"What?"
"I don't know." Amber bit her lip and whispered, "Something."
Hakiim rolled his dark eyes. Reiver hoisted a goatskin water bag and drank deeply. The thief had not only retrieved their rucksacks and his crude bundle and weapons, but he had stolen the huge ogre's water and rations besides. Thirsting, the trio drank gallons of water. They sniffed carefully at the smoked meat, decided it was goat and not cannibals' fare, and ate ravenously. They found an oilskin of mutton fat, and Amber dressed the sandy scabs on her face. Clamping down on her stomach, she worked the tiara from the giant's hairy arm with a knife. Reiver took the severed limb away to bury it. Scrubbing the headband with sand, Amber looked at the east where the moon rose.
"Will you put that thing on again?" asked Hakiim.
"Of course." Amber settled the tiara on her head, wincing as cold metal touched her forehead burns, and said, "It's the only way to learn-"
"It's trouble," grumbled Hakiim.
Amber tsked. "Rest, Hak," she said. "Catch some sleep."
Needing no prompting, Hakiim sprawled on his back. Reiver returned, curled up like a cat, and dropped off.
To quiet snores, alone in the bright desert night like an owl, Amber opened her mind to the tiara's story. Unlike earlier, in Cursrah's ruins, she found these mental images fuzzy and wobbly, skittering around her brain, making her dizzy. Like a bonfire seen from a distance, looking tiny as a candle flame, Amber wondered if the tiara were too far from the city, the source of the ancient scenes. Lying with her back against a rock in the chill desert night, Amber concentrated. Gradually, pictures formed.
In her mind's eye, Amber relived Amenstar's ancient adventure. She saw the capricious princess captured by cavalry, heard the lecture on "politics," dozed through three boring days of captivity, watched as the River Agis was diverted by magic.
With a shock, Amber realized that the earthquake had formed the Broken Hills, which they'd passed in venturing here. When the diverted Agis bent north and then west, it carved a new watercourse and eventually a new seaport-Memnon, their home town. Like Amenstar, Amber wept for Cursrah, doomed to die of thirst.
Alone, she whispered, "The samira finally realized her beloved city was truly endangered, but her tears came too late, like those shed at a funeral."
Thinking, half dreaming, Amber drifted off…
… and jerked awake in darkness.
Amber listened, ears ringing, but she heard nothing. Creeping, she peeped past staggered rocks. For once, Calim's Breath was still. Desert dunes were painted silver and jet, and a million million stars twinkled bright as diamond dust in the velvet sky. Yawning, Amber pried open her eyes, then nudged her companions.
"Come," she said. "It's time to get on."
"Home?" asked Hakiim sleepily. He and Reiver tussled briefly for the waterskin, both still dehydrated. "If we follow Pharos's Anvil to the river and find our boat, we can sleep in our beds tonight."
"No," Amber said as she raked fingers through her filthy black hair. "There are things left undone."
Hakiim demurred, "Sounds like one vote for home and one for Cursrah."
Amber huffed, then conceded, "I can't blame you for wanting to go home, Hak. We've been battered by forces young and old ever since we set foot in this desert. I swore I'd never venture underground again, but I must. I'm going, even if I have to walk there alone."
Amber poked Reiver then and asked, "You're quiet. Which do you prefer, Memnon or Cursrah?"
Swallowing a gulp of water, the thief shrugged. "It's all one to me," he said. "In Memnon I scrabble for pennies and risk arrest from the druzir's amlakkar and the Nal-lojal. In Cursrah we might be skinned and eaten, or worse, but we may find more than pennies."
Hakiim groaned, "I never thought I'd miss my sisters' nagging or my mother's cooking."
"I'd take my mother's nagging if only I could take a bath," Amber said, and stuffed the tiara securely into her rucksack, "but if I quit now, I'll never know peace for wondering what became of Samira Amenstar and her friends, who resemble you two more than brothers."
"I don't understand that, either," said Hakiim. "You say this Gheqet looks like me-"
"Is you, in another life," she corrected.
And the mummy is one of you in this life, she added silently.
"All right, is me. I'm Gheqet and Reiver is this Tafir- except he's a respectable citizen"-Hakiim grinned as Reiver punched his arm-"but those people are long dead and buried. Their lives have nothing to do with us."
"Then why were we drawn here?" Amber countered. "Why was it our fate to find Cursrah and the mummy? Why did it appeal to me for help? Why us three and those three? This is destiny, Hak. A juggernaut has started and can't be stopped. Great Calim himself fetched us a storm so we might escape and carry on to Cursrah. To return to Memnon is to defy the will of the gods! Out here, something beckons, and I must go back."
Bending her shaggy head, Amber retied her kaffiyeh, shouldered her pack and capture noose, and faced the gap in the rocks, toward Cursrah.
Hakiim and Reiver looked at each other.
"Maybe you read too many stories, Amb," Hakiim said.
"I know I do," the young woman conceded, "but adventure runs in my blood. My ancestors were pirates, you know."
"Mine were servants to genies," Hakiim sighed and grabbed his pack. "So I best serve as needed."
"Thank you, Hakiim."
Amber's smile was genuine and tinged with tears.
Reiver stood and stretched, yawning. Imperiously, he boasted, "Well, my ancestors were, uh, irresponsible!"
All three laughed. Reiver, always matter-of-fact, asked, "What if you're bewitched by that tiara?"
Amber shrugged and told him, "I can't help that, can I?"
Stepping from the rocks, Hakiim cast a last glance at the northern sky and countless stars, then turned west, toward Cursrah.
Lifting a brown hand, he said, "Destiny beckons."
"What's that moving in the lake bed?" asked Hakiim.
"Above the lake bed…" Reiver corrected.
"By the Killing Wave," hissed Amber, "it's a skeleton."
Always wary, Reiver had insisted the trio circle Cursrah's valley and descend its western slopes, because the White Flame's bandits would surely enter from the east. Plus the travelers desperately needed water. Reiver had seen birds kiting in and out of a hollow just north of the dry lake and guessed it was a water hole. Descending a crumbling staircase to the valley floor, skulking through ruined streets and buildings, the fugitives hadn't seen any bandits so far, yet undead beings moved in the once-buried city.
Arrested by movement, the three hid in a tumbledown building like jerboas, the long-hopping desert rats, peered between ragged stone blocks, and collectively scratched their heads.
The small lake that had once served as Cursrah's reservoir was now a dusty hollow. In the center, raised like a blunt column, stood a tiny island and shattered pump house. A dozen feet above the lake bed, in thin air, hung a patchwork of splintered planks gaping with holes. A yellowed, creaking skeleton methodically hobbled forward, shoved a stubby pole into thin air, walked backward along the boards, then repeated the motion.
"What's it doing?" asked Amber.
"Poling a barge," breathed Hakiim. "Like in Memnon's harbor. You walk to the bow, stab the bottom, walk the barge ahead, and do it again."
"But why?" asked Reiver. "There's no water."
"There was," Amber explained. "Some ghosts perform the same tasks in death that they had in life, over and over. The Tales of Terror tell us that."
"I thought ghosts relived a horrid or unfair death," said Reiver.
"That too, but most just repeat a chore forever, like a recurring dream or an echo that never dies."
"Remember the mules?" asked Hakiim. "They must have been yoked to a grindstone their whole lives, so in death they keep circling the mill. That skeleton must have been an old bargeman. See how he's humped over- there's another!"