Emmaline swallowed as the ground rumbled and the doorway to the tomb, or sanctuary or whatever it was slid open. Dust puffed from the opening and she pulled her veil over her eyes to shield them from the grit. She could sense ancient magics deep within the tomb, like distant rains through the forest of the Riekwald. She was unsure whether her spell, or Amal speaking the name of Asaph had caused the change but it seemed to her that the best thing to do was to leave and quickly. She turned to say as much to Amal when the sound of men shouting reached her ears. Glancing back along the canyon she saw men, probably bandits, on camelback silhouetted against the horizon. The rising sun was full in their faces and it would take them a few seconds to notice the interlopers.

“In!” she snapped grabbing the camel by the reigns and pulling it towards the door,” the beast whickered and struggled until Amal touched his hand to its face and it relented allowing itself to be lead between the stone lintels. The interior of the tomb was cool with the smell of ancient decay heavy on the air. Impressive panels framed a long hallway, carvings of strange pictorial designs covered the walls, snakes featured heavily in the iconography, leading some credence to Amal’s assertions about the Goddess. At the end of the corridor large carven columns flanked the entryway to a chamber. It was perhaps twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep. Decorative pots and vases lined the walls, some of them sealed with ancient dust covered wax. In the center of room was a sunken rectangle from which more columns rose. Emmaline guessed that it might once have been a pool, but it was long dried up now so the carefully fitted limestone blocks on the bottom were easily visible. A statue, ten feet high stood at the far end of the chamber, though in the dark it was hard to make out the details. They had no torches or lanterns so Emmaline took a gold piece from her purse and lifted it into the air, whispering an incantation as she did so. The gold Arabyian coin began to glow, casting a soft golden light through the chamber, throwing the carvings into sharp relief. The statue was of a beautiful woman, though from the waste down she appeared to be a serpent with her tail coiled around her body. Emeralds the size of Emmaline’s fists glinted in the statues eye sockets and the scales appeared to be carved not of sandstone, as the rest of the statue was, but of overlapping plates of jade. An altar of simple stone stood at the foot of the statue.

“I don’t see any other way out,” Emmaline fretted. It was certain that the brigands would spot the entrance to the subterranean structure as certainly as they had, and probably would investigate. While they might hope for the element of surprise she was far from certain that she and Amal could overcome a half dozen battle hardened cut throats, certainly if the bandits had supplies they could wait them out. She peered at the strange hieroglyphics on the walls but without the lexicon she had purchased they remained impenetrable to her other than the frequent repetition of the name Asaph.