Star of Cursrah Page 17

  We’ll die out here, Amber thought a thousand times. Our parents will never know what happened to us. We’ll never learn the secret of Cursrah’s destruction.

  The last notion pained Amber especially, as she stumbled blindly and swiftly behind the stinking ogre, because she’d gained a personal and emotional stake in the legend. Amber, Hakiim, and Reiver were not random travelers who’d blundered into empty ruins. Fate, or the will of the gods, or perhaps the breath of Great Calim himself had drawn the three adventurers to the site as sure as iron filings leaped to a lodestone.

  Clearly they’d been chosen, but for what purpose? To uncover a truth, or right a wrong, or finish an undone task? Or just to visit and learn from their former lives?

  That was the first fact Amber had withheld from her friends. Hakiim was Gheqet, Reiver was Tafir, and Amber was the reincarnation of the princess Amenstar.

  Poor Hakiim. Amber heard him cry with pain. City-soft, Hakiim had been the first to collapse. The tall ogre had dragged him for a while, until the dark man’s trousers were ripped away below the knee, but dragging a carcass was hard work, so the lead ogre called a halt. The two ogres kicked and pinched Hakiim until he came to, then looped his wrist bonds over the end of a spear. When the ogre rose, spear on its shoulder, Hakiim was yanked up like a pike on a fishing line. To save his wrists Hakiim had to walk, so he did. That had been—Amber had no idea how far back. Five miles? Twenty-five?

  Poor Gheqet and Tafir and Amenstar, recalled Amber. Together, those ancient friends had come to terrible grief. Amber knew this fact as a certainty. The mummy’s touch, that brief mental communion, had been familiar. The undead sufferer was someone Amber knew intimately.

  The mummy was one of Amenstar’s friends, either Gheqet or Tafir.

  How or why, Amber couldn’t guess, and not knowing tormented her like the burning thirst of this miserable march through the scorching desert. What could Gheqet or Tafir have done to deserve such an awful fate? To be trapped, condemned to a dark limbo, a horrid state between life and death, for an eternity? Why was one of Amenstar’s companions chosen? Simply because they’d helped the princess disobey her parents? Had Amenstar suffered to see a friend so tragically punished? What had become of the other man? What had been his fate? What became of Amenstar when her city was destroyed?

  Blind with sweat and fatigue, Amber’s foot struck a rock, and she crumpled. Dead tired, she never felt herself strike, though her forehead lay on pebbles. The she-ogre jerked her rawhide bonds, scouring red raw skin from Amber’s bleeding wrists. Weak, the daughter of pirates pushed to rise, but couldn’t.

  “Kill me,” she whispered. “Get it over with. I can’t go on.”

  The elder ogre called another halt. After a short time Amber was kicked upright. Hakiim had blacked out again, and not even knife pricks would rouse him, so he was carried.

  I’ll break next, Amber thought, and die next.

  Amber stumbled through a fog of pain and thirst. Eventually, miles on, she crumpled again. She too was kicked and pinched. Rousing, she begged for water and was surprised to be given a drink. The life giving liquid let her march another few miles. Again the world dimmed and she dropped. A knife pricked her thighs and rump, but despite the vicious stings Amber spiraled downward into a void.

  Water splashed Amber’s face, then filled her nose and mouth and threatened to drown her. Stabbing blindly, fumbling with bound hands, she groped against a pebbly bottom and pushed herself free of dark water, emerging into dark air.

  She lay facedown in a stream, the babbling water only three inches deep. Thirstier than she’d ever been, Amber gulped great mouthfuls of water, vomited it up, and drank more. A giant hand snagged her hair and wrenched her upright. She was too exhausted even to scream, but she could see.

  Grass dotted with rocks ran alongside the stream and up into steep foothills verging on low, weatherworn mountains. Trees, spring-quickening aspens and brushy cedars, dotted the foothills in clumps. Even this tiny bit of green seemed alien, as if Amber had lived her whole life in the desert, and the color hurt her eyes. The sun blazed at the western horizon, out over the desert where the gentle brook was swallowed up. These must be the Marching Mountains, Amber sorted out groggily, a dangerous place and home to the White Flame?

