Star of Cursrah

by Clayton Emery

  An acolyte entered the room bearing a gilded mask. As it was set on the table, Star felt new trepidation. Fashioned of layered cartonnage, the mask bore her face, down to her pouting red lips, insolent dark eyes, and beaded cornrows, or rather, what her face had resembled in life, before the vizars shaved and smeared her. The princess swallowed a sob. She’d been beautiful and free only hours ago.

  “Behold our Protector! The painted eyes let one see out … do you see?”

  After hours of quiet mumbling, the grand vizar’s loud jibe jarred Star, even with ears muffled.

  “But a few steps remain, the most important now. Fetch them, my willing hands!”

  Acolytes shuffled from the lab. For the moment, Star was alone with the newly crowned grand vizar. The sexless woman had so far bustled, busy and businesslike, but now her cruel nature erupted like bile.

  “Moonstruck ghouls, are we?” she sneered. “Ice-hearted bloodsuckers? Twisted tarantulas? You’ll regret those words, samira. You’ll learn who truly wields the power in Cursrah—us, her most potent artisans, masters of life and death!”

  A scuffling and jangling sounded out the doorway. Star wondered who came, since now only vizars occupied these depths. Everyone else had been sealed up tight.

  She was wrong.

  Seven priests dragged in Gheqet and Tafir in chains!

  “Star—what?” Gheqet goggled. “Anachtyr’s Tongue, is that you?”

  “They—shaved your head!” Tafir’s eyes were red, wide with terror. “Why are you—You’re swaddled like a mummy! What are they doing to you?”

  Amenstar tried to speak, but she only croaked and drooled like an idiot. Tears burst from her eyes. Her only comfort had been that her friends were safe, and now they were prisoners too. Truly, she lamented, the vizars had stolen her body, then crushed her heart and spirit too, and it was all her own fault.…

  “Down!” commanded the grand vizar, and Tafir and Gheqet were shoved to their knees. Gheqet still wore his grimy work shirt and kilt, and Tafir the stolen tunic of Oxonsis. Iron manacles locked their hands behind their backs and were chained to their ankles, so they hobbled or hopped like frogs. Now vizars yanked their chains so taut the prisoners’ foreheads were mashed against the floor.

  “Soldiers smashed down our gate!” Tafir called to Star. “They knocked my father sprawling, said the bakkal ordered I come, then hauled me here with Gheq! What will they do to us, Star? Star?”

  The fellows didn’t realize Amenstar’s tongue was paralyzed by dumbcane and petrifying potion. Strangling in despair, Star thought it just as well she was mute. What could she say? How could she apologize for endangering their lives? How explain that, simply by associating with a princess, they’d doomed themselves, unfair as it seemed? Nothing in her family’s mad decisions made sense, and they’d even hurled their own daughter to perdition. Now the only friends Star had were also swept away in the storm of destruction. Star was to blame for this too, yet helpless to change anything. Unable to speak, Amenstar could only weep as her friends shivered on the cold stone floor.

  The grand vizar crowed with evil pleasure, “Cursrah, the lion of Calimshan, has been pulled down by jackals because some hapless fools ignored their responsibilities. Now Cursrah’s finest citizens sleep until our city can again stride forth in glory. Until that day, while Cursrah sleeps, she must be protected! This Protector must be strong enough to endure untold ages.”

  Stained brown robe swishing, the grand vizar walked between Tafir and Gheqet, gently entwining her bony fingers in their light and dark hair.

  “You understand the need for sacrifice, don’t you, citizens? To be strong, the Protector must draw upon the strength of others, for one lonely soul could never endure. In a long, long not-life to come, the Protector will need kindred spirits, spirits of those who were closest and dearest in life. You two have been selected to serve Cursrah’s greatest endeavor. Be honored.”

  “H-honored!” The word was torn from Gheqet’s throat.

  “Honored,” mimicked the grand vizar. “You two are the most important components in the Protector’s enchantment, and I, who will bind the spirit itself. A trinket is needed too. Fetch the pillow!”

  Pillow? wondered Amenstar.

  An acolyte brought forth a pillow topped with a bundled handkerchief. Amenstar recalled her birthday, when she’d received the moonstone tiara. This pillow looked much the same. Why?

