The Dark Queen

Chapter 7

Three days into Fordus's absence, the rebel camp grew more and more uneasy. They were nomads, and three days in one place was too long. The livestock had grazed the scrub completely to the cracked and stony ground, and the last water was nearly gone. All the while, the camp was abuzz with new arrivals, as Plainsmen from all over the region came and went in Fordus's itinerant quarters.

It was not unusual for Fordus to be gone a day, perhaps even overnight. The rebels were accus shy;tomed to their commander's retreats into the desert fastness: Fordus leaving Stormlight in charge and departing for the kanaji, to the level lands beyond, in search of water or, sometimes, enlightenment. Fre shy;quently, after a night alone in the wasteland, fasting and meditating, he returned to the encampment exhausted but strangely alert, speaking cryptically of his desert visions.

The elf would give them words of direction, settle poetry into policy, oracle into tactics. Then the battles would follow, and the victories. It had been that way since Fordus became the War Prophet.

It was the way things worked when they needed water. But this time they were three nights waiting, in the wake of their most costly victory.

Even Larken began to watch the horizons with more than a little fear.

Apprehension spread like poison through the rebel camp, and Stormlight gathered scouts and out shy;runners to search for the missing commander. How shy;ever, a different sort of gathering took place where the plains tumbled down into desert, not a mile from the site of the recent bloody battle.

Just north of the grassy rise where Fordus had watched the battle unfold, scarcely an hour before sunrise on the second day of his absence, two Istar-ian cavalrymen rode south toward the Tine, cloaked in black against the fitful white moonlight. They were lean veterans of a dozen campaigns, hard and cynical and almost impossible to fool, borne by a mysterious summons to a moonlit council with the enemy.

They had come to this spot in the boulder-strewn rubble, awaiting the man who approached them now on foot and alone, trudging across a wide expanse of packed sand and sawgrass.

"No place for 'em to hide an escort, sir," the older of the cavalrymen observed. Absently, he stroked the sergeant's bar on the shoulder of his breastplate. "There's a mile between him and the cover of shadow."

The younger man nodded. He was the officer, the one in charge. By reflex, he rested a gloved hand on the hilt of his sword and traced the cold carving on it.

There was something very odd about this walking stranger. He moved heavily through the uneven ter shy;rain, never once dodging briar or gully. He did not break stride-not until he was within hailing dis shy;tance. Then, in a low, conversational voice, he greeted the Istarians.

"The time is now, gentlemen," he declared. His amber, slitted eyes narrowed, and he drew the black silk tunic close around him as cover against the desert night. "The time is now, if you're men enough to seize it."

"Come with us," the officer demanded curtly. "Tell me what you know."

The man stood his ground and turned stiffly to his left, his black hair cascading over his face, and pointed to a mesa low and dark on the horizon.

"The rebels are there," he announced, ignoring the circling horses. "Camped at the base of Red Plateau. It's been three days since they've seen For-dus Firesoul, and in his absence a dozen warring factions have sprung up in the camp. The old guard, the ones with Fordus since he became the Prophet, they all follow Stormlight and Larken. But some of the Que-Nara and many of the barbarians are looking to Northstar, while the bandits go with Gormion. And then. ." the informer concluded,

pausing meaningfully, "there are those of us … secretly loyal to Istar. Those whose future is tied intimately to the fortunes of the Kingpriest." The Istarians exchanged a skeptical glance and a curled smile.

"I tell you, their commander is missing," the informer insisted. " 'Tis now, or 'tis a long and bloody war, I tell you. I offer you a great gift!"

The officer considered this ultimatum. A dozen miles to the north, the defeated Istarian army huddled against the outer walls of the city, awaiting reinforcements recalled posthaste from their stations along the Thoradin border. Until relief arrived, the decimated remnants of Istar's pride crouched ner shy;vously at their campsites, imagining rebels in the shadows of rocks, in the moonlit tilt of the grass.

No. Though something about the informer's words edged on the truth, the time to attack was not now.

And yet..

Accustomed to quick, uncompromised decision, the young Istarian officer resolved the issue at once. He would send this veiled informer packing, then follow at a distance.

"What you advise is impossible," he said.

The man scowled. "And why?"

"I owe you no explanation."

"You already regret your decision," the informer growled, pointing a pale, almost translucent finger at the two men on horseback.

The officer did not reply, his gaze on the distant plateau. Out there, if the informer spoke the truth, hundreds of rebels camped by fires carefully banked and concealed so that their collected light would not lift the purple shadows on the horizon. "After all," he finally said, "how do we know that you are not sent to lure us into even greater troubles? Perhaps you are Fordus himself!" He laughed mockingly.

