Star of Cursrah (14 page)

The handsome, smiling youth kissed Star’s hand and said, “Ah, me. I’ve sought education in city-states throughout the world, Your Majesty, yet now I see my studying has gone for naught.”

“Oh? Why is that?” Amused, Star smiled.

“Never have I heard of, read of, or been told of any woman as lovely as you.” Nagid also didn’t loose her hand, and remained bowing as he continued, “From now on, with your gracious permission, I’ll forsake colleges altogether and simply worship at your feet, for surely a man can learn all that matters by gazing upon your exalted beauty. Perhaps, if the gods be kind, after years of effort I might compose one brief sonnet that could extol the smallest virtue of your heavenly features.”

“Oh!” Head aswim with compliments, Star stammered, “Oh, uh, no, don’t do that. I mean, I—I hope you enjoy your stay in, uh, Cursrah, and I—I must go.”

As genie and samira and entourage sailed across the crowded room, Vrinda had nothing to say, but her lofty smile was mocking. Star’s cheeks burned.

Directed by the administrator, Amenstar remounted her small throne, which stood equidistant from her parents and the two parties of the visiting samirs. Behind the princess crowded maids, guards, and Gheqet and Tafir, whom no one had yet ejected. As master of ceremonies, Vrinda signaled the band to strike up a tune. Forty women, draped only in strings of colorful beads, tootled reed flutes, plucked harps, rattled sistrums, thumped drums, clacked bone clappers, and clanged bronze cymbals. Into the hall tiptoed a troupe of black skinned dancers in feathers and masks who swayed and spun hypnotically. Guests immediately put their heads together to gossip, and Star was certain every whisper recounted her reactions to the princes. She wondered if the storytelling tiara on her brow had really recorded her awkward and girlish stumblings.

Over the music came Tafir’s voice, “Gheq and I have decided you should marry Hairy Hands and not Fancy Pants.”

“Too many clothes to wash with Torchhead,” Gheqet added. “Your hands would chap from all that scrubbing.”

“And Werewolf would be a better provider. If you want an antelope steak, he’ll run the poor critter down and bite its throat out for you.”

“And Carrottop would borrow your clothes, leaving you nothing to wear.”

“Then again, Hyenabreath might eat your children… and scare the horses.”

“True, but Candlestick might drop a book on your toes—”

“Belt up, you two!” Star hissed through an icy smile. “I should marry you two clowns, then make your lives miserable supporting my lavish and wasteful habits.”

“You can’t marry two husbands, can you?” Gheqet and Tafir sounded unsure.

“My mother laments that I’m spoiled, pampered, and always get my way. If I raised one finger, for instance, I could have two blabbermouths gagged and flogged.”

The men didn’t respond.

As the music climaxed the dancers whirled away. Vrinda glided to the center of the vast hall, under the round-cut roof hole, and gently shooed back the highborn audience. Announcing dinner was ready, Vrinda beckoned the waiters, stewards, and other servants forward. Marching in procession they took up rigid stances beside nothing at all. Leaving her slate palette hanging in the air, the golden-skinned Vrinda pointed to the nearest waiter and clapped her red-dyed hands once, sharply.

Magically, there appeared a knee-high round table with a gleaming tablecloth and shimmering bronze tray. Piled atop was a pyramid of hard-boiled eggs surmounted by a stuffed peacock.

Vrinda announced, “Peacock eggs pickled in plum wine and stuffed with artichoke hearts.” Polite applause answered the apparition.

Two claps conjured another low table with a naiad-shaped tureen and heaps of crooked fare.

“Frogs’ legs in dill vinegar sweetened with cane sugar.”

Table after table winked into place, a dizzying array: squid in its own ink seasoned with lotus petals; baked grasshoppers on red-leaf lettuce; rye cakes daubed with pesto topped with sturgeon eggs; pigeon hearts minced with yogurt pressed into lambs’ bones; grape leaves on sliced antelope tongue; bee-laden honeycomb and grapefruit wedges in custard dusted with cinnamon; raw oysters and pounded almonds brown with cumin; saffron rice with carrots; myrrh-scented camel milk floating pickled watermelon rind; quails in nut sauce surrounded by garlic cucumbers. There were pitchers and punch bowls of drink: date and raisin wine; pomegranate and grape juice; mint tea syrupy with sugar.

