At the opening of the door, she looked up, her mouth framing a greeting. Geth didn’t give any of them time to speak. With a snarl of frustration, the shifter twisted his torso and hurled the Rod of Kings into a large, ornately framed mirror that hung above a sideboard.
The glass exploded out in a shower of sharp fragments. The rod bounced off the thin wooden backing, hit the sideboard hard enough to gouge it, and fell to the floor with the heavy clang of solid metal. Ashi’s words turned into a yell of surprise and the door slammed open as Aruget charged in.
Geth turned on him. “Out!”
The guard stepped back and closed the door without a word. Ekhaas went over and looked down at the rod. The rune-carved shaft was unmarked. She would have picked it up, but Geth stopped her.
“Don’t touch it,” he said. “Don’t anybody touch it.” Feet crunching on the broken mirror, he retrieved the rod, handling it as if it were a snake. Geth grimaced and dropped back into one of the room’s chairs. His voice was a growl. “Chetiin said something to me after he killed Haruuc, just before he escaped. He said, ‘We swore we would do what we had to.’”
“He thought Haruuc had discovered the power of the rod,” said Ekhaas. Memory of the rod’s hold over her mind brought her ears low. There had been as much hope of resisting it as of holding back a flood with a leaking bucket.
“He should have talked to the rest of us.” Dagii’s face was grim.
“I wish he had,” said Geth. “Because if that’s what he was thinking, he was wrong.” He turned the rod in his hands, and for a moment Ekhaas thought he might throw it again, but then he stood and drew Wrath. Forged from the same twilight-purple byeshk as the rod, the sword was massive and heavy, sharp on one edge and deeply notched on the other, a dar design that hadn’t changed much in thousands of years. “Wrath… talks to me. In a way. Sometimes it gives me a nudge, pushing me to act the way a hero would. Occasionally it puts heroic words in my mouth. It’s not just the Sword of Heroes. It’s a sword that makes heroes.”
In the other hand, he hefted the Rod of Kings. “The rod is the same. Just before Keraal’s punishment, Haruuc and I had an argument. All the time that we were carrying the rod back to Rhukaan Draal, I was the only one to touch it. Wrath doesn’t just protect me from the rod’s power of command-it shields me from all of the rod’s power. When Haruuc took up the rod, he didn’t have that protection. A hero inspires. A king rules.” He bared his teeth. “From the moment he first held the rod, it fed him the memories of the Dhakaani emperors.”
Dagii’s ears rose. “Maabet. The rod has been pushing Haruuc to act like a king?”
“Not a king. An emperor.” Geth lowered both sword and rod. “Haruuc said the rod responds to the touch of anyone with the will to rule. I think he was strong enough to hold its influence off for a time, but when Vanii was killed in battle against the Gan’duur, it was too much.”
“He gave in,” said Ashi. “What he did to Keraal and the Gan’duur, his talk of war…”
“The rod,” Geth agreed.
“But not his talk of war with Valenar,” Ekhaas said. She remembered the look of desperate cunning on Haruuc’s face when he’d spoken of the elves as ancient enemies of the hobgoblin empire. “Two upstart nations carved out of territory seized during the Last War. The rod might have been driving him to war, but he was trying to choose a target that wouldn’t bring all of Khorvaire down on Darguun.”
“And if Chetiin hadn’t taken matters into his own hands it might have worked,” Geth said. “I could have gotten Ashi to him. We might have been able to block the rod’s influence.” He sheathed Wrath. “Haruuc and Chetiin had an argument. Chetiin tried to point out to Haruuc that he was heading for conflict. Haruuc ordered him out of Khaar Mbar’ost. The last thing Chetiin said to Haruuc was that he would destroy everything he had built unless he was stopped. Maybe he thought he was acting to preserve Darguun. He’s only made it worse, though.” He held out the rod. “Whoever succeeds Haruuc is going to claim this-and it will claim them. Haruuc had the strength of will to resist it. I don’t think anyone who comes after him is going to have that.”
“Destroy it,” Ashi said. “Steal it. Hide it. Just get rid of it.”
Ekhaas’s ears rose. “We can’t,” she said. “Haruuc’s plan to use the rod as a symbol of power was good. Too good. If it disappears now, there’s never going to be a clear line of succession. It may be possible for the assembly of warlords to agree on a new lhesh, but the rod links him to Haruuc and Darguun.”
“We could warn the new lhesh,” suggested Dagii.
“Warn him how? ‘Be careful. The rod will try to make you an emperor.’” Geth said. “Is that going to scare a new lhesh or make him curious?”
“There’s still the danger of the rod’s real power, too,” Ekhaas said. “Haruuc did everything that he did with the force of his own personality. The rod may have enhanced his presence, but he didn’t need its help. If he hadn’t resisted it, would the rod have revealed itself to him eventually?” She looked around the room at the others. “We’re holding a sword by the blade.”
“So what do we do then?” asked Ashi.
“I don’t know,” said Geth. “But we’ve got ten days of mourning and five of games to think of something.” He pointed the rod at Dagii, then grimaced and lowered it, gesturing instead with his free hand. “Dagii, I’m going to give you charge of keeping order in Rhukaan Draal. Use it to get a message out to Midian and tell him to return to the city. He’s clever. I want his help.”
“Mazo,” Dagii said.
Ekhaas nodded, too-Rhukaan Draal was technically the territory of the Mur Talaan clan, but Dagii’s father Feniic had been one of Haruuc’s original shava and had ceded it to the lhesh as neutral territory for Darguun’s capital city. Putting Dagii in charge of it during the period of mourning would meet with the approval of Darguun’s warlords. Bringing Midian back to the city was a good idea as well. The gnome scholar had left Rhukaan Draal days before to explore Dhakaani ruins in the south, a reward from Haruuc for his role in recovering the Rod of Kings. She wondered if news of the assassination had even reached Midian yet.
“What about Ashi and me?” she asked.
“Listen,” said Geth. “You’re in a position to hear what’s being said among the warlords-especially the possible heirs like Tariic and Aguus. Ashi, you listen to what’s happening among the ambassadors and envoys. They’ll be coming to me, but I want to know what they’re really thinking.”
There was still one worry lurking in Ekhaas’s mind, though. “What about Chetiin? He’s out there somewhere.”
Geth hesitated, then bared his teeth. “If he’s smart, he won’t show his face again.”
CHAPTER TWO
19 Sypheros Storm at dawn
"I think I’m going to go deaf!” said Sindra d’Lyrandar above the roar of the crowd as a fresh wave of noise honoring Haruuc rose to meet the morning sun.
“You’ve said that already!” Pater d’Orien shouted back at her.
“That’s because I mean it. Imagine how bad it must be at the front of the procession. Where’s the dignity? How much longer is this going to go on?”
Ashi clenched her teeth and tried to ignore the running litany of complaints from the viceroys of Houses Orien and Lyrandar. The crowd that packed the windows and rooftops of Rhukaan Draal was bad enough-she could almost feel the weight of hundreds of gazes on her-but the viceroys’ comments just made it worse. All around her, the envoys who represented the affairs of the dragonmarked houses in Darguun marched in their appointed place in Haruuc’s funeral procession, yet only Pater and Sindra felt the need to make their opinions known. It was almost as if they were in competition, something Ashi could believe far too easily. There was no love lost between the two viceroys. Their houses had a long-established rivalry, with Orien controlling overland transport across Khorvaire while Lyrandar’s sailing vessels dominated the sea and their wondrous airships the skies, but Pater and Sindra took it personally. Haruuc’s funeral wasn’t the place for it, though. If they wanted to talk about dignity…