The Dark Queen

Chapter 22

The last morning of the Shinarion was disrupted by the smoke from the battlefield.

It began as a shifting haze overhead, a sharp musty smell in the sunstruck air. But slowly it thick shy;ened, and the merchants, the drovers, the pickpock shy;ets and vendors took to the northern streets in. curiosity at what could possibly overcome the lin shy;gering smell of dead fish.

Their golden ribbons, worn in honor of the god shy;dess, fluttered soiled and frayed. Their pockets were empty, their resources drained, for the saying held true that nobody grew rich at the Shinarion. Above all, they felt weary, tired out by the revelry, by the wheeling and dealing and the thick corruption on display in the final days of the festival.

What they sought in the streets, the air above them bristling with smoke and cinder, offered diversion.

Something was afoot in the fields outside the city. The rumors were as thick as the smoke.

So, many of the celebrants, watching the sky and listening and gossiping, missed entirely the strange, quiet warrior that slipped through their midst, borne on fleet foot through the northernmost streets of the city, his head bared, his eyes smoke-stung and ravening, his heart twisted toward murder.

The city lay before him like a maze of crystals, the tall reflective buildings blinding him, baffling his path to the Tower.

For long, painful moments Fordus ranged through the baffling marbled streets. Smoke from the burn shy;ing plain drifted over the Istarian walls, and the new, alien landscape of man-made things clouded over, hazy and indistinct.

At the edges of his sight, just out of focus, dark shapes flitted and dodged like swamplight. The Prophet could see the gold fretting on their robes, the gold ribbons drooping over their shoulders, a testament to some forgotten god. They chattered to each other in a hidden language.

He knew the army of the dead had come to help him. They had come at last, just as he prophesied. They had invaded Istar at his orders, and were wait shy;ing for him.

Heartened, the raving Prophet wound his way through the intricate streets, past tavern and booth and vendors' wagons, always moving toward the center of the city where, through the fretted purple smoke, the looming spires of the Kingpriest's Tower dodged in and out of view.

His city. His Tower. He would meet this usurping Kingpriest face-to-face. As equals, who spoke to the gods, who commanded innumerable legions.

Into the Marketplace Fordus rushed. A passing squadron of Istarian soldiers startled, dropped their weapons, and dispersed as the haunted, robed man rushed at them silently, like some dangerous wind from the desert.

It lay directly before him now: the great Tower with its ancient marble foundations, low surround shy;ing wall… and bolted iron gates.

Muttering distractedly, Fordus rattled the bars across the archway. Then, like a spider, he scrambled over the wall.

And found himself in yet another maze-this time of thick foliage and lush, overgrown garden rows of evergreen and climbing vine.

Drawing his throwing axe, Fordus cut his way through the Kingpriest's private wilderness, slash shy;ing and hacking, his anger rising until his hand touched cold marble, his axe splintering with a blind, furious blow against the strong foundation of the Tower itself.

For a moment the Prophet rested his head against the cold stone, choking and gasping for air.

Had the smoke come this far?

He looked up the Tower. Faint murky tendrils encircled the spire, and its looming top was lost in a higher haze, but directly above was the dark of a window. Instantly, resolutely, using only his fingers and toes, Fordus began to climb.

Through the smoke and the damaged landscape, Stormlight followed.

Wading through the burning fields, he traced a long, looping path around the flames, the massacred rebels, the ignited Sixth Legion, and found his way to the damaged gates of Istar-to the same portal through which the Prophet had passed.

Istar loomed inside them, unreal and dark. Trac shy;ing a roundabout path through the concentric pen shy;tagonal walls of the inner city, he approached its epicenter, its heart: the marble tower that housed the Kingpriest.

For that was Fordus's destination. Stormlight was sure of it. And sure, from the years of affinity between Prophet and interpreter, in which their minds had virtually melded in the search for water, for victory, for hidden dangers, that his old compan shy;ion was still alive.

Alive, and bound for the end of his journey.

