The Grieving Tree: The Dragon Below Book II (34 page)

“No,” said Dandra. “It’s impossible that the Dhakaani could have made something to affect kalashtar.” Her eyes were wide. “This device has to be thousands of years old, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” said the wizard. “The Empire of Dhakaan fell after the Daelkyr War. I think historians agree it was dead by about five thousand years ago.”

Dandra raised her hand and wrapped it around her psicrystal. “How much do you know about the history of the kalashtar?”

Orshok and Ashi looked at her blankly and shook their heads. Geth spoke up, repeating bits and pieces that he had heard during the Last War. “Kalashtar come from across the Dragonreach. From the continent of Sarlona.”

“They come from farther away than that,” Singe said. He frowned. “Kalashtar are the descendants of humans and spirits from Dal Quor, the plane of dreams. That’s why you have psionic powers.”

Dandra nodded. “We’re not descendants as such—the Quori spirits that formed the first kalashtar were exiles from Dal Quor, and they were given refuge in Eberron by merging with a group of humans in the nation of Adara in Sarlona. As those first kalashtar married and had children, the original Quori spirits splintered among their lineages. The point is, we know exactly when kalashtar came into being. It was eighteen hundred years ago.” She pointed her spear at the Dhakaani device. “How could an empire that was dead more than three thousand years before kalashtar even existed build something to affect us? Why would they?”

“Maybe they’re not the same device,” said Orshok. All eyes turned to him and the young druid shifted uncomfortably. “Dah’mir’s device was bigger, wasn’t it? A knife and a sword have a lot in common, but you don’t use them for the same thing.”

Singe’s eyebrows rose. “But both devices were built around
the same Khyber shard. Once a shard is attuned to a particular magic, it can’t be changed.”

Geth was abruptly conscious of the weight of Adolan’s stone collar around his neck. During the battle at the Bonetree mound, the Gatekeeper magic within the collar had protected him from the mental assault of a mind flayer. The Dhakaani sword at his waist had been forged to kill illithids and the other aberrant servants of the daelkyr; the ancient hobgoblins must have known about the tentacle-faced creatures’ deadly abilities. “Dandra,” he said, “are the powers of mind flayers psionic or magical?”

Her mouth opened, then closed as her eyes narrowed. After a moment, she said, “Psionic. They might come from the madness of Xoriat instead of the dreams of Dal Quor, but they’re still psionic. It’s like the difference between the magic of druids and the magic of wizards.”

“The Dhakaani fought mind flayers during the Daelkyr War.” Geth looked to Singe. “What if the binding stone traps things with psionic powers and all the wires and crystals around it are like …?” He struggled to put the idea in his head into words. “Like a sieve that only lets certain things through. What if the Dhakaani built a device that let the shard capture mind flayers, but Dah’mir made a new device that captures kalashtar instead.”

Singe drew a long, shallow breath and pulled on his whiskers as he turned back around to stare at the device. “Twelve moons,” he muttered. He spun around sharply and walked to the nearest wall. Closing his eyes for a moment, he spoke a word of magic and laid a hand against the wall, then opened his eyes again and stepped back to scan the wall. His gaze seemed strangely unfocused but he clenched his teeth. “Twelve
bloody
moons.”

“You can read it?” asked Dandra.

“Yes and no,” Singe said. “No, because it’s not all words. A lot of it is research notes, just like that researcher at Wynarn. And yes—” He blinked and turned around to face Geth. “—because
you
might be right.”

Geth felt his gut tighten at the angry disgust in the wizard’s voice, but no one else seemed to notice. Dandra was pushing forward. “It was meant to trap mind flayers?”

“I think so, but it’s hard to tell.” Singe turned and traced a hand across the wall, his eyes going unfocused once more. “These
are mostly notes and calculations. They talk about illithids and arrangements of crystals that would attune the binding stone to their aura. I can only follow bits of it. They look more like the notes of an artificer than of a wizard. Other passages don’t make any sense at all.” He shifted his hand to another section of text. “This describes a sphere made of carved stone beetles linked together—it sounds like a child’s puzzle.” He touched other words. “This curses workers who fled the kraat. This tries to work breakfast into the equation for binding mind flayers. This—” He winced and lifted his hand away. “This just repeats over and over ‘My name is Marg. My name is Marg. My name is Marg.’”

