“The lid is made to be lifted a finger’s breadth,” he grunted. “Then it slides.” He lifted two of the demon figures down from their pedestals, then began to strain at the frieze of golden figures that ran around the rim.
“No!” Taluvaz cried. “There may be further deadly devices within-!”
“Not so. This is not Engsvanyali. Those of the First Imperium put their trust in deep-buried catacombs, gates and portcullises, roofs that collapse, pits and stakes. No prettily poisoned spines or other frills here!” He gasped and sucked in air, the muscles under his leather vest cracking and bulging with exertion. “Now, boy!”
“Desecration!” the Livyani shouted again. He made as if to rush upon Simanuya. “Leave the dead be, tomb- robber! Here sleeps a prince of the First Age, a devotee of Enome, the forbearer of your own Lord Ksarul-likely no more than another name for your same God!”
“At this moment I am unconcerned by gods.” The glassblower’s fingers slid beneath his vest; probably he carried some small weapon there. Taluvaz hesitated. Simanuya continued to eye him shrewdly but positioned himself to heave again at the lid.
Harsan glanced apologetically at the Livyani. “He may be right. I have myself read of such exits from tombs. And it is only a matter of a Kiren or two before Vridekka’s creatures smash through the stone block. We must do what we can.” He lifted hard, and was gratified to feel the massive lid rise a trifle.
“Mirure, stop them!” Taluvaz broke off into slurred, rapid Livyani.
The warrior girl stood undecided. Then she answered not in Livyani but in her throaty, accented Tsolyani:
“Lord, I have always done your will. I am yours, as you are mine. Yet now I must disobey. You may slay me for it, but if this thief speaks truly, then we are out of here. If he is wrong, then naught but a handful of bones is disturbed. In my land we love life more than bones.-And I–I care too much for your life to think of bones.”
She turned away, squatted down, let her hands fall to her sides, and bowed her head. Her braided hair tumbled down to shadow her face.
The spring-dagger was in Taluvaz’ hand. For a moment he stood thus, his features convulsed and furious. Then he flung down the weapon, went to Mirure, and raised her. Before their astonished gaze he embraced her, kissed her, and brushed her hair back from her eyes. He turned to the others.
“We are one,” he said. “She and I. A master enslaved by his slave-Look not so hard upon us, girl-priest- tomb-robber! As is my right, by the canon of our Shadow Gods, I shall free her and make her the mistress of my clan-house.” He shifted into Livyani, and only Mirure knew what he said after that.
Tlayesha was the nearest. She went to them, but she had no idea what to advise. The matter was simpler in Tsolyanu than in theocratic Livyanu, where all social relationships were dictated from birth by the rigid strictures of the Shadow Gods’ temples. Here, such a slave as Mirure could be freed, declare herself Aridani, and wed her master all on the same day-and marry as many other men thereafter as she pleased. It was not frequent, but it happened.
“Lift! Nay-hold fast! Halt it, you puling priest!” Simanuya yelped suddenly. “The whole weight comes upon me!”
The ponderous lid rested upon an inclined rim and must have been mounted on rollers; once raised, it was designed to slide. As Harsan watched with horror, it rumbled majestically towards the glassblower, who vanished behind it. The lid finished with a thunderous boom against the rear wall of the alcove. There it balanced, tilted down, scraped along the wall, and came to a stop with Harsan’s end angled high above the head of the sarcophagus.
They looked to see Simanuya mashed like a Chri-fly against the wall behind the thing. Then his voice arose, cursing and praying and wheedling, from the gap underneath the lid. He crawled, little the worse for wear, out of the dark triangular opening underneath, between the lid and the sarcophagus itself.
“Kill me outright, you milk-sucking fool! Never would I have you upon any venture of mine!” Simanuya exploded into curses.
Harsan heard but paid no heed. He stood gazing into the coffin.
