Holding her breath, Vena counted to sixty, still not daring to take her eyes from the gate and the long stone pathway that led down the steep hill to the revelry-filled guardhouse.  Only after a full minute had passed with no alarm or trample of pursing feet did she dare to exhale and relax slightly. Her murderous entry into the Royal Cemetery appeared to be successful, unnoticed by anyone.  At least anyone still alive.

Drawing in a slow breath, Vena looked in every direction, ears twitching in the silence.  There was no sound, save the roars of distant revelry from the main guard post, and the faint sounds of rock hammers back in the Great Plaza, where the Godking's new Crypt was being constructed. There were quiet noises nearer her, but just small chirps and whirrs of night insects. She had done it.

Vena grinned as she exhaled fully. Her plan was underway, and the first step, the one she'd been most worried about, was accomplished. None of the guards would notice one fewer serving girl, not with those other wenches slipping into the back alley and the barracks with any soldier who could boast enough silvers to shake in his money pouch. The two guards she had killed had drawn the shortest straws and were scheduled to be on duty until dawn, hours from now.  No one would come to check on or replace them until then.  And she would be away long before that time.

Abandoning her hiding spot, Vena rose and ran deeper into the Cemetery, the moonlight shining off the dew-wet grass showing her way well enough. She could actually see better once she was away from the torches at the gate and her eyes adjusted to the silvery moonlight. The wet grass was thick and heavy, but she picked up her feet and took long leaping strides while moving in a zigzag path, trying to minimize the trial she left.

To her left was the main stone path through the cemetery, but she kept clear of it, since her footprints would be easily-spotted on the flagstones.  Besides the main road, wide enough for two wagons to pass side by side, there were numerous narrow stone paths winding through the cemetery.  She hopped over these when she encountered them, mindful of how clearly a wet foot print, left shining in the silvery moonlight, would show her passage. The chances of someone outside the cemetery seeing her was greater on the clear walkways as well.

Admittedly, the chances of anyone seeing her if she stopped to dance a jig were remote with so many huge monuments and sepulchers on all sides. But there was no point in taking that chance.  Besides, the night air was chilly and her tavern wench disguise did not provide much protection.  Running kept her warm.

Continuing in her jerky, side to side movement, Vena hurried through the monuments, traveling gradually around the perimeter of the gently-sloping hill that filled most of the cemetery grounds. The Royal Cemetery seemed quite large when you were walking around the outside of it, shoulder to shoulder with thousands of other mourners, so Vena was surprised how quickly she reached her destination.

Pausing behind a low monument, she felt her heart racing, pounding far faster than the bit of running she'd done could account for.  Well, it was death at the stake for any caught inside, so she supposed a bit of nervousness was to be expected.  But she would not be caught.

Panting, Vena moved out from behind the headstone and slipped towards the outer fence, keeping in the deep shadow of a large monument to her right.  The outer fence was just ten yards away, and she looked through the tall wrought iron bars, out to the city beyond.

The Royal Cemetery was perched atop a steep hill in the heart of Balain, the capital city of Rohaland, largest of the Eastern lands.  Surrounding the cemetery hill like a stone moat was the Great Plaza; two acres across, it was paved with white marble and entirely bare of buildings, save for the Royal Cathedral. Vendors set up stalls and people came to socialize on holy days, and there was always foot traffic, but no buildings other than the church, though the city pressed up around the Great Plaza on every side.

The Royal Cathedral squatted alone, seeming larger for its solitude.  Long and wide, the building was shaped like an enormous barn; the main cathedral able to house five thousand penitents at a time. It was the most most holy site in Balain, and the second largest structure, after the castle. Men looked up to the Royal Cemetery, but they worshiped at the Cathedral. Vena, like most citizens, had never been inside; it was reserved for the nobles, priests, royalty, and military officers, though commoners were allowed to walk through a wide hallway to the rear of the building from where, through thick iron bars, they could glimpse the endless rows of white stone pews leading up to the altar.  Crowds pressed up to the sides of the Royal Cathedral every holy day, straining to hear what bits of the service might drift through the high barred and stained glass windows. There were smaller churches all through the city, but proceedings in the Royal Cathedral always seemed far grander.

