too late. A black wraith swept past Amber, swung a shining steel blade, and slashed the jackalwere's leg to the bone, breaking it. Upset, the monster tumbled across the corridor floor, but bounced up one-legged, slashing claws windmilling to keep its assailant back.
It was no use. A long spear with a cruel barbed point rammed the jackal's throat. The lycanthrope scratched splinters from the shaft as it died. Black robes milled, dust swirled, and two wounded jackalweres were dispatched by keen blades. Blood ran in streams. The fourth jackalwere bounded away with bandits in pursuit.
The White Flame's bandits, Amber realized, had finally caught up. She wanted to feel grateful and lucky, but she knew the raiders would be just as ruthless as the deceitful lycanthropes.
Rough hands tugged at Amber. Fingers probed her gashes and dismissed them. Water splashed in her mouth, which made her retch and roll over. Yet this simple action refreshed her, helped shake off the mind-fogging spell, so she could sit up and rub her face. Her wounds began to throb.
Hakiim slumped against a wall, teeth gritted, while bandits bandaged his sword arm, savaged and mangled by crooked fangs as he protected his throat. Reiver shook his head as if hung over. Amber ruminated, a fine lot of world-beaters we are. We should have stayed home.
The White Flame and a dozen bandits crowded the intersection, their black robes absorbing the meager torchlight. The chief dropped her face veil to expose puckered crisscrossed scars and obscene ridges where she lacked a nose and lips. Amber could now look at the mutilated face without feeling queasy. She should hate this woman for her casual cruelty but didn't; she felt only an overwhelming pity for the woman the White Flame had been.
Always curious, Amber wheezed, 'How did you cross the gluefloor?'
The Flame piffed, spittle flying off missing lips, and said, 'Only a fool would scavenge without knowing the simplest dispel charm. How else would one disarm a hundred traps?'
With damn fool luck, Amber thought.
Lowering her eyes respectfully, she said, 'I–I thank you for rescuing me and my friends-'
Two bandits grabbed Amber's hair and clothes and yanked her upright. The White Flame's skeletal hand slapped Amber's seeping cheek wound. Pain and a fiery itch made her swoon.
'Spare me your prattle, girl. I'd rather slit your nostrils and slice off your ears.' The glaring white face loomed inches from Amber's. 'I'll behead your friends and gouge out their bowels for vultures unless you lead me to that treasure in the next ten breaths.'
'It's down, Qayadin,' Amber panted, 'deep-not the lowest level, where the mummy guards, but next-to- lowest. The slaves packed tons of treasure and guards bricked up the walls. I can lead you right to it.'
Tou'd better.' The White Flame wrapped her veil around her face and said, 'You'll be watched. Run again, and I'll blind you.'
Amber believed her. Braced by two nomads, she pointed the way down the spiraling tunnel. Terror made her take mincing steps as if crossing hot coals.
Queer though, she reflected, the White Flame never asked about the mummy.
'Here.'
The bandits frowned at a blank wall. Amber pointed at the first of many griffon-head wall sconces, brass tarnished gray-green.
'Amenstar was escorted past this corridor as slaves piled treasure.'
A nomad woman tilted back her headscarf to peer at the wall. Blue dots were tattooed on her chin, and two blue lines downturned from her mouth, as if to deepen a frown.
'I see nothing-'
'No, the flatlander is right!' A scruffy-bearded dwarf bustled up, wedged a dagger blade into a cleft, and said, 'See these cracks-like spider webs? Limestone doesn't fracture that way. Amateurs-they mixed dirt into the mortar as a disguise, but it weakened the coating.'
The dwarf rapped at the fracture with the pommel of his dagger. Mortar crumbled to reveal lime-whitened bricks.
'Tear it down,' commanded the White Flame.
Eager hands pried with daggers and pounded with rocks to expose ancient bricks. Normally taciturn, even the nomads and mountain folk quivered and gibbered with excitement. The dwarfs fist hammered, and a dozen bricks cascaded inside. Heedless of traps, he rammed his arm into the hole and rummaged around.
Fairly dancing in place, nomads demanded, 'Well?'
The dwarf jerked his arm back. A fistful of gold glittered. A ruby fell to the floor. A pearl necklace with a malachite pendant hung from a sausage-like finger. The dwarfs bearded mouth pursed, like a girl expecting a kiss.
He squeaked, 'It's-real!'
Bricks were ripped out by a dozen hands, then everyone stopped in shock and amazement.
Torches glistened wetly on heaps within the vault. Light winked and sparkled on gold like liquid sunshine, along with gems, jeweled daggers, a crown, candlesticks, a silver mask, a tea tray, and much more in stacks high as a man's head. As nomads yanked away lower bricks, gold coins chinged and pinged on the stone floor like kernels of wheat. The hardened warriors barely paused when a half dozen skeletons clattered out, but they crunched the bones underfoot to grab loot.
Whooping, crying, keening, laughing, people caught coins, juggled them, reveled in their fatty cold feel, showed their comrades, stuffed pockets and pouches, and drooled over exotic jewelry and artifacts. Amber noted even the White Flame seemed pleased. With her head held high, and her veil in place, she might have been a queen.
'Go ahead, my faithful ones,' the bandit leader exclaimed. 'Take it all! It's yours!'
Even Amber marveled at the cascade of wealth. She'd glimpsed treasures in her tiara's visions, but dim pictures couldn't compare with this tumbling haystack of gold, precious stones, and ancient gifts. Hakiim and Reiver were breathless.
The thief muttered, 'There's more than they can haul away. This tribe would need ten trips to steal a fraction of it.'
'And it's only one chamber,' gushed Hakiim. 'Amber said there were dozens of chambers like it, and none of this is even stealing… I mean, it's free for the taking. Everyone who's ever even heard of this city is dead.'
Except the mummy, thought Amber, who's partly alive, or undead, or hung in some awful limbo between.
Nomads dug deep. Out came antique jewelry, gem-studded books, a gilded bird cage, a hand-carved staff topped with ivory, an ornamental helmet. Even non-precious items, such as a turquoise jar stippled with black marks that Amber recognized. Standing on the floor and buried in coins was a queer framework bristling with tin horns and flutes and tubes to conduct water. Not understanding the latter contraption, the nomads twisted off the instruments and bladders to dig out the gems beneath.
'What's that thing?' asked Hakiim.
'The clepsydra. Part of it.' To puzzled glances, Amber explained, 'The wonderful music-making engine I told you about. When it's all together, you pour water into the top, and I don't know, bladders squeeze so horns and flutes play tunes.'
Both men shook their heads, and Hakiim asked, 'How could the ancient ones build incredible engines that we don't comprehend? How did our ancestors forget such valuable knowledge?'
'No one wrote it down,' stated Amber, 'so the knowledge vanished. Like the whole history of Cursrah… lost to the wind.'
If I get out of here alive, Amber silently vowed, I'll write Cursrah's history and see it's not lost.
Amber saw Reiver flick his eyes in two directions. The bandits had clearly forgotten their prisoners. The three could have slunk away if the White Flame hadn't stood beside.
Taking a deep breath, Amber asked humbly, 'Qayadin, we've found you treasure. May we go?'
'Go?' Whirling, the White Flame doffed her veil, a tactic to shock her audience, and said, 'Are you mad? Think me a scatterbrain? This cannot be all the empire's treasure. You'll uncover the rest, or I'll flog the skin off your back!'
Amber was tired of ingratitude, dire threats and torment, and for being punished when she'd done nothing to
