'Host,' choked Natrac. He looked back to the right-hand passage.
Geth tightened his hand on the end of his flaming hunda. 'No,' he said. 'This is the way.' He could hear the fear in his own voice, but he pushed forward. After a moment, Natrac cursed and followed him.
The sound of the grindstone grew louder, though there were other sounds around it. More falling blades. The grating of bone saws. Sobbing. Screams. Always screams. The fire of the staff began to falter. Wordlessly, Natrac held out his hunda, offering it to him. Geth pressed it back.
The passage ended ahead, opening into some wide, dark space. Burning hunda held low, Geth crept up to the mouth of the passage and peered out.
He stood at the edge of a small balcony like a private box in some fancy Sharn playhouse, except that this box overlooked a wide, shadowed stone chamber. On the far side of the chamber, atop a short series of shallow steps, a long block of black stone stood like an altar.
In the center of the chamber, a figure hunched over a grindstone. Orange sparks flashed from the long steel blade that it held to the spinning stone. The figure was nothing more than a silhouette against the fiery spray, but there was something about it that made Geth's skin crawl. He bared his teeth and the whisper of a growl rose in his throat.
The dark figure straightened. The rasp of metal on stone and the shower of sparks ended as it lifted the blade. The grindstone spun on in silence and the figure looked up at Geth and Natrac. The strange light of Jhegesh Dol fell on a man's face so pale and beautiful that it might have been the model for Dah'mir's own, except that where Dah'mir's eyes were at least human, the eyes of the man below were pale, solid lavender without any iris or pupil. He paused and then stepped forward so that the light slid across shoulders and arms that rippled with muscle and flashed on a chunky amulet that hung against a broad, hairless chest. Shadows seemed to cling to him, obscuring his torso and legs like insubstantial black robes. Another spirit, Geth thought, another phantom.
Then the lavender-eyed man stretched his arms and spread his hands with a clash of metal. His fingers were blades, long as swords, heavy as axes, and so sharp they seemed to cut the light itself. The blades weren't stiff though. They bent and flexed with life, merging with the man's flesh, a part of him. He hadn't been sharpening a sword. He had been sharpening his own hand.
Nine thousand years ago, Batul had said, Jhegesh Dol had been a daelkyr stronghold.
The man was no mere phantom. He might have been put to the sword seven millennia before, but the master of Jhegesh Dol stood below them-at least in spirit. A shadow of a nightmare from a realm of madness.
Geth's growl rumbled louder; his fingers clenched the burning hunda.
'That other passage,' Natrac urged, his breathing harsh. 'The second one. We can still go back.' He started to turn.
The daelkyr's shadow brought its fingers together in a slow metallic scrape. The screams of the victims of the dark fortress echoed down the passage behind them. Natrac's face turned pale.
Around Geth's neck, though, Adolan's collar had gone cold again. Not painfully cold the way it had before, but sharp and bracing, like armor donned in winter. The sacred stones of the Gatekeepers' tradition were offering him protection, just as they had protected him from Dah'mir's influence in Zarash'ak and given him guidance at the intersection of passageways.
Guidance that had led him and Natrac to the daelkyr's shadow, not away from it. Geth's belly tensed and he knew that they weren't meant to run from this fight.
His growl rose into a roar. He jumped up onto the rail of the balcony, caught his balance-and leaped to the floor of stone floor below. To the sound of Natrac's frightened astonishment, he darted forward and thrust his flaming hunda at the daelkyr's muscular chest.
The spirit slid aside with an eerie grace and its hand came up to swipe at the hunda. The wood bucked in Geth's grip, then fell into burning chunks where the daelkyr's bladed fingers had cut it. Geth stared at the truncated section of staff still in his grasp.
Ten flailing swords stabbed at him. Geth yelped and threw himself back. The daelkyr's hands swept the air in front of his chest, so close he could hear the metal sing. He tumbled to the side, trying to stay out of the way of the shadow's lethal reach. His shifting-granted toughness wouldn't protect him from those steel claws; Geth wasn't sure that even his gauntlet would have stopped them!
