"Let's go," he said to Egil, and they continued deeper into the tomb, Nix went through the motions mechanically, picking locks, avoiding a pit trip, dodging another deadfall, avoiding a vicious spring-propelled scything blade designed to sever legs below the knees.
Presently they stood over a smooth-sided circular hole in the floor, as wide in diameter as Egil was tall. Oddly, the scroll of celebratory artwork continued down the walls of the shaft. Nix had never seen anything of the kind before.
Two statues of cast metal flanked the hole, one of the Afirions' jackal-headed god, the other of a hyenaheaded goddess. Both had their arms raised, palms out, in a gesture that forbade further desecration.
Nix checked the ceiling, saw the holes in the stone where a block and tackle had been mounted to lower heavy things down the shaft, no doubt including Abn Thuset's body and sarcophagus. The workers and architects would have used rope ladders to get up and down during construction, so there were no handholds.
Nix dropped his torch down the shaft. It hit the floor after falling seven or eight paces and lay there smoking. An opening led to a chamber beyond, though Nix could not see it from the top of the shaft.
"Down is easy," Egil said. "Up's a harder one. Rope in your bag?"
"We used all we had to get down the cliff."
"We could go back and get some," Egil offered.
"You want to do that?"
They looked at each other a long moment, then said at the same time, "No."
Egil put a hand on one of the divine statues, leaned into it, and rocked it a tiny amount on its base. "It was cast hollow. Let's see if we can walk it over, then."
Grunting and sweating, with Egil doing most of the work, they leaned into the statue of the jackal-headed god and walked it toward the shaft. The base of the statue screamed along the floor as it scored the stone. Nix smiled, imagining the guardsmen back in the cave hearing the sound and trying to guess its cause.
They edged the metal deity to the edge of the large shaft and pushed the statue in. It tipped as it fell, catching the outstretched arm on the edge of the pit and snapping it off. The impact caused the base to swing back hard against the shaft wall, the sound of the collision enough to ring Nix's ears, but the statue hit the bottom of the shaft base first, still intact and standing. The top of the god's head was just below the lip of the shaft.
"Down we go," Egil said. He stepped on the god's head, one of many blasphemies the two had committed over the years, and descended. Nix followed him.
The shaft opened into a large, long chamber. Pictoglyphs covered the walls from floor to ceiling, and four alcoves lined the walls to right and left. Ensconced in each were the bodies of armed and armored Afirion royal guardsmen.
The close, still air smelled vaguely charred. An archway opened on the opposite side of the room. The stone carvings on the door's jambs – sand serpents, land lampreys, and toothfish – indicated that it was the entrance to the royal burial chamber.
Nix took out his crystal eye, activated its beam, and studied floor and ceiling with care. He noticed nothing to alarm him and stepped into the chamber. He approached one of the alcoves, blade in hand, and studied the body.
"Mind," Egil cautioned, armed now with a hammer in one hand.
"Always," Nix said.
The guard wore a ceremonial breastplate and once-rich attire, now rotted to ruin. A round shield emblazoned with a serpent and rising sun sat on the floor at his feet, and a khopesh hung from his wide girdle. Nix could have sold the guard's intact weapons to a collector for a year's worth of drink, but he had little interest in it.
Desiccation had thinned the guard's face and the helm he wore sat askew on his head. Empty eye sockets stared out at the bygone centuries, and his lips, peeled back from his teeth, left him leering at eternity. His exposed skin was blackened, blistered. Nix checked his hands and found them the same way.
"He isn't embalmed in the Afirion fashion," Nix said over his shoulder. "He's burned."
"Burned? Alive?"
Nix shrugged. "Couldn't say. But he was dressed and armored after being burned."
"Messy work, that," Egil said, walking slowly from alcove to alcove.
Nix checked the bodies of the other guards and found them in the same condition – burned, then dressed, armored, and stationed in the tomb of their wizard-king, or wizard-queen, as it were.
"They're not animating," Egil said. "So let's get this over with, yeah?"
Nix nodded, and together, they walked the long hall, watched by empty sockets, unsettled by the grins of burn-blackened teeth. Nix held his hands before the jambs that led to Abn Thuset's burial chamber. He felt nothing to indicate a ward.
"Not enspelled," he said, so they walked through a few steps.
The vaulted, circular chamber beyond featured the expected gold-chased sarcophagus in the center. Statues of Abn Thuset in her royal garb stood at the cardinal compass points. In one of the sculptures, a large horn hung from a chain around her neck. In another, she held a thin stick in her left hand, the transmutation wand that had allowed her to live and rule as a wizard-king rather than a wizard-queen. In all cases, the lifelike statues showed her as she really was – robes curved over breasts, around wide hips. Steely eyes looked out from an otherwise soft-featured feminine mien. The eyes reminded Nix of Tesha's.
"The tomb shows the truth of her," Egil said, his deep voice somber.
"Aye."
Between the statues of Abn Thuset, and taller by a head, stood four sculptures of the animal-headed gods and goddesses of the Afirions. All were carved with arms held wide, open to receive Abn Thuset's spirit to their Heaven.
