The Hammer and the Blade

PROLOGUE

Nix studied the sanctum's door, a large slab of black metal featureless save for the narrow gash of a keyhole. Intricate stone reliefs of land lampreys and sand serpents — creatures deemed holy in ancient Afirion — lunged from the door's posts and lintel, the ropes of their serpentine bodies entwined in a chaotic swirl of fangs, bulging eyes, and implied violence. Afirion pictoglyphs covered the walls, the black, gold and turquoise ink telling the tale of Abn Thahl's life.

Nix put his hands on his hips and stared at the door as if he could will it open, like one of the mindmages of Oremal.

No luck. He frowned, looked over at Egil.

"No rust on a door more than six centuries old. Odd, not so?"

Egil sat on the floor with his back against the smooth sandstone wall, his twin hammers, both goresplattered, lying on the stone floor to either side, his legs stretched out before him. Sweat collected in the fringe of black hair that ringed his head above the ears. Blood — but not his own — speckled his thick forearms.

"Odd, aye," the priest said, worrying at a wound in the tree trunk of his leg. The tattoo inked on his bald pate — an eye looking out from the center of a starburst, the symbol of Ebenor the Momentary God — stared at Nix while Egil looked down. "Can you open it?"

The question jabbed a finger in the eye of Nix's pride. He turned to face his friend, his own finger pointed like a loaded quarrel at the top of Egil's head.

"Perhaps one of the zombies struck the sense from your head? Can I open it? I? You may as well ask can a whore hump, or can a wizard dissemble. These are things intrinsic to their nature. Can I open it? Hmph."

"There you are," said Egil, ignoring Nix's tirade. He brandished a sliver of bloody obsidian he'd plucked from a small gash in his left thigh and squinted up at Nix, brown eyes all innocence. "You were saying something about a wizard humping locks?"

Nix crossed his arms over his chest and glared. "You heard what I said, whoreson."

"I heard," Egil said, with a longsuffering sigh and a weary nod. He held the sliver of stone close to the lantern for a better look. "Look at this. It's a piece of one of the zombies' blades."

Nix and Egil had pulped a score of the undead creatures — onetime temple guards animated to unlife by the wizard-king's sorcerers — on their way through Abn Thahl's tomb.

"You may have heard but you didn't reply, so let me restate. Are you acquainted with a door I couldn't open? I press the question only to illustrate your softheadedness, as demonstrated by a faulty memory. It's important that you understand your limits."

Egil tossed the sliver to the ground, tore a strip of cloth from his shirt, and pressed it to his leg wound. "There was that time in the Well of Farrago-"

Nix shook his head emphatically. "That was not a door."

Egil looked up, thick eyebrows raised. "It had hinges, a handle. It opened and closed. How can you say-"

"It was a hatch."

"A hatch?"

"Of course it was a hatch, and only a fool priest of the Momentary God would confuse a door with a hatch. A hatch is a different thing from a door. A hatch can be troublesome. You see? Does having an eye inked on your head make your other two blind, or otherwise detrimentally affect your cognition?"

They stared at each other for a long moment, the lantern light flickering over their faces.

"Well enough," Egil said at last. "It was a hatch."

"Now you're mocking me? I hear mockery."

"I'm not. I'm agreeing. I said it was a hatch." Egil stood, tested the leg, and seemed satisfied.

"I heard the words," Nix said, waving a hand as if to fend off a buzzing insect. "It's the tone that bothers."

Egil opened his mouth to speak but Nix held up a hand to stop him.

"Leave off. We both know the truth."

He turned back to the door, muttering, more determined than ever to get it open. He eyed it from different angles, examined the stonework around it. There were no hinges, so he surmised it opened with hidden counterweights. Holes bored into the pale stone above the lintel caught his eye. They'd been filled with plaster long ago. Perhaps sand had been poured into the chamber beyond after the door had been sealed? He'd seen such things before.

He went down on his belly, saw that the bottom of the door sat flush on the floor, sealed with a thick layer of tar or something similar.

