into thousands of gallons of water. Displaced, water gushed into the sky as if a child had stamped in a puddle. In slow motion, the water arched high above, then rained and spattered torrents over broken ridges. Another cascade shot higher than the hills, pounded the landscape, and dislodged more rocks.
The spectators felt another temblor tingle their toes as the earth bucked like a wild horse. Another slab of hills, a newly uncovered face, broke free and followed its brother to crash into the riverbed. More water squirted- a murky brown deluge. Thrown off her feet, Amenstar sprawled facedown, hands and knees scuffed raw. The vizar, his acolytes, and soldiers also clutched the ground lest they be flipped like fleas into the sky. More groans and booms shook the world. Dust and water vapor boiled into a swirling brown mist.
Drenched in mud, Amenstar huddled like a whipped dog and prayed: 'Dark Destroyer, take me away! Blind me, Orus of the Thousand Eyes, so I never see such a sight again!'
As if drawing close to witness their destruction, the overcast sky lowered until Amenstar feared to stand and attract lightning. Thick air choked her as well as fear. Cracking and crackling now shook the sky while everywhere rocks broke, sheared, and tumbled, pulverized. Still the shaking hummed through Star's body until she felt her bones would shiver into jelly.
Above the noise, Tafir shouted, 'L-look at the c-clouds!'
Hunkered like bugs, spectators craned their necks to see the sky. The blanketing overcast had split in a thousand places. Scattered clouds coalesced into deeper black patches. Far off in a more peaceful world, the sun was setting, and shafts of brilliant yellow slanted across the landscape through a thousand holes in the sky. Amenstar caught her breath at the phenomenon. It was like a hailstorm of sunbeams.
Tafir pointed out one massive cloud directly overhead, a roiling gray-black anvil tinged red by the setting sun.
'It's a genie,' the princess blurted. 'Genie smoke!'
'Spirits of the Sands,' Pallaton shouted as he scrambled to his knees. 'It must be Almighty Calim himself. Run! Get off the hilltop!'
Terrified, blinded by dust and mist, Amenstar only saw dimly as the chief vizar and his acolytes scooted to their knees, raised their arms, and sent up prayers to the greatest genie of legend. Their escort of guards were less certain it was time to pray. Some stood still and gaped while most ran pell-mell away from the riverbank.
Pallaton grabbed Amenstar by both shoulders and jammed her slack body to his breast. Slapping Gheqet and Tafir before him, the prince took three loping strides and quit the hilltop. Rocks and sand jigged underfoot as he struck the downslope and lost his footing. Star tumbled end for end, down to where their horses had been killed by rolling rocks.
They heard what happened later from spectators ranged along the rocky slopes. Seconds after Pallaton and the Cursrahns vaulted from the hilltop, from the deepest part of the roiling thunderhead flashed lightning so bright people recoiled as if struck in the face. A sizzling bolt scorched the air and struck the hilltop square on the chief vizar and his pilfered scepter. Watchers grunted in sympathy as the priest and his acolytes exploded into charred gobbets of flesh that rained far out over the rocks and splashed into the churning river.
There came a pause while the world froze, and waited.
Thunder, an unimaginable crash that rattled teeth and jarred bones, slammed the land as if to punish it. Anyone who'd stayed half-risen was knocked flat by the explosion, and everyone feared they'd been permanently deafened. In a jumble of rocks and sand and horseflesh, Samir Pallaton craned to look up the hill. His mouth hung open, his pallor ghastly white.
Above a high buzzing whine, Amenstar heard a squeak, and realized it was Tafir shouting at the top of his lungs: 'I think that scepter was real!'
'I think Calim took it back,' replied Gheqet. 'It's-oh, no!' Crawling to his friends, the architect's apprentice tried to drag both Star and Tafir to their feet. 'Look there-the ridge cracked-the river turns!'