“I think someone lost themselves in their work,” said Natrac. “You were right when you said you felt madness in the air, Dandra.”

“Why would a Dhakaani have built something like this, though?” asked Ashi, still circling the ancient device. “Dah’mir had to tie Tetkashtai and the other kalashtar down to use his device on them. Wouldn’t it be easier just to kill a mind flayer directly?”

“This might answer that,” Singe said. He had paced further along the wall, trailing his hand over the writing. He read from another passage. “Too large! The first stones were so much smaller. The matrix can be made larger but focus will be a problem. How did he do it?”

Dandra paled. “There were other binding stones?”

“It sounds like there were—at one time, at least. Marg says
were
and it sounds like he was trying to re-create them rather than come up with something completely new.” Singe looked up at the wall. “I wonder who this other ‘he’ was, though.”

The wizard’s pacing had drawn them past the strange stone sculpture of the grieving tree and the far end of the great chamber loomed in the shadows at the edge of Geth’s vision. He squinted at it, took a few more paces, and let out a soft growl. “Maybe this was him.”

Behind him, Singe and Dandra both turned and came forward. The soft glow of magical light spilled across the floor—then climbed over the legs of the statue that stood, tall as the sculpted tree, within the sharp point of the chamber’s end. Dandra lifted her spear high, throwing light onto the statue’s torso and head.

The statue depicted a Dhakaani hobgoblin, or so Geth guessed from its build and from the sword—very much like his own—that it gripped, point resting against the ground. The subject had been a man and muscular even for a hobgoblin, with massively thick arms and shoulders. He wore a smith’s thick apron over a bare chest, with heavy gloves on his hands. Whether he had been fierce, benevolent, or wise, however, was impossible to tell. The statue’s face had been ruined, hacked away leaving only deep scars in the stone.

The blade of the statue’s sword, as wide as the shifter’s own body, had also been gashed and as Geth moved closer, he saw that several characters had been crudely removed from the beginning of a longer inscription in Goblin. Writing identical to that on the walls throughout Taruuzh Kraat had been scrawled in its place.

Near the statue’s feet, a few pitiful crumbled bones lay mixed with chips of stone, bits of metal ornament, an axe with a metal shaft, and a short black rod. One of the bones was a hobgoblin skull.

Singe slipped past Geth and laid his hand against the inscription on the stone sword. His eyes unfocused once more as he read the Goblin characters, then he lifted his hand and looked up at the statue’s scarred face. “His name has been erased,” he said. He pointed at the remaining text, moving his hand along as he read. “The rest of the inscription says, ‘The Father of the Grieving Tree. The time will come again. Three great works stand together as allies: treasure, key, guardian, disciple, and lord.’”

The others fell silent, but Geth couldn’t hold back a groan. “The Grieving Tree again. Grandfather Rat, another bloody riddle?”

“The spell lets me read a language,” Singe snapped back irritably. “That doesn’t mean I understand everything. The inscription might mean something in Goblin.”

“What does the other writing say?” Natrac asked.

Singe looked up at again. “‘Keep your secrets, old master. Marg has surpassed you! I have created a new—’” He frowned. “It ends suddenly.”

Ashi knelt beside the fragmentary remains at the statue’s feet. “There’s not much left of him,” she said, “but I think Marg died
in the moment of his triumph.” She pointed at the skull and Geth saw that part of it was fractured. “I think he fell.”

“An apprentice trying to outdo his master?” asked Orshok.

“I think you’re right.” Singe turned and walked away from the defaced statue to join them again. “Our nameless master created the first binding stones, but didn’t share the secret. Marg went mad creating another stone, then died before he could do more than taunt a dead man.” The wizard cursed. “But he still left a record of his research and thousands of years later, Dah’mir came along.”

