Word of Traitors_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [0]
“Bassingthwaite skillfully balances the high adventure common to the DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS novels with some tender and believable character moments. The grief over a lost sword-brother is given equal weight to intense battles, as is Ashi’s frustration at the regimentation of her life amongst the Dragonmarked House of Deneith. My favourite touch however, was that rarity of rarities, a non-human culture that felt true without borrowing slavishly from an existing or ancient people of our own world. I’m very excited that there will be two more novels with which the author can showcase his goblin peoples … The Doom of Kings is also an excellent starting point for a fantasy reader unfamiliar with EBERRON and the other worlds of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS.”
—Chadwick Ginther, writing for McNallyRobinson.com
Geth reached inside himself and shifted. The familiar feeling of invincibility burned through his veins. The pain in his rope-burned hand and his aching shoulder seemed to grow distant, than to vanish altogether. His skin felt like hide, his hair like thick, coarse bristles.
And he pushed himself further, pouring everything he had into the shifting. Hide, hair, flesh, bone—he was as hard and dense as the heaviest oak. Wild power flooded him and thought vanished. This was how a charging bear or a rampaging boar felt. Geth drew in his legs, pressed himself against the wall, and kicked out with all his strength, roaring as he unleashed the coiled power.
He let go of the rope just before it snapped taut. The plaza rushed up at him. so did the guards.
LEGACY OF DHAKAAN
BY DON BASSINGTHWAITE
The Doom of Kings
Word of Traitors
The Tyranny of Ghosts
June 2010
Raat shi anaa.
“The story continues.”
—Traditional opening to hobgoblin legends
THE EVENTS
OF THE DOOM
OF KINGS
Once a savage hunter, now the bearer of a powerful dragonmark, Ashi d’Deneith found herself isolated in the city of Karrlakton and at odds with her mentor, Vounn d’Deneith. Vounn had been tasked with transforming Ashi into an elegant, educated asset of House Deneith, a process which generated considerable resentment between the two women. Storming out of Sentinel Tower after a particularly bad argument, Ashi discovered and fought with a thief attempting to steal an artifact from a Deneith memorial. The thief, however, turned out to be a friend, Ekhaas, a hobgoblin duur’kala, or “dirgesinger.”
Ekhaas was in Karrlakton as part of a delegation to Deneith from Darguun, the goblin nation that was a major source of mercenaries for the house. The leader of the delegation, Tariic—nephew of Lhesh Haruuc Shaarat’kor, high warlord and founder of Darguun—carried an invitation for Vounn, Deneith’s premiere diplomat, to come to Haruuc’s court as a special envoy. Haruuc, a cunning but aging ruler, had seen the need for a closer bond between Darguun and Deneith.
Vounn agreed to allow Ashi to accompany them to Darguun. Their journey took them through the city of Flamekeep, where they discovered that Ekhaas and Tariic had not been entirely truthful. The mission to Karrlakton, while genuine, had served to disguise their real purpose: making contact with the shifter Geth, another friend of Ashi and Ekhaas. Accompanied by Chetiin, an elder of the goblin assassin clan, the shaarat’khesh, Geth joined them. Tariic explained that Haruuc wished the shifter brought into Darguun covertly. The canny lhesh knew that although closer ties between Deneith and Darguun might aid his nation, his eventual successor would need something more. Geth, as the bearer of Wrath, the legendary hobgoblin Sword of Heroes forged thousands of years before when the goblin Empire of Dhakaan ruled the land, was the key to lasting stability in Darguun.
Reaching the goblin nation, Geth, Ashi, Ekhaas and the others—joined now by Midian Mit Davandi, a gnome scholar of the famed Library of Korranberg and an expert on the history of Dhakaan—found themselves caught in simmering unrest as warlords chafed at Haruuc’s commands of peace between Darguun and surrounding