dissipating energy. Within moments, the station was filled with passengers disembarking and porters rushing to unload cargo.
The station master appeared again. “We’ll connect your carts as soon as the train is unloaded. The coach departs again at the seventh bell this evening, but you’ll be able to board your carts whenever you wish.”
There seemed to be a consensus among the delegation that they would prefer to wait several hours on board the cart rather than go back into the city. Ekhaas was certainly in agreement. Besides which, the carts-or at least the cart that Tariic had hired for himself and the other senior members of the delegation-were remarkably comfortable. When the time did finally come to board, she heard Ashi gasp as she climbed up into the cart.
“By Kol Korran’s golden bath, this is amazing!”
“Stop staring, Ashi,” said Vounn, pushing past. “You look like a peasant in a cathedral.”
Ashi didn’t stop staring, and Ekhaas couldn’t blame her. The interior of the cart was as luxurious as a fine House Ghallanda inn, with thick carpets, soft couches, and cabinets of books and good wine. “Didn’t you travel to Karrlakton on the lightning rail?” Ekhaas asked.
“Not like this,” said Ashi.
“We travel as representatives of Darguun,” Tariic said. “The lords of any other nation would travel in the same way. To accept less would only confirm everything people like that merchant say about us.”
Other passengers on the southbound coach appeared over the course of the afternoon, settling into the passenger carts or waiting in the terminal until the coach was ready to depart. Together with Ashi, Ekhaas wandered the platform, peering into the other coaches and resolutely ignoring the hostile glares that many of the Thrane passengers directed at her. The Darguul soldiers had been settled into the two other private carts hired by Tariic. They traveled in far more modest conditions than the senior members of the delegation, especially the cavalry riders who shared a cart with their tiger mounts and the delegation’s baggage. The great tigers dozed in their cages. Ashi studied them with a healthy respect, going right up to the bars before stepping back.
“I wouldn’t want to face one of those in the middle of a battle,” she said. She looked around. “There’s a lot of room still in this cart. Couldn’t Tariic have hired one less?”
“The tigers need space,” Ekhaas lied. “No one wants to sleep too near a cage.” So close and still not able to tell Ashi the truth! She gestured. “We should go back to our cart. It’s almost time for the coach to depart.”
Precisely at the seventh bell in the evening, the elemental bound to the crew cart snapped and crackled into activity. Leaning out the window of their cart, Ekhaas and Ashi saw the ring of lightning that was the manifestation of the elemental’s power spitting and hissing around the crew cart. A shudder ran through the entire coach. On the platform, the station agent blew a last piercing whistle to signal that all passengers were aboard. The crew answered with a shriek from the coach’s whistle. As smooth as milk poured from a pitcher, the carts of the coach began to move, sparks of lightning arcing between their undersides and the conductor stones laid out in a straight path below. They moved slowly at first, and the evening lights of Flamekeep crept by, but as the coach left the city behind, it gathered speed until they were fairly flying through the falling night.
They would take it, Ekhaas knew, all the way to Sterngate near the border of Breland and Zilargo, the homeland of the gnomes, before transferring to horses for the final journey to Rhukaan Draal-the lightning rail would carry them four times the distance of that final leg in only a quarter of the time.
But there would be, she knew as well, one interruption to their journey.
The first stop on the line south of Flamekeep was the city of Sigilstar, and when they arrived there in the middle of the next morning, Tariic summoned a station agent. “Have our carts disconnected from the coach,” he said. “We’ll stay overnight and take the morning coach tomorrow.”
The station agent nodded and left. Vounn-and most of the senior Darguuls-looked at Tariic with puzzled expressions. The lady seneschal of Deneith, however, gave voice to their curiosity. “Why the delay?”
“We’re waiting for someone,” Tariic said. His gaze took in all of them. “Stay close to the carts. Someone pass that order to soldiers, too. No one is to go wandering off.”
