Star of Cursrah

12

The 383rd Anniversary of the Great Arrival

"Samir Pallaton demands an audience with Samira Amenstar!"

Star pricked up her ears as a guard slipped out the tent flaps. She'd spent yet another boring day of imprisonment, one day after collapsing hills cut Cursrah's lifeline. The princess chafed at being locked up, at being inactive, at not knowing Pallaton's plans. Now came a soldier bawling her name, and Star would go willingly to be target practice-anything to escape these four canvas walls.

Outside, Star's guard demanded, "Sir, I don't recognize you-"

"I'm Tafir from the House of Ynamalik Sedulus! One of Oxonsis's most ancient and noble houses! I'm attached to the personal lifeguards of Samir Pallaton, who wishes to see Samir Amenstar right away!"

"I beg pardon, Yshah." The guard caved to a duke's son. The tent folds batted aside, and the guard urged, "Please come, your majesty, the samir orders you attend."

Squinting in the bright sunlight, Star smothered a grin. Tafir wore the red head cloth and linen tunic of an Oxonsin soldier. He stood parade-ground straight with an upright spear. Gheqet slouched before him, staring at the ground in feigned dejection.

Amenstar meekly fell in beside her friend, and Tafir rapped, "March!"

The army camp bustled like a beehive. Hundreds of slaves, released from digging the canal, polished shields and armor, curried horses, braided bowstrings, stitched packs, and otherwise prepared for war. At the edge of camp, even a platoon of slaves drilled with spears. A grizzled sergeant bellowed they better march smarter to win their freedom.

Threading dust and noise, Amenstar joked quietly, "Imagine finding another Tafir in Oxonsis's army, with a strange name like that."

"One of our guards ran after a loose horse. Gheqet lured the other inside, and I jumped him. We took his clothes." Tafir's face stayed wooden and disciplined and he added, "I got the uniform because I'm the cadet."

"He can bark like a war dog," Gheqet jibed.

"Clever," Star complimented, "but where do we go?"

"Out of camp, into the tall grass, then creep into the hills. Halt!" Tafir glowered at his prisoners while a water wagon swayed past the dusty street lined with tents. He muttered, "We can't steal horses from the picket line- it's watched-but if we hide until the night patrol rides in, they'll be tired. Maybe we can jump them. I just hope we don't bump into anyone who knows your face."

The dripping wagon passed. Star took one look at the milling crowd and groaned, "Death and damnation… the gods hate me."

Opposite stood Samir Pallaton with his bodyguards and advisors. He wore his usual plain tunic, leather cross-straps, and matched swords, and he had added a red silk cape. With fists propped on his belt, the cape fluttered around his elbows. The prince grinned and slowly shook his head.

"Well, well," he said, "the princess takes her exercise. Behold the seasoned warrior who escorts her majesty… and such a pitiful prisoner."

Striding to the party, Pallaton tugged off Tafir's head cloth and asked, "Did you kill your guard?"

"No," Tafir said, indignant. "Uh, that is, no, Your Majesty. He's bound in our tent."

"And bound for an extra week of night watch." Flipping the head cloth into the dust, Pallaton addressed Amenstar. "Actually, your brilliant escape precedes my own actions. -I was coming to release you."

"Release us?" Star blinked. "We're not-"

"Hostages?" The samir smiled. "You were. I might have used you to negotiate a surrender from Cursrah. Now that Cursrah's painted out of the picture, you're worthless."

The samira bristled. "Cursrah is Calim's Cradle, I'll remind you. Its library and college-"

"Are heaps of dusty scrolls in a dry valley," interrupted the prince, "and the cradle lies empty. Calimshan has matured. Oxonsis no longer needs your dead city. Nor do I need you, Samira, dead or alive. Certainly I don't need to marry you."

The last was delivered with an angry sneer that startled Amenstar. The prince was outwardly cool, she noted, yet his emotions boiled just beneath the surface. Why would he resent her, unless he repudiated an earlier attraction?

Turning to an aide, the prince barked loud enough for everyone to hear, "Give these foreigners good horses and escort them to the border immediately."

Without a backward glance, the prince stormed away.

"Are we-free?" whispered Gheqet.

"Free to go where we please," sighed Amenstar, "but never free of our mistakes."

