Star of Cursrah (17 page)

Mostly they were guards, Amber noted, packed as tightly as sardines in a net. Soldiers ringed the room in ranks five deep, the only clear space being here by the doors. There were five hundred or more, Amber guessed, and a tenth of them rhinaurs or manscorpions, all at rigid attention with spears or halberds upright. The hall’s center sported a raised dais, and more soldiers were ranked elbow to elbow around it, facing outward, dusty and blank-eyed.

Amber whispered, “Just soldiers?”

“No,” the thief said. Taller than Amber, Reiver could see past the guards ringing the dais. “Someone else.”

On mouse feet the three friends minced up to the outward facing soldiers and peeked between them. The first ranks were servants, to judge by their simple clothes and close-cropped heads. Then came files of ornate courtiers or advisors or secretaries, their gaudy colors muted by dust. Behind them clustered occult priests with shaven skulls branded with bizarre sigils. Some sixty statues formed the ring, Amber guessed.

At the very center, directly under the fake crescent moon sky, was grouped a family.

Hakiim blurted, “That’s the pasha!”

“Is this it?” Amber wondered aloud. “What I heard in the summons? The city’s ‘greatest treasure’ is statues of a royal family?”

On a low chair sat a dour man with a hawk’s nose, striped headcloth, and a headband in the shape of an upright cobra. Flanking him were four women of various ages, regal and serene, obviously queens. Ranged nearby, all facing out, were two dozen relatives from ancient crones to children. All were still, silent, layered with age and dust, mute. Silence, threatening and smothering as darkness, pressed upon the living trio as they circled the ring of soldiers to glimpse all the royal family.

“Amber,” squeaked Hakiim, “this one looks like you!”

Slowly, as if she’d expected this discovery all along, Amber squeezed between two guards and stepped up onto the dais. A young woman stood arrow straight, haughty nose and chin high, full lips pouting. A princess, Amber realized, with the same square shoulders, modest upthrust bosom, and (Amber noted with disgust) milk cow hips. The statue’s hair was braided into cornrows and beads, while Amber’s blew like a lion’s mane, but both were black topped. Amber might have been gazing into an antique mirror.

“What does it mean?” Hakiim asked. “Is she—you?”

“Amber in an earlier life,” marveled Reiver.

Amber didn’t hear. On the princess’s head rested an enscrolled tiara set with a square stone. Yet something looked odd. Amber saw gaps between the tiara’s band and the woman’s cornrows. No one could have carved a statue that intricate, she knew.

With icy calm, Amber’s calloused thumb stroked the tiara’s moonstone. Dust brushed away to reveal a dull glow. With a tiny trickle of dust, Amber plucked the tiara from her stone counterpart’s brow. A nervous laugh burst from her.

“Look,” she said, “it’s real! Real silver, and a true moonstone.”

“Better put it back,” Hakiim said, and his torch jiggled. “When you touched the moon globe, it triggered a sandstorm.”

Reiver echoed the warning, then both of them shouted, “Amber, no!”

Before she could be stopped, or stop herself, Amber flicked back her headscarf and tugged the tiara onto her brow.

Scowling, worried, Hakiim and Reiver squeezed between statues and bracketed Amber, terrified of what might happen. Amber’s dark eyes burned queerly under the silver band and lustrous moonstone.

Waiting, waiting … until Amber said, “Nothing.”

“Good!” Hakiim gushed. “You shouldn’t—”

In the suffocating silence came a scuffle and a scrape. Amber, Reiver, and Hakiim stopped breathing.

There was a shuffle and the jangle of jewelry, and into the pool of their torchlight shambled a dingy yellow figure. Shuffling, lurching, a figure wrapped in rotted rags approached the ring of statues. Powdery bandages covered the creature’s limbs, torso, and head. Crackling at every step, the wrappings shed resin dust and crumbs of herbs. Only the monster’s hands were bare, the bandages having shorn off like milkweed. Petrified skin was the color of tea. A double chain of silver, tarnished black, encircled its neck. Suspended on its breast, a red jewel shone like a dragon’s eye, like a funeral pyre, like fresh blood.

Gargling at first, when Reiver finally found his voice he shrieked, “Run!”

Like swans taking flight, the three companions bolted. They rammed at the line of soldier statues, ducking and scrambling to get away.

The mummy only needed to crook stiff fingers to stop them. The intruders plowed to a halt as the “statues” abruptly moved. A dozen soldiers slanted spears to block their path and stamped stone legs as awkward as tree roots to form a wall stemming their escape.

