Star of Cursrah

5

The Year of the Gauntlet

"Gold!"

First into the dim tunnel, Keiver pounced on a glimmer on the sand-strewn floor. Only pure gold could lie untarnished for centuries. Reiver held the coin to the light. It was round like a Calishite tardey; on one side frowned a king with a head cloth and serpent headband, big nose, and thin lips.

"A bakkal," murmured Amber.

"A what?" asked the two.

" 'He Who Rules from On High,' " Amber translated, taking the coin from Reiver. "Nowadays we call them pashas, but bakkals were thought to be genie-kin, or even demigods. What's on the obver-ooh\" On the coin's back glowed a ruffled bird rising from fire. "A phoenix…"

"This'll cause a flurry in the gold seller's bazaar," Reiver said, grinning, teeth bright in his tanned face. He took the coin back from Amber. "We might have wandered into a dragon's lair. They drag in treasure and coins fall out of their scutes."

"So do people's bones," sniped Amber.

"Don't speak of dragons," Hakiim hissed. "It's bad luck."

"You must have elven blood, Reive," Amber said, happy to change the subject, "you've the eyes of a lynx. I can barely-Vipers of Kalil!"

Her eyes having adjusted, Amber shifted her capture staff to pick up a white oblong. The skull leered at her, either a dog or wolf with a blunt muzzle and bone-crushing teeth. She tossed the relic away.

"Awful," she said. "This place is like a tomb."

Ignoring Amber, Hakiim raised his eyebrows at the coin in Reiver's hand and said, "Share and share alike?"

"Certainly. Next one's yours," Reiver said and slipped the coin into one of many pouches. "Let's hunt up another."

Edging past the men, Amber squinted down the tunnel, which descended slowly but steadily. How far and how deep? she wondered. "First," she said, "let's strike a li-Bhaelros take me!"

The daughter of pirates had brushed something with her hip. It moved. Wary of snakes, she flinched.

Too late. The tripwire parted with a pung!

Stone grated on stone, as a creak and groan sounded deep within the walls. Dust trickled from the ceiling. Amber shouted a warning. Hakiim whirled to dash for open air. Reiver, who survived by quick reflexes, rammed his hands against his friends and shoved. Amber and Hakiim lurched headlong, deeper into the tunnel, and dropped onto their hands and knees. Reiver flopped between them. Behind, the world crashed down.

Where they'd stood a second before, a stone block big as an oxcart fell into the corridor with a resounding crash. The impact lofted the intended victims a foot off the floor. Other blocks, no doubt cantilevered against the first, tilted, slid, and crashed atop. The grinding and subsequent thuds boomed like explosions in the travelers' ears as they crawled deeper into the tunnel to escape the dust. Instinctively they yanked their kaffiyehs across their faces, and Reiver clutched his companions' sleeves.

"Stop," the thief cautioned. "That's far enough. There may be more traps."

Frozen, they hunkered in darkness, waiting for the blocks to stop crashing and sliding. Billowing dust stung their eyes and made their noses run. They hunched their backs uselessly lest giant blocks drop on them. Gradually, scarcely breathing, digging dust from their ears and eyes, they guessed the cave-in had subsided and rose stiffly, sneezing and wheezing.

Batting the swirling air, they saw that the entrance was not far away. Early evening sunlight leaked through cracks and made dust motes dance, but jumbled blocks as big as hayricks blocked the corridor, the cracks too small to crawl through.

"Ogham's eyes! I would have been crushed running for the outside," panted Hakiim. "How did you know?"

"Common sense, a lucky guess," Reiver whispered. "Small traps nail a person on the spot. Big traps set the trigger at the far side so the whole party is-"

"Shhh!" Amber squeaked. "Something moved!"

A sound, part slithering, part skittering, and part chittering, came from just ahead and froze them. With a hand, Amber shooed Reiver and Hakiim against the opposite wall so slanting sunlight could lance into the depths.

