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Geth stopped at the bottom of the passage and looked on the remains of the father of Darguun, haste brushed aside by a curious sense of awe. He’d watched the corpse being carried down into the tomb, had walked with it through Rhukaan Draal. Haruuc was as dead now as he’d been then, yet somehow there was a particular solemn majesty about him. It wasn’t so much the wealth that surrounded him as it was the unnatural stillness of something dead, alone in the unchanging solitude of one of Eberron’s small secret places. Geth felt like an intruder. He lowered Wrath and bent his head in a nod of respect.

Tenquis must have felt it too. He bowed low, a flourishing gesture that was distinctly tiefling. Chetiin, however, didn’t move at all for a long, long moment and it took all that time for Geth to realize that this would be the first chance he’d had to see Haruuc up close since Midian had attacked him.

When the goblin finally moved, he walked directly up to Haruuc’s seated corpse, knelt down, and opened a small chest that rested by Haruuc’s feet. From inside it, he took the ugly, crystal-set dagger named Witness—the dagger that had been stolen from him, the dagger that had killed Haruuc. He pressed the flat of the blade to his heart as he looked up at the lhesh and Geth heard him murmur, “You will be avenged, my friend.” He slid the dagger into an empty sheath on his right forearm, then turned back to Geth and Tenquis. “Find the rod,” he said.

Geth raised Wrath again and swung it around the cave. Awareness of the Rod of Kings prickled across his senses. To the left and across the cavern—the sword pointed directly at a pile of rolled carpets. Geth had to admit that it was a good hiding place. If by chance the tomb was pilfered while the rod was within, the fine but bulky carpets would almost certainly be ignored in favor of gold and gems. “There!” said Geth. He stepped toward the carpets.

Something flickered in the very corner of his vision, high up among the shadows of one wall of the cavern. Something pale, quickly obscured by the movement of something dark that gave a soft snap.

He threw himself back with a curse at the same moment a crossbow bolt hissed through the space where he’d been. It sank deep into the wood of a treasure chest. Shadows leaped across the cavern wall as Tenquis raised the moonstone. Its pale light revealed Midian, perched in the mouth of narrow crack, already sighting along the stock of a small hand crossbow once more. The gnome gave a crooked grin and winked at Geth before he squeezed the trigger.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-EIGHT

3 Aryth

The rocks of the ridge made a challenging hunting ground. Makka’s initial charge carried him to the arm of the ridge behind which Ekhaas, Ashi, and Geth had sought shelter, but his quarry had already vanished into the rough gray folds. At the point where a shallow gully broke the slope he paused and tested the air with flaring nostrils. They hadn’t lingered—they were moving higher. He crouched. “Get off, Pradoor,” he said. “Wait here.”

“And do what?” The old goblin woman clung tight to his shoulder. “Admire the sounds of battle? My place is with you. The age turns.”

Makka bared his teeth for all the good that it did. Her blind eyes didn’t see him. “I can’t fight with you on my back.”

“The age turns around both of us.” Pradoor’s fingers dug into him. “We serve—”

“—the Six,” Makka said through his teeth. “But the Fury puts my revenge before me.”

“Then why do you hesitate to follow her path?” asked Pradoor. “The Six reward those who serve.”

Makka snarled and rose to his feet just as rocks clattered along the arm of the ridge behind him. He whirled to find two of Daavn’s bugbear workers clambering over the crest of the slope. The other bugbears, iron hammer and pry bar in hand, paused at the sight of him. Makka tensed his ears, thrust out his chest, and growled.

The other bugbears hunched back. Their ears flattened and they ducked their heads, offering submission in the ancient