Nettle & Bone(68)

The branching, newly anointed, led to another room like the last one, but with no hallways leading away from it. “Unmarried?” hazarded Marra. “So there are no other rooms for his bloodline?”

“Makes sense.” Fenris nodded to the grave mask, which was young but bore the lines of pain. There were fewer weapons here. They backed out of that room, and the next. At the end of the hall was an ornate threshold with carvings that stretched out five feet from the doorway itself—screaming faces, reaching hands, broken swords.

“That’s a little disturbing,” said Marra, poking the toe of her boot at one of the carvings.

“Enemies defeated in battle?” asked Agnes.

“Or sinners cast into hell.”

“Do they believe in hell, up here?”

“They do,” Marra said. “You freeze in eternal cold.” She shook her head. The concept had seemed foreign to her when she heard it. The Harbor Kingdom, sensibly, believed that the dead went into the sea, and the good were reborn from it, while the damned sank to the bottom and were devoured by crabs. Still, she couldn’t blame the Northern Kingdom for their confusion. There probably weren’t very many crabs up here.

“I hate to walk on them,” she muttered.

“They’re only stone,” said the dust-wife. “They were never alive.” She walked across the screaming carvings, the hem of her robes brushing over their faces. One by one, the others followed.

This tomb was as large and ostentatious as the wife’s tomb had been plain. The walls were ribbed with statues, each one of a stern-faced Northern god, and yet despite their faces, the impression was of a great throat waiting to swallow the unwary.

There were shadowy figures flanking the sarcophagus. Marra paused in the threshold, trying to make sense of the number of legs, the shapes …

“Oh,” she said softly. “Oh, I see.”

The cold air of the palace of dust had preserved the dead horses far better than she would ever have guessed. They had sagged and withered, but they were still identifiable. Poles thrust up into the bodies held them in place, standing at attention around their dead master. The proud arch of their necks had sunken in, but Marra could still recognize the marks of breeding and the richness of the golden bridles.

“A wealthy man,” said Fenris. “To be buried with his warhorses like this.”

“The father?” muttered the dust-wife, gazing up at the sarcophagus. “Or the son? Are we going forward or back?”

“If we go long enough in one direction, the weaponry should change,” offered Fenris, studying the carvings on the walls. “These saddles have stirrups. If we find a tomb without them…”

“If I could find a damn ghost, I could just ask,” said the dust-wife, annoyed. She smacked the sarcophagus lid and a hollow ringing filled the crypt, then died away. “But these are too quiet and too long dead. We need younger corpses. Or at least angrier ones.”

Marra did not have much time to worry about that, because the next corpse they found was positively furious.





Chapter 18


It was a small tomb off the grand one. A concubine’s room, perhaps. The materials were costly and exquisite, gold and jade and rosewood, and the death mask was beautiful and painted with lapis. Despite the materials, though, it seemed … hasty. As if everything had been slapped together swiftly and in fear. Jade tiles crunched under their feet, having fallen from the coffin, and there were no carvings, only faded paintings. The threshold was plain and uncarved and the doorway was hidden in the shadow of one of the scowling statues.

“This one,” said the dust-wife, with professional satisfaction. “This one here. This one is old, but she has grudges.”

She pulled something out of a pocket—Marra got a glimpse of orange red, like cinnabar—and dusted it over her hands, then knocked on the coffin lid as if it were a door.

Marra expected it to take a few minutes, as the drowned boy had, a slow swelling of horror as the ghost manifested itself, but she barely had time to brace herself before the room erupted.

Dust exploded up from the coffin. Broken tiles flew around the room. Fenris flung himself over Agnes and Marra, while Bonedog yapped silently, trying to catch one in his mouth. Only the dust-wife was unmoved, standing in the center of the chaos, with the light of the moon and her familiar’s shadow falling over her like a shield.

“Calm yourself,” she said. “Or I’ll lay you back down and find another spirit to work with. Your rage does not impress me.”

The entire sarcophagus twisted as it came alive, bouncing on the slab, and then it rolled to one side so that the death mask faced them. The beautiful face was still and calm but the eyes were alive and smoldering with fury.

you wake me!

The voice was made of echoes, of small green tiles falling from the badly mortared sarcophagus, of golden ornaments rattling together like metal cobwebs.

you dare to wake me!

peasant! commoner! you come into the tomb of the great … the great … the consort of kings, the great …

“Forgotten your name, have you?” asked the dust-wife. “Well, it happens, kings and commoners alike.” She thumped her staff on the floor of the tomb. “So what kept you furious all this time?”

replaced replaced replaced! The wind went around the room again. set aside! how dare they, how dare they. do they not know who I am? the great … the great … Again the stirring wind, the sense of a shriek somewhere beyond human hearing, like bats hunting overhead.