Angrily, the informer turned away, casting a last venomous glance over his shoulder. He moved quickly and silently back into the desert, a dark shape passing over the moonlit sands. The cavalry shy;men sat silently atop their horses until, on a dune at the farthest reaches of sight, the informer stopped and lifted his arms to the cloudy heavens.

"Dramatic sort, ain't he, sir?" the sergeant asked with a chuckle.

There was no answer.

For a long, idle moment, the sergeant watched the horizon. "Shall we follow him, sir?" he asked, turn shy;ing slowly toward the younger man.

Who had vanished entirely.

The officer's mare stood wide-eyed and trem shy;bling, black powder tumbling from her saddle, pool shy;ing on the ground in a murky pyramid, rising with a horrifying symmetry as though it lay in the bottom of a bewitched hourglass.

A bronze Istarian breastplate rocked pitifully on the hard ground, a helmet and a pair of white gloves not a dozen feet away.

Inanely, the sergeant reached for his sword.

A lone nightbird wheeled above, the moonlight silver on its extended wings.

Poison. Delicious poison.

The venom of ten thousand years flowed through the Dark Queen as, in her faceted, crystalline body, she stalked across the desert's edge toward the dis shy;tant fires of the Plainsmen.

She thought of the dead cavalryman with glee and relish.

Such to all, Plainsman or Istarian, who crossed her purposes. Especially the one who escaped her springjaw minion.

Such to the gods themselves who stood in her way.

In the starlit dome of the desert sky, the son of the goddess tilted into view, still invisible to the mun shy;dane eye-to human and elf, to dwarf and kender. Even the most powerful sorceries would strain to locate the black moon, for Nuitari awaited his time, eluding eye and glass and augury, the deluded fore shy;casts of Istarian astrologers.

But Takhisis could see him, of course, as he glided high overhead, obscuring bright Sirrion and Shinare in his passage.

Her son. Her dark pride.

From his birth, Nuitari had been the wedge between her and her consort, the black incident in the Age of Starbirth that drove apart Takhisis and Sargonnas before the world began.

Oh, I won that battle at the waking of time, Takhi shy;sis thought. And I shall win all battles hence.

The dark moon had been her oath, her promise to the other gods. To seal their agreement to never again make war on the face of the planet, each fam shy;ily of gods had agreed to create a child who would become blood-brother to the children created by the other families. Bound in kinship and in covenant, they would bless the world of Krynn with magic.

The silver child of Paladine and Mishakal, bright Solinari, was the first to ascend into the heavens. This eldest child showered forth a warm, beneficent magic, and the people of Paladine, the highborn elves, had lifted their arms to the descending moon shy;light. And the humans, the Youngest Born, had lifted their arms as well to the red light of Lunitari, the child born of Gilean the Book, chief god of the neu shy;tral pantheon.

Both of them sailed through the heavens now, aloft in an egg of silver and an egg of scarlet. When they hatched, the moons-husks of the gods, the ancient philosophers would call them-sailed through the skies of Krynn as refuge and home for the godlings …

And, in the binding age of the Kingpriest, their prisons.

But this was long before Istar, long before the Age of Might.

In the void above the whirling planet, Takhisis and Sargonnas had created the child. Their coupling was joyless, loveless, for already both gods had fallen away from one another into the dark abyss of themselves. In a dark cloud above the swelling Courrain, the goddess had overwhelmed her con shy;sort with a powerful magic, and forced Sargonnas to bear the child.

For a day and a night, the great scavenging god had lingered in the cloud of steam and volcanic ash, the miasma hovering sullenly over the ocean sur shy;face. Takhisis, watchful in her strange motherhood, circled the cloud and waited, as deafening cries of labor and rage burst forth from the eddying dark shy;ness.

For a day and a night and another day, she circled and waited, her hidden consort bellowing and vow shy;ing vengeance.

"Let it come," Takhisis taunted. "Oh, let your worst return to me, Sargonnas. I shall forego the pain and the labor, and when you have fulfilled your part…

"The spirit of the child will be mine alone."

At sunset on the second day, as the ocean waters flamed with the setting sun, the golden egg of the Condor sailed from the cloud.

The third moon. Nuitari the gold.

She remembered it well. How the great Condor, steaming and reeking with volcanic fire, had circled over the golden egg, menacing and boding.

