The Power and the Glory

Book 1 Chapter XVI: Dress Rehearsal

One of those parks was right next to a graveyard. Indeed, it was difficult to tell where graveyard ended and park began. Very few people ever visited graveyards around the Day of Comets. It would only be inviting ill fortune, they thought. Yet just as Ilaran sat down on one of the park benches and took a book out of his bag, he saw two people climb over the graveyard fence.

That was strange enough on its own. Graveyards' gates were never locked. Why would anyone go to the trouble of climbing over the fence if they could just open the gate? The obvious answer was they were up to no good.

From the park bench he had a reasonably good view of the graveyard. Or at least of the part that was nearest him. Which, as luck would have it, was the part that the people stayed in. He watched suspiciously as they stopped beside a grave. From this distance he couldn't make out any distinguishing features about either of them. They were both tall and black-haired, both dressed in black -- and both armed with shovels.

As he watched suspiciously the two of them began to dig up the grave. The sheer nerve of doing such a thing in broad daylight was somehow more baffling than them robbing a grave at all. Ilaran stared, hardly able to believe his eyes, as they struggled with the shovels.

Clearly they weren't very intelligent grave-robbers. Half the time they got in each other's way. They piled the displaced earth too close to the graveside, and it fell in again when they dug too close.

I don't think I have to do anything, Ilaran decided. They're foiling their own plans without any help.

He set his book down and sat back to watch the misadventures of the bumbling grave-robbers.

~~~~

"Oh, this is hopeless!" Abi groaned. She tried to comb the earth out of her hair with her fingers. Unfortunately her fingers were so dirty that she just made matters worse. "It'll take us all year at this rate."

Irímé scooped up a shovelful of earth and attempted to pour it onto the solid ground beside the grave. The edge of the shovel clanged against the headstone. All the earth cascaded down into the grave again. More than half of it got into Irímé's shoes.

"I still say we should use magic," he grumbled.

He leaned against the headstone and balanced on one foot as he took one of his shoes off. After he shook the dirt out of it he put it on again and took off the other. Unfortunately another mini-landslide fell just as he put the second shoe on again. Both his shoes immediately filled up with soil for the umpteenth time.

"Argh!" Infuriated, he stabbed his shovel into the grave. It promptly hit a stone. Its resulting shudder twisted the handle right out of his hands. With a resounding thunk it hit the headstone with enough force to leave a scrape on the marble.

"I don't know if using magic for this will have an effect on necromancy," Abi said dubiously. She looked down at her own shoes, which were now encased in an outer crust of soil, and the absolutely filthy hems of her trousers. The earth in Eldrin had a nasty tendency to become thick, cloying mud when it rained, and it took whole weeks of sun before it dried up properly. Until then it was a horrible sticky loam that clung to everything it touched. No amount of washing would ever get all of the stuff off her clothes now. "...But I think we'll risk it."

She scrambled out of the grave, dislodging more soil and getting more of it on her clothes. At this rate she'd look like something that had crawled out of a mud lagoon before the day was over. Her parents would have conniptions.

Irímé climbed out on the other side. He glared down at the grave as if it had personally offended him. The effect was somewhat ruined by the streaks of mud on his face.