Star of Cursrah Read online

  The ancient genies and slaves who’d built Cursrah had been canny engineers who cut and fit blocks so square and smooth they needed neither mortar nor tenons. Thus painstaking construction allowed for quick demolition. Teams of men and brawny women started with levers, pry bars, and blocks and tackle at the circular cornice ringing the palace’s open roof, the sacred circle that had admitted moonlight to the royal court for centuries. Loosened blocks skidded down the gently sloping roof and smashed away exterior cornices with tremendous crashes, then all landed with a muffled thud in the mud of the moat. Within an hour, slaves scrambled down rope ladders while master masons winkled free keystones. With an earthshaking, thunderous rumble, the gilded roof shattered onto the pink-white marble of the royal court.

  The pace of demolition increased. Thin internal walls were dismantled stone by stone, carried out along the eight bridges, and pitched into the mud. Working downward from the main walls, slaves tilted giant blocks out to slam into the moat one by one. Vibrant frescoes became marred with cracks, chips, and splits, then obscured by dust. Ancient scenes of glory were nibbled away. Bold warriors and kings and gods stood decapitated, their heads toppled with the walls. Their torsos were tilted after their heads. Morning sunrise washed the vast floor with golden rays, and Calim’s Breath, rising, gradually wafted away the worst dust.

  Work stopped, as into the royal court skulked a high vizar and two heavily laden acolytes in vulture-brown robes. This priest, short, gaunt, and shaven, with a horned sigil branded onto his forehead, summoned the master mason from off a ladder. Pointing, the vizar commanded that a single pink-white flagstone near the room’s center be pried up. Obeying, masons further plied chisels, star drills, and heavy iron hammers to punch a crude drop shaft through the floor’s foundation to the tunnel intersections below. The work went quickly, for all the commoners, from the college-trained mason-engineers to the lowest slaves, feared to look the vizar in the eye. Superstition whispered that anyone who saw their reflection in a vizar’s mad eyes would die before the next moonrise.

  Over the drop shaft, the vizar ordered a small hut built of fallen stone, with a broken column erected inside as a pedestal. Rapidly, low walls were stacked, then broken slabs laboriously lapped into a roof. The high vizar and his two acolytes were shut inside, which suited the workers, glad to see them go.

  In teams of eight, slaves streamed from the vanished palace, fracturing and collapsing all eight bridges as they went. When the last paving stone fell into the mud, the palace foundation became a true island once more. Only shattered and scattered stepping stones gave access to the island, and none dared or wanted to venture there. Sitting outside the former moat on the circular road that led nowhere, slaves ate hearty rations, sipped water carefully rationed by overseers with swords, and napped through the heat of the day.

  Awakened as the sun slanted to the west, the workers picked up shovels and baskets to finish the forbidding landscaping. Slaves and overseers and masons worked side by side to fetch and dump sand by the ton. Moving inward, industrious and mindless as ants, they filled the last vestiges of the moat, burying the mud and broken stone and the last of the brilliant frescoes under clean sand. When they reached the vast round floor, the exhausted workers buried the pink-white polished marble floor under a foot of sand, then poured basket after basket of sand over the crude stone hut at the very center, until only a low knob was visible.

  They hurried at this last chore, for a soldier had come running with news that made everyone look east. As the sun set behind the watchers, the last rays glowed on a tall, roiling dust cloud. Rumors were confirmed; an invading army marched toward Cursrah.

  Conferring, the master mason whispered to the chief overseer, who raised his whip and pronounced, “Slaves, as a reward for your hard work, and with the blessings of our gracious bakkal, you are hereby set free.”

  “Free …” The word skittered like a breeze among the clustered slaves. Freedom was a dream many had never entertained or even pondered.

  One slave, bolder than the rest, shouted, “Wait—what does that mean? Who will feed us? What shall we work at? Who will protect us from this marauding army?”

  The masons and overseers only hurried home to see their families to safety, if such a notion still existed in this doomed valley.

  The palace of Cursrah had been demolished, leveled, and hidden under sand. Now began the work of the vizars, to see that the sacred burial spot was protected against intruders, forever, if need be.

