Word of Traitors_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [3]
Geth guessed that Ashi’s dragonmark might be able to shield Haruuc. Leaving Haruuc to face the honoring of Vanii and the punishment of Keraal alone, Geth ran in search of Ashi. He found her in her quarters, preparing to leave Darguun under Vounn’s orders. She accompanied Geth at his urging. As they made their way back to the throne room, Geth’s explanation of the situation was overheard by Aruget. Assuring Geth that he could keep a secret, the guard guided them to a side entrance to the throne room.
They arrived to hear the assembly of warlords calling on Haruuc to lead them in war—and to see Haruuc almost give in to them and to the curse of the rod, before cannily suggesting the elves of Valenar as a target. Geth understood that by starting a small war with the elves, ancient enemies of Dhakaan and, like Darguun, mistrusted by other nations of Khorvaire, Haruuc was preventing a larger war that would surely have destroyed his nation. Once Ashi used the power of her dragonmark to shield him from the rod’s curse, even that small war might still be averted.
As Haruuc raised his arms in triumph, however, a crossbow bolt from a balcony struck him. Geth and Dagii ran to his aid, but the bolt was poisoned and the assassin was already descending from the balcony. It was Chetiin. Avoiding Geth and Dagii’s attempts to defend the wounded lhesh, the traitor killed Haruuc with a dagger thrust through his eye, then made his escape.
As the throne room erupted into chaos, Geth saw two things. First, that Chetiin had believed Haruuc had discovered the rod’s power of command when in fact all the power Haruuc had ever needed had been his own charisma. And second, that the rod remained a danger and that whoever sought to succeed Haruuc would surely fall to its curse as well. Acting to buy what time he could and knowing he was protected by the magic of his sword, Geth seized the rod and proclaimed that, until an heir could be determined, it was his sacred duty as Haruuc’s shava to hold the throne of Darguun.
CHAPTER
ONE
19 Sypheros, 999 YK (mid-autumn)
Noise battered Geth loud enough that he could feel it in his belly. It swelled out from pipes fashioned from brass stems and inflated bags of leopard skin; from the rhythm of big drums beaten with short, thick rods; from the voices of hundreds—thousands—of goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears as they crammed the streets of Rhukaan Draal and shouted a final farewell to Lhesh Haruuc Shaarat’kor.
The corpse of the assassinated lhesh sat in a throne carried on the shoulders of six strong bugbears. Haruuc had been dressed in a suit of heavy armor decorated with the claws and fangs of great cats, his hands curled around the hilt of the famous red sword that had carved out Darguun’s destiny. Protective magic had held off decay for the ten day period of mourning. When Geth had knelt before the throne in the last ritual submission demanded by goblin tradition, it had seemed to him that the lhesh might have been resting except for the ruin of the eye socket through which Chetiin’s dagger had plunged. Goblin tradition put the fatal wound on display for all to see, though Geth knew that the greatest wound was invisible. The dagger, straight and ugly with a blue-black crystal winking from its blade like the eye of a great cat, was called Witness. When it killed, it consumed its victim’s soul. Powerful magics could return life to the dead, but Chetiin had made certain that Haruuc was beyond even their power.
For ten days, no fires had burned in Rhukaan Draal. For ten days, the streets had been empty between dawn and dusk, and even between dusk and dawn, they had been quiet. The infamous Bloody Market was virtually deserted, most of its stalls shuttered. For ten days, no one had entered or left the city without permission from the fortress of Khaar Mbar’ost—no easy command to enforce, but