Star of Cursrah Page 9

  The wolf skull Amber had handled twitched. Bug-eyed, Amber watched the skull skitter backward with a clicking noise. A rat, she hoped fervently, a rat had crawled inside and dragged the skull like a hermit crab … but she could see through the skull’s vacant eyes. No rat.

  Hakiim groaned. Words failed him.

  As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they saw that more stark-white bones littered the tunnel, a heap almost knee-high. All the bones moved of their own will. Outlying bones trickled toward the pile. The wolf skull bumbled along to meet a crooked spine then clicked into place atop. The spine wriggled like a snake to join a dried pelvis like a broken seashell. Shoulder bones collected arms. Feet like spilled necklaces joined crumbly ankles.

  With no place to run, the three companions stared, riveted. Clacking, bumping, milling like albino ants, the bones coalesced into parodies of skeletons. One lurched to its feet.

  Hakiim screamed. Reiver prayed to Shar, Mistress of the Night and the Underdark, who sometimes took pity on thieves. Amber gained a terrifying insight. The skull with the bone-crushing jaw wasn’t a wolf’s or dog’s, but a jackal’s, an eater of corpses.

  Whatever spell animated the monster had hashed it, for the results were grotesque, lopsided, and hapless. The jackal skull wobbled atop a human spine, rib cage, and pelvis. One arm was perfect down to nimble finger bones, but the other shoulder sprouted a snake skeleton with multitudinous ribs. Both knees angled backward, the legs of a jackal, but the twisted feet were human. Clumsy though it was, the dead creation lurched toward the living humans. Fingers wriggled in anticipation of clawing warm flesh.

  More patchwork skeletons arose. A human skull, denied a torso, perched atop a pelvis and clacked cracked teeth. Another snake skeleton towed a human hand for a tail. A jackal’s body sprouted two human heads, one upside down but both jaws clacking. One human rib cage was crammed atop another so the topmost scratched the stone ceiling. Four arms sprang from a walking pelvis. Other hideous combinations jittered together until a dozen freaks blocked the corridor from wall to wall. Silently they stood and swayed as if from an invisible breeze.

  “What do we d-do?” Hakiim whispered.

  “Keep quiet,” Reiver advised.

  “What are they?”

  “Scavengers.” Amber clenched her teeth lest they chatter and continued, “Humans must’ve died in a pile, and jackals and snakes ate their corrupted flesh and died too.”

  “So?” Hakiim persisted.

  Amber grated, “Maybe they won’t attack—”

  As one, pushed by an invisible wind, the skeletons advanced with claws and jaws poised to rend and bite. Amber jumped to the left wall, untied the noose of her capture staff, and swished the ebony shaft in the air.

  “Hak!” she called. “Get your shield up.”

  “I lost it to the herders.”

  “Then wrap your headscarf around your forearm,” she told him. “Don’t let them bite you! Reiver—”

  “I’m set!”

  As if by magic, the thief produced a weapon Amber had never seen, a thin chain a yard long ending in big rings. From a pouch Reiver drew a lead weight and clipped it to a ring. Before Amber could ask, he swung the chain in a circle until it buzzed.

  Taking a long step, silent as falling snow, Reiver suddenly whipped the chain through a tight arc. The lead weight struck a human skull on a jackal’s carcass with an ear-wrenching crunch. The skull exploded into fragments that bounced off the walls. The jaw dropped to the stone floor.

  Reiver whooped, “That’s one!”

  “This is not a game,” Amber shrilled.

  She was terrified. These patchwork skeletons could tear them to flinders. A jackal-headed mockery clanked toward her, and she waved her capture staff feebly. What to do? Rope it? Pull it apart? Brush it back? Shatter the bones?

  Shambling along the floor, the horror crowded Amber back toward the jumbled landslide. Desperately she decided Reiver had the right idea. Hoping the seasoned ebony didn’t snap, she flipped it end for end to present the thicker haft, grabbed with both hands, and swung.

  Rock hard wood slammed the skull’s temple. Knocked off the spine, the jackal head banked off the wall. Amber couldn’t see if it shattered or not. The slanted spikes of sunlight were almost a nuisance. Glowing, swirling dust motes made it hard to see into the gloomier pockets. Still, at least ten skeletal constructs shuffled toward them.

