Star of Cursrah (8 page)

Scuffing her hands and knees on rock, Amber rolled and cried with pain.

“Hak! You clumsy fool…”

“L-look—h-here!” panted Hakiim.

She looked, then laughed for sheer delight. All around lay solid gray-yellow rock, an oasis of stone, a sanctuary. Grateful, Amber breathed steadily and felt her heart slow its pounding. She chuckled giddily. It felt wonderful just to lie still and watch the sky spin above her.

“Unbelievable!” called a voice.

Amber snapped her head up, frightened of another attack when she felt so weak. Rolling to one elbow, she saw Reiver already on his feet. His survival had always depended on outrunning his enemies, after all. From a bowshot away, where bedrock stopped, he called, “The thunderherders churn sand all around us. They’re still trying to get us!”

“Let ‘em churn,” Amber grunted and lay back.

Hakiim nodded and wheezed, “I hope they chew their teeth to nubs.”

They didn’t lay there long, though, for once their breathing steadied, thirst wracked them. They were parched enough to drink a lake dry and sucked their water bottles dangerously low, licking their sandy lips again and again.

“Hoy!” Reiver called from afar. “I found another hole … a square one.”

“Square?”

Amber and Hakiim glanced at one another. Tired but intrigued, the two trudged after the distant scarecrow figure that was the skinny thief, taking care to tread only on rooted stone, like children playing a game of Dare Base. This was a serious game, though, for furrows showed close at hand where thunderherders circled like sharks.

Reaching Reiver, the friends looked where he pointed. A hundred feet distant lay another shelf of bedrock. Notched into its lip was indeed a square hole. Judging from twin furrows passing by, the thunderherders’ burrowing had collapsed the sand covering it.

“Looks like a cellar hole,” said Hakiim.

“A house? Out here?”

Slowly, Amber turned a circle then grunted in surprise. That last downward slope actually curved around three-quarters of the horizon, dipping at the south.

“This is a valley,” she said, “miles across.”

“There’s nothing but sand and stone,” objected Hakiim.

“Nothing that shows,” countered Reiver.

Unbidden, all three looked at the square-cut hole. It had obviously been hand-cut, sometime in the past.

“Are the borers gone?” whispered Amber, then suddenly shrieked, “Reiver!”

Impetuous as ever, the young thief dashed across a hundred feet of sand for the next rock. His bare feet flew over sand crisscrossed with creases, but nothing nipped at his heels. On rock again, near the hole, Reiver spread his arms and crowed in triumph.

“He’ll get us killed,” Hakiim said.

“Now that he’s alerted the herders, yes,” Amber agreed, “but we need to get over there too.”

Gritting her teeth, clutching her capture staff with white knuckles, Amber scampered over the sand with Hakiim bumbling behind. Panting and raspy, but giddy to have survived, the three friends crept toward the square hole notched into the rock shelf. From above, they saw a rectangular ditch in the sand pointed to the notch, which slowly descended into the shelf under their feet. The gap was nine feet wide.

“A tunnel?” asked Reiver.

“Leading where?” rasped Hakiim.

The thief spit sand off his lips, then grinned and said, “Let’s find out.”

The 383rd Anniversary of the Great Arrival

“Ho, Tafir, shoo—oh, too late!”

“I bagged one,” Gheqet called as his brown mare pushed through shoulder high grass, the yellow-green stalks hissing along its flanks. “Now if I can just find it…”

Amenstar still held a long bird arrow nocked to a riding bow. She’d been too slow to loose when the covey of grouse flushed and beat the air in all directions. She yawned, for they’d ridden much of the cool night and the sun now climbed toward its zenith. Tucking bow and arrow into the case behind the saddle, Star grabbed a bota and took a long drink, but her stomach rumbled and she frowned. “Stupid of the stable hands to give us only water,” she complained.

“What would you expect?” Tafir said, circling, searching for a spent arrow amidst the tall grass. His black gelding danced and fidgeted, so he tugged the reins close. “They don’t keep rations in a stable. You should have raided the kitchen.”

“I’ve never been to the kitchens in my life,” she confessed. Star shook back her cornrows and brushed her dusky cheeks. The sun grew warm, and chaff stuck to her skin. “The stable master should have fetched a picnic basket.”

Tafir peered at his friend and asked, “Did you tell anyone you’d be gone past midday?”

Star rolled her eyes. “Servants are supposed to anticipate our royal needs,” she said, “else why should we allow them to work in the royal compound?”