And he wasn't at all certain he wanted to put the protection of the Gatekeeper's stones to the test.
Geth spun again. He ducked and blades hissed above him. The daelkyr's shadow moved in absolute silence except for the clash of its long fingers. Geth lunged in under its reach, extending himself to jab what was left of his hunda stick right into the shadow's belly.
It was like attacking mist. The flames that still clung to the stick flickered and dimmed. The daelkyr barely seemed to notice. Geth rolled quickly as its fingers darted at him again. 'Tiger's blood!' he spat. The spirit could hurt him, but he couldn't hurt it?
'Catch!' Natrac called. He had his hunda stretched out, offering it to him. Geth cursed and shook his head.
'It's not going to do me any good!' The shifter dodged back again as the daelkyr's shadow pressed forward. 'I need something else!'
He tried to duck around the thing, to get to its back at least, but it wouldn't let him pass. It surged ahead in a storm of bright metal, forcing Geth back by three fast paces. Abruptly, his heels hit the low stone steps of the dais he had glimpsed across the room and he stumbled. The daelkyr's claws flashed. Geth wrenched his body around, one palm planted on the steps, and tumbled out of the way as the blades met the stone in a skittering impact that sent sparks flashing in the shadows. He scrambled to his feet and leaped to the top of the steps, seeking the frail advantage of higher ground.
The black stone altar atop the dais was like a block taken from the walls of Jhegesh Dol, rough but greasy slick. Blood had gushed over in the stone in centuries past, drying thick in its pitted crevices. The altar's top was scarred, gashed and slashed by ancient blades like a butcher's wooden board.
In the middle of the altar lay a sword, its blade wide and heavy, flaring into a spreading fork like a serpent's tongue at its end, deeply notched along one edge. The metal had a weird sheen to it, dark and purple as twilight- but the sword was clean, as if none of the horror and corruption of the place had clung to it.
Geth vaulted onto the top of the stone and snatched up the sword. As the shadow of the daelkyr came charging up the steps, he whirled and swept the sword up to block its outstretched hands.
The twilight blade clashed against the spirit's steel claws-and cut through them. Falling metal clattered against the altar. The shadow staggered, mouth open in a soundless scream that revealed a dagger tongue. Its severed fingers trembled and black blood pumped out of the living steel.
Geth slammed the sword up in a chopping blow that cut under the daelkyr's arm and deep into its chest. The notched edge of the weapon bit deep in shadowy flesh. The spirit shuddered. For a moment it seemed that it might pulled itself backward off the blade. Geth grabbed the amulet around its neck, holding the foul ghost close as he jerked the sword higher.
The shadow of the daelkyr made no noise, but suddenly it seemed as if all of the tortured spirits of Jhegesh Dol gave one last wail.
The black fortress and the daelkyr faded into pearl-gray mist on an empty marsh. Geth froze. Natrac, standing on a low hillock of grass gasped and pointed with his hunda stick. The shifter spun around.
Less than ten paces away, Batul, Krepis, and Orshok stood under the branches of the tree that marked the edge of Jhegesh Dol. Behind them, the eastern sky showed the pale pink of dawn. Geth leaped down from the broken chunk of rock that he stood on and sloshed across the wet ground to face them.
'We're here,' he spat, still breathing hard from his phantom battle. 'Satisfied?'
But all three druids were simply staring at him. Even Batul's eyes were wide. Geth looked down at his hands. In his left he held the notched sword. In his right, the big amulet that had hung from the daelkyr's neck. There was something inside the amulet he saw now, a coarse, dull black object nearly as large as his palm.
'Gatekeeper legends,' said Batul in an awestruck voice, 'tell that when the daelkyr lord of Jhegesh Dol was brought down, two treasures vanished from Eberron. One was the sword, forged by Dhakaani smiths, of the hobgoblin hero who struck the killing blow. The other was a sacred relic, a scale from Vvaraak, the dragon who taught the first druids.' He swallowed, his eyes fixed on the amulet.
Geth held it out to him. 'Keep your word and stand with us against Dah'mir,' he growled, 'and you can have one of those treasures back.'