If the Cathedral was forbidden to commoners, the Cemetery was a no-man's land for virtually everyone.  Entering it was the biggest risk Vena had ever taken in her vocation, and she felt a rebellious thrill just being inside the gates. Her worry was not at all idle; the penalty for passing through the unlocked gates without proper permission was death by immolation.  Vena had seen three men burned at the stake in her lifetime, and she did not wish to suffer their fate.

The Royal Cemetery seemed a tempting target for thieves, but very seldom did anyone actually try to gain entry, and no one had successfully removed any treasures from it in over two hundred years, as far as Vena knew. There were thousands of graves in the Cemetery, all housing the mortal remains of nobles, knights, and merchants wealthy enough to buy themselves a plot.  Most were buried with several of their prized possessions; valuable jewelry, enchanted weapons and armor for the crusaders, and always wearing their best fashions.

Yet despite this bonanza of precious stones and magical equipment, robbery attempts in the Cemetery were almost unheard of. All the graves were sunk deep into the hard earth, and covered over with massive granite and marble slabs.  A crew of men with heavy digging tools were needed to excavate any grave, and with the Cemetery in the middle of the city, only one gate, the fearsome outer wall, and soldiers regularly patrolling the perimeter, no digging operation of that size could possibly succeed in stealth.  Solitary thieves managed to scale the outer wall at times, but what they hoped to carry away Vena never knew.  All were caught entering or leaving, or shot down by archers once sighted inside the cemetery.  Few thieves allowed themselves to be taken alive, knowing well the punishment.

The Cemetery was a tempting target, with such great riches known to be buried within, but Vena had never heard of any successful thefts over the last two centuries.  The last thieves to succeed had been guards, and all four had been tracked down within a month, and dragged back to be whipped, then burned in the Great Plaza, within sight of the cemetery they had dared defile.

Adding to the tempting nature of the Cemetery, ancient law writ that the gates must be left unlocked, for no reason Vena had ever heard. True, there were always guards stationed at them, but what thief had ever heard of an unlocked door on a treasure room?  Ordinarily there was a full squad of soldiers on guard duty, and dozens more in the guard house just a hundred yards away, but tonight, for the first night in Vena's memory, there had been but two.  All the city was swept up in celebrations, and Vena had known this was the best chance she would ever have.

The gate and dead guards were behind her, but now the outer fence was near, and what she sought lay beneath it. Ordinarily no one was permitted near the fence, but due to the special celebration that had been building to a crescendo for the past few weeks, commoners had been allowed to heap mounds of flowers, foods, and other offerings against the metal barrier.  Vena had been one of them earlier this day, tossing a long bundle of flowers through the bars and bowing respectfully as she did it.  Others were caught up in worship, sobbing on their knees, but she could not bring herself to go that far.  No one had given her or her offering a second look this afternoon, and she had walked away calmly, though her heart had been fluttering in her chest.

Now she had to find her flowers, and what they concealed. Her bundle was two dozen long stemmed yellow roses, with a long pink and white ribbon tied around them.  Easy enough to find in the daytime, but at night she could not make out the colors of anything from 10 yards away.  She knew right where hers had gone; looking through the bars she was lined up properly with two steeples across the plaza, but hours of worshipers had come after her, and added greatly to the heaps of debris.  Offerings were stacked several feet high in places, and she wished she'd dared toss her bundle farther inside.

