Word of Traitors_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [165]
There was a weight to the tube that he knew well, but he’d been tricked one too many times. Fingers fumbling with the clasp on the tube, Geth opened it just a bit.
The dim light of the moonstone—broken by the struggling shadows of Midian and Chetiin—flashed on a shaft of purple byeshk, thick as his wrist, carved with ancient symbols. A touch of his hand to Wrath confirmed it. This was the Rod of Kings. The true rod.
“I have it!” he shouted. He pushed himself to his feet and dashed back across the cavern, closing the clasp again as he went. Midian let out a howl of frustration—that turned into a howl of pain. Geth resisted the temptation to turn and see who was winning the fight. He ran for the stairs, racing up them with Tenquis following close behind.
He was about halfway up, the light of day glowing in the tomb door and a strange thrumming roar growing in his ears, when something big, heavy, and hairy dropped on him.
There was no chance to think what it was or where it came from. Geth had a brief sense of something falling on him, then he was crushed flat against the stairs. His breath exploded out of his mouth. The ribs he’d broken in his dive out of Khaar Mbar’ost cracked again in a sharp burst of pain rivaled only by the blossom of fire that bloomed when his head bounced off the stone steps. He heard Tenquis yell, but the sound seemed very far away.
The leather tube jerked out of his hand. A massive, wide-shouldered figure blotted out the daylight as it bounded up the stairs.
“Geth!” Hands grabbed him and turned him over. Tenquis’s face spun above him. Geth couldn’t quite focus on him. He couldn’t quite breathe either. His body heaved with the effort of it. Tenquis cursed and dug in a pocket, coming out with a little leather flask that he opened, stuck under Geth’s nose, and squeezed.
Acrid orange dust puffed up into Geth’s vision. It tickled his nose, burned his eyes, and somehow opened up his throat. He gasped and air rushed into his lungs. His head stopped spinning, though it still throbbed mercilessly. “What happened?” he asked.
Tenquis was already trying to drag him to his feet. “Makka! He must have braced himself between the walls of the passage. Geth, he has the rod!”
That, more than the orange dust, cleared Geth’s head.
“No.” Fighting back the pain in his side and his head, he thrust himself up the stairs. He twisted his head around as he ran to shout back into the tomb. “Chetiin! Makka’s stolen the rod!”
He staggered out of the tomb door just in time to see the bugbear snatch Pradoor up from where she stood chanting and vault into the saddle of a terrified horse. He wheeled the horse once and his eyes met Geth’s, then he spurred the beast along the road back into Rhukaan Draal.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
3 Aryth
Horror mingled with rage in Geth’s gut and he latched onto the edge of the stone doorway to hold himself up. Tenquis, coming up behind him, grabbed his shoulder.
“Look there!” Tenquis pointed at a vast cloud of locusts that swarmed along the ridge.
Even as Geth turned his head, the cloud dissipated, the thrum of wings fading as fast as Pradoor’s chant. Some of the insects flew away, others dropped to the ground like a brown hail around the trio of bloodied figures that huddled at its heart. Geth’s fear surged again—then the figures stirred and Ashi, Ekhaas, and Aruget looked down at him.
“The rod?” called Ekhaas, her voice raw.
Geth pointed at Makka’s retreating horse.
“They have it?” Ashi asked. “After all that, they have the rod?”
Grim determination settled over Geth. “Makka has it, not Tariic,” he said. “We still have a chance to stop him.”
The other horses, calmer now that the locusts had gone, were still picketed. Geth let go of the doorway and moved for the stairs down to the ground—and would have pitched over if Tenquis hadn’t been there to catch him. The tiefling