Paul Kemp - The Hammer and the Blade

"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, written 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!"

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.