Star of Cursrah Read online

  “Mother of Ilmater!” shrieked Amber.

  Thirty undead relics of lost Cursrah rose from the polluted pool. Walking skeletons were partly cloaked with petrified earth. Patchy heads showed yellow bone and black-brown mud that had taken the place of flesh. Eye sockets were caked with mud. Arms and hands wore more bone than mud, so the bodies appeared wasted and thin as tree trunks. Stringy rags marked ancient blue uniforms painted with eight-pointed stars. In their claw-like hands hung spears and halberds.

  The unthinking zombies leveled their weapons in precise formation, yanked bony feet free of dried mud, and stamped forward, fanning into two half circles to encircle and engage the enemy.

  The last zombie to rise was something Amber had only seen in visions. Rearing ten feet tall and twelve long, a giant’s scabrous head and torso bulked above the death-ravaged carcass of a rhinoceros. In bony hands big as bushel baskets, the undead rhinaur raised a tall, lyre-shaped halberd. A rusted and rotted leading edge, once sharp, aimed to kill.

  A dozen of the White Flame’s bandits had rushed into the courtyard but now reeled in shock. Amber also struggled to comprehend the revival of these undead warriors, what they meant, what they intended. Reiver and Hakiim couched in a corner, poised to vault the pool rim and run, even into the midst of the bandits. As the zombies stamped in formation toward them, Amber suddenly understood and grabbed her friends’ sleeves.

  “No, stay! They’re—they want to—they’re Amenstar’s personal guards. Song of El Nar’ysr, they think I’m their princess!”

  Indeed, the two half circles of undead guards crunched and clacked like living statues to bracket Amber and her friends in two phalanxes. The giant rhinaur, a phalanx all by herself, bulled across the pool with steps that shook the earth. When her petrified-mud hooves banged the pool rim, stone and tile broke and scattered like spun glass.

  The undead juggernaut was too terrible even for desert- and mountain-hardened outlaws. Spinning on their heels, they ran over rubble and ruin, wherever lay the quickest exit. The undead rhinaur—M’saba had been her name, Amber recalled—raised an arm only half fleshed and hurled her lyre-shaped halberd after a bandit. Propelled by that massive arm, the crumbly steel still had power to kill. One point of the lyre blade bit hard into the outlaw’s back, tearing a great ragged gash that broke his shoulder blade and collarbone and severed his spine. The man cried out once at the agonizing pain, then flopped and lay still. By the time his jaw crashed on rock, the other bandits had vanished.

  Silence.

  Peeking at the unliving guards, Hakiim hissed to Amber, “May we—go?”

  Reiver nodded hopefully. Amber balked. The devoted guards, or their remains, had saved her life. Even looking at them was difficult, they were so gruesome and grotesque, but each clearly bore an identical slash across his throat, and the towering M’saba wore many axe blows. They’d been beheaded not for their fault but for their mistress’s. Loyalty had proved their demise, yet when the princess—or Amber in her guise—was endangered, they’d risen to defend her without hesitation. Their simple, unwavering faith deserved some reward.

  Amber had nothing to give except her thanks, yet she hesitated to lie and claim she was the princess. Even ghosts deserved honesty.

  Gulping, she finally blurted, “Th-thank you, loyal bodyguards. Thanks for myself and my friends. I—I’m safe.”

  For a moment, she wondered if the zombies heard or could hear anything. Not one bobbed, or nodded, or bowed.

  Reiver whispered, “Can we—”

  “Look,” breathed Hakiim.

  A guard lost a hand. It fell from the wrist without a sound and broke like a clod of dirt on the courtyard flagstones. Another guard’s arm fell and burst in a puff of dust. A leg gave out, and a guard toppled. Amber and her companions skipped aside as M’saba, only minutes ago so strong and formidable, keeled over like a sinking ship and smashed into dirt and powder. In seconds all the guards had collapsed. Nothing remained but dry mud and antique bones.

  “It’s … sad,” said Hakiim.

  “Yes,” Amber whispered, then took a deep breath to keep from crying.

  Her emotions ran riot, as if she lived both for herself and for a long-dead princess. Visiting the past in visions might get her killed in the present.