"No, Takhisis!" Sargonnas had challenged, for the first time defying her, setting his contemptible, smoldering form against her will and desire. "I have borne this thing through magic and darkness and searing pain! I shall foster it, and it will be my emis shy;sary in the night sky of Krynn."

She had not expected the rage that rose up and nearly choked her. The eastern sands of the Ansalon coastline, those rocky beaches that would in time become Mithas and Kothas, islands of minotaurs, blackened in the heat of her passing wings as she swooped and circled the despicable rebel, the trai shy;torous god and his bright, golden trophy.

"Nuitari is mine!" she shrieked in reply, and the Worldscap Mountains erupted with the first volca shy;noes. "Mine, do you hear?" Lightning riddled the evening sky, and for the first time the forest crack shy;led, struck by the kindling heat from the heavens. "Or I shall destroy the thing. Shell and godling and all!"

The two gods circled the golden oval, the black batwings of Takhisis whirling in narrowing circles about the matted, smoking feathers of the scavenger, who fanned the ocean air with the stench of carrion.

"You would not destroy the godling," Sargonnas croaked, fire and sunlight brindling over his mottled apterium. "Not when you could master him!"

"You contemptible parasite!" spat the goddess. "You gem-hoarding adjunct] You sniveling, emulous,

dunghill fowl\"

Fire raced through the salty air and scattered, and Sargonnas perched atop the sailing golden egg, mantling his wings above the bright treasure.

" 'Would not destroy the godling,' you say?" Takhisis rumbled. "I will show you all my compas shy;sion, Sargonnas. I will show you the abundance of my heart."

Arching in the sky, her black wings shadowing the older moons, Takhisis drew the ocean wind into her lungs and belched forth a column of black fire. For a moment the condor and his glittering prize van shy;ished in the dark blaze, and the heavens fluttered and extinguished. Deprived of sunlight and star, the planet cooled and frosted, and the deepest winter settled on Ansalon, unnatural in the month of Sum shy;mer Run. But slowly, because the goddess was not the only force on Krynn, the stars returned one by one, the first ones rising in the constellation of the Dragon, then the surrounding luminaries and, finally, the planets and the moons.

A dark shape hung in the heavens, its burnt wings still brooding above the egg, above the blackened shell and the seared godling within.

Nuitari was never the same after that. Dark-haired and sickly, suffering a fiery malady in the depths of his lungs and throat, he spoke in hoarse whispers from the first days, from his hatching time.

So Takhisis remembered as she passed over the unsettled sands. Above her the dark moon drifted furtively between the stars, and she looked up approvingly at the twisted path of her son.

Sargonnas had been right.

Why destroy the child you can bend to your will completely?

She thought of the Kingpriest in his high tower, counting the opals that would bring her to the sur shy;face of Krynn.

She glided toward the lights of campfires, and a solitary bird, circling over her cautiously, called softly and sped away.

The same bird shrieked again as it sailed over For-dus, who knelt on the floor of the kanaji.

Exhausted and much the worse for his struggle with the springjaw, his grazed ankle swelling with a trace of the creature's poison, Fordus had struggled to the edge of the Tears of Mishakal. There he found the kanaji, and there he waited for the glyphs amid the strange, chiming music of the wind over the salt crystals, the lights of the camp a mile away glowing on the other side of the Tears.

Fordus closed his eyes. Clutching his ankle, he stared at the windswept sand in the open, circular chamber. For a terrifying moment, he confused it with the springjaw's lair and then remembered where he was. But his ankle had been touched by a plume of the acid that was the clumsy springjaw's other defense.

"Come forth," he muttered finally, teeth clenched.

And then, the new glyphs formed in the eddying sand.

The Tine. The sign for water. Of that he was sure.

Third day of Solinari.

That was more puzzling. But when he gave it voice in the midst of his people, when Stormlight heard the prophecy and interpreted it in the com shy;mon language, his mind would know what his heart now sensed here in the kanaji.

No Wind.

It was a mystery to him, an obscure arrangement of shape and line and half-resemblance. And then, emerging from the pristine, level sand, came a fourth, extraordinary glyph.

Springjaw.

Fordus blinked in confusion. But it had already happened! The funnel, the ground giving way beneath him …

This fiery sting in his ankle and the rising fever.

Slowly he set his thoughts aside-this time with more difficulty, as the pain in his foot and his leg thrust him again and again into the labyrinth of his mind, into doubts and fears that the words would not come, that Stormlight and Larken would not find him, that the gods themselves had turned away.