At the very window toward which Fordus climbed, Takhisis waited, breathing cold life into the crystalline form of Tamex. Her hours as a warrior of salt and sand were dwindling. Already Tamex crumbled at the edges, two of his fingers broken off in the mere act of opening the door to this sparely appointed guest chamber.

Yes, the both of them waited there-the translu shy;cent warrior and his animating spirit.

But there was another as well. A blue-eyed, bald shy;ing man who cowered in the corner of the chamber, nervously fraying the lace on his high priest's robes.

Tamex had wakened him from his unsettling mid-morning slumber, where he dreamt trees as things with daggers, brooks and streams thickening and darkening in the red moon. He had almost been grateful to awaken, until he saw his visitor, translu shy;cent and eroding, at the foot of his bed.

He whimpered once, most unroyally. Fumbling for the broadsword in which the druid had instructed him all these years, he clutched the pommel desperately, but it was as though his arms had failed him-the sword was heavy and his hands trembled.

Tamex had dragged the Kingpriest from his sump shy;tuous quarters, imprisoning him in this room to wait out the last of the night, the sunrise, the first blood of the battle. Then, coming down from the walls, the crystal warrior had joined his captive in a meeting he knew would be brief.

Now Fordus climbed the last few feet toward the window. Tamex glanced once at the Kingpriest, whose sea-blue eyes widened at the sound of some shy;thing scraping beneath the sill.

Good, the goddess thought, swirling slowly in her body of salt.

Good. It is time for them to meet.

Fordus climbed through the window.

Moving quickly, his eyes adjusting to the shadows of the room, the Prophet saw two figures at the far door. One was Tamex, the man in the salt flats-the dark and menacing warrior who had trifled with Larken in the battle's aftermath.

Fordus crouched, prepared for battle. But then he noticed the other.

The older man-the balding, robed dignitary-he had seen somewhere, he was certain. The face lay half-shadowed, but the curious sunlight in the room illumined the man's eyes.

Sea-blue. The color of Fordus's own.

Cautiously, the Prophet approached them, draw shy;ing his dagger.

"At last," Tamex said, with a voice that resonated out of Fordus's memory-a voice he recalled from a vision, a dream.

He shrank from its sound.

"At last," Tamex repeated, raising a cracked and crumbling hand. "I have brought us all together."

With astonishment, Fordus saw that the warrior- the creature-before him was a thing of rock and crystal, a breathing stone with a stone's heart.

The thing gestured toward its white-robed com shy;panion. "Bow before the Kingpriest of Istar, Fordus Firesoul."

"The Prophet bows to no man," Fordus replied coldly, knuckles whitening as his grip on the dagger tightened.

"But honor is due the Kingpriest," Tamex insisted melodiously. "A natural honor that rises. . from a forgotten time."

"You talk in riddles, false warrior," Fordus replied.

"Who is this man, Tamex?" asked the Kingpriest nervously, and the pale man turned his faceted face to the cowering ruler.

"This is the one who would have your throne, such as it is," Tamex announced. "This is Fordus, the Desert Prophet."

"Wh-What do you want of me?" the Kingpriest stammered, backing hard against the wall and the nearby door. "I intend you no harm, no slight. Stay away from my throne!" His fingers fumbled vaguely for the latch.

"You will remain!" ordered Tamex, a new, cold authority in his voice. It delighted and amused the goddess within him to humiliate the ruler of a vast empire, but the cravenness of the Kingpriest was sometimes. . inconvenient.

In disgust and contempt, Fordus watched the robed man grovel. Why, the Kingpriest, his chosen enemy, was nothing but a coward! A thing of robes and her shy;aldry and high renown-no more than a figurehead, an elegant glove for his general's iron hand.

"And are you any better, false Prophet?" asked Tamex, his glittering amber eyes turned toward For shy;dus. "You accuse me of speaking in riddles. . you! The mirage of the desert, the mockery of a Prophet!"

"You dare call me a mockery?" Fordus asked men shy;acingly, taking a long, aggressive stride toward the warrior.