Nix surveyed the room from the doorway but saw nothing to alarm him. He and Egil went to the sarcophagus. Nix held his hand out, just above the sarcophagus, but again felt nothing.
"Also not enspelled," he said.
"She seemed to want to make this easy," Egil said.
"Maybe she wanted someone to know the truth of her," Nix said.
Egil only grunted.
Nix had never felt any qualms about defiling tombs, but he hesitated in reaching for his crowbar. Abn Thuset was different. Her tomb was her truth. He felt as if he shouldn't defile it. His hesitation caused the spellworm to writhe around his innards. Egil must have read his expression.
"We should open it," Egil said, "though I don't like it either."
"Right," Nix said. "Maybe say a prayer beforehand?"
Egil's eyebrows went up in surprise. "Not sure she'd appreciate it. Not her faith."
Nix thought about how rarely she'd been able to live her life as a woman, how few moments of truth in her life.
"I think it fits," Nix said.
Egil acceded and bowed his head. Nix joined him and Egil intoned a short prayer to the Momentary God. He finished in fitting fashion.
"I pray she lived richly and lingered long in the moments that delighted her."
"Well said," Nix said. "Let's open it."
Egil jammed his crowbar under the lid's seal and pried it open. The smell of embalming spices and the faint whiff of perfume wafted out.
"Even her corpse smells like a woman," Egil said.
"Well done, milady," Nix said with a smile. He hoped she didn't rise. He didn't relish the thought of stabbing her animated corpse.
Grunting, they slid the sarcophagus lid aside to reveal the silk-lined interior of Abn Thuset's resting place.
The expertise of her priests had left her well preserved, though time and alchemy had left her desiccated, her skin cracked and leathery. Once-fine robes of turquoise-colored silk, now falling to rot, adorned her slim frame. Her long dark hair was braided with filaments of gold, and a modest gold tiara crowned her, rather than the full ceremonial headdress. Turquoise rings adorned her fingers. She lay on a sea of triangular gold coins.
A horn hung from a leather lanyard around her neck. Carved from yellowed bone and chased in silver, the horn matched the image from the statue. Tiny script, writte
n in black ink, covered the horn's entire surface. Nix did not recognize the script.
Near her left hand, but not in it, lay the teak and gold wand of transmutation, the magic stick that had allowed her to lie to history.
"Forgive me, lady," he said. He cut the lanyard with his dagger and lifted the horn from the sarcophagus. The magic it contained caused his fingers to tingle. He quickly joined the two ends of the lanyard with a hitch knot and put it around his neck.
"What about that?" Nix said. He nodded at the teakwood wand. It tempted him, he had to admit.
Egil stared at him across Abn Thuset's body. "I'd just as soon not see another wand in your hands."
"Could prove useful, though. And my satchel's gotten light, what with everyone getting poisoned and whatnot."
"Take it, or not, but be quick. Let's put her back to sleep and get clear."
"Aye," Nix said, and his love of things magical overcame his reverence for the sanctity of Abn Thuset's tomb. He slipped the wand from the sarcophagus and into his satchel. But they took only the wand and horn. They did not otherwise disturb her rest, and left her with the rest of her grave goods.
Together, they slid the sarcophagus's lid back into place.
"Let's go," Nix said, and they left the burial chamber, under the watchful eyes of Abn Thuset and the gods she'd worshipped.
Neither would say it for fear of tempting the spirits, but Nix knew that he and Egil were both thinking it: they'd never had an easier go in an Afirion tomb.
They hurried through the hall of alcoves, the gazes of the immolated guards seeming to follow them. As they walked through the archway leading out of the hall of alcoves and into the shaft, where now resided the broken-armed statue of a god, Nix heard a soft pop and sizzling sound.
"Uh-oh," he said.
"What?" Egil said, freezing in place, his voice tense. "Uh-oh, what?"
Nix turned and looked back, saw nothing but the alcoves, the guards, the artwork. Then the floor vibrated under their feet and somewhere, stone ground against stone.
"Shite," Egil said. "What's that?"
Nix shook his head, tense, listening, but nothing more happened.
"Some kind of failed ward, maybe. I–"
A fizzle sounded behind them, then a boom that blew heated wind through the chamber and up the shaft. A luminous orange light blossomed in the burial chamber, a light that grew more fulgent and soon revealed its cause: fire crawled along the walls on either side of the chamber in undulating, crackling waves. It swarmed into the alcove chamber, reached the first alcoves on either wall and engulfed the bodies.
Immediately a deep-throated roar of rage and pain came from the dead royal guardsmen, and a flaming specter of their forms, holding a khopesh made of smoke, stepped from the alcoves. The fire raced through the room, devouring the art on the walls, awakening the ancient guards to flame and rage.
"Climb!" Nix said, shoving Egil toward the statue of the broken-armed god. "Climb!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The flames pursued them as they clambered frantically up the metal body of a god. Egil reached the top first, hopped over the lip of the shaft, turned, and pulled Nix up by his shirt. His eyes were wide, orange with reflected fire.