The wolf skull Amber had handled twitched. Bug-eyed, Amber watched the skull skitter backward with a clicking noise. A rat, she hoped fervently, a rat had crawled inside and dragged the skull like a hermit crab… but she could see through the skull's vacant eyes. No rat.

Hakiim groaned. Words failed him.

As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they saw that more stark-white bones littered the tunnel, a heap almost knee-high. All the bones moved of their own will. Outlying bones trickled toward the pile. The wolf skull bumbled along to meet a crooked spine then clicked into place atop. The spine wriggled like a snake to join a dried pelvis like a broken seashell. Shoulder bones collected arms. Feet like spilled necklaces joined crumbly ankles.

With no place to run, the three companions stared, riveted. Clacking, bumping, milling like albino ants, the bones coalesced into parodies of skeletons. One lurched to its feet.

Hakiim screamed. Reiver prayed to Shar, Mistress of the Night and the Underdark, who sometimes took pity on thieves. Amber gained a terrifying insight. The skull with the bone-crushing jaw wasn't a wolfs or dog's, but a jackal's, an eater of corpses.

Whatever spell animated the monster had hashed it, for the results were grotesque, lopsided, and hapless. The jackal skull wobbled atop a human spine, rib cage, and pelvis. One arm was perfect down to nimble finger bones, but the other shoulder sprouted a snake skeleton with multitudinous ribs. Both knees angled backward, the legs of a jackal, but the twisted feet were human. Clumsy though it was, the dead creation lurched toward the living humans. Fingers wriggled in anticipation of clawing warm flesh.

More patchwork skeletons arose. A human skull, denied a torso, perched atop a pelvis and clacked cracked teeth. Another snake skeleton towed a human hand for a tail. A jackal's body sprouted two human heads, one upside down but both jaws clacking. One human rib cage was crammed atop another so the topmost scratched the stone ceiling. Four arms sprang from a walking pelvis. Other hideous combinations jittered together until a dozen freaks blocked the corridor from wall to wall. Silently they stood and swayed as if from an invisible breeze.

"What do we d-do?" Hakiim whispered.

"Keep quiet," Reiver advised.

"What are they?"

"Scavengers." Amber clenched her teeth lest they chatter and continued, "Humans must've died in a pile, and jackals and snakes ate their corrupted flesh and died too."

"So?" Hakiim persisted.

Amber grated, "Maybe they won't attack-"

As one, pushed by an invisible wind, the skeletons advanced with claws and jaws poised to rend and bite. Amber jumped to the left wall, untied the noose of her capture staff, and swished the ebony shaft in the air.

"Hak!" she called. "Get your shield up."

"I lost it to the herders."

"Then wrap your headscarf around your forearm," she told him. "Don't let them bite you! Reiver-"

"I'm set!"

As if by magic, the thief produced a weapon Amber had never seen, a thin chain a yard long ending in big rings. From a pouch Reiver drew a lead weight and clipped it to a ring. Before Amber could ask, he swung the chain in a circle until it buzzed.

Taking a long step, silent as falling snow, Reiver suddenly whipped the chain through a tight arc. The lead weight struck a human skull on a jackal's carcass with an ear-wrenching crunch. The skull exploded into fragments that bounced off the walls. The jaw dropped to the stone floor.

Reiver whooped, "That's one!"

"This is not a game," Amber shrilled.

She was terrified. These patchwork skeletons could tear them to flinders. A jackal-headed mockery clanked toward her, and she waved her capture staff feebly. What to do? Rope it? Pull it apart? Brush it back? Shatter the bones?

Shambling along the floor, the horror crowded Amber back toward the jumbled landslide. Desperately she decided Reiver had the right idea. Hoping the seasoned ebony didn't snap, she flipped it end for end to present the thicker haft, grabbed with both hands, and swung.

Rock hard wood slammed the skull's temple. Knocked off the spine, the jackal head banked off the wall. Amber couldn't see if it shattered or not. The slanted spikes of sunlight were almost a nuisance. Glowing, swirling dust motes made it hard to see into the gloomier pockets. Still, at least ten skeletal constructs shuffled toward them.

