The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [125]
“The trolls are your guards?” said Dagii.
“You encountered them, didn’t you, warrior?” Dabrak looked pleased. “They were wild things when they came, but I tamed them. The smallest of them entered the shrine and ventured in here. It was a challenge to work with them, but I had the power to mold them.”
He lifted the Rod of Kings and it seemed to Ashi that even that simple gesture carried with it a swirl of power. For a frightening moment, it seemed that Dabrak wore authority like a cloak—then the cloak vanished as the rod settled back into his lap. “I still feel a distant connection to them,” the emperor said, as if the display of power was something so casual he barely even noticed it. “I know their pack still watches over the Uura Odaarii. You must be mighty indeed to have passed them.”
Ashi could tell from the faces of the others that they had felt the rod’s power as well. Dagii seemed awed by it, Chetiin stunned. Midian looked gray with fear. She felt a little bit afraid herself. This was the power they would bring back to Haruuc?
Ekhaas struggled to speak again. “The Uura Odaarii, marhu?” she asked. “Is that this place?”
Ashi didn’t recognize the words. Chetiin was closest to her, and she glanced at him. “The Womb of Eternity,” he translated for her.
Dabrak’s attention was all on Ashi. “You haven’t heard of it. I’m not surprised. I traveled across the length and breadth of my empire just chasing down the rumors of it,” he said. He sat forward, the movement making the shriveled folds of his face slip like a loose mask. “Tell me, what stories do they tell of me?”
“They say that you left your palace to face the source of your fears, vowing to return and continue your rule,” said Ekhaas. “You were seen now and then across the empire—until one day you disappeared completely.”
“The day I finally located the Uura Odaarii,” said Dabrak. “You speak with the grace of a duur’kala. What is your name?”
“I am a duur’kala. I am Ekhaas of Kech Volaar.”
“The Kech Volaar. I don’t know that clan.” Dabrak sat back. “If you are a duur’kala, Ekhaas of Kech Volaar, you understand the nature of emotion. Tell me: What is the source of all fear?”
“The unknown,” Ekhaas said.
Dabrak gestured angrily, as though her word were flies he could shoo away. “Some would say that,” he said, “but it’s not true. What about someone who was afraid of spiders? They are hardly unknown. He sees a spider and knows it, yet he is still afraid. What is he really afraid of?”
Chetiin answered. “He’s afraid of what the spider might do.”
“Well said, golin’dar.” Dabrak held up a finger. “He’s afraid of what might happen. His fear isn’t in the moment, it’s in the might. What might a spider do, what might happen in the dark, what might happen if I venture into the water? The source of all fear is the future, and the future is inescapable. Except here.”
He rose to his feet and gestured with both hands. Once again the power of the rod washed over them. Ashi thought she could feel an echo of the profound fear that had earned Dabrak the name of the Shaking Emperor. She shivered herself and pressed her hands against the cold stone of the cave floor to keep them from trembling. Dabrak noticed nothing, though thankfully he lowered the rod again.
“I first heard of the Uura Odaarii from an old golin’dar, a traveling midwife who came to the palace to deliver a son to my cousin,” he continued. “She cast an augury during the birth, as was customary, but as she did so, she saw my terror. She was the first to recognize all the fears that plagued me as a single fear of the future. She told me the scrap of a legend, that in the time before Jhazaal Dhakaan brought together the Six Kings, there was a secret shrine in an ancient kingdom where it was said all of the future was born. People would search out the shrine and make offerings there in hopes of staving off a bleak