Orb Sceptre Throne by Ian C. Esslemont Read Free Book Online Page A

gold, plain, embossed with a face. And the mouth sculpted into the faintest of smiles like an aggravating, knowing smirk of superior knowledge.
    Ebbin almost stepped in to reach for that exquisite object, but something stopped him. Some instinct. And perhaps he was mistaken, but was that a ghostly, whispered,
not for you
… so faint he might have imagined it there in the dead silence so far underground? He pulled back his hand. Odd … these chambers looted, yet this crowning prize untouched. Why so?
    He backed away, raised his lantern to the outer walls. All of the smaller side niches broken open, their plinths empty. No, not all. One remained, its sealing door unscathed. He crossed to it. The door consisted of a single carved granite slab, unmarked, without any sigil. No hint of who, or what, lay within.
    He tapped the solid rock. An aristocrat of the legendary Imperial Age? He eyed the central dais-like installation.
    Or loyal retainer thereof.
    He ran his hands over the cold polished slab. He did not have the chisels to cut through this. And there was no way he was going to let his cretin assistants down here. No – to do this properly would take tools and resources currently beyond his reach.
    He’ll have to see his backer. And with this breakthrough the man will have to grant him further monies. He’s bankrolled him this far, after all. Remarkable foresight and vision this businessman from One Eye Cat has shown. Even if others murmur against the man and spread ugly rumours of criminal interests. He of the odd northern name: Humble Measure.
    As he returned to the tunnel an instinct, or irking detail, made him pause. Something about those sub-chambers. He counted them: twelve. Why always this mystical number? The legends? The old folk tales of the twelve fiends? Mere mythology handed down from ancient practices? Or a homage from the builders? He shook his head. Too tenuous as yet.
    Perhaps an answer would be forthcoming.
     

    Word had spread across Genabackis that the great Warlord of the north had for a time established a camp in the hills east of Darujhistan, the city that had taken his friend and sometime enemy, Anomander, Lord of Moon’s Spawn and Son of Darkness. Emissaries from across the north, the Free Cities and the Rhivi Plains came and went from his tent. They came asking for adjudication of land rights issues or title inheritances, and to settle territorial disputes. The great hulking beast of a man spent his days and evenings sitting cross-legged on layered carpets, drinking interminable cups of tea while city representatives and tribal elders argued and complained.
    One such night, when the issue of Sogena’s unfair taxation regime had degenerated into reminiscing of the old days before the arrival of the hated Malazans, Brood arose and went from the tent. Jiwan, son of one of the Warlord’s trusted old staff of Rhivi, and now making a name for himself within the great man’s council, took it upon himself to follow and intrude upon the Ascendant’s solitude.
    He found him standing alone in the night, staring west where the blue glow of the hated city softened the night. And perhaps the great man stared even further, beyond the city, to the barrow raised by his own hands in honour of his friend.
    Jiwan thought of the rumours circulating that the tomb was actually empty. After all, how could any darkness contain the one known as the Son of Mother Dark herself? But he neither knew nor cared about the truth of that. He did know that only fear of this man kept war from flaring in the north once again. A peace that held the Rhivi’s place upon the plains. The peace of the Warlord.
    A peace that may now be slipping. He cleared his throat to announce his presence. ‘You are troubled, lord?’
    The man swung his heavy beast-like gaze to him, then away, to the distant glow. ‘I allowed myself the luxury of thinking it was all over, Jiwan. Yet they rest uneasy. In the south. The Great Barrow of the