Amber had hoped the remaining skeleton would collapse upon losing its head, but she was disappointed. Curved bones clanked toward her, more hideous without the mismatched head. The human arm clawed while the snake arm gnashed the air with hollow fangs.

Amber bleated to Reiver, "What now?"

"I don't know," the thief admitted. Nonetheless, he wound up his weighted chain, jumped, and smacked an upside-down head riding on jackal bones. Jarred loose, the skull fell into a drift of sand. The jaw continued to clack as if hungry for blood. "Villein's Volley! Maybe if we cleave where the heart would beat… Hak, bring your sword."

Unprovoked, the rug merchant's son had hung back. Now, eager to help with any plan, he raised his scimitar so high it ticked the stone ceiling. Reiver flung his weighted chain, snagged a jackal's rib cage, and skipped aside.

"Hit 'im, Hak!"

With a schoolboy's shout, Hakiim cleaved bone with his thick bladed scimitar. Shoulder blades, ribs, and vertebrae sprayed in white splinters. The jackal thing's back legs, unsupported, missed a step and toppled. Hakiim cheered, and Reiver hooted. Amber watched and didn't like what she saw.

Unbroken, the rear legs struggled to rise. Other bones wriggled and jiggled to join up. Meanwhile, whole skeletons shuffled toward them. Even the smitten jackal skull skittered over stone again. Her staff had cracked the thick jaw and punctured the cranium, but the cursed creature, or its ghost, still strove to fight.

Wanting to cry with frustration, Amber released the rope pinned in her right hand and flicked the noose over the double heads of an oncoming skeleton. The thing didn't reach for the rope but stumped on obliviously. Holding tight to the rawhide handle, Amber yanked the noose shut, pulled, then pushed. Grunting, she tilted the two-headed fiend into a shorter skeleton, then shoved hard enough that the magic bond broke. Both collapsed in a heap. Immediately the bones began to merge, probably to create a three-headed horror with four arms. Amber didn't watch.

"It's no good," Amber yelled above the men's chatter as they picked out their next target. "The bones just reform. These things must be cursed to stop intruders forever!"

Startled, Reiver and Hakiim peered into the gloom. Their jubilance over one victory evaporated. Threatened by an almost-human skeleton, Hakiim wound up his scimitar and with a frustrated scream split the thing from shoulder to hip. The legs remained standing, and he chopped them off at the knees, but the skull magically rolled upright, snapped cracked teeth, and rolled again to nudge more bones into order. The rug merchant's son swore oaths learned from his uncles.

"We can't hack them forever," Hakiim said.

"No, we can't," Amber agreed.

Fending off a lurching, broken-backed skeleton with her capture noose, Amber flicked her left sleeve, caught the teak cudgel snagged on her wrist, and cracked the fiend's skull. The crown fell off, but ruptured eye sockets glared while a jaw chattered.

"Mother of Coins, help me!" she prayed.

Already Amber's arms were tired. It had only been an hour since they'd outrun the thunderherders. Now the light's slanted rays faded as the huge desert sun slipped below the valley's lip. "It'll be dark in a minute, and these things will have the advantage."

Reiver ripped a rag from his shirttail and spiked it on the point of his dagger. From a pouch came a small bottle whose cork he pulled with his teeth. Liquid gurgled on the rag. Crouching, he struck flint and steel, blew frantically, and set the rag alight. The three adventurers squinted as it ignited with a bright glow and very little smoke.

With a long arm, Reiver rammed the burning rag into the eye socket of a skull atop a pelvis and four arms. Smearing while burning, the oil charred the skull. Reiver stepped back, the tip of his dagger flaming.

"That's all my whale oil," he said simply.

"We'll need more!" Amber shrieked.

Skipping behind Hakiim, she jerked his thick blanket from under his pack flap, looped it over her capture noose, and balanced it alongside the flames. It caught, smoking. Amber flipped the burning blanket over the skeleton's frame, then used her staff to ram a shorter skeleton against the pyre. Thin rib bones crisped and flared like candlewood. Encouraged, Hakiim and Reiver scooped up slithering bones and threw them into the makeshift bonfire.

