The Dark Queen

Chapter 20

The Cental Pass through the Istrian mountains was and moonlit, littered with fallen branches, with stones, with smaller, uprooted alder and fir.

Despite Solinari and the clear sky, the rubble in the pass was an ominous prospect to Stormlight.

Vincus had warned Stormlight, who, in turn, had tried to warn the War Prophet. Follow the Western Pass, they had urged. But Fordus had not listened, had stared through Stormlight as if he were water, all the while toying with the enormous golden circle that enclosed his neck. It bristled with spikes that seemed to grow daily with his madness.

Now Fordus marched through the Central Pass at the head of his exhausted troops. Seven hundred had followed him before the Battle of the Plains, and scarcely five hundred survived it. Seventy had fallen to the Istarian ambush, and a dozen to the desert eruptions.

What do you want, old friend, dear madman? Stormlight thought bitterly as Fordus's banner danced out of view. Your forces have been wrecked, and yet you march. You cannot arm a legion with promises.

By sunrise they were midway through the Central Pass, climbing through boulders and downed pine and aeterna. Fordus's new drummer had struck up a song for courage and endurance.

But the going grew slower and slower as dawn crept into midmorning, and by noon, their hands blistered and their limbs bruised and scratched, the trailblazers stopped to rest, and noticed to their astonishment that they had traveled only a hundred yards in the last two hours.

There was no magic, as there had been in Larken's songs, to help.

Aeleth, his leather armor soggy with sweat, wiped his brow and scrambled to the top of a stone out shy;cropping, glaring over the rubblestrewn wasteland.

"What do you see, Aeleth?" Fordus called up to him.

Aeleth thought before he answered. Suffering from shortness of breath, muttering at the thin mountainous air and the countless obstructions in the path, the War Prophet had become an impossible commander, short with his lieutenants and merciless

in his quest to reach the other side of the pass by the evening.

Two men had fallen over dead from exertion, and despite the urgings of the Namers, Fordus had left the bodies where they lay.

"It's.. it's downhill from here, sir!" Aeleth called down.

Heartened, Fordus turned to face his followers.

"Another vision has come to me!" he proclaimed, his bony hands clutching his golden collar, fingering the dark glain opals. "If we march through the night, we cover ourselves with the mantle of surprise. When we reach the shore of Lake Istar, there will be nothing the Kingpriest can do to stop our advances!"

The storm charged upon them suddenly, rolling out of the south in a rumbling chaos like a herd of horses.

For a moment the air was still, and the hardy mountain birds-raptor and thrush, the loud purple jays of northern Ansalon-fell quiet in anticipation of the rising wind.

Then it surged through the pass behind them like a flash flood through a dry arroyo, the wind picking up velocity and force as it barreled over the felled trees, over the rocks and boulders, scattering sand and gravel and branches as it shrieked through the pass.

Stormlight turned around in astonishment as the wind roared past and over him, knocking him to the ground and thundering through the back of his followers.

Children were swept up and dashed against the rockface. Terrified, their mothers screamed for them, their words lost and useless. Stormlight covered his ears in the fierce, deafening wail, and a wave of sand broke over them, stinging and abrading.

Up ahead, a felled vallenwood launched into the air and crashed into Gormion and a handful of her followers. The bandit captain shrieked and rolled from the path of the hurtling limbs, scattering ear shy;rings and bracelets as the wind took her up, buoyed her, and hurled her, alive, into a stand of aeterna.

The rest of the bandits fared even less well. The vallenwood branches exploded with screams as the heavy tree crushed the hapless men against the rocks.

Clinging to Stormlight and Breeze, Vincus rode out the storm with his head in his hood. The pass vanished in a whirl of sand, and from the murky cyclone ahead he could hear wail and outcry. Occa shy;sionally a dark, unrecognizable shape rocketed past, and from somewhere back up the pass came the skidding, too-human sound of frightened horses.

Then, as suddenly as it had rushed over them, the storm was gone. The sand settled lazily over the mountain rocks-the desert transported by the fierce and merciless weather-and slowly, almost imperceptibly, a few moving shapes emerged from rock and sand and thicket.