That he'd never seen before, and it puzzled him.

Perhaps to prevent blades from being stuck under? But why?

"Maybe try to pick the lock?" Egil offered.

Nix answered with an obscene gesture.

Egil grinned, bending his wounded leg. "Your pride is too easily tweaked. And I make that point only to illustrate the fragility of your ego. It is, after all, important to understand your limits."

Nix stood and offered the obscene gesture with both hands.

"And so my claim is validated," Egil said. The priest took his yellowed ivory dice from the pocket of his trousers, shook them in his hand.

"Must you?" Nix asked, knowing the answer.

"Yes."

Nix reached out slowly toward the door, stopping a finger's width from its surface. He waited, waited, and after a moment, the hairs on his forearms rose. He looked knowingly at Egil.

"You see? Warded."

"Well noticed," Egil said. "Your education at the Conclave wasn't wasted. Now what?"

"Now this," Nix said, and unslung his leather satchel of needful things.

Within the satchel he carried his tools, both precise and blunt, the enchanted items he'd acquired through purchase or theft, together with sheets of parchment, sticks of chalk, a vial of ink, quills, and anything else that seemed to him likely to be of use on an expedition. It also held his collection of keys, both mundane and enspelled.

"One of your gewgaws?" Egil asked. The priest stepped to his side, eyed first the door, then the contents of the satchel.

Nix rifled through his various keys — all of them purchased in the Low Bazaar or found on expeditions — until he found the one he wanted: a small brass beauty, with a thin tube for a blade and a beaten copper coin for a bow. He held it up for Egil to see.

"My gewgaws, as you so roughly call them, have saved us more than once."

"That's truth," Egil acceded. "But the odds of that key working in an Afirion tomb are about as good as finding a virgin in the Slick Tunnel."

"Or, one might say, about as likely as finding a priest possessed of wit."

Egil chuckled. "Nice."

Nix smiled in return. "And this isn't an ordinary key. I purchased it in Dur Follin's bazaar from an agent of Kerfallen the Grey Mage. It opens wards, not doors."

"Hmm," said Egil, squinting at the key. "I pray it's so, though I credit the agents of wizards not at all." He bowed his bucket-sized head reverently, putting the eye of Ebenor squarely on Nix.

"Alas, I credit your prayers still less. Ebenor isn't called the Everlasting God, my friend. The Momentary God was divine for… a moment."

Egil's eyes moved off, grew distant as they did when he discussed his faith, when his thoughts turned to the events that had brought him to a life of religion. "Lives are made of moments, Nix. You know that."

Nix heard the seriousness in his friend's tone, but the door had left him irritated, so he did not tread as lightly as he ordinarily would.

"I do, but Ebenor's dead, so there are no more moments left to him. He can't hear prayers, my friend. And you're his only worshipper as far as I know."

Egil smiled through his beard and adjusted the mail shirt he wore. "That makes me high priest, not so?"

Nix already regretted his jab. "I guess it does. Pray, then, high priest. Can't hurt."

While Egil murmured a prayer in the coarse syllables of his native tongue, Nix spoke a word in the Language of Creation to awaken the magic of the key. When it warmed in his hand, he pointed the open end of the key's tube at the door, drew his punch dagger, and lightly tapped the key's end with its point.

The key vibrated, lightly at first, then more strongly, emitting a prolonged chime that would have done credit to the Great Clock of Ool, the sound reverberating through the large underground chamber, the echo replaying itself again and again. Loose sand misted down from the ceiling blocks.

The metal warmed between his fingers, and, as the sound faded away, grew hotter. Nix held on as long as he could then dropped it with a curse. It hit the floor, flared white, and melted into slag.

A wet slithering and high-pitched shriek spiked his adrenaline and jerked his head up. He caught a flash of one of the stone lampreys carved in the door jamb, now made flesh and as thick around as his forearm, lunging at him out of the stone, the black hole of its mouth ringed by a vicious sphincter of fangs.

