The Dark Queen

Chapter 11

There was no word in hawk for what happened next, either.

Though Fordus's scouts were sharp-eyed, skilled in reading trail and terrain, the subtle change in the nearby sands raised no alarm at first. By morning the dunes had shifted to encircle a huge, undulating mass of sand. The men were curious. A dozen of them, veterans of a hundred journeys and a score of battles, crouched around the disturbance, regarding it cautiously, intently.

It was a springjaw at worst, they told themselves, setting its funneled trap for unwary travelers. More likely a sandling, or the simple change of an overnight wind.

So the scouts kept their posts and turned their sights to the far horizons, to the edge of the salt flats-to anything, in short, except the whorling, lift shy;ing sands at their feet.

Indeed, they had almost forgotten this strange movement when the first rumbling shook the ground around them. The youngest of the scouts, standing not twenty yards from the disturbance, pointed and screamed..

And was swallowed by the first spray of molten sand that surged from the ruptured heart of the desert.

Dumbstruck, two other scouts fell seconds later, as the sands all around them erupted and, like an eerie, hidden volcano, rained glowing glass upon Plains shy;man and bandit alike. Overhead, the bard's hawk soared to a great height, the heat on his wings unbearable even at a thousand feet above this sud shy;den holocaust.

The bird cried out, again and again. "

It was less than an hour before Fordus reached the site of the eruptions. Larken and Stormlight fol shy;lowed him/and Northstar and the woman Tanila. Gormion and a dozen of her bandits were not far behind.

What they saw was a desert scarred unnaturally by fissures and craters and chasms, glazed over with a steaming, muddy caul. It looked like a country imagined from heat and light and attendant fire. Shadows of indignant desert birds reeled far over shy;head, and at the edges of the spreading lava the sand crackled, melted, and added to the rising flood.

For a moment, the handful of rebels fell silent. For-dus, his injury forgotten, took one firm step toward the smoldering landscape. Stormlight walked to his side, took his arm, and held him back.

Slowly, the sand at the center of the great wound hardened to dark crystal.

"What is it?" Gormion hissed, her hand slipping absurdly to the hilt of her dagger.

She received no answer. Neither Plainsman nor Prophet nor bard could decipher this mystery.

Yet one among them knew. One who veiled her knowledge behind expressionless amber eyes.

There were other gods in the Abyss, just as eager as Takhisis to enter the world and turn the tide of history to their liking. Zeboim had followed Takhisis once, and Morgion-the tempests in coastal waters and the plagues borne out of the marshes were testa shy;ment to their ingenuity-but they lacked the power to stay more than minutes, more than an hour at most.

But when the sand glazed and melted that day in the Istarian desert, spreading slowly toward the Plainsman encampment beneath the Red Plateau and destroying everything in its path, it was prelude to something far greater, far more disruptive. Takhi shy;sis recognized that at once. Another of her kind-a strong one with powers to rival her own-had dis shy;covered her secret and followed her through the crystalline gap between worlds.

And she knew who he was.

"What is it?" Gormion asked again, more insis shy;tently this time as the molten sand slowly swal shy;lowed the dunes.

"Volcano," Stormlight replied tersely, his eyes never leaving the glowing swirl of glass. "I've seen them before. Long ago, from the foothills of Tho-radin. We had best move the camp, and quickly."

Gormion was more than ready to comply. Her sil shy;ver jewelry rattled as she waved wildly at her bandit followers, whistling and motioning them back toward the camp. Fordus and Stormlight made ready to follow, but suddenly, as they turned toward the Red Plateau, they were startled by a loud, unearthly screech.

Tanila lay in the path of the flowing slag, writhing and clutching her ankle.

Without thinking, Stormlight raced toward the fallen woman. In the sand his footing was unsteady, and once, nightmarishly, he stumbled and fell, brac shy;ing himself on his hands not a foot from the glow shy;ing, blistering pool.

He felt the heat like a hundred suns, and his eyes, blinked and smarted.

