The lean, dark captain hammered her lips into a tight white line. After four hours' ride-and endless grumbled threats from Amenstar-the cavalry and their captives entered the hills northeast of Cursrah. Before them unfolded a city of tents. Foot soldiers and horse troopers marched and galloped hither and yon. Scores of slaves chopped, baked, and dished food onto long plank tables.
'What are they up to?' murmured Gheqet.
Tafir nodded to an open-air workshop. Dozens of slaves repaired and manufactured shovels, pickaxes, mattocks, and crowbars. Slave children wove rushes into baskets heaped up like winter apples.
'Hundreds of hand tools and baskets to carry dirt,' the architect's apprentice said. 'There must be some kind of excavation going on nearby.'
'Make way. Prisoners for questioning,' bellowed their escort.
Slaves and soldiers sidestepped. The camp was laid in neat military lines, with Samir Pallaton's big square headquarters tent centermost. The cavalry patrol rode the three captives up to six spear-wielding guards. As they dismounted, Samira Amenstar took charge and marched into the tent as if she owned it. The cavalry captain trotted to keep up.
'Samir Pallaton!' shrilled Amenstar.
Everyone in the tent turned. Prince Pallaton and nine advisers studied parchment maps pegged to an easel. Servants hovered at the back of the big tent, and eight guards were posted about. All wore undyed linen tunics emblazoned with red ox heads.
Amenstar still wore her riding clothes of plum blouse and yellow trousers smudged with dust and campfire smoke. Her silver tiara and cornrowed hair were streaked with blood from a sliced ear. The young woman looked every inch a princess as her fury boiled over.
'This woman whipped me!' Star shrilled. A royal finger stabbed at the sweating cavalry captain, who stood at rigid attention. 'As a princess of the blood, I demand she be punished with her life-flayed alive and her guts hurled to the jackals! She struck me, if you can believe it, with her filthy, common hands, knocked me off my horse, called me a bitch and a trull, and lashed me like some slacking dung shoveller. I have condemned her to be burned at the stake, and I order you, as a royal heir to a throne, to punish her immediately.'
Placidly, Samir Pallaton waited until Star ran out of breath. Handsome and hirsute, stocky and swarthy, the prince wore a common uniform accented by leather cross-belts, shoulder wings, and the red ox head sigil stamped on a leather disk. On campaign, he wore matched short swords at each hip, a leather skullcap with red neck cloth, and the spitting cobra headband.
As Amenstar panted to a halt, Samir Pallaton waved forward his cavalry officer. Saluting, the dark, lithe woman trembled slightly.
The army's commander asked calmly, 'Captain Chawal?'
'Your Majesty, these people, traveling without escort and in disguise, violated our border, refused to give their names when asked, then tried to flee.'
'So you lashed them and fetched them hither?'
'Yes, Your Majesty.' Well-disciplined, she didn't babble excuses.
'Good work. Well done.' Pallaton handed the woman a small purse from his belt and added, 'Please accept this bonus for escorting the samira safely here. Share it with your troop. Dismissed.'
Boggled and relieved, the captain stamped a smart about-face and marched from the tent. Amenstar stared, speechless, while Samir Pallaton smiled. Sauntering back to his maps, Pallaton shooed his advisors and waved for a servant.
He asked Star, 'Will you take beer and some breakfast? We've only soldiers' rations.'
'I-No, I will not!' snapped the princess.
'We will!' chimed Gheqet and Tafir.
Amenstar's blazing glare accused them of treason, but she soon gave in to a growling stomach. Servants proffered small beer, oat cakes with salt, dried tirfin, and fresh figs. While the young men stuffed themselves, Star nibbled, still livid.
'Pallaton, I can't believe you didn't punish that woman,' she said. 'Even lifting a hand to royalty demands that hand be cut off.'
Samir Pallaton drained his mug and lobbed it to a waiter. Dusting his hands, he returned to sorting maps.
