Star of Cursrah (19 page)

Anxious not to be caught, Star slinked to her secret doorway and stepped inside. For the merest instant, she paused. Through the gap she could see her low bed, old familiar wall hangings, and the squat statue of the fairy Taab, bug-eyed and big-handed, who warded off nightmares. For a moment, Star froze, awash in homesickness, fearful of never seeing her home again. A sob burbled from her chest, surprising her, but her sore lungs gurgled too. She shivered to recall her morning’s punishment in the pool. Hardening her heart, she tugged the panel shut with a sharp click. At the bottom of the hidden stairs, two conspirators waited with lantern lit.

Gheqet puckered his brow and asked, “Where are we going? Will we be late? I promised my parents I’d be home for supper.”

“And I must return to the barracks at sundown,” Tafir added, “else I’ll draw extra duty.”

“You won’t be eating supper for a while yet, Gheq,” Amenstar pronounced in hushed tones. “Nor must you march on a parade ground again, Taf. We’re going to take a trip.”

“Trip?” chimed both.

“To the coast,” stated the princess, “on horseback, just the three of us. I need time to ponder my future.”

“Future?” they repeated.

Gheqet said, “You’re a princess. You, uh, marry a prince and become a queen, don’t you?”

“Marry someone I don’t love?” the eldest daughter carped. “Go live in a foreign land, amidst strangers who know I’m nothing but a pawn, a royal asset doled out by my parents to promote trade? No, thank you. We’ll journey to the coast and take passage. I have jewels. We can exchange them for money.”

Boggled, the commoners gawked at the fistful of shining gems Amenstar dragged from the heavy leather bag.

Tafir choked, “That’s a king’s ransom! You could buy a ship … a whole town.”

“Perhaps I shall,” said Star primly. “I’m of royal blood. Why not establish myself in some lucky town and guide it by royal decree? I’ll tell you this, no woman or man in that town would ever be forced to marry anyone. Now, let’s be off.”

“Wait!”

Gheqet and Tafir blocked Star’s path.

The blond cadet asked, “Star, uh, have you thought this through? If you’re robbed in some foreign port, you’d be just a commoner—”

“If I stay here, I may be drowned,” Star said, ignoring their puzzled looks, “or married off, and I won’t let either happen. So let’s go!”

When they again hesitated she punched Tafir playfully, as she’d seen Gheqet do, and said, “Come, you sluggards! It’ll be fun … high adventure, and who knows, maybe I’ll marry one of you. Or both. How would you like that?”

The commoners stared at one another. Star was their friend, but she was also a charming and pretty young woman. While each man had surreptitiously studied her face and body when she was unaware, never had either considered marrying a princess any more than they’d consider wedding a ghost or an angel. It simply wasn’t in the stars.

“This is … reckless,” Gheqet breathed.

“And dangerous,” Tafir added. “Three’s a crowd in romance, not that romance has a chance.”

“Pooh to all your objections.” Star shouldered her leather bag of fabulous wealth and said, “Hear this. I must leave the city, and quickly. Once my bodyguards report I’ve fled the library, there’ll be nine hells to pay. All of us may be punished.”

“You said we couldn’t be punished,” objected Tafir.

“Was that a—lie?” added Gheqet.

“It was—” Amenstar huffed. What was left if a royal order didn’t fulfill your wish? “I truly don’t know what my parents might do, but they will be furious.”

The commoners blanched at the thought of the bakkal of Cursrah, genie-kin and demigod, being personally perturbed at them. Anything could result, from a simple whipping to the fury of dead ancestors and punishing gods.

“We must go,” insisted Star in the silence. “Shall I issue a royal command?”

“No,” said the two.

“Pick up your feet and march.”

Amenstar was only half kidding, but the citizens didn’t dare quibble. Bracketing the princess, the trio tramped through the tunnels toward the stables and freedom.

In the semi-gloom, Tafir muttered so both heard, “Just because a command is royal doesn’t mean it’s wise….”

“Figure however you want, we’re lost.”

The three adventurers hunched over a tiny fire to warm their hands. Juniper wood, wrenched from a small copse in this low rill, crackled and spat as if annoyed. On this second morning out they were cold, achy from unaccustomed exercise, and saddle sore. Princess Amenstar shivered and wished, just briefly, for her recliner, iron brazier, quilted robe, and a cup of mint tea dripping with honey.