With a cry, he closed the milky lucerna, pushed himself away from the slag, and staggered to Tanila, slipping his arm about her waist and dragging her blindly toward the safer crest of the nearest dune. She felt incredibly heavy, resistant in his grasp. With a desperate heave, he drew her to safety, toppled over the far side of the dune, and lay breathless, facedown in the sand. Around him a chaos of sounds eddied and swirled-the cries of the bandits, North-star's voice carried on a white-hot wind.

He could not believe Tanila's heaviness, how hard and brittle her body had felt in his hands. It was as though the slag had covered her and cooled, turning her to stone, to glass. He turned toward her, incredu shy;lous, longing to touch her again.

Her foot was missing, the ankle snapped and severed like hewn stone, no blood flowing from the wound. Stormlight gaped at the woman.

She returned his stare coldly.

A shout from Fordus disrupted his thoughts.

He sprang to his feet, and the earth split apart beneath him.

Kneeling in a daze at the edge of the slag, Storm-light watched the creature rise out of the fissured glaze, its broad wings glittering with spark and ash.

Fordus rushed out of the smoke, Northstar and two of the bandits beside him, as the creature took shape out of fire and cloud: an enormous hook-billed bird-its shape that of a condor or vulture, its naked head blistered and ugly, its black eyes glitter shy;ing like gems.

Fordus stopped in his tracks, dumbfounded, as the bird wheeled above the desert, shrieking and smoldering. Below, the bandits hurled axe and spear and imprecation, but all bounced harmlessly off the rough skin of the bird, who pivoted slowly, ponder shy;ously, as though only recently come to its own body.

With another cry, the creature swooped awk shy;wardly. Its attack was predictable and slow, its sharp beak clattering against the shield of one of the bandit spearmen, a young man from Kharolis named Ingaard. Ingaard feinted and laughed, and the bird staggered back, preparing to lunge again.

With a defiant cry, Ingaard braced himself to hurl his weapon, but suddenly, as though the whole desert had fallen under a terrible, malign enchant shy;ment, the lad's feet slipped in the tumbling sand, and he fell on his back, loosing the grip on his spear. The condor's beak crashed against his uplifted shield, again and again until the tough hide tore and the great bird snatched Ingaard into the air, rending his flesh and hurling him into the molten slag.

The other bandits turned and fled, screaming.

Slowly the creature pivoted toward Tanila, its eyes glowing red and smoke rising from its dark, angular feathers. Again, it fanned its wings, and the hot fetid air swirled like a hurricane around the Plainsmen.

Tanila, enraged, lost her balance in the eddying sand, but Stormlight alertly stepped between her and the monster, raising the bronze buckler of one of the fallen bandits. With a shriek, the condor lunged toward Stormlight, lightning blazing from its black, depthless eyes.

The bolts flickered and danced around the elf, who braced himself as the smoldering bird struck him, stopping the searching claws with the little shield and pushing the monster back and away. There was a shattering sound, like porcelain or glass, and the great bird groaned and drew his head back, his long neck arched like a scorpion's tail.

For a moment the desert was silent, as though sound itself had passed through the fissures and vanished. Elf and monster faced one another in a desolation of sand and rising steam.

"Kill him!" Tanila hissed.

And then, with a cry that was no doubt heard at the gates of Istar, the condor lurched after Storm shy;light. The elf stepped back, then lost his balance as the great beast cleared the edge of the slag, for a moment grotesquely in flight above the desert. With another deafening cry the condor swooped, falling upon Stormlight and driving him to the ground amid a gauntlet of slashing talons.

Larken whistled for her hawk and snatched her drumhammer from her belt. Deftly stepping over a widening fissure, she raced toward higher, more solid ground, rifling her memory for a powerful music.

Stormlight fell to his knees, bent backward by the weight of the creature. The condor hovered tri shy;umphantly over the struggling elf, its claws digging at his rib cage, its neck arched for a final, fatal strike.

Stormlight cried out and glanced beseechingly toward Fordus …

Who was about other business entirely.

Fordus stood on a narrow natural bridge of rock and dried earth left by the lake of molten sand that bubbled and swirled on the desert plain. It was a thin strip of solid ground, untouched by the fire and magma, and narrowing slowly as the hot current ate against its foundations.

