Star of Cursrah (36 page)

Still, when they marched through the last double doors to their final destination, the princess was oddly disappointed. The round room was simply a smaller replica of the royal court far above. Abbreviated frescoes were painted on the walls between familiar phoenix-faced sconces and zigzagged columns. Seven false doorways were painted black. The expansive floor was the same pink-white marble tiles, with one difference: each tile bore a central hole big as a woman’s fist. The ceiling had been carved to mimic the open round roof, with a mosaic night sky and moon inlaid in the hollow. This room would never know sunlight, so it must be lit by flickering torches spaced roundabout.

Gradually, curiosity intruded. How long ago, she wondered, had this room been prepared? How long had her parents, or their ancestors, been preparing for disaster? How long ago had this “Protector” idea, whatever it was, been planned? Had this secret dummy court been built within the palace ages ago, under Calim’s own guidance? Had genies and bakkals, way back at the city’s founding, envisioned and planned for its downfall?

There were only three pieces of furniture in the room, standing almost exactly in the center, and they jarred Amenstar. Three statues had been fetched down from the original royal court. Two represented Star’s elder brothers, both cruelly assassinated on their diplomatic missions. The third was Star’s own likeness in painted stone. She trembled to see it. Her two brothers were dead, so statues took their places. Thus, dictated cold logic, if Star’s statue were here, she must already be dead in her parents’ minds.

Royal family members of all ages, a cadre of trusted advisors, sages, secretaries, and courtiers, five hundred handpicked seasoned warriors from the bakkal’s bodyguard whose ranks filed out the door, and the brown-robed, bare-headed vizars like a flock of vultures entered the replica court. Tied in her chair, Star studied people’s faces. Some advisors seemed calm, as if not surprised, while many of Star’s siblings and half siblings fidgeted and fretted. Well they might, she thought, for who could hope for a happy outcome buried in this opulent grave?

The vizar-in-waiting took charge of the proceedings. Amenstar noted she’d donned a replica tiger-skin turban, and had blue and red veins inked on her cheeks, since there was no time for tattooing. Obviously, the old and senile grand vizar was dead, and the vizar-in-waiting had assumed her mantle.

The new grand vizar clapped and waved a hand. Into the hall staggered two junior acolytes carrying a steaming caldron of copper suspended from a pole. The oily brew was flecked with dark herbs and redolent with spices. Wafting, the smell made Star’s nostrils twitch. It was acrid and bitter as burned mint tea.

Bidden by the vizar, the first ranks of the bakkal’s bodyguard split and took up posts with their backs to the wall, until the room was ringed by red uniforms, leather accoutrements, and upright spears. Two hundred squeezed shoulder to shoulder, rhinaurs and manscorpions salted among them, and dutifully awaited the bakkal’s command. The bakkal gave a short speech, more words than Amenstar had heard her father ever utter at one time.

“Worthy family, venerable sages, honored vizars, loyal soldiers, a day long anticipated has arrived,” the bakkal said in a strong voice, slow and sepulchral, with no emotion, a tone fit to converse with the dead. “Today Cursrah dies, but Cursrah will live on—in you, my most faithful followers and family.

“Here, in the bosom of Toril, guarded by the Protector, shall the finest flowers of Cursrah sleep while the world changes above. Time will pass. How much, we don’t know, nor care. Cursrah is master of every era and will endure forever. Waiting far above is a moon-soaked orb. When the gods decree, and fate favors us, that orb will be kissed by her mother, then shall Cursrah be uncovered to come alive, as shall we. In that new era, a world of the future, we shall be the core of a restored civilization. Led by the royal family, guided by our advisors, armed with steel and muscle, empowered by the vizars’ magicks, and financed by tons of treasure, we shall march forth from Cursrah’s valley. Together, we shall conquer all the lands lying under Calim’s watchful eye and beyond. In that future time, we shall enslave an empire!”

At this dramatic pause, listeners stood stunned. Star saw people sifting the information, imagining the import, yet wondering about this magical feat—by which the royal court and attendants would “sleep”—when Amenstar’s father added simply, “Your bakkal bids you drink.”

The drink was the acrid potion steaming in the caldron. Elder vizars clustered around with copper ladles and doled out exact measures into blueware mugs. Acolytes carried the concoctions to the soldiers mustered along the wall. Even the bakkal’s most fanatical guards hesitated to imbibe a potion brewed by the repellant vizars, yet the guards’ grizzled commander-in-chief accompanied the acolytes with a sword and a scowl. The message was clear. Drink or die.

