Perhaps the only other good thing that could be said of the mourning period was that there had been no sign of Chetiin. If the goblin was still in the city, he wasn’t making himself known. Nor were any members of the shaarat’khesh, the Silent Blades, or their cousins, the taarka’khesh, the Silent Wolves. The Silent Clans might just as well have vanished from Rhukaan Draal. It was probably a good thing, too. Public anger had turned against the secretive goblins. City guards charged with enforcing the terms of mourning under Dagii’s authority had kept things quiet so far, but those terms ended with Haruuc’s entombment. Envoys and ambassadors had been quietly visiting House Deneith to arrange the hire of additional mercenaries to supplement their security in the coming days.
It occurred to Ashi suddenly that Vounn had made sure she was in attendance during those discreet visits. She’d thought it was just further training in the business of the House, but what if it hadn’t been? Much of the information-nothing damning or private, only rumors and descriptions of mood-that she’d passed along to Geth had come from those meetings. Ashi looked back to the lady seneschal and found her still watching her. Vounn’s eyebrow rose again and she smiled briefly before turning away.
If she hadn’t been in the midst of the procession, Ashi would have stopped cold with surprise. As it was, she stumbled. Maybe Vounn didn’t know everything that was happening, but her mentor was helping her anyway!
“Ashi?” Pater d’Orien caught her arm. “Is something wrong?”
“No. Thank you.” She smiled at the heavy-set viceroy of House Orien. In spite of his rivalry with Sindra d’Lyrandar, Ashi liked Pater. He had the manners and appearance of a caravan master in a fancy coat but behind his blunt exterior was a keen and cunning mind. “Excuse me, please-I need to catch up to Vounn.”
“She won’t be going far,” Pater said, nodding ahead. “This is the end of the-”
A swelling of pipes and drums drowned out his words. Ashi looked around and realized that they had reached the edge of Rhukaan Draal. The city dwindled away into a scattering of huts and shacks, though the road continued. The crowd was as thick as ever, but suddenly it was silent. When the crash of the pipes and drums ended, Ashi realized that she could hear another kind of thunder: the noise of the first cataract of the mighty Ghaal River, the steep stretch of whitewater west of Rhukaan Draal that prevented ships from progressing upstream beyond the city.
Ahead, the crowd ended, held back by a low wall of stone topped by a black iron fence, while the procession marched on through an imposing heavy arch as big as a good-sized house and built of the same red stone that had been quarried for Khaar Mbar’ost. Ashi heard Sindra snort. She was a half-elf and her fine-featured nose turned up in disdain. “A Karrnathi victory arch. Not very original.”
“Get closer,” Pater told her. “I think you’ll find it’s more original than you think.”
Ashi knew victory arches-House Deneith was based in the ancient Karrnathi city of Karrlakton, where monuments were nearly as common as hovels-and as they approached the arch in the wall, she could see what Pater meant. Karrnathi arches were typically decorated simply with fluted columns and a band of relief sculpture around the top, crowned perhaps with a memorial statue. This arch was different. Reliefs crawled across the red stone walls: hobgoblins and bugbears and goblins in battle and on the hunt. It was difficult to distinguish what they were fighting or hunting, but the scenes of struggle were clear. Nor could the arch properly be called a “victory arch,” because at least as many of the goblins depicted in the fantastic carvings were dead or dying as were triumphant. The higher up the walls the reliefs went, the more dead dar there seemed to be, until just beneath the crown of the arch, where rows of curved spikes jutted out like sinister horns, the carved bodies were piled in heaps. Ashi stole a glance at Sindra. The Lyrandar viceroy looked vaguely unsettled.
The carvings continued in the shadows of the arch as well, though here the dead stood in a parade of figures pierced with swords and crushed with hammers, bristling with arrows and ravaged by monsters, burned, tortured, decapitated, and dismembered. Ashi stared at a bugbear who appeared to be marching onward as if in ignorance of the massive ballista bolt that pierced his belly, and felt recognition. “Baargaar Seven Axes,” she said. “These are the heroes of dar history.”
“Aye,” said Pater. “And now they have one more.” He pointed up.
About halfway through the vault of the arch, the parade of figures gave way to smooth stone and on the edge of the empty space was a figure freshly carved-a hobgoblin wearing a spiked crown, one eye socket empty, a sword in his right hand and a rune-carved rod in his left.
