watched the captives stagger past, dark eyes revealing neither interest nor pity.
Beyond the pass, a shallow valley dead-ended at rising rocks and a sheer cliff. Evergreen cedars, arbor vitae, and scruffy red pines lined the hillside. A stream trickled from their roots. A frugal fire illuminated perhaps thirty people who shared a roasting goat and baked groundnuts. Amber's stomach squeaked at the smell of food, though she felt like she needed to sleep for a week first.
Weaving on her last legs, Amber stalled. An ogre's hand clamped her hair and frog-marched her across the dewy grass. Ahead, removed from the campfire, a slender woman sat on a rock like a queen upon a throne. The sister ogre attended her without speaking, as did two guards with spears, one a blocky dwarf. Everyone in the camp wore headscarves and long or short woolen robes, for the mountain nights were as cold as the desert's. Amber was propped before the reigning woman. The captive managed not to fall at her feet. Reiver and Hakiim, battered and tattered, slouched at either side, almost asleep on their feet.
Through slits in a white kaffiyeh, blue eyes studied Amber. Even given the chilly air, this chief was swaddled as if for winter. Her overlarge headscarf pillowed her neck, a voluminous vest reached to her knees, and her quilted, baggy trousers were stuffed into tall boots lined with sheepskin. Pinned to her headscarf was a badge of beaten silver, a wavy fire sigil. Unnerved by the blue-eyed stare, Amber looked at the ground, even managed a tiny curtsy that didn't crumple her on the sward.
'You know me?'
The woman's voice was husky and forced, as if she'd smoked too long at a hookah pipe. Her common tongue was accented by lyrical Alzhedo, making her hard to understand. Behind Amber, resin-rich firewood crackled and snapped, but otherwise the camp as silent as dead Cursrah.
Inwardly Amber fretted. She had no clue who this woman was, though an Alzhedo accent spoke of high birth. She supposed these were ragtag hill bandits who waylaid traders and pilgrims, attacked caravans, and raided mountain monasteries and abbeys and the prosperous summer villas overlooking the River Agis. This must be their bandit chief, but Amber could hardly say that. Dim-witted by fatigue, she fixed on the white-metal sigil that winked in firelight.
Inspiration struck. Bowing, clumsily giving the annuv signal of humility with bound hands, Amber babbled, 'Y-yes, Syl-Sadidrif. You are the famous White Flame.'
The chief nodded, and Amber mentally sighed. Calimshan sprouted more mystic titles than cacti. She'd added the title 'Leader and Warrior/Stranger' to her guess. Amber mustered all possible respect, for this woman owned their lives.
'You know the history of these lands?' husked the Flame. 'The epics that extol how outnumbered forces won victory because their hearts were pure and their cause just? Do you?'
'Y-yes, Qayadin.' At talk of armies, Amber boosted her rank to 'General.' As befit a social inferior, she looked no higher than the woman's waist and added, 'Some of it.'
'You know of the Jhannivars?' The woman bit off her words angrily, then coughed hard and long. 'Of the longstanding prophecy that Winter's Lion shall meet Summer's Scourge? How true believers rallied to Prince Yusuf Jhannivar in his glorious quest for the rightful throne of Tethyr? How he was betrayed behind the walls of Myratma?'
'Some, milady…' hedged Amber.
Jhannivar was a common name among the desert's nomads. Some of their clan, reported the marketplace grapevine and town criers, had helped a prince besiege Myratma this past winter. Myratmans called him the Pretender and a rebel, and his force was been wiped out or driven off. Details were hazy, for Calimshites considered their business rival Tethyr a backwater of squabbling fools.
Amber strove to sound neutral when she said, 'Was the prince-killed?'
'Betrayed!' husked the White Flame behind her thick scarf. 'Cut down like a dog by men he trusted. Sacrificed like a lamb in his sleep. The doors opened so Tethyr's soldiers could rush in with steel and fire and punish us. Traitors, they called us, they who hired the vilest assassins of the Sword Coast, cowards who paid the despicable Clenched Fist to do their dirty work… the evil connivers who did this!'