Taking a deep breath, Vena looked out through the fence.  Even at this hour there were still hundreds of people in the plaza, many pairs of men reeling along arm in arm, large wooden mugs in their free hand.  Snatches of drunken song floated on the night air, and even the soldiers were lost in celebration.  Vena knew none were so lost that they wouldn't snap to immediately at the sight of someone inside the cemetery though, and even if she could reach the fence unseen, she could be spotted pawing through the flowers.  Stealth was her only weapon, if she were seen death was sure, with only the method to be determined.  Her belt dagger was sharp enough; she would cut her throat before being captured.  But it would not come to that.

Readying herself, Vena narrowed down the location of her bundle to about a ten foot stretch.  The steeples were lined up exactly, but had been much easier to sight through in the daylight, she belatedly realized. Vena drew her knife, took a few steps back, and then with two steps to gain momentum, she dove out into the open. The wet grass was slippery, and she quickly slid down the slight slope towards the fence on her belly, sliding too low to be seen from outside the fence.  She hoped.

The grass was even slicker than she'd anticipated, and with the fence looming before her she drove her dagger into the earth, holding the handle with all her strength.  Even falling into the fence could be fatal, and sliding into it head first would have brought her evening's labor to a sudden end.

The entire cemetery was surrounded by thousands of long, thick, iron posts, driven into the ground and extending straight upwards nearly as high as a three story building. Each vertical bar was thicker than a man's arm, four-edged like a diamond, and studded in every direction by barbs and points sharper and longer than spear heads. The metal had been wrought in ages past, and was enchanted to remain perpetually sharp and free from rust or any signs of weathering.  Several skeletons dangled from the top or sides of the fence, would-be thieves who had died trying to climb in, and perished slowly, skewed by the barbs.  Vena had looked over the fence and immediately rejected the possibility of climbing over.  She would have needed a chain to throw to the top, metal shod boots and gauntlets to climb up, and the luck of the Gods to do so without being seen.

Looking up at the fence from this close, she was glad she hadn't tried to climb it.  Even with no risk of detection that could be fatal, as the dangling skeletons attested.  It was said the fence lived though some enchantment, and could move and turn to skewer an intruder.  The posts did seem to creak and sway in the wind at times, and the scythe-blades studding them were said to whisk along each other from time to time, as if sharpening themselves.  Vena didn't believe half of the legends she heard whispered in thief's dens.  Some said the bars extended down into the earth as far as they did up into the sky, in an homage to the earthly burial and ascended spirits of the cemetery's residents.  Vena thought it was more likely for stability and to make them impossible to tunnel under, but she was careful whose ears heard her voice that heresy.

Turning her attention to the piles of flowers and other offerings, Vena rooted through them quickly, feeling for hers by weight, since the heaps were far too deep to find hers easily, even if she had been able to tell the colors clearly in the moonlight.

At last she grasped one bundle that was ten times the weight of the others, and yanked it free, rolling away from the fence and lying flat.  Slicing open the ribbon with her dagger, she sheathed it and ripped open the wrapping paper, scattering the roses, heedless of several thorns that pricked her hands.  If any guards had examined her fingers closely she might have been in trouble, for they were heavily-calloused and strengthened by the frequent wall and roof top climbing she used to enter locked houses.  No bar wench would have nails so short and blunt as hers either.

At last clearing away the disguising flowers and paper, Vena grasped the thick bar of metal and felt the enchanted strength of it surging through her strong arms.  The crowbar was three feet long and magically-hardened as well as strength enchanted.  It had cost her more than all of her weapons and other possessions put together, but it was essential to this one mission.  It was also far too large to smuggle in under her clothing, which was why the offerings to Galliard had proved so helpful as a decoy.

Taking the heavy bar in her right hand, Vena turned and crawled back up the hillside as quickly as she could, trusting to luck and the cloud cover to get her back into the maze of monuments unseen.  The piles of garbage against the fence helped as well, since no one outside the cemetery could see within three feet of the ground.