Nix glanced down, saw flames ringing the shaft around the walls in a blazing vortex, rising fast. A sudden blast of superheated air forced both of them to lurch back from the edge. Nix's eyes fell on the artwork in the chamber, and he remembered the odd artwork in the shaft, and it registered with him.
"The ward uses the paintings for fuel! It's going to keep coming! Go, go!"
They scrambled to their feet and pelted off down the corridor, but made it only a dozen strides before blazing light lit the tomb behind them as bright as a noon sun. A chorus of enraged, otherworldly screams rebounded off the walls.
Nix looked back, shielding his eyes and face, to see a cloud of roiling flames pursuing them. And before the inferno went the blazing effigies of the royal guards, flaming spirits, fire in the form of men. They bore blades of smoke and glared through the black holes of their eyes.
"Run!" Nix said, and shoved Egil toward the exit.
They ran as if Hell were at their heels, but the flames gained on them, crawling along the walls beside them, crackling and sizzling. Nix felt his hair singe, found the scalding air hard to breathe. Smoke clouded the hall, made his eyes water, his throat tickle. The howls of the guards were in his ears and he expected their burning touch at any moment, but still he ran, leaping the pits they'd skirted, dodging the pressure plates, running without a care over the weighted stones in the floor.
"Run, damn it!" he shouted, partially to Egil, partially in hopes that Baras's guardsmen would hear them and get out of the tomb. "Run!"
They burst into the columned entry hall. Nix dared a momentary glance back and wished he hadn't. An inferno of smoke and fire swelled behind them, caustic and effulgent. The flaming guardsmen rode the heat, their expressions twisted in rage, their smoking blades held high.
"Keep running!" Nix said, dashing with Egil through the columns, across the length of the hall. Images of Abn Thuset's life and transformation flitted by him as he ran.
Egil was coughing as he ran but Nix dragged the bigger man along by the arm. Ahead, the door that opened into the natural cave was… closed.
"Gods damn them all!" Nix said.
"You told them to close it!" Egil said.
"I was jesting! Open the door!" Nix yelled as they ran, hoping the guards would hear him.
The fire raced along the walls, the floor, the columns, turning the entire chamber ablaze, effacing in fire the truth of Abn Thahl's life. The flaming spirits of the guards howled.
"Open the door!" Nix shrieked.
Sweat poured into his eyes, stung the scalded skin of his face and scalp.
Egil roared and picked up his pace. Nix saw right away what the priest intended and lagged a couple strides behind him.
From behind, flaming hands reached for Nix. Something hot scalded the back of his neck, burned his hair.
Egil lowered his shoulder and sprinted full speed up the stairs and into the metal door, his shoulder lowered. He hit it like a battering ram. The slab of metal shrieked as the impact drove the hinge bolts from the masonry. Egil and Nix tumbled into the room, landing on their stomachs atop the dislodged door.
The startled guards stood around them, eyes wide, blades in hand.
"We thought you was something else entire," Derg said. His relief lasted only a moment as he looked back into the columned hall, saw what was flowing up the steps.
Nix was already on his feet, pulling Egil up behind him. "Run for your life, you dumb gits! Run!"
He didn't wait to see if they heeded his words.
Fire, heat, and the roaring guards burst up the stairs and through the door. One of Baras's guards screamed, an agonized, pitiful sound, and the stink of charred flesh chased Nix through the narrow corridor that led back out to the natural cave. Despite the absence of murals, the flames and burning guardsmen chased them still, turning the cave into a furnace.
More screams from behind; more stink. Nix's legs felt numb. He was gasping, his hair singed, his throat raw from smoke and heat. He stumbled, slammed into a stalagmite.
"Keep going!" Egil said, both of them now communicating between exhausted gasps. "We grab the ropes, climb for our lives!"
"Too slow! We have to jump!"
"That water's too shallow!"
"The tide is in by now!"
"If it's not?"
"Then we're fakked!"
Egil muttered prayers to Ebenor as he and Nix drained their final reserves of energy and sprinted the last fifty paces for the cave mouth. But they were too slow and the crawling flames caught them at last. The walls of the cave turned to curtains of fire. The floor under their feet blazed. Nix's boots smoked. His cloak and trousers caught fire. He had breath enough only to scream at the pain.
Egil echoed his pained shriek but both kept running.
The howls of the guards rang in their ears. Swords of smoke slashed the air beside Nix. Blazing hands grabbed at his cloak, causing him to stumble and threatening to turn his clothing into a conflagration. In the crackle and roar of the flames he thought he heard the distant, mumbled sound of the Afirion tongue.
They reached the cave mouth at a dead run, both of them screaming, both of them aflame, and neither of them so much as slowed. They leaped out into open air, arms flailing, clothes ablaze and trailing smoke, twin comets falling into the watery void of the Bleak Sea below.
The flaming guards pursued them even over the edge. In the few heartbeats it took to plummet down the cliff face, Nix saw the blurry glow of the guards' blazing forms reflected on the surface of the water below, trailing them down.