garbage.
'The fog's coming from there,' Reiver said, pointing.
Opposite ran the short corridor leading to the royal court. Guarding the double doors were the bakkal's burly guards: two manscorpions, two rhinaurs, and eight humans, all with spears or lyre-shaped halberds. They stood on square flagstones that also bore the fist-sized holes, same as in the royal court. From the holes exuded the green haze, coiling upward lazily like cobras rearing from baskets.
'What's the smoke?' asked Hakiim.
'I don't… know.' Near panic, Amber's thoughts skittered around her skull like frightened mice. In her visions, she'd seen vizars place something underneath the holed flagstones, but couldn't recall what. She'd seen too much lately. 'Never mind for now,' she said. 'I want to see the rest of the corridor, to see if anything can help us.'
'What about the mummy?' asked Reiver.
Amber shivered. She wasn't ready to face her undead counterpart, yet.
'Come,' she said. 'This is the last level. Let's explore, and don't lag.'
Scuffling close together, the adventurers circled the corridor. The outer walls, they learned, were lined with tall, narrow vaults. Some yawned empty, but many were sealed with bricks and mortar.
'Like the treasure vaults on the higher levels,' mused Reiver.
'Except for these,' corrected Amber.
By torchlight the intruders from another time studied square granite plaques cemented into the bricks. Etched by ancient masons were simple pictographs and complicated hash marks.
'I've seen these before,' whispered Amber, 'along the walls of cemeteries at home.'
'Tombs,' said Hakiim. 'Down here, they must be kings and queens.'
'The pictures must be names.' Amber traced images with her fingers and said, 'A raven. A crocodile. A cloud. The marks must be the years they reigned.'
'Here. She was here,' Reiver's voice sounded small down the corridor.
His friends joined him. Broken bricks and crushed mortar littered the floor before a breached doorway.
'See it?' the thief asked. 'Bashed open from the inside.'
Amber shuddered. Inside the tall vault stood a sarcophagus thick with dust, its painted image obscured. Broken bones-whose? — littered the floor, and something else.
Stepping into the tomb on quaking legs, Amber picked up a gilded mask, surprisingly light. Painted on it was Amber's own face: dark eyes, pouting lips, black hair. Reiver hissed and Hakiim prayed.
'Entombed alive for millennia,' whispered Amber. 'Imagine.'
'Where is she now?' asked Hakiim.
'Only one place left,' said Reiver. 'The royal court.'
Around the corridor they stalked on feather-light feet, torches in one hand; capture noose, scimitar, and dagger in the other. Amber heard her sandals scuff and her breath rasp, but nothing else.
'Quiet as a tomb,' she jested.
No one Jaughed. Amber stopped cold. They'd circled the corridor and come back to the royal court's entrance. Dusty guards glared, wreathed in green fog.
'Is the haze getting thicker?' asked Hakiim.
Amber sniffed, and the green smoke or fog stung her nostrils. She stumbled at the next step and stopped to see why. There were no impediments; the floor was dusty but smooth, yet Amber's foot skidded again.
'I feel… muzzy,' said Hakiim.
That's why she stumbled, Amber realized. A faint dizziness stole upon her. She shook her head and scrunched her eyes, but she couldn't dispel the eerie spinning.
'I-' Amber started.
'These fumes are making us punch-drunk,' said Reiver.
'We better get out while we still… can,' the sensible Hakiim said, then sneezed twice. 'There's no one to haul us… out if we keel over.'
Eyes watering, nose running, Reiver echoed, 'Hak's right. These fumes might be poison, and we can't count on rescue.'
'We've come too far to bolt now,' Amber argued, but stalled. Part of her spirit wanted to run, part demanded she stay. 'The fog can't be poisonous, or it'd poison the sleepers. This is more like medicine smoke that doctors burn to drive off sickne-ulp!'
'Did he move?' Even Reiver didn't trust his acute senses.
A guard had moved, Amber was certain, and not like a herky-jerky puppet, as when the mummy animated them. Peering until her eyes watered, Amber saw another motion: a manscorpion's claw slid down a spear haft, slow as ice melting. A rhinaur's blocky, fat-nosed head began to droop.
'They're falling down,' whispered Hakiim. 'They're waking up,' moaned Reiver. 'The fumes are medicine-or magic,' Amber coughed. 'They're waking the sleepers.'
Reiver ducked his head to see if the air cleared near the floor. 'It makes sense for the outermost guards to wake first. They'll protect the royal family while they awaken.'
Something snuffled. A rhinaur sneezed explosively, then again, the giant sneeze echoing. It should have been comical, but the adventurers froze in their tracks.
Reiver whispered, 'These guards are handpicked, you said. The bakkal's most fanatical followers. Didn't they stab and crush the citizens who blocked the bakkal's parade?'
'They'll kill us in an instant,' muttered Hakiim, 'just for standing nearby while the royal family revives.'
A keening sigh marked a manscorpion inflating his skinny chest.
'If they revive, then we've failed,' Amber whispered. 'Oh, Amenstar, whatever you wanted, we failed-'
Amber bristled at a new sound behind. Many sandals scuffed. With no place to run, the adventurers turned.
The White Flame stood wrapped head to toe in black, a scimitar jutting from one hand, with thirty-odd followers behind her. They were sandblasted and storm-whipped, but they had obviously escaped the wind walker's fury.
Amber and her friends waited. Fierce and angry raiders loomed ahead, reviving fanatical guards behind. Hakiim's teeth chattered. No one spoke, though the White Flame cleared her rough throat in preparation for a speech.
A shriek from a nomad made everyone jump. A dwarf gibbered, and others whimpered. With terror-stricken eyes, the bandits stared past the adventurers, who spun on their heels.
Only one thing could reduce these hardened killers to frightened children, thought Amber.
From out of the double doors of the secret court, beyond the stirring guards, eerie in the green billowing smoke, shuffled the mummy. Rotted bandages trailed from outthrust arms. Crumbs of herbs and resin flaked off. The double chain clinked softly, and the blood-red girasol pendant winked like a dragon's eye. The mummy's head, not wrapped so thickly, was shrunken and shriveled as a boiled skull. The hand and feet were clumsy, yet capable of crushing bones and bricks. Withered fingers spread, taking in all the stunned observers. The digits crooked once.
Amber couldn't move.
Like devout slaves, the living gazed at the lord of this cruel domain. Amber's feet were rooted to the floor, her arms frozen, her head locked in place. Imbued with the powers of Cursrah's highest vizar, she thought, and having dwelt here so long, the mummy must control the very air, could probably warp stone, or make it flow like molten lava, or vanish altogether.
From the corner of her eye Amber saw that the nomads, dwarves, and robe-wrapped monsters cringed in place, also frozen. Only the White Flame, who had nothing to lose or fear, stood square-shouldered with veiled chin high.
As the mummy passed the guards, a rhinaur's ears flicked. A human's knee jerked. A sloping spear clinked against the wall. The bakkal's bodyguards were waking more quickly, Amber could see. Soon they'd shift their limbs and take a step, leather and cloth flexing for the first time in ages. Their first task would be to kill all strangers, perhaps by slashing their throats, as Gheqet and Tafir had died. Rapidly then, the guards inside the royal court would wake, all five hundred, then the courtiers and advisors and sages, then the royal family, and finally the bakkal with all his otherworldly abilities. Within days, no doubt, they'd launch an attack, hungry to conquer a brave new
