Star of Cursrah Page 22

  “Pallaton musters an army—defensive so far. He even trains slaves who fight for their freedom.”

  As Tafir and the leader talked, Amenstar squirmed under the scrutiny of the soldiers. A woman whispered to a companion, who whispered to another, which sparked a hushed but intense argument. Flame-faced, Amenstar ignored them.

  Tafir announced loudly, “I’d suggest you try Pallaton’s camp for work. He’d welcome good soldiers, and it’s not far. Just walk northeast and flag down any cavalry patrol wearing ox heads.”

  “That’s a bonny—” The leader stopped as a soldier tapped his arm and whispered. Irritated, the leader glanced at Star, but snapped, “No, we ain’t doin’ such a damn fool thing. He’s give us an idea where to enlist, and we’re going. To the front—march!”

  Nodding to Tafir, the leader led his party away, a sure destination putting pep in their step.

  When they passed out of earshot, Tafir wiped his brow and said, “By the Sword That Drips Anger, that was close.”

  “Why all the secrecy?” Star complained. “It’s immeasurably rude to whisper before royalty.”

  “Rude to kidnap royalty, too,” replied Tafir. “They recognized you as a princess. Someone suggested holding you for ransom. They’d probably have killed me and Gheq. Mercenaries make their money where they can.”

  “Oh,” squeaked Star. “My father’s own soldiers acting like such … dastards? How could their loyalty expire so quickly?”

  “It evaporated with the water,” sighed Hakiim.

  Shaking her head, Star jerked her reins.

  “We’d best move on,” she said. “Cursrah needs us.”

  “What’s happening there?”

  Gheqet pointed down into Cursrah’s valley. As twilight deepened, birds ceased to sing and homes were lit with tiny fires. The shallow bowl dropped away from their feet, down past terraces of manor houses and burial vaults, down past mud-brick cottages, stone walls, and parks, down past square apartment buildings with canopied sundecks, down past two-story shops and civic buildings and temples, finally down to the center, where the moated Palace of the Phoenix glittered dusk red.

  Gheqet pointed west to Cursrah’s lake reservoir and said, “I’ve never seen activity at the pump house before.”

  According to legend, the stone hut in the lake contained the marid Bitrabi, an ocean genie tasked centuries ago by Calim to protect and circulate Cursrah’s water all the way from the distant River Agis to the tiny pump house. Now the water had been diverted, and the Mouth of Cursrah ran dry.

  The pump house’s tiny island swarmed with people. Two barges packed with stones had been poled to the island, and only the bargemen idled, leaning on poles stuck in the lake bottom. Directed by an architect or master mason, slaves in loincloths off-loaded the stones and piled them against the walls and roof of the pump house.

  Ghequet frowned, “It looks as if they’re sealing the pump house.…”

  “You mean, to lock in Bitrabi?” Tafir asked, then slid off his horse to stand still and better see.

  “If she’s truly inside,” Gheqet said as he too dismounted, as did Star.

  “Everyone’s always believed that Bitrabi is in there,” said the princess.

  “That doesn’t make it true,” Gheqet fretted. “No one alive has ever seen the marid. The pump house has neither doors nor windows.”

  Tafir sniped, “Then how can anyone even claim the marid exists?”

  “We see results.” The architect’s apprentice sketched a finger around the valley and explained, “The city’s fountains are fed from pipes underground, and the water shoots up without any pumping. Same with the mansions along the valley rim. Older houses use gravity-fed pipes from the aqueduct’s head, but new ones tap water flowing uphill from the lake—”

  “Look! They’re falling back,” yelled Amenstar, “and running!”

  Far down on the tiny island, slaves and masters tumbled off their feet as if from an earthquake. People scrambled away from the pump house and into the barges while the bargemen poled off to save themselves. Some slaves plunged into the lake and swam.

  “What is it?” demanded Amenstar. “What’s panicked—”

  The pump house exploded.

  Faster than the eye could follow, stone slabs and blank rock walls blew into the sky. Debris, from pebbles to boulders, dappled the lake water and pattered on the shore. Boulders crushed and decapitated slaves and slave masters alike. A partial wall landed in a barge, breaking the raft’s back and sinking the pieces.

  “It’s—real,” Amenstar whispered. She could hardly breathe for wonder.

  “It’s Bitrabi,” moaned Gheqet.