  Amber had hoped the remaining skeleton would collapse upon losing its head, but she was disappointed. Curved bones clanked toward her, more hideous without the mismatched head. The human arm clawed while the snake arm gnashed the air with hollow fangs.

  Amber bleated to Reiver, “What now?”

  “I don’t know,” the thief admitted. Nonetheless, he wound up his weighted chain, jumped, and smacked an upside-down head riding on jackal bones. Jarred loose, the skull fell into a drift of sand. The jaw continued to clack as if hungry for blood. “Villein’s Volley! Maybe if we cleave where the heart would beat.… Hak, bring your sword.”

  Unprovoked, the rug merchant’s son had hung back. Now, eager to help with any plan, he raised his scimitar so high it ticked the stone ceiling. Reiver flung his weighted chain, snagged a jackal’s rib cage, and skipped aside.

  “Hit ’im, Hak!”

  With a schoolboy’s shout, Hakiim cleaved bone with his thick bladed scimitar. Shoulder blades, ribs, and vertebrae sprayed in white splinters. The jackal thing’s back legs, unsupported, missed a step and toppled. Hakiim cheered, and Reiver hooted. Amber watched and didn’t like what she saw.

  Unbroken, the rear legs struggled to rise. Other bones wriggled and jiggled to join up. Meanwhile, whole skeletons shuffled toward them. Even the smitten jackal skull skittered over stone again. Her staff had cracked the thick jaw and punctured the cranium, but the cursed creature, or its ghost, still strove to fight.

  Wanting to cry with frustration, Amber released the rope pinned in her right hand and flicked the noose over the double heads of an oncoming skeleton. The thing didn’t reach for the rope but stumped on obliviously. Holding tight to the rawhide handle, Amber yanked the noose shut, pulled, then pushed. Grunting, she tilted the two-headed fiend into a shorter skeleton, then shoved hard enough that the magic bond broke. Both collapsed in a heap. Immediately the bones began to merge, probably to create a three-headed horror with four arms. Amber didn’t watch.

  “It’s no good,” Amber yelled above the men’s chatter as they picked out their next target. “The bones just reform. These things must be cursed to stop intruders forever!”

  Startled, Reiver and Hakiim peered into the gloom. Their jubilance over one victory evaporated. Threatened by an almost-human skeleton, Hakiim wound up his scimitar and with a frustrated scream split the thing from shoulder to hip. The legs remained standing, and he chopped them off at the knees, but the skull magically rolled upright, snapped cracked teeth, and rolled again to nudge more bones into order. The rug merchant’s son swore oaths learned from his uncles.

  “We can’t hack them forever,” Hakiim said.

  “No, we can’t,” Amber agreed.

  Fending off a lurching, broken-backed skeleton with her capture noose, Amber flicked her left sleeve, caught the teak cudgel snagged on her wrist, and cracked the fiend’s skull. The crown fell off, but ruptured eye sockets glared while a jaw chattered.

  “Mother of Coins, help me!” she prayed.

  Already Amber’s arms were tired. It had only been an hour since they’d outrun the thunderherders. Now the light’s slanted rays faded as the huge desert sun slipped below the valley’s lip. “It’ll be dark in a minute, and these things will have the advantage.”

  Reiver ripped a rag from his shirttail and spiked it on the point of his dagger. From a pouch came a small bottle whose cork he pulled with his teeth. Liquid gurgled on the rag. Crouching, he struck flint and steel, blew frantically, and set the rag alight. The three adventurers squinted as it ignited with a bright glow and very little smoke.


  With a long arm, Reiver rammed the burning rag into the eye socket of a skull atop a pelvis and four arms. Smearing while burning, the oil charred the skull. Reiver stepped back, the tip of his dagger flaming.

  “That’s all my whale oil,” he said simply.

  “We’ll need more!” Amber shrieked.

  Skipping behind Hakiim, she jerked his thick blanket from under his pack flap, looped it over her capture noose, and balanced it alongside the flames. It caught, smoking. Amber flipped the burning blanket over the skeleton’s frame, then used her staff to ram a shorter skeleton against the pyre. Thin rib bones crisped and flared like candlewood. Encouraged, Hakiim and Reiver scooped up slithering bones and threw them into the makeshift bonfire.

  For the first time, Amber saw the magical enchantment stagger. Burning skull-and-bone monstrosities stopped creeping and sagged into the flames.

  “That’s the trick!”

