'Secure?' asked Hakiim.
'I won't say 'safe.' In this accursed city, nowhere's safe.'
'Sure you won't quit?'
'I'm sure,' Hakiim sighed and shook his head. 'Adventure seems to be mostly about fright and cold and hunger and fatigue, but I agreed to come, so I'll stick to the end.'
'What end?' sniped Reiver.
'Hush,' Amber warned, then squeezed both her friends' hands in the darkness. 'Thanks, Hak.'
The three sat on a high stone ledge with their feet dangling in the air. A shadow among shadows, Reiver had scouted for sanctuary and found this bricked niche, like a curved cave, on the second floor of a ruin. A chimney at the end gave a second escape route, if necessary. Amber didn't recognize the place from her visions of old Cursrah but guessed from the neighborhood it had been a shop or civic building. This pocket might have been a huge bread oven.
Evening ripened, the air cool. The moon had risen before sunset, and Amber donned her silver tiara. Watching the past while talking, she and her friends saw Amenstar drummed from the Oxonsin camp, watched them cross the grasslands, then witnessed the sea genie's escape atop the giant waterspout. They learned how citizens deserted the city in droves while others roamed half mad, glimpsed the wrath of the moon dragon, then fretted at Amenstar's arrest and audience with her implacable parents.
'So what happened?' demanded both boys.
Amber plucked off the tiara, afraid to see more. Condemned by her parents, the princess must surely die with her city, guessed the daughter of pirates. Head spinning, sorrow choking her throat, Amber was glad when Reiver declared it time to go.
Climbing the short chimney to a shattered third floor, the adventurers emerged onto a wide wall that broke away sheer on both sides. Reiver warned them to cling to the chimney lest their silhouettes be seen.
He asked Amber, 'Do you recognize anything new, now that you've toured the city through the tiara?'
Pouting, Amber studied the ruins. Light from a quarter moon painted Cursrah with a gentle glow, but nothing could disguise the scars the city had suffered before it died. No wonder, if Cursrah's citizens went wild drunk or half mad. Slowly she matched the vibrant pictures in her head against the silver-lit, cratered landscape, but it more resembled the moon than a world of men.
A slim projecting corner caught her eye, and she said, 'That's the Temple of Selune. It was crescent shaped, like the moon, and… there's a half dome, the Temple of Shar, broached by the dragon. See how the streets radiate from the center like spokes in a wheel? The palace was the hub.'
Obediently the men looked, but without her mental images they found it hard to recognize the layout. In many places, buildings had slumped across streets and into each other. Some streets and plazas had collapsed into the city's interconnecting tunnels, leaving enormous potholes or elongated depressions like giants' graves. Amber tried to sketch in the air, but the devastation was too disheartening, and she gave up.
'Never mind. Reckon where you would go, and I'll point the way.'
They hoped to gain the palace cellars but wanted to stay above ground. Collapsed streets and teetering rubble made them leery of dark tunnels, which might also contain man-made traps or other dangers; pits, snakes, unburied dead, even portals to the Underdark. Not all buildings, such as temples, were linked by tunnels anyway. Mapping various routes, they finally chose a jagged line that promised no obstructions, gave cover, and wouldn't box them in.
Standing up high, they could see that menaces increased by the hour. At first only birds, but now larger animals, ventured into the valley to drink from the sunken spring. Noises carried: the insane laughing of hyenas, the screech of an owl, a crashing of pottery or roof tiles upset by some big body leaping.
Off to the east, in a space that had once been a park with dry fountains and tree stumps, ensued a weird battle. The skeleton of an elephant wagged its bony head and lashed out with bare tusks to protect a skeletal elephant calf that cowered against tall legs of bone. Undead mother and child were threatened by a quartet of live cheetahs. The quick-springing cats, so thin and gaunt they resembled skeletons, worked in pairs, two distracting the cow's front while two more nipped at her missing flanks. Amber and her friends marveled that the cats attacked walking bones. The hungry animals couldn't comprehend that a familiar target was unsuitable for eating.