"Oh, yes, Fordus Firesoul. You are a mockery. And many other foolish things."

With a brittle arm, Tamex seized the Kingpriest by the nape and dragged him into full light. Now For shy;dus and his adversary looked at one another face-to-face, and the slow light of recognition dawned in each man's eyes.

"That is correct, Your Eminence," Tamex sneered. "The son of a slave girl you wished so … devoutly to forget. And when the time came, you took the child-no, you had the child taken-to the desert, and there, in a lonely place where predators stalked and the sun was nigh and merciless.."

"No!" the Kingpriest cried, covering his ears.

In astonishment, Fordus dropped his dagger. The world seemed to rock and, tumble around him, as though once again, huge cracks opened in the earth-molten crevasses, threatening to engulf and swallow him. He staggered, fell against the far wall.

"Don't you admit the. . family resemblance?" asked Tamex, a sinister glee in his voice. "Why, the two of you are exactly alike!"

He gestured to the Kingpriest, who had fallen to his knees, moaning and shaking his head.

"You, sir," Tamex said, "are nought but a backwa shy;ter king. A ruler of ghosts and little fictions. And you, Fordus Firesoul…"

His amber eyes fixed Fordus once again.

"You are as much a tyrant as the man you sought to overthrow. I knew you always had it in you. In all your talk of liberation, you have only shackled, only oppressed!

"Yes, the two of you are identical! And you are both my creatures!"

With a cry, Fordus leapt for Tamex, but the crystal warrior tumbled into dust and swirled in a blinding cloud through the room. The dust rose, glittering and eddying, and flashed suddenly, painfully, into the Prophet's eyes.

Blinded, Fordus fell to the hard stone floor, grop shy;ing for his dropped dagger, for anything. Slowly the Kingpriest approached the helpless rebel.

"Forgive me," the Kingpriest murmured ironi shy;cally, as delicately he touched the collar at Fordus's neck, removing the opals with a whispered spell. He stalked from the room as the golden tore around the Prophet's neck began to sparkle, tighten, compress.

Blute lightning played over the glittering metal, whichVontracted with a slow, inexorable motion. Fordus, writhing and gasping, clutched savagely at the strangling collar, tried to cry out. He fell face first to the floor, stirring the unswept dust with his last, desperate thrashing. Slowly, with a choking cry, he sank into a black, abiding darkness, where the army of the dead opened their ranks to receive him. His last breath eddied on the dusty floor of the Great Tower of Istar.

At the door, the Kingpriest turned, looking guiltily back into the rooni He whispered a last incantation, waving his hand over the dead Prophet, and the body of his son, now unprotected, hardened, blanched, and crumbled quickly into sand.

"I could not have done otherwise," he declared, to nothing but theidust and his conscience. "He was found in the salnds of tljie desert,/fhe protective tore I had devised around his neck. Sand and opals were the unsteady ground of his prophecy. Now to sand he returns, but his memory ….

Nor will the world remember, Takhisis replied, min shy;gling the remains of Fordus with the whirlwind that rose and vanished through the chamber window. We will veil it all, y0u and I.

We shall decide what history is. Create it…

Or destroy it.

The Kingpriest reeled, as relief and sorrow and secret ambition warred for mastery in his heart.

Now do my bidding.

"But…" began the Kingpriest, but the last wisp of dust spiraled swiftly out the window, leaving a whisper in its wake.

Prepare for the incantation. The one we planned in the first days.

"But it is too soon. ." began the Kingpriest, and his protest died in his throat.

Be ruled by me, the window murmured, and the chamber settled into unnatural darkness.

The Prophet was vanquished.

In a chaotic swirl above the Kingpriest's Tower, a faint, reptilian outline coalescing and dissolving in the whirling sand, Takhisis watched and laughed.

Now the Cataclysm was inevitable. Now the world would begin again in chaos; the gods would be readmitted.

And she would await them all.