  From the shattered pump house rose a waterspout. Thirty feet across, swamping the island, a column of pure pale blue wetness welled upward. Higher and higher rose the waterspout, taller than the Phoenix Palace, taller than the library’s ziggurats. Thinning as it rose, the column finally topped the valley walls. Thin and fragile, the waterspout poised, level with the awestruck adventurers.

  In the tip of the glassy column, Amenstar, Tafir, and Gheqet could discern a huge and eerie being. Its skin was as aquamarine as the ocean it called home, and it went naked except for filmy green kelp swirling in patches around its blue-green frame. The marid wore a necklace, bracelets, and anklets, and the watchers imagined seashells, twined narwhal tusks, or precious pink-white coral.

  Just for a second, the miraculous giant, a marid plucked from the sea’s darkest depths, hung suspended atop her ethereal waterspout like the finger of a god. Treading water, raising long slender arms, twisting her body to face west and the distant ocean—Amenstar saw this act clearly—the genie named Bitrabi clapped her hands.

  A roar bellowed, like a waterfall, like a sandstorm, like the thunderous drumming of Calim himself, as the genie shot into the sky, propelled by the impossible column of water.

  Out of danger, Amenstar and the others flinched as the waterspout zoomed into the ether like a magician’s toy rocket. Untold thousands of gallons shot up from the lake like a whale’s exhalation, following the aquamarine genie. For only seconds were the column and its mistress visible, then both arced away into the sky, soaring so high the trio craned their necks to see.

  Far, far away, they knew, the watery arc would descend, and the genie that Cursrah had called Bitrabi would splash into the Trackless Sea. After centuries of slavery, the marid would plunge into her home once again.

  Watching, the weary travelers gasped. For an instant, as the great waterspout bisected a sky tinged red by sunset, there flashed the biggest and most beautiful rainbow Calimshan had ever seen.

  The brilliant band faded. The sky turned gray and empty as twilight sank upon the land.

  “She’s gone,” murmured Tafir.

  “She’s free,” breathed Amenstar.

  “And she’s taken all the water with her,” lamented Gheqet.

  Snapped back to reality, Amenstar stared into the valley. Cursrah’s lake, a glittering and happy place Star had seen all her life, was a mire of mud. Stippled about were stone blocks, drowned or broken bodies, smashed barges, and other jetsam. The only water was a few boggy pools that would evaporate by daybreak.

  “The aqueduct,” muttered Gheqet, “must have finally run dry. That last six inches emptied into the lake. The last thread connecting us to the Agis snapped, so the spell binding Bitrabi must’ve expired. Even a tasked genie can’t protect what isn’t there, so her job was finished. She was free and bolted immediately.”

  “Leaving us stranded,” said Amenstar, “to die of thirst.”

  Cursrah normally came alive after sunset, as the day’s heat passed, but the homecomers found the city like a giant’s toppled body, dead but not yet cold. As Amenstar’s bay horse switchbacked down the valley road, trailed by her two friends, they passed an exodus already begun. Families had loaded carts, donkeys, drags, or their own backs. It was a short climb to the valley rim, but a long trek across grasslands and wilderness to the next tow
n or the river, yet they braved the night rather than remain. As the road bottomed out, Amenstar saw more cottages lit with torches where people packed in sullen or weepy silence. She watched a woman lean from a second story apartment and drop blankets to her husband, calling that that was the last. When the woman descended, crying quietly, the two hoisted bundles, joined hands, and turned toward the valley rim.

  Their horses’ hooves clip-clopped on cobblestones and echoed from empty buildings. Normally taverns, cafes, and gambling dens would sparkle with talk, laughter, and lovers’ cooing. Star saw only one cellar lit, and the patrons drank silently or muttered bitterly. Amenstar felt she’d blundered into some foreign and hostile port. Riding on, by and by a rustle and fuss welled ahead.

  Gheqet said, “People gather at the city center. I wonder what they hope to find?”

  “Not water, that’s for sure.” Tafir rubbed his throat and said, “I’m dry already.”

  “Stop it, you two,” Star’s voice cracked the empty night. “People flock to the city center to hear my father reassure them. He’ll have sought auguries from the gods and will now reveal our plans for the future.”

  Star saw the two young men exchange glances: What good can the bakkal promise? What kind of future? The princess scalded them with angry silence.

