Star of Cursrah

11

The Year of the Gauntlet

Haunted by visions of impending death, once again Amber stumbled and blundered across the burning desert tethered by the wrists to a cruel and uncaring ogre. Sun scorched Amber's face, beat on her head and back, and soaked through her filthy, torn clothing until she felt her blood would boil in her veins. Her legs were clumsy with fatigue and hunger, her mind dizzy from lack of water and sleep. Her face hurt the worst, still seared and blistered from the White Flame's torture. She was chilled by their ultimate fate waiting at the band's destination, and she prayed fervently to Ilmater, goddess of suffering and martyrdom.

Only Reiver's and Hakiim's frantic pleading had saved Amber's face and their lives. Yelling at the top of their lungs, the thief and rug merchant's son had insisted that untold wealth and riches awaited them in the ruins of Cursrah and repeatedly shouted that only Amber knew where these riches lay, having been befriended by the palace's undead guardian. Promised gold and jewels, the nomads had plucked Amber from the fire, and the White Flame had hesitated to execute her. The Flame lived for vengeance, but her followers lusted for wealth, and they'd keep Amber alive until it was found. Nomads had slapped mutton fat on Amber's face to quiet the burns, and they fed the prisoners meager rations, not out of kindness, but out of greed. That a magic-wielding mummy guarded the treasure was a fact everyone conveniently ignored.

The bandits broke camp and trekked into the desert just as the sun rose. Stumbling across sand and gravel, Amber listened to her captors talk, partly to learn about her enemy and partly to detract from her own suffering. The bandits were a mixed lot of oddballs with little in common, Amber learned, and she desperately hoped to exploit that flaw and somehow escape.

The White Flame constantly muttered to herself or to imaginary enemies about gaining power. The crazed leader hoped to find magicks or scrolls to aid her campaign for vengeance. A few tall bandits were Tuigan barbarians from the hills, who lusted to loot a desert city buried since ancient times. In olden days, they assured one another, nobles were buried with treasure to buy comfort and position in the next life. Robbing one tomb would yield enough booty to buy luxury in this life, and the devil take the next. Some of the raiders were dwarves of the Axemarch Stone Clan, who considered tomb raiding the most heinous of crimes, and grumbled in guttural tones. They hoped to find magical tools or loose gems, or crowns and armor, but not in coffins. The majority of nomads were southerners from the Land of the Lions, a somber lot who talked little. Amber glimpsed a face now and then, with tattooed dots and lines on chin and jaw. A few bandits lagged far behind and never spoke or shifted their veils, so only yellow or mismatched eyes showed. They might be half-ores, but from their painful shambling gait Amber guessed they were mongrelmen from the Marching Mountains, bastard offspring sporting the worst features of talking races and animals.

Thirty-odd bandits, Amber guessed, though their numbers were never clear because the band sprawled in clumps over a mile or more. Amber glimpsed the raiders mostly over her shoulder, or at rest stops in three days of marchine. for the White Flame and her bodyguards stuck to the center, with the ogres and captives in the van.

The breed-ogres Amber understood not at all. Enigmatic creatures, they might be freebooters or else outcasts from their pure-blood tribe. Why they traveled with a human-led band or what they hoped to gain, Amber couldn't guess. So far they'd gathered only three careless young Memnonites, a few coins and gems, and the moonstone tiara. The biggest giant, the slow-moving brother, had picked up the tiara when the White Flame discarded it and no one else, for superstition, would touch it. The ogre had slid it onto its left arm below the elbow, and no one contested its ownership. In the same way, the big brother carried Hakiim's scimitar, Amber's capture noose, and their rucksacks. The monsters took precious little care of their slaves, barely feeding them and administering kicks and jabs rather than water. Dragged behind the magic-plying, smarter brother, Amber was convinced that, upon reaching dead Cursrah the unneeded Hakiim and Reiver would be killed. Their scalps would be strung onto the ogres' fearsome spears and their bodies strung onto spits and roasted. Amber might be kept alive until she pointed out the spiraling tunnels to the palace cellars. The ogres showed jagged teeth like sharks, and Amber shuddered to think of fangs tearing her charred flesh from her bones. She felt partly crisped already, for heat made the mutton fat run from her face into her collar, and every wink of sunlight was like sandpaper brushing her burns.

