Something moved ahead of him.
Geth’s pace faltered for an instant, but only for an instant. He forced himself to keep walking. Several of Eberron’s twelve moons had risen, and their combined light cast a confusion of shadows onto the streets. A shifter needed very little light to see, and the moons gave more than enough of it for Geth to see clearly that the street ahead was empty.
He had seen something move, but it hadn’t been ahead of him. The movement had been a shadow, as something broke the moonlight over the peak of a roof. The movement had actually been behind him.
A bird? A cat? A bat? He kept walking, eyes on the shadows, ears alert. Not likely a bird-they would all be roosting for the night. A bat would still have been visible as it flapped its wings. A cat-possibly, but surely he would have seen its shadow again, yet there was nothing.
Could it be Urik and his friends, back on his trail? Geth couldn’t believe they could be so stealthy.
He walked a little farther, taking the measure of the street ahead and the town around him. He’d wandered into an area of Lathleer that seemed a little more down on its luck than other areas. The streets were narrow and twisting, the windows on the buildings tightly shuttered. He had a strong feeling that if a fight broke out here, no one would be rushing to see what was happening.
A short distance ahead, the street split into two lanes that passed on each side of a closed-up shop before meandering on through the town. Geth made a rough guess at how long it would take him to reach the intersection-then took a firm hold on his pack and broke into a sprint.
The slapping of his steps echoed from the walls and wrapped him in noise. If there were any sounds of surprise from whatever-or whoever-was behind him, he couldn’t hear them. Maybe his own footsteps were too loud. Maybe his pursuers were even more subtle than he thought. He put his head down and ran fast, veering slightly toward the lane that looked most likely to lead out of Lathleer.
Did something move against the moonlight? More shadows, breaking concealment to give chase? At his running pace, it was difficult to tell. Still no sound of pursuit. The intersection and the closed shop drew closer, and the lane opened before him.
At the last instant, Geth turned aside and whirled. His shoulders and pack slammed against the wooden shutters of the storefront with a loud crack, and Geth stared back along the street.
His pursuers-still racing after him-stared back, caught by surprise at the move. Geth caught a glimpse of black-clad figures moving like shadows along the street and the rooftops. A glimpse was all he caught, however. As soon as they saw that he had stopped, the figures froze and vanished. Their disappearance was so sudden and complete that Geth could almost believe what he had just seen had been his imagination.
He knew better though. Caught, the figures weren’t quite so subtle now as they had been before. If he looked closely, Geth could see the bulge of a shadow where one sought to hide. A roof tile clicked as another, unseen, shifted its weight.
Alarm rose in his throat. Grandmother Wolf, he thought, who were they?
In one way, at least, it didn’t matter who they were. Fists might have been fine against brawlers like Urik, but he’d be damned if he was going to face these mysterious figures with empty hands. Geth shrugged and his pack slid from his shoulder. In one swift movement, he freed the long, wrapped object that had been loosely lashed to the side of the pack. A twist and a shake sent the wrappings slithering to the ground. Holding the hilt of his sword in one hand and the wide scabbard in the other, Geth stepped clear of the discarded pack and wrappings. Then he drew a deep breath, reached down inside himself-and shifted.
Long, long ago, the gift-some said curse-of lycanthropy had risen among humans. By day men and women might have been as normal as their neighbors, but by night, when any one of Eberron’s twelve moons shone full, they became beasts. Werewolves. Werebears. Rats. Tigers. Boars. Sometimes they had managed to escape the anger and fear of their neighbors and live out their lives hidden in the wilderness. And as they lived, they had children, sometimes with others like them, sometimes with those who did not carry their gift. The children born of such unions weren’t fully human, but neither were they lycanthropes. Over time a new race was born, neither human nor lycanthrope nor animal, but something of each. Shifters were strong, they were fast, and they were marked by the blood of beasts. Thick hair, sharp teeth, eyes that could see as well by night as by day-and a touch of their ancestors’ shapechanging abilities. Each shifter’s connection to his or her ancient heritage was different. Some, when they shifted, gained a bear’s claws or a wolf’s fanged bite. Others gained speed or heightened senses.
Geth’s gift was sheer toughness.
The breath he had drawn hissed out between his teeth as the shifting passed through his body. His skin became tougher, his hair even thicker than it normally was. A sense of invincibility burned like hot steel in his veins and muscles, lending a sharp clarity to the night. With a grim smile, he sank back into a defensive posture, ready for the attack.
His black-clad pursuers must have recognized that their quarry was through running. They reappeared, the first dropping like a spider from high on a wall into the street below. The others followed until there were eight of them, silently watching Geth, every one crouched and as ready to fight as he was.
And not one of them stood any taller than his waist. Tiny dark eyes watched him from parchment-skinned faces that had been stained as black as their clothes.
His pursuers were goblins.
Another warrior might have forgotten his fear and fallen on the goblins with a foolhardy bravado, but Geth had seen what groups of the little creatures working together were capable of. Numbers always gave an advantage. Some of the goblins also had daggers drawn, the short blades smeared with something dark. Poison. Another advantage. The first goblin to reappear gestured, and all of the goblins began to creep forward.
But Geth had an advantage, too. His grim smile tightened. He raised his sword above his head so the goblins could see it, then snapped his arms wide, drawing the blade in a sharp, fluid motion. “Behold!” he shouted. “Aram!”
The word meant “wrath” in Goblin, and it was the name of the sword. Geth had carried the weapon out of the ghostly fortress of Jhegesh Dol where it had been lost for thousands of years. It was broader and heavier than any human sword, with one edge sharp and the other notched with deep serrations, the end not pointed but instead forked like a serpent’s tongue. The blade, forged from the rare metal byeshk, carried a deep purple sheen that almost seemed to consume the moonlight rather than reflect it. Wrath was a hobgoblin sword, created in the time of the ancient Empire of Dhakaan by one of the empire’s greatest wizard-smiths. It was the sword with which Geth had slain Dah’mir, the mad dragon who had given his soul to the terrible Master of Silence.
And it was a lhesh shaarat, a warlord’s blade, a weapon of kings and heroes. He’d been told that any descendant of Dhakaan-goblin, hobgoblin, or bugbear-recognized such a sword, and that anyone who dared to draw a lhesh shaarat proclaimed his power. Geth had drawn Wrath once to fight off a gang of goblins. The mere sight of the twilight blade had sent the whole lot of them fleeing in startled terror.
The black-clad goblins stopped their advance and stared at the ancient weapon-then looked back to Geth without any change in their harsh expressions. They continued their slow advance, four moving to flank the shifter on one side, three on another. Their leader, still facing him, wore daggers in sheaths on the inside of each forearm. He slid one arm across the other and, from the left sheath, drew an ugly curved blade that looked very nearly as nasty as Wrath.
An unpleasant feeling knotted in Geth’s gut, and he lowered Wrath, ready to defend himself.
“Rat,” he said.
CHAPTER TWO
The door steward of Sentinel Tower was a man of middle years, solemn and unflappable, an ideal man for a role that was mostly about showing up to ceremonies and reciting a few ritual phrases. Ashi-once a hunter, now a scion of House Deneith-had been in the city of Karrlakton and a resident of Sentinel Tower for only eight months. She’d seen the door steward no more than four times, though it felt like she heard about him every day. Elders and instructors held him up as a model of dignity and loyalty to Deneith. He was moderate in all things, knew when to speak and when to remain silent. Through thirty-one years of service in his position, it was said that he’d never
