Excerpt: The Sleep of Death

A sandstorm raged outside, but inside the tomb, its fury was muted and far away. Leelan Yuwiss was tired of listening to its incessant shhhhhing going on outside. A week ago he had been in the mountains, skiing in the sunlight.

Now he was on a crappy assignment, covering an archeological dig in the worst hellhole in the Eastern Continent.

He checked his camera, making sure that none of the sand had gotten inside or on the lens, then hung it on a strap around his neck. As a journalist, he had traveled all over the Laxam Empire, covering different stories. Some of them had been quite exciting, or interesting, such as the time he'd covered the battle of Talgar Castle, or when he tasted wines in the Norpal Baronies to the south a few decades before.

But this one definitely counted as 'human interest'. If that.

Who cared about some stupid sandstone tomb uncovered in the desert in the middle of the most civilized part of the Empire? His editor did, apparently. And now so did Leelan, because he had no real choice but to write this boring, silly story.

Perhaps it was the atmosphere that was bringing him down. The tomb had been sealed tightly, so tightly that the air inside probably hadn't moved since it was sealed up, which the lead archeologist had told Leelan had been about three hundred years before. It was close and silent, as a result. Though the air was thick with spirits outside, whipping the sand into a frenzy, inside there seemed to be few, though Leelan knew that was impossible.

Nothing really stopped spirits from getting in and out, after all. They were a part of the world, and so tiny that they usually couldn't be seen by the naked eye. A bit of sand and a closed door wouldn't stop them from getting inside and stirring things up, moving the air, breaking down the walls, infusing the surroundings with heat during the day, and cold during the night, things like that.

Certainly the torches inside the tomb still worked. One of them burned merrily just above Leelan's head. If he squinted, he fancied he could just see the heat spirits dancing inside the flame, little motes of light and heat that made the fire hot.

He heard a grinding noise as the archeologists wedged open another door. Sighing, Leelan got to his feet and dusted off his bottom, and walked towards the sound. He should probably take a few more photographs and some notes. He'd interview them all again about the day's events later, but if they found something interesting, he would need to have some pictures to choose from when he wrote up the story.

The whole place was choked with dust, and the movement of the heavy stone door made them all cough and wheeze. Leelan could see Faran, the lead archeologist, some distance down the hall. He was fanning his hand in front of his face to clear it, and peering into the room.

"Can we get a little light in there?" he called, and someone brought over an artificial torch. This light source was different from the natural torches - made of glass, with magical runes etched on the bulb. Inside, the light spirits, similar to the ones that were in the flame, but without the heat ones that made the flame hot, danced and spun. Leelan knew vaguely that the etched symbols kept the spirits inside the glass. And he had learned the hard way the first time he ever dropped a light bulb, that if the glass cracked, all of the spirits would escape. But this one was flawless, and cast a bright light into the room.

There was a collective gasp, and Leelan's apathy suddenly fled. "What is it?" he asked as the scientists pushed their way into the room. This was the biggest room in the tomb, he had been told, and they had been working most of the week at cataloguing all the other rooms, saving this one for last.

Was there treasure, perhaps? Or some kind of sarcophagus? Perhaps some ancient desert tribe, had buried their king there with a dozen of his mistresses, long before the desert peoples had been absorbed into the Empire.

Leelan wasn't an especially tall man, but he was slender and strong. He worked his way through the knot of people, making judicious use of his elbows, until he made it into the room. Then he raised his camera, looking for the glint of gold.

There was a glint, but it wasn't of gold. The light from the torch glinted off of a huge glass coffin, refracting and splitting into a hundred cold white sparkles as it hit the runes etched into the glass. Each rune was the size of Leelan's palm.

It was a spirit bottle. But Leelan had never seen one so huge.

And even stranger, there was a woman inside.

She seemed to be sleeping. Her long lashes rested on her cheeks, which were pale and almost as blue as a corpse under the harsh artificial light. Long, dark brown hair fanned out around her head, shifting as she dreamed.

But, even more amazing, Leelan then saw that something else lay underneath her, and shifted as she slept. Large, black feathered wings.

"What in the name of the spirits?" Faran breathed, his eyes as wide as saucers.

Leelan stepped closer to the coffin. His camera hung forgotten around his neck.

"Who is she?" Leelan whispered, bending over to try to get a good look at her face. "Shouldn't we get her out of there?" She was beautiful.

"Mr. Yuwiss!" Faran exclaimed suddenly. "Please don't touch--"

Before he realized what he was doing, Leelan had rested his palm on the glass as he leaned over it. He jerked his hand away and saw a palm print remaining on the formerly-pristine glass. Flushing, he used a corner of his shirt to try to scour it away.

Something moved in his field of vision, and he blinked. For one moment, he thought the woman had opened her eyes and looked at him. But when he looked again, she was just sleeping. Her full lips parted slightly, and then closed again, as if she sighed.