Amber could imagine no escape. Hakiim and Reiver were also exhausted and helpless. The rawhide binding their wrists was old and rotten but tough enough in multiple strands. When it broke the ogres simply re-tied it in a hash of knots. Even freed, the half-dead humans could never outrun the indefatigable and long-legged ogres or the other bandits spread across the dunes. No, Amber thought, they were helpless and alone, stumbling across rocks hot enough to crackle. Or perhaps not so alone…

The magnificent hunter genie Memnon, claimed some travelers, lay bound in the soil, and when angry at desert interlopers manifested Memnon's Crackle, a seething vortex of sand. Further, said others, Memnon could be invoked with a stonetell spell so his face appeared in solid rock and he spoke. Memnon was always that close. If so, then even closer was another genie, for the breeze that cooled Amber's parched face was said to be the very breath of-

"Great Calim, Lord of Genies, Qysar of Calimshan, hear my prayer," Amber whispered as she marched. She was uncertain if genies attended prayers, as gods were wont to do, but she'd try anyway. "These thieves seek to loot your city, sacred Cursrah built by your own mind and hands. They'd violate Calim's Cradle and the famous college, created to honor your memory, to sing your achievements, to boast to the world of your greatness. If these people reach the valley, they'll smash any vestiges of wonder and pilfer the gold and silver given in your name. Not so me and my friends, as you saw. We found your great city and yes, picked up odd coins, but mainly we wished to see Cursrah's secrets, to plumb the depths of your greatness. Deep underground dwells a mummy, a living relic of your greatest hours, and I would help that poor mummy, whoever he may be…"

Mishmashing every prayer and hymn she knew, Amber babbled to an ancient, unseen genie whose only hint of existence was a breeze against her cheek-but who'd also blasted with lightning a vizar who'd presumed to usurp Calim's power.

Talking, Amber surprised herself. She really didn't want to loot Cursrah, she realized, but she truly wanted to learn more about the mummy; why it stalked the dark corridors, why it touched her mind and sought rapport, why it pleaded with Amber for help, if that was truly its message. What could the undead want from the living? How could Amber help an animated corpse whose soul yet lingered and languished in awful, aching loneliness? The daughter of pirates couldn't guess, but if Great Calim let her survive long enough she'd find out, she silently vowed, or die trying.

Stumbling, falling repeatedly then dragged, Amber prayed until her dry throat seized up, choked by dust, and she could only move her lips in silence. Agonized by thirst and exhaustion, shocked by the fierce burns weeping from her cheeks, nose, and forehead, the young woman would have cried in despair if she'd had any tears left. Her useless prayers were whipped from her lips and dissipated by›the rising wind.

Rising wind?

Forcing open gummy eyes, Amber turned her face and was peppered with sand. Dust billowed from nearby dunes, swirled in dust devils around her aching feet, and fetched in folds of her headscarf and tunic. Some of the bandits were already obscured by curtains of sand that lifted and died and redoubled. The White Flame flicked a bony hand, and a bodyguard raised a curled ram's horn and blew a ratcheting wail that brought outwalkers closer lest they be separated in a sandstorm.

To be separated from this crew would have suited Amber. True, three puny humans stood little hope of fighting three breed-ogres; still, any change favored their chances. Squinting against sand and the darkening sky, Amber wondered if Calim indeed aided them. She rattled more prayers and praise through gritty lips.

The ogres stumped to a halt, and their captives collapsed and rested. The White Flame caught up and consulted her scouts.

"Which way?" the bandit leader asked. "How much farther?"

Frowning around pointed fangs, the lead ogre looked west but shook its head. The mountain-dweller was fuddled by desert distances.

"You!" The bandit chief dropped her veil to reveal teeth and jaw shorn of flesh, then kicked Amber viciously and asked, "Where lies Cursrah?"

"Uh. Uh…"

Amber's mouth and tongue were swollen. Bending from his great height, the ogre splashed water from a goatskin bota at her. Amber gulped the blessed cool wetness gratefully, but the ogre slapped her head so she choked, then jerked the rawhide binding her skinned wrists.

