Star of Cursrah Read online

  Puffing, the officer caught a fistful of cornrows and jerked Star to her feet. She expected the captive to beg for mercy, but Star’s dark eyes glowed with royal fire.

  Despite red welts marring her cheek and neck, the princess hissed, “You’ll burn at the stake for this indignity. After your skin is flayed from your wretched body. I, Samira Amenstar of Cursrah, vow it!”

  “Preposterous.” The officer let go Star’s hair and said, “As if a real princess would ride this far in plain clothes with only two ragamuffins for escort.”

  In the pause, a cavalryman cleared his throat. The captain glanced, saw the soldier flick his eyes to Star, then nod small. Amenstar grasped his message. The man must have accompanied Samir Pallaton to the royal gala, so confirmed Star’s identity. The captain gaped at the princess’s grim smile then blanched. Shaken, the officer groped for her horse and mounted.

  “You—you three. Mount up. We must—You’d be conducted to Samir Pallaton anyway, whoever you are.…”

  In silence, the troop formed three and three to bracket the captives and trotted off.

  “I told you we’d be safe, no matter where we went,” Amenstar told her friends. She rubbed her bleeding ear and winced.

  Tafir and Gheqet exchanged glances. They didn’t feel safe.

  9

  The Year of the Gauntlet

  “There are three of them, three friends, just like us.…”

  Hakiim and Reiver had been attacked by walking statues, spellbinding mummies, and a magical fear that still lingered to shred their nerves raw. On the verge of freedom, Amber had cried out and collapsed. Panicked, blundering in the darkness, they’d lugged Amber far from the palace floor into the shelter of a broken wall. Water and gentle shaking revived her, but her words rang strange.

  “You’re babbling, Amber,” Hakiim said.

  Both young men huddled over her with worried frowns.

  “I’m not crazy,” snapped the slave master’s daughter. “It’s this tiara. When I reached moonlight, the moonstone cast its spell. It’s a storytelling charm, I think. I saw it given as a present on the samira’s sixteenth birthday. I saw the whole gala, the sorcerous entertainments, people throwing food, the princess nearly being drowned, then running away—everything.”

  Hakiim pushed up his kaffiyeh to scratch his forehead, and Reiver urged, “Keep your voice down. Is this another of your fables?”

  “This thing shows the ancient life of that princess,” Amber said. She tugged off the tiara and waved it in their faces. “Don it yourself and find out.”

  “No, thank you,” Reiver said, and both Memnonites leaned back. “You dropped liked you’d been poleaxed!”

  “It wouldn’t work anyway,” Amber realized. “The moon has set. It’s all true, though. Her name was Amenstar, and I saw this city when it was alive and thriving.”

  Reiver stood up, stretched his arms and cast about the ruined valley. Nothing stirred but Calim’s Breath, the last and only manifestation of the world’s most powerful genie, now so impotent it couldn’t blow out a candle. Taking the opportunity to rest and refresh, Reiver opened his bundle and munched hardtack and jerked goat meat. The thief’s hands shook, for he hadn’t fully recovered from the mummy-induced fright.

  Too casual, he coaxed, “Go on, tell us. I like a good story.”

  “Damn you,” she said. Rattled herself, Amber stood, settled the tiara on her head to keep it safe, and pointed. “This city is—was called Cursrah.”

  “Never heard of it,” Hakiim said. He chewed dried apricots and gulped water, slopping because his hands quaked.

  “Don’t interrupt. Just listen—”

  Amber froze. There’d been other visions too, she recalled. The mummy had touched her, bonded with her mind, and conveyed a nightmare of swirling images that had yet to settle. Amber needed time to think and sort the facts, but one imperative loomed clear. She couldn’t tell her companions every detail; some were just too horrific.

  “Listen to what?” asked the two.

  “Uhh …” Amber hedged as she dug up neutral information. “Cursrah was famous for its library, which stood … there. Those twin ziggurats braced it, and the college lay right behind. The Palace of the Phoenix had a moat.…”

  Reclining against a broken wall, talking to calm herself and her friends, Amber related ancient everyday details of Cursrah. Calim’s Breath swirled around them as if to keep the travelers company. The breeze lifted Amber’s voice and wafted it far in the cool night, until, out at the valley’s rim, inhuman strangers with keen ears heard a pleasant drone and stealthily homed in.

  The first hint of trouble was the scuff of leather on stone in the chill air. Hakiim jumped up and grabbed his scimitar pommel. Amber rolled the other way and shook free the noose of her capture staff. Reiver didn’t hesitate, but pelted away from the noise, feet flying in the semi-dark.

