Star of Cursrah Read online

  The ogres stumped to a halt, and their captives collapsed and rested. The White Flame caught up and consulted her scouts.

  “Which way?” the bandit leader asked. “How much farther?”

  Frowning around pointed fangs, the lead ogre looked west but shook its head. The mountain-dweller was fuddled by desert distances.

  “You!” The bandit chief dropped her veil to reveal teeth and jaw shorn of flesh, then kicked Amber viciously and asked, “Where lies Cursrah?”

  “Uh. Uh …”

  Amber’s mouth and tongue were swollen. Bending from his great height, the ogre splashed water from a goatskin bota at her. Amber gulped the blessed cool wetness gratefully, but the ogre slapped her head so she choked, then jerked the rawhide binding her skinned wrists.

  “D-due west, I think,” Amber rasped, “per-perhaps four miles. A tower stands alone. The valley lies a league south.”

  One of her nomads had seen a tower just before the sand blew, so the White Flame assumed the city must lie south and west.

  Peering at the dark curtain of sand with lidless eyes, the cruel woman coughed, “Follow these dunes along the western side, out of the wind.”

  “Big herders,” warned a nomad. “Where sand traps a boot, herders of thunder may rise.”

  “The Jhannivars rule this land,” stated the Flame archly, “and I must see this city. My enemies grow stronger day by day. I shall brave any terror to see their guts exposed to the wind.”

  Nomads exchanged glances, but none objected as the leader struck out. Along the western side of the dunes, the sand indeed pulled at their boots. Amber found the footing harder than ever, but for the first time she took heart, hoping against reason that this storm had been crafted by a genie bound in the sky. Glancing behind, Amber saw Reiver’s eye glinted with malice as he bided his time. Even Hakiim, sensing his friends’ excitement, pricked up his ears. Amber waited for an opportunity as the striding ogres left the other bandits floundering behind a curtain of sand.

  Leaning against the sandfall, descending a soft slope, Amber wondered too whether thunderherders might suddenly bore up from the ground. Before, in good health and unfettered, the adventurers had barely escaped the monsters. This time—

  “Amber!” screeched Hakiim.

  The daughter of pirates was yanked brutally around, rawhide chafing her wrists. The ogre roared, and Amber was towed as if by a galloping horse through swirling sand.

  Reiver had made his move, though Amber couldn’t tell how. The skinny thief hung high in the air, back to the biggest ogre’s back and the adventurers’ pilfered packs. Reiver’s fists were jammed at his chin, still bound by rawhide to the giant. The creature’s fists were also wedged at its throat. Suspended, mashed against the packs, Reiver kicked his legs furiously. The huge ogre thrashed side to side like a colicky horse, purple tongue protruding and quickly coating with sand. Desperately the monster yanked at Reiver’s bonds, jerking the thief up like a fish on a line. Amber could make no sense of the attack as she lurched and stumbled headlong toward them.

  The ogre mage had dropped its huge spear and drawn its tiny human sword. Roaring, the giant raised a knotty arm like an oak branch to chop Reiver in half. Towed along, Amber shouted as they closed to striking distance—then scooted on her rump and stabbed her heels against the sand. The sudden anchor stalled the ogre mage, even threatened to topple him backward. Grabbing a handful of its desert robes, more rags than cloth, Amber pulled with fettered hands to tangle its legs. A monstrous hand like a granite block swung to snap Amber’s neck. The woman ducked, then scissored her legs around the giant’s filthy, bare ankle. If they were to die, she thought wildly, best to die fighting.

  Between the giant’s legs, Amber saw Hakiim and the she-ogre tumble across the sand and down a slope, first one and then the other atop. The she-ogre was the smallest of the three beasts, and Hakiim burly if short, yet he was still outweighed by a hundred pounds. The downward slope discommoded both, and Hakiim kicked with one foot to keep them spinning.

  Reiver still hung behind the giant, somehow. Through swirling sand, Amber saw that a glint of silver ran in a straight line from the thief’s hands to the giant’s throat. Finally, she understood. Despite being searched, Reiver had retained his garrote chain. Hooking it on each thumb, the wiry thief must have leaped up behind the ogre, whipped the chain around its neck, and crossed his wrists to sink the chain deep into the monster’s flesh. Reiver hung with his back to the giant’s back, grimly and efficiently strangling the brute, waiting patiently for it to collapse. A wonderful plan, Amber thought, except the ogre had siblings.