Two long days' ride found a familiar landmark. The flat slabs that covered Cursrah's aqueduct undulated across the plains. Their cavalry escort halted at the dusty path. The lieutenant mocked a salute.

"You can probably find your way from here, Samira. Good day."

The troop drummed off to the northeast.

"I'm glad we're rid of them," growled Star. "Smug bastards."

"I'm glad we had them," Tafir said. The cadet still wore the linen tunic of Oxonsis, so quickly had they been hustled from Pallaton's camp. "How many roving patrols did we spot? We might be prisoners of Zubat or even Coramshan if not for their protection."

Gheqet clambered off his horse, stiff and sore. Mincing to the aqueduct, he pried up a small stone slab. The underside displayed damp moss. On hands and knees, the architect's apprentice stuck his head down the hole, then rocked back on his rump.

"Gheq," asked Tafir, "what's down there?"

"Nothing." Gheqet rubbed his curly head, clearly worried. "Almost nothing. Six inches of water at most. I can see moss on the bottom waving in the current. The aqueduct's never been this low. Even in the years of drought following the genies' war there was six feet. Now it's… six inches."

"It's not the only water that feeds Cursrah," insisted Star. "It rains in winter sometimes, and the Mother of Flowers gives us water. Calim founded Cursrah around that spring."

"It's just a trickle, Star." Gheqet levered the slab back over the hole, twisted it tight, and said, "Nomads stopped and filled their waterskins from it, watered their goats, then moved on. You can't feed a city from a puddle."

Amenstar gazed along the gray aqueduct to far off where it dwindled into the horizon. Gheqet shook his head. "Without water to fill it, the aqueduct will cave in. The sides will shift, and the slabs will collapse. Once it fills with sand, no one will ever know it existed."

"We'd better mount up," Tafir advised. He pointed to a party approaching from Cursrah that carried spears at their shoulders hung with bundles. "This could be trouble."

"Trouble?"

Amenstar shook her head as if dazed. She hadn't sleep well lately. The oncomers were dressed in Cursrah's uniform, yet lacked the flat collar of a citizen-soldier, so they were foreign mercenaries obviously deserting her father's army, taking along their short swords and spears. Befuddled, Star was unsure if they suggested danger. Lacking any place to run, she just sat.

"Good day!" Tafir's cheer was strained.

The mercenaries looked up. There were ten men and three women. Besides the weapons, they were burdened with blankets, bulging packs, spare sandals, and two waterskins apiece. A tall man with the light skin of a northerner shrugged so his spear bobbed.

"The day's improvin'," the mercenary said, "now that we're finally movin' on."

"Where are you bound?" asked the cadet.

"Uh, north, to the river." The party stalled to a stop. The leader asked, "You from Oxonsis?"

Tafir glanced down at his foreign uniform with the red ox head. "No," he laughed. "We were, uh, guests of Samir Pallaton."

"Oh?" The man weighed his words. "And what's he up to?"

"Pallaton musters an army-defensive so far. He even trains slaves who fight for their freedom."

As Tafir and the leader talked, Amenstar squirmed under the scrutiny of the soldiers. A woman whispered to a companion, who whispered to another, which sparked a hushed but intense argument. Flame-faced, Amenstar ignored them.

Tafir announced loudly, "I'd suggest you try Pallaton's camp for work. He'd welcome good soldiers, and it's not far. Just walk northeast and flag down any cavalry patrol wearing ox heads."

"That's a bonny-" The leader stopped as a soldier tapped his arm and whispered. Irritated, the leader glanced at Star, but snapped, "No, we ain't doin' such a damn fool thing. He's give us an idea where to enlist, and we're going. To the front-march!"

Nodding to Tafir, the leader led his party away, a sure destination putting pep in their step.

When they passed out of earshot, Tafir wiped his brow and said, "By the Sword That Drips Anger, that was close."

"Why all the secrecy?" Star complained. "It's immeasurably rude to whisper before royalty."

"Rude to kidnap royalty, too," replied Tafir. "They recognized you as a princess. Someone suggested holding you for ransom. They'd probably have killed me and Gheq. Mercenaries make their money where they can."

"Oh," squeaked Star. "My father's own soldiers acting like such… dastards? How could their loyalty expire so quickly?"

"It evaporated with the water," sighed Hakiim.

Shaking her head, Star jerked her reins.

