance was flawless.”

Breathing hard, Ashi walked to Geth’s curled form, laid Wrath beside him, and retrieved her torch. She held her hand out to the emperor. “The rod, marhu.”

Dabrak’s shriveled ears twitched. “No,” he said. He gathered his robes around himself and turned back to his chair.

“No?” Ashi’s voice cracked with disbelief and she stalked over to confront him. “We had a deal, Dabrak!”

“We did. We agreed that if you died here in the Uura Odaarii, I would give you the rod.” He sat down. “Did you really think that a trick of dance would satisfy me? It was a pretty illusion, nothing more.” His face was hard. “Take your friends-I give you their freedom as a reward for your performance-and get out.” The rod flicked once, then vanished into the folds of Dabrak’s robes as his hands dropped into his lap.

Around Ashi, the others fell out of their kneeling postures. Midian gasped and gingerly worked a jaw that had been clamped shut. Near Ashi’s feet, Geth groaned and moved as well, rising slowly to hands and knees. Ashi kept her eyes on Dabrak, though, as if she could burn him with her anger. “You put no conditions on our agreement!” she protested. “I died!”

“You made a pretty show, but you did not die,” Dabrak said harshly. “I know what death looks like, and you’re not dead.”

“But I can’t die here. You said yourself, it’s impossible.”

The ancient emperor sat forward. “Of course, it’s impossible! That’s why I asked. It’s not my fault you agreed.” His lips curled back from his teeth. “This is the Uura Odaarii, you fool. There is no future here. There is no death. Nothing changes!”

Ashi’s hand thrust out to point at him. “You’ve changed,” she snarled without thinking.

Dabrak stared at her in surprise for a moment, then spat. “No, I haven’t.”

“You have!” The truth of what she had just said spread into Ashi. Her hand fell back. “You changed when you used the power of the cavern. It made you wither. If time has no effect in the Uura Odaarii, then you should look the same as you did when you entered. But you don’t. You’re all shriveled up.”

“What are you talking about?” Dabrak thrust out his hands. “I’m not shriveled. I’m strong!”

“Maybe you are,” said Chetiin. “But you’re wearing gloves.”

Dabrak looked at his hands as if seeing them for the first time, then grabbed at the fingers of one glove and pulled it off.

The hand that emerged was like a bundle of crooked twigs with orange skin hanging loose. Dabrak stared at it as though it didn’t belong at the end of his arm. “What is this?” he croaked. The hand crept up to his face, and he gasped as it encountered the wrinkles and folds there. “This is a trick.”

Midian had his arm up to his elbow in his pack. He pulled it out with a flat leather case clutched in his fingers and opened the case to reveal a polished steel shaving mirror. Jumping up onto the side of the chair, he thrust the mirror in front of Dabrak’s face. “Look for yourself!”

Dabrak looked-and screamed. He slapped Midian away. The mirror spun across the cavern. Dabrak stood up, suddenly a strangely ridiculous figure in his loose, flapping clothes. “This isn’t possible! Nothing changes in the Uura Odaarii. Nothing!”

“Maybe it’s your future catching up with you,” Geth said, rising to his feet. His voice was rough and shaky, but the hand that held Wrath was steady.

Dabrak spun around and hurled the rod at him.

Geth snatched the rod out of the air with his free hand. For a moment, he just stared at it in astonishment, then his fingers curled around it and he grinned.

“Yes, take it!” spat Dabrak. “Take what you came for and get out!” He collapsed back on his chair, his body wracked with silent convulsions that might have been sobbing.

No one needed a second invitation. “Twice tak, marhu!” Geth said and ran for the passage that led out of the weird cavern. Ashi followed him, pausing at the edge of the passage to make certain everyone else got out. Chetiin raced past, another torch in his hand to light the way for Geth. Midian, his pack clutched in his arms. Ekhaas and Dagii-Ashi flung herself after them, racing through the narrow twists of the passage. Her frozen torch began to hiss and flare as she ran, and she thought it was possibly the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.

It wasn’t the only sound she heard though. A voice drifted suddenly out of the darkness below. “Wait! Wait, bring it back! Bring the rod back to me!” Dabrak’s voice rose to a roar. “I said bring it back!”

Ashi glanced over her shoulder. The passage behind her was only dark as far as the last twist. Beyond that, a pale green glow was growing.

“Khyberit gentis,” she breathed, then shouted, “Faster!”

Up and down the rises and drops of the passage. Around corners. It seemed as if the darkness ahead wouldn’t end, and every time she dared to look back, the green glow was brighter. Dabrak’s angry roaring was constant-then suddenly it swooped up into a shriek of triumph. Ashi looked back once more and saw the undying emperor racing up the passage. The signs of the Uura Odaarii shone bright on his skin and his eyes were green flames.

Then her feet were crunching and skidding among the offerings left at the grate in the shrine. She almost fell, but Dagii and Ekhaas reached back together and pulled her up. They burst into the little chamber of the shrine. Chetiin was trying to set fire to the pitch pots they had left there. “No time!” said Dagii and swept the goblin ahead of him into the narrow doorway of the shrine. Ekhaas plunged after them.

Ashi paused. Chetiin had managed to light some of the pitch pots. Snatching them up by their leather straps, she whirled them around once, then let them fly back into the passage and the approaching green glow. She spun as soon as the straps left her fingers and thrust herself through the shrine’s narrow exit. Clay shattered, and there was a sudden whoosh of flame. Ashi felt a searing heat on her back, but then she was out and standing on the black soil at the bottom of the pit where the others were waiting for her.