  Lashed by the wrists, Amber still clung tightly to the lead ogre’s robes. The monster stamped a clumsy half circle and slashed at her with the sword. Plying strength and speed she couldn’t believe, Amber dodged the awkward blade nimbly while shoving her aching hands high. Rusted steel parted rotten rawhide, and Amber was free.

  She hoped to stay alive long enough to enjoy it. Amber kicked against the slippery dune slope but only sank in sand. Raging, forgetting the sword, the lead ogre slapped at Amber’s head. Fingertips like sling balls smacked her crown, and Amber dropped as if stunned, feigning unconsciousness, for she couldn’t run. Leaving Amber, the ogre spun to save its brother.

  Amber croaked, “Reiver, he’s coming—” and choked on sand.

  Plucking free of sand, she scrambled behind the lead ogre, out of eyesight, to help the thief. Fretting, she wondered when the White Flame and her escort would walk into their midst.

  Staggering, the biggest ogre stamped and thrashed to shake the human off, then crashed to its knees, face a ghastly purple, tongue sticking out half a yard. Even on its knees, the ogre was as tall as the thief, whose bare toes only tipped the sandy slope. Reiver clung grimly to his chain, drawing it so tight veins bulged in his tanned forehead. Only a thief’s instinct for danger made him turn and see the ogre mage rushing with a sword poised to stab.

  Amber gasped as Reiver bounced off the sand with his toes, jumped, and vaulted a backward somersault over the strangling giant’s head. With his arms still crossed behind the ogre’s neck, Reiver hung face-to-face with the stinking brute, the purple tongue almost jammed in his eye, but the giant’s eyes were closing. As the ogre mage roared and Amber screamed, the strangled brute toppled at Reiver, who skipped nimbly aside without loosing the chain.

  Amber howled, a cry lost in the wind, as the ogre mage swung high, one-handed, to cleave Reiver in twain. The earth split underfoot. For a second, Amber feared an earthquake, then yards-long thunderherders burst through the sand like whales breaching the ocean surface. The giant’s stamping feet must have attracted the monsters, Amber realized, promising a huge, meaty, juicy target.

  Very much a target, for thunderherders four feet thick and sixteen feet long churned and undercut the earth so no one could keep their feet. Amber felt the dune’s crust crumble, and she plunged into a waist-deep hole.

  Attacked from his left, the ogre mage had to desert his brother to slash at a borer slithering across the sand at him. Striking at an angle, powered by a massive arm, the sword chopped off half the creature’s wriggling teeth, so a half moon of writhing, mottled flesh flopped and gnashed at the ogre’s feet. Heedless, the butchered borer humped its great bulk and slammed into the ogre’s leg, shearing off skin and bowling the giant over.

  Amber struggled to wriggle and lever free of her hole, but the sandy crust collapsed again and again. Terrified a herder might rocket along and nip off her legs, Amber punched frantically, grabbed, and clawed. Finally she grappled the distracted ogre’s robe and tugged herself free of the suffocating sand. Not trusting the ground, Amber crawled away on all fours, then scampered around in a big circle toward Reiver and the strangling ogre.

  Sand blew in all directions; up, down, and sideways. Calim’s Breath had become Calim’s Whirlwinds. A screen good as night, Amber thought wildly, but it had disadvantages, if thunderherders plowed furrows right before her, or even holes
, she’d never see them.

  “Reiver,” she called. “Is he dead? We need—”

  She should have known better. Ten feet from Reiver, the earth dropped from under Amber’s feet. Sand boiled as she fell seemingly forever, then thumped hard four feet down. Of course, she thought in disgust, the borers would crisscross under the stamping giant first. A fractured pit sagged all around the two. In the pit floundered Reiver, the biggest ogre, Amber, and now the charging ogre mage. Amber was trapped to the waist by spilling sand and hurtling bodies.

  Reiver, always keeping his head in a fight, had skipped onto the dying ogre’s back as it sank face first without struggling. The outraged brother roared and slashed off-balance at Reiver. Amber craned to grab his mighty flailing arm, but bogged by sand, she missed.

