Another person waited on the roof, another hobgoblin woman in a black robe like those Ekhaas and Senen wore. The third woman was old, though-so old and seemingly frail that when she moved to meet them it was like watching an injured bat crawl across a rock. Her eyes were sharp, however, and she looked him over carefully, asking the same questions about the stone collar-in Goblin this time-that Senen had. Ekhaas gave her the same answer, but at least the old woman grunted and nodded with more conviction than Senen had, then turned to Geth.
“I am Aaspar,” she said. “This is the first part of the ritual that will wake Aram.” She gestured around them with a gnarled hand. “Tonight you will hold vigil beneath the moons and think on the history of the sword that you hold in your hand.”
“I don’t know its history,” said Geth.
The old woman looked at him blankly and Ekhaas murmured in her ear, translating his words for her. Aaspar clicked her tongue. “You know the history. Ekhaas tells me she has told you stories of the name of Kuun. They are the same.”
Geth blinked. He remembered-vaguely-stories Ekhaas had told him to pass the nights during a desperate race across the Shadow Marches. “I… I might not always have been listening,” he said.
Ekhaas scowled at him as she translated, and Aaspar laughed.
“Think on them. You’ll remember more than you believe. Now go to the circle and kneel. Leave Aram’s scabbard outside it before you enter.”
There was a circle drawn on the rooftop in charcoal. Geth walked to it, drew Wrath, set aside the scabbard, and stepped into the circle, kneeling on the stone of the roof. Aaspar swooped down after him, more like a bat than ever, and with a quick motion filled in a small portion of the circle that had been missing.
“When we are gone, you may move about the roof,” she said, “but you must remain awake and you must hold onto Aram through the night. Don’t release it. Do you understand?” He nodded and she clicked her tongue again. “We will return at dawn.”
She stepped back to form a line with Ekhaas and Senen. “Face the sun,” she told Geth, and he shifted around so that the red light was in his eyes. The movement put the three women at his back. His shoulders prickled, knowing they were back there but not knowing what they were doing.
Then they started to sing.
Geth recognized Ekhaas’s voice in the song, like burning cedar. He could pick out another voice, too, higher and more clear. Soaring over both voices, though, was a sound that barely seemed as if it could come from the throat of a living creature. It had a depth like the sea and a luminous beauty like a hundred beeswax candles glowing in the dark. It pulled at his heart and seemed to reach into the base of his skull to push against his mind. He felt it in his head, in his chest, in his belly, in his groin. It brought a dozen emotions washing over him at once, so many that he couldn’t react to them all but could only kneel and stare out into the gathering night.
It was Aaspar’s voice, and all he could think was that if this was what her song sounded like, how had the songs of the great duur’kala of ancient Dhakaan sounded?
Slowly, he became aware that the chorus of the three duur’kala was changing and growing both deeper and fainter. At the same time, the charcoal outline of the circle within which he knelt seemed to be shifting and spreading across the rooftop. Soon the stones for a sword length around him were black, then two sword lengths. The circle was growing like the shadows of the setting sun.
The sun.
He looked up and realized that the sun had almost entirely vanished below the horizon, sinking just as the duur’kalas song had. He could almost imagine that the three women weren’t just singing along with the sun’s setting but that they were actually singing it down. Time seemed to slow as he watched the disappearing sun and listened to the fading song.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Geth blinked.
The night was silent-and complete. The sun had set, and even the last red smudge was gone from the horizon. The duur’kalas song had ended. Still kneeling, he twisted to look behind him. The rooftop was empty. It was also completely black. The charcoal of the circle had crept over every stone, leaving only its interior, where he knelt, clear.
In the east, the first two moons of the night were rising, the pale gray twins of Therendor, big and bulky, and Barrakas, a third its size but twice as bright. Geth stood and stepped out of the clean circle with a caution that struck him as ridiculous. Aaspar had said he could move about the roof after they’d left. He made certain he kept a tight hold on Wrath, though.
His knees were already stiff and protesting the time spent kneeling on the bare stone. He could feel the cool of the night creeping through the thin linen robe, and his hunger was a constant nagging. The night wouldn’t be pleasant, but that was the point of vigils, wasn’t it? At least he was allowed to move. He jumped and stretched, easing some of the pain and warming his body a little, then went to peer over the edge of the tower.
He immediately wished he hadn’t. The view down onto the moonlit sprawl of the city, the Ghaal River and its first cataract flashing in the distance, seized the light-headed feeling he’d had climbing the stairs of Khaar Mbar’ost and set it spinning. Geth stepped back from the edge and crouched until the spinning stopped. He considered trying it again, to see if he could get used to the view, but decided against it. There was enough to see by looking out and up at the unfettered view of the sky. He sat down as comfortably as he could with the stones of the roof chilling his backside, held Wrath to him, and looked up into the night.
Think on the history of the sword that you hold.
Geth tried to remember what he could of the stories Ekhaas had once told him of the Dhakaani family named Kuun whose history had been tied to the sword. It was easier to think of the story that Senen had told only a few nights before, of Taruuzh and the forging of Wrath from the byeshk of Khaar Vanon. He wondered about the Rod of Kings and the Shield of Nobles. What had the shield been like? Did the rod still exist? He tried to envision Taruuzh laboring over his creations. He’d seen Taruuzh after a fashion. He’d been to the ruins of Taruuzh Kraat and seen the massive sculpture of the dashoor that stood there. In the ancient caves beneath Taruuzh Kraat, he’d seen the wizard-smith’s effigy atop his tomb and faced his ghost through a storm of unnatural cold…
He blinked again and jerked his head upright before he could fall asleep. “Grandfather Rat’s naked tail,” he muttered. The night seemed colder than it should. It would be far too easy to nod off. He got back up onto his knees, kneeling once more. It took effort to stay upright. That would, he hoped, make it easier to stay awake as well. He bent his thoughts back to Wrath, forcing himself past Taruuzh.
Taruuzh had given the sword to Duulan Kuun, the first to carry it, but the name that had always stuck in Geth’s mind was Rakari Kuun, who had been the last to carry it. He’d always felt an affinity for the hobgoblin hero who had destroyed a terrible evil but in the process lost his birthright. Geth had walked where Rakari had walked and had fought the evil-or a phantom of the evil- that Rakari had fought. Sometimes he still woke to nightmares of Jhegesh Dol, the Place of Cuts. In his dreams he could hear the sound of knives and bone saws and the screams of tortured orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins. He could see their mutilated ghosts and the horrible spectacle of their amputated limbs given a terrible, vengeful life of their own. He imagined what it must have been like for Rakari Kuun to enter Jhegesh Dol when it wasn’t an ethereal remnant of the past but a real place, full of pain and horror. He imagined the hero’s fear at facing the lavender-eyed monster that had been the lord of Jhegesh Dol, one of the alien daelkyr, his fingers replaced with living blades as long as swords, as sharp as axes, so sharp they cut light itself…