It was the country of his dreams: the fire, the lava, the dark bird.

He stood breathless, abstracted, until the shouts of his men awakened him.

Fordus was faced with a choice. Stormlight lay in the pocked and bubbling field, the condor over him, batting its burning wings, while Northstar, only a dozen feet away, stared desperately into the glowing liquid, calling plaintively for help.

Stormlight was in peril, it was plain to see.

But the condor …

Was Fordus's old friend, his dream-summoner.

And Stormlight. . was dissident. A troublesome lieutenant. Whatever happened to him was in the lap of the gods.

Fordus rushed toward Northstar, pulling the lad from the lip of the widening chasm.

"My medallion!" Northstar cried. "The disk!"

Fordus knew what he meant at once. The religious pendant, given to Northstar on his naming night, was a bronze replica of one of the fabled Disks of Mishakal. Worthless to anyone but the devoted lad, it now hung by its broken chain from an outcrop shy;ping of rock scarcely a foot above the widening crevasse.

"Walk carefully toward the high ground!" Fordus shouted, leaning over the burning lake, his lean, muscular arm stretching toward the medallion, his fingers spread and extended. "Save yourself, North-star!"

It sounded heroic, like the stuff of Larken's poetry. It would make for a good song in the evening's Telling.

On his back in the middle of the steaming field, Stormlight pushed the bird away yet again.

His arms were seared by the hot metal buckler he carried, and the smell of sulfur and burnt rock singed his nostrils, rushed down his throat and into his lungs.

Once again, he tried to cry out, but the pain was unbearable, smothering.

So this is the way it ends, he thought, strangely calm, the smoke gusting into his eyes and the hoarse cry of the condor on all sides of him.

The dull, dry shriek of the bird was answered by a call more shrill, and suddenly, miraculously, the sky cleared over Stormlight. He blinked painfully, scrambled to his feet.

Lucas swooped toward the Red Plateau, the con shy;dor glowing and smoldering in pursuit.

Swiftly, gracefully, the little hawk banked in the air, dodging the heavier, clumsier bird with a grace born of a thousand hunts, of a year's reconnaissance in the desert sky. Blindly, furiously the condor fol shy;lowed, the ground beneath the path of its flight blis shy;tering and blazing at its passage.

The hawk flew a wide, looping circle and returned toward the field and Stormlight, the condor picking up speed, swiftly closing the gap until it seemed that Lucas would be caught, ignited, consumed by the fiery monster.

Then Larken, standing on a sloping rise, seeing the danger to her companion, battered her drum loudly, slowly, in the stately Matherian rhythms of high magic. The song began in an incandescence of words, an elvish tralyta that trailed off into a hidden language, into the words that bards speak only in whispers, and only to the gods.

But the little bard gave her song full voice, and at the margins of the lava flow, the red glaze darkened and crusted, cooling so rapidly that the sound of its shattering echoed over the desert.

Still the bard's song rose above the chaos and noise, the words completely unintelligible now, trail shy;ing into birdsong, into distant thunder and the rush of water, into the sound of the wind through^the nearby crystals.

The crystals themselves, at the edge of the Tears of Mishakal, were breaking to shards, crumbling silently to powder.

Lucas soared high above the cooling earth, then dropped five hundred feet through the smoky air, landing roughly on the sand and mantling, his wings spread over him like a tent, a canopy. The condor followed, a trail of flame in its wake, stretch shy;ing its glowing talons to strike.

Then, fifty feet above the floor of the desert, the monster collided with the power of the bard's song. Tanila whirled and shrieked and covered her ears.

For a moment, out of the corner of her eye, Larken saw the dark woman hobble toward the Tears of Mishakal, trailing black dust like a cloud of billow shy;ing smoke.

Then suddenly, spectacularly, the air went incan shy;descent.

The condor splintered into a thousand sparks, slowly raining deadly flame over the parched land shy;scape, the igneous rock, the cowering bird.

Just before the fire shower reached Lucas, Storm-light/ racing over the hot ground, snatched up the hawk and hurled him free of the deadly rain. Lucas tumbled through the air, regained his balance and wings, and soared clear of the fire as Stormlight sprang free of the burning earth, rolling, his clothing on fire. Larken rushed to the elf, but by the time she reached him, the fire was smothered and he lay, dazed and breathless, in the shadow of a huge cac shy;tus.

