The Dark Queen

Chapter 19

Silently, moving through the tall grass like he moved through Istarian alleys, Vincus made his way to the edge of the rebel encampment.

He was not sure, actually, why he chose such secrecy. After all, he had come this far, through dan shy;gerous country and Istarian patrols, and finally, with the aid of the mysterious hawk, had reached his des shy;tination. But all of his instincts-born, perhaps, of his years in slavery and his childhood on the fringes of Bywall-urged him to be cautious, not to drop his guard just yet.

So he approached the camp stealthily, crouched low to make his movements small and quick through the grass.

The camp was laid out in three concentric circles. The outermost contained the outposts and fires of the sentries, the first warning line against assault or raid.

The men here were young: sharp-eyed, but also inexperienced. If an army had approached, they would have surely given warning, but Vincus was a solitary traveler, and a slippery, streetwise one at that.

Folding his tattered cloak and the bag Vaananen had given him close to his side, Vincus moved easily between two sentries-sallow-faced bandit boys from Thoradin, part of Gormion's following. He crept around the shadowy side of the first tent he came to, then waited until a cloud passed over the red moon, and raced through an open dry expanse until he reached another tent, another shadow, the second circle of the camp.

Instantly, Vincus knew he was among more sea shy;soned and watchful troops. These were men and women who had fought the year's war in the service of Fordus Firesoul, and had probably come to the Water Prophet battle-scarred and ready.

As Vincus crouched in the tent shadow, he sud shy;denly heard a low growling behind him. Slowly he turned to face a snarling midsized dog, its teeth bared and its fur bristling with aggression.

Vincus extended his hand. With the last scrap of his Istarian traveling rations, he bribed the dog to silence. He sat in the darkness, rubbing the willow-wounds that scored his shoulders, feeding bread to his newfound friend, mulling over a dozen ways- all unsatisfactory-to try to reach the center of the camp.

Something rattled against the book in the bottom of the bag. Reaching into the dark folds, gently brushing away the curious, snuffling dog, Vincus drew forth something hard and oblong, smelling green and citric, like the soft, thick husk of a freshly fallen walnut.

A zizyphus fruit. It could be nothing else.

Vincus wrinkled his nose. The zizyphus was ined shy;ible, good only for a soporific-to induce the sleep that banished pain. Clerics and druids made infu shy;sions from the fruit that their patients would inhale, and, within a matter of minutes …

Vincus smiled, tight-lipped.

Tossing the very last crust of bread into the shad shy;ows, he waited until the dog vanished after it, then crept around the side of the tent.

He approached another tight circle of tents and fires, perhaps a hundred yards away, that marked the command post of the rebel army. Vincus fell to his belly at the sight of two sentries standing watch by a fire in the open ground.

Raindiver and Bittern, the Plainsman sentries, stood faithfully at their posts, exchanging few words and staring out into the darkness. The banked fire between them was dim but warm, and while they watched, their thoughts slipped in and out of vigi shy;lance like the moon slipped in and out of the scat shy;tered clouds above the plains.

It was a night like any other, until something whistled by Raindiver's ear and skittered into the ashes, scattering sparks and filling the air with a thick, acrid smoke.

Bittern bent toward the fire and saw the small, oblong seed aflame in its very heart. Suddenly, the seed and the fire began to waver and double and blur, and he looked up to call to Raindiver, to warn him that something … something …

But Raindiver was already facedown in the grass, snoring contentedly.

Bittern dropped to his knees and tried to call out to the other sentries, to Fordus or Northstar, but another cloud seemed to pass over the moon and the sky and the fire went dark, and he felt himself falling.

Someone brushed by him, running. Bittern tried to shout again-a cry of alarm, of warning. But a pleas shy;ant dreamless sleep rushed over him, and he remem shy;bered nothing more.

The man had the look of a Prophet.

Vincus, belly-down in the dark grass like some enormous lizard, watched the auburn-haired Plains shy;man from a distance.

It was Fordus, he was certain. The slight blond woman who stood beside him in the firelight spoke in sign language-a strangely inflected version, but easy enough to interpret.

And there was the hawk, perched on a ring near her!

She had called the man "Commander." Called him "Prophet."

Vincus rose to his knees, peering through the last stretch of darkness toward the firelight. Not yet, he told himself. I will wait here for a while. For there is something more I am supposed to know.

"Bring me water!" Fordus commanded, his voice deep and melodious and a little too loud. "Bring meat, and a cup of wine as well."

A young man leapt at his command and rushed off into the darkness.

"Where is that boy? Where is the wine?" Fordus asked, much too soon. His followers stood about him uncomfortably, averting their eyes as he stared at each of them.

Finally, Fordus turned in Vincus's direction.