"D-due west, I think," Amber rasped, "per-perhaps four miles. A tower stands alone. The valley lies a league south."

One of her nomads had seen a tower just before the sand blew, so the White Flame assumed the city must lie south and west.

Peering at the dark curtain of sand with lidless eyes, the cruel woman coughed, "Follow these dunes along the western side, out of the wind."

"Big herders," warned a nomad. "Where sand traps a boot, herders of thunder may rise."

"The Jhannivars rule this land," stated the Flame archly, "and I must see this city. My enemies grow stronger day by day. I shall brave any terror to see their guts exposed to the wind."

Nomads exchanged glances, but none objected as the leader struck out. Along the western side of the dunes, the sand indeed pulled at their boots. Amber found the footing harder than ever, but for the first time she took heart, hoping against reason that this storm had been crafted by a genie bound in the sky. Glancing behind, Amber saw Reiver's eye glinted with malice as he bided his time. Even Hakiim, sensing his friends' excitement, pricked up his ears. Amber waited for an opportunity as the striding ogres left the other bandits floundering behind a curtain of sand.

Leaning against the sandfall, descending a soft slope, Amber wondered too whether thunderherders might suddenly bore up from the ground. Before, in good health and unfettered, the adventurers had barely escaped the monsters. This time…

"Amber!" screeched Hakiim.

The daughter of pirates was yanked brutally around, rawhide chafing her wrists. The ogre roared, and Amber was towed as if by a galloping horse through swirling sand.

Reiver had made his move, though Amber couldn't tell how. The skinny thief hung high in the air, back to the biggest ogre's back and the adventurers' pilfered packs. Reiver's fists were jammed at his chin, still bound by rawhide to the giant. The creature's fists were also wedged at its throat. Suspended, mashed against the packs, Reiver kicked his legs furiously. The huge ogre thrashed side ^ to side like a colicky horse, purple tongue protruding and quickly coating with sand. Desperately the monster yanked at Reiver's bonds, jerking the thief up like a fish on a line. Amber could make no sense of the attack as she lurched and stumbled headlong toward them.

The ogre mage had dropped its huge spear and drawn its tiny human sword. Roaring, the giant raised a knotty arm like an oak branch to chop Reiver in half. Towed along, Amber shouted as they closed to striking distance-then scooted on her rump and stabbed her heels against the sand. The sudden anchor stalled the ogre mage, even threatened to topple him backward. Grabbing a handful of its desert robes, more rags than cloth, Amber pulled with fettered hands to tangle its legs. A monstrous hand like a granite block swung to snap Amber's neck. The woman ducked, then scissored her legs around the giant's filthy, bare ankle. If they were to die, she thought wildly, best to die fighting.

Between the giant's legs, Amber saw Hakiim and the she-ogre tumble across the sand and down a slope, first one and then the other atop. The she-ogre was the smallest of the three beasts, and Hakiim burly if short, yet he was still outweighed by a hundred pounds. The downward slope discommoded both, and Hakiim kicked with one foot to keep them spinning.

Reiver still hung behind the giant, somehow. Through swirling sand, Amber saw that a glint of silver ran in a straight line from the thief's hands to the giant's throat. Finally, she understood. Despite being searched, Reiver had retained his garrote chain. Hooking it on each thumb, the wiry thief must have leaped up behind the ogre, whipped the chain around its neck, and crossed his wrists to sink the chain deep into the monster's flesh. Reiver hung with his back to the giant's back, grimly and efficiently strangling the brute, waiting patiently for it to collapse. A wonderful plan, Amber thought, except the ogre had siblings.

Lashed by the wrists, Amber still clung tightly to the lead ogre's robes. The monster stamped a clumsy half circle and slashed at her with the sword. Plying strength and speed she couldn't believe, Amber dodged the awkward blade nimbly while shoving her aching hands high. Rusted steel parted rotten rawhide, and Amber was free.

She hoped to stay alive long enough to enjoy it. Amber kicked against the slippery dune slope but only sank in sand. Raging, forgetting the sword, the lead ogre slapped at Amber's head. Fingertips like sling balls smacked her crown, and Amber dropped as if stunned, feigning unconsciousness, for she couldn't run. Leaving Amber, the ogre spun to save its brother.

