Star of Cursrah

17

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 Jaughed. 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 wind walker'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.

Behind her a nomad suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream that pierced Amber's ears like needles. Another nomad warbled a battle cry. A dwarf hollered like an avalanche of rocks. A robed mongrelman howled like a wolf.

The bandits could move, Amber realized. They'd been released from the petrifying spell while the Memnonites were still frozen. Every desert-dweller caterwauled, cursed, or threatened as if battle-mad. They were mad, Amber realized. Their fear had been banished by a magically induced berserker rage.

Even the White Flame slashed the air with her scimitar and shrilled with her fire-seared throat, "Nobody will muster an army in this desert but I! No one!"

Amber flinched as the White Flame swept by, scimitar flashing. More raiders stampeded past with jambiyas and spears and crossbows outthrust, a rolling tide of black and silver. Screaming, all thirty fighters surged past Amber and her friends, and right past the unmoving mummy.

Still glued to the floor, Amber watched as the bandits swarmed upon the palace guards.

A reviving rhinaur stamped two feet, took a fresh grip on a lyre-shaped halberd, and shoved straight with the curved razor edge. The demihuman was as slow as a winter-chilled snake. Sidestepping the huge blade, a nomad rammed a spear under the rhinaur's triple chins. Blood ran down the spear, cold and slow as molasses. Slowly the giant sank to four rhinoceros knees.

A nodding manscorpion had four crooked legs cut out from under him, and crumpled with its spear atilt the dead rhinaur. The other centaur-folk and the eight human guards were slaughtered as easily as sea turtles wallowing on a beach.

Brushing past bodies, the White Flame crashed open the double doors to the royal court. Green smoke made a thin haze, for inside the resurrection had barely begun. Over five hundred soldiers and dozens in a royal entourage waited to be revived.

Bewitched, the White Flame shrieked to her followers, "Kill them! Kill them all! Smash every one. I'll brook no army interfering with my plans for revenge."

Carnage reigned. Watching from the corridor, wincing inwardly, Amber saw bandits tear into the ranks of the dust-covered "statues." In investing the bandits with berserker rage, the mummy must have imparted the secret that Amber also knew; that to break even one finger of a sleeper destroyed the enchantment and ruined any hope of reviving.

Spinning, hacking, charging everywhere at random, bandits slammed weapons against heads, arms, hands, legs, and faces. The outermost guards, half-revived, had died like frozen people, bleeding slowly because their hearts beat slowly. Inside the royal court, there was no blood. Scimitars struck sleepers with a solid chonkl like an axe splitting wood. Noses, fingers, and ears smashed like china. Upset, sleepers teetered and crashed into their companions, until stiff bodies lay in heaps like wind-tossed trees. With the spells broken, bodies sagged into fleshy heaps, but their spirits had departed.

Unable to move, Amber leaked tears as the White Flame ordered the royal family beheaded. Amber knew elders and children were among them, many no doubt innocent of any crime, but the sins of the father and mother were visited upon the family a thousandfold. The clang of scimitars, thud of clubs, and shattering of bodies against marble scorched Amber's ears like fire.

The frantic destruction rang on and on as bandits repeatedly hacked bodies long dead. Gradually, like a passing thunderstorm, the savagery in the royal court slowed, then ceased. Silence grew.

Having stood unmoving all this time, the mummy now crooked a blighted finger. Amber and her friends stumbled headlong, free. The mummy turned with a dry, snaky rustle. Reiver and Hakiim hung back, wary and fearful. Laying down her capture staff, Amber took a deep breath and followed.

At the doorway to the royal court, the mummy halted. Inside, Amber got a glimpse of hell. Ancient Cursrahns were knocked into windrows like wheat from a killing frost. Arms, legs, and heads jutted at grotesque angles. Even the statues of the two brothers and Star's own statue had stone limbs smashed off. Whimpering at the devastation, Amber could clearly see that none of the petrified sleepers would ever awaken, for all had been smashed or cut or chopped a dozen times. Around the big hall, the White Flame's raiders slumped or lay prone, exhausted by their demonic fury.

So awesome were the mummy's powers, that when it lifted a single stone-gray hand, the nomads, dwarves, and mongrelmen instantly struggled to their feet. A bandaged finger flicked, and the raiders' emotions were tweaked again like the strings of a lute. This time, stark terror struck the White Flame's minions to the heart.

Screaming in panic, thrashing and spitting, casting away headscarves and weapons to run the faster, the bandits fled. Amber jumped aside rather than be trampled in the human stampede. Last to run was the White Flame, robes flapping, veil billowing back from her ruined face.

Watching them go, Amber wondered how the raiders would remember this episode. Would the merest memory rekindle terror, or would the mummy grant them forget-fulness? Either way, the bandits had been paid for their work, for most lugged packs and pouches stuffed with treasure. Perhaps, miles away, they'd collapse and rest, and be content and reckon themselves lucky.

While Amber and the mummy stood framed in the doorway, Reiver and Hakiim crept close and peeked into the court.