The White Flame wrenched away her veil. Amber almost fainted, and was glad for the dim light. No nose, no eyebrows, no lips. A face of unbending white scar tissue and skin red and shot with purple veins. Reiver, who'd seen many horrors, trembled. Hakiim fainted.
'I was tortured for days with fire,' growled the White Flame. Amber realized her lungs had been seared by smoke and screams. Coughing interrupted her. The three adventurers waited, trembling, and tried not to look at her skull-like face. 'Tortured with fire, then driven out to die in the wilderness, but I live. I live because I burn with a white-hot flame to punish my enemies, and you, young woman, will aid me.'
'I–I?' Swaying on her feet, Amber jerked and teetered. Normally Amber talked with her hands, like every Calimshite, but her bonds made her stutter. 'Wh-what can I-Q-Qayadin, I don't know-'
'My scouts report that a ruined city has appeared in the desert. You've been there. You found gold and treasure.'
Amber sputtered, so Reiver took over. 'Great Warrior, Exalted One, Mover of Mountains,' he groveled, 'we found but a few coins and tiny gems in the dust. Someone must have spilled them-'
The White Flame flicked a hand, and Reiver was belted across the head by an ogre's hand, a blow that could kill a camel. The young thief bounced on the grass and stayed down. The leader addressed Amber.
'I have no eyelids, but still eyes. I see your brow. Dare you lie?'
'Oh!' Amber cursed her clumsy memory. Through this ordeal she'd worn the moonstone tiara, which the ogres hadn't looted. The White Flame grew angry, thinking she'd lied. 'Great Leader, I–I forgot-'
A hand like a skeleton's claw, with only puckers for fingernails, wrenched the kaffiyeh and tiara from Amber's head. Blue eyes in the bone-stripped face studied the artifact.
'Is it enchanted? Tell me!'
'It-it's a storytelling charm, Great Lady. It shows pictures from the olden days of the city. Cursrah, called Calim's Cradle and the College. A princess was given it…' Amber rattled on and on, hoping to be spared torture by telling everything. '… If you don it when the moon is up, you see these images…'
Half listening, the White Flame pushed back her headscarf, eliciting more shudders, for her head bore only scant patches of black, scraggly hair. With bony fingers she eased the tiara onto her naked skull, holding it in place, for without hair it was too large. Seconds ticked by while Amber held her breath.
'You lie!'
Jumping from her stony throne, the White Flame cast the tiara spinning into the darkness. A sandpaper hand smacked Amber's cheek. Weak, the prisoner was bowled over. Terrified, aching, and tired, Amber cried freely.
'I don't lie! It only works in moonlight, and the moon's not yet-'
'Grab her!' Ignoring Amber's words, the White Flame shrilled, 'Thrust her into the flames, as I was!'
Everyone in the camp, it seemed, jumped to obey her orders. Shoving and grabbing, three men and a woman hoisted Amber by her elbows and ankles and trotted her toward the campfire. Other bandits scurried aside or kicked up the fire.
Amber shrieked, begged, pleaded, screamed, but no one paid attention.
Straddling the fire, kicking goat bones and twisted sticks to make them flare, the bandits leaned Amber forward until red and yellow flames filled her vision. Heat brushed her face, then warmed it. Screaming, arching her back until her spine felt like it would snap, Amber wriggled and kicked to no avail. Fire and smoke were hot and dry on her face. She shut her mouth and nose rather than breathe flame. Her chin and nose were cooking, incredibly painful, and she kicked anew.
Shoved lower, Amber felt her glorious thick black mane fall around her face, then sizzle and pop. She smelled burning hair, and Amber screamed and screamed.
10
The 383rd Anniversary of the Great Arrival
'You'll be sorry now,' growled Samira Amenstar to the cavalry captain. 'Striking royalty comes at the cost of the offending hand… and then your head.'
