so only yellow or mismatched eyes showed. They might be half-ores, but from their painful shambling gait Amber guessed they were mongrelmen from the Marching Mountains, bastard offspring sporting the worst features of talking races and animals.
Thirty-odd bandits, Amber guessed, though their numbers were never clear because the band sprawled in clumps over a mile or more. Amber glimpsed the raiders mostly over her shoulder, or at rest stops in three days of marchine. for the White Flame and her bodyguards stuck to the center, with the ogres and captives in the van.
The breed-ogres Amber understood not at all. Enigmatic creatures, they might be freebooters or else outcasts from their pure-blood tribe. Why they traveled with a human-led band or what they hoped to gain, Amber couldn't guess. So far they'd gathered only three careless young Memnonites, a few coins and gems, and the moonstone tiara. The biggest giant, the slow-moving brother, had picked up the tiara when the White Flame discarded it and no one else, for superstition, would touch it. The ogre had slid it onto its left arm below the elbow, and no one contested its ownership. In the same way, the big brother carried Hakiim's scimitar, Amber's capture noose, and their rucksacks. The monsters took precious little care of their slaves, barely feeding them and administering kicks and jabs rather than water. Dragged behind the magic-plying, smarter brother, Amber was convinced that, upon reaching dead Cursrah the unneeded Hakiim and Reiver would be killed. Their scalps would be strung onto the ogres' fearsome spears and their bodies strung onto spits and roasted. Amber might be kept alive until she pointed out the spiraling tunnels to the palace cellars. The ogres showed jagged teeth like sharks, and Amber shuddered to think of fangs tearing her charred flesh from her bones. She felt partly crisped already, for heat made the mutton fat run from her face into her collar, and every wink of sunlight was like sandpaper brushing her burns.
Amber could imagine no escape. Hakiim and Reiver were also exhausted and helpless. The rawhide binding their wrists was old and rotten but tough enough in multiple strands. When it broke the ogres simply re-tied it in a hash of knots. Even freed, the half-dead humans could never outrun the indefatigable and long-legged ogres or the other bandits spread across the dunes. No, Amber thought, they were helpless and alone, stumbling across rocks hot enough to crackle. Or perhaps not so alone…
The magnificent hunter genie Memnon, claimed some travelers, lay bound in the soil, and when angry at desert interlopers manifested Memnon's Crackle, a seething vortex of sand. Further, said others, Memnon could be invoked with a stonetell spell so his face appeared in solid rock and he spoke. Memnon was always that close. If so, then even closer was another genie, for the breeze that cooled Amber's parched face was said to be the very breath of-
'Great Calim, Lord of Genies, Qysar of Calimshan, hear my prayer,' Amber whispered as she marched. She was uncertain if genies attended prayers, as gods were wont to do, but she'd try anyway. 'These thieves seek to loot your city, sacred Cursrah built by your own mind and hands. They'd violate Calim's Cradle and the famous college, created to honor your memory, to sing your achievements, to boast to the world of your greatness. If these people reach the valley, they'll smash any vestiges of wonder and pilfer the gold and silver given in your name. Not so me and my friends, as you saw. We found your great city and yes, picked up odd coins, but mainly we wished to see Cursrah's secrets, to plumb the depths of your greatness. Deep underground dwells a mummy, a living relic of your greatest hours, and I would help that poor mummy, whoever he may be…'
Mishmashing every prayer and hymn she knew, Amber babbled to an ancient, unseen genie whose only hint of existence was a breeze against her cheek-but who'd also blasted with lightning a vizar who'd presumed to usurp Calim's power.
Talking, Amber surprised herself. She really didn't want to loot Cursrah, she realized, but she truly wanted to learn more about the mummy; why it stalked the dark corridors, why it touched her mind and sought rapport, why it pleaded with Amber for help, if that was truly its message. What could the undead want from the living? How could Amber help an animated corpse whose soul yet lingered and languished in awful, aching loneliness? The daughter of pirates couldn't guess, but if Great Calim let her survive long enough she'd find out, she silently vowed, or die trying.
