Star of Cursrah (33 page)

At the very lowest circle, the vizar-in-waiting chastised her clumsy acolytes. They pulled up square flagstones marked by holes in their centers. Other acolytes gingerly knelt with small jugs in hand. Each jug was filled with a vile green potion worked up in barrels months earlier, then covered with oiled paper tied with string and sealed with fragrant beeswax. A jug was nestled into a hollow just below each flagstone, then the flags were gently eased into place. Soon oiled paper gleamed beneath every hole.

Backing, wary of death traps, wards, and poised potions, the vizars and guards retreated into a large round room. The bakkal’s most faithful followers had done their work well. They’d buried themselves alive.

Their work was almost done.

Far above, in the early evening glow, the grand vizar crept from a tunnel entrance. The ancient crone was led by the youngest acolytes in the realm: two shaven-skulled children, a boy and a girl who trembled to touch the mighty priest’s icy hands, or look at her face tattooed with red and blue veins. Besotted by dreams and visions of other worlds and planes, the grand vizar stumbled often. Each time the children winced, fearing a single fall would kill the dotard, ruin their mission, and bring their own deaths.

A third being helped prop up the elder. The bizarre and living Vizar’s Turban had glowing amethyst eyes and a hide like a tiger’s. Crouching on the woman’s brow, the magic creature communicated mentally with its carrier. Advanced age, the drain of conjuring, and the mystic alien mumble made the vizar so jumbled of mind she could hardly think at all. So the children and the turban directed the priest to her task, not the other way around. Stumbling, eyes fogged and unfocused, the grand vizar was escorted around and around the circular street once touched by eight bridges. From her mouth spilled an invocation.

“Ibrandul, Father of All Lizards, hear my plea. Ward this site that all men shun it … as mortals shun the Underdark. Direct their feet… their feet away, so none may discover … treasures untold. Cloud their eyes … O Lurker in Darkness. Shield their eyes with scales, O Great Scaly One … that all avoid …”

The loathsome god Ibrandul, the vizars had agreed in council, often directed adventurers to or from a path, and into and out of the Underdark. Surely, they reasoned, the great lizard god could encoil some portion of his essence around the buried palace, and thus direct men away from the enchanted site. One vision, one sniff, of a monster lizard should send any sane person walking, or running, the opposite way.

The vizar babbled on, her voice warbling and reedy. The ritual took a great toll, until the elder’s feet began to fail and the children half carried her. Round and round the grand vizar trudged into the night.

All the while her young attendants anxiously watched climbing dust occlude the stars in the east.

Samir Pallaton of Oxonsis invaded Cursrah at the head of twelve hundred warriors. Adorned in his plain linen and leather uniform, the prince sat atop his regal horse at the valley’s rim and stared down into the fabled vale. His army had ridden all day, then long into this night, but Pallaton had no intention of resting. Splitting his column left and right to surround the valley, he consulted with advisors while the army’s tail caught up. No opposition showed its face, so when all twelve hundred warriors stood poised above the eight roads and paths leading into the city, a trumpeter blew the signal and the army descended.

Posted on the rim, fifty feet apart, waited ace archers with long riding bows, sheaves of goose-fletched arrows, and tall torches spiked into the soil. Their orders were simple: shoot anyone who flees the valley.

The army rode slowly, letting the horses negotiate the dark switchbacks. Scanning the valley, the raiders saw that many fires raged out of control. The center of the city looked oddly deserted, with many buildings toppled. Here and there citizens looted, screamed, cried, and fought amongst themselves. Most citizens cowered in their homes, the army supposed, praying to various gods for protection. If so, the gods would disappoint.

Men and women reined back their horses, who were also skittery at impending action. When the bulk of the army reached the valley floor, Pallaton called for a long trumpet blast.

The raucous, rattling peal made Oxonsis’s army roar with delight, boot their horses’ ribs, and thunder across fields and parks and gardens and cobbled streets, grinning into the wind.

Within minutes, the night echoed with the sound of breaking doors, bubbling screams, the clash of swords and clubs, and whinnying horses frightened by the coppery stench of blood.

Samir Pallaton rode to Cursrah’s center, or close to it, for the innermost street encircled only barren sand. By the light of a burning building, Pallaton saw lying in the road a bald scarecrow in brown robes. A fluffy tiger-skin turban lay nearby. Two shaven-polled children had fled at the riders’ approach. Pallaton craned in his saddle, leather squeaking, and saw every part of Cursrah under attack.