“I told you, I can only navigate by night,” Tafir said. His eyes were red from lack of sleep. “If you line up Aken’s Axe with the Tiger, the stars point north, but by day …”

“That’ll teach you to skip classes,” grumbled Gheqet. “If I miss a day without permission, my master makes me break rocks for eight hours.”

The horses tossed their heads and nickered, but the tired travelers ignored them. From burrows in the rill’s wall, hedgehogs peeked out, then ducked from sight.

At least this time they were prepared for extended riding. Amenstar had demanded horses from the stable master, food, and water bags. For a night and day, they’d ridden due north, the shortest route to the River Agis. Star planned to find a fishing village and hire passage to a seaport so only a few unimportant people would know their whereabouts. Unfortunately, they’d circled for hours. They’d seen groves of acacia, stands of scrub pine, and much coarse grass and sand, a flock of ostriches, wild camels and antelope, a golden eagle, and a mother bear and her sand-brown cubs feasting on a dead gazelle. Finally a goatherd pointed them north again, but they still didn’t find the river. Tired as their horses, they’d made camp early in this rill. Already cranky, they didn’t look forward to another day of aimless wandering.

One of their horses whinnied. A distant snort echoed.

“Uh oh,” said Tafir.

“Could be bandits,” Gheqet said. “I told you we shouldn’t light a fire.”

Normally levelheaded, Gheqet imagined that Star’s opulent jewelry shone across both horizons. He kicked at the fire, then fumbled to untie his reins.

“Wait!” said Taf. “If we lay low, they won’t spot us.”

“I order the two of you to remain here,” Star said as she struggled to quiet her horse. “No one will dare harm a princess—”

Hoof beats drummed, and suddenly they were hemmed by blowing horses and stern-faced soldiers.

The soldiers’ captain hollered, “Stand and identify!”

“Murdering Memnon,” carped Tafir. “It’s the ox heads of Samir Wolfbreath.”

“Pallaton of Oxonsis,” gasped Gheqet.

Six cavalry riders wore undyed linen tunics painted with red ox heads. Red headscarves fluttered, as did white and red ribbons topping their tall riding bows. The officer was a lithe, dark woman marked by two ostrich plumes, and a leather kurbash hung on her left wrist.

The captain, hardly older than Star, glared from her great height and repeated, “Intruders, identify yourselves!”

“We will not,” Amenstar retorted. Turning her back, she kicked her foot for a leather stirrup. “Now begone. We’ve a journey to complete—”

Quick as an eye blink, the officer spurred her horse so it reared and almost took wing like an eagle. The great beast galloped headlong into the rill, straight for the three Cursrahns, then slammed to a halt beside Amenstar. The captain flipped up her kurbash and slashed the princess across the head. Taken by surprise, the samira was knocked against her mount. Nudging the horse in a tight circle, the officer slapped Tafir and Gheqet, who prudently took the blows and kept still.

The officer snapped, “You’ll obey orders when visiting Oxonsis!”

“This is not Oxonsis’s sphere,” the princess said. In fact, Amenstar hadn’t a clue where they stood on a map. Clinging to her saddle, she felt her neck, and discovered blood from a sliced ear. Fury overtook reason. “You stinking scut—I can scarce believe it. You struck me!”

Possessed by her own temper, the officer vaulted from the saddle, kilt flapping, and stormed toward Amenstar. “You smart-mouthed slattern. Show respect for the prince’s army.”

Spanking Star’s mount aside, the amazon hoisted her kurbash and swatted Amenstar with the full of her knotty arm. Stunned, spun by the blows, Star tumbled to her knees. Whistling leather punished her back, butt, thigh, shoulder, and the back of her head. Gheqet stared in astonishment. Tafir set his feet to jump to Star’s defense, but a cavalry lance tapped his shoulder, freezing him.

Timed to blows, the officer snarled, “You brainless bitch! Think you can violate our borders with impunity? We lost half a night’s patrol tracking you down!”

Cowering, Amenstar covered her head, thinking this was the second time in three days she’d been punished. The first punishers had been her parents, the highest authorities in the land. Being beaten by an army lackey only stoked her highborn anger.

Puffing, the officer caught a fistful of cornrows and jerked Star to her feet. She expected the captive to beg for mercy, but Star’s dark eyes glowed with royal fire.

Despite red welts marring her cheek and neck, the princess hissed, “You’ll burn at the stake for this indignity. After your skin is flayed from your wretched body. I, Samira Amenstar of Cursrah, vow it!”

“Preposterous.” The officer let go Star’s hair and said, “As if a real princess would ride this far in plain clothes with only two ragamuffins for escort.”