Amber croaked, "Reiver, he's coming-" and choked on sand.

Plucking free of sand, she scrambled behind the lead ogre, out of eyesight, to help the thief. Fretting, she wondered when the White Flame and her escort would walk into their midst.

Staggering, the biggest ogre stamped and thrashed to shake the human off, then crashed to its knees, face a ghastly purple, tongue sticking out half a yard. Even on its knees, the ogre was as tall as the thief, whose bare toes only tipped the sandy slope. Reiver clung grimly to his chain, drawing it so tight veins bulged in his tanned forehead. Only a thief s instinct for danger made him turn and see the ogre mage rushing with a sword poised to stab.

Amber gasped as Reiver bounced off the sand with his toes, jumped, and vaulted a backward somersault over the strangling giant's head. With his arms still crossed behind the ogre's neck, Reiver hung face-to-face with the stinking brute, the purple tongue almost jammed in his eye, but the giant's eyes were closing. As the ogre mage roared and Amber screamed, the strangled brute toppled at Reiver, who skipped nimbly aside without loosing the chain.

Amber howled, a cry lost in the wind, as the ogre mage swung high, one-handed, to cleave Reiver in twain. The earth split underfoot. For a second, Amber feared an earthquake, then yards-long thunderherders burst through the sand like whales breaching the ocean surface. The giant's stamping feet must have attracted the monsters, Amber realized, promising a huge, meaty, juicy target.

Very much a target, for thunderherders four feet thick and sixteen feet long churned and undercut the earth so no one could keep their feet. Amber felt the dune's crust crumble, and she plunged into a waist-deep hole.

Attacked from his left, the ogre mage had to desert his brother to slash at a borer slithering across the sand at him. Striking at an angle, powered by a massive arm, the sword chopped off half the creature's wriggling teeth, so a half moon of writhing, mottled flesh flopped and gnashed at the ogre's feet. Heedless, the butchered borer humped its great bulk and slammed into the ogre's leg, shearing off skin and bowling the giant over.

Amber struggled to wriggle and lever free of her hole, but the sandy crust collapsed again and again. Terrified a herder might rocket along and nip off her legs, Amber punched frantically, grabbed, and clawed. Finally she grappled the distracted ogre's robe and tugged herself free of the suffocating sand. Not trusting the ground, Amber crawled away on all fours, then scampered around in a big circle toward Reiver and the strangling ogre.

Sand blew in all directions; up, down, and sideways. Calim's Breath had become Calim's Whirlwinds. A screen good as night, Amber thought wildly, but it had disadvantages, if thunderherders plowed furrows right before her, or even holes, she'd never see them.

"Reiver," she called. "Is he dead? We need-"

She should have known better. Ten feet from Reiver, the earth dropped from under Amber's feet. Sand boiled as she fell seemingly forever, then thumped hard four feet down. Of course, she thought in disgust, the borers would crisscross under the stamping giant first. A fractured pit sagged all around the two. In the pit floundered Reiver, the biggest ogre, Amber, and now the charging ogre mage. Amber was trapped to the waist by spilling sand and hurtling bodies.

Reiver, always keeping his head in a fight, had skipped onto the dying ogre's back as it sank face first without struggling. The outraged brother roared and slashed off-balance at Reiver. Amber craned to grab his mighty flailing arm, but bogged by sand, she missed.

Another borer arrived from underground. Rearing, the tubular monster popped from the sand, arched, and drove jagged teeth into the dying ogre. Amber winced at the crunch and smack of toothy jaws boring into flesh. The ogre mage turned, leaped half out of the sand, and hacked at the monster.

Nimble Reiver had already jumped clear and wrenched his bloodied chain from the ogre's neck. Scampering like a monkey up crumbling hummocks of sand, the thief circled wide, flopped on his belly rather than sink, then hooked Amber's armpits and yanked her from the earth like a carrot.

"Let's get!" the thief advised.

"No!" Rising, shedding sand, the daughter of pirates surprised the thief by snagging his wrist. She pointed to the tiara encircling the dead ogre's arm and said, "I need that!"

