edge of the Khraal.” He looked them over again. “If you want to go there, it will cost you.”

“You’ll take us?” said Tenquis. “After all that?”

A grin showed all of Tooth’s sharp teeth. “Hunters tell stories. If I get you there and come back, I’ll be a legend.” He lowered his voice. “This is my deal: For what you pay me, I swear by Balinor’s blood to take you to Suud Anshaar, but I’m not going in. I’ll wait for you, guide you back, but if you don’t come out of the ruins, I’m leaving.”

Ekhaas understood immediately. If Tooth returned from Suud Anshaar-even if it was as the sole survivor of a doomed expedition-his reputation would be made. She looked to the others. Chetiin and Tenquis nodded, the tiefling a little more slowly than the goblin. Geth grinned.

“I like him,” he said with a nod at Tooth.

“Agreed then,” said Ekhaas.

Tooth’s grin grew even wider. “Good. Now let’s talk about how much I’ll charge you-”

“We’re inflexible on that,” said Chetiin. He held out a small fist. “But I believe this should do.” He opened his fingers to reveal three sparkling straw-colored topazes.

During their journey across Darguun, they’d realized that while they had some money between them, it wasn’t enough to persuade a guide to take them deep into the jungle in search of cursed ruins. Fortunately, Chetiin had the answer. Unraveling the stitching of his belt, he’d revealed a tiny, portable treasure. “For emergencies,” he’d said as he sewed the leather back up.

The grin on Tooth’s face faltered, his eyes going wide in its place. Chetiin closed his fingers again. “When do we leave?” he asked. “Sooner is better.”

Rain came down heavy on a night as black as a traitor’s soul. Deep eaves shielded the windows of the Talenta Hospitality, letting cool air circulate into the busy common room. Lanudo’s guests for the night had finally abandoned the dubious shelter of the open-air taverns for somewhere a little more protected-the halfling circulated through the crowd, making certain that the guests whose rooms leaked worse than usual got extra beer. Sufficiently drunk, they wouldn’t mind the additional damp in their beds.

He happened to be near the door when it opened to admit two figures. Late for travelers, Lanudo thought, but he’d never turned away potential guests before-and on such a miserable night, he could charge extra for a corner in the common room. He turned to greet them.

The greeting caught on his tongue.

The bigger of the two figures was a bugbear, bareheaded to the rain and looking as if he’d barely noticed the storm. There was a sprawling scar on his chest, a crude outline of a woman with the tail of a snake and outstretched wings. The sign of the Fury.

The smaller figure wore a magewrought cloak that shed water like a duck’s back. Lanudo expected to find a goblin underneath, but the figure threw back the cloak’s hood to reveal the smiling, nut-brown face of a gnome. Bright eyes fixed on him.

“Ah, innkeep,” said the gnome. “Tell me you can spare us going back out on a night like this. My name is Midian Mit Davandi, historian to the court of Lhesh Tariic Kurar’taarn. We’re trying to catch up to some colleagues: a hobgoblin duur’kala, a shifter, a tiefling, and a goblin mounted on a black worg. Quite a distinctive group. I wonder if you might have seen them.”

The gnome’s manner was friendly, and a lilt in his voice implied that Lanudo would be doing him a huge favor by helping him locate his friends. Lanudo’s gut told him differently. Midian’s bright eyes were hard with a sharp cunning. His smile was cold. The bugbear didn’t smile at all. One hand gripped the shaft of a heavy trident, fingers rubbing the wood. The other hand rested on his belt, uncomfortably close to a dangling clump of reddish hair and orange-brown flesh. It came to Lanudo that he’d been in Arthuun too long if he was able to recognize the scalp of a hobgoblin on sight.

He doubted very much if the gnome and the bugbear were merely trying to catch up with their “colleagues.” A better man than him might have tried to throw them off the trail.

A better man than him wouldn’t have lived long in Arthuun.