Minds racing with terror, the trio whirled to skirt the statues. Diving and slithering between stone legs, they squirmed free of the trap.

The mummy slowly curled both brown hands and waggled its fingers twice, as if giving the tiniest push.

Hakiim and Reiver screamed so loudly and so harshly that Amber thought their brains had burst. Jerking and twisting as if struck by lightning, the two young men fell on their backs like crippled turtles. They beat their heads, thrashed their arms, tore their clothing and hair, and screamed as if to split their throats. Catching sight of the mummy, they clawed at the marble to get away, crabbing across the polished floor like madmen. They were mad, Amber realized, paralyzed with insanity, reduced by terror to gibbering idiots. Spittle flew from their lips as they beat the floor and themselves, crawling in no direction except away from the mummy. Too scared to stand and run, they fetched up against the wooden legs of the blockading statues and squealed like rabbits. Their dropped torches burned on the polished floor, the light half extinguished but doubled by reflection to cast an evil red glow over the shrouded room.

Amber could scarcely breathe for fright, but her literate mind wondered why she was spared the mummy’s terror-inducing spell. She saw the mummy advance—toward her.

Panting, wanting to shriek and hide her face, Amber stumbled back against the solid phalanx of soldiers. The mummy crooked a withered hand, and the soldiers closed tighter, spears forming an iron-headed fence. Crowded on three sides, almost crushed, Amber was in danger of burning herself with the torch, so she chucked it away to clatter on the floor, sputter, and extinguish. Fresh terror surged through her. Would she be trapped in pitchy blackness with two madmen and an undead fiend?

The mummy shuffled closer. Amber smelled its dry, snaky musk, but also an ancient perfume of cedar resin, beeswax, sage, wormwood, and other herbs used to preserve flesh.

Amber finally screamed as the mummy’s hand reached for her. Driven against the dais and the trapping wall of stone, cringing, helpless to escape, Amber whimpered in fright. The withered claw clamped her head, mashing the silver tiara down over her eyebrows. In her haste and fright, Amber had forgotten she wore it. The dead hand, cold and hard as a statue’s, squeezed Amber’s skull until she feared it would burst.

Memories rushed in.

Amber felt dust gurgle in her desiccated lungs. A smothering darkness dragged on and on, never ending. Time drummed in her brain like the clanging of an enormous bell. Hours stretched into days, into years, decades, centuries, millennia. She was alone, left behind, while everyone and everything she’d ever known grew old, withered, died, and crumbled to dust, until even the dust blew away on the wind. No one alive remembered her or her country. Even the land forgot she’d ever existed and only hot desert wind blew over hummocks of barren sand. Amber felt constricted by bandages, felt herself suffocating, felt her mind rebelling at the stifling silence, felt her thoughts run rampant, until her only refuge from horror was to plumb the depths of insanity.

Worst of all was the unending loneliness, eons with an empty, aching heart. The mummy needed help, aid in accomplishing some murky desire that yet burned in its shriveled heart and had burned for ages. It needed help but languished alone, for the mummy had lost its friends in awful punishment.

Like a star exploding in the heavens, Amber was blinded by the most twisting emotion of all. This mummy, an ancient, enchanted, undead creature, was somehow familiar. All this tumbling turmoil Amber suffered in a second while the mummy’s hard hand trapped her skull, then the hand released and Amber was free to go.

Weak with horror and emotion, she scurried away on her knees, then scrambled up to run. She snatched a sputtering torch. Hakiim and Reiver cowered in a pile like frightened puppies.

Kicking them to get their attention, Amber shrieked, “Get up! Come on!”

Blearily, as if awaking, the young men shook their heads. Amber caught their arms and yanked, then pushed so hard they almost sprawled. She flicked a backward glance to see if the mummy pursued, but the fearsome monster stood still with both bandaged arms folded across its breast, as if lying in a coffin.

Wondering, wishing she didn’t care, still in the throes of nightmare memories, Amber hustled her two friends from the replica palace. Panting, huffing, the weary companions trotted ever upward toward the surface, the world of life and sunshine. In the highest tunnels, Amber shoved her friends through the wide phoenix-marked doors, then boosted them with hysterical strength through the gap in the ceiling.

Amber was shocked to see stars wink above. They’d only been underground a few hours, yet day or night, she couldn’t wait to breathe fresh air. The underworld belonged to the dead, who must hate the living with an unending passion. Never again, thought Amber, will I descend deeper than a wine cellar.