  The three breed-ogres pulled Reiver and Hakiim from the stream. At least they were alive, Amber thought, for now. Dimly she recalled fainting from thirst, fatigue, and heat. She must have been dragged farther, for her trousers hung about her bloody calves in shreds, and her boots were scuffed white. She must have been carried, for a vast stink had made her gag.

  “We go. Move! Up!” barked the lead ogre, and shoved Amber from behind.

  Amber stumbled but kept her feet. These hillsides were rocky, and dragging would mean death. Bleary-eyed, she looked at her friends. Steeped in their own misery, they stared at nothing, blank-eyed. Pushed again, all three concentrated on their footing. A winding goat trail trickled up a hill. Upward they trudged as dusk blackened the mountains.

  Half the night they marched, Amber reckoned, though she couldn’t be sure. Her limbs shook from hunger, and wet clothes from the dunking chilled her in the gusting wind. She trembled with new fear, for the Marching Mountains had always been a frightening place. Called the Dragon Peaks in olden times, as well as the Spine of Empires and the Shield of the South, these craggy and jumbled mounts were home to austere monks, escaped slaves, and madmen; lost races of strange humanoids and giantkin; dangerous animals such as panthers and pegasi; and monsters of every kind, from beholders to formorian giants and hideous deepspawn, a place of hidden valleys, talking rocks, and mysterious lights.

  Finally, having climbed so high that farther peaks wore snow that glowed by starlight, they halted at the remnants of a dwarven causeway. Once, its precise dry stones had bridged two mountains, but soldiers in some war, or else the dwarves themselves, had broken the bridge’s back. The lead ogre sent his sister ahead to scout. She croaked a signal, and the three humans were shoved into a cleft in a mountain. Amber hoped they didn’t meet a whole tribe of ogres, for that would end their journey. They’d be eaten like cattle prodded into a slaughterhouse.

  A human guarded the shadows of a pass, a female with blue- and white-striped robes and an intricately carved crossbow. A desert nomad, Amber recognized, from the southern wastes they called “Land of the Lions.” These were cautious people, for the Syl-Pasha of Calimshan had sworn to rule or eradicate them. The nomad watched the captives stagger past, dark eyes revealing neither interest nor pity.

  Beyond the pass, a shallow valley dead-ended at rising rocks and a sheer cliff. Evergreen cedars, arbor vitae, and scruffy red pines lined the hillside. A stream trickled from their roots. A frugal fire illuminated perhaps thirty people who shared a roasting goat and baked groundnuts. Amber’s stomach squeaked at the smell of food, though she felt like she needed to sleep for a week first.

  Weaving on her last legs, Amber stalled. An ogre’s hand clamped her hair and frog-marched her across the dewy grass. Ahead, removed from the campfire, a slender woman sat on a rock like a queen upon a throne. The sister ogre attended her without speaking, as did two guards with spears, one a blocky dwarf. Everyone in the camp wore headscarves and long or short woolen robes, for the mountain nights were as cold as the desert’s. Amber was propped before the reigning woman. The captive managed not to fall at her feet. Reiver and Hakiim, battered and tattered, slouched at either side, almost asleep on their feet.

  Through slits in a white kaffiyeh, blue eyes studied Amber. Even given the chilly air, this chief was swaddled as if for winter. Her overlarge headscarf pillowed her neck, a voluminous vest reached to her knees, and her quilted, baggy trousers were stuffed into tall boots lined with sheepskin. Pinned to her headscarf was a badge of beaten silver, a wavy fire sigil. Unnerved by the blue-eyed stare, Amber looked at the ground, even managed a tiny curtsy that didn’t crumple her on the sward.

  “You know me?”

  The
woman’s voice was husky and forced, as if she’d smoked too long at a hookah pipe. Her common tongue was accented by lyrical Alzhedo, making her hard to understand. Behind Amber, resin-rich firewood crackled and snapped, but otherwise the camp as silent as dead Cursrah.

  Inwardly Amber fretted. She had no clue who this woman was, though an Alzhedo accent spoke of high birth. She supposed these were ragtag hill bandits who waylaid traders and pilgrims, attacked caravans, and raided mountain monasteries and abbeys and the prosperous summer villas overlooking the River Agis. This must be their bandit chief, but Amber could hardly say that. Dim-witted by fatigue, she fixed on the white-metal sigil that winked in firelight.