"You can't-whoal"

Reiver dodged as the ogre mage flailed his sword backward. A chunk of flesh had been sliced from a ravenous borer, so it curled and rolled in agony, but another herder burst up behind the giant, struck dagger teeth at its back, failed to grab on, recoiled, and slammed again into the giant's spine. This time teeth found flesh, and the giant howled.

Sand scoured Amber's burns like acid as she tried to rub her eyes clear. Reiver tugged and urged her to come. She flung his hand off.

"No!" she insisted. "I need that damned tiara. We can't go on without it. Help me-"

Reiver was gone. He'd catapulted away into the curtain of sand. Amber saw why. Behind, a brown-spotted sword-hacke,d borer, dripping white gore, had uncoiled and stabbed at him with multiple teeth wiggling. Now the thunderherder snapped in a circle and aimed for her. Amber shrieked so hard her throat cracked.

A spear long as a ship's spar stabbed down, punctured the writhing herder just behind its chittering teeth, and rammed home into sand beneath. The thick haft hummed inches from Amber's nose. Craning, she saw her rescuer was-

"Hakiim!"

"Hurry!" he called.

Slipping down the rim of the pit, the dark man struggled to keep the pinned borer from biting Amber. The beast's strength lifted him off his feet, so he squatted and clawed with his toes. The borer bucked, writhed, and-Amber heard flesh tear, a sickening sound-ripped itself backward off the spear haft. A gaping gash oozed white fluid as the herder curled its stinger tail and sank into its burrow, out of sight.

"Where's the sister ogre?" Amber asked as she grabbed the spear haft and was hauled from the ever-collapsing pit.

"I don't know," Hakiim said, and cast about at blowing sand as if the she-monster would swoop upon them.

In the pit, still sinking, the trapped ogre mage howled as a herder gnashed and chewed his back. Another herder bit the giant's side and hung on. Unable to strike hard with the sword, for his arm was crowded by one hulking body, the ogre pushed at the thing's jaws until jagged teeth spiked through his calloused palm. Giants and herders thrashed, spraying Amber with sand as she scuttled around the patchy pit.

"Whatever you want to do, do it quick!" Hakiim called.

Halting behind, Hakiim held the gruesome spear like a club, ready to clobber more herders if needed. At the pit's far side, Reiver suddenly appeared from the shifting curtain of sand, hopped onto the strangled ogre, and with clever fingers untied from his back their satchels and weapons.

"Give me Hak's scimitar!" Amber said.

Slipping steadily downward, the young woman braced her feet against the dead giant's head. The roaring of the ogre mage was ferocious as he battled two thunder-herders.

"Don't bother," Reiver said as he slung their packs up to Hakiim. "We must-"

Snatching Hakiim's blade, Amber chopped awkwardly, once, twice, thrice at the dead giant's elbow. The sound was sickening, far worse than beheading a chicken or gutting a pig, and only because Amber's stomach was empty did she not heave. She slashed doggedly until the corded, hairy forearm fell free. Grabbing the grisly object by its cold, thick fingers, she scrambled from the pit. Left behind was the cruel ogre mage in a losing battle with flesh-hungry thunderherders.

Crawling, too weak to run, Amber dropped her gory trophy long enough to sling on her pack with the capture noose lashed behind it. Hakiim shouldered his pack while Reiver carried the long spear.

The dark man hollered, "Which way now?"

"Down!" yelled Reiver.

Sand whipped them from all directions.

"No!" Hakiim shook his sand-crusted headscarf and said, "I saw the sister fall in a pit, but it'll be back."

"It's the only way," insisted Amber. "Otherwise the White Flamell find us when the storm dies. I'll lead."

Reluctantly, the men fell in behind, Amber clutching a giant's bloody, sandy arm, Hakiim clutching Amber's ruined tunic, and Reiver hanging onto Hakiim. Feeling the crust before every step, Amber duckwalked down-slope, then scooted and froze.

Through a haze below they saw a huge murky shape track back and forth, searching-the ogre sister. They were trapped on this slope with enemies above and below.

Amber turned to warn her friends, and her foot broke the surface. The hole widened into a dark gap into which sand trickled. Amber decided quickly, and clutching the giant's bloody arm under hers, she jumped high and plunged through the desert floor.