The Darguul carts were pulled out of the coach and towed by a small work cart off down a side line in the lightning rail yard. The day was hot, and the motionless carts rapidly grew warm in the sun. The distractions offered by the cart, well-stocked though it was, faded quickly and the members of the delegation were reduced to sitting around fanning themselves. Like the tigers in their cages, Ashi fell into a languid doze. Tariic and Vounn retreated to the private compartments that their rank afforded them. Ekhaas wished she could do the same, but the best she could manage was to sit in a sliver of the meager shade outside the cart and hope for a wind. Some of the Darguuls begged her for a tale from her store as a duur’kala to pass the time, and she put in a half-hearted effort. Inspired by the reliquary in her pack, she gave them a story of Duural Rhuvet and his battles against the nomadic halfling tribes that had harried the edges of the Dhakaani Empire as it faded into the lean centuries of the Desperate Times. Her enthusiasm grew in the telling of the tale, though, and when the story was over, she gave her audience another, then another, eating up the day. The soldiers lifted their ears to listen as well, and she told more tales, this time of the heroes of Dhakaan at its height-Kamvuul Norek, the slayer of illithids; Moorn Basha, who sang an island out of the sea; and Duulan Kuun, the first of the name Kuun and the hero who founded a line of heroes.
Night had fallen when she folded her hands and spoke the traditional words that finished the legends of Dhakaan, “Raat shan gath’kal dor.” The story stops but never ends.
Her audience of soldiers and councilors-the entire Darguul delegation, in fact-sat in silence for a moment longer, then rose in twos and threes and began to drift away, back to their places in the carts. Ekhaas let out her breath and allowed herself a smile. Enraptured silence was one of the greatest tributes a duur’kala could hope for.
“I can see why my uncle seeks an alliance with the Kech Volaar,” said a voice from above her. Ekhaas twisted around to find Tariic leaning out of the open window of his compartment. “That was stirring.”
Ekhaas’s ears flicked. “We both know your uncle wants more than tales from the Kech Volaar.”
“True, but I wouldn’t underestimate the power of a good story, either.” He nodded across the yard in which the carts had been left. Ekhaas turned and looked. In the direction he’d indicated stood three grubby goblins, wavering back and forth as if uncertain whether to approach. They weren’t Darguuls. Ekhaas guessed that they must have been inhabitants of Sigilstar, probably employed at the lightning rail station in some menial job. She glanced over her shoulder to say something more to Tariic, but he had already left the window. She looked back to the three goblins and beckoned to them.
They came forward like nervous supplicants. The boldest of them dropped down to his knees in front of her, gesturing for the other two, maybe his sons, to do the same. “Thank you,” he said to her. “It’s been a long time since I heard anything so exciting.” He spoke Goblin with a distinctly human accent. “We can’t pay you for what we heard, but we want you to have these.”
He held out a dirty cloth on which were piled three greasy bundles. Ekhaas’s nose twitched at the smell of food. The bundles were likely the goblins’ dinners. “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “I don’t need to be paid.”
The bold goblin looked at her, then at the bundles. He didn’t lower the cloth. “They say you should always pay what something’s worth. My Tunee, most people say she makes the best goblin food in Sigilstar. I think these might make a start at paying for your stories.”
“Won’t you be hungry tonight?”
“Your stories filled us up, chib,” said one of the other two, his big ears perking up.
Ekhaas smiled and took the bundles but returned the cloth. “I’ll remember your kindness,” she said.
The three goblins grinned as if one of the heroes from her stories had just come to life and thanked them. They stood up, dusted off their britches, and scampered back toward the lightning rail station, all the time grinning like fools. Ekhaas shook her head as she watched them go, then turned back to the cart.
Ashi crouched by the door, watching her. Ekhaas gave her a mock scowl and switched back to the human tongue. “I’m getting tired of people coming up behind me!”
“Sorry,” said Ashi. “I was just waiting for you to finish. Those must have been some stories. I wish I could have followed them all.”
“We need to start on your Goblin lessons then. Why don’t we begin with food?” Ekhaas passed one of the greasy bundles to her.
They climbed up onto the roof of the cart, the better to catch the evening breeze. Four moons had risen above the horizon, casting enough light for Ashi to see what she was eating. Ekhaas, of course, could see the contents of the bundles with no difficulty, and as they were unwrapped, she taught Ashi the names for the food