“You’ve missed them,” he said. “They stayed a night but rode out two days ago, heading into the Khraal. They didn’t say anything about where they were going in front of me, but they hired a guide, a hunter named Tooth. When he met them here, he looked like he was ready for a substantial expedition. If you want to know more than that, you should go to a tavern called the Rat’s Tail and ask there about what Tooth was up to.”

Midian raised his eyebrows. “Refreshing honesty. I appreciate that. Would the Rat’s Tail still be open tonight? No? How are your rooms, then?”

“Leaky and wet,” Lanudo said bluntly, “but I’ll give you the same rooms your colleagues stayed in if you want to search them.”

“Splendid,” said Midian. “How much?”

Lanudo charged him the same he would have on a dry night and, as the pair of them went upstairs, resolved to sleep in the bed of the handcart that the cooper three doors down kept behind his shop. Just to be safe.

12 Vult

A week after they left Arthuun, they heard the first shrieks in the night. Ekhaas sat beside their small fire and listened to the screams and wails as they rolled back and forth in the darkness. The jungle played tricks with distance. With rare exceptions, when a ridge or outcropping rose above the canopy and gave them a view of the green horizon, their world was limited to a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty paces in any direction. The shrieks had the same thin quality as distant thunder, but they could have been much closer.

“Suud Anshaar?” said Tenquis.

“Varags,” answered Tooth. “We’re on the edge of their territory now. Another day, then we’ll hear the Wailing Hill.”

“Is it possible the howls that are supposed to be Suud Anshaar are really just the howls of varags?” Geth asked.

“All of the hunter legends say there’s no mistaking the wails of Suud Anshaar for the cries of anything alive.” Tooth stirred the fire, then sat back. “Gives us another story, Ekhaas. Something to listen to besides varags.”

Though they’d tried to use false names at first, Tooth had figured out who they were within a day of leaving Arthuun. Word of events in Rhukaan Draal had filtered down to the south of Darguun after all. Tooth didn’t ask them for their version of the story, though-some sort of unspoken hunter’s courtesy, Ekhaas suspected. Maybe the bugbear had his own secrets.

And Tariic hadn’t, as they’d feared, put a bounty on them. Without a reward, Tooth didn’t have any incentive to turn on them. Rhukaan Draal was a long way away and the people of Arthuun had other things to worry about besides who ruled in Rhukaan Draal. As Tooth had put it, “Haruuc was a good chib. He traveled south sometimes. He paid attention to us. They say he hunted in the Khraal when he was a young warrior. This Tariic-what do we know about him? What’s he done? We hear stories of a victory in battle against the Valenar, but the stories don’t say that Tariic fought personally.”

With varags howling in the distance and Suud Anshaar only a couple of days’ travel away, Ekhaas felt emboldened. “Tooth,” she said, “how would you like to hear the real story of the Battle of Zarrthec from someone who was there?”

The bugbear cupped his big ears in interest. Ekhaas sat a little closer to the fire, closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, then opened her eyes again. “Raat shi anaa-the story continues. The sun rose on a battlefield covered with tattered fog, where an army of Darguun waited for an ancient foe…”

As the story of the battle, of Dagii’s cunning and his warriors’ bravery unfolded, Tooth sat up straighter and leaned forward until he might have fallen in the fire if he had lost his balance. Tenquis and Geth, who already knew the story, and Chetiin, who’d also been there, sat forward too. Even Marrow raised her head to listen, especially at the point where she and Chetiin arrived leading reinforcements of taarka’khesh, the wolf-riding cousin clan of the shaarat’khesh. Ekhaas downplayed her own part in the battle-how she’d rallied Dagii’s troops with her songs-but she couldn’t in all modesty leave it out entirely.

By the time she finished, eight of the twelve moons had risen, and the shrieks of the varags had moved even farther away. “… and with the last of the elves fleeing back to their hiding place in the Mournland, Dagii mounted the command hill and took up the Riis Shaari’mal, the ancient battle standard of Dhakaan under which he’d fought,

Вы читаете The tyranny of ghosts
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату