year before than the scion of Deneith she’d found in Karrlakton, led the way. The bushes were dense and thorny, difficult and painful to squeeze past. Ashi slipped through easily, Chetiin and Midian with only a little less difficulty. Ekhaas, Dagii, and Geth had to pick their way carefully, always trying to be quiet. They weren’t far enough away from the bugbear camp that thrashing about in the bushes wouldn’t attract the attention of the guards. At least Dagii had armor to protect him from the thorns. Ekhaas wished she could sing the plants aside.
The bushes continued under the first ranks of trees at the forest’s edge, where light from above was still plentiful. The farther they went, however, the taller the trees became and the denser the canopy that their branches formed. When the brambles finally fell away, the gloom under the trees was deep enough that Ekhaas was grateful for the sensitive eyesight of her people.
“These trees are old,” said Midian. He touched the trunk of one that was easily half again as wide as he was tall.
“I doubt anyone has ever come cutting timber here,” Dagii answered him.
“Not even the bugbears? Doesn’t that seem odd?”
“There are easier slopes to the south and west and plenty of timber above their camp, too,” Ekhaas said. “They don’t need to come down here.”
Geth bared his teeth. “You really think that’s all it is?”
Ekhaas shook her head. The song of ages had sunk back to a dull beat in her gut. Geth growled and drew Aram. The sword pointed along the valley floor and down. Without saying anything, he returned Aram to its sheath. His hand, however, didn’t leave the weapon’s hilt. Ekhaas found her hand on her sword as well.
The trees became even older, shaggy with moss and fungi. Smaller trees were mixed among them, starved of sunlight and the soil’s richness by towering siblings. They found a place where one of the giants had come crashing down, allowing for new growth. Sunlight raked across the canopy, drifting down in a white-gold haze over the great fallen corpse that rotted slowly among bushes, ferns, and saplings left spindly by the opportunity for sudden growth. It came to Ekhaas that for all the forest in the valley was alive, passing under its deep green roof and between its great pillars felt more like walking through some ancient tomb.
“The sun is going down,” said Ashi. “It’s going to be dark as Khyber here when that happens.”
Dagii looked to Geth.
The shifter shook his head. “We’re close. I can feel it.”
Midian spoke for all of them. “I’d rather keep going in the dark than spend a night sitting still in this place.”
“Ban,” said Dagii. “We go on.”
Soon enough, the darkness under the trees was so complete that Ashi could see nothing. Ekhaas and Chetiin led the way now. Geth and Midian, their nightvision reduced but better than blindness, followed. Ashi walked with one hand on Geth’s shoulder, her face tense with the mingled expression of concentration and uncertainty that all humans adopted when forced to struggle in the dark.
Midian had his everbright lantern at the ready. The rest of them had left their packs with the horses, but Midian had insisted on bringing his store of magical trinkets. “Better burdened than naked,” he’d said.
Dagii, however, had refused to allow him to open the lantern and release its light. “Better half-blind,” he’d said, “than a target.”
The chief of the Mur Talaan moved at the end of their party, ostensibly to keep an eye on Ashi. Ekhaas knew he was also watching behind them. Night in the valley was as quiet and still as the day had been. They all walked with their weapons drawn.
In Geth’s grasp, Aram pointed sharply downward. The rod was somewhere still ahead, but also somewhere below. Underground? In a cave? Ekhaas and Chetiin watched for holes, gaps, chasms- anything that might lead beneath the ground. They had to be close to the far end of the valley, Ekhaas thought. Maybe there would be a cave entrance on the valley wall. She didn’t relish the idea of scrambling across the steep slopes hunting for a cavern, but the thought of getting out of the valley was deeply appealing.
“So,” whispered Midian into the silence, “Dabrak Riis, the Shaking Emperor who lost the rod. I don’t think I’ve read about him in the histories.”