Tafir squinted one eye, weighing what to say, if anything. Though he’d known Gheqet his whole life, having grown up as neighbors, Star was a new acquaintance and prone to sudden quirks. They’d known her only since the Harvest Festival. She’d been excluded from palace festivities and banished to Cursrah’s famous library to study. The daring princess had slipped away and met two commoners who didn’t realize the young woman who called herself “Star” was actually Samira Amenstar. In the months since, meeting first in secret then publicly, they’d become friends. While it was exciting to consort with royalty and genie-kin, Tafir and Gheqet sometimes wondered if her friendship was worth the danger it often brought them.

Plying diplomacy, Tafir offered, “They tell us in the army that commoners are like dogs, smart enough to work but lazy—”

A thundering roar shook the sky. A whinny pealed, and their horses squealed in response, then tried to bolt. Star’s white mare laid back its ears, eyes round and white-rimmed, and reared for a running start. The samira yelped and snatched for the pommel but felt her feet swing free of the leather loop stirrups. Trained to horses, Tafir leaned, grabbed her reins, and yanked down hard. Caught by the head, kicking dirt and grass, the terrified animal corkscrewed and stumbled. Jostled, Star pitched on her rump into the grass, but Tafir’s firm grip saved her from being trampled. As it was, she crabbed backward to avoid plunging hooves.

“Mount up,” Tafir shouted as he struggled to hold both animals. “They’re after Gheq’s horse! We must stay mounted.”

“What’s after Gheq’s horse?” Star asked. She scrambled up, unconsciously brushed her riding clothes, then grabbed for the pommel and swung into the saddle. “That roar! Was it—”

“Hold tight or she’ll bolt,” Tafir interrupted. “Let’s go!”

From saddle height, the two riders could see trouble. Across the heads of shimmering yellow-green lay a cavity where something thrashed in the grass. Gheqet and his mount had disappeared in that direction. Roars, snarls, another horse’s scream, and a rending, tearing shriek resounded. The horses were too terrified to approach, so their riders wrestled the reins, kicked and squeezed their knees, and finally slapped the broad rumps hard.

Cursing, Tafir shouted, “Go left… I’ll go right. Gheq’s got to be—whoa!”

Afoot, Gheqet lurched out of the concealing grass. His white work clothes were disheveled and grass-stippled. Blood ran down his neck.

“Oh, thank Khises,” he gasped. “I got thrown and … there must be rocks….”

He felt his head and was shocked by the blood.

“It’s just a scalp wound,” Tafir said. He didn’t want his friend to faint and have to be carried. “Climb up behind Star, and hurry. We’ll—”

“The grass,” Amenstar warned, “it’s stopped moving!”

Amenstar spotted converging trails sizzling toward them like curved flights of arrows. Tafir shouted to Gheqet, but the dazed apprentice didn’t move, only turned to see where Star was pointing. Tawny gold flashed like lightning from the yellow-green grass as the lion pride struck.

Gheqet clutched his head and dropped to his knees as a scarred old lioness with one ear slammed down her great paws, scrunched her hindquarters, and vaulted higher than the grass tops. Eight wicked claws slashed at Star’s mount, hoping to rip out the mare’s eyes and blind her. Star jerked the horse’s head aside, but one paw snagged the mare’s jaw and raked it clear down the breast. Blood sprayed across Gheqet and the grass. The big cat rolled under the horse’s belly and uncoiled on the far side. Star’s panicked horse stumbled, then reared and bolted—straight into the next lioness.

This hunter, young and spry, leaped high above the oncoming hooves. Snarling, dagger teeth gaping, the lioness’s splayed claws slapped onto both sides of the mare’s neck. Before she slid under the stampeding hooves, the lioness bit hard and clung to the horse’s pink-white nose.

Clenched tight in the saddle, Star looked over the horse’s head into red-rimmed black eyes. The lioness’s weight, over seven hundred pounds, immediately dragged down the horse’s head. Star saw what was coming, let go of the reins, kicked free of the floppy stirrups, and catapulted from the saddle. As the horse stumbled and somersaulted, the lioness let go and skittered aside. Star barely had time to throw up her arms. Grass whipped her face, and she slammed into the ground on her shoulder, flipped like her horse, and thumped on her back. As she skidded to a dazed halt, grass pierced her skin like needles.