  Reverently unfolding the cloth, the grand vizar removed a large necklace. Amenstar gaped. Double chains of fine-wrought silver supported a plain setting that held a multifaceted fire opal, a girasol mined only in the hottest, most desolate deserts. Glossy and milky, much like a moonstone, the stone winked red deep inside, as if licked by fire. Why did it seem familiar?

  “The Star of Cursrah,” hissed the grand vizar, “crafted for the royal family’s eldest daughter, a gift for her wedding day. A double chain to symbolize two souls joined. A girasol to rival the moon, yet lit with a red and rebellious spirit, like the princess herself. Her marriage, it was hoped, would protect Cursrah like a benevolent star smiling from the heavens.…”

  A gasp escaped the princess. When her mother presented the silver tiara, she’d mentioned a “matching piece of jewelry—a surprise for later.” So long ago, it seemed.

  “… gods decreed otherwise,” the vizar droned on, “for no wedding shall there be, yet one Star of Cursrah shall be wedded to the other Star of Cursrah, and the double chains shall symbolize the union of two souls. The red fire will serve a rebellious spirit, as it sleeps from one life to the next.”

  What did this babble mean? Amenstar wondered. She watched, fascinated, as the grand vizar coiled the gaudy necklace in a shallow silver pan with the fire opal centermost. Stooping, she slid the pan under the noses of Gheqet and Tafir, as if to show off the necklace. While the prisoners strained against their chains and captors, the grand vizar summoned an acolyte.

  “Sickle.”

  A curved blade, razor edge winking in lantern light, was given to the vizar. Amenstar tried to scream, but only gargled spit.

  “With the blessings of Shar, Goddess of the Underdark,” intoned the grand vizar. “Here you shall remain, here you shall serve, here you shall obey. Let two lives be joined as one by a river of blood.”

  Bending, chanting obscenely, the vizar slipped the blade under the friends’ chins. Gheqet and Tafir made a mighty effort to break their bonds, to hurl off their chains, to scramble to their feet and run.

  Struggling against her thick mummy wrappings, Amenstar howled an anguished, “Nooooo!”

  Glimpsing the blade’s keen edge, Gheqet and Tafir screamed with Amenstar. With one deft slice, the grand vizar slit their throats. Pinned by chains and claws, the young men barely wriggled as hot blood gouted from their necks in a blazing crimson waterfall. Amenstar heard strangled sobs from severed windpipes, a ghastly whistling, then the spraying and splashing of blood drowned all sound. In seconds, the men were drained dry. Their blood filled the silver pan to overflowing, spilled to the stone, and ran in rivers around their knees.

  For the merest instance, as their bodies sagged, Amenstar saw an iridescent glimmer, a silver-purple flash travel between her two friends and the bloody silver bowl, then it winked out. Vizars tugged the dead men aside and without ceremony stuffed the carcasses under a big table in the corner.

  Retrieving the red-brimming bowl, the grand vizar fished out the Star of Cursrah and wiped it clean with linen rags. Amenstar gaped. The milky-white fire opal had changed, and was now as red as fresh blood. With great dignity, the grand vizar draped the double chains over Star’s shaven head so the bloody gem rested on her bandaged breast.

  “The final ingredient, samira. Your friends’ life-force, if not their very souls, has been transferred to the gem, and so to you. Their spirits will sustain you for centuries, if need be. For you shall not sleep as does your family, samira. A guardian must be alert, awake. From you we have fashioned, for the first time in Cursrah’s
history, a living mummy. You will be the Protector, and guard the family you failed so treacherously. Do you not see the irony, dear Amenstar? In life, you shirked your duty. In unlife, you are forced to perform it.”

  Ignoring Star’s garbled cries and weeping, the vizars worked quickly. Star’s head was bound in bandages and painted with resin, avoiding only her eyes and mouth and nose, then all wrapped in gilt cloth. Amenstar could see only blurs through a small, gauzy slit. The painted cartonnage mask was lowered over her head and bound in place, and Star saw only blackness.

