The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [57]
Redek couldn’t keep his eyes off the Siberys Mark, awed by the legendary power sitting in a corner of his office. He nodded to everything Vounn said, and by the time they left the room he seemed content to accept that he would continue the mundane task of brokering the services of Darguul mercenaries while Vounn handled the larger tasks of dealing with the powers of the nation. Ashi wondered why Vounn hadn’t just ordered her to strip. Had Redek seen the full extent of her dragonmark, he probably would have handed the entire stronghold over to Vounn’s command if she’d asked.
When they left the Gathering Stone, it was in the company of two full squads of hobgoblin, goblin, and bugbear mercenaries. With such protection, speed was no longer important, and they took their time. They couldn’t have ridden quickly anyway. So close to Rhukaan Draal, the way was busier. Merchants and travelers, all heavily armed, shared the road. They passed a House Orien caravan bound along the road back to Breland. The mercenaries who guarded it were hired from House Deneith, but even so they watched the party and their Darguul guards with suspicion until they were well past.
They reached Rhukaan Draal near sunset the next day. The road rose into a fine wide bridge that leaped across the dark water of a deep, fast flowing river. “The Ghaal River,” said Ekhaas. “Ships can come in all the way from the coast, but this is as far as they go. The cataract stops them here.” She pointed upstream to a boiling cascade of white water.
The city that sprawled on the southern bank of the river revealed itself as the bridge reached the apex of its gentle arc and fell again. Ashi’s first impression of Rhukaan Draal was that a bricklayer and a stone mason had collided, spilling the goods of their respective trades across the landscape. The city was a riot of buildings in a range of styles. The remains of human architecture still stood, and it was possible to see the bones of the Cyran town that Rhukaan Draal had been before Haruuc took it for his capital. The flesh that cloaked those bones, however, was rough and new. Ramshackle structures had been thrown up between and against the old human buildings in a style that Ashi was already beginning to think of as distinctly Darguul. The dar seemed to use whatever materials were at hand—wood, mortar, bricks, rough stone, worked stone, even chunk of masonry fallen from older buildings—to erect buildings that were as attractive as a rubbish heap but, to her Deneith-trained eye, looked durable and formidably defensive.
Most of the buildings, old or new, that leaned in upon the narrow, unpaved streets were no more than three stories tall. A few were taller, but nothing approached a single tower that soared up in the center of the city. At first Ashi thought that the red of the tower came from the light of the setting sun, but then she realized it was the stones of the structure themselves that gave it a bloody tint. The Khaar Mbar’ost, the Red House—Haruuc’s fortress. Unlike the other new buildings of the city, it seemed solidly constructed and even attractive in a vaguely sinister way.
Ashi looked around for someone to ask about this, but neither Ekhaas nor Chetiin nor even Tariic was nearby. Aruget, blow to his head mended by Ekhaas’s magic, rode close, and he answered her question before she’d even asked it. “Lhesh Haruuc wanted something special,” he said. “He had it built by craftsmen of House Cannith.”
It was getting easier to understand his thick accent than when she had first encountered him in Sentinel Tower, maybe because of the lessons in Goblin that Ekhaas had been giving her. Ashi tried some of her Goblin out on him. “Ataa so?” she asked, pointing in the direction of a milling throng.
All of Rhukaan Draal’s twisting, dusty streets were packed with a range of races nearly as diverse as she’d seen on visits