When they all had gathered, they were sixty less.

A new wailing began, the ancient funerary call of the Que-Nara rising like another wind, echoing from the mountainsides. Plaintively, eerily, the cry spread through the Central Pass, until even'the returning birds began to sing in response-thrush and jay in full cry from the ravaged, wind-blasted trees.

But Fordus scrambled up the rockface, clinging like a grotesque spider, and waved his hand for silence.

It was a long time coming. The rebels were griev shy;ing, swept away by the dark river of their own sor shy;row.

"It is the vengeance of Takhisis," Fordus rasped, his breath shallow and panting. But nobody was lis shy;tening.

"Hear the word of the Prophet!" he cried. A hun shy;dred pairs of eyes looked up at him, new fear flicker shy;ing alongside their old devotion. The rest of the survivors milled aimlessly, combing the rubble for the injured and the dead.

"There are a thousand roads to Istar," Fordus pro shy;claimed, his voice gaining power and authority as the words rushed from him. "Each of those roads is guarded, with torment and danger and hardship.

"But we have passed through the first of these hardships, my people. And though there are some we must leave behind …"

His gesture toward the gathered bodies of the dead was quick and casual, as though he brushed away a fly.

"Let them be remembered, and let their names be sung, at the time when we will remember all the fallen, commemorate all those who spilled their blood in my glorious cause."

Still clinging to the rockface, Fordus pointed north, the collar at his neck afire in the reflected light of the sunset.

"Their names will be sung around the throne of Istar, when I ascend to the lordship of the great Imperial City. We will sing them in glory when I am Kingpriest, set to the music of drum and passing bell. For the glyphs and the signs and my own dreams have told me that the rule of Istar is mine.

"You have followed my dream through four hard seasons. We have sown seed in the bitter ground of the desert, in obscurity and distance and sand, where all ambition was water. We have watered the plains with our blood, and tilled in the storm-furrowed mountain passes. Now Istar stands open to bandit and Plainsmen. My worthy rival-the kin shy;dred warrior and prophet in the Kingpriest's Tower-has met his adversary in the southern fields! The season has come! Set your hand to the harvest!"

For a moment the rebels fell into complete, aston shy;ished silence. All eyes were riveted on the Water Prophet, all ears turned to his feverish, wild pro shy;nouncements.

"Hear the word of the Prophet!" Northstar shouted.

A pathetic tap-tap, late and halfhearted, accompa shy;nied his cry.

"The word of the Prophet King!" the young man continued, unfazed and triumphant, and to the sur shy;prise of the elders and the Namers, a voice deep in the milling rebels took up the call-a dark voice, nei shy;ther masculine nor feminine, but a voice that seemed to rise up within the hearts of all assembled. Another cried in response, and another, and soon the young men, chanting "The Prophet King! The Prophet King!" lifted Fordus atop their shoulders and bore him through the wreckage, through the wide path that the wind had cut over rock and rubble and undergrowth.

At the mouth of the pass, Larken, Vincus, and a score of Que-Nara remained, as Fordus's compan shy;ions hastened toward the lakeside road and the plains and city beyond. Her dark eyes distant and mournful, Larken watched as the Prophet's banner was hoisted into the air, and the walls of the moun shy;tain pass resounded with this new and alien cheer.

"The Prophet King!"

As the cry carried down the column, Fordus's rebels picked up their pace. The weary trudge became a brisk, revitalized march, as a strange, per shy;fumed wind rolled through the pass, bearing upon it the smell of jasmine and juniper, of attar of roses and spice and old wine.

Istar the temptress was calling them. Soft and fem shy;inine, conniving and poisonous, at sunset she cast her nets of beguilement.

As Fordus and his followers ranged through the treacherous passes, the seeds of another insurrection were being sown in the depths of the mines.

Deep below the city, their dead mourned and placed reverently in porous pockets of volcanic rock, the elves resumed their digging.

Exhausted, the sounds of little Taglio's cries still echoing in his thoughts, Spinel guided his work-numbed crew into the dark recesses beneath the shores of Lake Istar.

