cat.
'Yes,' she said finally, 'these were her rooms. That crypt cat was her ocelot.'
'Then there's a secret passage down to the tunnels,' Hakiim said. 'Watch for us, Reive. We'll try to find the hole.'
Slithering over the wall, Amber closed her eyes to recall the wing's layout, then nudged Hakiim left. Crawling, Amber prayed they didn't awaken any adders, who loved ruins for their cool crevices and sunning spots. Pausing at a hollow in the floor, Amber brushed dust off a fallen wall. Colored chips sparkled to show a hippo's foot shod with a sandal.
'Khises, the half man, half hippo hero,' she whispered. 'Love of Ilmater-does anyone in today's world know of Khises except me?'
'Does anyone know where the damned shaft is?' Hakiim asked as he shifted shattered slabs. 'Whatsher- name sneaked down to the cellars from here, true?'
Shaking off reverie and forgotten heroes, Amber helped her friend tug and poke until the crumbled mosaic revealed a square downshaft. Rubble filled the shaft and proved solid when Hakiim kicked with his heel.
'Ibrandul haul them to the Seventh Hell,' he cursed. 'They filled in the tunnel.'
Another hiss made Amber peek over the wall. Reiver twirled his finger around his throat, their signal for 'the noose tightens.'
Hakiim and Amber scooted over lumps and bumps. Through a gap in a wall Amber saw a black robe flit by, then another. Surrounded, with no place to hide, Amber whimpered to think what the White Flame and her cruel bandits would do. Last time they'd almost scorched the skin from her face. Now they had even more reason to hate her.
Lacking any better plan, Reiver led them across the courtyard and over the tiled parapet. The pool was packed with dried mud, with only a foot of space behind the wall. With no choice, the fugitives lay flat on their bellies in one corner and wished themselves invisible.
Close by Reiver's ear, Amber whispered, 'Do the bandits know for sure we're here?'
'They know. Hush.' Unable to lift his head, the thief listened carefully.
Hakiim asked, 'Do we fight or surrender?'
A patter of sandals on stone warned that bandits converged on their hideout. Amber's heart thudded painfully, and her hands itched to grab her capture noose, to leap and fight or run. If the bandits simply stabbed straight down-
A crackling, crumpling, and thumping resounded, not outside the pool, but within it. Startled by the noise, Amber glimpsed a black-clad bandit who aimed a crossbow at her, then froze and stared. His bearded mouth dropped open, and red-rimmed eyes flew wide.
Amber looked to the pool's center. Petrified mud split with long cracks as something pushed from underneath. Mounds crumbled and tumbled as if giant flowers thrust upward for sunlight. One huge mound spanned a dozen feet, and dust squirted as a monster humped up, flexed broad shoulders, and burst free.
'Mother of Ilmater!' shrieked Amber.
Thirty undead relics of lost Cursrah rose from the polluted pool. Walking skeletons were partly cloaked with petrified earth. Patchy heads showed yellow bone and black-brown mud that had taken the place of flesh. Eye sockets were caked with mud. Arms and hands wore more bone than mud, so the bodies appeared wasted and thin as tree trunks. Stringy rags marked ancient blue uniforms painted with eight-pointed stars. In their claw-like hands hung spears and halberds.
The unthinking zombies leveled their weapons in precise formation, yanked bony feet free of dried mud, and stamped forward, fanning into two half circles to encircle and engage the enemy.
The last zombie to rise was something Amber had only seen in visions. Rearing ten feet tall and twelve long, a giant's scabrous head and torso bulked above the death-ravaged carcass of a rhinoceros. In bony hands big as bushel baskets, the undead rhinaur raised a tall, lyre-shaped halberd. A rusted and rotted leading edge, once sharp, aimed to kill.
A dozen of the White Flame's bandits had rushed into the courtyard but now reeled in shock. Amber also struggled to comprehend the revival of these undead warriors, what they meant, what they intended. Reiver and Hakiim couched in a corner, poised to vault the pool rim and run, even into the midst of the bandits. As the zombies stamped in formation toward them, Amber suddenly understood and grabbed her friends sleeves.
'No, stay! They're-they want to-they're Amenstar's personal guards. Song of El Nar'ysr, they think I'm their princess!'
Indeed, the two half circles of undead guards crunched and clacked like living statues to bracket Amber and her friends in two phalanxes. The giant rhinaur, a phalanx all by herself, bulled across the pool with steps that shook the earth. When her petrified-mud hooves banged the pool rim, stone and tile broke and scattered like spun glass.
The undead juggernaut was too terrible even for desert- and mountain-hardened outlaws. Spinning on their heels, they ran over rubble and ruin, wherever lay the quickest exit. The undead rhinaur-M'saba had been her name, Amber recalled-raised an arm only half fleshed and hurled her lyre-shaped halberd after a bandit. Propelled by that massive arm, the crumbly steel still had power to kill. One point of the lyre blade bit hard into the outlaw's back, tearing a great ragged gash that broke his shoulder blade and collarbone and severed his spine. The man cried out once at the agonizing pain, then flopped and lay still. By the time his jaw crashed on rock, the other bandits had vanished.
Silence.
Peeking at the unliving guards, Hakiim hissed to Amber, 'May we-go?'
Reiver nodded hopefully. Amber balked. The devoted guards, or their remains, had saved her life. Even looking at them was difficult, they were so gruesome and grotesque, but each clearly bore an identical slash across his throat, and the towering M'saba wore many axe blows. They'd been beheaded not for their fault but for their mistress's. Loyalty had proved their demise, yet when the princess-or Amber in her guise-was endangered, they'd risen to defend her without hesitation. Their simple, unwavering faith deserved some reward.
Amber had nothing to give except her thanks, yet she hesitated to lie and claim she was the princess. Even ghosts deserved honesty.
Gulping, she finally blurted, 'Th-thank you, loyal bodyguards. Thanks for myself and my friends. I–I'm safe.'
For a moment, she wondered if the zombies heard or could hear anything. Not one bobbed, or nodded, or bowed.
Reiver whispered, 'Can we-'
'Look,' breathed Hakiim.
A guard lost a hand. It fell from the wrist without a sound and broke like a clod of dirt on the courtyard flagstones. Another guard's arm fell and burst in a puff of dust. A leg gave out, and a guard toppled. Amber and her companions skipped aside as M'saba, only minutes ago so strong and formidable, keeled over like a sinking ship and smashed into dirt and powder. In seconds all the guards had collapsed. Nothing remained but dry mud and antique bones.
'It's… sad,' said Hakiim.
'Yes,' Amber whispered, then took a deep breath to keep from crying.
Her emotions ran riot, as if she lived both for herself and for a long-dead princess. Visiting the past in visions might get her killed in the present.
'Look here,' Reiver said, crouching near the fallen bandit. Amber knew Reiver had looted the corpse, for no thief could afford to pass up such an opportunity, yet the orphan held a dropped rucksack of camel hide. Stuffed inside was a rich, ivory fur with steel-gray spots. 'Snow leopard.'
'In the desert?' asked Hakiim.
Amber understood, if only by the spoiled-meat stink. 'It came from that ogress. Her comrades must have found her crippled and cut her throat. No other way could they get her fur.'
Hakiim gawked. Amber shook her head at the needless cruelty, yet knew she contributed her share. It was, as Hakiim said, sad.
Reiver watched the gaps between walls.
'Come,' the thief said. 'We need a secure place to hide until dark.'