From her stronghold she could seize them as they tried to enter the plane. Oh, yes, they would all come-good and neutral and evil alike-but her clergy would be there before them, her way estab shy;lished, and the blandishments of their followers would fall on deaf ears.

The age to come would be hers entirely, and last for thousands of years.

All that remained was the Kingpriest's ritual, the binding of her spirit in the glain opals, the gods-blood stones. Then her stay would be permanent.

Never again would she be driven from-Krynn.

How long yet would she wait? A year, perhaps two. The elven miners brought forth an abundance of gems from the dark.

From a dark far deeper than they imagined, Takhi shy;sis thought, and chuckled as her whirlwind moved through the cloudy Istarian sky.

But thoughts of the Lucanesti brought her back to StormlightyThe last of the rebel triad.

She wpmd see to that elf. If only out of thoroughness.

With a shriek, the whirlwind dove into the streets of the city.

The elf reeled and stumbled in the wind. Full of gravel and sand, it encircled him, whirling him about, smothering him in a harsh and stinging flood.

In the heart of the wind, Takhisis swirled and laughed.

Swept along by the bizarre sandstorm, the elf gasped and choked as the salt rushed into his nostrils, down his throat, into his eyes until, blinded, he groped his way across the Tower yards, looking for shelter, for covering, for the lee side to the pummeling wind.

Takhisis laughed again, more harshly as the pitiful creature tried to raise his lucerna against the gritty blast.

His hands clutched stone, mortar. With great effort, he pulled himself against the Tower wall as the wind Shrieked and battered.

Like a fly in a gale he was. Like a straw in a whirl shy;wind.

So fare all who vie with the power of a god.

Takhisis watched contentedly, her low purr rum shy;bling in the air like thunder over Istar as the elf encrusted with sand and stone.

I have vitrified him, she thought. Only a moment more…

Then, from somewhere far below her, imbed shy;ded in the depths of rock and water and earth, arose a murmur, a cry of a thousand voices so deep and remote that only a god's hearing could discern it.

The miners! Takhisis shrieked and hurled hysteri shy;cally against the ancient stone of the tower, sand and salt rattling against the windows. Then with a strange and urgent sighing, she settled on the cobbled streets of Istar, pouring like sand through the cracks of the stones in a sudden and frantic descent to the depths of the earth. The goddess was air and fire, salt and sand and glittering dark light, and as she poured through the crevasses~of the undercity, she forgot her victory, the dead reheL chieftain and his broken, abandoned bard, and the\ elf translated into crusted, dried stone.

Deep in the tunnels beneath the city, Spinel knew that something had changed-that for a moment, and perhaps only for a moment, the chains of the Lucanesti were loosened ever so slightly.

The old elf crouched in the lamplight and whis shy;pered the last of his directions to Tourmalin. The younger elf turned away, and raced with a handful of followers down the deepest incline.

They would leave the mines collapsed in their wake, burying the fabled opals under a hundred foot of rock. It would be decades before anyone-human or elf or even dwarf-could mine them again.

Tourmalin had cleared the rubble of a hundred cave-ins. She knew how the stones fell, how a slip shy;ping shelf of rock, an ill-guided pick, or a miner's spell might collapse the whole spindly arrangement of tunnel and winze and shortwall until the ground above them shuddered as the planet fell in on itself.

Jargoon, younger still, and a band of reckless younglings, would set pick and adze to the new beams supporting five of the six adits to the opal mines.

One lasfentrance would remain, and the Lucanesti would use it, overpower their guards by sheer number.

Then would be the fresh light of moon and stars, and breezes the likes of which Spinel barely remem shy;bered, and the smell of cedar and open water.

With a wakened resolve that bordered on hope, the old elf rose and made for the last of the adits.

Sifting through the layers of shivering stone, a dark sand tumbling through the porous volcanic rock, Takhisis growled and muttered.

The-least likely of saboteurs. A fossil of an elf and his cringing people.

Wluie-her eyes had been elsewhere, her powers diyerted:

The dark salts settled in a lightless chamber, then rose in an eddy of underground-wind, rattling eerily against the porous rock, sifting and stirring through the subterranean blackness.