  Heartened, Reiver and Hakiim dodged the quicker freaks and kicked others apart, adding fuel until the pyre snapped and crackled like a brush pile.

  Hakiim yelled, “Must we burn them all?”

  “Shame of Shar, no,” yelled Reiver. “We only need to get past!”

  Amber blinked. Intent on facing down the monsters, she’d forgotten their purpose. Casting a quick look about, she yelled, “Then go!”

  Batting aside a human skeleton with a backward head, Amber and her friends pelted past the flames and the last of the skeletons. Always looking ahead, Reiver plucked a burning thigh bone to fetch along.

  Three abreast, they trotted down the sloping tunnel until the crackling fire winked behind like a candle. No one pursued. Blowing from fright and exertion, the three sagged to the cold stone floor.

  Hakiim puffed, “Wh-What shall I use for a blanket?”

  Half hysterical, Amber found the lament funny, and began to laugh. Reiver joined in, sniggering quietly. Hakiim looked puzzled until he realized the absurdity of his complaint and roared along.

  Amber suddenly went cold. “Gates of the Seven Heavens,” she said. “I just realized … we tripped one trap entering this tunnel, we could have tripped a dozen more and been killed dead as Bhaal, Bane, and Myrkul!”

  “Could’ve been,” Reiver, who tilted the charring leg bone to keep it alight, agreed, “if the rest of the traps aren’t already sprung or too rusted and rotten to work.”

  “One trip wire … collapsed the tunnel … on our heads,” Amber panted.

  “So one still works,” Reiver shrugged. “The jackals, rats, and snakes only missed that wire because it was strung belt high, above their heads.”

  Hakiim shook sand from his clothes and hair and asked, “What was that weighted chain? It’s a handy trick.”

  “Garrote chain. Adding a fishing weight was my own idea.”

  “Garrote chain,” Amber mulled. “For strangling people?”

  “No,” Reiver grinned. “At least, I haven’t strangled anyone yet.”

  “Never mind,” Amber said, “I don’t want to know.”

  “Speaking of strangling, the air is awful in here. Can we get out of this tunnel,” puffed Hakiim, “or are we buried alive?”

  “Who wants to leave?” the thief asked, only half joking. “Look!”

  Juggling the burning bone, Reiver stooped for another small coin, which he presented to Hakiim.

  “Amber gets the next one,” he said. “Don’t fret, Hak, we’ll get out. Every rat hole has two exits and every tunnel two ends.”

  Hunched over, studying the dusty floor, Reiver moved on, taking the light with him.

  Amber called, “Don’t go too far!”

  Amber and Hakiim rested in the diminishing light while their breath calmed. Suddenly the light ahead winked out.

  “What happened?” yelped Hakiim. “Where’s Reiver?”

  “He’s gone! Reive!”

  Amber shot to her feet, fatigue vanished with the light. Holding her friend’s sleeve, Amber scuttled down the dark corridor. Hakiim pointed his scimitar at the encircling darkness.

  “He’s got to be—yaah!”

  “Don’t do that!” Amber barked.

  “Sorry,” Reiver said, grinning.

  He’d popped out of a dim niche. A growing glow revealed his face and headscarf, then his whole ragged body, and finally the walls and ceiling.

  “Look,” the thief said, “real torches … and this!”

  The corridor met a cross tunnel that was twice as wide. It curved away and the floor sloped gently downward. Off to the right, something glinted in the orange torchlight.

  “What’s that shine?” Hakiim asked. He leaned and peered, reluctant to step into the bigger tunnel.

  “First,” Reiver said, sticking his head back into the niche, “let’s get the rest of these torches.”

  In the niche stood a terra-cotta urn full of crooked sticks with four iron prongs spiked with a gummy ball that burned with a pleasant, familiar fragrance.

  “Balls of cedar needles glued with resin,” the thief said.

  Lighting more torches revealed more dropped coins sparkling at their feet. Hakiim plucked them from the dust and divvied them out.

  By flickering yellow fire, Amber studied the walls of the curved tunnel. Framed by whitewash, occasional panels had been painted at eye level. Fascinated, Amber peered at the pictographs. Men and women in blue shirts and kilts propped spears. A band of near-naked women played instruments. A vulture flew over two lovers kissing in a garden. A child tossed a ball to a pointed-eared dog. A woman spun wool on a drop spindle. Workers tilted columns in constructing a temple, and there was much more.