"We'd best move on," she said. "Cursrah needs us."

"What's happening there?"

Gheqet pointed down into Cursrah's valley. As twilight deepened, birds ceased to sing and homes were lit with tiny fires. The shallow bowl dropped away from their feet, down past terraces of manor houses and burial vaults, down past mud-brick cottages, stone walls, and parks, down past square apartment buildings with canopied sundecks, down past two-story shops and civic buildings and temples, finally down to the center, where the moated Palace of the Phoenix glittered dusk red.

Gheqet pointed west to Cursrah's lake reservoir and said, "I've never seen activity at the pump house before."

According to legend, the stone hut in the lake contained the marid Bitrabi, an ocean genie tasked centuries ago by Calim to protect and circulate Cursrah's water all the way from the distant River Agis to the tiny pump house. Now the water had been diverted, and the Mouth of Cursrah ran dry.

The pump house's tiny island swarmed with people. Two barges packed with stones had been poled to the island, and only the bargemen idled, leaning on poles stuck in the lake bottom. Directed by an architect or master mason, slaves in loincloths off-loaded the stones and piled them against the walls and roof of the pump house.

Gheqet frowned, "It looks as if they're sealing the pump house…"

"You mean, to lock in Bitrabi?" Tafir asked, then slid off his horse to stand still and better see.

"If she's truly inside," Gheqet said as he too dismounted, as did Star.

"Everyone's always believed that Bitrabi is in there," said the princess.

"That doesn't make it true," Gheqet fretted. "No one alive has ever seen the marid. The pump house has neither doors nor windows."

Tafir sniped, "Then how can anyone even claim the marid exists?"

"We see results." The architect's apprentice sketched a finger around the valley and explained, "The city's fountains are fed from pipes underground, and the water shoots up without any pumping. Same with the mansions along the valley rim. Older houses use gravity-fed pipes from the aqueduct's head, but new ones tap water flowing uphill from the lake-"

"Look! They're falling back," yelled Amenstar, "and running!"

Far down on the tiny island, slaves and masters tumbled off their feet as if from an earthquake. People scrambled away from the pump house and into the barges while the bargemen poled off to save themselves. Some slaves plunged into the lake and swam.

"What is it?" demanded Amenstar. "What's panicked-"

The pump house exploded.

Faster than the eye could follow, stone slabs and blank rock walls blew into the sky. Debris, from pebbles to boulders, dappled the lake water and pattered on the shore. Boulders crushed and decapitated slaves and slave masters alike. A partial wall landed in a barge, breaking the raft's back and sinking the pieces.

"It's-real," Amenstar whispered. She could hardly breathe for wonder.

"It's Bitrabi," moaned Gheqet.

From the shattered pump house rose a waterspout. Thirty feet across, swamping the island, a column of pure pale blue wetness welled upward. Higher and higher rose the waterspout, taller than the Phoenix Palace, taller than the library's ziggurats. Thinning as it rose, the column finally topped the valley walls. Thin and fragile, the waterspout poised, level with the awestruck adventurers.

In the tip of the glassy column, Amenstar, Tafir, and Gheqet could discern a huge and eerie being. Its skin was as aquamarine as the ocean it called home, and it went naked except for filmy green kelp swirling in patches around its blue-green frame. The marid wore a necklace, bracelets, and anklets, and the watchers imagined seashells, twined narwhal tusks, or precious pink-white coral.

Just for a second, the miraculous giant, a marid plucked from the sea's darkest depths, hung suspended atop her ethereal waterspout like the finger of a god. Treading water, raising long slender arms, twisting her body to face west and the distant ocean-Amenstar saw this act clearly-the genie named Bitrabi clapped her hands.

A roar bellowed, like a waterfall, like a sandstorm, like the thunderous drumming of Calim himself, as the genie shot into the sky, propelled by the impossible column of water.

Out of danger, Amenstar and the others flinched as the waterspout zoomed into the ether like a magician's toy rocket. Untold thousands of gallons shot up from the lake like a whale's exhalation, following the aquamarine genie. For only seconds were the column and its mistress visible, then both arced away into the sky, soaring so high the trio craned their necks to see.

Far, far away, they knew, the watery arc would descend, and the genie that Cursrah had called Bitrabi would splash into the Trackless Sea. After centuries of slavery, the marid would plunge into her home once again.

