The Dark Queen
( Villains - 6 )
Michael Williams
Michael Williams
The Dark Queen
Prologue
Thunder rumbled through the tower's polished opal windows and rattled their thin frames like a Namer's medicine stick.
An answer of lightning flickered over the dry white plains north of the city. Already, sweeping rain fell upon the far port of Karthay and on the bay-side forests toward the harbors of Istar. Here in the city, above the Kingpriest's Tower, the afternoon sky grew sullen and tense, and the brilliant gemstone windowpanes darkened to a deep blue.
From his tower window, opened to the fresh and rising wind, the white-robed man could tell by the sharp scent and expectancy of moisture in the air and the racing, tumbling black clouds that the storm was moving swiftly. He turned to his lectern, to the frail ancient volume that lay open beneath an unlit, solitary green candle, and the new volume, half copied, beside it. The room dimmed suddenly, and a strong breeze threatened the lacy pages as they lifted violently under its force.
Furtively, he closed the window and lit the candle. His moss-green eyes sought the tilt of the door, and he assured himself that it was still bolted. The book was volatile: a collection of druidic prophecies that had been hidden by the most capable of the Lucanesti elves for over a millennium. It had been brought to Istar secretly during the collapse of northern Silvanesti, kept in the recesses of a vint shy;ner's private library for years.
The Kingpriest forbade possession of this old, crumbling book and others like it. Copying it promised certain imprisonment, or even worse, for these were the most forbidding of times. The second year in the Edict of Thought Control. Outside, the air crackled, and brown pigeons took sudden wing from the garden's pavement. The rain shy;storm drew closer. It soon would hover and crash over the city, washing the dusty stone streets and the brick alleys, drenching cart and pedestrian, awning and booth/from the sentries on the northern walls to the longshoremen at the southern piers.
Moving south, the man thought. To hover for some time over the lake, before the mountains would catch and stifle it. The plains and the desert beyond them would again be cheated of the sooth shy;ing touch of water. No rain for them this time. Perhaps not for months, or years. Lightning flickered again over the northern sky, tracing a final, ragged white line between the gray-blue clouds, like a deep flaw in a dark gem. The man shuddered and returned to the old book. In the shadowy room, he began to copy, translating the weblike, interlacing lines of the ancient elven alpha shy;bet into a more legible common text, re-forming the prophecy he had copied through the night, a text that had come down to alarming events, to an alarm shy;ing passage.
He dipped his quill into the ink and cocked his hand. "In that time of the world," he wrote, "when the dark gods are still imprisoned in the vast empti shy;ness of the Abyss, the legends of Istar will claim that all evil is banished forever-that a universal tide of goodness and light has swept across the continent at the coronation of the Kingpriest. All civilized Krynn, the legends will say, stands at the threshold of a sil shy;ver age, an age of celebration and song, and the softer music of law and ritual.
"It will be the Age of Istar, they say, which a thou shy;sand years of histories will praise and exalt.
"The legends, of course, are wrong.
"Wrong about the law, the celebration, the ritual and song. Wrong about the age itself, which histori shy;ans will remember as the Age of Darkness…."
The man looked up from the book and massaged his temples. Half of the next page lay crumbled into bits, fallen away because of ill-treatment and the book's antiquity. Though he had reconstructed these very pages with care and skill and druidic magic, some passages were irretrievable, the pages on which they had been written either missing or dete shy;riorated into glittering dust.
Dust. Like most of the Lucanesti themselves. The book was as mysterious as the elves who had penned it.
Holding his breath, he turned the fragmented page. Even so, scraps of vellum, light as dust motes, shook loose and hovered above the book, rising in the heat of the candle.
So as not to further disturb the fragile, precious pages, he raised his thick sleeve very slowly and exhaled into it, then read on: "… were wrong about the gods. True, the great lance of the hero Huma will strike a near-mortal blow against the Dark Queen…"
Silently, the reader marveled. Huma's heroism, a thousand years in the past, lay in the future for the ancient writer. This book was over a millennium old. And yet it now read like news of tomorrow.
