The Hammer and the Blade Read Free Page A

an iron crowbar from his satchel. Egil took it and tossed the hammers back into the darkness behind them. He took the lantern from its perch and aimed its light into the keyhole.
      "Let's see what there's to see," Egil said.
      Nix had the lock picked in under a fifty count. Counterweights descended, metal ground against stone, and the door began to rise.
     
    The lantern light illuminated a domed, circular chamber beyond the door, the perimeter of the floor scored with deep, straight grooves. Statues of Abn Thahl stood at the compass points, the largest at due north. The statues featured the sand serpent and lamprey motifs favored by the Afirions, scaled forms coiling around the wizard-king's graven image. Painted images of still more serpents, lampreys, and even toothfish decorated the plastered walls, together with more pictoglyphs telling the story of Abn Thahl's life and rule. Fangs were everywhere in the imagery. Abn Thahl stood in the midst of the teeth and scales, unharmed, ruling not only men but the toothy creatures of the desert and sea, unleashing them on towns in great slithering waves to secure his rule. Some images had Abn Thahl with a serpent's head or a scaled body. Nix doubted the images were mere artistic license. He flashed back to his aborted education at Dur Follin's Conclave, to Professor Einz's droning voice as he lectured on magical history.
      The Afirion wizard-kings were transmuters and summoners of accomplishment, routinely modifying their own forms, and commanding the spirits and creatures of the otherworld, with a particular affinity for the denizens of Hell.
      "Nix?" Egil said. "You here?"
      "Here," Nix said, shaking his head to dislodge the memory.
      Abn Thahl's stone, gold-chased sarcophagus sat in the exact center of the chamber, the lid carved in his likeness. A large, irregular pit marred the floor before the sarcophagus, like a fanged mouth open in a scream. Atop the sarcophagus, glittering in the lantern light, stood the only treasure visible in the room: the golden, bejeweled idol of the sand serpent.
      It was small enough to fit in a hand, but exquisitely made. Its ruby eyes and intricately crafted scales glittered in the lantern light. It was said to have been Abn Thahl's prized possession in life, a gift given him by his wife.
      Right away Egil stepped into the room, and for the second time Nix recognized danger a moment too late. He grabbed for Egil's arm but the priest had already crossed into the chamber.
      The carved lines in the floor flared orange and a flash made their shape plain, a shape Nix had recognized a moment too late – a summoning triangle.
      Professor Einz would have excoriated Nix for missing so obvious a symbol.
      A rumble sounded from deep under the earth, a vibration Nix felt in his bones, a shaking that put an ache in his teeth, stood the hair on the back of his neck on end.
      "A summoning triangle," Nix said. "Godsdammit."
      Egil hefted the crowbar and planted his feet. "Bah. It'll make things interesting."
      A voice boomed in the chamber, deep and commanding, a five hundred year old echo of Abn Thahl, the words held in abeyance by the dead wizard-king's conditional magic, waiting only until tomb robbers broke the border of the summoning triangle.
      "Vik-Thyss!" Abn Thahl's voice shouted in Ancient Afirion, the word profane, ominous. "Return and take those souls of these grave robbers!"
      A sudden breeze gusted up from the pit near the sarcophagus, carrying the charnel reek of a graveyard, the faint tang of dry, reptilian stink.
      "Shite," said Nix, as Egil set down the lantern.
      A lamprey squirmed over the edge of the pit, larger than Nix had ever seen, its body as thick around as a man's waist, its heavy form thumping wetly against the floor. Intelligent black eyes stared over the fanged sphincter of its mouth. A second lamprey appeared beside the first and then…
      Nix swallowed in a throat gone dry