The face of the occupant had been covered with a mosaic mask. The wooden backing of this had crumbled away long ago, and the stones, red garnets and yellow zircons and brooding fire-opals, were scattered dewdrops upon the gold-laced cerements beneath. The arms and hands, sheathed in gauntleted vambraces of precious metals, lay folded upon the breast amidst collars, necklaces, and gorgets of enamel and filigree, all blackened by time and inevitable corruption. He could see nothing of the torso or the legs, so thick were the wrappings of what had once been lacy Thesun-gmz amp; and age-dimmed brocades.
He saw all of this, yet he saw none of it. Instead, he stared at the three objects that reposed upon the sleeper’s breast.
At first he had thought the corpse to be a woman. Then he realized that the metal breast-cups upon its chest were not such at all; they were really the two halves of a silvery globe, very like those he had examined so long ago with Chtik p’Qwe in the Temple of Eternal Knowing in Bey Sii!
The third object lay between the engraved and inlaid gauntlets covering the arms.
It was a golden hand, palm up, the fingers together, neatly pointing up at the corpse’s masked chin. From where he stood he could make out the column of Llyani glyphs as easily as though he knew them by heart.
He had the golden hand and one half of the globe before any of the others could react. Simanuya scooped up the other silvery hemisphere, however.
“Give me that!” Harsan reached for it.
“Now, priest, you’ll not be greedy, eh? Not deprive your comrades of some profit!” The man stood tensed and ready. He had probably survived similar situations before.
“No matter of greed. Take all the rest-the jewels, the gold!” “Har san, let him have what he would…” Tlayesha interrupted plaintively.
She did not know and could not understand.
“He can strip this poor corpse as naked as one of Dlamelish’ temple-boys-become rich as the Emperor in Avanthar! Give me the sphere-it is all I want.”
It had taken Taluvaz only moments to size up the affair. “Glassblower, you have no use for that object. Come, surrender it. Take what you like of the rest-take all our shares!”
“Something so valuable that all of these baubles are no more than dross?” Simanuya asked in bitter tones. “Something of sorcery, of ancient power? Something we could sell to our pursuers in exchange for our lives?” His voice rose to a barrelchested roar. “Something you must then take from me, priest, if you have more than buttermilk in your veins!”
Harsan had lost all thought of himself. He began to sidle around the sarcophagus toward the glassblower. The other inserted his free hand into his vest, and a short, triangular dagger appeared. It was a wicked thing, a hollow glass blade. Bluish liquid sloshed to and fro within it.
Simanuya sensed Mirure approaching from his right. He glided back around the sarcophagus, put beefy shoulders against the wall. The silvery hemisphere he carefully laid upon the coffin rim before him. He menaced the girl with the dagger and thrust out splayed fingers to fend off Harsan on his left.
“So you would cheat me?” he snarled. “Pious chatter about despoiling tombs and the dead? Cha, how you priestly hypocrites raise the whore’s price after you’ve seen her dance!”
“Look you here, man,” Taluvaz said. “None would rob you. It is as Harsan says. All is yours. All! Save for that sphere-thing. ”
He gestured sharply, and as Simanuya’s one good eye followed his hand, Mirure leaped.
Harsan moved almost simultaneously. He collided with what felt like a stone club, the glassblower’s fist. Momentum carried him on to crash into Simanuya’s brawny shoulder, and an arm encircled his back to crush the life out of him. He hammered Simanuya’s jowly chin with his free hand, but he could not see what transpired behind. Violent motion erupted there by his ear; the glassblower cursed, then shrieked. The arm fell away.
Harsan dragged himself free to see Mirure’s blade, scarlet to the hilt, gliding back out of Simanuya’s ribcage.
The wound did not even appear serious, a red-lipped slit no more than a finger’s breadth long; yet Simanuya’s good eye rolled up and began to glaze, and breath bubbled raggedly in his lungs. He opened his mouth to speak, waved a hand, and knocked the silvery hemisphere spinning and rolling out into the room. He wheeled toward Harsan. Slowly, with the face of a man who already knows he is dead, Simanuya crumpled, joint by joint, to the floor.