  “Look here,” Reiver said, crouching near the fallen bandit. Amber knew Reiver had looted the corpse, for no thief could afford to pass up such an opportunity, yet the orphan held a dropped rucksack of camel hide. Stuffed inside was a rich, ivory fur with steel-gray spots. “Snow leopard.”

  “In the desert?” asked Hakiim.

  Amber understood, if only by the spoiled-meat stink. “It came from that ogress. Her comrades must have found her crippled and cut her throat. No other way could they get her fur.”

  Hakiim gawked. Amber shook her head at the needless cruelty, yet knew she contributed her share. It was, as Hakiim said, sad.

  Reiver watched the gaps between walls.

  “Come,” the thief said. “We need a secure place to hide until dark.”

  “Secure?” asked Hakiim.

  “I won’t say ‘safe.’ In this accursed city, nowhere’s safe.”

  “Sure you won’t quit?”

  “I’m sure,” Hakiim sighed and shook his head. “Adventure seems to be mostly about fright and cold and hunger and fatigue, but I agreed to come, so I’ll stick to the end.”

  “What end?” sniped Reiver.

  “Hush,” Amber warned, then squeezed both her friends’ hands in the darkness. “Thanks, Hak.”

  The three sat on a high stone ledge with their feet dangling in the air. A shadow among shadows, Reiver had scouted for sanctuary and found this bricked niche, like a curved cave, on the second floor of a ruin. A chimney at the end gave a second escape route, if necessary. Amber didn’t recognize the place from her visions of old Cursrah but guessed from the neighborhood it had been a shop or civic building. This pocket might have been a huge bread oven.

  Evening ripened, the air cool. The moon had risen before sunset, and Amber donned her silver tiara. Watching the past while talking, she and her friends saw Amenstar drummed from the Oxonsin camp, watched them cross the grasslands, then witnessed the sea genie’s escape atop the giant waterspout. They learned how citizens deserted the city in droves while others roamed half mad, glimpsed the wrath of the moon dragon, then fretted at Amenstar’s arrest and audience with her implacable parents.

  “So what happened?” demanded both boys.

  Amber plucked off the tiara, afraid to see more. Condemned by her parents, the princess must surely die with her city, guessed the daughter of pirates. Head spinning, sorrow choking her throat, Amber was glad when Reiver declared it time to go.

  Climbing the short chimney to a shattered third floor, the adventurers emerged onto a wide wall that broke away sheer on both sides. Reiver warned them to cling to the chimney lest their silhouettes be seen.

  He asked Amber, “Do you recognize anything new, now that you’ve toured the city through the tiara?”

  Pouting, Amber studied the ruins. Light from a quarter moon painted Cursrah with a gentle glow, but nothing could disguise the scars the city had suffered before it died. No wonder, if Cursrah’s citizens went wild drunk or half mad. Slowly she matched the vibrant pictures in her head against the silver-lit, cratered landscape, but it more resembled the moon than a world of men.

  A slim projecting corner caught her eye, and she said, “That’s the Temple of Selûne. It was crescent shaped, like the moon, and … there’s a half dome, the Temple of Shar, broached by the dragon. See how the streets radiate from the center like spokes in a wheel? The palace was the hub.”

  Obediently the men looked, but without her mental images they found it hard to recognize the layout. In many places, buildings had slumped across streets and into each other. Some streets and plazas had collapsed into the city’s interconnecting tunnels, leaving enormous potholes or elongated depressions like giants’ graves. Amber t
ried to sketch in the air, but the devastation was too disheartening, and she gave up.

  “Never mind. Reckon where you would go, and I’ll point the way.”

  They hoped to gain the palace cellars but wanted to stay above ground. Collapsed streets and teetering rubble made them leery of dark tunnels, which might also contain man-made traps or other dangers; pits, snakes, unburied dead, even portals to the Underdark. Not all buildings, such as temples, were linked by tunnels anyway. Mapping various routes, they finally chose a jagged line that promised no obstructions, gave cover, and wouldn’t box them in.

  Standing up high, they could see that menaces increased by the hour. At first only birds, but now larger animals, ventured into the valley to drink from the sunken spring. Noises carried: the insane laughing of hyenas, the screech of an owl, a crashing of pottery or roof tiles upset by some big body leaping.