  Inspiration struck. Bowing, clumsily giving the annuv signal of humility with bound hands, Amber babbled, “Y-yes, Syl-Sadidrif. You are the famous White Flame.”

  The chief nodded, and Amber mentally sighed. Calimshan sprouted more mystic titles than cacti. She’d added the title “Leader and Warrior/Stranger” to her guess. Amber mustered all possible respect, for this woman owned their lives.

  “You know the history of these lands?” husked the Flame. “The epics that extol how outnumbered forces won victory because their hearts were pure and their cause just? Do you?”

  “Y-yes, Qayadin.” At talk of armies, Amber boosted her rank to “General.” As befit a social inferior, she looked no higher than the woman’s waist and added, “Some of it.”

  “You know of the Jhannivars?” The woman bit off her words angrily, then coughed hard and long. “Of the longstanding prophecy that Winter’s Lion shall meet Summer’s Scourge? How true believers rallied to Prince Yusuf Jhannivar in his glorious quest for the rightful throne of Tethyr? How he was betrayed behind the walls of Myratma?”

  “Some, milady …” hedged Amber.

  Jhannivar was a common name among the desert’s nomads. Some of their clan, reported the marketplace grapevine and town criers, had helped a prince besiege Myratma this past winter. Myratmans called him the Pretender and a rebel, and his force was been wiped out or driven off. Details were hazy, for Calimshites considered their business rival Tethyr a backwater of squabbling fools.

  Amber strove to sound neutral when she said, “Was the prince—killed?”

  “Betrayed!” husked the White Flame behind her thick scarf. “Cut down like a dog by men he trusted. Sacrificed like a lamb in his sleep. The doors opened so Tethyr’s soldiers could rush in with steel and fire and punish us. Traitors, they called us, they who hired the vilest assassins of the Sword Coast, cowards who paid the despicable Clenched Fist to do their dirty work … the evil connivers who did this!”

  The White Flame wrenched away her veil. Amber almost fainted, and was glad for the dim light. No nose, no eyebrows, no lips. A face of unbending white scar tissue and skin red and shot with purple veins. Reiver, who’d seen many horrors, trembled. Hakiim fainted.

  “I was tortured for days with fire,” growled the White Flame. Amber realized her lungs had been seared by smoke and screams. Coughing interrupted her. The three adventurers waited, trembling, and tried not to look at her skull-like face. “Tortured with fire, then driven out to die in the wilderness, but I live. I live because I burn with a white-hot flame to punish my enemies, and you, young woman, will aid me.”

  “I-I?” Swaying on her feet, Amber jerked and teetered. Normally Amber talked with her hands, like every Calimshite, but her bonds made her stutter. “Wh-what can I—Q-Qayadin, I don’t know—”

  “My scouts report that a ruined city has appeared in the desert. You’ve been there. You found gold and treasure.”

  Amber sputtered, so Reiver took over. “Great Warrior, Exalted One, Mover of Mountains,” he groveled, “we found but a few coins and tiny gems in the dust. Someone must have spilled them—”

  The White Flame flicked a hand, and Reiver was belted across the head by an ogre’s hand, a blow that could kill a camel. The young thief bounced on the grass and stayed down. The leader addressed Amber.

  “I have no eyelids, but still eyes. I see your brow. Dare you lie?”

  “Oh!” Amber cursed her clumsy memory. Through this ordeal she’d worn the moonstone tiara, which the ogres hadn’t looted. The White Flame grew angry, thinking she’d lied. “Great Leader, I-I forgot—”

  A hand like a skeleton’s claw, with only puckers for fingernails, wrenched the kaffiyeh and tiara from Amber’s head. Blue eyes in the bone-stripped face studied the artifact.

  “Is it enchanted? Tell me!”

  “It-it’s a storytelling charm, Great Lady. It shows pictures from the olden days of the city. Cursrah, called Calim’s Cradle and the College. A princess was given it.…” Amber rattled on and on, hoping to be spared torture by telling everything. “… If you don it when the moon is up, you see these images.…”

  Half listening, the White Flame pushed back her headscarf, eliciting more shudders, for her head bore only scant patches of black, scraggly hair. With bony fingers she eased the tiara onto her naked skull, holding it in place, for without hair it was too large. Seconds ticked by while Amber held her breath.