Reluctant to quit their safe post, the three friends lingered a while, watching and listening, but finally they linked hands and slid down a wall onto heaped bricks. Reiver led, steering by dead reckoning past mounds and walls and gaping holes. They hadn't gone a hundred feet, slipping through an ancient villa, before they found trouble.
Behind a tall mansion with a caved-in roof lay a garden. In Cursrah land had been precious, so the garden was small, perhaps thirty feet square. Neat walkways ran between raised beds. Dry fountains sprouted from the walls. High walls and a thick iron gate threw shadows that prevented the friends from immediately spotting the danger. The first warning was a clicking of enormous claws.
Reiver dodged left into shadows. Hakiim was unsure which way to jump. Behind, Amber belted his shoulder with her capture noose so Hakiim stumbled right. Thus Amber retreated from whatever clicking thing rushed from shadows.
In near darkness, the daughter of pirates saw a bobbing coil curve above head height. At first she imagined an ostrich's head on a sinewy neck, but something low and wide also threatened her front. Startled, with no better defense, Amber snapped her capture noose like a whip. Wood thumped on a surface hard as a teak table. What could this thing be?
A lumpy claw clamped her thigh and squeezed. Amber gargled in pain as twin bony ridges ground at her flesh. In a flash, she knew what had attacked her. Forcing down the pain, Amber batted her sturdy staff low and sideways. A solid tonkl sounded. The claw on her thigh eased its grip, and Amber yanked her leg back. Throbbing, her leg betrayed her and she dropped to one numb knee on sandy tiles between garden rows.
Now, lower, Amber could recognize her assailant silhouetted against the whitewashed mansion. She'd 'seen' these brutes before, on parade in the long-lost Palace of the Phoenix. A grotesque manscorpion of a long-lost race, for the creatures were thought extinct throughout Faerun-were still extinct, for this one was undead.
The creature bore a torso like a man's but with skin dark red and hard as an enameled shield. Its coarse face was fixed in a perpetual scowl. The scorpion thorax was segmented and propped by eight bowed legs, and two arms with pincer claws clamped Amber's thigh. The high-arcing tail stinger worried her most. It might be tipped with venom, still potent after centuries of burial. Of all the undead creatures reawakening in this nightmare city, Amber supposed the manscorpions most dangerous, for their desert-seasoned bodies had probably been half desiccated in life. This one had most likely been a mercenary privately hired by the villa's wealthy owner to protect the grounds. It was still intent on its task.
The horror clicked and clacked on the narrow garden path, closing toward Amber while snapping both claws. She was grateful it didn't carry a spear like the palace guards. Scooting backward on one good knee, dragging her deadened thigh, she jabbed at the thing's frowning face with the capture noose. Built low to the ground, the mannish head was below hers, but that meant the stinger tail could fly over its head to impale her. Perhaps it was best she kept to one knee.
'Amber!' Hakiim called from the right. 'Which one's you?'
'I'm here! Stay back! I can fend it off-'
'I'll get behind it!'
Eager to help, but clumsy as ever, Hakiim dashed in the dark, stubbed his toes against a raised flower bed, yelped and tumbled, but gamely limped to circle the fiend. Amber yelled, but Hakiim didn't hear over his own panting and scuffling. Where was Reiver?
A clay flowerpot answered. Lobbed from the left, it shattered against the manscorpion's back. Flinching, the beast clicked half around, wary to watch Amber and yet meet the invisible assailant. Another flowerpot thumped in dried weeds. The next crashed on the creature's chest armor. The thing buzzed angrily.
Hakiim limped into the path behind the undead guardian. The manscorpion spun on clicking claws to face the apprentice. Amber saw it hesitate or take aim. The curved tail snapped down; evidently it could strike ahead and behind. Hakiim yelled and dodged as the thing slung its stinger again.
Wishing they'd avoided this garden altogether, Amber freed some rope and flipped her capture noose over the scorpion's mannish arm, then snugged the noose tight. The thing buzzed again, a cluttering noise deep in its gullet, and pulled, strong as a pony.
