The Dark Queen

Prologue

Thunder rumbled through the tower's polished opal windows and rattled their thin frames like a Namer's medicine stick.

An answer of lightning flickered over the dry white plains north of the city. Already, sweeping rain fell upon the far port of Karthay and on the bay-side forests toward the harbors of Istar. Here in the city, above the Kingpriest's Tower, the afternoon sky grew sullen and tense, and the brilliant gemstone windowpanes darkened to a deep blue.

From his tower window, opened to the fresh and rising wind, the white-robed man could tell by the sharp scent and expectancy of moisture in the air and the racing, tumbling black clouds that the storm was moving swiftly. He turned to his lectern, to the frail ancient volume that lay open beneath an unlit, solitary green candle, and the new volume, half copied, beside it. The room dimmed suddenly, and a strong breeze threatened the lacy pages as they lifted violently under its force.

Furtively, he closed the window and lit the candle. His moss-green eyes sought the tilt of the door, and he assured himself that it was still bolted. The book was volatile: a collection of druidic prophecies that had been hidden by the most capable of the Lucanesti elves for over a millennium. It had been brought to Istar secretly during the collapse of northern Silvanesti, kept in the recesses of a vint shy;ner's private library for years.

The Kingpriest forbade possession of this old, crumbling book and others like it. Copying it promised certain imprisonment, or even worse, for these were the most forbidding of times. The second year in the Edict of Thought Control. Outside, the air crackled, and brown pigeons took sudden wing from the garden's pavement. The rain shy;storm drew closer. It soon would hover and crash over the city, washing the dusty stone streets and the brick alleys, drenching cart and pedestrian, awning and booth/from the sentries on the northern walls to the longshoremen at the southern piers.

Moving south, the man thought. To hover for some time over the lake, before the mountains would catch and stifle it. The plains and the desert beyond them would again be cheated of the sooth shy;ing touch of water. No rain for them this time. Perhaps not for months, or years. Lightning flickered again over the northern sky, tracing a final, ragged white line between the gray-blue clouds, like a deep flaw in a dark gem. The man shuddered and returned to the old book. In the shadowy room, he began to copy, translating the weblike, interlacing lines of the ancient elven alpha shy;bet into a more legible common text, re-forming the prophecy he had copied through the night, a text that had come down to alarming events, to an alarm shy;ing passage.

He dipped his quill into the ink and cocked his hand. "In that time of the world," he wrote, "when the dark gods are still imprisoned in the vast empti shy;ness of the Abyss, the legends of Istar will claim that all evil is banished forever-that a universal tide of goodness and light has swept across the continent at the coronation of the Kingpriest. All civilized Krynn, the legends will say, stands at the threshold of a sil shy;ver age, an age of celebration and song, and the softer music of law and ritual.

"It will be the Age of Istar, they say, which a thou shy;sand years of histories will praise and exalt.

"The legends, of course, are wrong.

"Wrong about the law, the celebration, the ritual and song. Wrong about the age itself, which histori shy;ans will remember as the Age of Darkness…."

The man looked up from the book and massaged his temples. Half of the next page lay crumbled into bits, fallen away because of ill-treatment and the book's antiquity. Though he had reconstructed these very pages with care and skill and druidic magic, some passages were irretrievable, the pages on which they had been written either missing or dete shy;riorated into glittering dust.

Dust. Like most of the Lucanesti themselves. The book was as mysterious as the elves who had penned it.

Holding his breath, he turned the fragmented page. Even so, scraps of vellum, light as dust motes, shook loose and hovered above the book, rising in the heat of the candle.

So as not to further disturb the fragile, precious pages, he raised his thick sleeve very slowly and exhaled into it, then read on: "… were wrong about the gods. True, the great lance of the hero Huma will strike a near-mortal blow against the Dark Queen…"

Silently, the reader marveled. Huma's heroism, a thousand years in the past, lay in the future for the ancient writer. This book was over a millennium old. And yet it now read like news of tomorrow.

"This queen, Takhisis of the Many Names, he will banish to the Abyss, where she and her barbarous minions will wait and brood in a sunless chasm, far from the warm and living world they desire to influ shy;ence and rule.

"To reclaim her power, it would take …" The man swore a mild, silent oath. The text broke off again, the sides of the ancient page lost forever, and words of the prophecy with them.