Luck was with her, for she made it in ten seconds with no alarm being raised, and in another half minute she had sprinted up nearly to the top of the hill.  Here the monuments were so thick that she could have all but lit a fire and remained unseen from below, and she moved quickly around the upper perimeter, her eyes fixed on her goal, the Tomb of the Fallen Prince.

Atop the hill stood three monuments to kings, ancient and undisturbed for ages.  The youngest of them was King Ramanon, and its great carved horses had loomed over all the others for more than three hundred and fifty years.  No king since then had won enough territory, or had enough nerve, to build himself a larger crypt, and several lesser kings who had installed themselves on the top of the hill, in smaller edifices, had been dug up and moved down the hill by their less reverential heirs.

The Tomb of the Fallen Prince housed a dozen coffins, and had room for a dozen more, the legends told.  It was reserved for future kings, first born and others in the direct line of succession, who perished before coming into the crown.  These unfortunates were given elaborate state burials by their fathers, and their great stone coffins were born into this tomb for eternal rest.

Into this tomb, five days past, had come the sealed and banded coffin of the Godking, Galliard. Greatest of all the kings, founder and uniter of Rohaland, Galliard had perished nearly one thousand years ago, and been laid to rest in a magnificent crypt on his home island, far to the east. Where exactly no one had known for over eight hundred years, since as the legend told, just a few years after his death the earth had shaken, cities had fallen, and Galliard's small island had vanished, sunken entirely beneath the waves.  There it had remained, vanished beneath the cruel sea, for nearly a millennium, until just six months ago when another earthquake had wracked the coast, killing thousands and lifting some harbors far above the ocean, while others were submerged completely.  Those tragedies, news for a decade any other time, had been forgotten almost at once, as word of Galliard's risen island had spread across the land.

The name of the island was long lost in history, but the name of Galliard, the founder and Godking, was more than myth.  Every conquering king in human memory had aspired to prove his true heir, both sides claimed his guidance in every battle in the land, and the actual discovery of his island, of his fabled crypt, weed-covered but largely undamaged by the ocean, was perhaps the greatest event since his death all those centuries before.

The current king, Alamond IV, a ruler who had distinguished himself by nothing more than a new design on official silver coins, saw a chance to join history as the discoverer of the Godking, and began issuing decrees at a frantic pace.  Half the army was to protect the tomb, wagons full of scholars were sent off to verify the authenticity of the risen island, warships were to make all possible haste to protect against pirate raids, and anyone who dared enter the tomb was subject to immediate execution. This last edict was hardly necessary, for the common people of the land held Galliard in as much regard as did the king, and without any thought of their place in history.

The day after the risen island was sighted, sailors, fishermen, and villagers had left off their rebuilding of the earthquake damage and streamed to the island in anything that would float.  Once there they found that the island had been virtually wiped clean by the ocean.  Clean save for Galliard's great tomb, which while weed-covered and stained by the sea, was largely intact. No man would have dared enter the crypt, much less pry up the huge granite slab that covered the stairs down to Galliard's stone coffin, their reverence was too great.

The scholars arrived at last, and after a week of careful comparisons to legend and lore, they finally pried up the burial slab and found Galliard's coffin entirely submerged in ocean water, water that stunk with the rot of small fish and weeds.  The strangest and most reverent bucket brigade of all time emptied the sunken tomb, and found Galliard's coffin still wrapped in the huge bands of enchanted gold that legend had told it would be.  Water was seen to be slowly leaking from one corner, and continued to trickle out for the next week while word was sent to the king.

Once the experts were sure it was Galliard, frantic preparations began.  Hundreds of laborers and an army of stone masons began to construct a massive new tomb in the Great Plaza of Balain.  Galliard's coffin remained on his island for several months, until several earth tremors touched off fears that it might sink again.  The coffin was therefore moved to the mainland, and from there began its slow journey back to the capital.  Construction on the new crypt in Balain would require another year, so it was decided that Galliard should rest in the Tomb of the Lesser King until then, there being no other space large and secure enough in the Royal Cemetery. It was rumored that the presence of Alamond V, the king's dead son, laid in the Tomb of Fallen Princes these six years, had something to do with this decision, for what man would not want his perished offspring to lie in such distinguished company?

