Dabrak. It does you no good here, but if we take it, perhaps a new Dhakaan can rise again.” She stretched out her hand.
He stared at it, then looked up to her. His body began to shake, not from fear but from anger. “No,” he said. “No!” He started to rise from his chair. “I am Dabrak Riis, marhu of Dhakaan, twenty-third lord of the Riis Dynasty-”
“Get him!” roared Geth.
But the rod lashed out. “-and you will kneel all before me!”
The power of the rod drove Ashi down before she could even think of resisting. It slammed against her mind with as much force as her knees slammed against the cavern floor. She saw Ekhaas, struggling against the compulsion, draw breath, perhaps to blast Dabrak with a song of magic, but the withered emperor held out the rod again. “You are slaves,” he snarled. “You belong to me, You will not rise up against your master.”
Ekhaas sagged back, her lips falling slack. On Ashi’s other side, Chetiin drooped with a groan. Ashi tried to fight back against the rod’s power, tried to throw it off, but she could feel herself slipping under its influence. The marhu was her master. She couldn’t rise against him.
But beyond Ekhaas, beyond Dagii, one figure was still standing firm against Dabrak’s commands. Geth. For a moment, he looked confused, then he glanced at the sword in his hand and smiled. He lifted Wrath.
“Two artifacts forged from a single vein of byeshk by the hand of Taruuzh,” he said in broken Goblin.
Dabrak’s ears went back. “Even when the shield had been shattered and the sword lost, legends were passed from marhu to heir that they were the only things capable of resisting the power of the rod. It seems the legends were right.”
“Give me the rod.” Geth dropped into a fighting stance, Wrath’s twilight blade crossed over the black steel of his great gauntlet.
“Give me the sword, beast-man.” Dabrak reached into the folds of cloth that draped his chair and drew out a sword. It was a little lighter than Wrath and forged of steel instead of byeshk, but it was still a good blade. He stepped clear of the chair and those who knelt before it.
Geth followed, circling him like a wolf.
Dabrak turned to keep him in sight. “What will you do, beast-man?” he asked. “You can’t kill me.”
“No,” Geth growled, “but I can hurt you.” He lunged, byeshk ringing on steel as he spread his arms. The gauntlet rose to block Dabrak’s sword while Wrath cut low. Dabrak moved with surprising speed, though, kicking back to escape the blow. The sword caught only silk, and even that was left unharmed. Geth pressed closer to try another swing, but Dabrak turned sharply and was suddenly behind him on his sword arm side.
Geth got Wrath up in time to tangle Dabrak’s sword, but the sword wasn’t the hobgoblin’s only weapon. With the same strength that had thrown Ashi into a wall, he slammed the rod into Geth’s bandaged shoulder. Geth grunted and twisted away. The shifter and the hobgoblin circled each other for a moment, then crashed together again in another flurry of blows.
The pair was evenly matched, neither finding any advantage over the other, both invulnerable in the weird timelessness of the cavern. There was something about the battle that brought a new fire to Ashi’s heart, though. Every attack that Geth made, every blow that he took seemed to give her a little more strength to push back the domination of the rod. She wanted to cheer for Geth, even as the rod’s power reminded her that Dabrak was her master, that she must remain kneeling as he had ordered.
No, she told herself. Geth is fighting for us-we should be fighting for him.
And a bit of what Senen Dhakaan had said of the creation of Wrath came back to her. Aram represented the inspiration that heroes provided for the people.
She clenched her teeth and pushed harder against the hopelessness brought down by the power of the rod.
Across the cavern, Geth raised Wrath and stepped back a pace as if searching for a weakness in his opponent’s defense. Dabrak lunged-and Geth struck, swinging his blade down against the hand that held Dabrak’s sword. In any other fight, Dabrak’s fingers would have been cut from his hand. In the Uura Odaarii, the blow passed harmlessly through flesh.
It struck hard against the steel of the sword clutched in them, though. Dabrak’s weapon was torn from his grip to fall, ringing, to the cavern floor. The ancient emperor flailed at Geth with the Rod of Kings, but his blows only rained down on the armored gauntlet. Geth tried to bring his sword back into play in the tight quarters, but Dabrak grabbed for it as if he could pull it out of the shifter’s grasp. His hand closed on Wrath.
A crack like lightning split the air, and Dabrak was flung back. He slid across the floor of the cavern, smoke rising for a moment from his clothing, the rod still clutched tight in his hand. Geth swung the twilight blade around as he stalked after him. “Wrath is the Sword of Heroes,” he said, showing his teeth in a savage grin. “It won’t accept the touch of a coward.”
Dabrak rose to a crouch, his teeth bared too. “Maybe the rod can’t affect you,” he said, “but I’ve spent a long time in the Uura Odaarii. I’ve learned its powers well.”
He closed his eyes.
Ashi’s heart seemed to clench. Uncertainty clouded Geth’s face, and he leaped to the attack, swinging Wrath high.
Dabrak’s eyes snapped open. No longer red-brown, they shone the same pale green as the symbols on the walls of the cavern. Smaller versions of the symbols glowed through his skin.
Geth froze in mid-leap, as still as the flame on Ashi’s torch. The faintest shimmer of green flickered around him. Dabrak rose and examined the unmoving shifter. His eyes flashed and Geth came crashing to the ground. He hit the cavern floor hard and curled up into a trembling huddle, his eyes wide and frightened. Wrath clattered down beside him. Dabrak looked at the weapon, snarled, then retrieved his own sword and walked back to his chair. The symbols faded from his skin and the glow from his eyes. Their passing seemed to leave him looking even more withered than before. Geth, however, remained curled on the ground.
Ashi stared at him. He’d been defeated. But he couldn’t have been-he shouldn’t have been. Rage welled up within her and she screamed in her mind, finally finding the strength to push back the rod’s power enough that she could focus her will. Dabrak’s legends might have said the Sword of Heroes and the Shield of Nobles were the only things capable of resisting the rod, but she had something the ancient emperor had never seen before. Something unknown in the time of Dhakaan.
Her dragonmark burned hot on her skin, and the burst of clarity that it brought shattered the rod’s hold on her mind. She stood, jaw clenched. “Release him,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Dabrak stopped halfway into his chair. His ears flicked up in disbelief, and the rod darted out. “By the Six Kings, you will kneel!” he commanded.
A tingle crawled across Ashi’s scalp as the order fell away from her. Dabrak’s eyes went wide-then he squeezed them shut. The glowing symbols darted across his skin again, as if they’d transferred there from the walls. His eyes opened and flashed green.
The foreboding stillness that Ashi had felt when she’d entered the shrine swirled around her, even heavier and more terrible than before. This time, though, she knew it for what it was: a dread of what might come to pass, a dark hint of the future preying upon her mind. But it couldn’t reach through the shield of her dragonmark. She shook her head, and it disappeared like a daydream.
The green drained from Dabrak’s eyes. Its passing left his flesh more shriveled, but he didn’t seem to notice. His gaze was on Ashi. “You defy me,” he said in amazement.
She pointed at Geth again. “Release him,” she repeated, then expanded her gesture to include the others, as well. “Release all of them.”
A smile touched Dabrak’s sagging lips. “Why should I?” he asked and sat down. “We’ve already established that Aram can’t harm me, and you’re not even armed. What are you going to do?”
He was right, she realized. He couldn’t affect her with the rod or with his strange command of the power of the cavern, but at the same time, there was nothing she could do to him. She swallowed and squeezed her fists
