Soon they were underway. Throughout the gray day, the ghost of his nightmare haunted him. He felt anxious, frightened, and angry by turns.
'You all right?' Egil asked him, as they trudged along the enspelled road.
'As well as can be,' Nix answered. He stared at Rusilla as they walked.
Rakon shared a horse with her, holding her upright as they rode. Her head bounced around and Nix took care not to meet her eyes. Merelda shared a mount with the eunuch, four vacant eyes between the two of them.
Even afoot they made good progress. The terrain smoothed as they traveled eastward, the world healing as they went. Around sunset they cut through a patch of scrub-dusted, scree-covered hills. From atop the low summits, Nix could see Afirion's sands stretched out before them, a sea of beige dunes that stretched as far as he could see. To the north, the failing light of the setting sun glittered feebly off the dark of the Bleak Sea. He could not see the Gogon Ocean to the south but he knew it was there. The guards audibly exhaled, pleased to be leaving the Wastes behind them.
'The Milai Peninsula,' Nix said, picturing in his mind the narrow slice of uninhabited land that connected the Demon Wastes in the west to the Afirion Desert in the east. He and Egil had seen it many times, always from the south, while riding the waves of the Gogon Ocean.
'I'll confess to doubting we'd make it,' Egil said to him.
'Hate for this to be one of the last things we see,' Nix said, wiping sweat from his brow. 'Still have the tomb ahead of us. Of course, I don't plan on dying in it. You?'
'I do not.'
They descended the hills and broke for a meal while Rakon and Baras consulted a yellowed map in the failing light. Rakon spoke animatedly, pointing northwest, toward a series of cliffs that overlooked the curving shoreline of the Bleak Sea. Sea birds wheeled in the air near the shore. Baras followed his lord's gesture, nodded.
As Baras returned to the rest of the group, Rakon studied the sky, his brow creased in tense worry.
'The tomb of Abn Thuset is in those cliffs,' Baras said, pointing.
'Really?' Egil said sarcastically.
'Let us see the map,' Nix said.
'Lord Norristru said-'
Nix and Egil walked through Baras toward Rakon. 'I'd see that map, sorcerer.'
'I'm sorry, my lord,' Baras said, trailing them. 'They're-'
'It's all right, Baras.' Rakon gently unrolled the map and held it for Nix to see. 'See for yourself.'
Nix and Egil studied the yellowed parchment until their eyes glazed over. The map was ancient, faded almost beyond legibility. In typical Afirion fashion, the image of the terrain had been superimposed over a treatise written in tiny script. Nix recognized the script as Afirion pictoglyphs and some numerals, but he could read only snatches. He noted a repeated pictoglyph for 'wizard-king,' though the glyph looked somewhat different to him than others he'd seen previously. He focused on the terrain, compared it to what he saw around him and what he knew from experience.
He made out the ocean coastline to the south, but the shore of the body of water that should have been the Bleak Sea was too far north and much too small. There were symbols on the map he took for cities, two of which would have been in the Demon Wastes, one of them about where the sea of glass was located.
'This isn't accurate,' Nix said. 'Look here. The Bleak Sea is too small.'
'It was much smaller then,' Rakon said. 'Before it… changed.'
'Changed?' Egil said. 'An entire sea? How old is this map?'
'Quite old,' Rakon said, rolling it up carefully.
'How can you be sure the tomb's here, then?' Egil asked. 'There's no scale on that map. We could be leagues away. The tomb could be underwater, if it's even the right tomb. I don't intend to abide this fakkin' spellworm forever, sorcerer.'
'He does not need to explain himself to you,' Baras said, and put his hand on Egil to steer him off. Egil shoved him away.
'Yes, he does,' the priest said.
The eunuch rumbled from atop his mount.
Rakon stared into Egil's face. 'I've cross-referenced this map with others in my possession, both current and ancient. Those, combined with the text on this map, describe the location of the tomb quite precisely.'
'I'd like to see those other maps,' Nix said.
'They were too delicate for such rough travel,' Rakon said. 'But be at ease. The tomb is in those cliffs. We press on a few hours more tonight, resting when we reach the shore of the Bleak Sea. Then you'll recover the horn for me and I'll release you.'
'And you'll save your sisters,' Nix said.
'Yes,' Rakon agreed, licking his thin lips. 'I'll save my sisters.'
By the time they reached the shore of the Bleak Sea, Minnear had risen over the horizon, full but for the slimmest crescent. Tomorrow it would sit full in the night sky, reigning over the night, since Kulven was new and dark.
They camped in the lee of a scree-covered rise two or three bowshots from the beach. Rakon stared at the moon's cratered face as the guardsmen set up camp.
The air smelled of the sea and the wind carried the rush of the waves to their ears. That night the men sat around the fire mostly in silence. Nix and Egil, too, held their tongues, each alone with his thoughts about the tomb, what they expected to find there.
Nix drank sour beer until his vision blurred.
'You'll need to be clearheaded tomorrow,' Egil cautioned him.
'That's why I'm doing it,' Nix said.
Only after collecting a fine drunk did he try to fall asleep. Thankfully, the alcohol stupor held at bay any dreams of breathing doors and manacles and impending doom. He woke in the late morning with a hangover, but nevertheless felt better than he had in days. Egil was not in the camp.
'Egil?' he asked Jyme, who was sipping coffee from his tin cup.
Jyme pointed northwest, toward the steep cliffs that walled part of the Bleak Sea in its basin. Nix squinted, his head aching from too much beer. He thought he saw three small figures moving around at the top of the cliff.
'Baras and Rakon are with him,' Jyme said.
Nix nodded and geared up. While he did so, he looked over to the tent in which Rusilla and Merelda lay. The eunuch stood before the flap.
'No more plaguing my dreams after tonight, witches,' he said softly. 'We get this horn and bid you farewell forever.'
'You say something?' Jyme asked, his mouth full of bread.
Nix ignored him and jogged up the rise for the cliffs. Sea birds cawed behind him, wheeling in the air near the beach below. Working up a sweat helped him relieve the hangover. He found Rakon consulting the map, Baras standing beside him, and Egil at the cliff's edge, looking out over the sea. Nix stepped up beside his friend. From the high vantage granted by the cliff, Nix could see blue-black water for leagues.
'It should be here,' Rakon called to them, his voice irritable and nervous. 'It must be here.'
'Nothing looks like an entrance to a tomb, though,' Baras said.
'The sorcerer seems convinced the tomb is hereabouts,' he said to Egil. 'Perhaps they imagine there'll be a sign announcing its presence.'
Egil smiled. 'There is,' he said, and nodded down at the surf.
Rocks jutted from the shallow water, all of them ruffed by foam. Sea birds perched on them. Bird shite and the ages stained them.
'The rocks?'
Egil nodded. 'The rocks. Watch.'
Nix soon saw it. The surf rolled, surging forward to smash the cliffs, then pulling back.
'There,' Egil said, pointing as the surf receded.
Nix saw it. A carved stone face staring up at him. The water quickly covered it, only to reveal it again as the