The daughter of pirates crashed into a tunnel four feet across. Sand rained onto her head, but for the first time in seeming hours, it didn't blow in her face. The tunnel walls ran lumpy and uneven, and undulated up and down, but seemed firm enough, if pitch dark.

"Amber! What-ulpl" Hakiim had tried to lean into the hole, but the sand collapsed and he tumbled in headfirst. Untangling, he groped and found Amber crouched ahead in darkness. Reiver dropped behind, light as a leaf.

"We can't crawl down a tunnel," Hakiim protested. "What if we meet a thunderherder?"

"Better than an avenging ogre… come on!" Amber scuttled along the tunnel with her grisly catch and added, "Bring that big spear, Reive, we'll need it…"

Total blackness. Dark as being buried alive, which they were, Amber shuddered to think. The three adventurers crawled downslope for scores of feet, or hundreds of feet. Their shoulders rubbed raw on sand, their backs ached, their hands and knees grew sore, and all the while they grappled with pure terror. Any moment the tunnel might collapse, drop like a mine shaft, or Amber might bump into clashing, ravenous jaws. The tunnel sloped gently, ever onward, and Amber guessed herders didn't burrow too deep but hovered close to the surface to detect moving food. At least, she prayed so.

The tunnel bottomed out, and Amber's blind hand found that it sloped up. Hakiim plowed into her rump.

"Pass me the spear," she said.

Tilting to one side, Amber dug upward with the point. Cascading sand filled the tunnel.

"Well suffocate," Hakiim wailed.

Amber fought her own panic. She shoved straight up, probing with the spear. Sand smothered her. The spear nibbled sand then-nothing. Amber jiggled the spear and glimpsed light. Hollering thanks to Calim, she widened the hole as more sand poured in her face. The three friends clambered up a short well into sunlight.

The sky was clear, the breeze only a tickle. Dunes surrounded them, with barren ledges to one side and jumbled rocks at the other. No enemies were in sight. Wiping their faces clear, the three companions staggered into the shelter of tall rocks.

"Thank you, Great Calim! Bless you, praise you, love you!" huffed Amber with her last breath.

Finally safe, she collapsed.

"What do you mean, go back?" demanded Hakiim.

"Go back to Cursrah," Amber whispered, in case enemies skulked nearby.

"That thing will kill us," rasped Hakiim.

Amber shook her head so waves of dark hair whisked about her face and said, "It could have killed us easily the first time."

"We ran-"

"It let us go! That mummy makes magic. It pinned us in those painted statues and cursed you with fear. It could have killed us a dozen times, but all it did was… was to plead for something!"

"What?"

"I don't know." Amber bit her lip and whispered, "Something."

Hakiim rolled his dark eyes. Reiver hoisted a goatskin water bag and drank deeply. The thief had not only retrieved their rucksacks and his crude bundle and weapons, but he had stolen the huge ogre's water and rations besides. Thirsting, the trio drank gallons of water. They sniffed carefully at the smoked meat, decided it was goat and not cannibals' fare, and ate ravenously. They found an oilskin of mutton fat, and Amber dressed the sandy scabs on her face. Clamping down on her stomach, she worked the tiara from the giant's hairy arm with a knife. Reiver took the severed limb away to bury it. Scrubbing the headband with sand, Amber looked at the east where the moon rose.

"Will you put that thing on again?" asked Hakiim.

"Of course." Amber settled the tiara on her head, wincing as cold metal touched her forehead burns, and said, "It's the only way to learn-"

"It's trouble," grumbled Hakiim.

Amber tsked. "Rest, Hak," she said. "Catch some sleep."

Needing no prompting, Hakiim sprawled on his back. Reiver returned, curled up like a cat, and dropped off.

To quiet snores, alone in the bright desert night like an owl, Amber opened her mind to the tiara's story. Unlike earlier, in Cursrah's ruins, she found these mental images fuzzy and wobbly, skittering around her brain, making her dizzy. Like a bonfire seen from a distance, looking tiny as a candle flame, Amber wondered if the tiara were too far from the city, the source of the ancient scenes. Lying with her back against a rock in the chill desert night, Amber concentrated. Gradually, pictures formed.

In her mind's eye, Amber relived Amenstar's ancient adventure. She saw the capricious princess captured by cavalry, heard the lecture on "politics," dozed through three boring days of captivity, watched as the River Agis was diverted by magic.