  Another borer arrived from underground. Rearing, the tubular monster popped from the sand, arched, and drove jagged teeth into the dying ogre. Amber winced at the crunch and smack of toothy jaws boring into flesh. The ogre mage turned, leaped half out of the sand, and hacked at the monster.

  Nimble Reiver had already jumped clear and wrenched his bloodied chain from the ogre’s neck. Scampering like a monkey up crumbling hummocks of sand, the thief circled wide, flopped on his belly rather than sink, then hooked Amber’s armpits and yanked her from the earth like a carrot.

  “Let’s get!” the thief advised.

  “No!” Rising, shedding sand, the daughter of pirates surprised the thief by snagging his wrist. She pointed to the tiara encircling the dead ogre’s arm and said, “I need that!”

  “You can’t—whoa!”

  Reiver dodged as the ogre mage flailed his sword backward. A chunk of flesh had been sliced from a ravenous borer, so it curled and rolled in agony, but another herder burst up behind the giant, struck dagger teeth at its back, failed to grab on, recoiled, and slammed again into the giant’s spine. This time teeth found flesh, and the giant howled.

  Sand scoured Amber’s burns like acid as she tried to rub her eyes clear. Reiver tugged and urged her to come. She flung his hand off.

  “No!” she insisted. “I need that damned tiara. We can’t go on without it. Help me—”

  Reiver was gone. He’d catapulted away into the curtain of sand. Amber saw why. Behind, a brown-spotted sword-hacked borer, dripping white gore, had uncoiled and stabbed at him with multiple teeth wiggling. Now the thunderherder snapped in a circle and aimed for her. Amber shrieked so hard her throat cracked.

  A spear long as a ship’s spar stabbed down, punctured the writhing herder just behind its chittering teeth, and rammed home into sand beneath. The thick haft hummed inches from Amber’s nose. Craning, she saw her rescuer was—

  “Hakiim!”

  “Hurry!” he called.

  Slipping down the rim of the pit, the dark man struggled to keep the pinned borer from biting Amber. The beast’s strength lifted him off his feet, so he squatted and clawed with his toes. The borer bucked, writhed, and—Amber heard flesh tear, a sickening sound—ripped itself backward off the spear haft. A gaping gash oozed white fluid as the herder curled its stinger tail and sank into its burrow, out of sight.

  “Where’s the sister ogre?” Amber asked as she grabbed the spear haft and was hauled from the ever-collapsing pit.

  “I don’t know,” Hakiim said, and cast about at blowing sand as if the she-monster would swoop upon them.

  In the pit, still sinking, the trapped ogre mage howled as a herder gnashed and chewed his back. Another herder bit the giant’s side and hung on. Unable to strike hard with the sword, for his arm was crowded by one hulking body, the ogre pushed at the thing’s jaws until jagged teeth spiked through his calloused palm. Giants and herders thrashed, spraying Amber with sand as she scuttled around the patchy pit.

  “Whatever you want to do, do it quick!” Hakiim called.

  Halting behind, Hakiim held the gruesome spear like a club, ready to clobber more herders if needed. At the pit’s far side, Reiver suddenly appeared from the shifting curtain of sand, hopped onto the strangled ogre, and with clever fingers untied from his back their satchels and weapons.

  “Give me Hak’s scimitar!” Amber said.

  Slipping steadily downward, the young woman braced her feet against the dead giant’s head. The roaring of the ogre mage was ferocious as he battled two thunderherders.

  “Don’t bother,” Reiver said as he slung their packs up to Hakiim. “We must—”

  Snatching Hakiim’s blade, Amber chopped awkwardly, once, twice, thrice at the dead giant’s elbow. The sound was sickening, far worse than beheading a chicken or gutting a pig, and only because Amber’s stomach was empty did she not heave. She slashed doggedly until the corded, hairy forearm fell free. Grabbing the grisly object by its cold, thick fingers, she scrambled from the pit. Left behind was the cruel ogre mage in a losing battle with flesh-hungry thunderherders.

  Crawling, too weak to run, Amber dropped her gory trophy long enough to sling on her pack with the capture noose lashed behind it. Hakiim shouldered his pack while Reiver carried the long spear.

  The dark man hollered, “Which way now?”

  “Down!” yelled Reiver.

  Sand whipped them from all directions.

  “No!” Hakiim shook his sand-crusted headscarf and said, “I saw the sister fall in a pit, but it’ll be back.”