Whatever the reason, it had touched off a huge debate as to the appropriateness of such a resting place, even just a temporary one, and the priests had won out.  The coffin was scheduled to be moved into the great vault beneath the Royal Cathedral in two days, and once there Vena knew no one other than the Cardinal or King would be able to gain access to it.  That was why she had taken such a risk tonight, knowing this was her last possible chance at such a rich prize.  Her intrusion was not motivated by reverence, but greed.  She was a thief, one successful enough to keep all her fingers, both hands, an occasionally full belly, and had never been forced to earn a living on her back, or worse yet on her knees, in dirty back alleys.  But she was far from rich, far from happy, and Galliard was known to have been buried in enough enchanted armor to furnish a museum.

His plate mail was said to be coated with gold and black diamonds, his sword and shield inlaid with precious gems, his crown ringed with rubies.  The equipment was all enchanted as well, indestructible, forever sharp and gleaming, magical enough to turn any bar brawler into a warlord.  Vena had no interest in being a warlord, though she wouldn't have objected to selling a nice secondhand sword or shield or helm to one.  Even Galliard's coffin was said to be priceless, banded with thick straps of gold. And all that stood between those riches and Vena now was a locked tomb door.

She hefted the crowbar she'd sold everything she owned to purchase, and walked around the Tomb of the Fallen Prince, looking out at the dark city.  The view from near the top of the cemetery hill was quite impressive, and Vena sighed at the sight of the tiny lights and torches twinkling on every house and all through the Great Plaza. Galliard's coffin had only been in Balain for a week, but the city had been at a stand still almost since word came that the caravan was approaching, ten days ago. The one-day holiday had stretched on and on, and the celebrants drinking entire taverns dry as every man seemingly waited his turn to buy a round and toast the return of the Godking.  Vena had done very well pick pocketing for the last week, with so many easy marks and all of the country folk streaming into town, but her ambitions were greater than that.

Tonight was the height of debauchery, for it was Hallow's Eve, and the king had ordered work to resume the next day. Vena had been scheming to get at Galliard's coffin since it had arrived in the city, and when she'd seen that even the Royal Guards were partaking two days ago, she had hatched her plan. And it was working perfectly, thus far.

She looked away from the city and turned the corner to her left, readying her crowbar for the locked door of the Tomb of the Fallen Prince, and what she saw shocked her so badly that she dropped the iron, wincing at the clang it raised from the granite flagstones.

The tomb door was open!

Just a crack, but the bolts in the wall were ripped out and the massive metal plate that served as a lock was entirely wrenched from the marble wall. Vena fingered the mangled metal with wonder, and doubted that she'd have been able to pry that out of the way, even with her crowbar.  A depressing thought.

An instant later she realized that while she stood here in wonder, some other thieves might be down below, cleaning out what was rightfully hers.  This galvanized her resolve, and she picked up the crowbar and wedged it into the open door, levering it open.  This revealed another mystery, for the door was cracked, but not pushed open entirely.  The metal plate was bent and bolts had pulled out of the wall, but not enough to open the door.  Vena had to put her full strength into prying at the metal, bracing one foot against the wall, feeling the enchanted pry bar adding to her force, before the last bolts popped and the door was free to pull open.  Had a thief been inside and then partially locked the door once they left?  Was someone inside and locked in?  Had someone tried to get in, wrenched the locks almost entirely free, and given up?  Vena was perplexed, since there was no way anything thicker than the blade of a sword could have entered the tomb before she'd pried the last bolts free.

Waiting was accomplishing nothing, so Vena pulled the door open just enough to slip through, and with one last look at the dark, deserted cemetery behind her, she squeezed into the crypt.

Chapter One, Part Two -->

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