With a shock, Amber realized that the earthquake had formed the Broken Hills, which they'd passed in venturing here. When the diverted Agis bent north and then west, it carved a new watercourse and eventually a new seaport-Memnon, their home town. Like Amenstar, Amber wept for Cursrah, doomed to die of thirst.

Alone, she whispered, "The samira finally realized her beloved city was truly endangered, but her tears came too late, like those shed at a funeral."

Thinking, half dreaming, Amber drifted off…

… and jerked awake in darkness.

Amber listened, ears ringing, but she heard nothing. Creeping, she peeped past staggered rocks. For once, Calim's Breath was still. Desert dunes were painted silver and jet, and a million million stars twinkled bright as diamond dust in the velvet sky. Yawning, Amber pried open her eyes, then nudged her companions.

"Come," she said. "It's time to get on."

"Home?" asked Hakiim sleepily. He and Reiver tussled briefly for the waterskin, both still dehydrated. "If we follow Pharos's Anvil to the river and find our boat, we can sleep in our beds tonight."

"No," Amber said as she raked fingers through her filthy black hair. "There are things left undone."

Hakiim demurred, "Sounds like one vote for home and one for Cursrah."

Amber huffed, then conceded, "I can't blame you for wanting to go home, Hak. We've been battered by forces young and old ever since we set foot in this desert. I swore I'd never venture underground again, but I must. I'm going, even if I have to walk there alone."

Amber poked Reiver then and asked, "You're quiet. Which do you prefer, Memnon or Cursrah?"

Swallowing a gulp of water, the thief shrugged. "It's all one to me," he said. "In Memnon I scrabble for pennies and risk arrest from the druzir's amlakkar and the Nal-lojal. In Cursrah we might be skinned and eaten, or worse, but we may find more than pennies."

Hakiim groaned, "I never thought I'd miss my sisters' nagging or my mother's cooking."

"I'd take my mother's nagging if only I could take a bath," Amber said, and stuffed the tiara securely into her rucksack, "but if I quit now, I'll never know peace for wondering what became of Samira Amenstar and her friends, who resemble you two more than brothers."

"I don't understand that, either," said Hakiim. "You say this Gheqet looks like me-"

"Is you, in another life," she corrected.

And the mummy is one of you in this life, she added silently.

"All right, is me. I'm Gheqet and Reiver is this Tafir- except he's a respectable citizen"-Hakiim grinned as Reiver punched his arm-"but those people are long dead and buried. Their lives have nothing to do with us."

"Then why were we drawn here?" Amber countered. "Why was it our fate to find Cursrah and the mummy? Why did it appeal to me for help? Why us three and those three? This is destiny, Hak. A juggernaut has started and can't be stopped. Great Calim himself fetched us a storm so we might escape and carry on to Cursrah. To return to Memnon is to defy the will of the gods! Out here, something beckons, and I must go back."

Bending her shaggy head, Amber retied her kaffiyeh, shouldered her pack and capture noose, and faced the gap in the rocks, toward Cursrah.

Hakiim and Reiver looked at each other.

"Maybe you read too many stories, Amb," Hakiim said.

"I know I do," the young woman conceded, "but adventure runs in my blood. My ancestors were pirates, you know."

"Mine were servants to genies," Hakiim sighed and grabbed his pack. "So I best serve as needed."

"Thank you, Hakiim."

Amber's smile was genuine and tinged with tears.

Reiver stood and stretched, yawning. Imperiously, he boasted, "Well, my ancestors were, uh, irresponsible!"

All three laughed. Reiver, always matter-of-fact, asked, "What if you're bewitched by that tiara?"

Amber shrugged and told him, "I can't help that, can I?"

Stepping from the rocks, Hakiim cast a last glance at the northern sky and countless stars, then turned west, toward Cursrah.

Lifting a brown hand, he said, "Destiny beckons."

"What's that moving in the lake bed?" asked Hakiim.

"Above the lake bed…" Reiver corrected.

"By the Killing Wave," hissed Amber, "it's a skeleton."