These were the newest mines. No sooner had the mourning ceased than word came down from the Kingpriest's tower to open them. Obviously, some event above had changed the nature of the labor, brought a new urgency to this mysterious need for the glain opals.

By lamplight, Spinel examined the most recently discovered stones. Judging from the veins of opal the diggers had found, the glain themselves were young-younger by far than any he had mined in his thousand years of subterranean labor.

The stones looked oddly familiar-as though in a shape-a formation-the old elf should recognize.

He knelt, examined more closely.

There was something deep and important he was forgetting.

It was time for the Anlage.

The lucerna closed over the old elf's eyes as he entered the deep recollection of his people. Abstractly, he fingered the gems.

He remembered the years of mining beneath the city. The bright eyes of the Kingpriest's guards, the serpentine, human-faced nagas, with their enchant shy;ments that dried and paralyzed the Lucanesti, the wanderings in the Age of Might.

Remembered the Age of Light, of Dreams, his thoughts tunneling back into Starbirth, into the God-time …

Then he looked at the stones in his hands, and cried out in horror.

"Bones," Spinel told the assembled miners. "The glain opals, the special black ones the Kingpriest covets, are the bones of our deepest ancestors."

Tourmalin frowned in disbelief, but her gaze fal shy;tered under the withering stare of the ancient elf.

"No, neither your fathers nor your grandfathers, nor the bones of any in five generations of Lucanesti. But the eldest of the race-those who entered the company of Branchala in the years before the ward and the wanderings. How could we have been so blinded?"

He extended his pale, encrusted hands.

"Istar has blinded us!" someone shouted from the borders of the torchlight, but Spinel shook his head.

"Istar has used our blindness," he insisted. "Used our greed and our cowardice for its own dark strategies. All the while, the Anlage was there for us, bear shy;ing this terrible secret. Why did we never consult it?"

His words tumbled into a long silence. Spinel leaned against the rock and gazed out over the torches and lamps, over the glittering eyes of his people.

"Blame and punishment are not the answer," he insisted, and others-the oldest of the company- nodded in eager assent. "For years we have com shy;plied, have knelt in submission to the Kingpriest and his minions. Now we must redress our wrong shy;doing. Regardless of the guards and venatica, one road remains for our people. We must reclaim and rebury our ancient dead."

The rebels reached the shores of the lake at mid shy;night.

Barely three hundred of Fordus's followers remained. In early evening, Larken and Stormlight, who had been following at an unfriendly distance, had taken a sloping path into the sunset, headed for the Western Pass and a safe route back to the desert.

Fordus did not acknowledge them. With North-star and three of the younger bandits, he approached the lapping waters of Lake Istar, dark and spangled with the reflections of a thousand stars. He knelt, recovered his breath, and stirred the waters with his hand.

The surface of the lake glittered with starlight and torchlight, for the bandits had brought fire with them, the better to burn the city.

"With neither glyph nor interpreter, he finds the greatest of all waters," Fordus pronounced, an eerie

laughter underscoring his voice. Resolutely, he stepped into the water, took another step, and waded waist-deep into the lake. Pensively he traced his finger across the glittering surface.

"I had thought to run to Istar," he murmured cryptically. "Perhaps my steps would skip over the water, or the lake itself would buoy me …"

"But we must travel like mortals," he conceded with a smile. "For all of you are my charges, my min shy;ions, my. . celebrants. And though to cross the water would be more swift, I would have to do it alone-to leave you here to plod in your brave little paths."

He stepped forward, sank to his chest.

"I choose not to travel alone," he declared. "At least not yet."

The drama that played out in the mountains was small, insignificant compared to the large struggles among the pantheon of Krynn.

Deep in the Abyss, the dark gods felt the absence of the Lady. In the dark unfathomable void they waited-Zeboim and Morgion, Hiddukel and Chemosh, the dark moon Nuitari hovering over them all. It was strangely restful, this respite from her chaos and torment. Oh, there would be time to gather and turn on one another-to intrigue and rend and divide and wrestle for power. But for now they were content to recline and bask on the dark currents, to recover and regroup their failing energies.