"I don't understand," said Reiver.

"Nor I," said Hakiim. "How could the mummy-Amen-star-bewitch the bandits into destroying her relations?"

Reiver added, "Wasn't it-she-supposed to guard them? Compelled by a geas to protect?"

Only someone who'd communed mentally with the mummy and had seen her life in all its vibrant beauty and horror could explain. Time seemed suspended as Amber stared into shrouded black eye pits. The bandaged face was gray as a stone wall. The linen-pressed nose, she noticed, was exactly level with hers. The two women were the same height.

"You were cursed to guard your family, weren't you? There was no way to resist. You initially drove us away with fear, yet not before you touched me, beseeching, asking my help. I understood that much. It's why I returned. Now I see what you've done.

"You had to protect them as long as the family slept, but once the green smoke was released, and the resurrection began, your work was done, so the geas faded. You were free to act, free to charm the bandits into crushing your family. How many centuries have you lain imprisoned, hating your parents, wishing them dead, as you weren't?"

Hunched, shriveled, small, the mummy stared at the court's destruction. The creature seemed neither vindicated nor joyful, but only infinitely sad and pitiful.

The men looked puzzled. Reiver asked, "Isn't she happy? She finally got her revenge."

Amber shook her head of dark waves and said, "For good or evil, everything in Amenstar's world was here, and now it's gone forever. We could all wish there'd been some other way."

Straightening, the mummy shuffled a slow circle to face the three Memnonites. Gesturing, she touched the blood-red girasol hung from the double chain at her breast. The jewel still imprisoned the souls of Star's friends, Gheqet and Tafir, if Amber understood the story correctly. Bony fingers tapped the jewel once, twice, thrice.

"What does she want?" whispered Hakiim.

"I know." Stooping, Amber picked up a fallen club with an iron head and said, "Goodbye, Star. I hope you find peace."

Raising the club and taking aim, Amber smashed the iron club against the mummy's rock-hard breast. The bloody jewel, the Star of Cursrah, shattered into a hundred glittering fragments, but the splinters that bounced on the marble tiles were no longer red, but milky white.

For a second, the mummy stood immobile, gazing blindly at Amber through slitted bandages. Then the head drooped and the chest slumped, until Amber realized the shell was crumbling inward. A dent creased the skull and caved in. The spine telescoped with a crackle. Fingers fell from the hands, one tiny bone at a time. The knees sagged, and the body keeled. Striking the floor was the last blow. The mummy shattered into dust, powder, rotten bandages, and a chain of tarnished silver, the whole pile no more than a finger's width deep.

In the silence, Reiver observed, "A good breeze would scatter her to the four winds, poor thing."

"That's only her remains," said Amber. "Somewhere, her soul walks free for the first time in ages-with Gheqet and Tafir, who are free too. Just like us, my good friends."

She squeezed the men's hands, smiled, and they smiled back. Backing, Amber pulled closed the heavy double doors of Cursrah's last royal court.

"Looks like a storm brewing."

Standing at a tunnel's mouth, the adventurers watched sand whirl and sizzle by. Already a drift had piled ankle-high across the entrance.

"We better move quickly," said Reiver. "If this keeps up, the whole valley could be buried."

"Most likely." Amber shifted her nearly-empty pack and bobbed her capture noose. "This storm isn't natural, I think. The mummy-Amen star-may have conjured it, or even Great Calim himself. It's just as well. Cursrah belongs to another time, not ours."

"Are you sure you don't want some loot?" The men shifted sagging, clinking packs. As they'd spiraled up the tunnels, they'd passed the breached chamber previously stuffed with treasure. Most was gone. Whether the wind walker had whirled away the fabulous horde to some other plane, or the White Flame's bandits had hidden it, they couldn't tell. By gleaning corners and the wreck of the antique clepsydra, and picking up drabs along the way, Reiver and Hakiim had each netted a fat double handful of coins in gold, silver, and electrum, and a few gems and trinkets. Reiver had wanted to break down other walls and find more, but a sixth sense warned that time ran short, and indeed, they'd found the wind rising ominously. Amber had taken no treasure, and now shook her head.

"Money can't give me anything I want," she said. "It's what your carry in your heart and head that's important."

"What about carrying that on your head?" pointed Hakiim.

"What? Oh." Amber touched her forehead. She'd worn the moonstone tiara so long it felt like part of her. Tugging it off, she gazed at it for a moment then said, "I should have given this back to Amenstar."

Stooping, Amber set the tiara gently on the pillow of sand at her feet and smiled.

"Ready?"

Hakiim tisked. "I think all that bewitching addled your brain."

Amber smiled and said, "If you mean, will some part of my spirit always remain in Cursrah? You may be right. I've seen so much of its past… almost lived it…"

She stood so long, staring into the wind that howled and slobbered around the tunnel mouth, that Reiver finally nudged her shoulder.

Shaking her head, Amber tucked her kaffiyeh across her face. Together the three friends marched into the burgeoning sandstorm.