with torches where people packed in sullen or weepy silence. She watched a woman lean from a second story apartment and drop blankets to her husband, calling that that was the last. When the woman descended, crying quietly, the two hoisted bundles, joined hands, and turned toward the valley rim.
Their horses' hooves clip-clopped on cobblestones and echoed from empty buildings. Normally taverns, cafes, and gambling dens would sparkle with talk, laughter, and lovers' cooing. Star saw only one cellar lit, and the patrons drank silently or muttered bitterly. Amenstar felt she'd blundered into some foreign and hostile port. Riding on, by and by a rustle and fuss welled ahead.
Gheqet said, 'People gather at the city center. I wonder what they hope to find?'
'Not water, that's for sure.' Tafir rubbed his throat and said, 'I'm dry already.'
'Stop it, you two,' Star's voice cracked the empty night. 'People flock to the city center to hear my father reassure them. He'll have sought auguries from the gods and will now reveal our plans for the future.'
Star saw the two young men exchange glances: What good can the bakkal promise? What kind of future? The princess scalded them with angry silence.
At the centralmost ring of streets, they dismounted and tied their horses to posts, for beasts of burden were not allowed in the civic quarter. The hitching posts hung above water troughs normally kept filled by city slaves, but the troughs had been bailed dry.
Proceeding afoot, Amenstar retied her yellow neck scarf into a veil to hide her face and the silver moonstone tiara. Her yellow trousers and green cloak were so grimy and dusty as to be colorless. Gheqet wore a worker's white tunic and kilt like hundreds of others. Tafir had inverted his linen tunic to hide the red badge of Oxonsis.
Thousands of people, half Cursrah's population it seemed to Star, milled at the city center. Not one stood still, but all walked this way or that as if searching for something, while a few ran headlong to escape or embrace disaster. People chattered alone or to others, some wept, a few laughed in hysteria. Many citizens were drunk, terrified to face the future sober. Anxious not to get separated, Amenstar touched her friends, who squeezed her hands.
'I can't tell what transpires,' said Tafir. 'Is everyone mad?'
'There's no pattern.' Gheqet cast about. 'Everyone's just wandering around like…'
'Like cattle penned for the slaughterhouse,' finished Star. 'What's that old saying? 'When strife eclipses the sun, only Bhaelros lights the consciousness of men.' '
Standing at an intersection, the companions gazed at the Palace of the Phoenix. Torches burned in iron sconces on every column of the round palace, their lights reflected in the dark moat. Four guards, grim heavy infantry, barred each of the eight bridges to the palace. No activity showed, and Amenstar wondered what her parents did. At times, the crowd swelled toward the bridges, eager to glimpse the bakkal, but then surged away aimlessly.
Down the street Star saw people collected before the Temple of Selune, a tall crescent-shaped building that imitated the moon. The gentle Mistress of the Sky had always been favored in moonstruck Cursrah, but despite the fright, no one entered her temple. People shouted in frustration and beat at the doors as if they were locked.
Star murmured, 'This can't be…'
Tired of confusion and ignorance, Amenstar snagged the next person who passed. A woman, middle-aged and wrinkled, jolted to a halt and slapped the offending hand from her sleeve. Star demanded news, and the woman acceded to royal authority without recognizing it.
'The Temple of Selune has been shut tight-closed for the first time in memory. The vizar-in-waiting brought soldiers inside, and they whipped folks-whipped them! — to drive them out. Slaves bricked up the doorways. Selune's temple is no more, I tell you. It's the bakkal's fault. He's deserted us, left us to die of thirst. There's no water. It's all gone-'
To the left, a huge fireball suddenly roiled, lighting the night sky. The crowd gasped, and Star gawked. The woman hurried away to nowhere. Holding hands, the three friends joined the surging crowd to see what made the fire.
'That old fool,' the princess fumed. 'My father would never desert his people, and none of this makes sense. Why would my father's soldiers close the Temple of Selune? People need her comfort in times of trouble, and who's-oh, no!”