Stumbling, falling repeatedly then dragged, Amber prayed until her dry throat seized up, choked by dust, and she could only move her lips in silence. Agonized by thirst and exhaustion, shocked by the fierce burns weeping from her cheeks, nose, and forehead, the young woman would have cried in despair if she'd had any tears left. Her useless prayers were whipped from her lips and dissipated by›the rising wind.
Rising wind?
Forcing open gummy eyes, Amber turned her face and was peppered with sand. Dust billowed from nearby dunes, swirled in dust devils around her aching feet, and fetched in folds of her headscarf and tunic. Some of the bandits were already obscured by curtains of sand that lifted and died and redoubled. The White Flame flicked a bony hand, and a bodyguard raised a curled ram's horn and blew a ratcheting wail that brought outwalkers closer lest they be separated in a sandstorm.
To be separated from this crew would have suited Amber. True, three puny humans stood little hope of fighting three breed-ogres; still, any change favored their chances. Squinting against sand and the darkening sky, Amber wondered if Calim indeed aided them. She rattled more prayers and praise through gritty lips.
The ogres stumped to a halt, and their captives collapsed and rested. The White Flame caught up and consulted her scouts.
'Which way?' the bandit leader asked. 'How much farther?'
Frowning around pointed fangs, the lead ogre looked west but shook its head. The mountain-dweller was fuddled by desert distances.
'You!' The bandit chief dropped her veil to reveal teeth and jaw shorn of flesh, then kicked Amber viciously and asked, 'Where lies Cursrah?'
'Uh. Uh…'
Amber's mouth and tongue were swollen. Bending from his great height, the ogre splashed water from a goatskin bota at her. Amber gulped the blessed cool wetness gratefully, but the ogre slapped her head so she choked, then jerked the rawhide binding her skinned wrists.
'D-due west, I think,' Amber rasped, 'per-perhaps four miles. A tower stands alone. The valley lies a league south.'
One of her nomads had seen a tower just before the sand blew, so the White Flame assumed the city must lie south and west.
Peering at the dark curtain of sand with lidless eyes, the cruel woman coughed, 'Follow these dunes along the western side, out of the wind.'
'Big herders,' warned a nomad. 'Where sand traps a boot, herders of thunder may rise.'
'The Jhannivars rule this land,' stated the Flame archly, 'and I must see this city. My enemies grow stronger day by day. I shall brave any terror to see their guts exposed to the wind.'
Nomads exchanged glances, but none objected as the leader struck out. Along the western side of the dunes, the sand indeed pulled at their boots. Amber found the footing harder than ever, but for the first time she took heart, hoping against reason that this storm had been crafted by a genie bound in the sky. Glancing behind, Amber saw Reiver's eye glinted with malice as he bided his time. Even Hakiim, sensing his friends' excitement, pricked up his ears. Amber waited for an opportunity as the striding ogres left the other bandits floundering behind a curtain of sand.
Leaning against the sandfall, descending a soft slope, Amber wondered too whether thunderherders might suddenly bore up from the ground. Before, in good health and unfettered, the adventurers had barely escaped the monsters. This time…
'Amber!' screeched Hakiim.
The daughter of pirates was yanked brutally around, rawhide chafing her wrists. The ogre roared, and Amber was towed as if by a galloping horse through swirling sand.
Reiver had made his move, though Amber couldn't tell how. The skinny thief hung high in the air, back to the biggest ogre's back and the adventurers' pilfered packs. Reiver's fists were jammed at his chin, still bound by rawhide to the giant. The creature's fists were also wedged at its throat. Suspended, mashed against the packs, Reiver kicked his legs furiously. The huge ogre thrashed side ^ to side like a colicky horse, purple tongue protruding and quickly coating with sand. Desperately the monster yanked at Reiver's bonds, jerking the thief up like a fish on a line. Amber could make no sense of the attack as she lurched and stumbled headlong toward them.
The ogre mage had dropped its huge spear and drawn its tiny human sword. Roaring, the giant raised a