Watching, the weary travelers gasped. For an instant, as the great waterspout bisected a sky tinged red by sunset, there flashed the biggest and most beautiful rainbow Calimshan had ever seen.

The brilliant band faded. The sky turned gray and empty as twilight sank upon the land.

"She's gone," murmured Tafir.

"She's free," breathed Amenstar.

"And she's taken all the water with her," lamented Gheqet.

Snapped back to reality, Amenstar stared into the valley. Cursrah's lake, a glittering and happy place Star had seen all her life, was a mire of mud. Stippled about were stone blocks, drowned or broken bodies, smashed barges, and other jetsam. The only water was a few boggy pools that would evaporate by daybreak.

"The aqueduct," muttered Gheqet, "must have finally run dry. That last six inches emptied into the lake. The last thread connecting us to the Agis snapped, so the spell binding Bitrabi must've expired. Even a tasked genie can't protect what isn't there, so her job was finished. She was free and bolted immediately."

"Leaving us stranded," said Amenstar, "to die of thirst."

Cursrah normally came alive after sunset, as the day's heat passed, but the homecomers found the city like a giant's toppled body, dead but not yet cold. As Amenstar's bay horse switchbacked down the valley road, trailed by her two friends, they passed an exodus already begun. Families had loaded carts, donkeys, drags, or their own backs. It was a short climb to the valley rim, but a long trek across grasslands and wilderness to the next town or the river, yet they braved the night rather than remain. As the road bottomed out, Amenstar saw more cottages lit with torches where people packed in sullen or weepy silence. She watched a woman lean from a second story apartment and drop blankets to her husband, calling that that was the last. When the woman descended, crying quietly, the two hoisted bundles, joined hands, and turned toward the valley rim.

Their horses' hooves clip-clopped on cobblestones and echoed from empty buildings. Normally taverns, cafes, and gambling dens would sparkle with talk, laughter, and lovers' cooing. Star saw only one cellar lit, and the patrons drank silently or muttered bitterly. Amenstar felt she'd blundered into some foreign and hostile port. Riding on, by and by a rustle and fuss welled ahead.

Gheqet said, "People gather at the city center. I wonder what they hope to find?"

"Not water, that's for sure." Tafir rubbed his throat and said, "I'm dry already."

"Stop it, you two," Star's voice cracked the empty night. "People flock to the city center to hear my father reassure them. He'll have sought auguries from the gods and will now reveal our plans for the future."

Star saw the two young men exchange glances: What good can the bakkal promise? What kind of future? The princess scalded them with angry silence.

At the centralmost ring of streets, they dismounted and tied their horses to posts, for beasts of burden were not allowed in the civic quarter. The hitching posts hung above water troughs normally kept filled by city slaves, but the troughs had been bailed dry.

Proceeding afoot, Amenstar retied her yellow neck scarf into a veil to hide her face and the silver moonstone tiara. Her yellow trousers and green cloak were so grimy and dusty as to be colorless. Gheqet wore a worker's white tunic and kilt like hundreds of others. Tafir had inverted his linen tunic to hide the red badge of Oxonsis.

Thousands of people, half Cursrah's population it seemed to Star, milled at the city center. Not one stood still, but all walked this way or that as if searching for something, while a few ran headlong to escape or embrace disaster. People chattered alone or to others, some wept, a few laughed in hysteria. Many citizens were drunk, terrified to face the future sober. Anxious not to get separated, Amenstar touched her friends, who squeezed her hands.

"I can't tell what transpires," said Tafir. "Is everyone mad?"

"There's no pattern." Gheqet cast about. "Everyone's just wandering around like…"

"Like cattle penned for the slaughterhouse," finished Star. "What's that old saying? 'When strife eclipses the sun, only Bhaelros lights the consciousness of men.' "

Standing at an intersection, the companions gazed at the Palace of the Phoenix. Torches burned in iron sconces on every column of the round palace, their lights reflected in the dark moat. Four guards, grim heavy infantry, barred each of the eight bridges to the palace. No activity showed, and Amenstar wondered what her parents did. At times, the crowd swelled toward the bridges, eager to glimpse the bakkal, but then surged away aimlessly.

