The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [142]
Then there was just Thuun, running hard and weaving from side to side as he sought an escape. Haruuc galloped after him. He didn’t raise his sword again, but just ran him down. Thuun shrieked as the horse’s bulk knocked him to the street and the animal’s hooves hammered his body. He curled into a ball and stayed that way as Haruuc wheeled his horses around. Thuun screamed again, but Haruuc reined in his mount and slid from the saddle. Thuun’s scream faded away and he looked up to find the lhesh standing over him, red sword dripping blood onto the ground. Thuun whimpered.
Vanii dismounted beside Vounn and helped her stand. “Have you been harmed?”
The fumes of the rag still made her head spin a little, but they were easing. “No,” she said, then called out to Haruuc. “He kidnapped me in Khaar Mbar’ost by pretending to be Thuun. He’s a changeling.”
Haruuc’s ears went back. “Show me your true face, gaa’ma,” he growled.
Thuun nodded and his hobgoblin features seemed to melt and flow across his face. Nose and mouth faded, becoming almost half-formed. His eyes became wide and milky, his hair white. His skin turned soft and dusky gray. His body shrank a little as well, so that Thuun’s armor was loose on him. Gaa’ma, the Goblin term for changelings, literally meant “wax baby,” Vounn knew. It suited the creature that lay still under Haruuc’s sword.
The lhesh shifted the blade so the blood that ran off it fell in drops on the changeling’s face. “You were hired to kidnap Lady Seneschal Vounn d’Deneith?”
The changeling nodded.
“By who?”
“A hobgoblin—he wore a mask and called himself Wuud.”
“Like all the others,” Vanii murmured.
Vounn glanced at him, but he said nothing else.
Haruuc’s face betrayed nothing except anger and contempt. “You give away easily what you know,” he said.
“I was paid to snatch the Deneith envoy, not fight the lhesh,” the changeling said. “I’ll tell you anything you want, but there isn’t much I know.”
“I didn’t imagine there was. Where were you taking her?”
“A boat waiting outside of Rhukaan Draal, above the first cataract of the Ghaal. Wuud’s men will take her from there.”
Haruuc looked to one of the soldiers who had been with him. “You—gather a squad and investigate. Bring back anyone you find” His glance shifted to two others. “You take this taat back to Khaar Mbar’ost. I want him held in an isolated cell—we may need his word later.”
The soldiers hastened to obey their commands. When the changeling had been seized and led away, Haruuc came over to Vounn, still standing with Vanii’s support. “I apologize, Lady Vounn,” he said. “Such things shouldn’t happen in Khaar Mbar’ost. I can assure you that the real Thuun is no changeling.”
“I’m fine,” Vounn said. “I hope Thuun is too.”
The stiffening of Haruuc’s ears, however, suggested that he suspected the same thing she did: the real Thuun was dead, removed so that the changeling could take his place without threat of being revealed. Vounn moved on to something else. “When the changeling mentioned a masked hobgoblin, Vanii said, ‘Like all the others.’ What does that mean? Have there been other kidnappings?”
Haruuc gave his shava a disapproving look and shook his head. “No, but all those captured near the burning buildings so far have been locals, all hired by a masked hobgoblin calling himself Wuud. The fires and your kidnapping were coordinated.”
“Keraal,” said Vounn. The Gan’duur had tried to kidnap her once before. The disappearance of a senior member of House Deneith would be as embarrassing for Haruuc now as it would have been then.
“There’s no evidence to prove it,” Haruuc said. “More important, how could he have been here to hire them? We’ve been watching Gan’duur territory.” He shook his head again. “But you should worry about these things in Khaar Mbar’ost. Go back to your chambers and rest.” He gestured for another guard.