Word of Traitors_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [157]
There was a clash of blades from the ridge and another sharp scream. Chetiin turned to look. Geth kept his eyes on Tenquis and his grip steady on the pry bar. He could feel sweat forming on his palms.
Tenquis’s teeth clenched. His whispers slid between them.
Stone creaked.
Through the steel bar, Geth felt a distinct vibration as the door shivered and rose by the tiniest fraction. He threw his weight against the bar, hauling at it. For an instant, steel grated against stone, then the tip of the bar caught again and held. Geth strained, his muscles cracking and popping.
The door moved.
Geth groaned at the weight of it. He ground his teeth together until they hurt and heaved harder on the bar. The thickness of stone that stood out from the frame grew slowly. A finger’s width. A finger’s length. Two fingers’ lengths. A dagger’s length.
Darkness appeared. Chetiin seized a loose rock and shoved it into the gap. Geth drew back the pry bar and thrust it into the darkness before the stone could crack. The heavy steel squealed as it took the weight of the door. Geth drew a breath and shifted, letting the ancient heritage of his blood give new energy to his muscles before he stepped around, worked his fingers into the thin gap and pulled. Tenquis moved with him, hands resting steady on the stone, whispers rising.
The gap grew. Geth could have slipped through sideways. “Enough!” he gasped at Tenquis.
“All the way or it will swing closed on us,” said the artificer, and even those few words interrupting his whispers brought new creaking from the unseen pivots. Geth groaned again and kept pulling. Step by step, back until the mouth of the tomb gaped wide. He waited for a shout from Daavn or one of his men as they caught a glimpse of what was happening and realized they’d been tricked. None came.
“Almost there!” said Tenquis—and pulled his hands away from the door, getting out from behind it. There was a crunch and a grinding sound as the magic that had held the shattered pivots together faltered. For an instant, Geth felt the unbearable weight of the door against his arms. He pulled with all his strength, trying to hold in the straining cry that threatened to escape him.
The door shifted one last time, then ground to a stop, striking the side of the tomb with a gentle tap. Geth’s arms and shoulders felt heavy and numb. His legs trembled, but he limped around to the front of the tomb and the doorway.
Chetiin was already standing in the shadows, poised at the top of a dark staircase. Tenquis pulled a stone that glimmered pale as moonlight from his pocket. Geth drew Wrath. He could feel the presence of the Rod of Kings pulsing in the sword.
They stepped down into Haruuc’s tomb together, moving away from sun and into shadow. The cold stench of cave damp and slow decay rose to meet them. Tenquis’s moonstone—shedding just enough light for shifter or dar or tiefling eyes to see—revealed walls that changed from worked stone to rough, natural rock as they descended. The stairs became rougher, too, hacked out of the floor of a steep passage wide enough for two broad-shouldered men to walk side by side. The words that the hobgoblin priests had spoken at Haruuc’s funeral came back to Geth.
Traditions tell that the People were born in caverns and lived there before we emerged to fight beneath the sun and the sky. When we pass through the gates of death, we return to caverns, the womb and the grave.
The steep passage grew taller. Glints of light shone ahead, reflections of the moonstone, and they emerged into a cave perhaps twice as big as Geth’s quarters in Khaar Mbar’ost and far taller, heaped with gold and treasures.
Lhesh Haruuc Shaarat’kor sat on his throne