“Over here,” called Agnes. “We’ve got a hallway.”
The hallway was as broad as the wife’s room had been. It vanished in both directions, with branchings off on the same side as the tomb they stood in. “Lady Fox?” said Fenris. “I think you likely have more experience here than the rest of us. Which way?”
“Huh!” She lifted the light on her staff. “My dead were all sensible people in the ground. Not these great frozen tombs. Your ghost would rattle around like a pea in a dish in here. I’ve no idea.”
Bonedog solved the problem by straining at his leash in toward one of the branchings, although it turned out that he only wanted to pee against a wall, which he did, meditatively, while everyone else pretended to be interested in the bas-reliefs on the walls.
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.”