The Dark Queen

Chapter 16

Shinare's festival was doomed from the outset.

From the abandoned Tower of High Sorcery, its gates draped in drooping golden ribbons in honor of the goddess, all the way across the central city to the School of the Games, where tarnished bronze griffin wings hung as a reminder of earlier, more vibrant festivals, the city stiffened under a turgid pall. The few paltry booths, decked with the ribbons of the goddess, looked muddy and stained in the hot, windless afternoons. The goods sold in the Market shy;place seemed tawdry and cheap: shoddy earthen shy;ware statuary from Thoradin replaced the customary carved stone, the scrimshaw from Balifor seemed abstract and rushed, and the scaleless fish from northern Karthay was the worst of all failures.

This fish, brought to the markets in thousands of pounds and kept on ice from the Karthayan moun-^ tains, was intended as the principal delicacy of this" year's Shinarion. But the heat of the city grew sud shy;denly unbearable, and the catch had spoiled by the second day, leaving the air of the city tainted, almost unbreatheable.

The visitors could not help but notice. Despite the fuming incense on the windowsills of houses, despite the cloves hung by the thresholds and the attars of roses and violets let run in rivulets through the gutters of the streets, the city stank.

By the second evening of the Shinarion, those who were leaving the festival outnumbered the arrivals. Into the adjoining towns about the bay they retreated, past the monastery or through the Karthayan forest, rushing on horseback, in carts, on foot toward the fresh, cool air, shaking the odors of incense and dead fish from their clothing.

The few among them who looked back, nostalgic, no doubt, for the merriment of earlier festivals, saw the lights of Istar flickering and dim across the dark water. The Shinarion candles, once used to mark the festival time in such profusion that the light was vis shy;ible ten miles away, had dwindled to a few sad thou shy;sand, barely producing light to steer by.

It was not long before the travelers lost the city behind them in the rising dusk.

Alone on the Temple battlements, gazing out over the putrid city, Vaananen marveled at the quiet and darkness of this most unusual festival time.

The city looked besieged.

Of course, the rumors had spread through Istar more quickly than the smell of the rotten fish.

A rebel force had come out of the desert again, headed toward the city, its numbers unknown. At its helm was the same man-the Water Prophet-who had burst into the grasslands less than a month before, inflicted great casualties on the Twelfth and Seventh Istarian legions, then hastened back into that godless country of rock and sand, where he had vanished like a dying wind.

Vaananen shook his head. It was too soon.

No matter the powers of this Fordus Firesoul, he and his rebels were not ready. The forces arrayed against them were more than formidable, the road ahead of them perilous and long.

With Fordus away from the kanaji, there was no chance to warn him. Vaananen leaned against the cooling stone wall and stared out over the city. In the distance, the School of the Games blazed with gaudy purple light, and a roar erupted from a crowd accus shy;tomed to gladiatorial slaughter and reckless horse races.

Now was the most dangerous time-for his own mission in the city, and for Fordus's rebellion in the outlands.

For the Sixth Legion had indeed arrived in Istar. Of that much Vaananen was certain.

After his trip to the stables and the other discover shy;ies, Vincus had rushed back to the druid's quarters, scrambled through the window in a net of torn vines and brambles, and gesticulated so wildly that it took Vaananen the goodly part of an hour to calm the young man down.

By now, the druid believed the servant's story, but he accompanied him back to the stables anyway, and the horse's tattooed lip had confirmed the unpleasant truth.

Not even three legions of Solamnic Knights could hope for victory against Istar's garrison of over five thousand veteran soldiers.

He had warned the Prophet accordingly, drawn the glyphs in the rena garden, four symbols bold in the dark sand.

But who would be there to read it?

Vaananen pulled his cloak tightly about his shoul shy;ders. It always seemed to happen during the Shinarion: the last days of summer blended unaccountably into the first of autumn, and sometime, usually in midfestival, one cool, unforeseen night would signal a change in the season.

Vaananen descended the battlements. The sun had drifted behind the delicate white spires and domes of the western city, staining the luminous buildings with an ominous red.

He had one desperate hope. The Kingpriest, for all his skill in ritual and politics, was not known for his perfect choice of generals. Each successive comman shy;der had been worse than the last, culminating in the abysmal Josef Monoculus. To find a good leader had become next to impossible when the Solamnic Order, disgusted with Istar's.policy of oppression, had ceased to support the Kingpriesf s sterner measures.

And a good thing that was, Vaananen concluded, because the Istarian army with a real general at its head would be matchless.

Shivering at the thought, the druid pulled up his hood and entered the great Council Hall of the Temple, where, in his guise as a loyal follower of the Kingpriest, he would join a handful of other chosen clerics in receiving the next, no doubt, in a sorry line of military leaders.

"The fool of the season" Brother Alban had called the new commander.

None of the priests had met the new man.

Always an occasion for curiosity, the moVnent arrived, and Vaananen was somewhat shocked when, entering the torchlit hall, he saw the clergy crowded around the impressive figure of a black-robed man. The man stood next to the Kingpriest himself.

For the first time in years, perhaps the Kingpriest had chosen wisely. Vaananen could tell by the cut of the man: sturdy and strong, his pale body chiseled, almost translucent, as though an able sculptor had carved him of marble. The black silk tunic he wore was simple and elegant, a striking contrast to the bil shy;lowing, ornate robes of his clerical hosts, and he wore a battered sword at his side-a weapon that had seen years of action, the druid guessed, unlike the ornamental baubles banging around on the belts of the last three generals.

This man was dark-haired, handsome in a femi shy;nine, almost reptilian fashion, and he held the gaze of the Istarian priests impassively, with neither respect nor condescension. He refused the wine offered him by Brother Burgon and remained stand shy;ing when most of the clergy chose to sit, his pale arms crossed over his broad chest.

