would be soon.
She would die, Star supposed. Whatever this 'Protector' plan was, it must involve death, for the vizars practiced nothing else. Star's imagination ran riot with horrors. Would they skin her? Drain her blood? Drown her in some vile soup? Whatever the method, they could only kill her once, though it might be slow.
A curious lassitude crept over Amenstar, perhaps a function of the poultice, perhaps simple despair. Her family had retreated into petrification deeper than any grave. Her beloved city burned to ruins as her citizens ran mad. Cursrah was dead, its royal family gone, and she, a daughter of both, might as well be dead.
She had only one satisfaction. Punishment found her, but her friends had escaped. No doubt Gheqet and Tafir had found their families and fled across the grasslands. Forewarned of invaders, both young men had the good sense to vanish.
Star felt a cool tear trickle down her numb cheek. Gheqet and Tafir, those laughing teasing clowns, had been her only true friends in her short life. She would miss them like a piece of her heart. In some foreign port they'd eventually settle, she knew, pursue careers, marry, and raise families. The lonely princess's only hope was that, sometime in the future, one or both would occasionally think of her. With Cursrah blown into dust, those two young men might be the only memory in which Star endured. Star was startled as someone spoke in these still, chill chambers.
'Let's begin.' Rolling up her sleeves, setting aside her false tiger turban, the grand vizar fell to work. Dipping the dregs of a copper caldron, she diluted the petrifying brew with more wine, and stirred in six curled tails of scorpions.
A potion for her, Star knew. Suddenly angry, she resolved to fight, and flipped her head to flick away a tear. Show no weakness, she thought, even if she couldn't speak. Show them how bravely a princess endured their hideous ministrations.
As if reading her mind, the grand vizar ordered, 'Open her mouth… with tools, you idiots.'
Star wanted to scream. The evil vizar anticipated her every move, even such a pathetic one as trying to clamp her jaws shut. Two junior vizars caught Star's chin and cheeks. When she tried to bite, they jammed silver spatulas between her teeth. Leaning, straining with a cloth, the grand vizar poured the bitter tea down the princess's throat, choking her. Star willed herself to vomit, but her mouth was clamped shut. Sure enough, within minutes a stony stiffness inched through her muscles like frost.
'That should do,' the vizar gloated. 'Untie her.'
Released, Amenstar couldn't control her muscles. She sagged to the floor like an octopus out of water, as three acolytes wrestled her limp form onto a slab table. Star stared at a stone ceiling dotted by yellow circles of lamplight. She was almost a corpse, and she wondered what end portended. A knife between her ribs? A wire around her throat? A wet cloth over her face? She strained to hear the grand vizar's orders.
Papyrus crackled on an easel as it unrolled. Queer, thought Star. Whatever they planned, the operation was so new the highest-trained vizar had to follow written instructions.
'Knife,' came a hiss.
A hooked blade flashed before Star's eyes, and her heart thumped. A female acolyte cut into her grimy traveling clothes. As cold metal kissed Star's skin, to the floor went her stained tunic, her sweaty trousers, her linen breeks, even her sandals. Nude, dusky, and miserable, Star shivered under the reptilian gaze of the priests.
'Fleam,' the grand vizar said, calling for the bloodletting knife. 'Catch the flow in that silver basin. This will weaken her resistance.'
Star heard metal stropped on leather. A steel tooth bit the inside of her limp forearm. The grand vizar muttered a spell, invoking some vampiric touch, as Star felt heat trickle down her forearm. Loss of blood, or plain fright, made her dizzy.
'Razors.'
From a narrow bottle, an acolyte poured ice-cold olive oil onto Star's armpits, crotch, and legs, then saturated her black hair of dusty cornrows. Priests encircled the table holding obsidian razors mounted on gold handles. Shifting her arms, the priests scraped her armpits clean of fine dark hair. Spreading her legs, they did the same, then scraped her legs and even her forearms.
'Bucket.'
Yanking taut, the grand vizar's scalpel snipped off Star's beautiful beaded cornrows and dropped them tinkling in a pail. Soon a flint razor scraped her scalp, grating loudly in Star's ears. Even her eyebrows were scraped away, and her eyelashes trimmed short. Tears leaked from her unwinking eyes as, within minutes, she was as naked and hairless as any vizar.
'Roll her over. Bring that pail.'
More indignities. Star was washed head to toe, even between her toes, with icy saltwater then dried with rough linen towels. A felt swatch was pressed onto her tongue, and she couldn't gag it out. The princess trembled. What were they doing?
'Spoon. The tiniest one.'
The vizar ladled crimson drops into Star's unmoving eyes. The solution burned and itched, making her eyes tear. Worse, her vision grew blurry. Blinded! she wailed inwardly, but gradually her eyes focussed again, though the room was tinged red.
'Get the Ghast Salve. That copper dish there,' the new grand vizar instructed her juniors as if dissecting a frog.
'Normally, this step takes ninety days, with the first forty soaking in the tub. Here, we approximate the process. You, recite Abi-Dalzim's wilting as we work. Slowly! Necromancy takes time.'
A dish of salt-stinking paste was plunked on the table.
Spidery hands dug out handfuls, and to a monotonous sing-song dirge, slathered it on Star's body, rolled her, and applied more. The grand vizar daubed cold gunk onto Star's face, eyelids, lips, ears, nose, and her shaven pate, rubbing hard in circles to soak the gunk deep. Rubbed into her nostrils, Star identified natron, a sea mud used to dry out mummies. Fresh terror gripped her.
All the gods of Toril, I pray, have mercy! I'm not dead yet!
A junior wheedled, 'Shall I invoke bone blight, Master?'
'No. We decided her bones must remain strong. Unfold the shroud.'
Shroud! Amenstar almost jerked upright. Clothes donned by the dead!
With many hands lifting her, Star's legs and torso were cocooned in gauze that stuck to the salve coating her skin. The grand vizar fussed to smooth creases.
'As the cloth shrinks, it may abrade the skin. Bring the wrappings, small patches first.'
Linen patches were neatly packed between Star's toes and fingers. More were stuffed into her ears so sounds grew muffled.
'Now we wrap. Neatly, always, the legs first. While we wrap, each invoke the living embalm enchantment we rehearsed.'
Embalming! Preserving the dead! Star wanted to scream. How could anyone be embalmed who still lived?
Hands lifted one of Star's flaccid legs, which was wrapped in yards of linen bandages, as her calf had been after the lion wound-but this bandage was so tight! Her limbs would turn gangrenous for lack of blood!
'Stand back. Ready your brushes.' An iron pot was lifted off a brazier and set on the table, smoking evily. All the vizars dipped horsehair brushes. Star's bandage was saturated with a hot glue that smelled like a cedar grove in summer. It was resin, resin that would harden like a beetle's carapace.
Amenstar's heart quaked. Was she to be buried alive?
It couldn't be, she thought. Not even the unspeakably cruel vizars could do that. Entombed in a coffin or sepulchre, Star would suffer for days, slowing dying of thirst. Why administer such a horrific fate? For what purpose? Just to punish her? Could even her cold-blooded parents wish a lingering death on their own daughter?
'Another basket.'
Star glimpsed a long, ragged strip of linen, which was tugged tight around her torso and painted with resin. So it was true. She was swaddled like a mummy, to be entombed alive. Amenstar prayed desperately to any god who'd listen, but especially to Selune, gentlest and most motherly of goddesses. She knew the moon's light never penetrated to these depths, but the princess prayed anyway while priests entwined her arms. Daubing on resin,
