Star of Cursrah (38 page)

The grand vizar asked her acolytes to join hands before the sarcophagus. She thanked them for their hard work, gently touching each upon the brow. One by one, the acolytes collapsed, dead, their brains blasted to atoms. The grand vizar didn’t bother to enchant their corpses, for the Protector needed no protection.

Unaccustomed to masonry, working by guttering lanterns, the grand vizar bricked up the entrance to the vault. Mortar dripped and oozed in uneven globs, even that labor was finally finished.

One last task remained. Stepping to the sarcophagus, pressing her brow against the cool wood, the grand vizar chanted in a voice hoarse and low. She laid upon herself the same curse laid upon Gheqet and Tafir.

Mashing her brow against Star’s image, she finished the incantation with a shout, “I welcome a better life!”

For a second, a silver-purple glimmer flashed in the black cell as the grand vizar’s life-force, and her magical might, were transferred to the coffin’s occupant.

An empty shell, the grand vizar’s corpse fell at Star’s painted feet.

Inside the wooden sarcophagus, Samira Amenstar, the last living Cursrahn, wept, cried, pleaded, and prayed. Despair overwhelmed her, for she’d learned that there were fates worse than death. By her own deeds and her family’s cruelty, she was condemned to a living death, to be always awake, always trapped, always regretting.

Her only escape now would be from her own mind, a long, agonizing fall into total insanity.

And insane she’d become, for the only sound Amenstar heard were the screams of her dying friends, ringing in her ears.

Forever.

The Year of the Gauntlet

“They died?” asked Reiver, seven thousand, four hundred, and seventeen years later.

“Their souls are trapped in a moonstone?” echoed Hakiim.

Amber nodded dully. Her companions massaged their throats. All spoke quietly, having no wish to attract bandits, and out of respect for the dead. Crouching in an unused alcove, they nursed a single torch to keep light low.

“The mummy is you,” breathed Hakiim.

“No!” Amber almost shrieked, then shook her head. Sand rained from her headscarf; a vestige of the wind walker assault. “No, the mummy is Amenstar, not me!”

“But they’re our ancient counterparts,” said Reiver. “You said their fates must be linked to ours.”

“No, they mustn’t,” objected Hakiim. “They got killed … or worse…”

“Our feet were guided here, though I can’t guess by which god’s caprice,” Amber said. Her voice quavered, still shaky from seeing the grisly deaths and Star’s frightening imprisonment. “At least our goal is clear.”

“I’ll say,” piped Hakiim. “We climb the next staircase and run for home!”

Reiver agreed.

“No, shame on you both,” Amber snapped. “Didn’t you hear? Those aren’t statues, they’re living people about to be resurrected. Imagine five hundred bloodthirsty warriors led by a power-mad bakkal. What’s the first city they’ll attack? The closest—a city named after Calim’s most hated enemy—Memnon … our home!”

“Memnon has three thousand soldiers,” objected Reiver. “It’s called the Garrison City and the City of Soldiers—”

“If they’re posted at home,” Amber interrupted. “If the pasha hasn’t sent them away on spring campaign to attack Tethyr. Five hundred warriors could swarm over Memnon’s walls and slaughter half the populace. It’ll be worse than the Great Fires. They’ll put our parents and families to the sword, just as Samir Pallaton’s army devastated Cursrah.”

“Troops would come from Calimport—” began Hakiim.

“Too late—and they’d be blasted by Cursrah’s death-worshiping vizars. The Cursrahns could possess ancient and powerful magicks that Memnon’s own vizars couldn’t stop. The bakkal himself was a priest-king. He’d have necromantic powers we can’t imagine, and don’t forget the bakkal’s treasure, tons of it. It’s enough to hire every mercenary in Calimshan. This army could conquer Memnon in days. Burn, pillage, loot, and enslave our citizens … we’d have no home to return to.”

“If the bakkal and his army awaken,” hedged Hakiim.

“They’ll awaken,” Amber assured him. She felt bone weary from constant fighting and fretting. “Cursrah prepared their sleepers well. They forgot nothing, and now the city’s coming to life. The army’ll be loosed like war dogs before Calimshan even knows it. It’s up to us to stop them, right here. It’s my duty.”

“Yours?” echoed the two.

“You said Amenstar wasn’t you,” insisted Reiver. “If she failed, why is it your duty to set her mistakes right?”