Struggling to their feet, supporting one another, the three friends gazed at the River Agis. It boiled and churned in its rocky bed, a torrent of hissing water, mud, and sand. Along the Agis's old course, the watchers realized, the shattered hills had slumped into the riverbed and blocked it for half a mile or more. Tiny trickles seeped amidst the jumbled rocks, but the barrier dammed the water completely. Denied its usual route, the mighty Agis backed up. Water seethed and trembled in whirlpools and maelstroms, then began to spurt along the northern ridge of the river, where its stony restraint had cracked.
'There it goes!' hollered Gheqet.
Unconcerned with its destination, the River Agis rushed and pushed against the cracked northern face, and broke it. As the ridge shattered, Pallaton's newly dug ditch beckoned. Astonished slaves clung to the walls of their tiny valley and watched the River Agis gush into their earthworks and fill it, turning a barren gash into a true living canal. Water lurched and slopped and boomed northward, scouring the canal and carving a new riverbed amidst the constricting hills. As Pallaton's engineers had predicted, the river had turned, found lower ground, rushed in, and now flooded off out of sight.
Northward, many miles, the river would once again hook west, inevitably driving for the sea.
'Great Calim,' Gheqet whispered, 'help Cursrah in her hour of need…'
'It can't be,' Amenstar gasped, and her breath turned into a sob. Tears burned her cheeks.
Samir Pallaton had predicted accurately. Not a drop of the Agis's life-giving water would ever reach Cursrah again. With the riverbed forever blocked, the famous aqueduct five miles west would run bone dry within hours.
For the first time in her life, Amenstar wept for her homeland. Her parents had spoken the truth. Without water, Cursrah would soon be swallowed by the desert.
11
The Year of the Gauntlet
Haunted by visions of impending death, once again Amber stumbled and blundered across the burning desert tethered by the wrists to a cruel and uncaring ogre. Sun scorched Amber's face, beat on her head and back, and soaked through her filthy, torn clothing until she felt her blood would boil in her veins. Her legs were clumsy with fatigue and hunger, her mind dizzy from lack of water and sleep. Her face hurt the worst, still seared and blistered from the White Flame's torture. She was chilled by their ultimate fate waiting at the band's destination, and she prayed fervently to Ilmater, goddess of suffering and martyrdom.
Only Reiver's and Hakiim's frantic pleading had saved Amber's face and their lives. Yelling at the top of their lungs, the thief and rug merchant's son had insisted that untold wealth and riches awaited them in the ruins of Cursrah and repeatedly shouted that only Amber knew where these riches lay, having been befriended by the palace's undead guardian. Promised gold and jewels, the nomads had plucked Amber from the fire, and the White Flame had hesitated to execute her. The Flame lived for vengeance, but her followers lusted for wealth, and they'd keep Amber alive until it was found. Nomads had slapped mutton fat on Amber's face to quiet the burns, and they fed the prisoners meager rations, not out of kindness, but out of greed. That a magic-wielding mummy guarded the treasure was a fact everyone conveniently ignored.
The bandits broke camp and trekked into the desert just as the sun rose. Stumbling across sand and gravel, Amber listened to her captors talk, partly to learn about her enemy and partly to detract from her own suffering. The bandits were a mixed lot of oddballs with little in common, Amber learned, and she desperately hoped to exploit that flaw and somehow escape.
The White Flame constantly muttered to herself or to imaginary enemies about gaining power. The crazed leader hoped to find magicks or scrolls to aid her campaign for vengeance. A few tall bandits were Tuigan barbarians from the hills, who lusted to loot a desert city buried since ancient times. In olden days, they assured one another, nobles were buried with treasure to buy comfort and position in the next life. Robbing one tomb would yield enough booty to buy luxury in this life, and the devil take the next. Some of the raiders were dwarves of the Axemarch Stone Clan, who considered tomb raiding the most heinous of crimes, and grumbled in guttural tones. They hoped to find magical tools or loose gems, or crowns and armor, but not in coffins. The majority of nomads were southerners from the Land of the Lions, a somber lot who talked little. Amber glimpsed a face now and then, with tattooed dots and lines on chin and jaw. A few bandits lagged far behind and never spoke or shifted their veils,
