Somewhere behind her, Tenquis cried out, and Geth shouted her name. Ekhaas squeezed her hands into fists and ground her teeth together. No, she was neither thief nor traitor; none of them were. Face down as if she were walking into a blizzard, she breathed in through her teeth, then raised her head, and sang back at the ghosts.
She chose an anthem of Dhakaan, a song that spoke of need and valor. Her voice clashed with the chorus of the ghosts like a lone warrior taking on a squad of swordsmen. For a moment, the two songs struggled against each other, then the song of the ghosts rose in strength and volume, pushing Ekhaas back. She staggered under the power of it. The glowing figures drifted forward, shrouded feet not quite touching the ground. Ekhaas clenched her fists, laid her ears back, and focused both her will and her voice.
Her song rose over the ghosts’, hung in the air, then slashed down.
The ghosts’ song vanished into silence. The spirits went with it, like a candle snuffed out or a chime muffled. The Vault of the Eye was still and-except for the heaving of her breath-silent once more.
It was so sudden that Ekhaas almost stumbled. Could she really have defeated the phantoms so easily?
Then, far off, she heard their song rise again. The ghosts had been dispersed but not destroyed.
“Horns of Ohr Kaluun,” said Tenquis. “What are they?”
An idea had sprung into Ekhaas’s head as she sang against the ghosts. “Duur’kala,” she said, her voice rough from the effort she’d put into her song. “Long ago, we were buried in the vaults. But I had no idea…” She turned. “Chetiin-the inscription?”
The goblin was helping Geth to his feet, but one hand dipped into the front of his shirt and produced a piece of paper that was dark with charcoal. Ekhaas slid back down the slope of the hollow and snatched it from him. The paper was badly creased and the charcoal had been rubbed over it in haste, but it carried a clear imprint: part of the description of the reward given to Tasaam Draet, two of the three notched rings, half of another, and the words that had been inscribed beneath them.
THE NOBLES OF DHAKAAN NO LONGER HAVE A SHIELD TO HIDE BEHIND, FOR MUUT IS IN THE KEEPING OF TASAAM DRAET.
Her heart leaped. References to the shattering of muut and to a shield for nobles couldn’t be a coincidence.
“What does it say?” demanded Geth.
Ekhaas read the inscription aloud. The shifter looked confused, then understanding flashed in his eyes. “The shattered pieces of the Shield of Nobles,” he said. “Tasaam Draet had them. His fortress-you said the ruins still stood. It could still be there.”
Ekhaas nodded. “It’s the best hope we’ve had so far!” Her ears twitched with the desire to climb back up the stela and see if anything else was recorded on it Another voice joined the ghostly chorus, this time from a different direction in the darkness. Far more than six ancient duur’kala had been buried in the vaults. Ekhaas swallowed her curiosity, roughly folded the paper once more, and stuffed it into a pouch on her belt. “We have to go.”
They circled the stela and climbed up the side of the hollow closest to the path through the Vault of the Eye. Ekhaas paused briefly on the edge, watching and listening, then gestured for the others to follow. The echoing chorus of the ghosts was drawing slowly closer, and, she suspected, in greater numbers than they’d initially confronted. Would the ghosts follow them? She hoped not-they’d seemed attracted to her songs, which meant that their best weapon against the spirits would only draw more of them. If she didn’t sing, maybe they would converge on the stela, and she and the others could slip away.
She moved as fast as she dared, trying to reverse the way back to the great shaft and the precarious stairs up to the Vault of the Night-Sun. Artifacts she’d made a point of marking in her mind looked strange from the other direction and under the thin light of the drifting globes. More than once, she had to turn around and walk backward to render them familiar. And always she was alert for the unnatural shimmer or approaching song of a ghostly presence. A dim glow appeared ahead, and her first instinct was to press herself into the shadow of a statue in case she could hide from the spirit. It took her a moment to realize that it was the ghostlight rod that Tenquis had dropped.
They’d made it back to the stairs. Ekhaas stepped out into the open, scanned the area one last time, then gestured for the others to go up the stairs ahead of her.
The chorus of the ghosts, muted, remained distant. As they reached the spot where the stairs met the ceiling of the vault, she looked back out onto the darkness, searching for the glowing forms, but there were none.
“Ekhaas!” rasped Chetiin. She whipped around. The others stood just below a narrow landing in the stairs, the first of the switchbacks as the stairs ascended. Ekhaas leaped up the last few stairs to join them.
Ahead of them was the arch over the stairs that marked the Vault of the Eye. Floating in silence beneath the arch was another duur’kala ghost. It watched them like a sentinel. Slowly a skeletal hand rose to point at them. A shroud-wrapped jaw opened “No,” said Tenquis. “Not this time.” His hands vanished into pockets on his long vest. One drew forth a slim wand. The other emerged with a pinch of silvery dust squeezed between his fingers. Taking a quick step forward, Tenquis flicked the dust at the ghost as his wand wove an arcane pattern.
For an instant Ekhaas smelled a sharp tang on the air, then the pinch of dust blossomed into a cloud around the ghost. Tiny flashes of lightning erupted in a miniature storm that lit up the ghost’s translucent form from within.
It didn’t even give the phantom pause. As song emerged from its gaping mouth, it swooped forward and stroked a hand along Tenquis’s face in a gesture that seemed almost gentle.
There was nothing gentle in Tenquis’s reaction, though. The tiefling staggered as if he’d been struck hard. He might have collapsed backward down the stairs if Geth hadn’t been there to catch him. As the ghost pressed forward, Chetiin slipped past them, a dagger in his hand. Ekhaas caught the flash of the blue-black crystal embedded in the weapon’s gray blade. It was the dagger he kept sheathed on his right forearm, the one called Witness that would trap a creature’s soul when it struck a killing blow. But could it affect something that was already dead? The ghost swiped at Chetiin. He moved aside with graceful ease. The dagger darted out.
And passed through the spirit with no more effect than Tenquis’s spell. Chetiin’s face tightened, and he slid away from another blow. “Ekhaas…” he said.
There was no choice. Ekhaas reached into herself and sang a counterpoint to the ghost’s song. Ekhaas thought she saw a look of surprise on the ghost’s withered face. It struggled, trying to match Ekhaas’s song, but alone its hollow voice was no match for hers. The spirit twisted in on itself and vanished like a wisp of smoke.
But down in the vault, the chorus surged with renewed energy, a pack of spectral hounds on the trail. Ekhaas grabbed Tenquis’s arm and helped haul him to his feet. His skin was cool to the touch, and his golden eyes were wide.
“Can you climb?” she asked him. He nodded. “Then do it.”
The descent of the stairs along the shaft had been unnerving. The climb back up was grim, step after step, staying ahead of the song that pursued them. At first they raced, taking the stairs as quickly as they could. It couldn’t last. Chetiin ran lightly, and Geth bounded on, his stamina extended by shifter-granted toughness, but Ekhaas and Tenquis tired. Every step became a cliff to be scaled. Ekhaas’s legs and throat burned. After a time, Geth looked over the stair rail and back down the shaft.
“They’re coming,” he said.
“I can tell,” said Ekhaas. The ghosts’ song had swelled until it echoed in the shaft. “How fast?”
“Slow.” He grimaced. “But they won’t get tired.”