  “You lie!”

  Jumping from her stony throne, the White Flame cast the tiara spinning into the darkness. A sandpaper hand smacked Amber’s cheek. Weak, the prisoner was bowled over. Terrified, aching, and tired, Amber cried freely.

  “I don’t lie! It only works in moonlight, and the moon’s not yet—”

  “Grab her!” Ignoring Amber’s words, the White Flame shrilled, “Thrust her into the flames, as I was!”

  Everyone in the camp, it seemed, jumped to obey her orders. Shoving and grabbing, three men and a woman hoisted Amber by her elbows and ankles and trotted her toward the campfire. Other bandits scurried aside or kicked up the fire.

  Amber shrieked, begged, pleaded, screamed, but no one paid attention.

  Straddling the fire, kicking goat bones and twisted sticks to make them flare, the bandits leaned Amber forward until red and yellow flames filled her vision. Heat brushed her face, then warmed it. Screaming, arching her back until her spine felt like it would snap, Amber wriggled and kicked to no avail. Fire and smoke were hot and dry on her face. She shut her mouth and nose rather than breathe flame. Her chin and nose were cooking, incredibly painful, and she kicked anew.

  Shoved lower, Amber felt her glorious thick black mane fall around her face, then sizzle and pop. She smelled burning hair, and Amber screamed and screamed.

  10

  The 383rd Anniversary of the Great Arrival

  “You’ll be sorry now,” growled Samira Amenstar to the cavalry captain. “Striking royalty comes at the cost of the offending hand … and then your head.”

  The lean, dark captain hammered her lips into a tight white line. After four hours’ ride—and endless grumbled threats from Amenstar—the cavalry and their captives entered the hills northeast of Cursrah. Before them unfolded a city of tents. Foot soldiers and horse troopers marched and galloped hither and yon. Scores of slaves chopped, baked, and dished food onto long plank tables.

  “What are they up to?” murmured Gheqet.

  Tafir nodded to an open-air workshop. Dozens of slaves repaired and manufactured shovels, pickaxes, mattocks, and crowbars. Slave children wove rushes into baskets heaped up like winter apples.

  “Hundreds of hand tools and baskets to carry dirt,” the architect’s apprentice said. “There must be some kind of excavation going on nearby.”

  “Make way. Prisoners for questioning,” bellowed their escort.

  Slaves and soldiers sidestepped. The camp was laid in neat military lines, with Samir Pallaton’s big square headquarters tent centermost. The cavalry patrol rode the three captives up to six spear-wielding guards. As they dismounted, Samira Amenstar took charge and marched into the tent as if she owned it. The cavalry captain trotted to keep up.

  “Samir Pallaton!” shrilled Amenstar.

  Everyone in the tent turned. Prince Pallaton and nine advisers studied parchment maps pegged to an e
asel. Servants hovered at the back of the big tent, and eight guards were posted about. All wore undyed linen tunics emblazoned with red ox heads.

  Amenstar still wore her riding clothes of plum blouse and yellow trousers smudged with dust and campfire smoke. Her silver tiara and cornrowed hair were streaked with blood from a sliced ear. The young woman looked every inch a princess as her fury boiled over.

  “This woman whipped me!” Star shrilled. A royal finger stabbed at the sweating cavalry captain, who stood at rigid attention. “As a princess of the blood, I demand she be punished with her life—flayed alive and her guts hurled to the jackals! She struck me, if you can believe it, with her filthy, common hands, knocked me off my horse, called me a bitch and a trull, and lashed me like some slacking dung shoveller. I have condemned her to be burned at the stake, and I order you, as a royal heir to a throne, to punish her immediately.”

  Placidly, Samir Pallaton waited until Star ran out of breath. Handsome and hirsute, stocky and swarthy, the prince wore a common uniform accented by leather crossbelts, shoulder wings, and the red ox head sigil stamped on a leather disk. On campaign, he wore matched short swords at each hip, a leather skullcap with red neck cloth, and the spitting cobra headband.

  As Amenstar panted to a halt, Samir Pallaton waved forward his cavalry officer. Saluting, the dark, lithe woman trembled slightly.

  The army’s commander asked calmly, “Captain Chawal?”