  Hakiim yelled, “Come back, you coward. We mu—ulp!”

  “Giants!” chirped Amber.

  Looming at either end of the shattered wall were huge, blocky figures, one a head taller than the other. It was hard to judge in the colorless pre-dawn light, but the attackers’ heads towered at least seven and eight feet into the star-washed sky. Wrapped in desert robes and headscarves, they carried nine-foot spears with wicked iron barbs. The long shafts sported fuzzy blotches just above the hand grips, and Amber wondered briefly what they might be.

  Making no sound, working together, the raiders stepped wide and closed in. Amber saw the predicament immediately. Whether she and Hakiim ran along the wall or directly away, those nine-foot spears held sideways would corral them.

  “What do we do?” Hakiim asked, pointed his scimitar at a closing giant.

  These brutes could probably crush the humans with one foot, thought Amber. She had an idea, but no time to tell it, so said only, “Get ready to run.…”

  Lunging, snapping her capture staff, Amber flicked the noose over a spear point. All in the blink of an eye, for Amber had done it a thousand times handling slaves, she yanked hard with her left hand to snug the noose around the shaft. Tethered to the spear, Amber skittered backward and leaned into her capture staff. For just a moment, as the taller giant shifted its weight, the spear swung toward Amber and opened the trap.

  They’re slow, thought the daughter of pirates. Good.

  “Go, Hak! Run!”

  Hakiim dashed through the gap. Lumbering, the giant slashed the air with a long spear point but missed the youth by a yard. As the giant turned like a bewildered ox, Hakiim ran rings around it, flung his scimitar far back, and sliced hard at bulky desert robes. Amber heard the raider hiss as keen steel licked its skin, the first sound the brutes had made. Now if Amber could just get herself free …

  Scooting to her heels, snaking out line with her free hand, she flicked her staff like a fishing pole and flipped the noose off the spear point. She ducked, and the giant simply drove the butt of the spear straight at Amber’s head. Hardwood smacked the ruined wall, and pebbles ticked on her headscarf. The giant was angry, Amber realized, and turning to attack Hakiim.

  “Hak, run!” she shrilled. “It’s after you!”

  “I won’t leave you,” the man’s voice quavered. He stood his ground and waved his scimitar like a dancing cobra, a simple tactic meant to distract an enemy.

  Her friend was brave, loyal, and foolish, Amber thought. Meanwhile the second giant trundled at her. A head shorter, this giant was quicker. Fortunately Amber had a partial shield, and she exploited it. Rising from her crouch, Amber dashed along the wall behind the wounded giant’s back. Squirting past, she caught a whiff and almost gagged. The giants stank like a slaughterhouse, an eye-watering reek like green hides, rotting guts, and curdled blood. Holding her breath, Amber almost brained herself on the giant’s spear haft. Dodging, her foot slipped on a rock, for it was still dark near the ground, though the sky had lightened enough to show silhouettes. The scrape of stone was loud, but if she was quick enough …

 
She wasn’t. From behind, the shorter giant whisked the long iron spear point between Amber’s knees. She felt the curious plumes on the shaft, perhaps horsetails, brush her leg, then flinched as a backward barb pinked her thigh. As Amber bleated, the larger giant half-stepped back. Amber was mashed against the crumbling stone wall, breath crushed from her lungs as if a hogshead barrel had flattened her.

  “Amber!” shouted Hakiim.

  Pinned, Amber wished her friend would run. Standing there waving his scimitar wouldn’t help for long. If the big giant hurled its spear, or simply chucked it sideways, the spear would skewer Hakiim or knock him flat. Squashed, Amber gasped as the big giant backed tighter. The spear shaft tangling Amber’s knees rapped her in the rump and crotch. Hoicked higher, the shaft picked Amber’s feet off the ground. Teetering, straining to stick one foot on solid earth, Amber felt a huge hand grab her shoulder.

  Before she could jump or even yell, Amber was plucked off the ground like a chicken for the pot. Seams in her leather vest popped as she was bashed into the stone wall. The first blow hurt as her legs slapped helplessly. The second blow winded her. The third banged her head so she swooned.

  Hakiim saw silhouettes as the shorter giant hoisted Amber in one hand. Amber kicked her legs, helpless as a puppet, until her puppet strings were cut, and she dropped into darkness. Hakiim shouted her name and got no reply.