Beside him, the Kingpriest displayed his gentlest features. He was a lean, balding scholar with bright sky-blue-no, sea-blue-eyes. If the power of Istar had not resided in the little man, he might have been mistaken for the new general's obsessively proper secretary.

The two dignitaries spoke quietly to one another, as the priests and monks leaned into the conversation.

The Kingpriest looked tired, harried; what remained of his auburn hair had thinned even more since Vaananen had seen him last, and for a moment the druid wondered if the monarch was ill.

But when the blue eyes turned toward him, they were bright and hectic.

And afraid.

How odd.

Vaananen edged closer through the crowd, hear shy;ing the stranger's name bandied excitedly by the murmuring clerics.

Tadec? Tanik? The whispering was insistent, dis shy;tracting, the words blending together so that the druid could not make out the name in question. But whoever the man was, Tadec or Tanik, he continued to charm his hosts: a low, melodious comment from the man drew animated laughter and, with an icy smile, he scanned the room, his eyes locking at once with Vaananen's.

The eyes of the new general were amber, depth-less, and slitted. He stared at the druid, and the black core of his gaze opened malignly. Looking into the heart of those eyes, Vaananen saw an image of a dark void, a huge winged shape spiraling in the windless nothingness, its webbed, extended wings flexing and shimmering.

/ know you, a dark voice seemed to say, rising from nowhere but registering inside the shaking druid's head.

Then, as suddenly as it struck, the feeling sub shy;sided. Vaananen blinked, the general turned away, and the image vanished. But in that moment's com shy;munion Vaananen knew both what the man called himself, and who he really was.

"Takhisis," Vaananen whispered to himself, as the clergy around him slipped past on their way to meet

and admire and adore this new, mysterious leader. "Takhisis commands the armies of Istar. Now I know. "And now she knows, too."

The corridors of the tower were drafty and dank as the druid made his way back to his quarters. The hour was still early, his priestly brothers either at prayers or the festival … or adoring the general, breathless and rapt like vermin mesmerized before a sewer snake.

There was still time to warn the rebels, if Fordus returned to the kanaji.

Vaananen knew that the days to come would be dangerous for all of them. Now he would have to lock his doors, board his windows against the sud shy;denly hostile night. The goddess had recognized him-he was almost sure of it. And since that was true, his life was forfeit.

A faint light wavered and approached from a side corridor. Not even an hour, and. it has already begun, Vaananen thought, wrestling down a rising fear. He stepped into a dark threshold, pressed himself against the polished wood of the door. . and watched as a sleepy acolyte passed, bearing a torch to the last prayers of the night.

Vaananen moved out from the darkness, laughed softly and sadly. It would not do. He would not hide and hole away in the temple, waiting for Takhisis to strike. He would not lie trembling in bed, awaiting a footfall outside his locked doors.

And yet, despite his brave thoughts, Vaananen sighed in relief when his own door was behind him, when it was locked and double-locked against the night and his own fearful imaginings. At once the druid moved to the rena garden, to see if the four glyphs he had drawn that morning lay untouched in the shadowy sand.

Yes, they were still there. Fordus had not received them.

Vaananen sat on the black stone. It was time for a fifth symbol. The druids had taught him that a pow shy;erful magic lay in the crafting of this extraordinary glyph-a magic to be used only when circumstances were dire. The message of the fifth symbol was always loud: sometimes a warning of famine or sud shy;den flood, often, during the Age of Dreams, a token that a dragon approached. It was distinct from the other glyphs, for it beckoned with an impulse as strong as hunger or weariness.

Now the message would call out to Fordus from the landscape itself-from the rocks in the foothills to the mud along Lake Istar, wherever his army marched. The fifth rune would summon him back to the desert, to the kanaji.

Carefully, shaking ever so slightly, Vaananen drew the glyph beneath the other four. It was an ancient symbol, used last, the druid believed, in the time of Huma-in the Third Dragon War that had driven the goddess from the face of Krynn.

The markings were twofold, overlapping. The image of a woman upon that of a man.

Beware Takhisis! the glyph read. Beware the dark man!

Tamex greeted the last of the clergy, two balding old men who bowed and scraped before him as though he were the Kingpriest himself. They babbled their amenities, their little phrases of flattery and adoration, never noticing that the new commander's amber eyes had strayed from them.

Quick, ruthless, and efficient, she had come to Istar for business. Crawling through the city as a snake had been a pleasing reconnaissance. No one noticed another serpent in Istar, anyway. And there had been no one to bar entry to the arena, no one to disturb her next transformation.

Out of the sands she had assembled Tamex, and it had been easy for this embodiment, this creature of crystal and lies, to win over the Kingpriest and his company-indeed, to win over all of them.

All of them, that is, except that druid.

Oh, yes. She had seen the druid for the first time in a vision, exultant at Fordus's victory, raising his bared arms. It had to be him. She had seen the red oak leaf tattooed on the inside of his left arm.

That information alone, in the proper hands, would be enough to silence him.

Yet, at times the court of Istar moved with exasper shy;ating slowness. Misdemeanors could take years to try and judge, and a capital crime such as this-high trea shy;son against the empire-could take so long the druid might die of old age before he was sentenced.

No, his silencing would come by older, more tra shy;ditional means.

Tamex moved through the dispersing crowd, tak shy;ing care not to brush against priest or acolyte. The cold, stony feel of the adopted body would surely arouse suspicion. Moving the heavy limbs without overmuch noise or breakage was difficult enough.

Watch your windows, druid, the crystals in Tamex's blood whined and whispered. Watch your doors, and watch your back in the corridors.

And, oh, yes, count the sunrises and the sunsets, and bless each one of them. For you, there are few remaining.