Shimmering steam rose from the condor's ashes and spread angrily across the fire-ravaged plains.

The bard crouched over the elf-warrior, singing a brief song of healing and gratitude. Groggily, lean shy;ing on Larken's shoulder, Stormlight rose to his feet, looked her level in the eyes, as though he saw her for the first time, past the roughness and dirt, the weathering and the matted, neglected white hair.

Suddenly, Fordus shouted in triumph across the smoldering plain.

The War Prophet stood on the narrow strand of earth, holding aloft a brightly shimmering object, red and golden as the afternoon sun. He danced a victory dance, and Northstar, safely on the other end of the strand, danced with him.

"He's mad!" Stormlight whispered. "Fordus is completely and red-mooned mad!"

Larken remained silent, her hands occupied in gently supporting the injured elf.

Fordus lifted aloft the medallion again, laughing and whistling. But suddenly the dark smoke bundled and rushed toward him at a blinding speed. Trapped on the narrow bridge, he could not elude it, could not outrun it. In an instant it engulfed him, swirled about him like a whirlpool, like a maelstrom, then dissolved into the clear desert daylight, leaving him lifeless on the scored and barren rock.

Stormlight never remembered what happened after that.

He thought he heard Larken singing once, maybe twice, and Northstar shouting, and the distant cry of the bard's hawk. He felt himself being moved, car shy;ried …

And then there was torchlight, and shamans, and medicine women dancing attendance over him, and he felt the pain lift from his arm and legs.

Fordus, he told himself, Fordus is dead.

His sorrow was not pure. In the midst of the mourning, of the weeping, he felt something heavy lifted from him. At last it is over, a voice said or seemed to say, and he felt a strange upsurge of joy, even in the midst of his bereavement.

Later, when he awoke at the foot of the Red Plateau, drenched in rainwater and wrapped in cool hides, he tried to forget that traitorous delight. Northstar stood over him, watching him intently.

"Northstar."

"The commander is alive, Stormlight. Thank the gods he is alive! Twice he has asked for you. Can you stand? Can you walk?"

"I… I think so," the Plainsman replied, pulling himself painfully to a sitting position. "He's. . he's still. ." Something tugged at the edge of his memory-something he should remember but could not, given the fire and smoke and the great raging bird.

"His spirit stands at the edge of this life, where the dusk surrounds him and the shadows stalk. But he is strong, and we hope for his recovery."

Stormlight leaned hard against the younger man, his eyes on the fire, the assembly atop the Red Plateau where Fordus lay injured, perhaps dying. Slowly, with great exertion, he matched pace with Northstar, as the two of them crossed the deserted campground and began the gentle, roundabout ascent to the top of the plateau, where a throng had gathered and the drum beat a mournful rhythm.

The Branchalan mode. The mode of remembrance.

Perhaps he was already too late.

"Hurry, Northstar," he muttered through clenched teeth, and the young man quickened their pace.

"Five sentries are dead," Northstar explained, as the sound of the drum grew louder. "Gormion sur shy;vived, and Larken, and three of the bandits."

The drum droned on, and a clear voice rose on the rhythm, the melody doleful and lonely.

"Poor Larken," Northstar murmured. "A widow's weeds though never wed."

Stormlight stood upright, stepped away from the young man's support. The memory, elusive in fire and battle.

Tanila.

"The woman, Northstar!" he shouted, his strong hands grasping the guide's shoulders. "What hap shy;pened to Tanila?"

Northstar shook his head.

"Vanished. No sign of her at the dunes or amid the slag. There's a chance the eruption swallowed her, or…"

"Or?" Stormlight was insistent, shrill.

"I stepped to the edge of the salt flats, where she was headed when Larken's song began, when the monster descended. There was nothing there but the faint outline of a woman's body, already half-vanished in the shifted sand."

"An outline? No tracks leading away?"

"None. Nothing but a smaller pile of rubble … a heap of black crystal and salt."