  At the centralmost ring of streets, they dismounted and tied their horses to posts, for beasts of burden were not allowed in the civic quarter. The hitching posts hung above water troughs normally kept filled by city slaves, but the troughs had been bailed dry.

  Proceeding afoot, Amenstar retied her yellow neck scarf into a veil to hide her face and the silver moonstone tiara. Her yellow trousers and green cloak were so grimy and dusty as to be colorless. Gheqet wore a worker’s white tunic and kilt like hundreds of others. Tafir had inverted his linen tunic to hide the red badge of Oxonsis.

  Thousands of people, half Cursrah’s population it seemed to Star, milled at the city center. Not one stood still, but all walked this way or that as if searching for something, while a few ran headlong to escape or embrace disaster. People chattered alone or to others, some wept, a few laughed in hysteria. Many citizens were drunk, terrified to face the future sober. Anxious not to get separated, Amenstar touched her friends, who squeezed her hands.

  “I can’t tell what transpires,” said Tafir. “Is everyone mad?”

  “There’s no pattern.” Gheqet cast about. “Everyone’s just wandering around like …”

  “Like cattle penned for the slaughterhouse,” finished Star. “What’s that old saying? ‘When strife eclipses the sun, only Bhaelros lights the consciousness of men.’ ”

  Standing at an intersection, the companions gazed at the Palace of the Phoenix. Torches burned in iron sconces on every column of the round palace, their lights reflected in the dark moat. Four guards, grim heavy infantry, barred each of the eight bridges to the palace. No activity showed, and Amenstar wondered what her parents did. At times, the crowd swelled toward the bridges, eager to glimpse the bakkal, but then surged away aimlessly.

  Down the street Star saw people collected before the Temple of Selûne, a tall crescent-shaped building that imitated the moon. The gentle Mistress of the Sky had always been favored in moonstruck Cursrah, but despite the fright, no one entered her temple. People shouted in frustration and beat at the doors as if they were locked.

  Star murmured, “This can’t be.…”

  Tired of confusion and ignorance, Amenstar snagged the next person who passed. A woman, middle-aged and wrinkled, jolted to a halt and slapped the offending hand from her sleeve. Star demanded news, and the woman acceded to royal authority without recognizing it.

  “The Temple of Selûne has been shut tight—closed for the first time in memory. The vizar-in-waiting brought soldiers inside, and they whipped folks—whipped them!—to drive them out. Slaves bricked up the doorways. Selûne’s temple is no more, I tell you. It’s the bakkal’s fault. He’s deserted us, left us to die of thirst. There’s no water. It’s all gone—”

  To the left, a huge fireball suddenly roiled, lighting the night sky. The crowd gasped, and Star gawked. The woman hurried away to nowhere. Holding hands, the three friends joined the surging crowd to see what made the fire.

  “That old fool,” the princess fumed. “My father would never desert his people, and none of this makes sense. Why would my father’s soldiers close the Temple of Selûne? People need her comfort in times of trouble, and who’s—oh, no!”

  The bonfire illuminated the Temple of Shar, goddess of darkness, pain, and unlife. Shar had always been an unpopular deity, worshiped only by the dying and the damned, for Cursrahns had been happy and satisfied and didn’t wallow in self-pity. Shar’s was the only temple doing business this dark night. The low dome was decorated with black tiles and a few red ones inserted at random. The only door descended below street level into the dark bowels of the world, Shar’s domain. On a small cobbled plaza before the dome, Shar’s few elderly priests had propped a huge iron dish on stone uprights, filled it with amphoras of black rock oil, and ignited the pool. The watery fire spawned spirals of greasy, stinking smoke. A big drum of ox hide had been rolled out, and a red-clad acolyte pounded hard and long upon it. The sagging drumhead gave a muffled, mushy tone, and the erratic drumming grated on everyone’s nerves.

  Amenstar growled, “One time only, Shar’s clerics gain attention and then irritate us like a sore tooth.”

  “Make way! Make way!”

  The crowd edged aside while two acolytes in red struggled to drag a tall white ox by a ring in its nose. The beast was edgy from the pressing crowd, eye-watering smoke, and the clumsy handling, but the crowd slapped and prodded the ox onto the plaza.

