“For how long?”
“Long enough,” Geth said. He sheathed Wrath-just as three slow knocks sounded against the great wooden door of the throne room.
Haruuc started. “Razu,” he said. “It’s time to end Keraal’s rebellion.” He let go of the throne’s back and walked around it. His hand hovered over the rod, then he took it and seated himself. Geth hissed, but Haruuc shook his head. “This can’t be delayed. It must be done. Nothing can save Keraal now. I would only look weak if I let him live. I know this without the rod. But hurry.” The lhesh raised his voice in a powerful shout and said in Goblin, “Enter! Enter to mourn! Enter to witness judgment!”
Down at the end of the throne room, the great wooden door began to rise.
Geth jumped down from the dais and raced up the aisle. Ashi would be with the court. He could catch her as she entered and take her around to the side of the dais. She only needed to touch Haruuc and they could put an end to this-
And why do you care so much? he found himself wondering. Not so long ago, you were ready to leave and put Darguun behind you.
He ground his teeth together. Call it the influence of the sword, he thought. But Haruuc’s words came back to him.
Weren’t you already a hero before you took up the sword?
“Rat,” he muttered as he slid to a stop beside the rising door. Shins were visible on the other side. Knees. Thighs. Waists. Geth threw a final look back at Haruuc, sitting like a statue on his throne, then ducked under the moving door.
Ekhaas watched Razu lift a massive staff from her shoulder and swing it three times against the great carved door of the throne room, then step back. There was a short pause, then Haruuc’s deep voice echoed through the wood. “Enter! Enter to mourn! Enter to witness judgment!”
Razu gave a nod to some hidden assistant and the door began its slow rise up into the ceiling. Ekhaas took a breath and made herself calm. There were rumors about what judgment waited for Keraal on the other side of the door. After all that Haruuc had done already, it was hard to guess what he might do next.
Standing beside her, Senen Dhakaan spoke under her breath. “You saw Dagii. What did he say about Haruuc’s announcement on the bridge?”
“Nothing,” said Ekhaas. She kept her voice level and calm. It was the truth. She’d found Dagii after the procession had returned to Khaar Mbar’ost and gotten close to him under the guise of offering healing for his torn hands. As she had sung away his wounds, they’d exchanged quick words. Haruuc’s announcement, to her shame, had not been what they’d discussed.
“You bound all of the Gan’duur into the grieving trees yourself?” she’d asked.
“Cho,” he had whispered back-then he’d caught her gaze, haunted gray eyes to amber, and whispered what amounted to treason. “They didn’t suffer long, Ashi. I opened a vein for each of them. They died on the trees, but quickly. Haruuc was wrong to order them killed that way. What happened to him?”
She shook the memory-and the image of her hands around Dagii’s-from her head and looked back toward the throne room.
Just in time to see Geth duck under the partly open door. The shifter’s appearance caused a small ripple among the elder warlords who stood at the front of the antechamber. Tariic and Munta both tried to speak to him, but Geth shook them off and pushed himself into the open. He stood on the edge of the steps for a moment, surveying the crowd below. His face twisted in frustration, then his eyes found her and widened. He jumped over the rail of the stairs and came across the floor of the chamber, using his great gauntlet like a shield to shove warlords and clan chiefs out of the way.
“Ekhaas!” he said as soon as he was close. “I need Ashi! Have you seen her or Vounn? Have they gone to the gallery?”
He started to turn to the passage that led up to the gallery overlooking the throne room, but Ekhaas grabbed him and spun him around. “The gallery is closed,” she said. “But I saw them heading up the stairs to their chambers. They haven’t come back down?”
“I couldn’t see them.” Geth pulled away, but she hung onto him a moment longer.
“What’s happening?” she whispered in his ear.
He hesitated for a moment, then murmured back, “The rod.”
She felt her ears rise and panic filled her. “Haruuc has discovered its powers?”
“Not yet. It’s trying to make him a king the way Wrath makes me a hero.”
“Khaavolaar! What can I do?”
“Watch him!”
Geth tore out of her grasp and charged through the crowded chamber like a bull. She stared after him until Senen asked in her ear, “What was that about?”
She twitched and turned back. “It’s a private matter.”
Senen’s ears flicked. “Haruuc’s shava comes rushing out of a sealed throne room looking for the bearer of a Siberys dragonmark, and it’s a private matter?”
Ekhaas’s teeth ground together. “Yes,” she said tightly and was saved from further interrogation by a collective gasp of amazement that rose from the front ranks of the crowd. The great door was all the way up, and the way into the throne room was open. There was a moment of confusion, as if some of those in the front ranks had drawn back before entering, but then Haruuc’s court was moving inexorably forward. Ekhaas was carried up the stairs-and saw the grieving tree.
“Khaavolaar!” she said again, but her expression of surprise was lost in the rolling wave of astonishment that gripped each new rank of spectators to mount the stairs. Every goblin knew what a true grieving tree was supposed to look like. Very few of them had ever seen one before. Ekhaas had, and she still found herself struck dumb by the curved and cruel branches of white stone.
The interior of the throne room was as silent as Haruuc on his throne. The only noises were the rustle of fabric and the clatter of armor as warlords and clan chiefs, ambassadors, envoys, and councilors took their places. The room was packed tight. Ekhaas was fortunate enough to find herself with a good view of Haruuc. When the court had assembled, he spoke.
“Enter the dead.”
A drum beat started, and Ekhaas couldn’t help but think of the drum that had followed their steps into the throne room when they’d presented Haruuc with the rod. She studied the lhesh, trying to see if she could find any clue to the truth of what Geth had said. Haruuc’s fingers were white around the rod, and his face was drawn into a tightly controlled mask, but that could have been anger or grief.
There was movement in the doorway. With another rustle of cloth and metal, heads turned as Vanii’s body was carried into the throne room by the same six bugbears who had carried the casket through Rhukaan Draal. It had been removed from the casket, though, and placed on a silk-draped plank. There was some preserving magic at work-Haruuc’s shava had been dead for nearly a week, but he might have been struck down only hours before. Humans, Ekhaas knew, might have tried to make it look like he was only sleeping. Such denial was a shame. Goblin tradition honored a warrior’s death. The wound that had killed Vanii was visible for all to see: a deep red rent in his chest surrounded by shattered mail and broken ribs.
At the end of the aisle, the bugbears paused before Haruuc. He rose from his throne and came down from the dais to stand over Vanii. His hand came up. He touched the open wound, then Vanii’s forehead.
“Paatcha, shava,” he said, then nodded to the bugbears. They took the corpse to a stone bier set beneath the grieving tree, left him there, and retired to the side of the room. Haruuc returned to the throne and looked up the aisle. Heads turned again in anticipation.
Chains clanked on the stairs in counterpoint to the slow beat of the drum, then Dagii and Keraal appeared. The warlord of the Mur Talaan had washed and donned his armor with the three tribex horns that stood tall over his head and shoulders. Ekhaas saw his ears flick at the sight of the grieving tree, but his face otherwise betrayed nothing.
Keraal’s ears, however, went back flat against his head, and his eyes opened so wide the whites of them made a shocking pale ring. He had been stripped of clothes except for a loincloth. Chains bound his ankles and his wrists. Bruises and half-healed wounds showed on his body. He tried to pull back, but Dagii pushed him forward. Keraal stumbled down the aisle, his eyes fixed on the grieving tree. Dagii dragged him to a stop before the throne.