  The living mummy felt the vizars hoist her onto a hardwood pallet. She didn’t see the acolytes whisk her down the dark tunnel. On the lowermost level, where resided the mummies of Star’s ancestors, and not far from the sealed doors of the replica court where slept Star’s family, gaped a dark, narrow vault. Inside waited a stack of bricks, a bucket of wet mortar, and a sarcophagus with a lid painted in Amenstar’s image. With no more ceremony, the living mummy was tilted into the coffin. The heavy lid was jostled into place and sealed with resin pitch, and the sarcophagus stood upright. It could stand that way forever, if need be.

  The grand vizar asked her acolytes to join hands before the sarcophagus. She thanked them for their hard work, gently touching each upon the brow. One by one, the acolytes collapsed, dead, their brains blasted to atoms. The grand vizar didn’t bother to enchant their corpses, for the Protector needed no protection.

  Unaccustomed to masonry, working by guttering lanterns, the grand vizar bricked up the entrance to the vault. Mortar dripped and oozed in uneven globs, even that labor was finally finished.

  One last task remained. Stepping to the sarcophagus, pressing her brow against the cool wood, the grand vizar chanted in a voice hoarse and low. She laid upon herself the same curse laid upon Gheqet and Tafir.

  Mashing her brow against Star’s image, she finished the incantation with a shout, “I welcome a better life!”

  For a second, a silver-purple glimmer flashed in the black cell as the grand vizar’s life-force, and her magical might, were transferred to the coffin’s occupant.

  An empty shell, the grand vizar’s corpse fell at Star’s painted feet.

  Inside the wooden sarcophagus, Samira Amenstar, the last living Cursrahn, wept, cried, pleaded, and prayed. Despair overwhelmed her, for she’d learned that there were fates worse than death. By her own deeds and her family’s cruelty, she was condemned to a living death, to be always awake, always trapped, always regretting.

  Her only escape now would be from her own mind, a long, agonizing fall into total insanity.

  And insane she’d become, for the only sound Amenstar heard were the screams of her dying friends, ringing in her ears.

  Forever.

  17

  The Year of the Gauntlet

  “They died?” asked Reiver, seven thousand, four hundred, and seventeen years later.

  “Their souls are trapped in a moonstone?” echoed Hakiim.

  Amber nodded dully. Her companions massaged their throats. All spoke quietly, having no wish to attract bandits, and out of respect for the dead. Crouching in an unused alcove, they nursed a single torch to keep light low.

  “The mummy is you,” breathed Hakiim.

  “No!” Amber almost shrieked, then shook her head. Sand rained from her headscarf; a vestige of the wind walker assault. “No, the mummy is Amenstar, not me!”

  “But they’re our ancient counterparts,” said Reiver. “You said their fates must be linked to ours.”

  “No, they mustn’t,” objected Hakiim. “They got killed … or worse …”

  “Our feet were guided here, though I can’t guess by which god’s caprice,” Amber said. Her voice quavered, still shaky from seeing the grisly deaths and Star’s frightening imprisonment. “At least our goal is clear.”

  “I’ll say,” piped Hakiim. “We climb the next staircase and run for home!”

  Reiver agreed.

  “No, shame on you both,” Amber snapped. “Didn’t you hear? Those aren’t statues, they’re living people about to be resurrected. Imagine five hundred bloodthirsty warriors led by a power-mad bakkal. What’s the first city they’ll attack? The closest—a city named after Calim’s most hated enemy—Memnon … our home!”

  “Memnon has three thousand soldiers,” objected Reiver. “It’s called the Garrison City and the City of Soldiers—”

  “If they’re posted at home,” Amber interrupted. “If the pasha hasn’t sent them away on spring campaign to attack Tethyr. Five hundred warriors could swarm over Memnon’s walls and slaughter half the populace. It’ll be worse than the Great Fires. They’ll put our parents and families to the sword, just as Samir Pallaton’s army devastated Cursrah.”

  “Troops would come from Calimport—” began Hakiim.

  “Too late—and they’d be blasted by Cursrah’s death-worshiping vizars. The Cursrahns could possess ancient and powerful magicks that Memnon’s own vizars couldn’t stop. The bakkal himself was a priest-king. He’d have necromantic powers we can’t imagine, and don’t forget the bakkal’s treasure, tons of it. It’s enough to hire every mercenary in Calimshan. This army could conquer Memnon in days. Burn, pillage, loot, and enslave our citizens … we’d have no home to return to.”

  “If the bakkal and his army awaken,” hedged Hakiim.