For the first time, Amber saw the magical enchantment stagger. Burning skull-and-bone monstrosities stopped creeping and sagged into the flames.

'That's the trick!"

Heartened, Reiver and Hakiim dodged the quicker freaks and kicked others apart, adding fuel until the pyre snapped and crackled like a brush pile.

Hakiim yelled, "Must we burn them all?"

"Shame of Shar, no," yelled Reiver. "We only need to get past!"

Amber blinked. Intent on facing down the monsters, she'd forgotten their purpose. Casting a quick look about, she yelled, "Then go!"

Batting aside a human skeleton with a backward head, Amber and her friends pelted past the flames and the last of the skeletons. Always looking ahead, Reiver plucked a burning thigh bone to fetch along.

Three abreast, they trotted down the sloping tunnel until the crackling fire winked behind like a candle. No one pursued. Blowing from fright and exertion, the three sagged to the cold stone floor.

Hakiim puffed, "Wh-What shall I use for a blanket?"

Half hysterical, Amber found the lament funny, and began to laugh. Reiver joined in, sniggering quietly. Hakiim looked puzzled until he realized the absurdity of his complaint and roared along.

Amber suddenly went cold. "Gates of the Seven Heavens," she said. "I just realized… we tripped one trap entering this tunnel, we could have tripped a dozen more and been killed dead as Bhaal, Bane, and Myrkul!"

"Could've been," Reiver, who tilted the charring leg bone to keep it alight, agreed, "if the rest of the traps aren't already sprung or too rusted and rotten to work."

"One trip wire… collapsed the tunnel… on our heads," Amber panted.

"So one still works," Reiver shrugged. "The jackals, rats, and snakes only missed that wire because it was strung belt high, above their heads."

Hakiim shook sand from his clothes and hair and asked, "What was that weighted chain? It's a handy trick."

"Garrote chain. Adding a fishing weight was my own idea."

"Garrote chain," Amber mulled. "For strangling people?"

"No," Reiver grinned. "At least, I haven't strangled anyone yet."

"Never mind," Amber said, "I don't want to know."

"Speaking of strangling, the air is awful in here. Can we get out of this tunnel," puffed Hakiim, "or are we buried alive?"

"Who wants to leave?" the thief asked, only half joking. "Look!"

Juggling the burning bone, Reiver stooped for another small coin, which he presented to Hakiim.

"Amber gets the next one," he said. "Don't fret, Hak, we'll get out. Every rat hole has two exits and every tunnel two ends."

Hunched over, studying the dusty floor, Reiver moved on, taking the light with him.

Amber called, "Don't go too far!"

Amber and Hakiim rested in the diminishing light while their breath calmed. Suddenly the light ahead winked out.

"What happened?" yelped Hakiim. "Where's Reiver?"

"He's gone! Reive!"

Amber shot to her feet, fatigue vanished with the light. Holding her friend's sleeve, Amber scuttled down the dark corridor. Hakiim pointed his scimitar at the encircling darkness.

"He's got to be… yaaa!"

"Don't do that!" Amber barked.

"Sorry," Reiver said, grinning.

He'd popped out of a dim niche. A growing glow revealed his face and headscarf, then his whole ragged body, and finally the walls and ceiling.

"Look," the thief said, "real torches… and this!"

The corridor met a cross tunnel that was twice as wide. It curved away and the floor sloped gently downward. Off to the right, something glinted in the orange torchlight.

"What's that shine?" Hakiim asked. He leaned and peered, reluctant to step into the bigger tunnel.

"First," Reiver said, sticking his head back into the niche, "let's get the rest of these torches."

In the niche stood a terra-cotta urn full of crooked sticks with four iron prongs spiked with a gummy ball that burned with a pleasant, familiar fragrance.

"Balls of cedar needles glued with resin," the thief said.

Lighting more torches revealed more dropped coins sparkling at their feet. Hakiim plucked them from the dust and divvied them out.

