just one voice singing anymore. It was several, blended into an eerie chorus. It took all of her will not to turn her head and look around. “Chetiin,” she said, fighting to stay calm, “can you climb from-”
Before she could finish, the summoned light that had lit the vault flickered and vanished. Darkness cloaked the cavern beyond the glow of her drifting orbs. The chorus seemed to grow stronger, and even the orbs flickered briefly. Tenquis hissed between his teeth.
“Don’t move!” Ekhaas snapped. “Chetiin, how much farther?”
“A dagger’s length. Hold still.” One foot left her shoulder and planted itself on top of her head. Ekhaas stiffened her neck as Chetiin changed his perch as easily as if he were a bird. Ekhaas heard paper slapped onto stone and a rapid rubbing sound.
“Hurry,” said Geth, his voiced strained. She felt him shift, trying to hold their weight.
“I almost have it,” said Chetiin. Ekhaas counted heartbeats. One. Two. Three. Four “Done!” Chetiin said.
“Jump!” Geth gasped, and an instant later his support dropped out from under them. Ekhaas felt Chetiin’s weight leave her head. She heard Tenquis yelp again and the unseen chorus rise as if in excitement. Guessing at where the edge of the hollow had been, she tried to push off from Tenquis’s shoulders, from the stela, from anything that would push her away from the collapse.
It almost worked. Her back slammed into the slope of the hollow, driving the wind out of her. Her legs came down across someone else’s back. For a moment, all Ekhaas could do was lie still, staring at sparks of light that had nothing to do with her floating globes and everything to do with a hard impact.
At least it was quiet. The haunting chorus was gone. The vault was silent.
A small shadow hovered over her. It touched her face and then-none too gently-slapped her. Ekhaas blinked and sucked in air. She rolled over-all of her limbs obeyed her and there was no sharp pain, which was a good sign- and glared briefly at Chetiin before looking down at the body under her legs. It was Tenquis. She felt a surge of relief to see that he was also rolling over. She looked for Geth and found him on his hands and knees at the base of the stela, chest heaving from exertion. She started to rise and go to him, but Chetiin grabbed her.
“No,” he said. “Look!” He spun her around so that she faced up and out of the hollow.
It took her an instant to recognize what she saw. Six figures stood looking down at them. Six hobgoblin women wrapped in tattered lengths of linen. Six hobgoblin women as thin as bones, their flesh translucent and shimmering with its own cold light.
One of them raised a skeletal hand and pointed at her. “Trespasser,” she said in Goblin, in a voice that seemed like an echo of a song. “Thief. Defiler!”
CHAPTER SIX
16 Aryth
“No!” Ekhaas staggered to her feet. What were they? Some kind of spirits, but she’d heard no stories of ghosts in the vaults. “We’re not thieves. I’m not a trespasser. I’m Kech Volaar.” She thrust a hand back at Geth- Chetiin was urging him and Tenquis to their feet. “He bears Aram, the Sword of Heroes. He is worthy-”
“Defilers,” said the ghost again, and this time the others echoed her in a hiss like a bow drawn across the strings of some otherworldly instrument. “Defilers! Defilers!”
The word rose into a crashing wave of song so powerful it almost drove Ekhaas back down to her knees. With it came a wave of shame and despair. She was a thief and a violator of these sacred vaults. She was a traitor to her clan. To her race. To all of the dar.
Somewhere behind her, Tenquis cried out, and Geth shouted her name. Ekhaas squeezed her hands into fists and ground her teeth together. No, she was neither thief nor traitor; none of them were. Face down as if she were walking into a blizzard, she breathed in through her teeth, then raised her head, and sang back at the ghosts.
She chose an anthem of Dhakaan, a song that spoke of need and valor. Her voice clashed with the chorus of the ghosts like a lone warrior taking on a squad of swordsmen. For a moment, the two songs struggled against each other, then the song of the ghosts rose in strength and volume, pushing Ekhaas back. She staggered under the power of it. The glowing figures drifted forward, shrouded feet not quite touching the ground. Ekhaas clenched her fists, laid her ears back, and focused both her will and her voice.