“But there’s so much writing,” said Dandra. “How long would it take to sort it out?”

Singe shrugged. “How much time does a dragon have? Decades? He spent two hundred years with the Bonetree clan before he tested his device on Tetkashtai, Medalashana, and Virikhad.”

“Why leave Taruuzh Kraat then? Why did he create the Bonetree clan? Why not build a tribe of followers here?” Dandra pressed the tips of her fingers into her forehead in frustration. “We know where Dah’mir got the binding stone now, but we’re no closer to understanding why he tried using it to turn kalashtar into servants of the Dragon Below.”

Orshok took a breath and stepped forward. “No,” he said. “We are. It’s the sword and dagger again. Batul taught me that it was Gatekeeper magic and Dhakaani weapons that drove back the daelkyr and their servants and won the Daelkyr War.” He touched the symbol of the Gatekeepers that he wore around his throat. “But Gatekeeper magic and Dhakaani weapons are meant to stop aberrations and the creatures of Xoriat.”

Dandra’s fingers slid down her face and she stared at the orc in amazement. Singe narrowed his eyes. “You don’t use the same defense against a sword as you use against a dagger,” he said.

Orshok nodded.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” growled Geth.

“All of the ancient defenses against the great powers of the Dragon Below are focused against the madness of Xoriat,” said Dandra slowly, as if she was working out the answer herself. She looked up sharply. “By subverting kalashtar to the service of Khyber, Dah’mir gives the daelkyr servants with the psionic abilities of mind flayers but without their vulnerabilities.”

“And the ability to move about easily,” Singe added. “Mind flayers are monsters, but kalashtar can pass unsuspected almost anywhere.”

“Wait,” Geth said. He pointed back at the Dhakaani device. “The binding stone was built to capture mind flayers, but
it
captured kalashtar as well.”

“But it took a dragon at least two hundred years to figure out how to do that,” replied Orshok. He looked frightened. His hands were clenched so tight around the shaft of his hunda stick that his knuckles were white. “We need to tell someone about this.”

“Batul,” said Geth. “The Gatekeepers need to know.”

Singe nodded slowly. “I think you’re right.”

“What about Ekhaas?” asked Dandra. “Do you think she knows anything more about the history of Taruuzh Kraat? She might be able to tell us something that could help.”

“We’ll talk to her back at Tzaryan Keep.” Singe led the way across the great chamber, past the pale stone of the grieving tree, and toward the stairs back up to the corridor. “We’ll set out for Vralkek first thing in the morning—Robrand will help us. He might even know where we can find passage back to Zarash’ak and the Shadow Marches.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Geth saw Dandra stiffen. Singe must have seen it as well because he muttered, “I’m sorry, Dandra. I don’t think we have a choice.”

“We’ll be heading back toward Dah’mir,” Dandra said.

Singe stared ahead grimly. “Maybe he’s moved on by now.”

The return trip up the long corridor was much faster. They didn’t bother creeping along or trying to remain quiet. They didn’t pause to look down side passages or into rooms. There was no point. Taruuzh Kraat was empty. They moved along the corridor quickly—Geth even caught Dandra with her feet off the ground, skimming the air as she did when she fought. No one said much. Geth suspected that they were all too caught up in what they had just uncovered.

The stream of sunlight that fell through the hole to the surface was a welcome sight. Singe paused beside it. “Geth,” he said, pointing. “You first. You’re the best climber and you’re strong enough to help pull the rest of us out.”

Geth growled under his breath, but there was no conviction to it. After hours in the ancient dimness of the ruins, open air and warm light would be a welcome change. Orshok and Ashi linked hands to help boost him up and into the hole. Geth kicked and wriggled, bracing himself with his elbows, then catching the stones of the broken wall with his feet and pushing. Below him, Ashi and Orshok coughed on the dirt he dislodged. He gritted his teeth and clawed his way up the sides of the hole until his head and shoulders popped out the other end of the hole. It was well on into the afternoon—the sun was low and bright in his eyes.