By flickering yellow fire, Amber studied the walls of the curved tunnel. Framed by whitewash, occasional panels had been painted at eye level. Fascinated, Amber peered at the pictographs. Men and women in blue shirts and kilts propped spears. A band of near-naked women played instruments. A vulture flew over two lovers kissing in a garden. A child tossed a ball to a pointed-eared dog. A woman spun wool on a drop spindle. Workers tilted columns in constructing a temple, and there was much more.

The daughter of pirates whispered, "A lost world…"

Jiggling her torch made the distant, intriguing glint flare and die. Rapt, with Hakiim crowding her, Amber trailed one hand along the inward wall until they stood before two iron-strapped doors.

"Look at this sigil," Amber said.

Bolted to the door with copper rivets, big as a tabletop, split in half, hung an emblem cut from sheet gold-a phoenix rising from flames. Unlike the coins, this fire burned atop a rectangular building with many thick columns supporting its roof.

"A palace," breathed Hakiim.

"The Palace of the Phoenix?" asked Amber. "I've heard of the Phoenix Prophecies, but never a palace. Have you?"

Hakiim shook his head and said, "The Calim desert has more lost cities than a camel has fleas."

"Yes," the woman mused. "Most were destroyed in the Era of Skyfire or soon after. They call that the Retreat from the Desert. Some ruins house desert dragons like Ylveraasahlisar the Rose, and Sharpfangs, and Rhimnasarl the-"

"Father Sky watch over us," bleated Hakiim, "I hope this isn't Teshyll! Those who seek her ruins never return."

"Teshyll's farther south, I think," Amber said as she traced the cool golden emblem with her fingers. "Hmm… I've read that the ruins of Dashadjen support the Altar of the Air, but I don't think-yahhl"

Amber and Hakiim jumped when the phoenix flashed and swung toward them as if taking wing. The split door revealed a familiar face.

Both yelled, "Reiver!"

"Sorry."

Unbeknownst to his friends, the street urchin had scouted ahead and already slipped inside. He rattled the ironbound latch.

"The door could be trapped, knothead!" Amber said, panting for breath again. "It could be warded, or cursed, or bristling with pestilence or poison needles… what's inside?"

The thief grinned, nodded behind him, and said, "Light."

"Light?"

"Somebody's home."

Passing through the gold-hung door, the three adventurers knew immediately that they'd entered a sacred space. The corridor was larger, the ceiling higher, and many doors lined both walls. Paving stones were polished smooth as ice. The walls were plastered or inset with wooden panels, and every inch was painted in brilliant red, blue, green, gold, and silver. Life-size characters carried on their lives at every hand, and their clothing and jewelry glowed with opulence.

The searchers, however, were riveted by a tiny trickle of light above a wide intersection. Pacing that way while many painted eyes watched, Amber held her breath lest she disturb the awesome silence. Hakiim crept like a mouse, and even the irreverent Reiver clung close by for once.

Hakiim whispered, "This is the center."

"What?" Amber whispered back. She felt dazed by the majesty surrounding her. "Center of what? How do you know?"

"Look." The torch dipped four times as Hakiim said quietly, "It's a major intersection, and I'll bet these four corridors are of equal length. It's the center."

"Of the palace," breathed Amber.

"Someone smacked that through in a hurry," added Reiver. The hole, directly above the midpoint, was ragged, and had ruined a careful painting of rainbows on clouds.

On tiptoe, as if fearing to disturb the dead, Amber crept under the hole. The stone ceiling was three feet thick. Above, the mysterious light glowed in a tiny, dark room, like a mirrored lamp in an attic. From this angle, Amber couldn't see the light's source.

Amber started as Reiver brushed her elbow. Pointing her capture stick, she whispered, "We've been descending steadily, so we must be deep underground by now. How can there be a light?"

"Magic," quipped Reiver. "Give me a boost."

"Reive!"