He nodded at the fallen scarecrow and asked, “Is she dead?”

“Stiff, your majesty.”

A dismounted soldier kicked the body with a hobnailed sandal.

“Make sure.”

Drawing a sword, the soldier plunged it clean through the scarecrow until it clanked on a paving stone. Stooping, the Oxonsin picked up the tiger-skin turban. He made to pluck off the amethyst eyes, but they suddenly flared and glowered, searing his soul like a tiger leaping on his back. Rattled, he dropped the turban.

“Wh-what shall I do with this, sire?”

“Throw it on a pyre.”

The soldier used his sword to fling the thing into flames.

Pallaton cast about, wondering—what? Something was missing, but what?

A soldier called, “What about those children, sire?”

“Run them down and kill them.” Pallaton’s voice was level.

The horseman balked. “Children?”

“Go!” As the soldier cantered away, Pallaton announced to his advisors, “Hear your prince! Many of our men are green. My army needs an orgy of murder and looting to harden their hearts. Oxonsis must destroy Cursrah utterly. Only by dealing out cruelty can they learn to be as hard, as ruthless as the coming months will require each of them to be.”

A woman’s scream seemed to answer from the shadows. Oxonsin soldiers ran riot. They guzzled looted wine from amphoras and poured it over one another’s laughing heads. They set fire to houses that opposed them, then blocked the doors so the inhabitants burned alive inside. They knocked down shrieking men, women, and children alike, then toyed with them before delivering death blows. Three cavalrymen hitched horses to a temple door and ripped it from the hinges, then rode inside to stomp and slash the citizens who’d sought sanctuary there.

Galloping full tilt, they speared dogs, horses, cows, and people. They threw burning rags into fig and olive trees and grape arbors until branches crackled like fireworks.

Samir Pallaton watched the destruction without satisfaction or enjoyment. Given a chance, he’d have co-opted Cursrah, starved and overwhelmed it, and made it a puppet of Oxonsis, if possible with so much distance between them. He’d have forced Cursrah’s famed scholars to re-divert the river to the aqueduct, then to devise war engines, propaganda, and battle tactics. He’d have made slaves plow up grasslands to feed his army, drafted the young adults, and bled the citizens white with taxes. Enslaved, Cursrah would have lived, yet fate and the gods had deemed otherwise, so Cursrah must be destroyed lest Coramshan take it. If only Amenstar had been more pliable.

Staring at flames, Pallaton saw only the face of a beautiful young woman with dusky skin and dark eyes, who could lift her pointed nose with such disdain that a man’s pulse raced. His palms had itched to hold her lush body, to smother her with burning kisses, to entice and sweeten her into submission, but fate had deemed otherwise there, too. He wondered what became of Samira Amenstar. He recalled the first night he saw her, sashaying toward him—where?

“Where?” he said aloud. “Where did I meet her?”

“Sire?” asked an advisor.

Grunting with frustration, Pallaton kicked and spun his horse to survey the entire city. He stared across the barren sand, a circle occupying the exact center of the city.

Straining his eyes, he snarled, “Where is the palace? I visited it, but I can’t see it….”

Most of the samir’s advisors had been there too, but they also looked befuddled, staring across the great circle of sand without seeing it.

One ventured, “Perhaps it’s been spirited away, your majesty. Calim may’ve whisked it off to his bosom, or shifted it to another plane or time.”

“It must be. You couldn’t hide …”

Chewing his cheek, Samir Pallaton glared at the circle of sand. Something squirmed in his brain. A giant-lizard? Pallaton grit his teeth to drive out the foolish image, yet it got clearer. A giant, sand-colored lizard, dappled with dark spots like a thunderherder, coiled in a hidden cave somewhere, or else wrapped around the prince’s brain. A muscular tail slapped the inside of his skull, rocking him in the saddle. Distracting him—from what?

“Never mind!” he barked, then shook his head. “Let’s ride to the college. I want it eradicated—every book and scroll piled and burned, the ashes kicked to the winds, and the pillars pulled down. No one will ever read about Cursrah’s ancient wonders. Tonight glory belongs to us! Let the heralds trumpet the news in Coramshan and Zubat! Oxonsis dared to attack Calim’s Cradle, and her citizens were washed away in a river of blood!”