But perhaps a more powerful spell, he mused. Perhaps I can still reconstruct…

But that would have to wait until the others left for the service. Too noisy for now. With a shrug, he picked up where the text continued.

"… that forms her body from the dust of the planet, restores her entry into the disheartened world. But until that time there will be other ways- faceted, more regular-to enter for a moment, for an hour, though the stay is brief and tantalizing in its brevity.

"Lightning is one way, and the powerful surge of flowing water another. For a time-sometimes a minute, sometimes an hour-the goddess will be able to channel her spark and spirit into a blinding flash in the western sky or the tumble of waters in the dark Thon-Thalas. For that brief and glorious breath, the world will spread before her, green and vulnerable in all its prospect…

"And then it will vanish, and what remains for her is Abthalom, her prison in the dark, shrieking swirls of the Abyss.

"Then, on one desert night, well into the reign of the last Kingpriest, the change will begin unexpect shy;edly.

"Will begin like this.

"Reveling in a thunderstorm, riding the jagged lightning over the red mesa south of Istar, Takhisis will watch and exult as the black desert lies exposed to fire and power, and sudden torrential rains-the first in three years, the last ever in the Istarian desert-batter the desolate salt flats at the foot of the Red Plateau. When the lightning strikes the stand of black crystals she will scarcely notice, until the storm subsides and she finds herself hovering, a tiny spark in the heart of a glittering shard.

"How she will remain there, how she can linger, is a mystery unknown to druid or priest. And yet, by this peculiar accident, she will find a way back to the world.

"Oh, yes, the form she takes will be brittle. When she molds her new body into the shape of a snake, of a jackal-finally a woman-it will be a full year before she learns the art, before she can take shape without breaking or crumbling. Even after that, her stays will be short-lived, for without notice her crys shy;talline flesh will crumble to salt, to sand, to dust, and she will be forced back to Abthalom again-back to the swirling darkness.

"To await a housing more amorphous. A home borne of water and slow time and the incantation of a powerful priest."

The man lifted his eyes from the book. Water and slow time? Incantations? Not enough to piece together the puzzle of this prophecy.

But the crystals. He could learn more of the crys shy;tals. He bent over the book, reading again.

"But after a dozen years, Takhisis will achieve a foothold of sorts in her old, accustomed haunts. She will dwell in the crystals for days, sometimes for weeks, a malign, animate spark that shapes the glit shy;tering stones to whatever form or guise takes her fancy.

"As a woman, as a warrior, as a viper or dragon, she can be all but indistinguishable from flesh and scale and blood. Beware her footprints. The massive weight of a waterless body will make them too deep for her size. And so, in those regions of Ansalon where sand and salt and crystal abound, the Dark Queen will begin to thrive and flourish.

"She will stop revolts and start them, depose a king and set a duke of her liking in his place. She will misdirect caravans across the Istarian desert so that all who travel with them die of exposure and thirst.

"She cannot remain, cannot establish herself, but her new presence will be stronger and remain longer than it ever has in lightning and dreams. Slowly she will regain her influence in Ergoth, in Thoradin, in the court of the Kingpriest at Istar."

The man's eyebrow raised. She would be coming here.

Why not? He had secretly expected it. Quickly he mined his memory-of rain, of the Istarian desert, of the last downpour by the Red Plateau.

Could it really have been twenty years?

She might already be here. With a rising appre shy;hension, he turned the page.

"Takhisis will guard her newfound power jeal shy;ously, but there will be other gods in the Abyss, just as eager to enter the world arid turn the tide of his shy;tory to their liking."

A sharp rap on the door startled the man. With a desperate, reflexive lurch he slammed the fragile book shut and hid it beneath his austere, blanketed cot.

"I am surprised," he marveled bleakly. "How remarkable."

Inwardly he cringed at the damage he had surely done to the delicate volume.

The lad at the door stood stooped and deferential, apologetic. After a barrage of the boy's tedious and lengthy explanations and many obeisant hand ges shy;tures, the man longed for the other servant-the voiceless one.

"The Kingpriest," the boy finally said, steepling his hands, his eyes cast to the floor, "requests the pleasure of your company."

The man nodded, snuffed the green candle, and followed the lad from the room. As they walked down the cool torchlit corridor, toward the Council Hall and the great and ever-pressing business of state, another roll of thunder sounded high above the city, the smell of ozone pressed into the man's nostrils, and the first wave of rain washed over the harbor.