Stepping into Hakiim's fingers, the nimble thief jumped, caught the upper edge of the hole with bony hands, and legs kicking, wriggled up into the dark niche. Amber protested, but his dirty feet disappeared.

Seconds later, his face hung over the edge and said, "Hand me your noose."

Amber sighed and flipped the thief her rope's end. Leaving the three torches stacked in a pyramid, the two friends shinnied up the rope and peeked over the edge.

The tiny room was barely head high and only six feet on a side. The walls were rough cut blocks, the roof sloppy slabs. Contrasting with the rude walls, the floor was gorgeous pink-white marble squares so polished they saw their reflections in it. One square had been removed and the floor broken through. The missing tile was still here, stacked on its brother. Sand had leaked in, so Amber concluded this stone hut was at least partly underground.

Light leaked in, too. From a crack in the ceiling peeked a pale light that touched the only furniture, a blunt pedestal topped by a glowing orb.

Drawn as if hypnotized, the young woman stared. The orb was milk white, perfectly round, polished until it glowed, and the size of Amber's fists. It sat nestled in folds of black cloth.

"That can't be sunlight," frowned Hakiim. "We saw the sun set."

"Moonlight," Reiver offered as he squinted at the orb. "Myths of Mystra, I'd almost swear this isn't glass but a single jewel!"

"That can't be. Jewels don't come the size of ostrich eggs," Hakiim argued. "Can we take it? It's lost treasure, doesn't belong to anyone. So it's ours, right?"

Strangely, their roles had reversed. Avarice made the normally cautious Hakiim reckless, while the rash Reiver pulled his hand back.

"Queer how it glows in such a tiny moonbeam," the thief observed, "collecting the light like a mirror."

Reiver raised his hand to block the light but the orb glowed on.

"Ah," Reiver said. "Better not touch it. It's en-"

Unnoticed, mesmerized, Amber reached with both hands and clasped the moonlit globe.

"Amber!" yelled both friends, who then froze at the sound of a whisper.

A hiss issued from the close rock walls. Whistles joined in, until the adventurers looked for a thousand cobras. Within seconds, the hissing rose to a piping keen like a banshee's wail, then a hurricane's roar.

Reiver yelled, "Jump!"

Too late. The world exploded in wind, sand, and noise. Stone roof slabs blew off like palm fronds. Sand boiled around the hut's walls, whipped into dust devils by cyclone winds. The three hunkered in a corner, covering their eyes with their scarves and arms lest they be blinded.

The walls melted as hundredweight blocks were snatched loose and whisked into sandy darkness. Massive thuds resounded as boulders banged like dice. The sandstorm intensified until the crouching companions' knotted headscarves lifted, and their hair was tugged by the roots. They might have cowered at the eye of a hurricane while primeval winds thundered around them like wrathful giants. Over the howling din they heard a sizzling, screaming roar as tons and tons of sand, an entire desert's worth, were scoured from the ground around the moonstone.

Amber and her friends breathed through their sleeves, gasping as the very air seemed pulled into the sky. They heard crashes, booms, thumps, and above all the fiery swirl of shifting sand. Rumbles shook the earth until the searchers feared the floor would collapse and bury them alive. Sand stung and spat like hail, threatening to smother them as it filled their clothes, filtered down their necks, sailed into their nostrils and ears and hair and eyes. The blistering winds puffed, pounded, blew, and buffeted, rocking them where they sat encircled by whipping sand. Beaten, breathless, and terrified, the three Memnonites clung together and curled into balls of misery that gradually grew numb before the storm's fury.

An eternity later, Amber shook her head awake. Sand spilled from her headscarf. Her eyes and lips were gummed shut, her cheeks and forehead chapped and raw. Picking at her face with filthy fingernails, she gradually leaked enough tears to uncrust her eyes and open them.

Darkness. For a second she feared blindness; then a light peeked from low on the horizon. Sister Moon, full, round, and white, was near setting. Amber guessed they'd sheltered for hours while the storm raged, passed out or sleeping. Stiff from tying herself in a knot, she found Reiver wedged between her knees like a lapdog and Hakiim mashing her left armpit. Groaning, the daughter of pirates shoved the stunned companions aside and reached for a wall to help her rise.