"This queen, Takhisis of the Many Names, he will banish to the Abyss, where she and her barbarous minions will wait and brood in a sunless chasm, far from the warm and living world they desire to influ shy;ence and rule.
"To reclaim her power, it would take …" The man swore a mild, silent oath. The text broke off again, the sides of the ancient page lost forever, and words of the prophecy with them.
But perhaps a more powerful spell, he mused. Perhaps I can still reconstruct…
But that would have to wait until the others left for the service. Too noisy for now. With a shrug, he picked up where the text continued.
"… that forms her body from the dust of the planet, restores her entry into the disheartened world. But until that time there will be other ways- faceted, more regular-to enter for a moment, for an hour, though the stay is brief and tantalizing in its brevity.
"Lightning is one way, and the powerful surge of flowing water another. For a time-sometimes a minute, sometimes an hour-the goddess will be able to channel her spark and spirit into a blinding flash in the western sky or the tumble of waters in the dark Thon-Thalas. For that brief and glorious breath, the world will spread before her, green and vulnerable in all its prospect…
"And then it will vanish, and what remains for her is Abthalom, her prison in the dark, shrieking swirls of the Abyss.
"Then, on one desert night, well into the reign of the last Kingpriest, the change will begin unexpect shy;edly.
"Will begin like this.
"Reveling in a thunderstorm, riding the jagged lightning over the red mesa south of Istar, Takhisis will watch and exult as the black desert lies exposed to fire and power, and sudden torrential rains-the first in three years, the last ever in the Istarian desert-batter the desolate salt flats at the foot of the Red Plateau. When the lightning strikes the stand of black crystals she will scarcely notice, until the storm subsides and she finds herself hovering, a tiny spark in the heart of a glittering shard.
"How she will remain there, how she can linger, is a mystery unknown to druid or priest. And yet, by this peculiar accident, she will find a way back to the world.
"Oh, yes, the form she takes will be brittle. When she molds her new body into the shape of a snake, of a jackal-finally a woman-it will be a full year before she learns the art, before she can take shape without breaking or crumbling. Even after that, her stays will be short-lived, for without notice her crys shy;talline flesh will crumble to salt, to sand, to dust, and she will be forced back to Abthalom again-back to the swirling darkness.
"To await a housing more amorphous. A home borne of water and slow time and the incantation of a powerful priest."
The man lifted his eyes from the book. Water and slow time? Incantations? Not enough to piece together the puzzle of this prophecy.
But the crystals. He could learn more of the crys shy;tals. He bent over the book, reading again.
"But after a dozen years, Takhisis will achieve a foothold of sorts in her old, accustomed haunts. She will dwell in the crystals for days, sometimes for weeks, a malign, animate spark that shapes the glit shy;tering stones to whatever form or guise takes her fancy.
"As a woman, as a warrior, as a viper or dragon, she can be all but indistinguishable from flesh and scale and blood. Beware her footprints. The massive weight of a waterless body will make them too deep for her size. And so, in those regions of Ansalon where sand and salt and crystal abound, the Dark Queen will begin to thrive and flourish.
"She will stop revolts and start them, depose a king and set a duke of her liking in his place. She will misdirect caravans across the Istarian desert so that all who travel with them die of exposure and thirst.
"She cannot remain, cannot establish herself, but her new presence will be stronger and remain longer than it ever has in lightning and dreams. Slowly she will regain her influence in Ergoth, in Thoradin, in the court of the Kingpriest at Istar."
The man's eyebrow raised. She would be coming here.
Why not? He had secretly expected it. Quickly he mined his memory-of rain, of the Istarian desert, of the last downpour by the Red Plateau.
Could it really have been twenty years?
She might already be here. With a rising appre shy;hension, he turned the page.
"Takhisis will guard her newfound power jeal shy;ously, but there will be other gods in the Abyss, just as eager to enter the world arid turn the tide of his shy;tory to their liking."
