Jasilia tried to go back down the ladder, but it was too late. The giant skeleton on the wall top—crowned with a royal blue khepresh, holding a jewel-encrusted scepter of pure gold, and dressed like the pharaoh himself—reached out a massive bony hand and grabbed her by the wrist.

With a cry, Nekhtep kicked his heels into the camel's sides and swung the beast toward the ghastly soldier on their left, charging down the dune's face. The move seemed to take the skeletal thing by surprise. Moldering flesh hanging in loose patches from its skull, the creature raised a longsword only to see the weapon driven out of its hands by a powerful blow from Nekhtep's khopesh. The Risen Guard's next swing lopped off the unliving soldier's head, which rolled down the dune's side, leaving behind shreds of rotting skin on the baking sand.

Nekhtep looked down at Jasilia as they stood in the shadow of the great dune, his expression puzzled. "How could you know where they've taken Ojan? And who's 'they'?"

Searing heat and abrasive, sand-laden winds burned the exposed patches of skin around Jasilia's stylized brass goggles. She slipped a hand beneath her tightly drawn burnoose and adjusted the scarf around raw cheeks, her other hand thrust up under the half-buried opening of the tomb's great stone lip so the wailing winds wouldn't sweep her away.

Marcov spotted the modest hut to which the priest had directed him, spent a moment invoking the haunting spirits, and broke into a sprint. He leaped, hurling his whole weight against the shuttered window nearest the front door. Wood burst inward, splinters flying—all in utter silence, for the ghosts of that long-dead village had spread their intangible substances through the surrounding air, muting all sound.