“There wouldn’t be much to read,” said Ekhaas. “He belonged to the Riis Dynasty, the last dynasty of the empire, when the blood of the Six Kings had run thin, been reinvigorated, and run thin again. From what I learned from Senen Dhakaan, he ruled for about ten years. If he hadn’t lost the Rod of Kings, the most significant thing about him would have been that he lived in fear every day of his life.”
“In fear of what?”
“Everything. Closed spaces, open spaces, insects, snakes, monsters, being assassinated, strangers, friends.” She gestured around them. “The dark, even though he could see in it. His fears were why he was called the Shaking Emperor, a name that shamed him. One day he left his palace with a troop of guards, declaring that he would face the source of his fears and return to rule as an emperor should. His heir, a cousin, wasted no time in declaring himself regent, and that was when the disappearance of the rod was discovered. They tried to find Dabrak but without success. It turned out that the one thing he had a talent for was eluding pursuit. Rumors of sightings of him and his guards sprang up across the empire, but he was never located. The regent became an emperor, and life carried on.”
“And that’s when people started hunting for the rod?” asked Geth.
“Almost,” said Ekhaas. “They looked, of course, but with no idea where Dabrak really was, there wasn’t much they could do. Then fifty years after Dabrak vanished, a body was discovered floating down the Torlaac River-a body that was identified as one of Dabrak’s guards, not looking a day older than when he’d ridden from the palace with the Shaking Emperor. Hunts for the rod had died down by that point, but with a solid if unexplained clue before them, hunters swarmed the entire Torlaac watershed for another century before the fervor cooled off again. The last emperors sent out expeditions every so often for generations after that, but as the empire passed into the Desperate Times, people had other things to worry about. Eventually even the rod itself was all but forgotten. Raat shan gath’kal dor,”
“You said we’re not far from the headwaters of the Torlaac River,” said Ashi. “We’re only a day’s travel from a Dhakaani road. Could the hunters have come this way?”
“I’d be surprised if they didn’t,” Ekhaas told her. “But the mountains and the forest aren’t likely to have changed much. Between them and the position of the valley-and with the rod underground-it would be easy to miss something.”
“Even something,” asked Chetiin, pausing beside a massive old tree ahead, “like this?”
His scarred voice was tight. Ekhaas’s fist clenched around her sword. She stepped up to stand beside him and instantly understood what he meant.
Beyond the tree, the valley floor dropped away into a vast pit.
The slope was at least as long and steep as that from the bugbear camp into the valley, and the bottom of the pit lay beyond the range of her sight. Trees grew up from the pit, however, and if the trees of the valley were old, the trees of the pit were truly ancient. As deep as the pit was, the trees in it reached almost to the height of the valley’s canopy, their branches as thick and luxuriant as a forest in themselves. Anyone looking into the valley from above would have seen no hint of the pit save perhaps a dip in the treeline.
But once there had been people here. The canopy thinned above the slope and moonlight reached through to shine on the lichen-stained stone of a staircase that plunged into the pit. Big blocks, hollowed with age, formed the steps, with long narrow blocks making borders to each side. If the steps were worn, though, the borders were practically untouched, rounded on top and heavily carved in a style that was almost but not quite familiar. Unlike the road through the mountains, the stairs were whole and unbroken.
“Khaavolaar,” she breathed. Chetiin was right. Perhaps hunters for the rod might have missed seeing the pit from above, but if they’d passed through the valley, how could they not have seen it and the stairs?
The others moved up to join them. Ashi was still almost blind, but Geth and Midian blinked at the moonlight as if they’d stepped into the sun. Geth stared down the length of the steps and slowly raised Aram. The twilight blade pointed straight along the stairs and into the pit.
Midian, however, dropped to his knees beside the carved borders. “By the quill,” he said, his voice quivering. “These are pre-Dhakaani-and in such perfect condition…” His words trailed off into a wet moan of excitement.
“Pre-Dhakaani?” asked Ashi. She squinted into the dark in Midian’s direction. “Ekhaas, what’s here?”
Ekhaas described the stairs to her and explained the gnome’s excitement. “Before Jhazaal Dhakaan united
