The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [75]
Think on the history of the sword that you hold.
Geth tried to remember what he could of the stories Ekhaas had once told him of the Dhakaani family named Kuun whose history had been tied to the sword. It was easier to think of the story that Senen had told only a few nights before, of Taruuzh and the forging of Wrath from the byeshk of Khaar Vanon. He wondered about the Rod of Kings and the Shield of Nobles. What had the shield been like? Did the rod still exist? He tried to envision Taruuzh laboring over his creations. He’d seen Taruuzh after a fashion. He’d been to the ruins of Taruuzh Kraat and seen the massive sculpture of the dashoor that stood there. In the ancient caves beneath Taruuzh Kraat, he’d seen the wizard-smith’s effigy atop his tomb and faced his ghost through a storm of unnatural cold …
He blinked again and jerked his head upright before he could fall asleep. “Grandfather Rat’s naked tail,” he muttered. The night seemed colder than it should. It would be far too easy to nod off. He got back up onto his knees, kneeling once more. It took effort to stay upright. That would, he hoped, make it easier to stay awake as well. He bent his thoughts back to Wrath, forcing himself past Taruuzh.
Taruuzh had given the sword to Duulan Kuun, the first to carry it, but the name that had always stuck in Geth’s mind was Rakari Kuun, who had been the last to carry it. He’d always felt an affinity for the hobgoblin hero who had destroyed a terrible evil but in the process lost his birthright. Geth had walked where Rakari had walked and had fought the evil—or a phantom of the evil— that Rakari had fought. Sometimes he still woke to nightmares of Jhegesh Dol, the Place of Cuts. In his dreams he could hear the sound of knives and bone saws and the screams of tortured orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins. He could see their mutilated ghosts and the horrible spectacle of their amputated limbs given a terrible, vengeful life of their own. He imagined what it must have been like for Rakari Kuun to enter Jhegesh Dol when it wasn’t an ethereal remnant of the past but a real place, full of pain and horror. He imagined the hero’s fear at facing the lavender-eyed monster that had been the lord of Jhegesh Dol, one of the alien daelkyr, his fingers replaced with living blades as long as swords, as sharp as axes, so sharp they cut light itself …
And in Geth’s mind, for what seemed like an instant, he was Rakari Kuun, plunging Wrath into the lord of Jhegesh Dol, forced to flee as all the blades of Jhegesh Dol fell like a steel rain.
Heart racing, Geth’s eyes opened wide, and he was back on the roof of Khaar Mbar’ost. Time had passed—the twin moons had risen higher and another moon was reaching over the horizon—but he was certain that he had not fallen asleep. The memories that had played in his head had simply belonged to someone else.
He lifted Wrath into the air and stared at the sword. Did it shine a little brighter? Was there a depth to the twilight metal that hadn’t been there before?
He groped for another story, the tale of Mazaan Kuun and the Hundred Elves. What had Ekhaas said of Mazaan Kuun? That he’d been a great strategist in the days when the Empire of Dhakaan had clashed with elves from the island-continent of Aerenal who had attempted to create a colony on the mainland. Mazaan had stood alone on the plains against a hundred elves, each wearing the spirit of an ancestor like a mask …
And he was Mazaan Kuun, luring the elves into a river-washed canyon where the stones split into a maze and where smoking fires turned friends into enemies. Wrath rose and fell only fifty times, but in the end, all of the hundred elves were dead. Half had been killed by their own kind in the frenzy of battle.
The moons had moved even more when he saw them again. Time had passed as he remembered the story. No, as he had lived the story. There had been details in the memories that Ekhaas had never conveyed in her story. The