Don Bassingthwaite - World of traitors

“If you’re going to try and rob me, get on with it,” said Makka. “There’s still enough strength in these hands to drag you into the Keeper’s domain with me!”

Her chuckle turned into a cackling laugh. Makka roared and thrust himself forward, sliding on a slick of his own blood, ignoring the pain in his side. “By the Fury, you’ll meet the Keeper before I will-and by the Mockery, you’ll suffer more too!”

His push wasn’t quite enough. Somehow she was still just beyond his reach, though her cackle was dropping now. Her big ears cupped as if she was listening to something more than his threats and curses, and her wrinkled face creased in a thin smile.

“Oh, you would be a terror at your full strength!” Her stick rapped his knuckles again. He grabbed for her and missed again. Her smile grew tight. “You honor the old ways,” she said. “You wear the muu’kron.”

It was a statement, not a question. An eerie feeling penetrated Makka’s anger. How had the goblin known? She couldn’t have seen the six knotted cords on his belt. Had she guessed? There was too much confidence in her voice. His hands dropped and he pulled back a little bit.

“I wear the muu’kron,” he said.

“You call on the Dark Six. The Keeper. The Fury. The Mockery.” She paused and cocked her head. “The Devourer?”

“When thunder rolls and my belly is empty,” said Makka.

“The Shadow?”

He shivered. “I have little dealing with dark magic.”

“But you honor him?”

“I fear his power.”

The goblin tapped her stick against the ground. “That is as much as honoring him. And the Traveler?”

Makka’s hair rose as stories of the trickster god came creeping out of his childhood. Stories that told of how the Traveler had remained on Eberron after the age of creation, wandering the world to spread chaos and test the faithful, never appearing in the same guise twice. Stories rejected by the adult mind of a hunter that had no room for chance, but broke down on the edge of death. Makka looked at the old goblin woman with new eyes and a growing wariness.

His silence must have given away his thoughts. The golin’dar laughed. “You think I could be the Traveler? Your wounds must be bad! And yet surely the Traveler led me to you.”

Makka found his voice again. “Or the Mockery, to increase my torment.”

She laughed again, a sound like some night-hunting bird, and moved closer to settle down on her haunches. She was close enough to seize now, but Makka didn’t move. It wasn’t just because of the growing darkness that drained the strength from him. There was something odd in this fearless woman.

“I am Pradoor,” she said.

“Makka.” He didn’t add the name of his tribe, partly because he no longer had a tribe, partly because a strange sensation had fallen over him. He stood on a cliff. With one step, such things as tribes would no longer matter.

“You are called, Makka,” said Pradoor. “The change beloved of the Traveler is coming. Haruuc fled to the gods of the Sovereign Host in the belief that it would make Darguun strong, but only the strength of the old ways can make Darguun great. There will be a new lhesh, and he will respect the Six. The people still believe. The order of the world will be set right.”

Her blind eyes faced him. “You want revenge. The Dark Six-the Fury-will place it in your path. Serve me, and your strength will be greater than anything you had before. Refuse and die.”

The words were blunt. It wasn’t a threat, only the truth. “When the Six give a sign, only a fool ignores it,” Makka said. “I choose vengeance.”

“When the Six call, you have no choice.” Pradoor stretched out a gnarled hand-she was somehow even closer than he had thought-and stroked his head the way his mother had when he’d been a pup. “You are their instrument. The Keeper will not take you this night.”

Waves of fatigue and weakness washed over Makka. For a moment, he thought that Pradoor was wrong, that the Keeper had claimed him, then fatigue and weakness were both gone. He trembled, as if just recovering from a long and terrible fever, but the fire of the wound in his side had cooled. He stood up and pulled apart the gap that Ashi’s sword had made in his bear hide vest. The skin beneath was crusted in dried blood, but the wound had closed, leaving a tender pink scar behind.

“Stare later,” said Pradoor. She poked her stick into his leg. “Up.”

Makka lifted her up to his left shoulder where she settled herself comfortably, one hand curled around the back of his neck. The old goblin weighed almost nothing. She tapped his head and pointed to the mouth of the alley. “The people wait for us. A king waits for us.” Her fingers stroked his head again. “Your revenge waits for you.”

Makka bared his teeth. “Praise the Six,” he said, and walked out to face the jackals of Rhukaan Draal.

20 Sypheros The most rumored match of the second day of the games had already begun as Ekhaas stepped into the sun of the warlords’ box. Below, Keraal circled the ring, back to the wall, taking the measure of his opponent-an ettin captured somewhere in the northern hills of Darguun and forced into the arena. Ekhaas shaded her eyes against the afternoon’s brightness and studied the creature just as Keraal did. The ettin stood nearly twice as tall as the hobgoblin. Its limbs were thick and its features angry, with fleshy lips and ragged ears on each of the two heads that sprouted from its massive shoulders.

Both pairs of the ettin’s tiny black eyes were fixed on Keraal, watching intently as the warlord of the Marhaan spun the chain that was his appointed weapon in a slow circle before him. The ettin had been provided with arms of a sort as well: a club fashioned from a length of heavy building timber and a shield made out of a door.

The spectators in the stands were cheering, most of them for the ettin, a vocal few for Keraal. Ekhaas saw one of the ettin’s heads murmur something to the other, then the creature let loose a bloodcurdling dual-pitched cry and charged. The club swept down and Keraal slid aside, but it was a feint. The ettin pushed its makeshift shield into the path of Keraal’s spinning chain. A few chunks of wood flew free, then the chain crashed into a tangle. Keraal tried to leap away, but he was slow. The club dealt him a glancing blow. He staggered and turned the stagger into a desperate lunge under the ettin’s arm. He kicked hard into its calf, then sprinted away as it hopped in pain, yelping with two voices. On the other side of the arena, Keraal shook out his chain and began to spin it again.

A few more voices were cheering for Keraal.

Geth sat alone at the front of the box. Ekhaas slipped in beside him. “None of the heirs are putting themselves on display?” she asked.

“They are. Just not here.” Geth pointed to either end of the box, then out into the stands. “They claimed their own territory.”

Ekhaas followed his gesture. At one end of the raised box, Tariic stood cheering with Daavn at his side. A good number of other warlords clustered around him. Aguus of Traakuum and the warlords who supported him had claimed the other end of the box. Garaad of Vaniish Kai had taken a populist approach, sitting in the stands surrounded by warriors of lower ranks-many of them looking vaguely wistful as they stared across the arena at the section of benches taken over by Iizan of Ghaal Sehn and his supporters where wine was flowing freely and boxes of sweet shaat’aar were being handed around.

“He’ll empty the vaults of the Ghaal Sehn,” Ekhaas said.

“They’re all spending money,” Geth told her. “Iizan’s just being more showy about it.”