"A fair point," Nix said.
"Good. Ready? One, two, three!"
Holding the lid, they staggered as fast as they could toward the fiend. Nix released his end right before the devil's mouth, and, with a grunt and shout, Egil drove the lid half its length into the creature's gullet, shattering teeth and crushing flesh and whatever organs devils possessed.
With that, the devil moved no more.
"Done is done," Egil said.
"Truth," Nix said.
Together, the friends limped out of the tomb, out of the dark, with their prize and their lives. They passed the acid trap they'd barely escaped, the scythe blade trap they'd foiled, the stinking, now-rotting corpses of the undead guards they'd destroyed on their way in. They glanced on walls decorated with pictoglyphs. Nix couldn't read most of them but those he could were curses promising a dark death to any who dared defile the tomb of the mighty Abn Thahl.
So much for that.
To Nix, events seemed to have happened long ago, to someone else, not within the last hour to him. He felt apart from himself, oddly distant. Beside him, Egil bore the idol they'd won and eyed it from time to time as they walked.
"Now that we have it," Egil said, eyeing the exquisite figurine, "it hardly seems worth all the fuss."
Ahead, they saw the entry shaft to the tomb. Beams of light from the desert sun outside put a bright circle on the polished stone floor. An ocean of dust floated in the glow. So, too, did their rope, their way out. Before they reached it Nix turned to face his friend.
"I think maybe it's time to stop. What say you?"
"Stop what?"
"Stop this. Tomb robbing. Traipsing across Ellerth for this and that."
"You think?"
Nix nodded. "I think."
Egil stared at him for a long moment. He looked as if he might protest, but then his shoulders sagged and he relented.
"Agreed. That was close and to no good end. If we'd died here, who'd know? Who'd care?"
"Mamabird, I suppose," Nix said thoughtfully, thinking of the woman who'd fostered him as a child. "No other."
Somber, they said nothing more as they walked the rest of the way to the rope. Before climbing, Egil took one last, long look at the idol, then at Nix.
"Maybe I should toss it?"
"Maybe you should," Nix agreed.
Egil looked at the idol one last time, sighed, and reared back to throw. But before he loosed, Nix, struck with an idea, grabbed his arm.
"Wait!"
Egil kept his arm cocked. "Wait? If we're done, then let's be done with all of it."
Nix smiled. "We are done, my large friend. But we're going to need that."
"Again, why?"
"Because we're going to use it and the rest of our coin to buy the Slick Tunnel. We know it's burdened with several liens."
Egil looked skeptical.
"Think about it," insisted Nix. "We clear the lien, become property owners, then later, who knows? Maybe a seat on the Merchants' Council in Dur Follin? Respectability. A voice in the city. No more tombs. Lives of ease."
Egil pulled on his beard. "Respectability seems an ill fit."
"A fair point, I concede. Still…"
Slowly Egil lowered his arm. Nix could see that the priest wasn't in full agreement, but he only needed Egil to come halfway now. He'd come along fully later, as always.
"Let's get out of here," Egil said, and returned the idol to his pouch. "I need beer."
Nix nodded, and with that, they both began to climb back into the world. Nix felt lighter by half.
CHAPTER ONE
Rakon strode the halls of the manse, worry tearing a ragged edge on his emotions. The few servants who were allowed in this part of the dilapidated manse must have heard his approach and scurried out of his path, for he saw none. Floors creaked under his tread. Dust misted the air. He climbed the circular staircase of the manse's western tower until he reached the thick wooden door of his summoning chamber. He spoke the infernal words that suspended the protective wards, opened the door, and walked through into the room beyond.
The roof on the corner of the house had been removed generations ago to expose the room to the elements, lay it bare to the sky and the lines of the world's power. The bare beams looked like ribs, as if the house were decomposing, though Rakon's sorcery preserved the wood and tile and plaster from rot.
A waxing, gibbous Minnear peeked over the horizon line, casting the world in viridian. Kulven, the larger pale moon, managed only a waning crescent high above. Stars and planets winked in the vault of the sky, their relative locations a map of time and place to those, like Rakon, who knew how to read them. And they told him the Thin Veil was near. When Minnear turned full, the walls between worlds would be at their weakest.
And still no herald.
He looked to the sky-behind-the-sky and found Hell, a distant, blinking red dot in the central eye of the secret constellation, Vakros the Feeder. He stared at it in worry for a long while. The Pact would fail if not consummated during the Thin Veil. And he could not allow it to fail.
On the wood-planked floor at his feet, inlaid lines of lead formed glyphs of power, the symbols with which he did his work: a thaumaturgic triangle, a pentacle, a source-oval for elementals, a binding circle. He walked over the arcana, heedless in his worry.
In the center of the round chamber stood a stairway, supported by elaborate scaffolding. Thirteen stairs led up to a raised octagonal platform, atop which sat a simple metal lectern, rusted from exposure to the rain. He ascended the stairs, speaking in Infernal the number of each stair as he stepped over its riser. The recitation gathered energy to his locus. The wind picked up, gusted.
He stepped to the lectern, took a candle and a stick of incense from a compartment beneath it. The incense, made from the mottled brown leaves of the flesh flowers of Hell, felt greasy in his fingers.
A word of power and a minor cantrip ignited the candle, though he held the incense in reserve. He incanted the thirty-nine verses of an abjuration, a demand of the King of the Air to send him a sylph, a spirit of the air who trucked in the information carried by the winds of the world.
The wind swirled around him in response to his incantation, collecting his words and carrying them to the outer reaches of Ellerth, to the pillars that held the world aloft in the vault of night. The King of the Air would heed the call, backed as it was by the Pact with the Thyss.
He ended his incantation, waited, and soon the wind gusted more strongly, buffeted his robes, his hair. The candle flame flickered and danced, but his power kept it lit. Behind the wind's rush, he heard the faint titter of an invisible spirit.
"The King has heard your call and sent me for answer," said a high-pitched voice.
"You are fortunate, then," Rakon said, and held the flesh flower incense aloft.
The sylph gave a greedy gasp. The wind keened.
"You know what this is, then?" Rakon asked.
"Burn it," said the sylph, excitement in its tone, the winds swirling. "Let me taste its aroma."
"Only after I've had truth from you."
"Truth you shall have, Rakon Norristru. Ask! Ask!"
"The Thin Veil is upon us and no herald has arrived from Hell to prepare the way for Vik-Thyss. Why?"
The wind died to a breeze and the sylph's voice fell to a whisper.
"Vik-Thyss? Vik-Thyss is dead. His death has been in the wind for many days."
Surprise stole Rakon's speech. Finally, he stuttered, "You… you promised truth, sylph! This-"
"Is truth! I swear it! Vik-Thyss is dead, or so say the Afirion winds. Now burn it!"
"Silence," Rakon said, and tried to control his beating heart. He clutched at the lectern in a white-knuckled grasp. Vik-Thyss's death put the Pact at risk. And if the Pact failed…