  Inside the smothered stone hut, the gaunt vizar with the horned sigil and his two acolytes crouched in darkness. Sand sifted from the cracked roof slabs onto the vizars’ shaven pates as they poked and squinted to assure no sunlight leaked into the stygian cell. Carefully they unrolled a bundle of jute, in triple layers dyed black, and draped it across the drop shaft to block any torchlight welling from the corridor below.

  Satisfied that the darkness was complete, one acolyte unwrapped a square box big as a man’s head. It was folded from sturdy tin and brazed shut with bronze seams. Working clumsily in pitch blackness, plying a small chisel and hammer, they attacked the tin box and pried the lid back. Gently they lifted out a wad of more black cloth, and carefully peeled back the folds. Working by feel, they arranged the soft cloth as a nest atop the short pedestal. Into the nest they eased a plain glass orb.

  None of these vizars had ever seen the sphere, but they’d heard its story. Hand blown by Cursrah’s finest glassblower, the orb was almost perfectly round, thick-walled, and unclouded save for a few tiny suspended bubbles. Years before, when the grand vizar’s powers were most potent, she and other clerics had journeyed far and high to a peak in the Dragons’ Wall. Waiting for a full moon, they had loudly offered the nearly perfect orb as a delicacy to Selûne, goddess of the moon. At the same time, other vizars had under their breath invoked Bhaelros, god of storms, wind, and lightning, another inhabitant and lord of the sky. By a delicate balance of flattery, fast talk, and hedges, and despite teeth chattering with cold, the grand vizar had captured the favor of Selûne, gentlest and most forgiving of goddesses, yet harnessed a small part of Bhaelros’s might, a god with wind to spare. Before the magic could be tapped and drained, the orb was wrapped in black cloth and stuffed into the tin box. Fighting a howling wind, an alchemist coaxed a charcoal fire hot enough to braze the box shut, sealing out any chance of light.

  Now the globe had been shut up again, this time in a chamber sealed by stone and sand. Reposing on its pedestal, the orb was a trigger waiting to be pulled. When the time was right, the sandy cover would wear thin. The first finger of Selûne, the merest sliver of moonlight, that infiltrated the globe’s hiding place would set it aglow. The first touch of a human hand would unleash the fury of a hurricane stolen from Bhaelros, and Cursrah would be swept free of suffocating sand.

  On some distant day in the future.

  Removing the jute curtain, the vizar and two acolytes descended the short, improvised drop shaft. They turned down the spiral corridor toward the deep-sunken vizars’ workshops. As they went, they passed a cluster of men and women who laughed and joked and fairly skipped by.

  These people had, moments ago, been palace slaves of the highest caste, fit to wait on the royal family. Along with a hundred other slaves they had just delivered the royal family and their possessions to safety. As a reward, the vizars had granted them their freedom. Each ex-slave also received a mug of celebratory wine, three small gold coins, and a tiny gem to begin their new lives. Split into groups of a dozen, the newly freed folk giggled and boasted of the many great things they’d accomplish as they traipsed up the seemingly endless ramps and sloping corridors toward sunshine and promise.

  Their walk to freedom halted. First one then another of the elders stumbled. Hanging back, a woman of sixty, who’d served faithfully in the palace since she was six years old, suddenly caught her throat, moaned, and fainted. A middle-aged man sank to the cold tunnel floor. Younger folk ran to their sides, only to be
stricken themselves in throat and gut. Before long, all the ex-slaves collapsed. Infirm folk died quickly. Strong ones hung on grimly, curled in agony, cursing the bakkal before they finally ceased breathing. In their final lucid moments, a few veterans of palace intrigue realized they’d been betrayed, that the celebratory wine had been poisoned.

  As the last victims lay twisting in pain, bleeding from the nose and mouth, a vizar came along with a palm leaf, the symbol of service. Chanting slowly, he imposed upon the ex-slaves one final chore to fulfill even in death.

  “Here you will abide. Here wait, patiently, as in life. Guard this corridor. Let no intruder pass, though time lose its meaning and the moon vanish from the sky. Stay, guard, protect, let no one pass.…”

  Deeper within the tunnel complex, guards retreated backward on feather-light feet. Along the many tunnels they armed dozens of devilish death traps sure to cut down looters: falling blocks, hair-trigger crossbows, spring-set blades. Some guards frowned, knowing these traps had lives of their own, so would rot after a few decades or even centuries, but they kept any objections private. Working alongside them, whispering vizars enchanted stretches of gluefloor to snag unwary feet, spectral voices to haunt the mind, and beguiling eyes to hypnotize.