Instead, he stared at the symbols, closed his eyes. There. He had it. The four glyphs were committed to memory, and then as always, they vanished immedi shy;ately, leaving the floor of the pit clean and unruffled.

Fordus tightened the neck of his robe, his opal col shy;lar hot and constricting. He could not remove the tore. Long ago the glyphs had warned of dire conse shy;quence if he did so. But he was pained and uncom shy;fortable. His fever made the desert chill almost unbearable.

Fordus tried to stand, and suddenly the kanaji rocked with a red light, throwing him back to his knees. He closed his eyes and saw the acid spurt again, eating relentlessly into the flesh of his booted ankle.

Leaning against the limestone wall, he pulled himself up on his feet again.

Have to get out of here, he thought. Into the light. Into the air.

Get home. Get warm.

Painfully, his skin hurting with every touch of his robe, he crawled out of the pit and rested-for a minute, ten minutes, an hour? — on the baked earth at its rim. Dimly his fevered mind registered the faint music of the salt crystals, and for a while, he slept or tried to sleep.

Again the dream came to him. The lake of fire. The spindle bridge. The dark, winged form, the flattery and coaxing. . the promise of finding out who he was.

Briefly, in the flitting fashion of delirium, it seemed like Racer stepped into his dream. Grizzled and venomous, his wrinkled face a sinkhole of mal shy;ice, Racer shuffled onto the narrow bridge and into the winged shadow, his spindly ancient form com shy;mingling with the strange, birdlike cloud until Racer became the condor, the condor Racer.

No. No unexpected dreams.

Fordus woke and stood, drunkenly lurching toward the shimmering stones and the camp and safety. Not a hundred yards into his desperate effort, the cracked earth seemed to rise, to trip him, and he fell to his hands and knees, clambering over the ground like a scorpion, like a monstrous crab.

He reached the level top of the small rise. Ahead, the Tears of Mishakal seemed hazy, even more dis shy;tant, as though in trying to run toward them he had in fact run in the opposite direction.

Fordus looked back, toward the kanaji.

A wide expanse of desert land lay between him and the standing rock and baked, cracked earth, its red-brown surface scored with an intricate webbing of lines.

For a moment, on the horizon, Fordus thought he saw Kestrel. He raised his hand, shouted or thought he shouted …

Then he remembered that his foster father was two years dead, buried at the ancient dry fork of the Tine.

Then who. .?

Kestrel's form wavered at the edge of his sight, like a rain cloud. Slowly another form took shape inside it-another man, dressed in brilliant white, his robes dispelling the shadow like smoke in the wind.

Fordus stared at the man until his eyes hurt. A midsized man, balding, with sky-blue. .

No, sea-blue eyes. .

Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the image was gone, leaving the bare desert bathed in the eerie moonlight, a desolate flatland that stretched for as far as Fordus could see.

His fever still torrid, the Water Prophet stared absently at the cracked earth until the cracks them shy;selves began to take shape.

A glyph. Then another.

The whole desert has become my kanaji, Fordus thought incoherently, triumphantly. He began to read the wavering lines on the earth.

One resembled a tower. The other a chair.

In swift hallucinatory fashion, Fordus put a mean shy;ing together.

"I shall sit on the throne of Istar," he breathed. "I have waited for this summons.

"The rule of empire awaits me. The world has become my kanaji, my ground of visions. I shall lift the tyranny of the Kingpriest…

"And I shall rule in his stead. I know who I am. I am the Kingpriest."

All messages of water forgotten, Fordus rolled exultantly onto his back, staring up at the reeling heavens. The earth had spoken, naming him rightful Kingpriest of Istar.

It was glorious news.

What he had found was better than water.

He was the Prophet and he was the prophecy.

Above him, the hawk banked and rushed on a high wind back to the rebel camp. At his mistress's orders, Lucas was searching for the commander, guided by faint, barely comprehensible voices on the edge of the wind. The hawk heard a dozen lan shy;guages breathed into the air: the sleepy muttering of an elf-child somewhere in the darkness beneath Istar, the last gurgled sigh of a merchant murdered on the edge of the desert, the quiet sermons of the high grass and the ancient vallenwoods far, far to the south in Silvanost.

Among these sounds arose at last the murmur of the Water Prophet, strange, distracted talk of runes and water and the fall of cities.

Lucas found him on a flat stretch of desert south of the Tears. Sharp-eyed and vigilant, the hawk saw Fordus crawling and babbling, coming to rest at last on a rise midway between the salt flats and the standing stone from which he had been returning.

He seemed to be talking to someone, but there was nobody there.