The opals were lost to her now, the mines caved in and closed to her slaves and minions.

There was enough of the glain dust to bring her into the world. Not in the form and the strength she would like, and perhaps not for the thousand years she had yearned for and craved.

But fifty years. Perhaps a hundred. Enough to punish all those who had foiled her.

It would be enough.

But meanwhile the Lucanesti would pay for the time she would lose. Pay dearly and in kind, with the time they had remaining.

Gasping for air in the collapsing tunnels, Spinel led a handful of the Lucanesti, mainly children, toward a wavering light-the last of the entrances, supported and protected by the young elf Jargoon.

The amber torchlight was soft, almost silky/ through his lowered lucerna, and the children daneed at the edge of his vision, their dark robes flickering like blades of translucent fire.

Somewhere below, Spinel prayed, Tourmalin was guiding the rest of the elves-the most skillful sappers and miners-toward thejsame entrance, the same faint source of light and air. Breathing a last hopeful petition to Branchala, the old elf followed the dodging, visionary light through the winding and crumbling corridors.

Sabotage had been easy. The Kingpriest had little regard for safety, and the whole network tumbled in upon itself in a vast, subterranean chain reaction. Already dust was rising from the lower corridors, and Spinel urged the younglings on, lifting a frail little elf-maid to his crusted shoulders and carrying her toward the entrance and freedom.

"Where are we going?" she asked, and asked again as the corridor snaked up through thick, glassy layers of obsidian.

Spinel soothed her with a faint, musical cooing, reached up and stroked her shoulder with a knobby hand.

He must protect these children. The fate of the Lucanesti lay in their futures.

^ Spinel calmed the children, stepped over the body of a battered Istarian sentry sprawled at the intersec shy;tion of two collapsed tunnels. It was apparent that Jargoonjiail been hard at work, and judging from the face of the poor Istarian, the elves had been enthusiastically merciless.

Holding his breath, the old elf rushed up the corri shy;dor, past another felled sentry, and another. Now the entrance to the mine was fully visible, a bright arch in the receding gloom some hundred yards away.

Spinel quickened his steps.

But where was Jargoon and his company? Spinel looked to the side tunnels, all collapsed and filled with rubble.

There was no sign of the other elves.

Long before the Lucanesti were brought to the cav shy;erns below Istar, before the long line of Kingpriests

and the city itself, a race of creatures ruled the intricate underworld of obsidian and brittle pumice and ages of dark voldanic gems.

The spiritvnaga had guarded these recesses dili shy;gently, jealously, hoarding the jewels, the precious metals-any stone that caught their depthless, glit shy;tering eyes-and guarding their riches out of sheer and aimless greed.

When the elves had come, the naga had fought against their invasion, and the nightmares of Lucanesti children were soon peopled with these monsters. Enormous serpents with passionless, blank human faces became the villains of a thousand elven legends, and every catastrophe from famine to collapsed tunnels was seen as the doing of the naga. Most importantly, the beasts practiced a rough and villainous magic, armed with an array of spells that blinded and stunned their unfortunate victims, so that the creatures might approach them and, using a magic more ancient and despicable still, drain their prey of all moisture, leaving the elves a mocking heap of opalescent bone.

Sinister and marginal, the spirit naga were a mys shy;tery to the Lucanesti, to the Istarians, to dwarf and druid as\well.

But nojt to Takhisis.

Long ago the goddess had found them and made them her minions.

The time had come to deploy them.

Now, an ancient naga crouched in the shadows beside the last clear entrance to the Istarian mines, hissing with hungry anticipation. The sinuous, scaled form flashed once in the rubble.

It was answered by another movement in the darkness on the other side of the entrance.

Which was enough for the old elf to understand.

Two of them. And no sign of Jargoon.

The monsters would make short work of the chil shy;dren, here at the edge of freedom, unless …

How did the words of the chanting go? It had been a hundred years since he used the spell, four hundred seasons with his thoughts on tunnels and corridors and hidden veins of opal.