A sharp rap on the door startled the man. With a desperate, reflexive lurch he slammed the fragile book shut and hid it beneath his austere, blanketed cot.
"I am surprised," he marveled bleakly. "How remarkable."
Inwardly he cringed at the damage he had surely done to the delicate volume.
The lad at the door stood stooped and deferential, apologetic. After a barrage of the boy's tedious and lengthy explanations and many obeisant hand ges shy;tures, the man longed for the other servant-the voiceless one.
"The Kingpriest," the boy finally said, steepling his hands, his eyes cast to the floor, "requests the pleasure of your company."
The man nodded, snuffed the green candle, and followed the lad from the room. As they walked down the cool torchlit corridor, toward the Council Hall and the great and ever-pressing business of state, another roll of thunder sounded high above the city, the smell of ozone pressed into the man's nostrils, and the first wave of rain washed over the harbor.
Chapter 1
The Lady shrieked-a shriek that would echo for a century in the Abyss where she hovered on the dark airless currents of chaos. Takhisis furiously snapped her wings and shut her eyes against the vision unfold shy;ing before her.
Where had this warrior come from? How had he escaped her notice?
She had to know. And so, raging, she looked again at the man certain to thwart her plans to enter the world in a shape that was her own and would hold its boundaries amid the physics of Krynn.
He was a tall Plainsman, with unusual sky-blue, no, sea-blue eyes that stared past the flaming walls of her coveted Istar. His face was windburnt and ruddy, with a thick stubble of red beard unusual among his people. He wore a massive golden tore, inlaid with black glain opals, its ends knobbed and twisted at his throat. The opals. So he was protected.
Takhisis guessed him to be about thirty by the faint lines on his handsome, tanned face, by the fine lacing of silver in his auburn hair.
He stood at the gates of a city in flames.
The Kingpriest's Tower burned gloriously, its sov shy;ereign dead, its swarm of clergy defeated and scat shy;tered like pigs. .
Except for one. One white-robed figure held his hands aloft in exultation. She could not see the lone cleric's face, but for a moment a hot wind billowed back his sleeves and exposed the red oak leaf tattoo on his left wrist.
Druid. They were always there to vex her.
Then the vision wavered, brushed by the dark wings of another god.
Takhisis whirled in the blackness of the Abyss, her enemy a faint glimmer at the edge of sight.
Already too far away to follow, to punish.
Speed of a god.
But now all of them-the druid, the warrior, the Plainsmen army-faded from view as black fire washed over her vision.
Takhisis shook with another angry scream, but con shy;tinued to watch as the Plainsman moved into her sight again, his eyes still cool and distant. Now he walked through the burning portals of Istar, to seize posses shy;sion of all that lay before him. And beyond him.
From the way he moved, the sweep of his massive hand, Takhisis knew this man had never seen a defeat, never cried one tear in the humiliation of surrender.
And then, in the Dark Lady's vision, the shifting blue of those confident eyes turned and fastened on her, and for the first time since the Dragon Wars, since the Great Lance had banished her to this swirling noth shy;ingness, she felt the claws of fear rake her heart.
Locked in his stare as the scene dissolved, Takhisis spun in a slow circle, realizing that if she could not destroy him in time his rebel armies would lift her hard-wrought chains from all of Ansalon. This Plainsman would destroy her long and tedious work with the Kingpriest of Istar: her quiet, narcotic presence in the cleric's dreams, the controlled feed shy;ing of her plans into his sleeping mind.
The Kingpriest was more powerful than Takhisis had imagined. More learned in lore and godcraft than any mortal in the history of this world. He had barred all the gods from the face of Krynn-all of them, from high Paladine to low Hiddukel, from Zeboim of the seas to the three lunar children. They could return only fitfully, briefly-faint flickerings in rock crystal, in spindrift, at the blazing edge of meteors, or in the latticework of ice.