  Shar’s high priest held a long knife with a black blade, and as the acolytes struggled to hold the powerful ox, he chanted, “Shar! Goddess of Truth! Of Bitter Wisdom! Of Life’s Burdens! Pray accept this sacrifice that we may know your mind and wishes!”

  The crowd sighed as the dagger plunged into the ox’s neck. Red blood gushed onto the priest’s arms and robes and the cobblestones. The acolytes were hoisted into the air as the bawling ox tossed its head, but quickly the loss of blood buckled the beast’s knees. Acolytes and citizens struggled to roll the heavy body over. The priest would slice open the carcass, Amenstar knew, then drag out its hot guts and read—or pretend to read—auguries and mystic divinations for the future.

  Star growled to her friends, “I’ve no wish to witness butchery. Let’s hie to the palace—”

  A man howled and pointed to the sky. Others looked up and screamed. The moon, Cursrah’s celestial guardian, had risen above the eastern rim of the valley. A propitious time for sacrifices, and for good luck, yet the moon was suddenly eclipsed by a ragged form like a gigantic bat. People shrieked with fright, for any eclipsing of Cursrah’s moon was a bad sign. Sounds of wonder and puzzlement bubbled as citizens wondered what it might be. Few creatures flapped in the skies over Calimshan.

  The shadow came and went, dodging in and out of the moonlight, growing rapidly. Soon its jagged points all but occluded the white sphere. Like lightning from a clear sky, the thing pounced, and Cursrah screamed in response.

  Amenstar was crushed to the cobbles by Gheqet and Tafir as the dragon landed. All was confusion, and Star saw only snatches of the attack. A blue dragon, almost black against the night sky, forty feet or longer, dropped from the sky onto the sacrificial ox in its vast pool of blood and onto the panicked crowd. The dragon bristled with spines, scales, and spikes jutting in all directions like a desert hedgehog’s. Twenty or thirty citizens were immediately crushed or impaled. Luckily, Amenstar and her friends arrived late and hung back to avoid the press, so they didn’t die. When the dragon fanned its powerful, sweeping wings, the blast seemed to sear Star’s face like a hurricane.

  A great tail, long as a camel train and curved like a sickle at the tip, scythed to cut and smash fleeing Cursrahns like mice hiding in wheat. A clawed paw like a trio
of pickaxes sank into the ox’s body and squirted blood into the air. Another fearsome paw crumpled the awestricken acolytes, breaking their backs and skulls. The dragon’s maw gaped, and a bolt of lightning sizzled and crackled to scorch another dozen souls, who tumbled and burned as they died, clothing and hair ignited.

  Twisting, the dragon’s clawed feet skidded on cobblestones and gore. The blue tail flexed and upset the huge iron dish of flaming oil. It dropped with an ear-punishing clang, and burning oil bubbled in channels between raised cobblestones. Ox and human blood and fallen bodies were charred as a stomach-turning, iron-stinking smoke rolled across the plaza. The dragon roared, a eerie keen like wind whistling across a lonesome desert, and Curshrans screamed.

  Amenstar watched the carnage as blood and dust boiled into the air and blacked out the moon. An ancient prophecy sprang to mind: “The Dragon of the West and the Stallion of the East shall meet, and the dust of their fury shall eclipse the skies.”

  Star was dragged up and backward by her friends. The trio plunged into the panicked crowd, and the men shielded Star from falling under stampeding sandals. Up until now, Amenstar had been too enthralled and too stunned to feel fear, but as she saw the dragon clearly terror chilled her heart.

  Dragons had plagued Calimshan for centuries, but this grotesque flying giant might have been specially conjured to ravage Cursrah. The dragon was plated with scales of a deep shining black-blue, but the largest scales on its back and haunches were curiously edged in white, as if painted with half-moons. Its tail had been sharpened into a sickle, and even the major horn on the dragon’s nose recalled a white crescent moon.

  “It’s a moon dragon,” Star cried. “Surely the gods must curse our moonstruck city! Cursrah is doomed!”

  Gheqet and Tafir shouldered through the crowd to seek shelter between tall buildings. Behind came a tremendous crunching and shattering as the Temple of Shar was stove in by an errant tail. New shrieks made them look up.

  Bathed in moonlight, glowing blue and silver as the moon itself, the dragon scooped air with its ragged wings. The sacrificial white ox dangled from curved fore claws. Steadily, the dragon dwindled into the distance.