  Farther down, where the walls were lined with brass, griffon-headed sconces, overseers barked as lower caste slaves packed treasure into shallow chambers along the corridor walls. Chests and boxes were stacked to the low ceilings. Baskets of jewelry were piled until they threatened to topple, and when sacks of coins and gems wouldn’t fit, they were upended and poured into cracks like acorns into a tree. Gifts given to generations of royalty were squirreled away along with common but costly household goods: candlesticks, a crown, an incense burner, a gilt screen of rosewood, a brass barometer, a tea tray, a toy wagon with jeweled wheels, a magical jar, a lacquered box of ivory hairpins, a decorated horse bridle, and much, much more.

  When these slaves finished their labor, and the chambers were mostly full, guards drew their short bronze swords. Slaves and slave masters screamed, cried, begged, clawed the walls and climbed the golden hoard, to no avail. The bakkal’s bodyguards butchered them until the corridors were quiet again and even the echoes had died. The ravaged bodies were left to rot. Working slowly, the guards bricked up the entrances to the chambers and smoothed the mortar. The hard-faced guards felt no regrets. No slave would ever creep back to loot the bakkal’s treasure. The gold and gifts would stay hidden until their sovereign needed it.

  At the very lowest circle, the vizar-in-waiting chastised her clumsy acolytes. They pulled up square flagstones marked by holes in their centers. Other acolytes gingerly knelt with small jugs in hand. Each jug was filled with a vile green potion worked up in barrels months earlier, then covered with oiled paper tied with string and sealed with fragrant beeswax. A jug was nestled into a hollow just below each flagstone, then the flags were gently eased into place. Soon oiled paper gleamed beneath every hole.

  Backing, wary of death traps, wards, and poised potions, the vizars and guards retreated into a large round room. The bakkal’s most faithful followers had done their work well. They’d buried themselves alive.

  Their work was almost done.

  Far above, in the early evening glow, the grand vizar crept from a tunnel entrance. The ancient crone was led by the youngest acolytes in the realm: two shaven-skulled children, a boy and a girl who trembled to touch the mighty priest’s icy hands, or look at her face tattooed with red and blue veins. Besotted by dreams and visions of other worlds and planes, the grand vizar stumbled often. Each time the children winced, fearing a single fall would kill the dotard, ruin their mission, and bring their own deaths.

  A third being helped prop up the elder. The bizarre and living Vizar’s Turban had glowing amethyst eyes and a hide like a tiger’s. Crouching on the woman’s brow, the magic creature communicated mentally with its carrier. Advanced age, the drain of conjuring, and the mystic alien mumble made the vizar so jumbled of mind she could hardly think at all. So the children and the turban directed the priest to her task, not the other way around. Stumbling, eyes fogged and unfocused, the grand vizar was escorted around and around the circular street once touched by eight bridges. From her mouth spilled an invocation.

  “Ibrandul, Father of All Lizards, hear my plea. Ward this site that all men shun it … as mortals shun the Underdark. Direct their feet … their feet away, so none may discover … treasures untold. Cloud their eyes … O Lurker in Darkness. Shield their eyes with scales, O Great Scaly One … that all avoid …”

  The loathsome god Ibrandul, the vizars had agreed in council, often directed adventurers to or from a path, and into and out of the Underdark. Surely, they reasoned, the great lizard god could encoil some portion of his essence around the buried palace, and thus direct men away from the enchanted site. One vision, one sniff, of a monster lizard should send any sane person walking, or running, the opposite way.

  The vizar babbled on, her voice warbling and reedy. The ritual took a great toll, until the elder’s feet began to fail and the children half carried her. Round and round the grand vizar trudged into the night.

  All the while her young attendants anxiously watched climbing dust occlude the stars in the east.