The block walls were gone. Everything was gone, except for the black square hole, pedestal, and orb. The globe in its nest of black cloth, Amber noted numbly, no longer glowed. It had reverted to plain glass like a big drop of water.

Keeling over backward, Amber untangled her legs, rolled over, and crawled to her feet. Rising, she forgot to breathe as she turned a slow circle.

The polished floor of pink-white marble tiles, a portion of which they'd seen in the stone hut, was revealed as an immense circle hundreds of feet across. Encircling the vast circle lay a moat filled with jumbled blocks of stone as big as oxcarts, and encircling the moat stood a city.

Amber stood on a slight rise in the valley's exact center. From here she could see two or three miles in all directions. Every inch of the valley was laden with ruins. Not far off squatted a two-story complex with tumbledown walls and collapsed roofs. Yonder reared a pair of low ziggurats with rubble between. More buildings crouched around, some intact, some mere outlines. Far off Amber saw a depression that must have been a dry lake. Archways still marked some streets while others were broken. Staggered farther out were square apartments and cottages. Rising up the valley sides were stone walls and terraces and the hollow shells of mansions. In parks, dried trees and grape arbors hunched like tired skeletons.

The night air was dead calm. The ghostly city glowed white. Every inch had been bleached by sun and scoured by wind until neither paint nor smoke soot lingered. Amber smelled nothing, not even death, just the salt rankness of clean sand.

Awestricken, she trekked across the vast round floor to the very lip above the dry moat. Once wide as a marketplace, the moat was filled with broken blocks, smashed columns, and crushed roof tiles. Wall sections were painted with delicate frescoes now shattered. The phoenix, a mythical bird rising from fire to live again, occurred many times above the heads of the happy painted people. Seeing the brilliant colors and artwork, recalling the golden emblem on the doors, Amber knew this palace had once possessed a breathtaking beauty.

Belatedly, as if waking, Amber realized this ruined Palace of the Phoenix was not rectangular, as they'd assumed from the glyph, but round as the sun or the moon. The round palace had sported cylindrical columns above a circular moat at the center of a dish-shaped valley, recurring circles that invoked the moon herself.

This fabulous building had been deliberately destroyed, its roof and walls and columns systematically broken and hurled into the once water-filled moat.

"Oghma take my eyes, that I ever saw such devastation," Amber whispered to the moon. "Why? Why was this beautiful palace demolished? Who could do such a thing?"

Glowing ghost white in moonlight, the dead city stood mute. Nothing lived here, Amber knew, but three misfit children too far from home.

Far beneath Amber's feet, a door creaked.

No, not a door, but the lid of an oblong box.

The tall box was tilted against the wall of a dark niche.

The sarcophagus lid had once been brightly painted with an effigy of the occupant, but time and dust had besmirched the image until nothing showed but the vague outline of a human form. Inside the coffin stirred that form.

Resin that had sealed the coffin cracked and crumbled off. The hands that pushed the lid were wrapped in bandages, each shrunken digit carefully defined in rough linen. Lacquered resin and sprinkled herbs trickled into dust as the hands flexed and shoved.

Blocking the coffin's foot were heaps of bones and brown rags. With ancient and petrified strength, the undead being pushed from within. Bones clicked and skittered, then the heavy cedar lid toppled free, slamming on the stone floor with a ponderous boom. No one alive heard the sound.

The creature in the sarcophagus was swaddled head to toe in linen bandages, its only decoration a painted mask and double chain of tarnished silver. Suspended on the being's breast was a vivid jewel the startling color of blood.

Knocking off the painted mask, shedding resin dust and linen fiber, the monster stamped ancient bones as it stepped from its coffin.

Free. Free for the first time in centuries, after eons of imprisonment, yet still a slave to magic. Magically animated, the creation was cursed to fulfill an ancient duty.

Crushing skulls underfoot, the mummy shambled toward its task.

To hunt the intruders.