  “It’s the only way,” insisted Amber. “Otherwise the White Flame’ll find us when the storm dies. I’ll lead.”

  Reluctantly, the men fell in behind, Amber clutching a giant’s bloody, sandy arm, Hakiim clutching Amber’s ruined tunic, and Reiver hanging onto Hakiim. Feeling the crust before every step, Amber duckwalked downslope, then scooted and froze.

  Through a haze below they saw a huge murky shape track back and forth, searching—the ogre sister. They were trapped on this slope with enemies above and below.

  Amber turned to warn her friends, and her foot broke the surface. The hole widened into a dark gap into which sand trickled. Amber decided quickly, and clutching the giant’s bloody arm under hers, she jumped high and plunged through the desert floor.

  The daughter of pirates crashed into a tunnel four feet across. Sand rained onto her head, but for the first time in seeming hours, it didn’t blow in her face. The tunnel walls ran lumpy and uneven, and undulated up and down, but seemed firm enough, if pitch dark.

  “Amber! What—ulp!” Hakiim had tried to lean into the hole, but the sand collapsed and he tumbled in headfirst. Untangling, he groped and found Amber crouched ahead in darkness. Reiver dropped behind, light as a leaf.

  “We can’t crawl down a tunnel,” Hakiim protested. “What if we meet a thunderherder?”

  “Better than an avenging ogre … come on!” Amber scuttled along the tunnel with her grisly catch and added, “Bring that big spear, Reive, we’ll need it.…”

  Total blackness. Dark as being buried alive, which they were, Amber shuddered to think. The three adventurers crawled downslope for scores of feet, or hundreds of feet. Their shoulders rubbed raw on sand, their backs ached, their hands and knees grew sore, and all the while they grappled with pure terror. Any moment the tunnel might collapse, drop like a mine shaft, or Amber might bump into clashing, ravenous jaws. The tunnel sloped gently, ever onward, and Amber guessed herders didn’t burrow too deep but hovered close to the surface to detect moving food. At least, she prayed so.

  The tunnel bottomed out, and Amber’s blind hand found that it sloped up. Hakiim plowed into her rump.

  “Pass me the spear,” she said.

  Tilting to one side, Amber dug upward with the point. Cascading sand filled the tunnel.

  “We’ll suffocate,” Hakiim wailed.

  Amber fought her own panic. She shoved straight up, probing with the spear. Sand smothered her. The spear nibbled sand then—nothing. Amber jiggled the spear and glimpsed light. Hollering thanks to Calim, she widened the hole as more sand poured in her face. The three friends clambered up a short well into sunlight.

&n
bsp; The sky was clear, the breeze only a tickle. Dunes surrounded them, with barren ledges to one side and jumbled rocks at the other. No enemies were in sight. Wiping their faces clear, the three companions staggered into the shelter of tall rocks.

  “Thank you, Great Calim! Bless you, praise you, love you!” huffed Amber with her last breath.

  Finally safe, she collapsed.

  “What do you mean, go back?” demanded Hakiim.

  “Go back to Cursrah,” Amber whispered, in case enemies skulked nearby.

  “That thing will kill us,” rasped Hakiim.

  Amber shook her head so waves of dark hair whisked about her face and said, “It could have killed us easily the first time.”

  “We ran—”

  “It let us go! That mummy makes magic. It pinned us in those painted statues and cursed you with fear. It could have killed us a dozen times, but all it did was … was to plead for something!”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” Amber bit her lip and whispered, “Something.”

  Hakiim rolled his dark eyes. Reiver hoisted a goatskin water bag and drank deeply. The thief had not only retrieved their rucksacks and his crude bundle and weapons, but he had stolen the huge ogre’s water and rations besides. Thirsting, the trio drank gallons of water. They sniffed carefully at the smoked meat, decided it was goat and not cannibals’ fare, and ate ravenously. They found an oilskin of mutton fat, and Amber dressed the sandy scabs on her face. Clamping down on her stomach, she worked the tiara from the giant’s hairy arm with a knife. Reiver took the severed limb away to bury it. Scrubbing the headband with sand, Amber looked at the east where the moon rose.

  “Will you put that thing on again?” asked Hakiim.

  “Of course.” Amber settled the tiara on her head, wincing as cold metal touched her forehead burns, and said, “It’s the only way to learn—”