Clayton Emery - Star of Cursrah

Obedient even to death, every guard slugged the bitter brew, returned the mug, and resumed their stance of attention. More guards filed into rank before them and drank the potion, until nine caldrons had been emptied and the soldiers ranked three deep around the court. Only a few dozen guards were held in reserve.

As the maneuvering and imbibing dragged on, the bakkal asked the grand vizar to explain the mystical potion. Whether this was to increase his knowledge or to double-check the process, Star couldn't tell. Rasping like a crow, the grand vizar spoke of old wine steeped with harmless herbs such as self-heal and skullcap, and toxic ones such as monk's hood and foxglove. Dissolved in were natron fetched from the sea, feldspar from the mountains, phosphate from desert salt flats, dreambliss from the southland jungles, and resin from northern trees. The mix had been stirred under last night's full moon, with prayers offered to Selune, the gentle Mistress of the Night, and bribes offered to Shar, Overseer of the Under-dark. Incantations had included forbiddance, death pact, armor of darkness, feign death, protection from fiends, and other spells the vizar was reluctant to reveal.

Intrigued, Amenstar watched the first guards who'd been dosed. Gradually, so slowly Star couldn't tell when the change took effect, the soldiers' rigid stance of attention became something more: a rock-solid immobility no human could attain. Testing, the bakkal plied one finger to tip a soldier. The unblinking guard tilted just like a statue, thumped lightly against the wall, and rocked back into place.

"Beware, Highest of Holies," cautioned the vizar. "If the sleeper suffers harm, even so little as a finger joint broken, so too is the spell broken. That sleeper will be lost to you forever."

The bakkal nodded absently, for his time to partake had come. The grand vizar sorted and shooed the royal family onto the central dais under the round canopy of fake stars and moon. Only the bakkal sat, on a low chair at the exact center, flanked by his wives and children. Poised in an outward facing ring were royal uncles and aunts and cousins. Outside their circle were ranged the sages, courtiers, and a handful of elder vizars. Mixed in were three stand-ins; not far from the bakkal's right hand were placed the statues of two elder brothers and Star's own statue.

To complete the illusion of a princess joining her family, Star's moonstone tiara was yanked from her head and settled on the stone skull of her statue. The message was clear. In the family's eyes, Star was as dead as her brothers. The princess's heart ached to bursting. Why had she lived at all, if only to end in such hateful disgrace?

With a sense of pressing time, another ring of guards was ranked around the royal family while a fresh bubbling caldron was lugged in. One by one, from the outermost ring inward, soldiers, then courtiers, and finally the royal family drank the petrifying brew and slowly sank into a wide-eyed, unblinking coma. With sleep that deep, Star wondered, what could wake them? What concoction or incantation could revive her time-frozen family? Amenstar was never to know, not in this life.

At a gesture of dismissal, Star's sedan chair was hoisted onto the shoulders of junior vizars and lugged out. Retreating, the grand vizar shooed the lesser priests. With them went torches, so darkness crept from the corners to smother the room. Last to leave was the grand vizar, who closed the big double doors. Elder vizars used spatulas to cram gooey resin into cracks to seal out fresh air. The grand vizar positioned a dozen of the bakkal's burliest bodyguards in the short corridor before the doors, two rhinaurs foremost, two manscorpions at the rear, then administered potions that froze them immobile.

The grand vizar surveyed her handiwork. Behind a phalanx of soldiers, behind sealed doors, ringed by more soldiers and courtiers, Cursrah's royal family was entombed, sleeping for ages, if need be.

Dusting her hands, the grand vizar leered at the princess muted and bound in her sedan chair, and said, "Now, Your Majesty, it's your turn."

It's my fault, Star repeated to herself over and over, it's my fault.

She'd been recalcitrant, headstrong, spoiled, and foolish. She'd refused to listen to her parents, tutors, and friends, had refused to think at all. Now at the clanking end of a mournful chain of events, she was a prisoner of the people she hated most: the shaven-skulled, sigil-branded vizars with their clammy hands and hollow voices, people who hid from the sun to worship death.

In the largest and most frightening laboratory junior vizars dropped Amenstar's sedan chair with a thump. Stone slabs were backed by butchers' tools: scalpels, bonesaws, needles, forceps. Racks and crocks of dried leaves and sickly liquids ranged around, as well as jars of worms, maggots, and leeches. In the middle of the lab stood a soapstone tub big enough to submerge a corpse. The princess shivered, for the room was as cold as a grave, as she would be soon.

She would die, Star supposed. Whatever this "Protector" plan was, it must involve death, for the vizars practiced nothing else. Star's imagination ran riot with horrors. Would they skin her? Drain her blood? Drown her in some vile soup? Whatever the method, they could only kill her once, though it might be slow.

A curious lassitude crept over Amenstar, perhaps a function of the poultice, perhaps simple despair. Her family had retreated into petrification deeper than any grave. Her beloved city burned to ruins as her citizens ran mad. Cursrah was dead, its royal family gone, and she, a daughter of both, might as well be dead.

She had only one satisfaction. Punishment found her, but her friends had escaped. No doubt Gheqet and Tafir had found their families and fled across the grasslands. Forewarned of invaders, both young men had the good sense to vanish.

Star felt a cool tear trickle down her numb cheek. Gheqet and Tafir, those laughing teasing clowns, had been her only true friends in her short life. She would miss them like a piece of her heart. In some foreign port they'd eventually settle, she knew, pursue careers, marry, and raise families. The lonely princess's only hope was that, sometime in the future, one or both would occasionally think of her. With Cursrah blown into dust, those two young men might be the only memory in which Star endured. Star was startled as someone spoke in these still, chill chambers.

"Let's begin." Rolling up her sleeves, setting aside her false tiger turban, the grand vizar fell to work. Dipping the dregs of a copper caldron, she diluted the petrifying brew with more wine, and stirred in six curled tails of scorpions.

A potion for her, Star knew. Suddenly angry, she resolved to fight, and flipped her head to flick away a tear. Show no weakness, she thought, even if she couldn't speak. Show them how bravely a princess endured their hideous ministrations.

As if reading her mind, the grand vizar ordered, "Open her mouth… with tools, you idiots."

Star wanted to scream. The evil vizar anticipated her every move, even such a pathetic one as trying to clamp her jaws shut. Two junior vizars caught Star's chin and cheeks. When she tried to bite, they jammed silver spatulas between her teeth. Leaning, straining with a cloth, the grand vizar poured the bitter tea down the princess's throat, choking her. Star willed herself to vomit, but her mouth was clamped shut. Sure enough, within minutes a stony stiffness inched through her muscles like frost.

"That should do," the vizar gloated. "Untie her."

Released, Amenstar couldn't control her muscles. She sagged to the floor like an octopus out of water, as three acolytes wrestled her limp form onto a slab table. Star stared at a stone ceiling dotted by yellow circles of lamplight. She was almost a corpse, and she wondered what end portended. A knife between her ribs? A wire around her throat? A wet cloth over her face? She strained to hear the grand vizar's orders.