Yet it was there, if he mined his memory wisely.

Slowly, Spinel lowered the elf-child to the tunnel floor. A faint rumbling from the rocks let him know the naga awaited them, had begun their long and treacherous incantations.

"Culet," he whispered to the little elf-maid. "When I tell you to run toward the light, you will do so. It is a game we can play, you and I, but remember to keep running when you reach the light and the wind. The rest of the people will follow."

Two of the older elf-children exchanged troubled glances, andthe corridor filled with the sound of a dry rustle, like something crawling over a century of leaves.

"Do not concern yourselves with me," Spinel assured them, affecting bravery, confidence, hoping his voice did not betray him. "You will follow Culet on my signal, and I shall join you later."

May the gods grant that reunion, he thought, his gaze flickering over the stirring darkness, the deep muttering in the rocks.

Slowly his arm encircled the elf-maid. Spinel guided her to the forefront of the company and, with a last, quick embrace, pushed her forward and away from him.

"Now!" he commanded, and the girl ran dutifully toward the light, the others following. Spinel ran with them, his old, stony bones creaking with sud shy;den movement, and there, at the entrance to the mines, he turned to face the waiting creatures.

Mouthing an old elven incantation, Spinel stood in the opening, and a globe of amber light formed around him. As each child, each youngling passed through the glow, it was as though they were cleansed and delivered. Shielding their eyes, they burst into sunlight and fresh airland a new, unex shy;pected life.

The nagas, unable to penetrate the amber glow of magic, groaned angrily in the darkness.

Finally, the last of the elf children leapt free of the mine. The light around him fading, Spinel prepared to follow, but the incantations, faint during his own swelling magic, grew louder and louder still.

Blocking out thought, and will, and memory.

Wearily, he took a last step toward the light, and his unveiled eyes looked longingly at the rockface, a patch of green and a spray of wildflowers in the midst of the black obsidian.

Gentian, he thought. And I had almost forgotten.

The monsters slithered into the light, blockingxthe entrance, Rising and arching, their pale, human› faces expressionless, they chanted the last of the spell to the humped, opalescent pillar at the edge of the cavernous dark.

Spinel became one with his ancestors and the earth that covered them.

The Dark Queen hovered in the upper chambers of the opal mines. A black dust whirling in the stag shy;nant passages, she heard the rumbling deep in the ground and rejoiced.

What difference did it make that the mines col shy;lapsed? That the elven younglings had escaped?

Most of the Lucanesti were far underground, easy prey for rockslides and spirit naga. As for the rest…

They would suffer the most in her impending return.

For now was the hour, when the Kingpriest chanted and the glain dust, the godsblood, filled with her fierce and abysmal life.

This did not go according to her schedule. Had it not been for that impudent ancient elf-the one who lay stony dead at the very edge of light and free shy;dom-she could have planned all things in her own time.

But now, the remaining opals darkly glittering in the depths of the earth, far from the grasp of her minionsTitwas as good a time as any. And a time to demolish the twenty or so remaining Plainsmen in the southern passes, the fool of a slave, the bard- the lot of them.

As though a wind rose from the deepest recesses of the planet, the dark dust rose and sifted through the cracks in the earth, merging into a hulking black cloud, sprouting tail and talon and tattered wings in its headlong flight for the lofty parapets of the King-priest's Tower.

When the windows spoke to him, clouded in smoke and approaching evening, their message was urgent, angered.

Now is the time, they told the Kingpriest. Your bride awaitsryou in the collected dust.

But he no longer believed the voices. It was fear that prompted his magic, rather than hope and desire. Sifting the glain dust through his trembling hands, he began the first of the incantations, his breath enkindling the dust, spangling it with a harsh, artificial light.

I must not fail, he thought. Bride or no bride, I must do the bidding of the voice.

He did not notice the clouckpf smoke and sand until it surrounded him, pouring through the stained opalescent windows and filling his chamber with a thick, choking haze.

