they'd never had an easier go in an Afirion tomb.
They hurried through the hall of alcoves, the gazes of the immolated guards seeming to follow them. As they walked through the archway leading out of the hall of alcoves and into the shaft, where now resided the broken- armed statue of a god, Nix heard a soft pop and sizzling sound.
'Uh-oh,' he said.
'What?' Egil said, freezing in place, his voice tense. 'Uh-oh, what?'
Nix turned and looked back, saw nothing but the alcoves, the guards, the artwork. Then the floor vibrated under their feet and somewhere, stone ground against stone.
'Shite,' Egil said. 'What's that?'
Nix shook his head, tense, listening, but nothing more happened.
'Some kind of failed ward, maybe. I-'
A fizzle sounded behind them, then a boom that blew heated wind through the chamber and up the shaft. A luminous orange light blossomed in the burial chamber, a light that grew more fulgent and soon revealed its cause: fire crawled along the walls on either side of the chamber in undulating, crackling waves. It swarmed into the alcove chamber, reached the first alcoves on either wall and engulfed the bodies.
Immediately a deep-throated roar of rage and pain came from the dead royal guardsmen, and a flaming specter of their forms, holding a khopesh made of smoke, stepped from the alcoves. The fire raced through the room, devouring the art on the walls, awakening the ancient guards to flame and rage.
'Climb!' Nix said, shoving Egil toward the statue of the broken-armed god. 'Climb!'
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The flames pursued them as they clambered frantically up the metal body of a god. Egil reached the top first, hopped over the lip of the shaft, turned, and pulled Nix up by his shirt. His eyes were wide, orange with reflected fire.
Nix glanced down, saw flames ringing the shaft around the walls in a blazing vortex, rising fast. A sudden blast of superheated air forced both of them to lurch back from the edge. Nix's eyes fell on the artwork in the chamber, and he remembered the odd artwork in the shaft, and it registered with him.
'The ward uses the paintings for fuel! It's going to keep coming! Go, go!'
They scrambled to their feet and pelted off down the corridor, but made it only a dozen strides before blazing light lit the tomb behind them as bright as a noon sun. A chorus of enraged, otherworldly screams rebounded off the walls.
Nix looked back, shielding his eyes and face, to see a cloud of roiling flames pursuing them. And before the inferno went the blazing effigies of the royal guards, flaming spirits, fire in the form of men. They bore blades of smoke and glared through the black holes of their eyes.
'Run!' Nix said, and shoved Egil toward the exit.
They ran as if Hell were at their heels, but the flames gained on them, crawling along the walls beside them, crackling and sizzling. Nix felt his hair singe, found the scalding air hard to breathe. Smoke clouded the hall, made his eyes water, his throat tickle. The howls of the guards were in his ears and he expected their burning touch at any moment, but still he ran, leaping the pits they'd skirted, dodging the pressure plates, running without a care over the weighted stones in the floor.
'Run, damn it!' he shouted, partially to Egil, partially in hopes that Baras's guardsmen would hear them and get out of the tomb. 'Run!'
They burst into the columned entry hall. Nix dared a momentary glance back and wished he hadn't. An inferno of smoke and fire swelled behind them, caustic and effulgent. The flaming guardsmen rode the heat, their expressions twisted in rage, their smoking blades held high.
'Keep running!' Nix said, dashing with Egil through the columns, across the length of the hall. Images of Abn Thuset's life and transformation flitted by him as he ran.
Egil was coughing as he ran but Nix dragged the bigger man along by the arm. Ahead, the door that opened into the natural cave was… closed.
'Gods damn them all!' Nix said.
'You told them to close it!' Egil said.
'I was jesting! Open the door!' Nix yelled as they ran, hoping the guards would hear him.
The fire raced along the walls, the floor, the columns, turning the entire chamber ablaze, effacing in fire the truth of Abn Thahl's life. The flaming spirits of the guards howled.
'Open the door!' Nix shrieked.
Sweat poured into his eyes, stung the scalded skin of his face and scalp.
Egil roared and picked up his pace. Nix saw right away what the priest intended and lagged a couple strides behind him.
From behind, flaming hands reached for Nix. Something hot scalded the back of his neck, burned his hair.
Egil lowered his shoulder and sprinted full speed up the stairs and into the metal door, his shoulder lowered. He hit it like a battering ram. The slab of metal shrieked as the impact drove the hinge bolts from the masonry. Egil and Nix tumbled into the room, landing on their stomachs atop the dislodged door.
The startled guards stood around them, eyes wide, blades in hand.
'We thought you was something else entire,' Derg said. His relief lasted only a moment as he looked back into the columned hall, saw what was flowing up the steps.
Nix was already on his feet, pulling Egil up behind him. 'Run for your life, you dumb gits! Run!'
He didn't wait to see if they heeded his words.
Fire, heat, and the roaring guards burst up the stairs and through the door. One of Baras's guards screamed, an agonized, pitiful sound, and the stink of charred flesh chased Nix through the narrow corridor that led back out to the natural cave. Despite the absence of murals, the flames and burning guardsmen chased them still, turning the cave into a furnace.
More screams from behind; more stink. Nix's legs felt numb. He was gasping, his hair singed, his throat raw from smoke and heat. He stumbled, slammed into a stalagmite.
'Keep going!' Egil said, both of them now communicating between exhausted gasps. 'We grab the ropes, climb for our lives!'
'Too slow! We have to jump!'
'That water's too shallow!'
'The tide is in by now!'
'If it's not?'
'Then we're fakked!'
Egil muttered prayers to Ebenor as he and Nix drained their final reserves of energy and sprinted the last fifty paces for the cave mouth. But they were too slow and the crawling flames caught them at last. The walls of the cave turned to curtains of fire. The floor under their feet blazed. Nix's boots smoked. His cloak and trousers caught fire. He had breath enough only to scream at the pain.
Egil echoed his pained shriek but both kept running.
The howls of the guards rang in their ears. Swords of smoke slashed the air beside Nix. Blazing hands grabbed at his cloak, causing him to stumble and threatening to turn his clothing into a conflagration. In the crackle and roar of the flames he thought he heard the distant, mumbled sound of the Afirion tongue.
They reached the cave mouth at a dead run, both of them screaming, both of them aflame, and neither of them so much as slowed. They leaped out into open air, arms flailing, clothes ablaze and trailing smoke, twin comets falling into the watery void of the Bleak Sea below.
The flaming guards pursued them even over the edge. In the few heartbeats it took to plummet down the cliff face, Nix saw the blurry glow of the guards' blazing forms reflected on the surface of the water below, trailing them down.
Nix tensed his body and tried to angle himself slightly, but nothing prepared him for the force of the impact,
