The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [76]
“You,” he said to Wrath. “Tiger and Wolf, you’re doing this.”
He tried to remember one of Ekhaas’s stories of Duulan Kuun and found that he all but plunged into it. Duulan fought a roaring giant, taller than a hill, by climbing up the monster’s back and thrusting Wrath—newly forged—into its ear. He leaped clear of the dying creature and swept up the woman, a princess of the beautiful city of Paluur Draal, who would become his wife.
Moons barely flickered before his eyes as the next story came over him. Duulan turning the tide of a battle against cackling gnoll tribes. And the next story, Duulan grieving over the grave of his wife, then riding into the Eternal Forest in pursuit of the dark fey creature that had killed her.
The stories came without interruption. Duulan’s twin sons, Nasaar and Vanon, who wielded Wrath in turn, and all the great deeds they did with it. Mekiis, the youngest of Duulan’s great-grandchildren, who took up the sword when she was a child and killed the assassin who would have killed her, who later became a duur’kala and the wife of an emperor. Biish, who was her nephew and became an outlaw as one dynasty of emperors fell and another began.
Geth was aware of the flow of time, of moons that seemed to rush and stutter across the sky. He was aware of the pain in his joints and the cold in his muscles. He had vague hints that he sometimes stood and staggered about the roof, trying to warm himself, but there was always the flow of stories. Some of them, like the ribald adventures of Jhezon “One-Eye” Kuun, he was certain Ekhaas had never told him, but they played out in his mind all the same.
He thought he laughed. He was certain he shouted in rage and in excitement. When Wrath once again plunged into the heart of the lavender-eyed lord of Jhegesh Dol and was abandoned by Rakari Kuun, when everything went dark as if there were no more stories and no more heroes, he cried.
But then the darkness lifted and a new story began. The story of a strange new creature not of the name of Kuun, not hobgoblin at all and almost as much beast as man, but still a hero who carried Wrath out of Jhegesh Dol and into a new age …
He heard music.
Geth opened his eyes to see Ekhaas, Senen, and Aaspar singing. This time, though, they stood with their backs to him, facing the rising sun as they sang the day into existence. Their song of dawn was as exquisitely beautiful as the song of dusk, ascending into something powerful but still ethereal.
Wrath was still in his hands, still raised before him. His arms ached and trembled with the effort of holding the sword, but they held firm. Beneath his fingers, Wrath seemed to pulse and surge in a way that it never had before. He felt a bond to the sword and to all those of the name of Kuun who had carried it in the distant past. With Wrath in his grasp, he felt like he could do anything.
His spirit might have been flying with the duur’kalas song, but his legs weren’t taking him anywhere. They were numb. When he looked down, he saw that he was kneeling exactly where he had started within the charcoal circle, once more shrunk back to only a line on the stones of the roof.
The song of the duur’kala peaked as the lower curve of the sun cleared the horizon and morning came to Rhukaan Draal. The three singers turned to face Geth. Ekhaas and Senen continued to sing, but Aaspar looked at him and spoke.
“Stand,” she said, the word like music. Even her speech was song—how had he not heard that before?
Geth stood, rising awkwardly. His legs felt like wood at first, then they felt like they were on fire as sensation returned to them in a rush of tingling agony. He twisted and almost fell, catching himself at the last moment—but not before his gaze had turned away, just for a moment, from the duur’kala.
Smoke rose to the north. Great black clouds of it, twisting high up into the air to be pushed into