Down the street Star saw people collected before the Temple of Selune, a tall crescent-shaped building that imitated the moon. The gentle Mistress of the Sky had always been favored in moonstruck Cursrah, but despite the fright, no one entered her temple. People shouted in frustration and beat at the doors as if they were locked.

Star murmured, "This can't be…"

Tired of confusion and ignorance, Amenstar snagged the next person who passed. A woman, middle-aged and wrinkled, jolted to a halt and slapped the offending hand from her sleeve. Star demanded news, and the woman acceded to royal authority without recognizing it.

"The Temple of Selune has been shut tight-closed for the first time in memory. The vizar-in-waiting brought soldiers inside, and they whipped folks-whipped them! — to drive them out. Slaves bricked up the doorways. Selune's temple is no more, I tell you. It's the bakkal's fault. He's deserted us, left us to die of thirst. There's no water. It's all gone-"

To the left, a huge fireball suddenly roiled, lighting the night sky. The crowd gasped, and Star gawked. The woman hurried away to nowhere. Holding hands, the three friends joined the surging crowd to see what made the fire.

"That old fool," the princess fumed. "My father would never desert his people, and none of this makes sense. Why would my father's soldiers close the Temple of Selune? People need her comfort in times of trouble, and who's-oh, no!”

The bonfire illuminated the Temple of Shar, goddess of darkness, pain, and unlife. Shar had always been an unpopular deity, worshiped only by the dying and the damned, for Cursrahns had been happy and satisfied and didn't wallow in self-pity. Shar's was the only temple doing business this dark night. The low dome was decorated with black tiles and a few red ones inserted at random. The only door descended below street level into the dark bowels of the world, Shar's domain. On a small cobbled plaza before the dome, Shar's few elderly priests had propped a huge iron dish on stone uprights, filled it with amphoras of black rock oil, and ignited the pool. The watery fire spawned spirals of greasy, stinking smoke. A big drum of ox hide had been rolled out, and a red-clad acolyte pounded hard and long upon it. The sagging drumhead gave a muffled, mushy tone, and the erratic drumming grated on everyone's nerves.

Amenstar growled, "One time only, Shar's clerics gain attention and then irritate us like a sore tooth."

"Make way! Make way!"

The crowd edged aside while two acolytes in red struggled to drag a tall white ox by a ring in its nose. The beast was edgy from the pressing crowd, eye-watering smoke, and the clumsy handling, but the crowd slapped and prodded the ox onto the plaza.

Shar's high priest held a long knife with a black blade, and as the acolytes struggled to hold the powerful ox, he chanted, "Shar! Goddess of Truth! Of Bitter Wisdom! Of Life's Burdens! Pray accept this sacrifice that we may‹know your mind and wishes!"

The crowd sighed as the dagger plunged into the ox's neck. Red blood gushed onto the priest's arms and robes and the cobblestones. The acolytes were hoisted into the air as the bawling ox tossed its head, but quickly the loss of blood buckled the beast's knees. Acolytes and citizens struggled to roll the heavy body over. The priest would slice open the carcass, Amenstar knew, then drag out its hot guts and read-or pretend to read-auguries and mystic divinations for the future.

Star growled to her friends, "I've no wish to witness butchery. Let's hie to the palace-"

A man howled and pointed to the sky. Others looked up and screamed. The moon, Cursrah's celestial guardian, had risen above the eastern rim of the valley. A propitious time for sacrifices, and for good luck, yet the moon was suddenly eclipsed by a ragged form like a gigantic bat. People shrieked with fright, for any eclipsing of Cursrah's moon was a bad sign. Sounds of wonder and puzzlement bubbled as citizens wondered what it might be. Few creatures flapped in the skies over Calimshan.

The shadow came and went, dodging in and out of the moonlight, growing rapidly. Soon its jagged points all but occluded the white sphere. Like lightning from a clear sky, the thing pounced, and Cursrah screamed in response.

Amenstar was crushed to the cobbles by Gheqet and Tafir as the dragon landed. All was confusion, and Star saw only snatches of the attack. A blue dragon, almost black against the night sky, forty feet or longer, dropped from the sky onto the sacrificial ox in its vast pool of blood and onto the panicked crowd. The dragon bristled with spines, scales, and spikes jutting in all directions like a desert hedgehog's. Twenty or thirty citizens were immediately crushed or impaled. Luckily, Amenstar and her friends arrived late and hung back to avoid the press, so they didn't die. When the dragon fanned its powerful, sweeping wings, the blast seemed to sear Star's face like a hurricane.

