The guards looked wide-eyed at the stone, at the now-gaping opening in the ceiling.
'Help me slide it aside,' Nix said.
With help from Egil and the guards, he moved the stone aside and opened the door to the tomb. He held the crystal eye high.
A series of carved steps led down into a large oval chamber. Smooth columns of limestone ran floor to ceiling. More artwork adorned the walls. Nix put away his magical eye and struck another torch to match Egil's.
'Stay here and don't move until we come back,' Nix said to the guards.
'Aye,' said the guards. Nix saw their nervousness. They eyed the ceiling, floor, and walls as if they might fall in on them at any moment.
'If it'll make you feel better, close the door after we're through.'
He'd been jesting about the door, but the moment he and Egil stepped down the stairs and into the columned chamber beyond, the door squeaked closed behind them. They, like Abn Thuset, were entombed in stone.
'Timid slubbers,' Nix said.
'Look at this,' Egil said, holding his torch high and indicating the walls.
Mindful of his steps, Nix moved closer to the walls and held up his torch to view the wall murals.
Placatory to the gods, tomb murals always showed the truth of a wizard-king's life. A false mural risked divine wrath and condemnation to the Nether Void.
The murals began on one end of the chamber and stretched along the wall. They began as they all did, with the birth of the wizard-king and a detailed rendering of the sky on the day of birth. Subsequent murals showed the wizard-king's childhood, education, tutors, parents, siblings, their entire life told in pictoglyphs painted on limestone. The workmanship was excruciatingly detailed and often done in symbolic fashion. Nix had seen enough of them to deduce meanings. He followed them along the wall but stopped, frowning, when he reached the images showing Abn Thuset in adolescence. The images of tutors and other servants looked typical but the clothing…
'He wears a girl's clothing,' Nix said. 'Look. That's not a wrap. It's a dress.'
Egil grunted, his interest in Abn Thuset's life already slaked.
Nix followed the murals along the wall, a spectator to the truth of Abn Thuset's life. Scenes showed the battles fought in the rebellion that put Abn Thuset's father on the Serpentine Throne of Afirion. Nix could hardly believe what he was seeing. He narrated for Egil.
'Her brothers were killed in the rebellion-'
'Her?'
Nix nodded, his finger tracing the images on the walls as he narrated. 'Her brothers were killed in the rebellion that put her father on the Serpent Throne. With no male heirs…'
Nix stared at the image a long while. Egil moved beside him.
'What?' Egil asked.
Nix tapped the wall mural that showed Abn Thuset's transformation. ' She became the male heir.'
'How do you mean? She pretended to be a man? I've heard of such things before, though not in Afirion.'
'No,' Nix said, shaking his head and studying the mural. 'She became a man.'
Egil's face wrinkled in confusion. 'What are you saying?'
'I'm saying the Afirions were masters of transmutational magic.' He pointed to the key events of the narrative, which occurred during Abn Thuset's youth. A scene showed her and her father in solemn prayer to a jackal-headed god. A subsequent scene showed her father pointing something at her — Nix assumed it to be a wand — and her body haloed in light. Scenes thereafter showed her with the hairstyle and clothing of an Afirion nobleman, not a noblewoman.
'And they used it to make a daughter a son. She became a man.'
'One of Afirion's greatest wizard-kings wasn't a wizard-king at all?' Egil said. 'But a queen?'
'Aye.'
'But… the magic wouldn't last, would it?' Egil said. 'No magic lasts forever.'
'Not forever, no, but it would last a considerable time.' He recalled his introductory lessons at the Conclave. 'The closer the changed form is to the original form, the longer the transmutation will last.'
'And the change from woman to man is slight,' Egil said. 'Though much in life rides on it.'
'The Serpentine Throne rode on it for Abn Thuset.'
Had one of her brothers lived and assumed the throne, she would have remained a woman. As such, she'd have been subject to the authority of her brother, who would have married her off to a husband to whom she would then be subject. By making herself a man, she had instead been able to rule and become one of history's great names.
'Think of it,' Nix said. 'She was born with the mind and talent to rule, but only rose to it because her brothers were killed and Afirion magic could change her form.'
'What a waste had events not unfolded so,' Egil said.
'A waste indeed,' Nix agreed.
Images from her later reign showed her from time to time using the transmutational wand to renew the magic that had made her a man.
To his surprise, Nix felt a kinship to her. She'd lived a lie, her true self buried in her core, visible to no one but the gods. Nix empathized, though his own secret self was trivial compared to hers.
'You're in love again?' Egil said, his voice carrying a smile. 'You wear a doltish smile.'
'No,' Nix said, losing the smile. 'Just impressed. And thoughtful. Think about it, Egil. Abn Thuset's talents were rare, but probably not unique. How many other Afirion women lived lives made for them by men but unsuited to their talents and natures? How many women in Dur Follin?'
For some reason he flashed on his dreams, breathing doors, long hallways, screams, and bloody beds.
'Your point's well made,' Egil said, 'though I question the timing. We're here to rob her tomb. We should be about it.'
'I believe I'd turn from this if I could,' Nix said, and the spellworm churned his guts for the thought.
'Yet we can't and we both know it,' Egil said. 'We've robbed tombs of men both good and evil. And now we'll rob this one, though she be admirable. Come on, Nix.'
Nix felt an odd sense of sacredness, but not out of respect for the dead. He'd long ago come to regard dead flesh as nothing but decaying matter. Its provenance was, instead, the connection he felt to Abn Thuset. The truth of her life was known to her father, herself, and now Egil and Nix. There was something in that secret shared that demanded reverence.
And yet he'd have to honor her in the breach, for he could not do anything but what he'd come to do. The spellworm would not allow anything else.
'Let's go,' he said to Egil, and they continued deeper into the tomb, Nix went through the motions mechanically, picking locks, avoiding a pit trip, dodging another deadfall, avoiding a vicious spring-propelled scything blade designed to sever legs below the knees.
Presently they stood over a smooth-sided circular hole in the floor, as wide in diameter as Egil was tall. Oddly, the scroll of celebratory artwork continued down the walls of the shaft. Nix had never seen anything of the kind before.
Two statues of cast metal flanked the hole, one of the Afirions' jackal-headed god, the other of a hyenaheaded goddess. Both had their arms raised, palms out, in a gesture that forbade further desecration.
Nix checked the ceiling, saw the holes in the stone where a block and tackle had been mounted to lower heavy things down the shaft, no doubt including Abn Thuset's body and sarcophagus. The workers and architects would have used rope ladders to get up and down during construction, so there were no handholds.
Nix dropped his torch down the shaft. It hit the floor after falling seven or eight paces and lay there smoking. An opening led to a chamber beyond, though Nix could not see it from the top of the shaft.
'Down is easy,' Egil said. 'Up's a harder one. Rope in your bag?'
'We used all we had to get down the cliff.'
'We could go back and get some,' Egil offered.
'You want to do that?'
They looked at each other a long moment, then said at the same time, 'No.'
Egil put a hand on one of the divine statues, leaned into it, and rocked it a tiny amount on its base. 'It was