He stumbled back, trying to brandish the punch dagger he still held, but he was too slow, and Egil snatched the creature out of the air in mid-lunge and slammed it to the ground. It writhed frenetically in his grasp, hissing, attempting to twist enough of its body free to latch its teeth onto his flesh. The priest pinned it with his boot.

"Your blade, Nix!"

Nix recovered himself, jerked his falchion free of its scabbard, and cleaved the lamprey in half. Its pieces squirmed for a moment, spurting stinking black ichor, before going still and reverting back into two chunks of stone.

"Fak," Nix cursed, his heart still racing. He sheathed the punch dagger.

Egil removed his boot from the creature's body and eyed Nix.

"You see?" the priest said, kicking one of the pieces of the creature across the sand-dusted floor. "Moments, Nix. Life and death are experienced in the moments. We just had one."

Nix thumped Egil on his huge shoulder. "Point taken. Thanks."

He took a moment to let his heart still, then held his palms before the door once again. He waited, but no longer felt the tingle of an active ward.

"The key dispelled the ward," he said.

"Bah!" Egil answered. "The key activated the ward. We could've done that ourselves."

"I blame your prayers."

"And I blame your 'magical' key. Perhaps a chat with Kerfallen's agent is in order when next we see him?"

"Agreed." Nix rubbed his nose thoughtfully. "Though, in fairness, it wasn't a very expensive key."

Egil chuckled, started rattling the dice in his hand once more.

Nix kneeled before the door. "Shine the lantern's light in the keyhole for me."

Egil pocketed his dice, held both of his hammers in one hand, and with the other angled their lantern so that its light reached into the key slot.

As Nix removed his precision tools from his satchel, he realized of a sudden that he didn't particularly care if they found the serpent idol within the sanctum. He and Egil had set off from Dur Follin after a three-day drink, in the midst of which they'd bought a "treasure" map from Crustus the blind cartographer. Crustus, in turn, had received the ancient yellowed vellum from a teamster who'd taken it as payment for passage from an Afirion nobleman fleeing dervish assassins. He and Egil had followed it on a drunken whim.

He held his pick poised before the slot. The moment felt portentous. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. "Remind me again what we're doing here, Egil."

Egil's bushy eyebrows rose to a precipitous height. "I'm standing here on a wounded leg. You're picking a lock. We're both overdue for beer."

"Don't be a bunghole. I mean, what are we doing? Here. Now."

"Here? Now? Are you daft? We're retrieving a serpent idol from the tomb of the wizard-king Abn Thahl."

Nix leaned back on his haunches, tapped his lockpick on his cheek. "Right, right, but why? I remember wenches and boasts and… not much else."

The observation seemed to flummox Egil. His brow furrowed, his cheeks darkened. He shifted on his booted feet. The light from the lantern cast crazy shadows on the stone wall. He ran a hand over his tufted scalp.

"I don't recall. I think… we were quite drunk and… I remember being in the Slick Tunnel but… I guess coin?" He looked up as if he'd had an epiphany. "The idol must be valuable, eh?"

"We've got enough coin stashed around Dur Follin to keep us in wine and whores until we're too old to appreciate the pleasure of either. Not to mention the markers we hold."

Egil tilted his head to accede the point. "True. So?"

"So, indeed, is the question." Nix studied his wire pick, thoughtful. He did not remember what they'd been thinking exactly. They'd dodged the Demon Wastes and taken ship across many leagues of the Gogon Ocean to reach Afirion, braved the desert, thirst, the traps, and undead guardians in the tomb for… what? Coin they didn't need?

Perhaps they'd done it so often in the past that they did it now with no forethought, no real purpose, automatons who went through the motions of their lives because they didn't know what else to do or why else to do it.

"We could go back," Nix said, looking up at the towering priest. "Right now."

Egil's expression twisted uncertainly behind the nest of his beard. He chewed the hairs of his mustache. "Why would we do that?"