The crowd’s appreciation grew in murmurs and exclamations, but a queasy uneasiness stole upon Amenstar. Such a lavish gala must have taxed even her parents’ massive wealth. These plentiful and imported foods were not conjured from thin air—nothing could be conjured from nothing, she’d been told—but were whisked from the palace kitchens. They’d been costly to prepare, and rumors had it that the evening’s entertainment would be equally fabulous. For the first time, Star realized how seriously her parents wished to impress the suitor princes and gathered nations, which meant Star’s impending marriage was certain, with only the bridegroom in question. The samira found her stomach churning, and not from hunger.

Before the slavering audience could partake of the lavish repast, the gods needed their share, so servants ferried offerings to a sacrificial table bathed by moon glow under the cut-out roof. The Grand Vizar was escorted forth for the invocation. This doddering crone was rail thin, branded with arcane sigils, and hideously tattooed with blue and red veins until she resembled an anatomy chart. She staggered under a bloated turban seemingly made of tiger skin with a tiger-head pin sporting amethyst eyes. A murmur circled the room, for everyone knew the legend: the turban was actually a living creature captured in the Burning Lands of Zakhara, “Where the Gods Dare Not Tread.” Magically cursed or blessed, the creature crouched atop the vizar’s head and siphoned her life-force. In return, the enigmatic monster granted strange mystical visions by telepathy. Amenstar had always suspected the turban was the smarter of the two, who steered the addlepated vizar as a rider steers a horse.

Without preamble, the vizar raised one scrawny claw to the peeking moon, pointed the other at the offerings, and railed, “Our Lady of the Sky illuminates your vanity, but remember all beauty becomes dust. Death brings us closer to life, because light and darkness are joined. You cannot escape. The Grim One will sweep down, and you will cry upon your knees, but there is no halting the last passage when the Dark Spectre watches with nine eyes. Pain stalks the sunshine, and even gods weep….”

There was more, far too much more. Finally Vrinda touched a henna-hued fingernail to her ginger eyebrow. Instantly the scatterbrained vizar jerked as if whip-lashed. The turban rocked, and amethyst eyes flashed as the mystic creature gripped the crone’s bony skull. Stumbling as if bludgeoned, the Grand Vizar was ushered out by the vizar-in-waiting and her anatomists. Amenstar wanted to spit. The drooling, moonstruck moron was an embarrassment to the city.

“And now,” pronounced Vrinda, “may your graces eat and enjoy!”

The guests sighed with relief. Amenstar accepted a gold-rimmed plate, and leading the line, threaded the many groaning tables, taking a morsel here, a dram there. Chatter increased as people partook of sweetmeats, gossip, and laughter, standing in groups or sitting in clusters on three-legged stools. The only ones not gorging themselves were the hollow-eyed vizars, who were never seen to eat. Rumors spoke of raw meat and cow’s blood, or worse… .

The sacrificial table was toted away, and the evening’s entertainment began. Vrinda conjured a circle of red-painted stones, and as the band plucked and wheezed, a troupe of leather-clad dwarves on racing zebras stampeded into the room. The crowd gaped as the dwarves tumbled on the cantering zebras, vaulted headlong to change mounts, rode backward, behind the tail and beneath striped bellies, formed dwarven pyramids and crosses, and capered through a dozen more dangerous tricks. Vrinda clapped her red hands, and the dwarves disappeared. The breathless audience applauded.

Another genie clap filled the red ring with a tall, complicated engine that resembled an orchestra hurled together by a tornado. A smiling woman with almond eyes bowed deeply, wound a long-handled crank, and stepped back. Atop the machine bubbled a fountain whose water was channeled into many tiny pipes. Slowly, streams of water dripped and jetted to spin wheels, compress bladders, tilt cups, and drop counterweights. With a collective wheeze, the contraption began to play the jumbled instruments. Horns blooped, strings hummed, flutes tooted, drums thumped, and bagpipes wheezed. Tongues wagged about the clever engine, called a “clepsydra,” a variant of the water clock. When the weird engine finally gasped to a halt, people clapped for more, calling wildly, and threw coins into the stone ring. At their insistence, the clepsydra was rewound, water bubbled and fell, and the gargling tune repeated. It was only when Vrinda pleaded to keep her schedule that the clepsydra was hauled away by four sturdy slaves.

A sage from Cursrah’s college stepped into the ring, dressed in square-cut hair, green tunic and kilt, bare feet, and a black poncho beaded with the moon’s phases. Two students in similar garb lugged in a clay jar. Big as a peck basket, turquoise in color, it was stippled with marks of black paint and its lid was tightly sealed with yellow wax. Gingerly the students eased the jar to the ring’s center then scurried away. The sage made a short speech about the ongoing wonders to be learned from Cursrah’s college, then drew a small knife and squatted to dig away the sealing wax.