All except one: the most devious of all the evil pantheon. Sargonnas circled the void in a thousand pieces, his fragmented thoughts on the War Prophet whose campaigns he had inspired and nurtured. He had been foolish, trying to break into the world through the sands of the desert, but the knowledge that Takhisis walked the earth and spoke to his min shy;ions, his Prophet, was too galling, too frightening for silence and inaction.

Now, fragmented and abstract, he spread through the void like a cloud of locusts, like a monstrous contagion.

There would be a time. He would watch and wait. In her desire to destroy Fordus, Takhisis's attentions would shift elsewhere, and there would be a time for him to strike.

He would precede her into the world. His clerics would build their fortresses of stone and lies. And even if they failed, he would spoil the plans of the Dark Queen.

His mind on vengeance, Sargonnas dropped a thousand miles through the chaos, glittering darkly as he fell like a fiery rain.

Alone in the rena garden, Vaananen stirred the sand over yet another futile message of glyphs.

The druid had done all he could. And the hope that stirred within Vaananen was now the hope of flight. Solitary and recklessly brave, the druid had remained in the city, gathering information and sending it nightly through the white, decorative sands to a distant point in a distant country-infor shy;mation that could save rebel lives, perhaps ensure rebel victory.

Absently Vaananen rubbed his tattooed arm. His efforts had gone unheeded. And now Fordus stood at the outskirts of Istar, and it was time for the druid to save himself.

He'd tied his belongings in a hide bag not much larger than the one he had given Vincus. Three druidic texts, as yet uncopied, took up most of the space. For the last time, in the hopes that somehow Fordus would receive the message, Vaananen scrawled the five glyphs in the sand of the garden, beside the yellowed, rapidly swelling cactus.

Desert's Edge. Sixth Day of Lunitari. No Wind.

The Leopard and the fifth and warning symbol- the sign of the Lady beneath the sign of the Dark Man.

It was all he could do.

The turgid cactus beside him trembled. The plant, usually deep green and healthy, had suffered like this for days. Three nights before, searching for rain, the druid had passed his hand just above its spiny surface and sensed a tremor, a boiling from the cen shy;ter of the cactus, as though it heralded a new and unnatural life.

He had ignored it at first, and now he chided him shy;self for his negligence, searching his memory for a healing chant, for something to soothe and settle the plant.

He began slowly, whispering an old warding from Qualinesti. But a humming sound from the heart of the cactus, unlike any song or language of plants the druid had ever heard, drowned out the chant before he had really begun. Alarmed, Vaananen stepped back from the plant, which swelled more and more rapidly, like a grotesquely inflated waterskin, its shiny yellow surface mottling and browning.

Vaananen realized that the cactus was no longer just a plant, but had been transformed into some shy;thing monstrous and menacing. Run! the druid's instincts told him.

He turned to the lectern to gather the last of his belongings-his copying pens and inks-as the cac shy;tus sizzled and whined, the sound reaching above audibility. Mesmerized, the druid stayed one second too long-and with a shattering boom, the cactus burst open. The room filled with a hot, swarming rain of something fierce and stinging and relent shy;lessly hungry and alive. Vaananen felt searing heat course up his legs and run down his back, and he futilely lifted his arms to shield his face.

Tiny black scorpions covered his shoulders, his neck, the hidden red oak leaf on his wrist.

The druid cried out once, briefly, but the poison that raced through his blood felled him like a cross shy;cut oak. He sank to his knees in the midst of the white sand, with a last painful brush of his hand erasing the final glyphs he had written for Fordus, the message the War Prophet would never read.

I am again surprised, thought Vaananen, sinking into green darkness. How remarkable.

Swarming over the room, their dark mission accomplished, the scorpions turned upon one another until all of them, stung by their own poison, lay as dead as the druid.

The next day, the stunned acolytes found that the sand from the rena garden covered the floor, the bed, the lectern, the dead scorpions, and Vaananen, too, in a thin white layer like a fresh new snowfall. It was pristine, almost beautiful, except for a wide stain of sand hardened into dark volcanic glass, in the center of the garden between three standing stones.