"Why not? If life's made of moments, here's another one. Feels important. We could use it to leave."

Egil's dice came back out of his pocket, rattled in his palm, his habit when thinking or nervous.

"We could." The priest ran a hand over his bald head, poking Ebenor in the eye, his other habit when nervous or thinking. "But… we're already here. Be a waste to just… leave, wouldn't it?"

Nix supposed that made as much sense as anything. He nodded. "I suppose. We're here. Why leave a deed half-done?" He turned back to the door. "Hold the light steady."

Peering inside the keyhole, Nix found the lock less complicated than he expected. The ancient Afirions had been expert stonemasons but inexpert locksmiths. His wire pick, sawblade, and tumbler pry would have it open in a moment. He set to work and quickly had the lock primed.

"Ready yourself," he said to Egil. The dice disappeared and Egil hung the lantern from a protuberance in the mural-splashed wall. The big priest filled each of his fists with the haft of a hammer.

Nix released the final tumbler and heard the satisfying click of an opening lock, a sound that always felt to him like… opportunity. Nothing pleased him more save the opening of a fetching girl's thighs.

He bounded back to stand beside Egil, holding his falchion and hand axe.

Somewhere within the walls, pulleys squealed, the sound like a scream. Counterweights descended and the door started to lift, metal shrieking against stone. Immediately liquid poured out from the widening crack and an acrid, eye-watering stink filled the air. All in a rush Nix knew he'd missed it.

Everything came together for him but too late — the holes in the wall where something had been poured behind the door, the unusual metal of the door itself, the tarred seal.

"Off the floor, Egil! Off!"

Nix jumped up, his boots already warming from the touch of the liquid, and grabbed hold of one of the lampreys carved into the lintel. He braced his feet on a sand serpent carved into the left post, praying to Aster that they did not animate.

Egil must have heard the alarm in Nix's tone for he responded quickly. Too big to perch on the door jamb, he put both hammers head down on the ground and, holding the hafts, went feet over head in a handstand, and just in time.

The initial slow rush of black liquid from under the door gave way to a gush of fluid as the door opened wider. The fluid bubbled as it dissolved stone, filling the air with black, stinging smoke. Nix put his face in his sleeve to shield his nose and mouth against the stench. Egil, unable to do anything but hold himself upright, had to endure it.

The acid popped as it ate at the surface of the floor and the heads of Egil's hammers. Had they been standing on the floor, the substance would already have eaten through their boots and started dissolving flesh. Tiny droplets from popping bubbles hit Egil's bare forearms, burned pink pinholes into the hairy flesh. The priest grunted at the pain, the stinging reek.

"Egil?"

The lucky dice Egil carried with him on every expedition slipped from his pocket and fell into the acid, asp eyes up. The ivory pyramids cracked, shattered, and dissolved. Egil loosed a stream of expletives cut short when he inhaled the smoke and started to splutter. The coughing upset his balance and he swayed.

"Nix!" he gasped between coughs.

Nix adjusted his weight, steadied himself on three points, and reached out and back to grab Egil by the ankle.

"Got you."

They hung there over the acid, two friends and adventurers, one balanced precariously on his melting hammers, the other hanging on the wall in a desperate three-point perch. The whole affair struck Nix as hilarious, but he swallowed his laughter lest a guffaw dislodge him from the wall and kill them both.

"Here's a moment, yeah?" Nix said through gritted teeth.

"Shut up."

"I hope you bought better hammers than usual," Nix said, watching the metal of the weapons smoke and crack.

"Do not make me laugh," Egil said. "I'll pull us both down."

"I'd let you go before that. But I'd mourn you, rest assured. For a few moments, at least."

The acid, spreading thin across the floor of the chamber, soon bubbled less, smoked less. In a few more moments the popping ceased altogether and the smoke diminished, crowding close to the high ceiling in a stinking yellow-black cloud. Nix gave it another sixty count, then said:

"That's it. It's inert."

"You're certain?"

"As certain as I was about the magic key," Nix said.