The audience murmured, wondering what they’d see, with the word “genie” bubbling up most often. Cursrah had been founded by the greatest of genies, built by lesser genies and genie slaves, and still employed two or three carefully bound to their tasks or habitats. No doubt the college had extra genies bottled up and stored on shelves. The crowd leaned in on tiptoes.

One student had fetched a bamboo pole. The sage raised an eyebrow to Vrinda, silently asking if precautions had been taken. People rocked back and buzzed at the hint of danger. Getting a nod from the administrator, the sage stood outside the red rock circle, and using the pole, tipped the lid off the jar.

Instantly there spewed into the air a howling whirlwind, big around as the enchanted ring of stones, high as the round opening in the roof. People recoiled, for the tiny tornado screamed, screeched, hissed, keened, and wailed like souls of the dead in torment. Viewers gasped, for within the spinning dervish they glimpsed forms, long and sinuous. They were snakes, thousands of them, from twenty-foot serpents to tiny adders. Most were sand-or stone-colored, limbless children of the desert. Were the snakes caught in a dervish? Or did they actually form the tornado?

To a bombardment of questions, the sage raised both hands and bellowed, “What you see, gentle nobles, is not a simple whirlwind. It is a living creature of the elemental plane of air, a servant to djinns, a windwalker summoned through a portal in the jar, drawn here with Cursrahn magic for your delight and amazement. For such wonders do we practice daily at our college, where all the fathomable knowledge of the ancients resides….”

There was more speechmaking that the crowd largely ignored, mesmerized by the ethereal servant. The windwalker’s fury increased as it adjusted to this new plane, so the whirlwind spun faster and faster until little puffs of not-snakes whipped away and vanished in midair. Flecks of red paint from the inside of the protective ring flaked and spun too. The sage droned on, extolling the college’s virtues, until Vrinda coughed and touched her golden throat. Immediately the sage’s voice faltered. Dazed, he nodded at no one, plied the bamboo pole to catch the clay lid and recap the jar. The windwalker winked away with a sudden compression that made people’s ears pop.

Vrinda clapped her hands once and sage and jar winked away too. The masked and feathered dancers reappeared, this time bobbing and swirling through the audience. The band struck up a bouncing tune, and people laughed and relaxed. Vrinda glided away to administer dessert. Courtiers steered to the lesser throne to compliment Amenstar on the food, display, entertainment, and more.

“What happens now?” Gheqet hissed. The two were still stationed behind Star.

Tafir scanned the audience for eligible girls and asked, “Will this party drag on all night?”

“I’ve no idea,” she said. “Vrinda is in charge.”

Star wrinkled her forehead; her tiara itched.

“Must we stand here?” Gheqet, who had also spotted some interesting young women, whined. “I’m bored.”

“I know we crashed the party, but—oops! Pucker up, Princess. Cursrah’s flanks are penetrated by a scouting probe from Oxonsis and a butterfly brigade from Zubat.”

Courtiers fell back as two large entourages converged on Star’s small throne. From the right marched Samir Pallaton’s military escort in lock step, with the dark prince the point of the spear. From the left flowed Samir Nagid’s entourage, light and colorful as wax paper balloons. The two princes stopped, an arm’s length apart, before Star’s throne. The samira smiled carefully, flattered at their attention, but recalled that the two heirs should be kept apart, lest their kingdoms’ impending war explode here in the palace.

“My compliments, Samira.” A military man, Pallaton got off the first shot, saying, “Cursrah shows its riches are its strength of mind. Oxonsis too knows knowledge is true power.”

“Which makes one wonder, Fair Amenstar,” the sprightly Nagid interjected, “why Oxonsis shut down its college and banished its scholars? What did their military elite fear to hear?”

“Oxonsis fears nothing, but our college proved a viper pit of treason.” The swarthy Pallaton looked only at Amenstar as he continued, “In times of trouble, citizens should support their rulers and join in the mutual defense. It’s different in Zubat, I hear. In that city, fops and fools spend their time stargazing and reciting poetry, while enemies infiltrate the streets and poison the minds of the populace.”

“I’m amazed Oxonsis has any populace left,” Nagid breezed. “Trumped-up criminals and enemies of the state hang along the city walls like rotten fruit. Soon the civic butchers will be forced to recruit sheep into their burgeoning army, but then, that’s appropriate isn’t it? Sheep never know the shepherd’s plan until their throats are cut….”