Then, when the light faded, the meteor cooled or the snow melted, their worldly stay was over, and they returned to Concordant Opposition, to the Ethereal Plane.
To Abthalom, the Abyss, where they shrieked and glided and waited to return.
But the Kingpriest was mortal. He could not last for long beneath the weight of his own momentous spellcraft.
To bind a god is exhausting work, Takhisis thought with a chuckle. They would find him, sooner or later, gibbering in his tower.
Then it would rain fire, and the gods would return.
But if Takhisis had her way, they would return to find her already in power. They would find her fully enthroned amid her darkest minions, and even the gods would bow to her magnificence.
Already, through her insinuations, the Kingpriest had banished the magic-users, the elves, all bards, and every unorthodox scholar. Philanthropists and intellectuals had been stripped of power and riches, then sold into slavery to the mob of priests who swarmed through the Kingpriest's Tower, seeking favors, preferment, and bribes.
The Lucanesti elves, or what was left of them, the Kingpriest had imprisoned in the opal mines beneath the city, where they slaved to gather more of the fabled glain amid the rising rubble and dust of thirty years' labor.
Next to the Kingpriest, theirs was the most impor shy;tant service to her. For the black glain opals were the key to the goddess's intricate plot.
She had tried to enter the glain opal once.
The gem was filled with moisture, a stony blood that would nourish and sustain her indefinitely in hostile Krynn. Godsblood, the Lucanesti miners called it. She could only imagine the power, the havoc. She would be loose upon Krynn, were there a way to inhabit the stone …
So in a thunderstorm Takhisis had tried to enter the gem, but the flat black opacity blocked and scat shy;tered her energy and light. Shrieking in pain and anger, spread to the eight corners of the air in an explosion of fragmented light, the goddess regath-ered, tried again.
Was shattered again.
The stone was impermeable, proof against her priest-bound energies.
But if the smooth, flawless stone were broken. .
The moisture within it would house her a thou shy;sand years.
Godsblood indeed.
That, too, she would put into the hands of the pli shy;able Kingpriest.
Thirty years in the forming had been Takhisis's plans. Three decades as she drew
closer and painfully closer to the moment when disastrous, irretrievable events-Cataclysmic events, she thought, with a sinister smile-would rise amaz shy;ingly out of the Kingpriest's droning, everyday pol shy;icy. It had taken that long to push the city, the continent, the very matter of the world to the edge of a precipice lovely and sheer.
Now she was only five years away, six at most, from that moment when some regular rite or cere shy;mony-a few words changed, along with a power shy;ful magic, and most of all, a fostered, vaunting pride-would collapse the city, the government, the empire, and rend asunder the face of Krynn.
It would be a summoning ritual that would seem harmless and ordinary, perhaps even beneficent to all the clergy by then. But in it, the Kingpriest would chant words that, ten years earlier, he would have found blasphemous, abominable.
He would breathe into the dust of a thousand stones, seeking his dream, his shadow. So that her spirit might move freely in the world long denied her, he would shape her a body from the watery glain dust. And she would be home-on the throne of Krynn, as Istar fell and the world was renewed in chaos.
But all of this would fail, be grievously delayed at best, if the rebels prospered. There Would be no compliant Kingpriest if this bearded Plainsman ever saw his campaign through.
Perhaps no Cataclysm.
How could she have missed him!
Her dark wings fanned the liquid void of the Abyss. Light rushed at her suddenly, as great gaps in the fabric of her prison plane opened briefly, tanta-lizingly on the bright world that Huma and the gods had denied her, and mountains, seas, and deserts rolled under her cold eye.
"There is great power in knowledge, great free shy;dom," Takhisis whispered to herself. Her dark heart yet full of fear, she composed her vast mind to call forth the broken pieces of the Plainsman's history, for in his past, she thought, lay her best weapons against this horrifying future.
The black wind congealed and wavered, and Takhisis spread her wings and rested on its thrum shy;ming current. Scanning the past, searching for the key to this mystery, she saw …. Nothing. His past had been erased.
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