"Less talk, more walk," The Masked told her, almost shoving her through the secret door. "And give me the lamp."
"So you can get a better look at what's falling down on our heads to kill us?"
Tantaerra was still flinging those words at her partner when her foot came down on a flagstone that sank a little. "Uh-oh."
The Masked caught hold of her shoulder with one hand and pulled, even as he flung himself over backward.
They both bounced on their backs as, mere feet away, a block of stone the size of a large wagon plummeted from the ceiling to almost kiss the floor. It swayed, in a creaking of chains, perhaps the width of The Masked's hand above the flagstones, and then started to rattle slowly up into the ceiling again.
The Masked looked thoughtful. "You were heavy enough to trigger that. So if you wear the cord around your waist this time, and I stand ready to haul you back, and you traipse across the rest of this room …"
Tantaerra sighed. "Let's do it."
Four flagstones and four falling blocks later, the room ended in an archway filled with a curtain of hanging chains. There was a strong, steady glow of light coming from beyond them.
"Those look all too much like tentacles to me," the halfling commented.
"Agreed. So let's start throwing gears into them, and see if-aha!"
The Masked's first missile had caused the chains to writhe and coil around it. He flung a second, and a third, and the chains were now darting about just like the tentacles of a hunting squid, stabbing and encoiling and-
They flung all the gears they'd salvaged, more than a dozen cogs and gear fragments in all, into the chains, which convulsed into crushing, strangling knots about them, leaving only three chains to wave and quest about. Tantaerra and The Masked slid under them feet-first at top speed …
And found themselves in a room floored in gleaming black marble, that rose up in sweeping curves into a central plinth, on which stood the source of a steady pearly glow: an ornate catafalque of chased and carved white marble, grander than any coffin they'd yet seen.
Once safely out of the reach of the archway chains, the two partners peered at it hard and long.
It was a box carved out of one massive block of marble, with a sculpted lid that rose in arches and domes, into a narrowed replica of an ornate royal crown, its spires and winking gems rising almost The Masked's height above the upper lip of the coffin sides.
"Someone certainly thought a lot of himself," Tantaerra commented. "Those jewels are huge. I wonder if they're real."
The Masked wasn't looking at gems or carved furbelows. His attention was on a half-hidden iron frame under the lid, which thrust forth thick rings beyond the edges of the lid. From those rings stretched chains rising up to large pulleys affixed to the ceiling, and continuing from those pulleys around smaller pairs of guide-pulleys to run toward each other and down from ceiling to the far wall, where they came together in a winch affixed there, beside a plain, closed door.
"Freshly oiled," he noted. "I wonder how often Mahalagris emerges for a stroll?"
"You want us to be stupid enough to lift the lid, don't you?"
The Masked shrugged. "Do you see a Fearsome Gauntlet anywhere? These gauntlets we've borrowed aren't even close. It's got to be on his body or with it, and …"
"He's got to be lying in his coffin," Tantaerra sighed.
They kept well away from the coffin on its upswept plinth as they gingerly passed it, seeing nothing in the darker corners of the room except carvings of smiling human faces spaced around the room above the height of a tall door. No one wearing crowns or anything of the sort, and no faces they recognized. There were more women than men.
"Apprentices?" Tantaerra asked.
The Masked shrugged. "Who knows? Mahalagris, yes, but he's probably beyond asking. I hope."
The winch beside the door was the sort that had a spike an operator could thrust in through holes in the winch, to stop what had been winched up from falling again as its weight undid the winching.
"I want to open this door and just move on," Tantaerra muttered. "What are we going to do when we get the lid up, hey? Are we ready to battle some sort of undead wizard hurling the-gods-alone-know-what sort of horrid spells at us?"
"Of course not," The Masked replied. "So we'll just…improvise." He laid hands on the winch handle.
And as he started cranking, his mask started to glow.
∗ ∗ ∗
Tantaerra peered at the mask on her partner's face-now blazing an eerie blue-and backed away.
"Tarram?" she asked. "Masked man?"
He kept on cranking the winch, the oiled chains rattling smoothly.
"Tarram?" Tantaerra asked, more sharply.
"Yes?"
"Your mask."
"Is glowing, yes. I did notice; my eyes are looking out through it, remember? Worry not-I'm still Tarram Armistrade, not some mind-mazed minion of a dead wizard. So far."
Tantaerra didn't laugh.
The next turn of the crank caused a chime to sound somewhere nearby beyond the walls, metal clashing on metal. Then another. And another.
Silently, in the far corner of the room, one of those carved faces started to glow. Tantaerra watched it intently, but it didn't move or change expression or anything else, just started to glow as brightly as a lamp.
Her partner kept on cranking, and another face started to shine.
She spun around with a little chill of fear. What was she doing staring at glowing faces when she should be watching the catafalque-and what might just be starting to rise out of it, as the lid ascended?
Nothing was, that she could see. The lid was rising slowly but steadily as The Masked worked the winch, but the coffin just seemed to be …sitting there.
Which was very much a good and favorable state of affairs, she reminded herself, though what she felt was disappointment.
Around the room, face after carved face started to glow, forming a row of rather eerie lamps.
"High enough?" the masked man called, dog-spike poised to jam the winch with the lid at its current height, about twice his height above the coffin, and not far beneath the pulley.
"I'm no palace decorator," Tantaerra replied. "Looks fine to me." She went on staring at the coffin for a moment and then added, "You're going to want me to climb up and look inside, aren't you?"
"Stand on my shoulders," The Masked told her. "Seeing as we've lost both pole and rock."
She gave him a wry grin. "Isn't it your turn to smile fetchingly at evil, rotting undead wizards?"
"Not with what I'm wearing on what's left of this face," he reminded her darkly, and strode to a stop right beside the plinth. "So start climbing."
"I'm not going to be tall enough," Tantaerra complained, on her way up his back. "I'm going to have to jump high-so step back and catch me, hey?"
"Done," The Masked replied, turning sideways on to the catafalque and backing to one end of it, so her jump would give her a good look at its inner depths.
"I'm afraid we might well be," she replied grimly, standing up on his left shoulder. No, she was much too short. This was going to have to be a spectacular jump-or a grapnel, cord, and climb task. "Ready?"
"For what? Standing here?"
"Ha ha," Tantaerra replied-and leaped high.
The Masked caught her neatly by the hips and set her down gently on the floor. "Well?"
"It's empty."
A door closed-the door, beside the winch. They both whirled.
"Of course it's empty," said the tall man who'd just come through it. "I'm much too busy to spend time lying in my own coffin in the dark, wallowing in endless boredom. There is, after all, so much still to do."