Her song rose over the ghosts’, hung in the air, then slashed down.
The ghosts’ song vanished into silence. The spirits went with it, like a candle snuffed out or a chime muffled. The Vault of the Eye was still and-except for the heaving of her breath-silent once more.
It was so sudden that Ekhaas almost stumbled. Could she really have defeated the phantoms so easily?
Then, far off, she heard their song rise again. The ghosts had been dispersed but not destroyed.
“Horns of Ohr Kaluun,” said Tenquis. “What are they?”
An idea had sprung into Ekhaas’s head as she sang against the ghosts. “Duur’kala,” she said, her voice rough from the effort she’d put into her song. “Long ago, we were buried in the vaults. But I had no idea…” She turned. “Chetiin-the inscription?”
The goblin was helping Geth to his feet, but one hand dipped into the front of his shirt and produced a piece of paper that was dark with charcoal. Ekhaas slid back down the slope of the hollow and snatched it from him. The paper was badly creased and the charcoal had been rubbed over it in haste, but it carried a clear imprint: part of the description of the reward given to Tasaam Draet, two of the three notched rings, half of another, and the words that had been inscribed beneath them.
THE NOBLES OF DHAKAAN NO LONGER HAVE A SHIELD TO HIDE BEHIND, FOR MUUT IS IN THE KEEPING OF TASAAM DRAET.
Her heart leaped. References to the shattering of muut and to a shield for nobles couldn’t be a coincidence.
“What does it say?” demanded Geth.
Ekhaas read the inscription aloud. The shifter looked confused, then understanding flashed in his eyes. “The shattered pieces of the Shield of Nobles,” he said. “Tasaam Draet had them. His fortress-you said the ruins still stood. It could still be there.”
Ekhaas nodded. “It’s the best hope we’ve had so far!” Her ears twitched with the desire to climb back up the stela and see if anything else was recorded on it Another voice joined the ghostly chorus, this time from a different direction in the darkness. Far more than six ancient duur’kala had been buried in the vaults. Ekhaas swallowed her curiosity, roughly folded the paper once more, and stuffed it into a pouch on her belt. “We have to go.”
They circled the stela and climbed up the side of the hollow closest to the path through the Vault of the Eye. Ekhaas paused briefly on the edge, watching and listening, then gestured for the others to follow. The echoing chorus of the ghosts was drawing slowly closer, and, she suspected, in greater numbers than they’d initially confronted. Would the ghosts follow them? She hoped not-they’d seemed attracted to her songs, which meant that their best weapon against the spirits would only draw more of them. If she didn’t sing, maybe they would converge on the stela, and she and the others could slip away.
She moved as fast as she dared, trying to reverse the way back to the great shaft and the precarious stairs up to the Vault of the Night-Sun. Artifacts she’d made a point of marking in her mind looked strange from the other direction and under the thin light of the drifting globes. More than once, she had to turn around and walk backward to render them familiar. And always she was alert for the unnatural shimmer or approaching song of a ghostly presence. A dim glow appeared ahead, and her first instinct was to press herself into the shadow of a statue in case she could hide from the spirit. It took her a moment to realize that it was the ghostlight rod that Tenquis had dropped.
They’d made it back to the stairs. Ekhaas stepped out into the open, scanned the area one last time, then gestured for the others to go up the stairs ahead of her.
The chorus of the ghosts, muted, remained distant. As they reached the spot where the stairs met the ceiling of the vault, she looked back out onto the darkness, searching for the glowing forms, but there were none.
“Ekhaas!” rasped Chetiin. She whipped around. The others stood just below a narrow landing in the stairs, the first of the switchbacks as the stairs ascended. Ekhaas leaped up the last few stairs to join them.
Ahead of them was the arch over the stairs that marked the Vault of the Eye. Floating in silence beneath the