“Because,” Amber struggled to explain, “Amenstar learned her lesson too late. She shirked her duties—yes, as did many others, but she also—and events spun out of control like a cyclone. In the end Star realized her mistakes and has probably regretted them for centuries. Now she’s trapped as a mummy and asks me for help. I swear, by all the gods of sea and sky, she’ll get it, even if I must descend alone.”

“What can we do?” Hakiim was gentle, no longer arguing. “How can we stop the bakkal’s army? We’re only three, and none of us fighters.”

“We’ll—We can—” Amber halted. “I don’t know what we’ll do, but someone else does.”

“Who?”

“Amenstar.”

“The air is green—and it stinks!”

“Hush,” Amber hissed.

She raised her torch and the flame jiggled because her hand shook. She peered across the corridor, hoping and yet fearing to see the mummy. Squinting didn’t help. A green fog or smoke permeated the air, rank as burning garbage.

“The fog’s coming from there,” Reiver said, pointing.

Opposite ran the short corridor leading to the royal court. Guarding the double doors were the bakkal’s burly guards: two manscorpions, two rhinaurs, and eight humans, all with spears or lyre-shaped halberds. They stood on square flagstones that also bore the fist-sized holes, same as in the royal court. From the holes exuded the green haze, coiling upward lazily like cobras rearing from baskets.

“What’s the smoke?” asked Hakiim.

“I don’t… know.” Near panic, Amber’s thoughts skittered around her skull like frightened mice. In her visions, she’d seen vizars place something underneath the holed flagstones, but couldn’t recall what. She’d seen too much lately. “Never mind for now,” she said. “I want to see the rest of the corridor, to see if anything can help us.”

“What about the mummy?” asked Reiver.

Amber shivered. She wasn’t ready to face her undead counterpart, yet.

“Come,” she said. “This is the last level. Let’s explore, and don’t lag.”

Scuffling close together, the adventurers circled the corridor. The outer walls, they learned, were lined with tall, narrow vaults. Some yawned empty, but many were sealed with bricks and mortar.

“Like the treasure vaults on the higher levels,” mused Reiver.

“Except for these,” corrected Amber.

By torchlight the intruders from another time studied square granite plaques cemented into the bricks. Etched by ancient masons were simple pictographs and complicated hash marks.

“I’ve seen these before,” whispered Amber, “along the walls of cemeteries at home.”

“Tombs,” said Hakiim. “Down here, they must be kings and queens.”

“The pictures must be names.” Amber traced images with her fingers and said, “A raven. A crocodile. A cloud. The marks must be the years they reigned.”

“Here. She was here,” Reiver’s voice sounded small down the corridor.

His friends joined him. Broken bricks and crushed mortar littered the floor before a breached doorway.

“See it?” the thief asked. “Bashed open from the inside.”

Amber shuddered. Inside the tall vault stood a sarcophagus thick with dust, its painted image obscured. Broken bones—whose?—littered the floor, and something else.

Stepping into the tomb on quaking legs, Amber picked up a gilded mask, surprisingly light. Painted on it was Amber’s own face: dark eyes, pouting lips, black hair. Reiver hissed and Hakiim prayed.

“Entombed alive for millennia,” whispered Amber. “Imagine.”

“Where is she now?” asked Hakiim.

“Only one place left,” said Reiver. “The royal court.”

Around the corridor they stalked on feather-light feet, torches in one hand; capture noose, scimitar, and dagger in the other. Amber heard her sandals scuff and her breath rasp, but nothing else.

“Quiet as a tomb,” she jested.

No one laughed. Amber stopped cold. They’d circled the corridor and come back to the royal court’s entrance. Dusty guards glared, wreathed in green fog.

“Is the haze getting thicker?” asked Hakiim.

Amber sniffed, and the green smoke or fog stung her nostrils. She stumbled at the next step and stopped to see why. There were no impediments; the floor was dusty but smooth, yet Amber’s foot skidded again.

“I feel… muzzy,” said Hakiim.

That’s why she stumbled, Amber realized. A faint dizziness stole upon her. She shook her head and scrunched her eyes, but she couldn’t dispel the eerie spinning.

“I—” Amber started.

“These fumes are making us punch-drunk,” said Reiver.

“We better get out while we still… can,” the sensible Hakiim said, then sneezed twice. “There’s no one to haul us … out if we keel over.”

Eyes watering, nose running, Reiver echoed, “Hak’s right. These fumes might be poison, and we can’t count on rescue.”

“We’ve come too far to bolt now,” Amber argued, but stalled. Part of her spirit wanted to run, part demanded she stay. “The fog can’t be poisonous, or it’d poison the sleepers. This is more like medicine smoke that doctors burn to drive off sickne—ulp!”

