Clayton Emery - Star of Cursrah

"I live with adventure every day, trying not to get killed or jailed," drawled Reiver. "It's hardly a lark."

"Still," lamented Hakiim, "repairing rugs and rolling rugs and hauling rugs and haggling over rugs-better Ibrandul spirit me to the Underdark."

"Shhh, you'll jinx us," Amber said, putting her fingers to her ears to keep out evil notions. "Especially out here. You want skulks to drag us off while we sleep?"

"Skulks only inhabit ruins." Reiver winkled a cork from a bottle of Zazesspuran wine. "Of course, the Under-dark underlies everywhere. In Calimport the Night Parade thrives on it."

"Cease your ghost stories," Amber said.

She cast about, but saw little except the high ridges that channeled the river to the Shining Sea. Amber lay back and tried to relax, but watching a million stars dance circles around the masthead made her dizzy and queasy. Soldiers called the River Agis-also called the River Memnon-the Troubled River because of the continual border clashes, and Amber couldn't shake the feeling that they were sailing into trouble. She wished the moon would rise so she could offer prayers to Selune.

Trying to distract herself, Amber joined the conversation. "I know how Hakiim feels," she said. "All I ever hear about is money and the family business-as if slavers were brass casters or felt makers. It's funny, though. I grew up watching slaves come and go, lived with it all my life, but it's only lately it seems wrong."

"The gods made them slaves," Reiver said, repeating the conventional wisdom of Memnon. "Slavers just shunt them from master to master."

"No, Amber's right," Hakiim added. "Now that we're pondering our own futures and freedom, we're more aware of other peoples' lives-and plights." He peeled a desert orange, chucked the thick rinds in the river, and continued, "No one's really free. Everyone has a master, or customers to please. The only one who's truly free in Calimshan is Sultan Sujil, though I suppose in some ways he answers to ten thousand citizens."

"Still, slaving makes my family no better than the likes of the Twisted Rune, or the beholders, or illithids. Sorry, Reive." The thief made the fig sign, thumb between middle fingers, to ward off evil names. Amber trailed her fingertips in the river, keeping watch for crocodiles. "I'm not sure my family's got a future in slavery anyway. Since the Reclamation, my cousins can't capture slaves from Tethyr, so now they hunt in Athkatla, which is risky. If I could, I'd let the slaves go free and find another occupation, preferably anything not obsessed with coin. I'd be happy."

"You scorn money because you've never lacked for it," returned Reiver. "I pray to Waukeen and Lliira for any at all. A bag of gold would solve all my problems. Between the Night Arrow and the Syl-Pasha's brother fighting to control the Undercity, and El Amlakkar busting heads, there's no future for a thief except as gallows bait."

"So," Hakiim challenged, "if you could do anything, what would you choose?"

Amber chewed her cheek a while, considering. "To start, I'd read all the Founding Stories in the library."

"That's a lot of stories," said Reiver.

"Reading's a hobby," Hakiim added. "You can't make a living at it."

"I know," Amber said, then slapped at a mosquito with wet fingers, "but I love the old stories the storytellers recite in the bazaar and the grove behind the library. Tales culled from dragons, can you imagine?"

" 'Never trust the story, but always trust the storyteller,' " quipped Reiver. "I can make up dragon tales- ulkl"

Reiver flipped backward against the mast, Amber jounced off her tiny perch in the stern to sprawl in the bilge, and Hakiim lost his kaffiyeh in the water. Struggling upright, Amber asked, "What happened?"

"We ran aground on a sand bar," Reiver said, peering over the gunwale and trying to rock the boat. "I'd say we're stuck till the tide turns."

"When's that?" Amber swiped water from the seat of her breeches.

"Uh, twelve hours? Doesn't the tide turn twice a day? Or does it take longer in the spring?"

Hakiim wrung out his headscarf and said, "Might as well send an elephant to sea. You'd sail into a fog and beach in the Theater of Allfaiths."

"A good place to pick pockets," the thief observed, "and nobody'll spill their morningfeast on you from seasickness."

Amber studied the shoreline thirty feet away, then ran down the sail. "Looks like our holiday begins with wet feet," she said, "unless you two can walk on water."

"Let the sailor go first," joked Hakiim, "to test for crocodiles."

"The stink from his dirty feet will drive them away," laughed Amber.

"You insult the honest dust of your home city," Reiver said.

"Drag the anchor ashore, Hak." Amber buckled her horsehide sandals around her neck, shrugged on her rucksack, grabbed her capture noose, and added, "I don't mind walking now, but I'd rather ride back to Memnon."

Probing ahead with her long wooden handle, the daughter of pirates sloshed through ankle-deep water, following the curving sandbar to the shore. Reiver skimmed along quietly as a fish, but Hakiim hurried, tripped, and splashed down like a harpooned whale. Once ashore, the three wedged the anchor between two boulders and jammed a big rock on top to hold it fast.

Amber dried her feet and donned her sandals, ready to go, and barefoot Reiver was already waiting. Hakiim was busy arranging an old rucksack made of carpet scraps on his back, lashing a jacket and blanket atop it, hanging a haversack of food and a canteen on his shoulder, and slinging a jingling scabbard for his curved scimitar through his belt. When all of that was finished, he was stuck holding his round shield in his left hand.

"What do I do with this?" he asked.

"Skim it across the river," advised Reiver.

"I can't throw it away. I only know how to fight with shield and scimitar combined."

"If we need to fight," Amber teased, "just spin around and charge the enemy with that backpack. It's thicker than any armor I've ever heard of. Oh, here, hold still."

With nimble fingers, she tied his leather-bound shield atop his rucksack. Hakiim waggled his pack and bonked his head on the shield's rim.

"I'll fall over backward."

"After a mile you'll know what to throw away," Reiver assured him. The thief showed only pouches at his belt and a thin canvas bundle over one shoulder, though his patched and saggy clothes could have concealed more.

Reiver scaled the ridge like a squirrel to scout the country beyond, and Amber joined him. Hakiim plodded up the slope, already puffing, and peered into the nearly total darkness.

"Hey," he said, "where are we going?"

Amber squinted. Far off, faint against the night sky, jutted a tiny, upright finger of shadow against the deep indigo of the night sky.

"There," Amber said.

"Not much to see," groused Hakiim.

"This is ancient history," Amber protested, "and it's fascinating."

"It's boring."

"Oh, come now," Amber coaxed, "aren't you curious about who built this tower? Don't you wonder what it overlooked, or guarded, and who's stood here before us?"

"No," said both young men.

"You should have stayed home, you grumps."

"We grumps are going down," announced Reiver. Careful of handholds and footing, he and Hakiim began to spiral down the narrow stairs.

"Go, I don't care."

Alone, Amber circled the tower's top, window by window, squinting as afternoon sun glinted on the brassy desert. North lay the crumbling ridge that lined the river. Patches of sand were still dimpled by their footprints. Eastward peeked a brown smear, the foothills of the Marching Mountains. To the west lay only more wastes, which dropped away at the south. The desert was mostly sand, shelves of shale, and jumbled rocks. Tufts of coarse yellow grass cropped up here and there, as did patches of low thorn bushes. Scattered about were Calim cactuses, tough and flat and half-buried in sand. Amber had already dug out one cactus spine that had pierced her camel hide sandal. After that, she walked more warily.