The Hammer and the Blade (2 page)

  "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.

  "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…