"Shite," Egil answered.

Nix chuckled as he released Egil's ankle, hopped off the wall, and landed in the thin layer of black liquid that coated the now-pitted floor.

"See?"

Egil lowered his feet to the ground and stood. "Pits, man!" He covered one nostril and blew snot from the other, each in turn, then hocked and spit.

The hallway behind the now open door was barely a hallway at all, being only a few hand spans deep and there blocked by another door, of similar make to the one they'd just opened. The walls, too, were made of the same odd metal as the doors.

"You see what they did here?" said Nix appreciatively. "They sealed this compartment and poured acid in through the holes above the door. Time spared us, I suspect. The acid must have been wizard-made to last this long. It was probably much stronger once. Your hammers probably wouldn't have lasted had we entered this tomb a century ago."

Egil eyed his hammers, the metal heads pitted and discolored, the prayers he'd engraved on the metal effaced.

"Time didn't spare us, Nix. You did."

Nix colored under his friend's praise. "You've done the same for me many times."

"Nevertheless."

Nix put a hand on Egil's shoulder, moved past him, and studied the second door. He sensed no ward, no bottom seal, no holes, no sign of any traps at all. And the lock appeared similar to the one he'd just picked.

"It's like the other. A simple lock to charm."

"Do it, then," Egil said.

Nix looked back. "You're certain? We just got a second chance. We could still walk away."

Egil shook his head, the set of his jaw hard under his thick beard. "This tomb and its idiot wizard-king owe me hammers and owe you boots." He eyed his pitted, discolored weapons and shook his head in disgust. "Give me your crowbar. These'll crack on the first skull they mean to split."

Nix took an iron crowbar from his satchel. Egil took it and tossed the hammers back into the darkness behind them. He took the lantern from its perch and aimed its light into the keyhole.

"Let's see what there's to see," Egil said.

Nix had the lock picked in under a fifty count. Counterweights descended, metal ground against stone, and the door began to rise.

The lantern light illuminated a domed, circular chamber beyond the door, the perimeter of the floor scored with deep, straight grooves. Statues of Abn Thahl stood at the compass points, the largest at due north. The statues featured the sand serpent and lamprey motifs favored by the Afirions, scaled forms coiling around the wizard-king's graven image. Painted images of still more serpents, lampreys, and even toothfish decorated the plastered walls, together with more pictoglyphs telling the story of Abn Thahl's life and rule. Fangs were everywhere in the imagery. Abn Thahl stood in the midst of the teeth and scales, unharmed, ruling not only men but the toothy creatures of the desert and sea, unleashing them on towns in great slithering waves to secure his rule. Some images had Abn Thahl with a serpent's head or a scaled body. Nix doubted the images were mere artistic license. He flashed back to his aborted education at Dur Follin's Conclave, to Professor Einz's droning voice as he lectured on magical history.

The Afirion wizard-kings were transmuters and summoners of accomplishment, routinely modifying their own forms, and commanding the spirits and creatures of the otherworld, with a particular affinity for the denizens of Hell.

"Nix?" Egil said. "You here?"

"Here," Nix said, shaking his head to dislodge the memory.

Abn Thahl's stone, gold-chased sarcophagus sat in the exact center of the chamber, the lid carved in his likeness. A large, irregular pit marred the floor before the sarcophagus, like a fanged mouth open in a scream. Atop the sarcophagus, glittering in the lantern light, stood the only treasure visible in the room: the golden, bejeweled idol of the sand serpent.

It was small enough to fit in a hand, but exquisitely made. Its ruby eyes and intricately crafted scales glittered in the lantern light. It was said to have been Abn Thahl's prized possession in life, a gift given him by his wife.

Right away Egil stepped into the room, and for the second time Nix recognized danger a moment too late. He grabbed for Egil's arm but the priest had already crossed into the chamber.

The carved lines in the floor flared orange and a flash made their shape plain, a shape Nix had recognized a moment too late — a summoning triangle.