A great tail, long as a camel train and curved like a sickle at the tip, scythed to cut and smash fleeing Cursrahns like mice hiding in wheat. A clawed paw like a trio of pickaxes sank into the ox's body and squirted blood into the air. Another fearsome paw crumpled the awestricken acolytes, breaking their backs and skulls. The dragon's maw gaped, and a bolt of lightning sizzled and crackled to scorch another dozen souls, who tumbled and burned as they died, clothing and hair ignited.

Twisting, the dragon's clawed feet skidded on cobblestones and gore. The blue tail flexed and upset the huge iron dish of flaming oil. It dropped with an ear-punishing clang, and burning oil bubbled in channels between raised cobblestones. Ox and human blood and fallen bodies were charred as a stomach-turning, iron-stinking smoke rolled across the plaza. The dragon roared, a eerie keen like wind whistling across a lonesome desert, and Curshrans screamed.

Amenstar watched the carnage as blood and dust boiled into the air and blacked out the moon. An ancient prophecy sprang to mind: "The Dragon of the West and the Stallion of the East shall meet, and the dust of their fury shall eclipse the skies."

Star was dragged up and backward by her friends. The trio plunged into the panicked crowd, and the men shielded Star from falling under stampeding sandals. Up until now, Amenstar had been too enthralled and too stunned to feel fear, but as she saw the dragon clearly terror chilled her heart.

Dragons had plagued Calimshan for centuries, but this grotesque flying giant might have been specially conjured to ravage Cursrah. The dragon was plated with scales of a deep shining black-blue, but the largest scales on its back and haunches were curiously edged in white, as if painted with half-moons. Its tail had been sharpened into a sickle, and even the major horn on the dragon's nose recalled a white crescent moon.

"It's a moon dragon," Star cried. "Surely the gods must curse our moonstruck city! Cursrah is doomed!"

Gheqet and Tafir shouldered through the crowd to seek shelter between tall buildings. Behind came a tremendous crunching and shattering as the Temple of Shar was stove in by an errant tail. New shrieks made them look up.

Bathed in moonlight, glowing blue and silver as the moon itself, the dragon scooped air with its ragged wings. The sacrificial white ox dangled from curved fore claws. Steadily, the dragon dwindled into the distance.

"I'm glad to see that thing go," breathed Tafir.

"It'll be back," Gheqet panted. "That's the first dragon attack since the Great Arrival. Jassan, our invisible air guardian, must have deserted us too. All the genies have left Cursrah to its fate!"

"What fate?" demanded Tafir.

"Our fates are to separate, for now." Numb to horror, Amenstar straightened her clothes and hair. Forcing calm, the samira announced, "I must return to the palace. My family will need me in these trials. You should return home too, and see what your parents plan. They may wish to-to leave Cursrah." Her voice faltered on the last.

"Is that wise?" asked Gheqet. "Your family might be, uh-"

"Uh, miffed that you ran off," finished Tafir.

"When are they not?" breezed Amenstar. "They're an unsmiling bunch. I'll just talk quickly, pile on apologies, and be forgiven. There is no time to punish me now."

In the moon-striped shadows of the alley, Amenstar spoke lightly, but fear gnawed her belly. For the first time she faced the mind-numbing notion that Cursrah might really fall, cease to exist, and be swept from history. The princess couldn't imagine Cursrah ending any more than the sun winking out, yet it might.

She remembered the last time she'd rebelled by spoiling her coming-out ball. Her parents' punishment had been heavy and painful. She shuddered to think of drowning, then shook it off with regal poise.

"Never fear. We'll meet again soon. Here, hold still." Star surprised both men by catching their faces and pecking their lips. She'd never kissed them before, had barely touched them. Gheqet and Tafir were too stunned to respond, and the lovely young lady laughed at their confusion.

"Take care, please. You're my best friends, my only friends." Her voice broke. Before they could see her tears, Star dashed off.

Panicked citizens ran in all directions, mindless as chickens in the shadow of a hawk. Aloof, Star strode up a short street toward a bridge that gave access to the Palace of the Phoenix. Four glowering guards barred the way. Around the palace, torches glittered redly on the dome's gold roof, and flickered in reflection in the moat, which had sunk so low slimy rocks jutted from the bottom.