In the pause, a cavalryman cleared his throat. The captain glanced, saw the soldier flick his eyes to Star, then nod small. Amenstar grasped his message. The man must have accompanied Samir Pallaton to the royal gala, so confirmed Star’s identity. The captain gaped at the princess’s grim smile then blanched. Shaken, the officer groped for her horse and mounted.

“You—you three. Mount up. We must—You’d be conducted to Samir Pallaton anyway, whoever you are.…”

In silence, the troop formed three and three to bracket the captives and trotted off.

“I told you we’d be safe, no matter where we went,” Amenstar told her friends. She rubbed her bleeding ear and winced.

Tafir and Gheqet exchanged glances. They didn’t feel safe.

The Year of the Gauntlet

“There are three of them, three friends, just like us….”

Hakiim and Reiver had been attacked by walking statues, spellbinding mummies, and a magical fear that still lingered to shred their nerves raw. On the verge of freedom, Amber had cried out and collapsed. Panicked, blundering in the darkness, they’d lugged Amber far from the palace floor into the shelter of a broken wall. Water and gentle shaking revived her, but her words rang strange.

“You’re babbling, Amber,” Hakiim said.

Both young men huddled over her with worried frowns.

“I’m not crazy,” snapped the slave master’s daughter. “It’s this tiara. When I reached moonlight, the moonstone cast its spell. It’s a storytelling charm, I think. I saw it given as a present on the samira’s sixteenth birthday. I saw the whole gala, the sorcerous entertainments, people throwing food, the princess nearly being drowned, then running away—everything.”

Hakiim pushed up his kaffiyeh to scratch his forehead, and Reiver urged, “Keep your voice down. Is this another of your fables?”

“This thing shows the ancient life of that princess,”

Amber said. She tugged off the tiara and waved it in their faces. “Don it yourself and find out.”

“No, thank you,” Reiver said, and both Memnonites leaned back. “You dropped liked you’d been poleaxed!”

“It wouldn’t work anyway,” Amber realized. “The moon has set. It’s all true, though. Her name was Amenstar, and I saw this city when it was alive and thriving.”

Reiver stood up, stretched his arms and cast about the ruined valley. Nothing stirred but Calim’s Breath, the last and only manifestation of the world’s most powerful genie, now so impotent it couldn’t blow out a candle. Taking the opportunity to rest and refresh, Reiver opened his bundle and munched hardtack and jerked goat meat. The thief’s hands shook, for he hadn’t fully recovered from the mummy-induced fright.

Too casual, he coaxed, “Go on, tell us. I like a good story.”

“Damn you,” she said. Rattled herself, Amber stood, settled the tiara on her head to keep it safe, and pointed. “This city is—was called Cursrah.”

“Never heard of it,” Hakiim said. He chewed dried apricots and gulped water, slopping because his hands quaked.

“Don’t interrupt. Just listen—”

Amber froze. There’d been other visions too, she recalled. The mummy had touched her, bonded with her mind, and conveyed a nightmare of swirling images that had yet to settle. Amber needed time to think and sort the facts, but one imperative loomed clear. She couldn’t tell her companions every detail; some were just too horrific.

“Listen to what?” asked the two.

“Uhh…” Amber hedged as she dug up neutral information. “Cursrah was famous for its library, which stood … there. Those twin ziggurats braced it, and the college lay right behind. The Palace of the Phoenix had a moat….”

Reclining against a broken wall, talking to calm herself and her friends, Amber related ancient everyday details of Cursrah. Calim’s Breath swirled around them as if to keep the travelers company. The breeze lifted Amber’s voice and wafted it far in the cool night, until, out at the valley’s rim, inhuman strangers with keen ears heard a pleasant drone and stealthily homed in.

The first hint of trouble was the scuff of leather on stone in the chill air. Hakiim jumped up and grabbed his scimitar pommel. Amber rolled the other way and shook free the noose of her capture staff. Reiver didn’t hesitate, but pelted away from the noise, feet flying in the semi-dark.

Hakiim yelled, “Come back, you coward. We mu—ulp!”

“Giants!” chirped Amber.

Looming at either end of the shattered wall were huge, blocky figures, one a head taller than the other. It was hard to judge in the colorless pre-dawn light, but the attackers’ heads towered at least seven and eight feet into the star-washed sky. Wrapped in desert robes and headscarves, they carried nine-foot spears with wicked iron barbs. The long shafts sported fuzzy blotches just above the hand grips, and Amber wondered briefly what they might be.