Always wary, Reiver had insisted the trio circle Cursrah's valley and descend its western slopes, because the White Flame's bandits would surely enter from the east. Plus the travelers desperately needed water. Reiver had seen birds kiting in and out of a hollow just north of the dry lake and guessed it was a water hole. Descending a crumbling staircase to the valley floor, skulking through ruined streets and buildings, the fugitives hadn't seen any bandits so far, yet undead beings moved in the once-buried city.

Arrested by movement, the three hid in a tumbledown building like jerboas, the long-hopping desert rats, peered between ragged stone blocks, and collectively scratched their heads.

The small lake that had once served as Cursrah's reservoir was now a dusty hollow. In the center, raised like a blunt column, stood a tiny island and shattered pump house. A dozen feet above the lake bed, in thin air, hung a patchwork of splintered planks gaping with holes. A yellowed, creaking skeleton methodically hobbled forward, shoved a stubby pole into thin air, walked backward along the boards, then repeated the motion.

"What's it doing?" asked Amber.

"Poling a barge," breathed Hakiim. "Like in Memnon's harbor. You walk to the bow, stab the bottom, walk the barge ahead, and do it again."

"But why?" asked Reiver. "There's no water."

"There was," Amber explained. "Some ghosts perform the same tasks in death that they had in life, over and over. The Tales of Terror tell us that."

"I thought ghosts relived a horrid or unfair death," said Reiver.

"That too, but most just repeat a chore forever, like a recurring dream or an echo that never dies."

"Remember the mules?" asked Hakiim. "They must have been yoked to a grindstone their whole lives, so in death they keep circling the mill. That skeleton must have been an old bargeman. See how he's humped over- there's another!"

All three squinted in mid-morning glare. The lake bed was ringed by shallow stone bowls with tarnished brass spigots; public fountains, long dry. A tiny skeleton in shriveled rags lugged a cracked crock to a fountain. Gently, gratefully, the phantom waited a while by the spigot. Eerily, it bobbed its skull to imaginary companions, then raised a missing hand to the passing bargeman. Soon the small ghost hoisted the crock to a crooked shoulder and trudged away, all in ear-straining silence.

"An old woman fetching water," breathed Hakiim. "Like my dame-mother. Catching up on gossip, waving to a friend."

"The oldest ghosts must wake first," mused Amber.

"Why wake at all?" Reiver said as he tried to watch everywhere at once. "Why bother? The water won't return. The city can't come back to life."

"The city uncovered itself," pondered Amber, "as if it had slept long enough. Maybe Great Calim's winds released it, or the mummy, or some deep-lying wizard we haven't met yet. No matter the source, it's a miracle. Magic like that can do whatever it likes-"

Amber jumped as a gargling screech spiked the morning silence. The wail began like a jackal's howl, but then keened into a woman's scream. Hairs crackled on the listeners' necks.

"Something's very alive down there," hissed Hakiim.

"Probably at the water hole," grated Reiver. "Every living thing in the valley has to visit it eventually… and it's a perfect place for an ambush."

"Ambush?" asked both.

"If I wanted to kill something I'd creep near the water hole, dig a hidey-hole, and just wait. Unfortunately we need water too, so come on."

Peeking like a meerkat, mapping in his mind, Reiver picked a route through more ruins. His friends followed, wary and scarcely breathing.

Skirting a debris-laden plaza, in the cellar pit of a fallen building, the trio spotted the hollow visited by birds. A jagged crease in the valley floor had been preserved in its natural state. Bedrock had been polished satin-smooth by centuries of feet. A small half dome of white granite was erected at the far end. Under the dome, a sliver of water trickled from rock. The musical babble made the onlookers' throats ache.

"Looks like a shrine," said Hakiim.

"It's the only water for ten leagues around," replied Amber. "It should be sacred."

Reiver licked crusted lips and said, "Give me the waterskins. I'll fetch, you two wait here."

Before the others could object, the thief grabbed the botas and scurried off, angling toward the crevice's entrance.

From their pit, Amber and Hakiim watched anxiously. A stone clattered behind them and they whirled. An inhumanly tall figure reared over them. Clad in snow leopard's fur and rags of blankets, the brute waved a spear and roared a challenge. The she-ogre, whose brothers the adventurers helped kill, had lain in ambush and sprung a trap.