Almost a peaceful scene, Amenstar thought, but the sparse water spoke of tragedy to come. The princess took a deep breath as she marched up to the guards. Emotions swirled and welled so large in her breast she thought she might choke. If her world ended, what could take its place?

A spear-wielding sergeant raised a hand and called, "Halt, citizen, no one is-oh! Your Majesty…"

Star had dropped her scarf. Immediately the guards snapped to attention, but then, as if confused, stamped forward like automatons to surround the small woman.

Puzzled, Star looked at her human prison and asked, "Sergeant, what's the meaning-"

"Samira Amenstar," interrupted the sergeant, "in the name of the bakkal, I place you under arrest."

The royal family's compound proved as tumultuous as the streets. In wing after sprawling wing, candlelight was as brilliant as the outside night was black. Star trotted to keep up, for the guards evidently had orders to rush her once found. Clerks and maids and junior officials and vizars hurried hither and thither, aimless as Cursrah's citizens.

At a corridor intersection, a tall vase had crashed in porcelain splinters, and no servants cleaned it up, so shards crunched underfoot. Somehow this simple, messy lapse worried Star, for all her life the royal mansions had been immaculate. Her heart began to thump so hard her breath came short.

Rounding a corridor, two guards almost overran Tunkeb. Star's second sister was a younger but taller edition of their mother. Tunkeb's head jerked when she beheld the prisoner, then she trotted alongside, happy to needle her worst rival.

"You're in terrible trouble, Star!" twittered Tunkeb. "Papa and Mama are furious. They blame you for all our troubles. Vrinda is gone. She's been the royal administrator since forever, but as soon as a cook reported the water had run out, Vrinda clapped her hands and disappeared in a puff of red smoke that set fire to a tapestry in the west wing-and our elder brothers are dead! They were assassinated by the Hatori, and all your bodyguards are dead. They were-"

"My bodyguards?" Star skidded to a halt, but the guards simply shoved along, so she trotted again asking, "Why?"

"They were executed," Tunkeb, both shocked and gleeful, reported, "because you sneaked away. Father's strongest soldiers chopped off their heads in your courtyard. They had to kneel and offer their necks-even M'saba, your rhinaur. They had to stand on a pedestal to chop off her head, and it took four blows. Captain Anhur-they made her watch her troop die, then she was trussed up and flogged to death. They threw all the bodies into your fishpond and the water turned red with blood. You're in dire straits…"

Tears spilling down her cheeks, head roaring, Amen-star heard no more as her escort whisked her into an opulent waiting room adjacent to her parents' wing. Tunkeb was stopped at the door. Amenstar's father and mother were in conference with the wizened grand vizar in her heavy turban. The vizar-in-waiting and other clerics stood nearby like a flock of vultures, all in dark brown robes with shaven, branded skulls.

Star was announced. The bakkal and first sama turned, and their daughter trembled to see their deep-cut frowns.

The bakkal barked, "Kneel!"

Before Star could comply, two guards mashed her down so fast her knees smacked the marble floor. More than the shooting pains, Star was frightened by her father's speaking to her, an unprecedented event. Always Star's mother had relayed his wishes, for the bakkal communed mainly with gods and ancient ancestors. Perhaps, Amenstar shuddered, she were already counted among the dead.

"Samira Amenstar, you are exposed as a harbinger of chaos." The bakkal's voice was ancient, though he was not an old man, and deep, as if issuing from a tomb. "Calim's charges have deserted Cursrah. Even now a dragon, unseen for centuries, ravages the marketplace. Our water is cut off and cannot be restored, so our city dies. The grand vizar has ordered the temples shut, for even the gods have abandoned us… even our Mistress of the Moon, who has smiled on Cursrah for eons. Now only Shar will receive us to her bosom, in the unplumbed bowels of the Underdark-"

"I am sorry-" Star began, but her hair was wrenched from behind, so she shut up.

"The end of the end has come," continued the bakkal. "Cursrah embraces death. So too will Cursrah's royal family, for we are the city's heart and soul. All of us will die, to one day live again. All but you."

In the ominous pause, Star's teeth chattered. She couldn't have spoken a word to save her life.

"For you, Star of Cursrah, Daughter of Disaster, the vizars ready a fate worse than death…"