Though Vincus was well out of sight, hidden by tall grass and shadow, the firelight showed him the full face of the Prophet-the handsome, windburnt features and the auburn beard.

Unusual for a Plainsman. As were the eyes.

Vincus had seen that color before. Sky-blue? Sea-blue? Had seen it in Istar …

At the School of the Games? No. It must have been at the Kingpriest's Tower.

Barely had the name crossed through his thoughts than Vincus remembered. The hushed room of the great Council Hall, the man almost swallowed by a globe of brilliant white light, reflected off the pol shy;ished marble and the luminous pellidryn stones that spangled the Imperial Throne.

The Kingpriest. The Kingpriest had eyes like that.

And the other features. The thin aristocratic nose, the high cheekbones, and even the auburn hair. The resemblance was uncanny. Fordus might have been the Kingpriest's brother. Or …

Vincus's thoughts recoiled from the prospect. The priesthood of Istar was austere and proper. Suppose the Kingpriest…

It was a thought he could not even finish.

For a moment he lay silent in the darkness, his thoughts far away-on Vaananen, on those in ser shy;vice to the Tower and the city. He had come a long way with a single message of great importance.

But now, having seen what he had seen, would he deliver that message?

He would think on this a while, find a sheltered place in a greater darkness. He would have the night, at least, perhaps until sunrise. Then he would decide whether to approach the Water Prophet, or

go-He started to back away from the firelight, intent on losing himself somewhere outside the encircled tents. But suddenly, rough hands seized him by the shoulders and jerked him to his feet. Vincus spun around, but his attacker caught his arm and, with a flawless wrestler's maneuver, twisted it behind his back.

Hot pain shot through Vincus's shoulder, and he looked into the face of his assailant.

A Lucanesti elf, his arms encrusted with the first bejewellings of middle age, regarded Vincus calmly. "I am not sure whether your intentions are good or ill," the elf whispered. "But perhaps by other fires and among other people, we can find out just who you are, and why you spy on Fordus Firesoul."

The elf's name was Stormlight. He was a lieu shy;tenant of the War Prophet, but had fallen from favor in some recent dispute of policy.

After he seized Vineus near Fordus's fire and tents, Stormlight had taken his captive to the other side of the encampment entirely-to quiet quarters, where a half dozen veteran Plainsmen waited in silence.

Stormlight had questioned Vincus, and when he failed to understand the sign language, had reluc shy;tantly sent for the woman, the one with the yellow hair, whose name was Larken. With her odd, alien gestures, she translated Vincus's signs in her own silence.

"What proof have you that you were a slave in Istar?" Stormlight asked finally, regarding Vincus with a stare that was melancholy but not unkind.

Vincus showed him the collar, how the pieces fit together, how they spelled his name. Stormlight nodded, placed the pieces around Vincus's neck, and was satisfied they fit. He started to ask another question, then fell silent.

"How did you find us?" he asked finally, and Vin shy;cus told of his journey, of the pass through the mountains and his guidance by the benevolent hawk.

It was a god, he signed. / am sure it was a god taking the bird's form to guide me. He camps with you? I saw him perched by your fire.

Larken smiled as she translated his gestures for Stormlight.

The elf's expression softened.

"And why have you found us?" he asked. "What do you ask of us? Or what do you bring us?"

Vincus gestured excitedly, knelt on the ground. Stormlight dropped beside him, and the Plainsmen, Larken, and Gormion stood above them, watching curiously and intently.

Though he had mistrusted Fordus from the start, Vincus felt surprisingly safe in the company of the elf. He knew that Vaananen's glyphs were meant for this man, for Stormlight was one who asked instead of commanded.

To Vincus, that was a sign of wisdom and discern shy;ment. He had heard enough of command in his servitude.

Confidently, he drew the five glyphs on the ground before Stormlight. After he was finished, he looked up.

Stormlight stared at the glyphs intently.

"Desert's Edge," he said. "Sixth Day of Lunitari. No Wind."

It seemed to be nothing new to him until he reached the fourth glyph.

"The Leopard? And … there is a fifth one that fol shy;lows. Something dreadfully important here."

I shall bring Fordus, Larken signed, but Stormlight waved the thought away.

"Not this time."

Larken frowned, a question forming in her thoughts.

Stormlight stared at Vincus, and a long moment passed in which the camp lay silent.

"Is the Sixth Legion in Istar, Vincus?" Stormlight asked.

Elatedly, Vincus nodded, gesturing excitedly as Larken struggled to translate his account of his own discoveries, of conveying the news to Vaananen, of the whole series of events that boded danger for For shy;dus and the rebels.

Stormlight leaned back, his face lost for a moment in the shadow. Then, craning toward the fifth glyph, he read it and proclaimed: "Beware the dark man."