  Panic choked Hakiim as the taller giant rumbled toward him like a mountain avalanche. If he turned and ran, Hakiim was sure, that long spear would lance his back and pin him like a fly. Slowly the dark man crabbed backward to keep his footing. He hated to leave Amber in the giants’ clutches, but what else could he do, and where in the name of Seven Devils was Reiver?

  As if in answer, something whistled over Hakiim’s head. The giant grunted in pain as a rock smacked its jaw. Another rock stung, and the giant sidestepped, albeit slowly.

  Hakiim whirled just as Reiver called, “Hak—now!”

  Pointing his scimitar wide lest he fall upon it, the rug merchant’s son dashed for the cover of ruined walls. Some stood ankle high, some two stories. Somewhere in this mess Reiver hid with his cat’s-eye vision—but where? Shrugging mentally, Hakiim zigzagged around a waist high wall and into a broken alley. He’d hide, try to circle back and rescue Amber, then let Reiver find him.

  Ahead he saw a tattered scarecrow in faded clothing. Popping up in a junction of alleys, the thief gestured wildly for Hakiim to duck into a dark crease in a high wall. A slender crack where the giants couldn’t fit, Hakiim guessed, and steered for it, a hand in front lest he smack his head. Reiver was already slipping sideways up another alley.

  Something flickered in the thief’s path. A black, bulky shape materialized out of thin air like a genie. Hakiim gargled a warning, too late.

  Reiver plowed right into the monster, yet another giant looming higher than the tumbledown walls. Even with its native slowness, the magical giant had only to close a hand to clamp Reiver’s neck and hoist the thief off the ground. Reiver kicked the giant’s chest with bare feet and beat uselessly against a hand as big as a watermelon. The giant shook the thief like a puppy, so hard Reiver’s tools and coins jingled, and he hung stunned.

  Hakiim saw the capture and looked back to see the magical giant barreling after him with Reiver in one hand, and a bigger one tramping down the alley. Torn between fear and loyalty, Hakiim couldn’t decide whether to flee or stay.

  The giant called, “Cease or I snap his neck. Stay!”

  Hakiim stayed. Within a heartbeat the biggest giant, whose back the man had sliced with his scimitar, arrived. Hakiim flinched, and a hand like a wrecking ball knocked him to the alley floor. He tasted dust on split lips. Too stunned to pick up his head, he groaned as a massive foot stamped him flat. Lame, in pain, lacking air, he inhaled dust that burned his throat, felt his head swim, and sagged into darkness.

  Propped against a broken wall, tied with rawhide hand and foot, Amber moved only her eyes. Her thigh stung like hornets from the spear barb. Her shoulder and arm felt wrenched, and she bit her lip against the throbbing. Hakiim was dragged by one foot like a dead fox and dumped at her feet, then trussed. Amber pricked her ears, heard Hakiim breathe, and relaxed a trifle.

  Another giant—here were three—trudged from the ruins with Reiver over one shoulder. The giant bent and straightened his arm. The little thief slid down the arm and thumped on dust like a dropped bracelet, hands and ankles tied with a single thong of rawhide. Unlike Hakiim, the thief was alert but lay unmoving, eyes closed. Amber thought Reiver’s nimble fingers fiddled at his ankle, but perhaps he simply scratched at fleas.

  Dawn blazed along the eastern rim of the valley. As the light increased, Amber studied their captors. With daylight came heat, and the three let their robes hang open. Amber’s eyes grew wide.

  They were ogres, or rather, half-ogres, for these brutes stood only two heads higher than a man, not tree high like full-blooded ogres. Amber had only seen an ogre once, and it had been dead. A tribe of ogres had one night attacked her parents’ slave train along the Trade Way. Two hired guards, ex-cavalry riders, killed one brute with lances and drove the others off. The mercenaries dragged the ogre all the way to Memnon in hopes of collecting a bounty, or at least selling the skeleton, but the carcass stank so badly they abandoned it outside the city walls to vultures and wild dogs.

  These part-ogres had mannish features enlarged and grotesque: huge noses, jutting jaws, round ears like an ape’s, low foreheads with tiny horn buds, and scruffy gray-white hair like a wolf’s mane. Under their desert robes, just ill-stitched gray blankets, the menfolk wore raw horsehides slung over one shoulder and belted. The female wore a luxurious ivory fur with steel-gray spots. Amber identified it as a snow leopard’s hide; very valuable, as that wily cat inhabited only the highest mountains. The giants wore little else, going barefoot on soles tough as camel pads, and wearing human swords—no doubt trophies—as long knives. Their mighty spears had fearsome barbed heads of hammered iron and more trophies.

