ventured past this point.'
'Because there's treasure on the far side,' gushed Hakiim.
'A good guess. Now what can we tread on that's not leather?'
'I know,' Hakiim said. He whirled and trotted back up the sloping corridor, then returned with an armload of bricks. 'Stepping stones!'
In a few minutes they'd plunked bricks on the shiny floor, crouched atop them, and bridged farther. With a thief's instinct to leave the least trace, Reiver laid the bricks close to one wall, which also gave handholds. Still Amber and Hakiim held their breath as Reiver stepped from brick to brick to the far side.
Balancing, the thief joked, 'If I slip, you'll have to saw my foot off at the ankle.'
His friends didn't laugh. Hugging the wall, the other two got across safely.
Reiver pointed his torch at the descending darkness and said, 'The last stretch.'
'I'll lead,' said Amber.
Amber's heart clanged like a leper's bell as she peeked around a corner. Straight ahead, in a short corridor wreathed in shadows, loomed two huge figures with poised halberds.
Reiver said over his friends' panting, 'A real guard would've cloven us in half by now.'
Slowly, barely breathing, the adventurers crept to within six feet of the armed figures. Guarding the short corridor were two huge demihumans, a man and woman. Each had a huge nose topped by a bump, curled and pointed ears, kinky, thick hair, fat-fingered hands, and the the body of a rhinoceros. Each loomed almost ten feet high, and their curious halberds with lyre-shaped blades were just as tall. They wore leather armor across their thick chests and mantles over their hindquarters like war-horses. Each statue was inches thick with dust, but underneath lay bright and precise paint.
'Rhino people?' breathed Hakiirn.
'Not even in The Tales To Be Remembered have I heard of such things,' added Amber, 'and look there.'
There were more guards, and Amber and Hakiim gasped. Eight were human, dressed in old-fashioned red tunics, holding spears and tall, triangular shields. Two more demihumans stood or rather crouched behind. Their upper torsos were human, with ruddy and rough skin, but their hands were three-fingered claws. Their torsos were segmented armor and they stood on eight spidery legs.
'Manscorpions,' breathed Hakiim. 'I thought the last of them died out ages ago.'
'They may have been standing here for ages or more,' countered Reiver. 'See what they guard?'
Past the phalanx of guards stood solid double doors. A bisected phoenix of gold glittered in the torchlight.
'These are marvelous statues,' Hakiim said. He poked a rhinaur and found it hard as marble.
'They resemble the Askar of Stone who killed Wythal the Vile,' murmured Amber.
'Before we go past,' Reiver cautioned, and lowered his torch, 'first look at the floor.'
All the tunnel floors had been plain stone or fitted stone that bridged holes. This short corridor was laid with square flagstones of polished, pink-white marble same as the palace far above, but with one difference. Here each tile bore a central hole big enough to pass a wine bottle through.
Spooked but still game, Amber went first, creeping down the corridor careful not to touch the cold statues or step on a hole. Her hands shook as she handed Hakiim her torch and pushed at the heavy doors. They resisted, crumbs of cedar resin trickling from cracks. Amber shoved harder, and the doors popped open.
She stopped, stunned, then said, 'It's the palace all over again.'
Like its twin far above, the room was round, paved with pink-white marble and painted with colorful frescoes that glowed even under a coat of dust. Seven false doorways were painted black, as were the backs of the doors they'd opened. Arches and columns ornately carved with zigzags supported a domed ceiling. Recessed was a circle inlaid with a nighttime mosaic of stars and a crescent moon, so the intruders realized the original Phoenix Palace must have boasted an open roof. The room was slightly smaller, all the floor tiles had the same fist-sized hole, and this room was occupied.
Mostly they were guards, Amber noted, packed as tightly as sardines in a net. Soldiers ringed the room in ranks five deep, the only clear space being here by the doors. There were five hundred or more, Amber guessed, and a tenth of them rhinaurs or manscorpions, all at rigid attention with spears or halberds upright. The hall's center sported a raised dais, and more soldiers were ranked elbow to elbow around it, facing outward, dusty and blank-eyed.
Amber whispered, 'Just soldiers?'
'No,' the thief said. Taller than Amber, Reiver could see past the guards ringing the dais. 'Someone else.'
On mouse feet the three friends minced up to the outward facing soldiers and peeked between them. The first ranks were servants, to judge by their simple clothes and close-cropped heads. Then came files of ornate courtiers or advisors or secretaries, their gaudy colors muted by dust. Behind them clustered occult priests with shaven skulls branded with bizarre sigils. Some sixty statues formed the ring, Amber guessed.
At the very center, directly under the fake crescent moon sky, was grouped a family.
Hakiim blurted, 'That's the pasha!'
'Is this it?' Amber wondered aloud. 'What I heard in the summons? The city's 'greatest treasure' is statues of a royal family?'
On a low chair sat a dour man with a hawk's nose, striped headcloth, and a headband in the shape of an upright cobra. Flanking him were four women of various ages, regal and serene, obviously queens. Ranged nearby, all facing out, were two dozen relatives from ancient crones to children. All were still, silent, layered with age and dust, mute. Silence, threatening and smothering as darkness, pressed upon the living trio as they circled the ring of soldiers to glimpse all the royal family.
'Amber,' squeaked Hakiim, 'this one looks like you!'
Slowly, as if she'd expected this discovery all along, Amber squeezed between two guards and stepped up onto the dais. A young woman stood arrow straight, haughty nose and chin high, full lips pouting. A princess, Amber realized, with the same square shoulders, modest upthrust bosom, and (Amber noted with disgust) milk cow hips. The statue's hair was braided into cornrows and beads, while Amber's blew like a lion's mane, but both were black topped. Amber might have been gazing into an antique mirror.
'What does it mean?' Hakiim asked. 'Is she-you?'
'Amber in an earlier life,' marveled Reiver.
Amber didn't hear. On the princess's head rested an enscrolled tiara set with a square stone. Yet something looked odd. Amber saw gaps between the tiara's band and the woman's cornrows. No one could have carved a statue that intricate, she knew.
With icy calm, Amber's calloused thumb stroked the tiara's moonstone. Dust brushed away to reveal a dull glow. With a tiny trickle of dust, Amber plucked the tiara from her stone counterpart's brow. A nervous laugh burst from her.
'Look,' she said, 'it's real! Real silver, and a true moonstone.'
'Better put it back,' Hakiim said, and his torch jiggled. 'When you touched the moon globe, it triggered a sandstorm.'
Reiver echoed the warning, then both of them shouted, 'Amber, no!'
Before she could be stopped, or stop herself, Amber flicked back her headscarf and tugged the tiara onto her brow.
Scowling, worried, Hakiim and Reiver squeezed between statues and bracketed Amber, terrified of what might happen. Amber's dark eyes burned queerly under the silver band and lustrous moonstone.
Waiting, waiting… until Amber said, 'Nothing.'
'Good!' Hakiim gushed. 'You shouldn't-'
In the suffocating silence came a scuffle and a scrape. Amber, Reiver, and Hakiim stopped breathing.
There was a shuffle and the jangle of jewelry, and into the pool of their torchlight shambled a dingy yellow figure. Shuffling, lurching, a figure wrapped in rotted rags approached the ring of statues. Powdery bandages covered the creature's limbs, torso, and head. Crackling at every step, the wrappings shed resin dust and crumbs of herbs. Only the monster's hands were bare, the bandages having shorn off like milkweed. Petrified skin was the
