The Tyranny of Ghosts_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [36]
Geth wrinkled his nose. “And you call him a folk hero?”
“You invoke a trickster rat as a folk hero. The dar invoke a devoted warrior.” Ekhaas shrugged and continued. “Tasaam Draet was so powerful, so full of atcha in his service to Dhakaan, that the last forces of the daelkyr made a target of him. One day travelers to Suud Anshaar found it utterly empty of life, with only a lingering taint of madness to hint at what had happened. Suud Anshaar was abandoned as cursed, and Tasaam Draet became a legend. It’s said that the ruins of Suud Anshaar still stand deep in what’s now the Khraal Jungle, the cries of those who died by Tasaam Draet’s hand still echoing in the night. Raat shan gath’kal dor—the story stops but never ends.”
“That doesn’t shed any new light on the shattering of the Shield of Nobles, though,” said Chetiin somberly. “Or on whether the inscription refers to muut as the shield or as the duty of nobles.”
“Or maybe it does,” said Tenquis, still on the other side of the stela, “Ekhaas, come look at this.”
She went around the hollow, Geth and Chetiin following her. Tenquis looked up at the stela. He pointed and said, “There’s the inscription.” His hand moved lower. “What’s that below it?”
Symbols carved into the stone ended the text in praise of Tasaam Draet—three rings with stretched slashes along the outside, like a sword blade bent into a circle with the notched edge out. Ekhaas knew them. In fact, she had recreated them on a battle standard for Dagii’s army before the Battle of Zarrthec. “They’re shaari’mal,” she said. “The tearing wheels. They’re an ancient symbol of Dhakaan.”
“There’s something written under them,” said Tenquis.
Ekhaas squinted. There was something written there, the letters smaller than the surrounding text, almost too small to read from a distance. She thought she could make out one word though. Shield.
“We need to get closer,” she said. “Chetiin, can you climb it?”
He looked at the stela and shook his head. Geth growled. “Then we stand on each others’ shoulders,” the shifter said. He rolled his shoulders, then climbed down into the hollow and put his back to the stela. “Tenquis first.”
“Wait.” Tenquis dug into one of the pockets of his vest and produced a piece of fine folded paper and a stick of charcoal. He gave them to Chetiin. “Lay the paper over the inscription, then rub the charcoal over it. It will make an impression of the inscription that we can take with us.”
“I know how to make a rubbing,” the old goblin said. “Try not to fall out from under me.”
Geth crouched down. Tenquis stepped onto the shifter’s bent knee, then carefully up onto his shoulders, facing the pillar so that he could brace himself against it with his hands. Geth gripped Tenquis’s ankles and stood up slowly, breath hissing out between his teeth. When he stood straight, he paused for a moment to let Tenquis adjust his balance, then let go of him and reached down to make a stirrup of his hands for Ekhaas.
She put one foot into it and pushed off from the ground with the other. For a perilous moment her feet joined Tenquis’s on Geth’s shoulders. Then she grasped the tiefling’s shoulders, wrapped one leg around his waist, and climbed up over his back. He groaned and breathed even harder than Geth had.
“Easy,” Ekhaas whispered. “You can do it.” She got one knee on his shoulder, then the other. His horns made the maneuver difficult.
“Just hurry,” he wheezed.
She put her palms against the cool stone of the stela, digging her fingertips into the shallow grooves of the carved letters—Muurazh who led the defense of the dungeons is rewarded with two swords from the emperor’s hand and land before the walls of Zaal Piik—before drawing up one foot …
At the bottom of their