Above, Hakiim and Reiver laid on the pink-white marble floor of the former palace and trailed their arms to drag Amber up. A gibbous moon just above the rim of the shallow valley gave them light. Amber dropped her torch, jumped, and caught their hands. She felt a thrill at being hoisted up. Safe outside, she could lie down and rest, for days, if need be.

She’d forgotten the moonstone tiara that still circled her brow.

As the jewel rose from the depths, it caught a sliver of moonlight. Enchanted eons ago under a full moon, the tiara’s enchantment sparked, and the moonstone flushed with a blue-white glow. Amber felt warmth throb on her forehead. The moonstone flashed and made her blink.

The spell triggered. Amber grabbed her head and screamed as if her soul had caught fire, then collapsed onto the marble as if dead.

The 383rd Anniversary of the Great Arrival

Amenstar drowned.

Cool water sloshed around her face, but felt boiling hot as she held her breath. Her cheeks hurt from cramping, her lungs ached for air, and her throat was raw as if swallowing fire. If she weakened, she’d swallow water and truly drown. Blood pounded in her skull and throbbed in her neck. Her nose was stabbed with pain as if she were being stabbed with a thousand needles, and her mouth tasted foul. The temptation to open her mouth, to try to breathe was horrific, and her brain battled to keep her mouth shut.

Knotty hands yanked her head out of the water into glorious, sweet air. Star spluttered and gasped, wanting to cry, but she was too busy just breathing.

She sobbed, “Don’t—”

“Again!” rang her mother’s voice.

Star’s head was shoved back into the pool.

Submerged, Amenstar tried to calm herself, to harbor the little air in her lungs, but it burned in her chest. The tiny sip of air left her aching for more. Just one breath, she pleaded, and she’d never make another request. Pain flared in her sinuses, her cheeks, her forehead, and her nose, sharper than before. The temptation to inhale water was as strong as the cruel hands that pinned her to the bottom of her own glittering pool. She tried to wrestle free, to lash out, but someone locked both her wrists while others jammed her shoulders and hair below the surface. The roaring in her skull blared like a war trumpet, until she felt her brain would burst. Her clamped lips were failing, opening—

Again Star was hoisted into sunshine. This time she didn’t try to talk, just pulled in air, slobbering drool down her wet chin and soaked shift, hurrying to breathe and breathe again.

“Release her,” came the voice of command.

The three vizars let go of the samira, who collapsed on the wet tiles of her own courtyard. Perhaps her best defense, Star thought wearily, was to stay limp, show she had no fight left. Groggy, she slumped in a heap and panted until her breathing approached normal, though her chest ached as if her ribs were fractured.

“I hope you’ll listen now, eldest and dearest daughter,” her mother said, voice dripping acid.

There were few witnesses to Star’s punishment. The bakkal and the first sama had only a dozen guards ranked behind them. Still, she huddled like a drowned rat. Flanking her were three vizars with dirt brown robes and shaved skulls. Initiate anatomists, young and strong, they were perfectly willing to shove the samira’s head into the shallow pool at the queen’s command, drowning her slowly or quickly. Wedded to the goddess of death, the vizars would gladly sacrifice Star or anyone else in their bony clutches. Suffering was a tonic to them.

A princess of royal blood couldn’t be whipped or struck, nor even touched unless she allowed it, as when she gave her maids permission to comb her hair or dress her. Beatings were for mortals and commoners. To strike a descendant of genies, someone practically a demigod, would offend the gods themselves. For rejecting the samirs and ruining the royal gala, Star was punished by being half drowned, which left no marks or blemishes. That the princess was punished by the hated vizars, submerged in her own pool in her own courtyard, and humiliated in full view of her gossipy, snippy maids clustered at the wide windows, added to Amenstar’s agony.

All through the ordeal, the bakkal of Cursrah stood stone still, arms folded across his bare chest. Behind him stood a general of the army with his ceremonial war axe jutting high. Star’s father rarely spoke and had never directly addressed his daughter since her birth. As priest-king of Cursrah, the bakkal associated most with advisors and high vizars and spent days communicating with dead ancestors and distant gods. Mediumship was risky and never-ending. The dead resented the living, resisted contact, and punished intruders with hauntings and demon attacks unless the proper wards and protections were maintained with vigilance. Star was glad for silence. Her father or not, she had always found the man eerie and frightening. In Cursrah, the samas, and especially the first sama, handled worldly issues such as chastising a recalcitrant daughter.