Then the dust in his hands rose and mingled with the blinding air.

You have done your part, the voices proclaimed. I will let you live for now.

He knew better than to ask for the woman, the bride-the beautiful girl crafted of dust opalescent and promised him years ago by the dark voice in the clerestory. She would not come. He knew that he had been deceived. Duped and humiliated, weaker than he had ever imagined himself to be, the King-priest watched helplessly as the cloud darkened and solidified and poured out the opened windows.

Emerging from the temporary stonesleep that had saved him from Takhisis's anger, Stormlight watched from the foot of the Tower as a new whirlwind stirred on the balcony.

Dark sand eddied and rose, and within it the flat, opaque dust of the glain opals. The elf saw three shapes intertwined in the heart of the cloud: Tamex and Tanila, their amber eyes glittering with a strange, reptilian identity…

And the other one, bearded and long-haired …

The one with sea-blue eyes.

The shapes were insubstantial, ever shifting, sometimes indistinguishable from each other, sometimes individual and distinct. He watched, horror-stricken, and he knew, as the sand and opal dust rose into an enormous, boiling cloud above the tower, that his old friend was no more and that the fabled city they had sought together was nothing but glittering, hollow marble.

"Beware, Istar," he whispered, retreating through the streets toward the gate, the burning fields, and the people beyond who were his care and charge.

"Beware in the years to come. For the ground is unsteady."

Larken watched in alarm as the storm rose over the city.

A deep, brooding shadow settled on the tallest of Istar's towers, and above the marbled horizon swirled a shapeless cloud, shot through with wind and lightning.

Suddenly, the cloud took form and settled on the spire, dark wings emerging from the whirling chaos. Now a tail, now a thick, muscular neck and a strong reptilian jaw.

With a cry, Lucas vaulted into the air. Wheeling once above the mouth of the pass, he shot south ahead of the building storm. In dismay, Larken watched him fly-watched her people scatter in fear and panic.

Now a dragon perched atop the Kingpriest's Tower-a dragon of cloud and spinning sand. Slowly the wings began to flutter and fan, and Istar Lake buckled and rolled as a fierce wind passed over it. The clouds above the stormy image wheeled about it like indignant desert birds, and the air itself buckled in sheets of violet lightning,

in a hundred whirlwinds racing throughout the northern sky.

What is it? Vincus signed to the bard.

Nothing. Nothing but a storm.

But the shape, Vincus insisted, his dark hands emphatic. It looks like …

Nothing, Larken signed. Nothing more than sand and old malice.

Then the raging wind rushed over them all.

Far worse than the sterim in the central pass, Takhisis's vengeance was swift and powerful. The alder trees were torn from their roots and hurled against the walls of the pass. Their crash and splinter and the cracking of rocks was deafening: all around Larken, the Plainsmen sought cover, as the wind tunneled through the Western Pass, whipping down into the plains and the desert beyond.

Now, in the ear-splitting racket of wind, in the breaking of nature, Larken took up her lyre.

The wind buffeted her frail song back to her, and, breathless, she stood in the mountain pass as the world uprooted around her.

In the midst of chaos, she found herself peculiarly calm. There was a passage-a way past the shriek shy;ing wind and the devastation. And she knew that the answer lay somewhere in her memory.

"Something perilous," Stormlight had told her. "And altogether new."

She touched the lyre's strings, gathered her last shreds of courage and hope, faced the stormy dragon and began to sing. \

Fierce, driving sand clawed at her throat, and the wind took away her breath. Her voice flowed through the lyre, inaudible above the clamor, and yet she continued, singing despite the fact that no one could hear her, not even Vincus, who stood clinging to her, holding them both down, his face averted from the driving wind.

She could not even hear herself.

My song will not abandon me, she thought. It is the last thing I have against this chaos. And I will sing it until the world breaks in two.