He looked up at Vincus, then at Larken. A crooked, bemused smile played at the corner of his mouth.

"Hear the word of the Prophet," he whispered, with a laugh.

"Beware the lady," he said flatly. For a while he knelt before the fifth glyph, tracing its outline with a callused finger.

"I see," he murmured. "I should have known by the amber eyes. Tamex. . Tanila. . They looked alike. Reptilian.

"And then … the dragon tracks through the Tears of Mishakal!"

"One will ask for it soon," Vaananen had said. "And you will know it is right to give the book to that person."

So Vincus gave the book to Stormlight, trusting the same instinct that had guided him through the desert and steered him from Fordus at the last moment.

After all, the book was written in Lucanesti. What other sign could a man expect?

Together, the elf and the bard puzzled over the ancient text, Larken frowning at the complexities of the scattered, angular script, but Stormlight nod shy;ding, reading…

Until he came to the lost passages. Gray dust eddied in the hands of the elf as he knelt at the campsite, spreading the opened book before him.

Stormlight bowed over the page and inspected it for a long time. "Perhaps," he murmured, "it is in my language, and it is prophecy as well."

"The Anlage …" he murmured. "The oldest see shy;ing."

Long before the first migrations of the Lucanesti across the Istarian desert, before the first discoveries of glain opal, and perhaps even before the time when the elders of that dwindling people had dis shy;covered the powers of the lucerna, another deeper way of seeing had been encoded in their thoughts and memory.

The Anlage. The great mine of elventhought. The shared memory of the race.

In its depths lay the earliest recollections of the mining elves: their wanderings, their departure from Silvanesti. Some even said that, in the hands of a wise and anointed elf, the Anlage could reveal the earliest days-in the Age of Dreams, when the First shy;born of the world opened their eyes to moonlight upon a newly awakened planet.

It was all there. All memory and all imagining.

So the elders had told Stormlight in his childhood and youth, in the long years of wandering before the ambush, his wounding, and his adoption by the Plainsmen. The elders had told him how to draw upon that power as well, and of the danger therein- the risk that the visionary might not return to the waking world, but sleep and sleep until the opales-cence of age covered and swallowed him entirely.

Yet without fear or misgiving, Stormlight sank into these meditations, tunneling deeper and deeper until he reached a level where he knew the thoughts and recollections were no longer his own, and he sank into a cloudy vein of mutual remembrance.

Around him, his Plainsmen companions, Larken, and Vincus watched helplessly, expectantly, as though they stood on the shores of a great ocean, waiting for a distant sail.

But Stormlight was calm, preternaturally alert. No fear, he told himself. No fear is very good.

Mindfully, he explored the shadowy dream, a shifting landscape bedazzled with the light of both. . no, of three moons. The five elements enfolded him: the fire of the stars, the water in the heart of the earth, the desert and stone, the parched and wander shy;ing air.

And memory. The fifth oi the ancient elements.

Dancing, as the elders said it did, as a gray absorbent light on the margins of vision. Stormlight directed his thought toward that grayness, and it parted before him.

For a moment there were grasslands, the pale face of someone he neither remembered nor knew …

Then forest.

The book, he told himself. Keep your mind on the book.

Briefly, a great darkness yawned to his left, full of flashing color and a strange, seductive beckoning. For a while he stood at the borders of that darkness, which seemed to call to him, promising sleep, an easeful rest.

But that way was dangerous. He would be lost if he entered it.

The book, he told himself. Nothing but the book.

And then it appeared before him, its pages crisp and sharp and entirely intact. Eagerly, he opened the pages with his mind.

He read and remembered.

Finally, Stormlight looked up, and Vincus saw the transformation.

For a moment the elf looked blind, his pale eyes milky and unfocused. Vincus started, believing the book had struck Stormlight sightless, but then the eyes of the elf changed again, a white shell or a pale film dropping out of his gaze and receding beneath his eyelids.

"Come with me, Larken," Stormlight urged. He shot to his feet as though at a call for battle. Grab shy;bing the bard by the arm, he ushered her into the night, whispering a warning or strategy that reached Vincus only in snatches, in fragments.

"Against us" he heard.

"Incarnate. Opals."

"Takhisis."

And "opals" again, the last word swallowed by the rising night.

So the stones that protect us will enable her to enter the world? Larken asked.

Stormlight nodded. "And if we deny her the stones, if we destroy them or hide them, we relin shy;quish our protection."

Together they stood in the twilight not a hundred yards from the fire. Overhead, scarlet Lunitari reeled through the night sky, and the landscape, rock and rubble and distant tent, seemed bathed suddenly in dark blood.

What shall we do, Stormlight?

Her hands did not shake, Stormlight noticed. She was awaiting his command, and was not afraid.