Professor Einz would have excoriated Nix for missing so obvious a symbol.

A rumble sounded from deep under the earth, a vibration Nix felt in his bones, a shaking that put an ache in his teeth, stood the hair on the back of his neck on end.

"A summoning triangle," Nix said. "Godsdammit."

Egil hefted the crowbar and planted his feet. "Bah. It'll make things interesting."

A voice boomed in the chamber, deep and commanding, a five hundred year old echo of Abn Thahl, the words held in abeyance by the dead wizard-king's conditional magic, waiting only until tomb robbers broke the border of the summoning triangle.

"Vik-Thyss!" Abn Thahl's voice shouted in Ancient Afirion, the word profane, ominous. "Return and take those souls of these grave robbers!"

A sudden breeze gusted up from the pit near the sarcophagus, carrying the charnel reek of a graveyard, the faint tang of dry, reptilian stink.

"Shite," said Nix, as Egil set down the lantern.

A lamprey squirmed over the edge of the pit, larger than Nix had ever seen, its body as thick around as a man's waist, its heavy form thumping wetly against the floor. Intelligent black eyes stared over the fanged sphincter of its mouth. A second lamprey appeared beside the first and then…

Nix swallowed in a throat gone dry as an enormous, scaled, misshapen form lurched up, and Nix realized with horror that the lampreys were attached to the form at the shoulders.

They were its arms.

"What devil is this?" Egil said, raising his crowbar and taking a step back despite himself.

The devil pulled the rest of its girth from the pit and stood heavily on the floor. The wrongness of its appearance put stinging bile in the back of Nix's throat. Foul fluid glistened on its scaled form. It stood on two legs as thick as temple columns. Muscles pulsed under the deep green scales of its torso. But where it should have had a neck, it instead had an enormous, toothlined hole that opened directly into its torso. Vertical slits in its chest, under the mouth, exhaled wetly. Its lamprey-arms writhed, the motion hypnotic, grotesque.

"It's a devil, indeed," said Nix, recovering his wits. He'd seen illustrated guides to Hell's Eleven Pits. He knew a diabolical form when he saw it. He noted the grotesque organ hanging from between the creature's thighs. "And not a she-devil, we can be sure."

The eyes of one of the lampreys focused on Nix, the others on Egil. The fang-lined mouths opened and closed, ichor dripping. The mouth in the creature's center opened in a prolonged snarl of hate.

"That idol is to be mine, fiend," said Egil, and brandished the crowbar. "Now climb back into your pit ere I and Ebenor give you this to feed on."

The creature shrieked and bounded toward Egil, its movement surprisingly rapid despite its size and shambling gait. Nix had two throwing daggers in hand and gone before the devil had taken three steps. Both hit the creature and bounced off its scales. It barely seemed to notice.

It lashed its arms at Egil, the teeth snapping. The priest held his ground and swung the crowbar twohanded at one of the onrushing arms. It connected with a dull thud across the lamprey's mouth. Teeth and dark ichor sprayed. The other arm caught Egil in the side so hard it nearly folded him in half. The impact drove the priest to the ground and sent him sliding across the floor. He dug the crowbar into the floor to stop his slide, the friction spraying sparks.

The devil lurched toward the prone priest, arms writhing, teeth snapping.

Nix rushed toward it from the side, throwing his hand axe as he did. The weapon hit the devil squarely in the midsection and again bounced off the scales. The devil roared with anger and Nix ducked under a backhand strike from the lamprey arm, darted in close, and swung his falchion two-handed at the abomination's thigh.

He might as well have struck stone. His blade rang off the creature's scales and the jarring impact numbed his arms. The devil kicked him in the chest and sent him flying across the chamber. He hit the ground in a heap, the breath knocked from him, unsure if he'd broken any ribs.