The Year of the Gauntlet

Trapped between two packs of bandits, with no place to go, Amber and Hakiim went nowhere.

Amber shoved Hakiim against the opposite wall, adding an extra nudge that meant “stay put and don’t even breathe.” She backed against her wall and tried to flatten herself as thin as paint.

They had a chance, Amber thought wildly. The bandits in the tunnels had torches, and would see them instantly if they crept that way, but the three bandits coming in had no light, so they might miss them. They had to slide down paving blocks and pick past rubble. They’d concentrate on their footing. If Hakiim and Amber melted against the walls, the bandits might pass by.

Might.

Amber tried not to squirm as pebbles clittered and sandals skittered. Reiver had disappeared, as usual. Amber didn’t worry. The thief could vanish into a hole like a mouse and pop out anywhere. She heard rough breathing, puffing from the climb, smelled wool robes, dried sweat, camel-dung smoke, and mint tea, heard gravel crunch under a sandal, then a hem swish over stone. The first bandit was past, a man by the size.

The same again, only a smaller blur, a woman spiced with some perfume like cinnamon. She too was past.

A slap and stamp sounded outside. A big rock rattled, then there was a muffled thump as someone half fell and caught himself. Breathing rasped, hot, harsh, and constricted, as if through half-closed nostrils. With a flicker of horror, Amber recalled that the third bandit had straggled well behind the humans as if shunned—the mongrelman. Amber shuddered and mashed herself still flatter against the wall.

Crawling off the wreckage, the mongrelman shambled along the tunnel but stopped instantly when it drew abreast of the hiding Memnonites. The hulk sniffed the air and turned toward Amber surely as if in broad daylight. It had an animal’s nose, Amber thought in despair, so they must fight clear. Unless this beast-man passed by—

In pitchy darkness, a hand with dog claws touched Amber’s breast and snatched a fold of her filthy tunic. The daughter of pirates exploded into action. In her right hand, the capture noose swooped a half circle to bean the mongrelman’s head. It did, just barely, whiffing through the top of its ratty headscarf. The monster was shorter than Amber had guessed. No matter. That nudge was just to gauge where the mongrelman stood and to distract it to look right.

From the left, Amber snaked her wooden billy from her sleeve, grabbed the short handle tight, and swung a vicious arc for the attacker’s temple. She didn’t swing club fashion, side on, but pointed the club like a dagger because she knew where to strike.

Strike she did, like a meteor. Teakwood punched the mongrelman’s skull like a hammer hitting an anvil. A gut-wrenched woof, rancid as a vulture’s breath, gushed in Amber’s face as the mongrelman collapsed. She jerked her knee so the creature didn’t topple against her, clopped it under its chin—or beak—and kicked it flat on its back. Dust billowed, a musty smell, for she couldn’t see much.

“What’s happening?” hissed Hakiim, nine feet away against the opposite wall.

“Get back up to the street! There’s too many—ack!”

Amber flinched as a hand hooked her neck from behind. Gulping, the daughter of pirates flopped and squatted, as she’d been taught in handling slaves. To simply go limp and let your weight drag off an assailant’s grip was a good defense, especially since the grabber expected you to stiffen and pull away, not sink. At the same time, Amber thrust her left hand up alongside her chin to force the assailant’s arm away. A calloused hand slid up her face, dislodging her headscarf.

Instinctively, Amber fought back. Slavers who didn’t cut and thrust didn’t survive. Twisting from the questing left hand, Amber rammed her sturdy capture noose backward, then snapped high. The move would either belt the attacker in the gut and double him over, or if she missed, smack him in the plums, providing he was male.

He was. A pained grunt echoed over Amber’s head. Without rising, with both hands, Amber jammed her staff’s butt for the same spot, a little higher. A satisfying thud told her she’d scored. All this in seconds.

Close up, Hakiim muttered, “I think there’s only one, Amber.”

“Well, hit him, by Bhaelros!”

Instantly she wanted to retract the command, because Hakiim carried a scimitar, and this tunnel was black, and he could easily kill her too, but a series of rapid chops told her Hakiim whacked the bandit’s head with either the back side or flat of his blade.

“I think he’s down,” Hakiim panted.

“Where’s the other one?”