touch.
Beyond, the cave stretched back and down at a gentle slope, out of reach of the day's light.
'Goes back a ways,' Egil said.
'Aye.'
The first of the guards reached the cave mouth. Egil grabbed him by his belt and pulled him inside. He did the same with the others, one after the other. Derg started to walk deeper into the cave but Egil grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to a stop.
'Don't move unless we say,' the priest said to them.
Wide-eyed, Derg nodded.
Moving his feet as little as possible, Nix examined the ceiling and floor, looking for man-made seams disguised as cracks. He saw none.
'Don't look much like a tomb,' Derg said.
Nix did not bother to explain Afirion burial customs to the youth. Typically, Afirions dug tombs for their royalty in caverns that already existed.
The earth awaited the body of wizard-king thus and so, the inscription usually read.
'The tomb proper will be deeper in,' Egil said.
'If it's here,' one of the guards said.
'It's here,' Egil and Nix said in unison.
'How do you know?' the guard asked.
Nix pointed with the tip of his falchion at a faint discoloration on the ceiling. 'That's a soot stain. Very old.'
'And note the stalactites and stalagmites,' Egil said. 'See how they're thinner and shorter in the center of the cave?'
'So?' the guard said.
'So,' the priest explained. 'The ones in the center are not as old as those on the sides. That's because the original ones in the center of the cave were cleared to allow passage of workers and materiel. Probably that statue in the water was cracked or broken in transit and discarded by lazy workmen. Proved good luck for us.'
While the guards digested that, Nix used a matchstick from his bag to fire a torch.
'I lead,' he said. 'Then Egil, then the rest of you. Don't touch anything.'
Nix led them through the thicket of stone, and followed the slope of the cave downward into darkness. The tunnel narrowed to a neck at twenty paces and they advanced in single file. The guards' rapid breathing betrayed their nervousness.
The narrow passageway opened abruptly into a large vaulted chamber of worked stone. The flickering light of Nix's torch illuminated plastered walls and a ceiling covered in pictoglyphs and Afirion script, a riot of colors and imagery. A large metal door stood on the opposite side of the chamber. Nix saw nothing to indicate the name or station of the person buried in the tomb, but that was not unusual. The receiving room was used to prepare the body for eternity. Afterward, the room was typically covered in curses and trapped. It was probably a good thing he couldn't read much Afirion script.
The guards filed in behind Egil, clustering around Nix.
'Gods,' one of them said in a hushed tone, eyeing the ancient artwork.
'What does it say?' another asked.
'I can't read much of it,' Nix said, 'but it's warnings against defiling the tomb, a promise of curses on tomb robbers.'
'What kind of curses?' said the youngest of the guards, his voice betraying a slight quaver.
'The kind that makes your balls fall off,' Nix said absently, studying floor and ceiling in the light of his torch.
'Or that makes you shite yourself to death,' Egil added.
'Gods,' said the guard.
'Shite,' said another.
'Exactly,' Egil said solemnly.
'I need more light,' Nix said. He handed Egil his torch and took his magic crystal eye from his satchel. He tapped it with a finger and spoke a word in the Mages' Tongue.
'Wake up,' he said, and the eye opened, blinked a few times, and emitted a beam of light. Nix used it to pore over the walls, ceiling, and floor, keeping his feet planted.
'There,' he said, indicating the floor before the door.
'I see it,' Egil said.
'And there,' Nix said, indicating a spot on the ceiling near the wall.
'What? What?' asked a guard.
'Traps,' Egil said. 'There are always traps.'
Derg cleared his throat. 'I don't… feel like we need to enter the tomb any farther. Probably just be in the way of these two. You, mates?'
Murmured agreement.
Nix smiled. 'Wise,' he said.
'Maybe that could stay between us, though?' Derg said.
'Of course,' Nix said.
'Ought to spring the traps, then,' Egil offered. 'Else they'll set them off.'
'Right,' Nix said.
Nix ventured into the chamber and walked near the metal door opposite them.
'This looks like a door,' he said and stepped before it. When he felt the floor give slightly, triggering the counterpoise, he bounded aside. The metal slab fell forward and crashed onto the floor with a ferocious crash.
'But it's a deadfall.'
'Shite!'
'Gods!'
'Pits, man!'
On the otherwise blank wall revealed by the door's fall was scrawled a death curse. Nix pointed at it.
'And there's Egil's 'shite yourself to death' curse. Nicely anticipated, priest.'
Egil half-bowed.
Nix walked toward the tomb's actual door, its location hidden by the plaster coating the walls.
'The actual door is here.'
'Where?' asked Derg.
'Careful,' Egil said.
'Aye,' Nix said.
'I don't see it,' said another guard.
Nix took a chisel from his satchel and chipped away the plaster until it revealed another metal door, flush with the wall and with no handle, the hinges sunk into the stone of the cavern by screws. He examined the screws. Time had rusted them.
'Hinges are soon to give,' he said.
A dusting of rust coated the door. Nix rubbed it off as best he could and read the characters engraved on the door.
'Abn Thuset of Afirion, beloved of the people and the gods.'
'It's the right tomb, then,' Derg said.
Nix took his crowbar from his satchel, got it in the seam between the wall and the unhinged side of the door.
'Mind,' Egil cautioned.
Nix nodded, pried at the door, once, twice, a third time before it finally gave. The moment it started to open, he heard the expected sound of falling counterweights. He leaped backward as the hidden pegs holding the block of ceiling stone above the door slid back and let the block fall. The huge block of stone hit the floor with a dull, ponderous thud, and would have crushed anyone standing under it.
'The Afirions liked crushing tomb robbers,' Nix said.