  Samir Pallaton of Oxonsis invaded Cursrah at the head of twelve hundred warriors. Adorned in his plain linen and leather uniform, the prince sat atop his regal horse at the valley’s rim and stared down into the fabled vale. His army had ridden all day, then long into this night, but Pallaton had no intention of resting. Splitting his column left and right to surround the valley, he consulted with advisors while the army’s tail caught up. No opposition showed its face, so when all twelve hundred warriors stood poised above the eight roads and paths leading into the city, a trumpeter blew the signal and the army descended.

  Posted on the rim, fifty feet apart, waited ace archers with long riding bows, sheaves of goose-fletched arrows, and tall torches spiked into the soil. Their orders were simple: shoot anyone who flees the valley.

  The army rode slowly, letting the horses negotiate the dark switchbacks. Scanning the valley, the raiders saw that many fires raged out of control. The center of the city looked oddly deserted, with many buildings toppled. Here and there citizens looted, screamed, cried, and fought amongst themselves. Most citizens cowered in their homes, the army supposed, praying to various gods for protection. If so, the gods would disappoint.

  Men and women reined back their horses, who were also skittery at impending action. When the bulk of the army reached the valley floor, Pallaton called for a long trumpet blast.

  The raucous, rattling peal made Oxonsis’s army roar with delight, boot their horses’ ribs, and thunder across fields and parks and gardens and cobbled streets, grinning into the wind.

  Within minutes, the night echoed with the sound of breaking doors, bubbling screams, the clash of swords and clubs, and whinnying horses frightened by the coppery stench of blood.

  Samir Pallaton rode to Cursrah’s center, or close to it, for the innermost street encircled only barren sand. By the light of a burning building, Pallaton saw lying in the road a bald scarecrow in brown robes. A fluffy tiger-skin turban lay nearby. Two shaven-polled children had fled at the riders’ approach. Pallaton craned in his saddle, leather squeaking, and saw every part of Cursrah under attack.

  He nodded at the fallen scarecrow and asked, “Is she dead?”

  “Stiff, your majesty.”

  A dismounted soldier kicked the body with a hobnailed sandal.

  “Make sure.”

  Drawing a sword, the soldier plunged it clean through the scarecrow until it clanked on a paving stone. Stooping, the Oxonsin picked up the tiger-skin turban. He made to pluck off the amethyst eyes, but they suddenly flared and glowered, searing his soul like a tiger leaping on his back. Rattled, he dropped the turban.

  “Wh-what shall I do with this, sire?”

  “Throw it on a pyre.”

 
The soldier used his sword to fling the thing into flames.

  Pallaton cast about, wondering—what? Something was missing, but what?

  A soldier called, “What about those children, sire?”

  “Run them down and kill them.” Pallaton’s voice was level.

  The horseman balked. “Children?”

  “Go!” As the soldier cantered away, Pallaton announced to his advisors, “Hear your prince! Many of our men are green. My army needs an orgy of murder and looting to harden their hearts. Oxonsis must destroy Cursrah utterly. Only by dealing out cruelty can they learn to be as hard, as ruthless as the coming months will require each of them to be.”

  A woman’s scream seemed to answer from the shadows. Oxonsin soldiers ran riot. They guzzled looted wine from amphoras and poured it over one another’s laughing heads. They set fire to houses that opposed them, then blocked the doors so the inhabitants burned alive inside. They knocked down shrieking men, women, and children alike, then toyed with them before delivering death blows. Three cavalrymen hitched horses to a temple door and ripped it from the hinges, then rode inside to stomp and slash the citizens who’d sought sanctuary there. Galloping full tilt, they speared dogs, horses, cows, and people. They threw burning rags into fig and olive trees and grape arbors until branches crackled like fireworks.

  Samir Pallaton watched the destruction without satisfaction or enjoyment. Given a chance, he’d have co-opted Cursrah, starved and overwhelmed it, and made it a puppet of Oxonsis, if possible with so much distance between them. He’d have forced Cursrah’s famed scholars to re-divert the river to the aqueduct, then to devise war engines, propaganda, and battle tactics. He’d have made slaves plow up grasslands to feed his army, drafted the young adults, and bled the citizens white with taxes. Enslaved, Cursrah would have lived, yet fate and the gods had deemed otherwise, so Cursrah must be destroyed lest Coramshan take it. If only Amenstar had been more pliable.