A Gift from Draazstone

Synopsis

They were still turning over Kurvroc’s house when somebody knocked. Three hobgoblins out of Draazstone had come calling, and Mikhail knew nothing about them beyond a cousin’s best friend twice removed. Cloaks, boots and weapons went into the cubbies by the door without a word, and they noticed at once that their host and Koa were still booted. Aldo brought in one glass short, which in that company is a statement of rank, and it was taken as intended: offense first, then appreciation that the form had been used properly. Varka and Mazhira took glasses; the three settled silently among themselves that Corvin would go without.

Then one of them remarked on the magnificent adornment their host wore, and asked whether he knew its history. Mikhail did, and told them what the crown was and whose it had been. Aldo bent to his ear to say he should be careful what he said; Mikhail patted his shoulder and carried on. “It has deep history and it has passed many a brow,” one of them said, not delicately, “and yet it falls on yours.” Only for now, Mikhail conceded aloud. Then he asked whether any of them were Muharib, and one had distant relatives who were, who knew the region and had visited recently. The barb followed: they had come looking for stolen artifacts and heirlooms, and here their host stood in the pinnacle of Muharib heritage, absent from Loshev when the raiders called and better off for it. One of them stood. “I’m sure they will speak with you soon.” At the door they left a parcel, because in Draazstone nobody calls on a home uninvited without a gift.

The argument indoors was the better one, and neither man was wrong. Aldo said Mikhail had forced a conflict the party could not yet meet, against people who do not negotiate by letter; Mikhail said the crown had been recognized on sight, and that a lie only buys weeks and then makes permanent enemies. Koa walked in on the worst of it holding a tray of the dead man’s leftovers, said he had brought snacks, and stayed until Mikhail ate.

Sulking in the basement afterward, Aldo found a false wall, built so well that the brick behind it read continuous, with no latch and nothing his own Mól ring would answer to. He put on Billy, told the other two he had no idea how to open it, and left. That evening he sat near the callers at their inn in another man’s face, and heard that the one who had noticed the crown was still choosing when to report it, weighing the favor it might earn against the face it might cost, and that Hinta had been meant to marry one of them.

The parcel went to her in the morning. It was Draz Steel, the finest metal to be had for several hundred miles. It was also a welcome mat and a trap: a foreigner who steps out of line in Draazstone goes to prison for three years, or seven. She knew the stamp and the House of Keth behind it. Her history with them Mikhail already knew and did not open. She looked at the crown, looked again, and said it was magical, then made Mikhail admit in front of Koa that she had offered him a Mól sword for the estate. Aldo showed her the Ravenhold dagger the other two had never seen him carry. It was made for rituals, she said, the darker sort out of the Mól past, and from her manner people rather than animals. He told nobody.

The wall wanted two rings on two different people, both against the doorway, so that the current ran from one through the stone into the other. The Ring of Säv alone had raised nothing but a vibration under Mikhail’s palm. Behind it was a small store room walled in Mól metal, holding dishware and statues and furniture and the rest of Kurvroc’s library. Above the door the filigree all collapsed into one stone with a gem set inside it. Mikhail would not let her crack it: he wanted the door to go on locking, and remembered what came out the last time they broke one. Volumes nine and twenty and the whole purple set completed two more subject sets of the Mól Encyclopædia, sealed in there before Kurvroc ever burned the rest.

Then west, days of plain and hill, with gnoll kills along the Goat Trail. At the southeastern mouth of the valley there were tents and easily three dozen gnolls and hyenas, and the party ran. A thrown spear went through Mikhail’s armor into his side, and Aldo turned in the saddle and shot the gnoll who threw it. Hours of Koa’s navigating brought them around to the northwestern pass, an old Mól road wide enough for merchants. The gnolls used to live in that valley; now it was their dominion, patrolled and claimed. They crossed four miles of it on foot without being caught, and Aldo picked the keep door open under a scent cloak, but they were seen at fifty feet on the last dash for it. Koa hung back so that he could ride last and hardest, and when a spear hit Nightstorm what rose in him was not the rage he had learned to control but something deeper. He rode the gnoll down and took its head most of the way off in one sweep, and the moment it dropped the thing let go of him. Inside, with the door barred, he stood staring at it while Mikhail, who was the one bleeding, asked him for a hand with the horse. They went up the stairwell they had mapped years ago and stopped at the dial lock, not knowing whether Al-Sāmiyah had brought her chicks in off the ledge.