Obedient even to death, every guard slugged the bitter brew, returned the mug, and resumed their stance of attention. More guards filed into rank before them and drank the potion, until nine caldrons had been emptied and the soldiers ranked three deep around the court. Only a few dozen guards were held in reserve.

As the maneuvering and imbibing dragged on, the bakkal asked the grand vizar to explain the mystical potion. Whether this was to increase his knowledge or to double-check the process, Star couldn’t tell. Rasping like a crow, the grand vizar spoke of old wine steeped with harmless herbs such as self-heal and skullcap, and toxic ones such as monk’s hood and foxglove. Dissolved in were natron fetched from the sea, feldspar from the mountains, phosphate from desert salt flats, dreambliss from the southland jungles, and resin from northern trees. The mix had been stirred under last night’s full moon, with prayers offered to Selune, the gentle Mistress of the Night, and bribes offered to Shar, Overseer of the Underdark. Incantations had included forbiddance, death pact, armor of darkness, feign death, protection from fiends, and other spells the vizar was reluctant to reveal.

Intrigued, Amenstar watched the first guards who’d been dosed. Gradually, so slowly Star couldn’t tell when the change took effect, the soldiers’ rigid stance of attention became something more: a rock-solid immobility no human could attain. Testing, the bakkal plied one finger to tip a soldier. The unblinking guard tilted just like a statue, thumped lightly against the wall, and rocked back into place.

“Beware, Highest of Holies,” cautioned the vizar. “If the sleeper suffers harm, even so little as a finger joint broken, so too is the spell broken. That sleeper will be lost to you forever.”

The bakkal nodded absently, for his time to partake had come. The grand vizar sorted and shooed the royal family onto the central dais under the round canopy of fake stars and moon. Only the bakkal sat, on a low chair at the exact center, flanked by his wives and children. Poised in an outward facing ring were royal uncles and aunts and cousins. Outside their circle were ranged the sages, courtiers, and a handful of elder vizars. Mixed in were three standins; not far from the bakkal’s right hand were placed the statues of two elder brothers and Star’s own statue.

To complete the illusion of a princess joining her family, Star’s moonstone tiara was yanked from her head and settled on the stone skull of her statue. The message was clear. In the family’s eyes, Star was as dead as her brothers. The princess’s heart ached to bursting. Why had she lived at all, if only to end in such hateful disgrace?

With a sense of pressing time, another ring of guards was ranked around the royal family while a fresh bubbling caldron was lugged in. One by one, from the outermost ring inward, soldiers, then courtiers, and finally the royal family drank the petrifying brew and slowly sank into a wide-eyed, unblinking coma. With sleep that deep, Star wondered, what could wake them? What concoction or incantation could revive her time-frozen family? Amenstar was never to know, not in this life.

At a gesture of dismissal, Star’s sedan chair was hoisted onto the shoulders of junior vizars and lugged out. Retreating, the grand vizar shooed the lesser priests. With them went torches, so darkness crept from the corners to smother the room. Last to leave was the grand vizar, who closed the big double doors. Elder vizars used spatulas to cram gooey resin into cracks to seal out fresh air. The grand vizar positioned a dozen of the bakkal’s burliest bodyguards in the short corridor before the doors, two rhinaurs foremost, two manscorpions at the rear, then administered potions that froze them immobile.

The grand vizar surveyed her handiwork. Behind a phalanx of soldiers, behind sealed doors, ringed by more soldiers and courtiers, Cursrah’s royal family was entombed, sleeping for ages, if need be.

Dusting her hands, the grand vizar leered at the princess muted and bound in her sedan chair, and said, “Now, Your Majesty, it’s your turn.”

It’s my fault, Star repeated to herself over and over, it’s my fault.

She’d been recalcitrant, headstrong, spoiled, and foolish. She’d refused to listen to her parents, tutors, and friends, had refused to think at all. Now at the clanking end of a mournful chain of events, she was a prisoner of the people she hated most: the shaven-skulled, sigil-branded vizars with their clammy hands and hollow voices, people who hid from the sun to worship death.

In the largest and most frightening laboratory junior vizars dropped Amenstar’s sedan chair with a thump. Stone slabs were backed by butchers’ tools: scalpels, bonesaws, needles, forceps. Racks and crocks of dried leaves and sickly liquids ranged around, as well as jars of worms, maggots, and leeches. In the middle of the lab stood a soapstone tub big enough to submerge a corpse. The princess shivered, for the room was as cold as a grave, as she would be soon.