From arm’s length, with her head spinning, Star looked up into golden-brown eyes. A huge lion, king of the pride, studied her. Hypnotized, paralyzed with fright, Star watched the lion’s nostrils twitch, ears flicker, and whiskers tick as grass caught behind them. The princess knew that lionesses did most of the hunting so were more feared, but this monster could break her spine with one paw and bite through her neck. Part of her mind calmly urged her to remain motionless and maybe live. The other part shrieked to scramble up and run.

Staring, Star heard a curious keening whine coming from her own throat. Somewhere Tafir shouted, but the words didn’t penetrate. The lion curled a whiskered lip. The samira saw yellow fangs long as her fingers, smooth as ivory tusks from cutting through living bone.

A dragonfly zipped by and thudded into the lion’s shoulder. No, not a dragonfly, one of Tafir’s bird arrows. The shafts were longer than Star’s arm, the feathers wide for stability. The head wasn’t a steel point, but four thin prongs for catching birds on the wing. Such a pinprick couldn’t hurt the lion, Star wanted to scream, it would only—

The lion grunted as the arrow hit, then snapped at the shaft with its blunt black muzzle. It couldn’t reach. Snarling, it whirled and turned smoldering eyes on its attacker. Star saw the lion settle on its back legs, then leap like an eagle taking flight.

A horse whinnied again. Star twisted about painfully and parted grass fronds to see. Gheqet, with his torn scalp, had fled. Thirty feet away, Tafir fought to control his plunging black horse and hang onto his riding bow. Under the assault of three lionesses, Star’s white horse was painted with blood, its face torn off like a mask to expose red-streaked bone. One of the lionesses ripped open its throat and the horse died quickly, but none of the females fed. As long as meat beckoned they continued to hunt. Leaving their kills, they split and melted into grass to encircle Tafir’s black horse. A pair of yearling males with scanty manes had skulked that way, but they jumped aside when the old scarred matriarch coughed.

“Star,” Tafir called, “run the other way, and I’ll circle around to pick you up.”

Tossing the clumsy bow, the cadet yanked the black’s head over and kicked hard. The horse laid back its ears and ran. Star wondered where the huge lion had vanished, but now it pounced on the spot Tafir had just vacated. The long bird arrow had been plucked from the lion’s shoulder, probably by grass stalks, leaving four leaking holes.

Star then blinked as all three lionesses, with no prey at hand, spun their heads and stared at her. Golden eyes glowed like six unwinking lamps. Gulping fear, Amenstar scuttled up and ran. Grass whipped and stung her face, cut her hands, arms, lips, and tugged at her tangled cornrows. She had no clue where to run, for she saw only grass and sky. Dashing, she almost twisted her ankle in a hidden hole. She recovered and pounded on, breath rasping in her lungs, burning.

Suddenly Tafir’s black horse, foam-sweaty, loomed ahead, its dark eyes rimmed with white.

Tafir called, “Keep running! They’re close behind!”

Gasping, Star charged faster, then clutched at horse and rider like a drowning woman lunging at a boat. The strong cadet leaned, grasped the back of Star’s baggy trousers, and hauled hard to dump her across his saddle. Trying to encourage his mount, or trying to scare the lions, he bawled and whooped nonsense. Belly down, facing more grass, and unable to breathe, Star felt the horse balk, perhaps stumbling in another hidden hole. Tafir cursed and kicked. Gheqet shouted from far away.

An electric tingle like lightning burned Star’s calf. For a frozen moment, she wondered what happened. Pain flashed through her leg and spine, and she shrilled out her last breath.

Tafir hollered as the horse regained its footing, set four powerful hooves, and launched through the grass. The rhythmic banging, thumping, and pounding wouldn’t let Star catch her breath. The world dimmed at the edges, and she blacked out.

“Star! Wake up!”

The samira fell, instinctively grabbing for support, but Tafir and Gheqet caught her and laid her onto low, wiry bushes. It felt wonderful to breathe freely, the princess thought, until her left calf brushed a bush and a splinter of agony made her yelp.

“Easy,” Gheqet crooned. “Here, roll over.”

“That big lioness tagged you,” Tafir explained.

Both young men inspected the wound. Splitting her trouser leg, Gheqet picked cotton threads from the wound, but even that gentle motion made Star clench her teeth.

“Not bad,” the cadet grunted. “Like a pink from a practice sword.”

“It feels like …” the samira moaned,”… like I’ve been disemboweled and set afire.”

“This wound will inflame,” Gheqet said. “Cats’ claws are filthy.” He wrapped his dusty apron around her calf and tied it lightly with the strings. “Good thing we’ve got one horse left.”