So the song of the bard warred against the shriek of the wind for a long hour, while a dozen Plains shy;men huddledJix alarm and forks of lightning flick shy;ered through the distant wings of the dragon. Twice Larken lost her footing-once she even fell, but Vin-cus's sinewy arms hung on to her, his dark head bent above her trembling shoulder as he stood in the wind like a strong rock in the sterim.

Through it all Larken kept singing, sending all the verses and music she knew into the relentless assault of the wind, composing new melodies with a wild and reckless invention.

Then, slowly, the cloudy dragon drew itself up and sailed high above the Kingpriest's Tower.

As it took to the air, a wave of immeasurable silence-a last calm before the final, strangling tem shy;pest-rolled forth over the lake. The cloudy dragon followed, a swirling figure of sand, its broad wings beating slowly over the dark waters.

In that sudden silence, Larken, still singing, dis shy;covered that no sound came from her throat-none but a faint, exhausted rasping.

It is over, she thought, still trying to sing, opening her^ eyes and cradling the lyre like a sleeping child. I have done I can all to stand against the beast.

Then, in the flash of a second before her last frail note slipped into fear and despair, as she held to her song with her ruined voice, the cry of a hawk frac shy;tured the expectant silence.

Like a herald, Lucas flew north, out of the pass, in the fore of a great rumbling. Then the Istarian Mountains gave back Larken's lost song. It powered forth, strong, clear, and sweet, resounding with magic she had never known she possessed, of a love that sheltered her adopted people. Larken heard her own voice surge over her, echoing off the facets of a thousand rocks, a chorus magnified and deepened, echo upon echo, until the ground shook under her feet.

At the edge of the lake, the shape of the dragon began to crumble and fall, harmlessly sifting into thtsvvater. The lake hissed as it received the fiery sand, and great columns of steam rose from the boiling surface. A horrendous shriek of anger and futility drowned swiftly in the rising song, and the steam hovered in the air, molding itself into the form of a bearded Plainsman warrior, a spiked tore about his neck and a celestial sadness in his countenance.

Then a soft rain fell from the steaming clouds, and the last image of the Prophet vanished into the Istar shy;ian skies.

Neither sand nor salt would ever be the same: every crystalline structure changed to the core, all geology translated, no mineral of Krynn would ever again harbor a god.

For a moment the Kingpriest's Temple looked like a shining spire in the afternoon sun, pristine and washed.

Larken's song-her last song-had done this.

"So be it," she whispered, softly, absently, her thoughts on old memories, on private, inexpressible things. "Things will change after this. Things will have to change."

Beside her, to her great surprise, Vincus nodded in agreement.

The bard had spoken, and for the first time in a long time, her people had heard her voice.

Another voice thundered in the depths of the Abyss.

In black fire Takhisis rolled and raged, stirring a hot and lethal wind. The godlings scattered before her, twittering like bats.

Defeated! By a squeaking bard and her attendant elves!

The darkness whirled in disarray, the Abyss span shy;gling with bright stars, white and violet and crimson.

Slowly, the goddess enfolded herself in the leath shy;ery sheath of her enormous batwings. She soothed herself in the permeating darkness, turning and calming her anger.

Perhaps this time they had won.

Perhaps these petty weaklings, in their great good fortune, had postponed her entry into Krynn for a few, paltry hours.

But Fordus was dead, his insurrection crushed. She had seen to that.

Now, her thoughts burst in flames on the tough, leathery surface of her inner wings. As though she watched a mural of light take form and evolve, Takhisis guided the images, shaped them and gave them purpose.

The fire from her anger and magic splashed violet and crimson and white in the leathery cocoon of her folded wings. It shone upon a burning, collapsing city, the fall of great towers and the rending of the earth.

It shone upon the Kingpriest's Tower, where the most powerful of her minions sat amid the dust of a hundred opals, chanting the last of a hundred spells she would begin to teach him today.

Oh, it was not the inalterable future. Not yet. But in dream and insinuation, through his guilt and through the darker promptings of his heart, she would bring the Kingpriest to this spell, this moment, this pass.

Her time would still come, was still coming.

The Kingpriest would see to it all.