  “They’ll awaken,” Amber assured him. She felt bone weary from constant fighting and fretting. “Cursrah prepared their sleepers well. They forgot nothing, and now the city’s coming to life. The army’ll be loosed like war dogs before Calimshan even knows it. It’s up to us to stop them, right here. It’s my duty.”

  “Yours?” echoed the two.

  “You said Amenstar wasn’t you,” insisted Reiver. “If she failed, why is it your duty to set her mistakes right?”

  “Because,” Amber struggled to explain, “Amenstar learned her lesson too late. She shirked her duties—yes, as did many others, but she also—and events spun out of control like a cyclone. In the end Star realized her mistakes and has probably regretted them for centuries. Now she’s trapped as a mummy and asks me for help. I swear, by all the gods of sea and sky, she’ll get it, even if I must descend alone.”

  “What can we do?” Hakiim was gentle, no longer arguing. “How can we stop the bakkal’s army? We’re only three, and none of us fighters.”

  “We’ll—We can—” Amber halted. “I don’t know what we’ll do, but someone else does.”

  “Who?”

  “Amenstar.”

  “The air is green—and it stinks!”

  “Hush,” Amber hissed.

  She raised her torch and the flame jiggled because her hand shook. She peered across the corridor, hoping and yet fearing to see the mummy. Squinting didn’t help. A green fog or smoke permeated the air, rank as burning garbage.

  “The fog’s coming from there,” Reiver said, pointing.

  Opposite ran the short corridor leading to the royal court. Guarding the double doors were the bakkal’s burly guards: two manscorpions, two rhinaurs, and eight humans, all with spears or lyre-shaped halberds. They stood on square flagstones that also bore the fist-sized holes, same as in the royal court. From the holes exuded the green haze, coiling upward lazily like cobras rearing from baskets.

  “What’s the smoke?” asked Hakiim.

  “I don’t … know.” Near panic, Amber’s thoughts skittered around her skull like frightened mice. In her visions, she’d seen vizars place something underneath the holed flagstones, but couldn’t recall what. She’d seen too much lately. “Never mind for now,” she said. “I want to see the rest of the corridor, to see if anything can help us.”

  “What about the mummy?” asked Reiver.

  Amber shivered. She wasn’t ready to face her undead counterpart, yet.

  “Come,” she said. “This is the last level. Let’s explore, and don’t lag.”

  Scuffling close together, the adventurers circled the corridor. The outer walls, they learned, w
ere lined with tall, narrow vaults. Some yawned empty, but many were sealed with bricks and mortar.

  “Like the treasure vaults on the higher levels,” mused Reiver.

  “Except for these,” corrected Amber.

  By torchlight the intruders from another time studied square granite plaques cemented into the bricks. Etched by ancient masons were simple pictographs and complicated hash marks.

  “I’ve seen these before,” whispered Amber, “along the walls of cemeteries at home.”

  “Tombs,” said Hakiim. “Down here, they must be kings and queens.”

  “The pictures must be names.” Amber traced images with her fingers and said, “A raven. A crocodile. A cloud. The marks must be the years they reigned.”

  “Here. She was here,” Reiver’s voice sounded small down the corridor.

  His friends joined him. Broken bricks and crushed mortar littered the floor before a breached doorway.

  “See it?” the thief asked. “Bashed open from the inside.”

  Amber shuddered. Inside the tall vault stood a sarcophagus thick with dust, its painted image obscured. Broken bones—whose?—littered the floor, and something else.

  Stepping into the tomb on quaking legs, Amber picked up a gilded mask, surprisingly light. Painted on it was Amber’s own face: dark eyes, pouting lips, black hair. Reiver hissed and Hakiim prayed.

  “Entombed alive for millennia,” whispered Amber. “Imagine.”

  “Where is she now?” asked Hakiim.

  “Only one place left,” said Reiver. “The royal court.”

  Around the corridor they stalked on feather-light feet, torches in one hand; capture noose, scimitar, and dagger in the other. Amber heard her sandals scuff and her breath rasp, but nothing else.

  “Quiet as a tomb,” she jested.

  No one laughed. Amber stopped cold. They’d circled the corridor and come back to the royal court’s entrance. Dusty guards glared, wreathed in green fog.