The Tyranny of Ghosts_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [37]
It was a reflexive action, with less magic about it than inspiration. She sang strength and steadiness, focus and will. Geth sucked in a great breath and managed to stand straight once more. So did Tenquis—she could feel him grow steadier under her, and she seized the opportunity to climb all the way up onto his shoulders.
But with the song came the echo, and this time it was distinctly louder and more insistent. And when she stopped singing, it persisted as if it had taken on a life of its own.
“Ekhaas!” said Geth through his teeth.
“I know.” She ducked her head and peered under one arm at Chetiin. “Up!”
The goblin swarmed over Geth, then Tenquis as easily as if he were climbing a tree. When he passed over Ekhaas, she barely felt it. Then he was on her shoulders—and cursing.
“This is worse than from below,” he said. “The angle is wrong.”
The haunting song had drawn closer in just a few moments. It had changed, too, Ekhaas realized. It wasn’t just one voice singing anymore. It was several, blended into an eerie chorus. It took all of her will not to turn her head and look around. “Chetiin,” she said, fighting to stay calm, “can you climb from—”
Before she could finish, the summoned light that had lit the vault flickered and vanished. Darkness cloaked the cavern beyond the glow of her drifting orbs. The chorus seemed to grow stronger, and even the orbs flickered briefly. Tenquis hissed between his teeth.
“Don’t move!” Ekhaas snapped. “Chetiin, how much farther?”
“A dagger’s length. Hold still.” One foot left her shoulder and planted itself on top of her head. Ekhaas stiffened her neck as Chetiin changed his perch as easily as if he were a bird. Ekhaas heard paper slapped onto stone and a rapid rubbing sound.
“Hurry,” said Geth, his voiced strained. She felt him shift, trying to hold their weight.
“I almost have it,” said Chetiin. Ekhaas counted heartbeats. One. Two. Three. Four—
“Done!” Chetiin said.
“Jump!” Geth gasped, and an instant later his support dropped out from under them. Ekhaas felt Chetiin’s weight leave her head. She heard Tenquis yelp again and the unseen chorus rise as if in excitement. Guessing at where the edge of the hollow had been, she tried to push off from Tenquis’s shoulders, from the stela, from anything that would push her away from the collapse.
It almost worked. Her back slammed into the slope of the hollow, driving the wind out of her. Her legs came down across someone else’s back. For a moment, all Ekhaas could do was lie still, staring at sparks of light that had nothing to do with her floating globes and everything to do with a hard impact.
At least it was quiet. The haunting chorus was gone. The vault was silent.
A small shadow hovered over her. It touched her face and then—none too gently—slapped her. Ekhaas blinked and sucked in air. She rolled over—all of her limbs obeyed her and there was no sharp pain, which was a good sign—and glared briefly at Chetiin before looking down at the body under her legs. It was Tenquis. She felt a surge of relief to see that he was also rolling over. She looked for Geth and found him on his hands and knees at the base of the stela, chest heaving from exertion. She started to rise and go to him, but Chetiin grabbed her.
“No,” he said. “Look!” He spun her around so that she faced up and out of the hollow.
It took her an instant to recognize what she saw. Six figures stood looking down at them. Six hobgoblin women wrapped in tattered lengths of linen. Six hobgoblin women as thin as bones, their flesh translucent and shimmering with its own cold light.
One of them raised a skeletal hand and pointed at her. “Trespasser,” she said in Goblin, in a voice that seemed like an echo of a song. “Thief. Defiler!”
CHAPTER
SIX
16 Aryth
“No!” Ekhaas staggered to her feet. What were they? Some kind of spirits, but she’d heard no stories of ghosts in the vaults. “We’re not thieves. I’m not a