She would die, Star supposed. Whatever this “Protector” plan was, it must involve death, for the vizars practiced nothing else. Star’s imagination ran riot with horrors. Would they skin her? Drain her blood? Drown her in some vile soup? Whatever the method, they could only kill her once, though it might be slow.

A curious lassitude crept over Amenstar, perhaps a function of the poultice, perhaps simple despair. Her family had retreated into petrification deeper than any grave. Her beloved city burned to ruins as her citizens ran mad. Cursrah was dead, its royal family gone, and she, a daughter of both, might as well be dead.

She had only one satisfaction. Punishment found her, but her friends had escaped. No doubt Gheqet and Tafir had found their families and fled across the grasslands. Forewarned of invaders, both young men had the good sense to vanish.

Star felt a cool tear trickle down her numb cheek. Gheqet and Tafir, those laughing teasing clowns, had been her only true friends in her short life. She would miss them like a piece of her heart. In some foreign port they’d eventually settle, she knew, pursue careers, marry, and raise families. The lonely princess’s only hope was that, sometime in the future, one or both would occasionally think of her. With Cursrah blown into dust, those two young men might be the only memory in which Star endured. Star was startled as someone spoke in these still, chill chambers.

“Let’s begin.” Rolling up her sleeves, setting aside her false tiger turban, the grand vizar fell to work. Dipping the dregs of a copper caldron, she diluted the petrifying brew with more wine, and stirred in six curled tails of scorpions.

A potion for her, Star knew. Suddenly angry, she resolved to fight, and flipped her head to flick away a tear. Show no weakness, she thought, even if she couldn’t speak. Show them how bravely a princess endured their hideous ministrations.

As if reading her mind, the grand vizar ordered, “Open her mouth … with tools, you idiots.”

Star wanted to scream. The evil vizar anticipated her every move, even such a pathetic one as trying to clamp her jaws shut. Two junior vizars caught Star’s chin and cheeks. When she tried to bite, they jammed silver spatulas between her teeth. Leaning, straining with a cloth, the grand vizar poured the bitter tea down the princess’s throat, choking her. Star willed herself to vomit, but her mouth was clamped shut. Sure enough, within minutes a stony stiffness inched through her muscles like frost.

“That should do,” the vizar gloated. “Untie her.”

Released, Amenstar couldn’t control her muscles. She sagged to the floor like an octopus out of water, as three acolytes wrestled her limp form onto a slab table. Star stared at a stone ceiling dotted by yellow circles of lamplight. She was almost a corpse, and she wondered what end portended. A knife between her ribs? A wire around her throat? A wet cloth over her face? She strained to hear the grand vizar’s orders.

Papyrus crackled on an easel as it unrolled. Queer, thought Star. Whatever they planned, the operation was so new the highest-trained vizar had to follow written instructions.

“Knife,” came a hiss.

A hooked blade flashed before Star’s eyes, and her heart thumped. A female acolyte cut into her grimy traveling clothes. As cold metal kissed Star’s skin, to the floor went her stained tunic, her sweaty trousers, her linen breeks, even her sandals. Nude, dusky, and miserable, Star shivered under the reptilian gaze of the priests.

“Fleam,” the grand vizar said, calling for the bloodletting knife. “Catch the flow in that silver basin. This will weaken her resistance.”

Star heard metal stropped on leather. A steel tooth bit the inside of her limp forearm. The grand vizar muttered a spell, invoking some vampiric touch, as Star felt heat trickle down her forearm. Loss of blood, or plain fright, made her dizzy.

“Razors.”

From a narrow bottle, an acolyte poured ice-cold olive oil onto Star’s armpits, crotch, and legs, then saturated her black hair of dusty cornrows. Priests encircled the table holding obsidian razors mounted on gold handles. Shifting her arms, the priests scraped her armpits clean of fine dark hair. Spreading her legs, they did the same, then scraped her legs and even her forearms.

“Bucket.”

Yanking taut, the grand vizar’s scalpel snipped off Star’s beautiful beaded cornrows and dropped them tinkling in a pail. Soon a flint razor scraped her scalp, grating loudly in Star’s ears. Even her eyebrows were scraped away, and her eyelashes trimmed short. Tears leaked from her unwinking eyes as, within minutes, she was as naked and hairless as any vizar.