  Off to the east, in a space that had once been a park with dry fountains and tree stumps, ensued a weird battle. The skeleton of an elephant wagged its bony head and lashed out with bare tusks to protect a skeletal elephant calf that cowered against tall legs of bone. Undead mother and child were threatened by a quartet of live cheetahs. The quick-springing cats, so thin and gaunt they resembled skeletons, worked in pairs, two distracting the cow’s front while two more nipped at her missing flanks. Amber and her friends marveled that the cats attacked walking bones. The hungry animals couldn’t comprehend that a familiar target was unsuitable for eating.

  Reluctant to quit their safe post, the three friends lingered a while, watching and listening, but finally they linked hands and slid down a wall onto heaped bricks. Reiver led, steering by dead reckoning past mounds and walls and gaping holes. They hadn’t gone a hundred feet, slipping through an ancient villa, before they found trouble.

  Behind a tall mansion with a caved-in roof lay a garden. In Cursrah land had been precious, so the garden was small, perhaps thirty feet square. Neat walkways ran between raised beds. Dry fountains sprouted from the walls. High walls and a thick iron gate threw shadows that prevented the friends from immediately spotting the danger. The first warning was a clicking of enormous claws.

  Reiver dodged left into shadows. Hakiim was unsure which way to jump. Behind, Amber belted his shoulder with her capture noose so Hakiim stumbled right. Thus Amber retreated from whatever clicking thing rushed from shadows.

  In near darkness, the daughter of pirates saw a bobbing coil curve above head height. At first she imagined an ostrich’s head on a sinewy neck, but something low and wide also threatened her front. Startled, with no better defense, Amber snapped her capture noose like a whip. Wood thumped on a surface hard as a teak table. What could this thing be?

  A lumpy claw clamped her thigh and squeezed. Amber gargled in pain as twin bony ridges ground at her flesh. In a flash, she knew what had attacked her. Forcing down the pain, Amber batted her sturdy staff low and sideways. A solid tonk! sounded. The claw on her thigh eased its grip, and Amber yanked her leg back. Throbbing, her leg betrayed her and she dropped to one numb knee on sandy tiles between garden rows.

  Now, lower, Amber could recognize her assailant silhouetted against the whitewashed mansion. She’d “seen” these brutes before, on parade in the long-lost Palace of the Phoenix. A grotesque manscorpion of a long-lost race, for the creatures were thought extinct throughout Faerûn—were still extinct, for this one was undead.

  The creature bore a torso like a man’s but with skin dark red and hard as an enameled shield. Its coarse face was fixed in a perpetual scowl. The scorpion thorax was segmented and propped by eight bowed legs, and two arms with pincer claws clamped Amber’s thigh, The high-arcing tail stinger worried her most. It might be tipped with venom, still potent after centuries of burial. Of all the undead creatures reawakening in this nightmare city, Amber supposed the manscorpions most dangerous, for their desert-seasoned bodies had probably been half desiccated in life. This one had most likely been a mercenary privately hired by the villa’s wealthy owner to protect the grounds. It was still intent on its task.

  The horror clicked and clacked on the narrow garden path, closing toward Amber while snapping both claws. She was grateful it didn’t carry a spear like the palace guards. Scooting backward on one good knee, dragging her deadened thigh, she jabbed at the thing’s frowning face with the capture noose. Built low to the ground, the mannish head was below hers, but that meant the stinger tail could fly over its head to impale her. Perhaps it was best she kept to one knee.

  “Amber!” Hakiim called from the right. “Which one’s you?”

  “I’m here! Stay back! I can fend it off—”

  “I’ll get behind it!”

  Eager to help, but clumsy as ever, Hakiim dashed in the dark, stubbed his toes against a raised flower bed, yelped and tumbled, but gamely limped to circle the fiend. Amber yelled, but Hakiim didn’t hear over his own panting and scuffling. Where was Reiver?

  A clay flowerpot answered. Lobbed from the left, it shattered against the manscorpion’s back. Flinching, the beast clicked half around, wary to watch Amber and yet meet the invisible assailant. Another flowerpot thumped in dried weeds. The next crashed on the creature’s chest armor. The thing buzzed angrily.

  Hakiim limped into the path behind the undead guardian. The manscorpion spun on clicking claws to face the apprentice. Amber saw it hesitate or take aim. The curved tail snapped down; evidently it could strike ahead and behind. Hakiim yelled and dodged as the thing slung its stinger again.