  The daughter of pirates whispered, “A lost world.…”

  Jiggling her torch made the distant, intriguing glint flare and die. Rapt, with Hakiim crowding her, Amber trailed one hand along the inward wall until they stood before two iron-strapped doors.

  “Look at this sigil,” Amber said.

  Bolted to the door with copper rivets, big as a tabletop, split in half, hung an emblem cut from sheet gold—a phoenix rising from flames. Unlike the coins, this fire burned atop a rectangular building with many thick columns supporting its roof.

  “A palace,” breathed Hakiim.

  “The Palace of the Phoenix?” asked Amber. “I’ve heard of the Phoenix Prophecies, but never a palace. Have you?”

  Hakiim shook his head and said, “The Calim desert has more lost cities than a camel has fleas.”

  “Yes,” the woman mused. “Most were destroyed in the Era of Skyfire or soon after. They call that the Retreat from the Desert. Some ruins house desert dragons like Ylveraasahlisar the Rose, and Sharpfangs, and Rhimnasarl the—”

  “Father Sky watch over us,” bleated Hakiim, “I hope this isn’t Teshyll! Those who seek her ruins never return.”

  “Teshyll’s farther south, I think,” Amber said as she traced the cool golden emblem with her fingers. “Hmm … I’ve read that the ruins of Dashadjen support the Altar of the Air, but I don’t think—yahh!”

  Amber and Hakiim jumped when the phoenix flashed and swung toward them as if taking wing. The split door revealed a familiar face.

  Both yelled, “Reiver!”

  “Sorry.”

  Unbeknownst to his friends, the street urchin had scouted ahead and already slipped inside. He rattled the ironbound latch.

  “The door could be trapped, knothead!” Amber said, panting for breath again. “It could be warded, or cursed, or bristling with pestilence or poison needles … what’s inside?”

  The thief grinned, nodded behind him, and said, “Light.”

  “Light?”

  “Somebody’s home.”

  Passing through the gold-hung door, the three adventurers knew immediately that they’d entered a sacred space. The corridor was larger, the ceiling higher, and many doors lined both walls. Paving stones were polished smooth as ice. The walls were plastered or inset with wooden panels, and every inch was painted in brilliant red, blue, green, gold, and silver. Li
fe-size characters carried on their lives at every hand, and their clothing and jewelry glowed with opulence.

  The searchers, however, were riveted by a tiny trickle of light above a wide intersection. Pacing that way while many painted eyes watched, Amber held her breath lest she disturb the awesome silence. Hakiim crept like a mouse, and even the irreverent Reiver clung close by for once.

  Hakiim whispered, “This is the center.”

  “What?” Amber whispered back. She felt dazed by the majesty surrounding her. “Center of what? How do you know?”

  “Look.” The torch dipped four times as Hakiim said quietly, “It’s a major intersection, and I’ll bet these four corridors are of equal length. It’s the center.”

  “Of the palace,” breathed Amber.

  “Someone smacked that through in a hurry,” added Reiver. The hole, directly above the midpoint, was ragged, and had ruined a careful painting of rainbows on clouds.

  On tiptoe, as if fearing to disturb the dead, Amber crept under the hole. The stone ceiling was three feet thick. Above, the mysterious light glowed in a tiny, dark room, like a mirrored lamp in an attic. From this angle, Amber couldn’t see the light’s source.

  Amber started as Reiver brushed her elbow. Pointing her capture stick, she whispered, “We’ve been descending steadily, so we must be deep underground by now. How can there be a light?”

  “Magic,” quipped Reiver. “Give me a boost.”

  “Reive!”

  Stepping into Hakiim’s fingers, the nimble thief jumped, caught the upper edge of the hole with bony hands, and legs kicking, wriggled up into the dark niche. Amber protested, but his dirty feet disappeared.

  Seconds later, his face hung over the edge and said, “Hand me your noose.”

  Amber sighed and flipped the thief her rope’s end. Leaving the three torches stacked in a pyramid, the two friends shinnied up the rope and peeked over the edge.

  The tiny room was barely head high and only six feet on a side. The walls were rough cut blocks, the roof sloppy slabs. Contrasting with the rude walls, the floor was gorgeous pink-white marble squares so polished they saw their reflections in it. One square had been removed and the floor broken through. The missing tile was still here, stacked on its brother. Sand had leaked in, so Amber concluded this stone hut was at least partly underground.