Paul Kemp - The Hammer and the Blade

"Think of it," Nix said. "She was born with the mind and talent to rule, but only rose to it because her brothers were killed and Afirion magic could change her form."

"What a waste had events not unfolded so," Egil said.

"A waste indeed," Nix agreed.

Images from her later reign showed her from time to time using the transmutational wand to renew the magic that had made her a man.

To his surprise, Nix felt a kinship to her. She'd lived a lie, her true self buried in her core, visible to no one but the gods. Nix empathized, though his own secret self was trivial compared to hers.

"You're in love again?" Egil said, his voice carrying a smile. "You wear a doltish smile."

"No," Nix said, losing the smile. "Just impressed. And thoughtful. Think about it, Egil. Abn Thuset's talents were rare, but probably not unique. How many other Afirion women lived lives made for them by men but unsuited to their talents and natures? How many women in Dur Follin?"

For some reason he flashed on his dreams, breathing doors, long hallways, screams, and bloody beds.

"Your point's well made," Egil said, "though I question the timing. We're here to rob her tomb. We should be about it."

"I believe I'd turn from this if I could," Nix said, and the spellworm churned his guts for the thought.

"Yet we can't and we both know it," Egil said. "We've robbed tombs of men both good and evil. And now we'll rob this one, though she be admirable. Come on, Nix."

Nix felt an odd sense of sacredness, but not out of respect for the dead. He'd long ago come to regard dead flesh as nothing but decaying matter. Its provenance was, instead, the connection he felt to Abn Thuset. The truth of her life was known to her father, herself, and now Egil and Nix. There was something in that secret shared that demanded reverence.

And yet he'd have to honor her in the breach, for he could not do anything but what he'd come to do. The spellworm would not allow anything else.

"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.