The ground vibrated with the devil's heavy tread as the creature left off Egil and charged toward Nix. Nix rode adrenaline to his feet, wincing from the pain in his sternum. He parried the attack of one of the lampreys, his arms tingling from the force of the blow. He ducked under a blow from the other lamprey and unleashed a flurry of overhand slashes and cross-strikes. His weapon struck home often, but his blade would not bite the creature's flesh. A blow to his head nearly knocked him senseless and he just ducked under the sucking fangs of the lamprey.

Egil's sharp whistle drew his attention. The priest had scaled the largest statue of Abn Thahl and stood on its shoulder, beside the wizard-king's regal visage and sand serpent headdress.

"Bring it to me!" he shouted in Urgan, his native tongue.

Nix didn't know Egil's plan and didn't need to. He feinted an overhand slash with his falchion, causing the devil to hesitate briefly, and sprinted to his left across the chamber.

"There!" Egil said, pointing with the crowbar at the ground before the statue. "Right there!"

The slurping, snapping teeth of the lampreys sounded loud in Nix's ears. The heavy stomp off the devil's pursuit was right behind him. He expected the bite of one of those arms at any moment, but he proved the faster and made it before the statue.

"Now what?" he shouted.

"Turn and face it!"

"What?"

He had no choice. The devil was upon him, arms flailing, teeth snapping. Nix ducked, spun, leaped, his blade a whistling blur as he tried to keep the devil's attacks at bay and hold his ground. His blade hit home once, twice, but did little damage. A lamprey closed on his shoulder, tore through his shirt, and seized his bicep. Only his boiled leather jack spared his arm. The bite tore loose a chunk of leather but only scraped his skin. The creature withdrew, spat the leather to the floor, and snapped at him again. He dove aside, came up swinging but missing.

"Do what you're going to do!" he shouted in Urgan.

Another rumble sounded and Nix feared a second devil emerging from the pit.

"Get clear!" he heard Egil shout, and looked up to see the large statue of Abn Thahl falling toward him and the devil. Egil was astride it, riding it down, crowbar in hand.

Nix rolled to the side as the statue toppled and Egil jumped clear just before impact. Abn Thahl fell with a wet crunch atop the devil, and the pitch and volume of its pained scream caused Nix to wince.

Egil appeared over Nix, favoring a leg, huge hand extended, and pulled him to his feet. Nix checked his shoulder — a few teeth punctures — and felt his ribs — no breaks so far as he could tell.

Egil winced with each breath and the side of his face was already swelling. He'd not be able to see out of his right eye by the end of the day. Yet he smiled anyway. Blood stained his teeth.

"I may need to keep one of these to hand from now on," he said, brandishing the crowbar. "Quite useful."

"Aye."

Behind them, the devil moaned, stirred under the crush of stone. Its large central mouth, open in a pained groan, expelled a stink that turned Nix's stomach. Its wet breathing sounded like a sodden forge bellows. Abn Thahl's stone eyes stared mournfully out of the pile at Egil and Nix.

Egil spit a mouthful of blood. "Still living, eh? Tough bastard. Help me, Nix."

The priest went to Abn Thahl's sarcophagus, took the idol from its top, and put it in his belt pouch without a second look. Nix knew they could turn that idol into thousands of gold royals back in Dur Follin.

Egil worked the crowbar under the lid of the sarcophagus and levered it loose. Plaster seals audibly snapped. The stink of rot filled the air.

Behind them, the devil exhaled a pained groan and stirred under the ruin. A block of the statue rolled off of it and fell with a crash to the floor.

They slid the lid off to the side to reveal the corpse of Abn Thahl, his desiccated body dressed in the gold grave-goods of one of the wizard-kings of Afirion — a serpent crown, a beaten gold breastplate, a ring of turquoise, a necklace of pearl, a sea of triangular gold coins to pay his way through the afterlife. In his hand, he held an ivory wand capped with a pearl.

Nix showed the dead no more reverence than he showed the living. He snapped off two of the wizardking's fingers as he took the turquoise ring and pried loose the wand.

"The wand for me and the ring for some lucky lass."

The priest pocketed a fistful of the gold coins, more out of principle than need. He eyed the wand skeptically. "Is it enspelled? What does it do?"