“Haruuc,” said Ashi. She couldn’t help noticing that the stonecarver had taken some liberties. Under Haruuc’s feet lay the broken body of a goblin dressed in the clothes of the shaarat’khesh and holding two daggers, one wickedly curved, the other straight and plain. Chetiin. Ashi wondered if the others were having the same difficulty as she was in reconciling the quiet, wise goblin who had traveled with them to recover the rod with the treacherous assassin who had cut down Haruuc. That Chetiin was a killer-yes, even an assassin-there was no doubt, but which of them wasn’t? Ashi had been a hunter and briefly the huntmaster of the Bonetree, the most feared and savage clan in the Shadow Marches. Chetiin was an elder in an ancient clan of assassins and skilled in ways Ashi could only hope to imitate. When he moved, he was a whisper. When he fought, he was the blade of a dagger. When he spoke, his strained voice carried the lessons of a lifetime. He carried their loyalty and the loyalty of Haruuc and the loyalty of the Silent Clans. Yet he had turned against and slain in cold blood the greatest leader the dar had known in generations, someone who had trusted him and called him a friend. If Chetiin were standing in front of her right now, Ashi didn’t know if she would talk to him or try to put her sword through him.
Beyond the arch, the only sounds were the movement of bodies and the crash of the cataract. The road formed the only level surface across rocky and irregular ground and even it ended within a dozen paces of the arch. The funeral procession walked through tall grass, dry with the end of autumn, heading toward a ridge of weathered rock-the same ridge that formed the cataract in the river. Haruuc’s tomb waited within the shelter of a fold of the ridge, a low structure with a peaked roof that sank back into the rock and a larger underground chamber. It had been built of the local gray stone and seemed stark in its simplicity. The door gaped open, ready to receive its occupant. Ashi felt her flesh crawl. The arch, the vanishing road, the ridge, and the eternal crash of the cataract created a vista to haunt the soul of anyone who approached. Haruuc’s was the only tomb here, yet Ashi felt as though she walked through a graveyard that already held the royal dead of centuries.
The strict hierarchy of the funeral procession broke down in the field of grass. Goblins crowded forward as Haruuc’s body, still borne aloft on its throne, was carried up a set of steep stairs carved into the rock. Humans, half-elves, and other races stayed back, clustering together with unspoken wariness. Ashi caught up to Vounn. Pater and Sindra joined them, rivalry set aside for the moment.
Three hobgoblins waited beside the open door of the tomb. Priests, Ashi thought. Goblins by tradition offered their prayers and sacrifices to the gods of the Dark Six, hoping to appease the harsh deities. Haruuc, however, had embraced the worship of the Sovereign Host, the gentler faith followed by the majority of the nations of Khorvaire. Over the years of his reign, acceptance of the Host had filtered down from warlords and courtiers eager to emulate their lhesh to average warriors, merchants, and farmers. The Darguuls, however, had put their own mark on the worship of the Host. Ashi guessed that the three priests spoke for Dol Dorn, Dol Arrah, and Balinor, the gods of strength, honor, and the hunt that Haruuc had venerated above the other Sovereigns. All three wore snowy robes, but their faces had been smeared with dirt of different colors, and beneath their robes they wore armor-plate for Dol Arrah, chain for Dol Dorn, a hunter’s leathers for Balinor.
As soon as the gathered warlords had grown still, the priest of Dol Dorn stepped forward. His face was darkened with gray soil that could have been scooped from among the rocks of the ridge. He called out in Goblin, but Ashi had been studying with Ekhaas and the harsh sounds of the language were familiar to her now. “Who comes to the gates of death?”
Geth stepped forward from the crowd to mount the steps up to the tomb. “Geth, who bears the sword Aram, who carries the honor of Kuun, who killed the dragon Dah’mir, comes.” His accent was thick, but he spoke the Goblin words carefully.
The priest of Dol Arrah moved forward. His face was yellow with the dust of Rhukaan Draal. “You will not pass, Geth who bears Aram. Death has not claimed you.”
“I follow one whom death has claimed. I seek passage for him.”
Balinor’s priest came forward as well. His face was stained with ochre, red as the blood spilled during the hunt. “For whom do you seek passage? Who will enter the gates of death?”
“I seek passage for Haruuc of Rhukaan Taash, who was son of Tiraan, who was Haruuc Shaarat’kor, Lhesh of Darguun. He will enter the gates of death.”
“By what right do you seek passage for him?” The priest’s voice was deliberately disdainful.
Geth met his eyes in ritual defiance. “I was shava to him.”