'Times change, Your Majesty,' he said. 'These days, I need the talents of a good officer more than the approval of a poor princess. Events thunder out of control, like an avalanche down a mountain. Old customs will be swept away unless they're rooted in common sense.'
'What events do you speak of?' Star asked, ignoring the cheap jibe.
Samir turned from his easel, grinning, at ease, in command.
'Oh, your betrothal to Samir Nagid of Zubat, for one,' he said. 'That little stone dropped onto a mountainside set many rocks rolling, and the landscape will soon be altered.'
'You speak in riddles,' sniped Star. 'I'll not play word games. If you'll summon a guard, I wish to be escorted to the river.'
'I speak of politics, Amenstar, a thing you avoid as 'boring.' ' Pallaton shook his curly dark head. 'You can't roam the countryside at will, incognito or otherwise. Bide a while as my guest, and learn a little about politics.'
'As your prisoner'-the princess's voice dripped acid- 'or your audience?'
'Hear him out,' Tafir interrupted. 'Something's in the wind.'
As Amenstar protested, Gheqet snapped, 'Star, shut up, will you? This is important,' as if berating a sister.
The princess goggled at the men. For the first time, Star saw herself alone, perhaps in a hostile camp. She needed to cooperate, so wisely sighed, 'Very well, Pallaton. Play your game.'
'No game, Star. This is life in the wilds, where you live by wits and claw.' Pallaton's casual familiarity stoked the princess's wrath, but she kept quiet. 'Sit,' he said, 'and I'll try to explain.'
Sinking into folding chairs, Star and her friends attended, the young men still downing food and drink. The prince unrolled a scroll and pinned it to the easel.
'Let me begin with a map.' Pallaton plied a dagger for a pointer as he said, 'Here we see all our peninsula of Calim's Home, or Calimshan. Her western border is the Dragons' Wall, her northern border the River Agis. Crammed in this corner, penned by mountains and the river, verging on wilderness, stands Oxonsis, my wild and free homeland. At the far south, verging on the Shining Sea, sprawls Coramshan, biggest and boldest of our seaport cities. Close to Coramshan huddles Zubat, a city of arts and culture, and eastward of everyone, isolated by desert, sits tiny Cursrah, guardian of Great Calim's wisdom.
'Except Great Calim is vanished,' the prince added ominously. 'Leaving Cursrah alone, small as an anthill in a busy corral, and just as easily crushed, even accidentally.'
'Crushed?' chirped Amenstar. 'Cursrah? Great Calim isn't vanished! He's, uh-'
'Exactly. He's missing. No one knows Calim's exact fate.' Samir Pallaton sketched a circle with his dagger and said, 'All we know is that Great Calim and Mighty Memnon battled fiercely to control this desert, and no one's seen either since, though rumors abound.'
'Ancient history,' sneered Amenstar. 'It's naught to do with us.'
'Not true. The genies battled a mere fifty-two years ago. Our grandfathers were witnesses,' corrected Pallaton mildly. 'The dust of the genies' battle still settles on our heads. Calim and Memnon exhausted their powers unto death or dissipation. One is a thin wind, the other rooted in rock.'
'It's blasphemy to criticize Great Calim,' snapped Star, 'may he boil the blood in your veins. Calim is hardly impotent.'
'Precisely my point,' said Pallaton patiently. 'Imagine a leviathan whale washed up on the beach. Even dead, it sends out such a powerful stench that people shudder and fall sick. So it is with the Trapped Terrors. Their powers radiate like twin suns. Calim in the sky and Memnon in the ground continue to hate furiously, and their hatred daily alters our lives.
'Study the hills and plain.' Pallaton pointed his dagger out the tent door, and everyone instinctively looked. 'Grasslands turn into desert year by year, warn the nomads. My shepherds and vintners agree. The foothills of the Dragons' Wall no longer feed as many sheep. Oxonsis's crops wither because rain conies less often. Perhaps the