"Indeed it is enspelled. I can feel that. And I don't know yet what it does." He winked and placed the wand in his satchel. "But finding out's the fun."

"You and your gewgaws," Egil said, shaking his head. He nodded at the lid of the sarcophagus, then back at the devil. "The fiend still looks hungry, no? Let's give him a wizard-king to eat."

Sweating and grunting, the two adventurers lifted the sarcophagus's lid and carried it across the chamber. Egil positioned them a few paces from the open mouth of the still-breathing devil.

"I think it will die without aid," Nix said, noticing the shallower breathing. "Maybe we should just leave it?"

"Where's the fun in that?" Egil said. "Do you want to be able to say that we slew a devil in Abn Thahl's tomb, or that we left one to rot under a pile of stone?"

"A fair point," Nix said.

"Good. Ready? One, two, three!"

Holding the lid, they staggered as fast as they could toward the fiend. Nix released his end right before the devil's mouth, and, with a grunt and shout, Egil drove the lid half its length into the creature's gullet, shattering teeth and crushing flesh and whatever organs devils possessed.

With that, the devil moved no more.

"Done is done," Egil said.

"Truth," Nix said.

Together, the friends limped out of the tomb, out of the dark, with their prize and their lives. They passed the acid trap they'd barely escaped, the scythe blade trap they'd foiled, the stinking, now-rotting corpses of the undead guards they'd destroyed on their way in. They glanced on walls decorated with pictoglyphs. Nix couldn't read most of them but those he could were curses promising a dark death to any who dared defile the tomb of the mighty Abn Thahl.

So much for that.

To Nix, events seemed to have happened long ago, to someone else, not within the last hour to him. He felt apart from himself, oddly distant. Beside him, Egil bore the idol they'd won and eyed it from time to time as they walked.

"Now that we have it," Egil said, eyeing the exquisite figurine, "it hardly seems worth all the fuss."

Ahead, they saw the entry shaft to the tomb. Beams of light from the desert sun outside put a bright circle on the polished stone floor. An ocean of dust floated in the glow. So, too, did their rope, their way out. Before they reached it Nix turned to face his friend.

"I think maybe it's time to stop. What say you?"

"Stop what?"

"Stop this. Tomb robbing. Traipsing across Ellerth for this and that."

"You think?"

Nix nodded. "I think."

Egil stared at him for a long moment. He looked as if he might protest, but then his shoulders sagged and he relented.

"Agreed. That was close and to no good end. If we'd died here, who'd know? Who'd care?"

"Mamabird, I suppose," Nix said thoughtfully, thinking of the woman who'd fostered him as a child. "No other."

Somber, they said nothing more as they walked the rest of the way to the rope. Before climbing, Egil took one last, long look at the idol, then at Nix.

"Maybe I should toss it?"

"Maybe you should," Nix agreed.

Egil looked at the idol one last time, sighed, and reared back to throw. But before he loosed, Nix, struck with an idea, grabbed his arm.

"Wait!"

Egil kept his arm cocked. "Wait? If we're done, then let's be done with all of it."

Nix smiled. "We are done, my large friend. But we're going to need that."

"Again, why?"

"Because we're going to use it and the rest of our coin to buy the Slick Tunnel. We know it's burdened with several liens."

Egil looked skeptical.

"Think about it," insisted Nix. "We clear the lien, become property owners, then later, who knows? Maybe a seat on the Merchants' Council in Dur Follin? Respectability. A voice in the city. No more tombs. Lives of ease."

Egil pulled on his beard. "Respectability seems an ill fit."

"A fair point, I concede. Still…"

Slowly Egil lowered his arm. Nix could see that the priest wasn't in full agreement, but he only needed Egil to come halfway now. He'd come along fully later, as always.

"Let's get out of here," Egil said, and returned the idol to his pouch. "I need beer."

Nix nodded, and with that, they both began to climb back into the world. Nix felt lighter by half.