“Did he move?” Even Reiver didn’t trust his acute senses.

A guard had moved, Amber was certain, and not like a herky-jerky puppet, as when the mummy animated them. Peering until her eyes watered, Amber saw another motion: a manscorpion’s claw slid down a spear haft, slow as ice melting. A rhinaur’s blocky, fat-nosed head began to droop.

“They’re falling down,” whispered Hakiim.

“They’re waking up,” moaned Reiver.

“The fumes are medicine—or magic,” Amber coughed. “They’re waking the sleepers.”

Reiver ducked his head to see if the air cleared near the floor. “It makes sense for the outermost guards to wake first. They’ll protect the royal family while they awaken.”

Something snuffled. A rhinaur sneezed explosively, then again, the giant sneeze echoing. It should have been comical, but the adventurers froze in their tracks.

Reiver whispered, “These guards are handpicked, you said. The bakkal’s most fanatical followers. Didn’t they stab and crush the citizens who blocked the bakkal’s parade?”

“They’ll kill us in an instant,” muttered Hakiim, “just for standing nearby while the royal family revives.”

A keening sigh marked a manscorpion inflating his skinny chest.

“If they revive, then we’ve failed,” Amber whispered. “Oh, Amenstar, whatever you wanted, we failed—”

Amber bristled at a new sound behind. Many sandals scuffed. With no place to run, the adventurers turned.

The White Flame stood wrapped head to toe in black, a scimitar jutting from one hand, with thirty-odd followers behind her. They were sandblasted and storm-whipped, but they had obviously escaped the windwalker’s fury.

Amber and her friends waited. Fierce and angry raiders loomed ahead, reviving fanatical guards behind. Hakiim’s teeth chattered. No one spoke, though the White Flame cleared her rough throat in preparation for a speech.

A shriek from a nomad made everyone jump. A dwarf gibbered, and others whimpered. With terror-stricken eyes, the bandits stared past the adventurers, who spun on their heels.

Only one thing could reduce these hardened killers to frightened children, thought Amber.

From out of the double doors of the secret court, beyond the stirring guards, eerie in the green billowing smoke, shuffled the mummy. Rotted bandages trailed from outthrust arms. Crumbs of herbs and resin flaked off. The double chain clinked softly, and the blood-red girasol pendant winked like a dragon’s eye. The mummy’s head, not wrapped so thickly, was shrunken and shriveled as a boiled skull. The hand and feet were clumsy, yet capable of crushing bones and bricks. Withered fingers spread, taking in all the stunned observers. The digits crooked once.

Amber couldn’t move.

Like devout slaves, the living gazed at the lord of this cruel domain. Amber’s feet were rooted to the floor, her arms frozen, her head locked in place. Imbued with the powers of Cursrah’s highest vizar, she thought, and having dwelt here so long, the mummy must control the very air, could probably warp stone, or make it flow like molten lava, or vanish altogether.

From the corner of her eye Amber saw that the nomads, dwarves, and robe-wrapped monsters cringed in place, also frozen. Only the White Flame, who had nothing to lose or fear, stood square-shouldered with veiled chin high.

As the mummy passed the guards, a rhinaur’s ears flicked. A human’s knee jerked. A sloping spear clinked against the wall. The bakkal’s bodyguards were waking more quickly, Amber could see. Soon they’d shift their limbs and take a step, leather and cloth flexing for the first time in ages. Their first task would be to kill all strangers, perhaps by slashing their throats, as Gheqet and Tafir had died. Rapidly then, the guards inside the royal court would wake, all five hundred, then the courtiers and advisors and sages, then the royal family, and finally the bakkal with all his otherworldly abilities. Within days, no doubt, they’d launch an attack, hungry to conquer a brave new world after eons of dreaming about blood, steel, and glory.

Amenstar’s mummy, alone, protected the resurrection process, Amber noted. Cursed to duty, saddled with a hideous unlife centuries ago, the former samira would hold the nomads and the Memnonites at bay until the ancient royals were fully awake.

Tears coursed down Amber’s cheeks. From inert lips, the daughter of pirates whispered, “We’ve failed you, Memnon, and you, Amenstar. We’re sorry.”

Paralyzed, terrified, the living souls stared at the unliving mummy. One bandaged hand began to move. Shriveled fingers drew a slow half circle in the air. Fascinated, the onlookers watched the gray digits, falling under their spell. Amber scarcely breathed for wondering what the next enchantment might be.