The bonfire illuminated the Temple of Shar, goddess of darkness, pain, and unlife. Shar had always been an unpopular deity, worshiped only by the dying and the damned, for Cursrahns had been happy and satisfied and didn't wallow in self-pity. Shar's was the only temple doing business this dark night. The low dome was decorated with black tiles and a few red ones inserted at random. The only door descended below street level into the dark bowels of the world, Shar's domain. On a small cobbled plaza before the dome, Shar's few elderly priests had propped a huge iron dish on stone uprights, filled it with amphoras of black rock oil, and ignited the pool. The watery fire spawned spirals of greasy, stinking smoke. A big drum of ox hide had been rolled out, and a red-clad acolyte pounded hard and long upon it. The sagging drumhead gave a muffled, mushy tone, and the erratic drumming grated on everyone's nerves.
Amenstar growled, 'One time only, Shar's clerics gain attention and then irritate us like a sore tooth.'
'Make way! Make way!'
The crowd edged aside while two acolytes in red struggled to drag a tall white ox by a ring in its nose. The beast was edgy from the pressing crowd, eye-watering smoke, and the clumsy handling, but the crowd slapped and prodded the ox onto the plaza.
Shar's high priest held a long knife with a black blade, and as the acolytes struggled to hold the powerful ox, he chanted, 'Shar! Goddess of Truth! Of Bitter Wisdom! Of Life's Burdens! Pray accept this sacrifice that we may‹know your mind and wishes!'
The crowd sighed as the dagger plunged into the ox's neck. Red blood gushed onto the priest's arms and robes and the cobblestones. The acolytes were hoisted into the air as the bawling ox tossed its head, but quickly the loss of blood buckled the beast's knees. Acolytes and citizens struggled to roll the heavy body over. The priest would slice open the carcass, Amenstar knew, then drag out its hot guts and read-or pretend to read-auguries and mystic divinations for the future.
Star growled to her friends, 'I've no wish to witness butchery. Let's hie to the palace-'
A man howled and pointed to the sky. Others looked up and screamed. The moon, Cursrah's celestial guardian, had risen above the eastern rim of the valley. A propitious time for sacrifices, and for good luck, yet the moon was suddenly eclipsed by a ragged form like a gigantic bat. People shrieked with fright, for any eclipsing of Cursrah's moon was a bad sign. Sounds of wonder and puzzlement bubbled as citizens wondered what it might be. Few creatures flapped in the skies over Calimshan.
The shadow came and went, dodging in and out of the moonlight, growing rapidly. Soon its jagged points all but occluded the white sphere. Like lightning from a clear sky, the thing pounced, and Cursrah screamed in response.
Amenstar was crushed to the cobbles by Gheqet and Tafir as the dragon landed. All was confusion, and Star saw only snatches of the attack. A blue dragon, almost black against the night sky, forty feet or longer, dropped from the sky onto the sacrificial ox in its vast pool of blood and onto the panicked crowd. The dragon bristled with spines, scales, and spikes jutting in all directions like a desert hedgehog's. Twenty or thirty citizens were immediately crushed or impaled. Luckily, Amenstar and her friends arrived late and hung back to avoid the press, so they didn't die. When the dragon fanned its powerful, sweeping wings, the blast seemed to sear Star's face like a hurricane.
A great tail, long as a camel train and curved like a sickle at the tip, scythed to cut and smash fleeing Cursrahns like mice hiding in wheat. A clawed paw like a trio of pickaxes sank into the ox's body and squirted blood into the air. Another fearsome paw crumpled the awestricken acolytes, breaking their backs and skulls. The dragon's maw gaped, and a bolt of lightning sizzled and crackled to scorch another dozen souls, who tumbled and burned as they died, clothing and hair ignited.
Twisting, the dragon's clawed feet skidded on cobblestones and gore. The blue tail flexed and upset the huge iron dish of flaming oil. It dropped with an ear-punishing clang, and burning oil bubbled in channels between raised cobblestones. Ox and human blood and fallen bodies were charred as a stomach-turning, iron-stinking smoke rolled across the plaza. The dragon roared, a eerie keen like wind whistling across a lonesome desert, and Curshrans screamed.
Amenstar watched the carnage as blood and dust boiled into the air and blacked out the moon. An ancient