His face softened, and for a long time the elf stood silent. "I am not sure, Larken. Nor were the elves who wrote the manuscript. But the text is clear on one thing. Whatever it takes to stop a goddess will demand our utmost. Something perilous and alto shy;gether new.

"Despite our quarrel, Fordus must know of it. I shall warn him this night." Without further word, the elf stalked off into the darkness, his destination the level plain to the east, the largest circle of camp-fires.

Larken watched as Stormlight receded into the night.

"Something perilous," he had said. "And alto shy;gether new."

She was ready. She had changed. She felt it now, with a slow certainty. Danger and novelty no longer

frightened her. Out of a strange solitude, she awaited the approaching change calmly and with a new eagerness.

Stormlight came back at dawn, a great heaviness in his cold eyes.

He had talked to Fordus, the rumors said. He had told the Prophet the news of the discovered text.

But Fordus had stared beyond him, into the noth shy;ingness of desert and night. Had called Stormlight a dead man, said that his words no longer had life.

Fordus had rejected him, and it was Stormlight now who stood at the edge of the sea, a powerless observer.

By midmorning of the next day, Fordus's group had resumed the march, and by late afternoon, they had reached the foothills of the Istarian Mountains. Stormlight's troops still followed at a distance.

Vincus leaned gratefully against an outcropping of rock, making certain that the ground around him was free of willow branches. It was the best of times to camp, he thought, before darkness fell in the midst of rough and treacherous terrain.

A courier came back from the ranks to Fordus's rear guard, to where Vincus waited with Stormlight and two older Plainsmen, Breeze and Messenger.

It was a man Vincus had never met-a young man named Northstar-who brought the word.

"The Prophet Fordus," Northstar said, speaking the name in quiet and reverent tones, "had a dream in which a dead man visited him with a warning."

Stormlight turned away at these words.

"The dead man told him," Northstar continued, "that Takhisis herself-She of the Many Faces-has arrayed her dark powers against the rebellion, against the Prophet Fordus."

"And what else did the. . dead man say, North-star?" Stormlight asked bitterly, his back to the mes shy;senger.

"All the rest was lies, says the Prophet Fordus. For Takhisis sends her minions to deceive, to waylay and destroy. Her army is the living and the dead, and none are to be believed. So says the Prophet For shy;dus.

"But the goddess is afraid now. Her warnings and threats are the words of a beast in flight. For if she thought she could defeat the Prophet Fordus …

"She would not let him know of her presence. She would wait, and hide, waylaying him when he least expected, when he stood at the edge of his greatest victory, rather than now, before the war has even begun."

Stormlight shook his head.

Vincus tried to follow the reasoning of the Water Prophet. Perhaps Northstar had not remembered it right, for it seemed cloudy and formless, a poor and shoddy logic.

Yet Northstar was ardent, rapt, fresh from the presence of his hero, his lord.

"We shall continue the assault on Istar," the mes shy;senger proclaimed. "Her threats are the banner of the Kingpriest's fear. So says the Prophet Fordus.

"We shall march through the night, for speed and surprise are our allies, and the mountains will be ours by morning. Through the Central Pass we will go, and let those who dispute the word of the Prophet Fordus stay in their camps and cower.

"We are bound for Istar, and to us will the city belong!"

Having spoken, Northstar wheeled about and raced back up the column, his long strides eager and jubilant. Stormlight turned, an overwhelming sad shy;ness on his face, and stared at Vincus.

" Tis the wrong pass, is it not?"

Vincus nodded, started to gesture, to explain that it was the Western Pass that was free of the sterint, free of rockslide and shearing and the terrible destructive wind.

But Stormlight rested his hands on Vincus's shoul shy;ders and regarded him openly, honestly.

" 'Tis what I told him last night, when I spoke to him and warned him. Told him that I had a man in my camp who could guide him safely through the mountains if he chose to continue, but that it would be far wiser to return, to go back to the desert. And it was no dream. But he is no longer listening to me. He pulls phrases from the air, words out of their places, and distorts them into what he wants to hear-into what he says those damnable dreams and visions are telling him."

Stormlight turned away. Far ahead, Fordus's ban shy;ners flew aloft in the dying air, red in the sunset light. Already his columns were starting to move again, and somewhere far up in Fordus's ranks, a solitary drum began a slow, stumbling cadence.

The new drummer was no match for Larken.

"He is completely, utterly mad," Stormlight said. "And I have no choice but to go behind him and to fight his enemies. For the time is coming when he will take my people into more than the weather, more than the death of a few in a narrow, storm-swept pass.

"The walls of Istar are coming. And the Sixth Legion. And Takhisis herself. And before Fordus rides out to meet them, someone will have to stop him."