  Amber blanched. The bushy tatters that she’d taken for horsetails were human scalps, dried and laced in place. At least thirty were divided amongst the three ogres. Most scalps were black, but a few were red or blond. The young woman groaned, imagining her own wild curls dangling from drying flesh peeled from her skull.

  The half-breed ogres argued in guttering tones like rocks rolling down a hillside, voices curiously alike, with the female’s hardly higher. From their similar features, Amber concluded they were siblings.

  Certainly they quarreled like brothers and a sister. The she-ogre had torn the Memnonites’ purses from their belts, and with blunt, black fingernails she laboriously counted their hard-won coins while the others frowned and bitched. The biggest brother reached for Amber’s silver tiara, but the sister growled and no one touched it. Perhaps they feared its magic, Amber thought; she was certainly leery of it herself. The sister and biggest brother, who’d only been scratched when Hakiim’s scimitar cut wool and leather, obviously wanted to explore the ruins for more loot. The middle-sized brother, seven and a half feet tall, pointed to the valley rim. The oldest, he seemed a natural leader and certainly he was the quickest of mind. The sister only yelped as a small shape rocketed from under their feet.

  Amber blinked. Reiver raced like a shaggy greyhound for a jumbled cellar hole. Wide cracks promised escape into the tunnels that honeycombed the city. Reiver must have slipped a small knife from an ankle sheath, Amber guessed. She thrilled to see her friend escape into the long shadows of peeking dawn light and wanted to whoop for happiness to hurry him along.

  The elder ogre demonstrated why he led. A craggy hand arched over his head like a crippled bird as he gargled some tortured incantation. Instantly Reiver and the ruins were blotted out by a black fog, a patch of ethereal darkness. In the same moment, the middle ogre brushed aside his bigger brother, caught his nine-foot spear by the butt, and spun it sideways into the inky, enchanted pool. A resounding thwack! r
eported a hit. The giant waggled thick fingers toward heaven, and the blackness faded like a dream. Reiver lay on his side, stunned, the big spear slanted across his skinny frame. Gamely the thief crawled on, but the leader tromped like a charging rhino, caught Reiver by both feet and banged his head against the dirt until the thief hung limp.

  Amber stifled a whimper. As if their predicament weren’t perilous enough, they were captured by an ogre mage, a master of light and darkness. The brute could even bend light around itself and become invisible, as Reiver had learned earlier in the “empty” alley. Better both her friends remained unconscious, thought Amber, lest they fret about their ultimate fate. In The Tales of Terror, ogres were always painted as cannibals.

  More argument flowed in an arcane gobble, and then Amber heard two words in the common tongue accented by Chultan: “White Flame.” Whatever this invocation meant, it got the leader his way.

  Hakiim and Reiver were kicked repeatedly by feet like dragon claws. Hakiim revived, so he and Amber walked. The thongs that cut into their wrists were tied to the ogres’ belts, close enough that their stench filled the captives’ nostrils. Reiver was hung like a dead deer on a spear haft between the big brother and sister.

  The hunting party and its captives turned toward the cobbled road that switchbacked to the valley rim. Amber avoided Hakiim’s eyes, not wanting to show her despair. As they crossed a small bridge, the ogres stopped and pointed, grunting in amazement. Amber squinted against the dawn.

  Rings of stone marked where round buildings had once stood; corn cribs, Amber decided, like those in Memnon’s Grain Market. In the market’s center stood a raised well. Around and around the well, ancient bones shining yellow-white in the early morning light, marched the skeletons of two mules.

  “Are they cursed?” asked Hakiim.

  “Cursed to work,” breathed Amber. “This dead city gives up its ghosts.…”

  The prisoners were marched across the desert for two days without stopping. The tireless ogres tramped over sand, cactus, salt flats, and stone, even bulled through thorn bushes as they towed their captives behind them. Amber’s trousers were shredded, her skin scratched and torn, her feet blistered and pierced by thorns. Onward she trudged, mile after mile after mile. The sun sank, and for hours Amber froze in the chill desert air. Then, too soon, the sun burst high and sizzled her chafed skin. There was no world left, neither Faerûn nor Calimshan, just a brassy bowl of sand ruled by a tyrant sun, and miles to march, and a White Flame—whatever that was—hot as the sun, waiting at the end.