“Come out come out where ever you hide!,” a brutish voice called as torchlight cast harsh shadows down the entrance passage. Emmaline opened her mouth to scream but Amal’s hand clamped over her mouth. A moment later a brutal looking bandit with an eye patch stepped into the chamber below them. In one hand he clutched a scimitar and in the other a burning torch. The camel they had led into the chamber snorted nervously as several more bandits spilled into the room.

“Hand her over boy, we will give you some of the gold we sell her for and let you keep your balls,” the bandit went on in a wheedling tone.

“By Allah’s beard,” one of his underlings exclaimed as torch light played across the facets of the emeralds in the statues eyes, making them glint and shimmer. There was a collective intake of breath as the bandits realised the value of the stones and then a general disorganized rush towards the statue. 

“We should run,” Emmaline whispered urgently as the boot falls of the freebooters covered her words.

“There might be more outside,” Amal conseled, “let us wait a moment more.”

The bandits realised the stones were too high to reach and began dragging one of the heavy ceramic amphorae closer to the statue to use as a step. As the lip of it bumped the statue Emmaline felt a stirring of magic both ancient and powerful.

“Let us go,” Amal hissed urgently, but Emmaline couldn’t move, only stare transfixed at the unfolding scene. The one eyed bandit climbed up onto the amphora and, at full extension pressed his knife into the statues eye socket, preparatory to removing it. There was a sudden howling wind that seemed to carry with it not only the dry heat of the desert but the distant and perfumed reek of southern jungles. An arm burst from the statue in a shower of rock dust and seized the bandit by the neck. Emmaline realised in horrified fascination that it wasn’t an arm inside the statue, it was the statue itself, cracks ran down the limestone facing and the avatar of Asaph stepped free. The things body was composed of carved ivory and gold above the waist and interlocking plates of jade to form its serpentine lower quarters. The bandits fled screaming before the avatar but Asaph, it seemed, was no merciful goddess. The avatar crushed the bandit in her grip with a negligent gesture, the tomb echoing with the crack of the man's ribs before pitching like a missile at the remainder, driving them to a ground in a sprawl. With a seductive swish of her hips that echoed mesmerizingly through her tail she closed the distance and fell on the survivors, each hand jerking a long silvery blade from what had appeared to be carven sheaths.