  Wishing they’d avoided this garden altogether, Amber freed some rope and flipped her capture noose over the scorpion’s mannish arm, then snugged the noose tight. The thing buzzed again, a chittering noise deep in its gullet, and pulled, strong as a pony.

  Amber yelled, “Hak, back up! Get clear so we can run.”

  Hakiim skipped backward, but that freed the manscorpion to whirl on Amber. Lunging, it tried to nip her belly with its pincer. By bracing her feet and pushing, Amber held the thing at bay. The pincer snapped at the rope. Cursing, she pulled again, wary of a stumble. If she got tangled with the manscorpion, she’d come in range of that stinger. Still, she was reluctant to disengage, not wanting to lose her staff or get spiked in the back. What to do?

  “Push it this way!” Reiver appeared from the night carrying a long rectangle—a door. Evidently the thief had slipped the iron pintels off a garden shed, probably where he’d found the flowerpots. Skipping across dead flower beds, the thief hollered, “Get ready to run!”

  From a raised flower bed, Reiver swung the awkward door to bat the manscorpion in the face. The thing’s buzzing was constant, angry as a giant wasp. As it spun toward Reiver—evidently it wasn’t very smart, and could only attack one person at a time—Amber loosed her capture noose.

  Hakiim yelled, “Here’s an exit!”

  Dashing down a walkway toward Hakiim’s voice, her thigh wincing at every step, Amber called, “Leave it, Reive—ow! Damn. Run!”

  “Coming!”

  Making sure Amber was clear, Reiver pitched the door and dodged in its shelter past the manscorpion. He almost made it, but at the last second the guardian’s prehensile tail lashed.

  Pausing at the door, Amber shrieked as the stinger lanced Reiver in the kidneys and he stumbled. The thief recovered, vaulted a fallen pedestal, and jumped after Amber and Hakiim into a high-walled alley.

  “Reiver!” Amber caught her friend’s arm. “It stung you—are you poisoned?”

  “Not I,” Reiver laughed with delight at being alive. Bumbling along in the dark, he boasted, “My camel suffered the damage!”

  “Camel?” chirped the two.

  “You won’t believe it,” chuckled Reiver.

  Pushing along in the lead, Hakiim insisted, “Believe wha—Shoes of the Shoon!”

  The alley gave onto a side street, and Hakiim stepped out directly between two black-robed bandits.

  Twisting aside too late, Hakiim was knocked into a wall by a heavy crossbow batting fo
r his head. Rather than defend herself, Amber made the mistake of propping Hakiim. The other bandit slashed down with her scimitar. Amber yelped as the blade flashed, and her wrist blazed with pain. Horror stunned her, and she thought, she cut my hand off!

  The flat of the scimitar swung at Amber’s face, and she dropped flat, sprawling on the ground to avoid it. Numb fingers pronged the dirt and pain shot to Amber’s elbow, but the sting let her understand the attack. The scimitar stroke had been made with the back of the blade. Amber cursed. They want to capture us alive for the White Flame, she thought. For talking as loud as that, we deserve to be punished. A brutal kick bounced her off a wall, and she slumped, half stunned.

  The only one left standing, Reiver raised both hands and shouted, “Don’t kill me!”

  In the ghostly moonlight, wrapped nose to toe in black, the bandits looked flat as shadows, but their weapons glinted like mercury.

  The female nomad snarled, “Surrender or suffer!”

  “We surrender,” Reiver’s voice rasped as if he gargled gravel. “Just, please, may I spare a drink? I’m dry as a hyena’s hind end.”

  Not waiting for permission, Reiver looped a cord over his head, and made to drink from his camel-hide waterskin. His power of suggestion had taken root, and the female bandit snatched the waterskin away.

  “You can do without!”

  “Take care, please, don’t spill it,” Reiver whined. “The bag has a hole, and we’ve so little—”

  “Bide your tongue.”

  The nomad jerked aside her headscarf and drank while her companion guarded the prisoners with his crossbow.

  Lying at Reiver’s feet, Amber touched the thief’s leg gently, signaling: “I’m ready to move.” The thief pressed her with a knee that said, “Stay put, wait.”

  The female passed the waterskin to her partner. He drank it dry and pitched it into the street.

  “Holed,” he said. “It’s fit for nothing. Same as you’ll be once the White Flame kisses you with fire. Now get—”