The Dark Queen

by Michael Williams

  "We have fallen on meaner times, Larken. The great villains are gone, and the great heroes. Who will stand against me now?"

  They both fell silent as the rising red moon streaked the tents of the Plainsmen. Overhead, in a last circling- flight before evening, Lucas called and banked in the light westering sun, amber rays still dancing over the tips of his wings like mastfire.

  "Josef Monoculus was a fool," Fordus declared. "So are all the Istarian generals, all the fabled and fine Solamnic commanders. But perhaps the King-priest …"

  He propped himself on his elbows, stared eagerly at Larken.

  "Perhaps the Kingpriest!" he said again. "For he is a mystery who stands at the head of a great army. He is not only a man-he is a great and wondrous idea.

  "And he speaks with the gods, as do I. Or so the starians say."

  Fordus stroked his red beard thoughtfully.

  "I pray that he is worthy of me. A man must have great enemies when his friends are small. If he has neither enemy nor friend to match his noble spirit, he is straitened, imprisoned. Forced to grow crooked in confinement.

  "Without a worthy enemy, the world is a damnable wasteland."

  For a long time he scanned the darkening camp below, and the sun sank from view, and only the red moon rode in the desert sky.

  Chapter 3

  By day Fordus's world was barren, sun-beaten, a country of exotic colors-of red and black rock and ochre earth and of hazy white salt flats, their crystals rising over the lifeless landscape like frozen, abstract trees. It was a country of extremes and sharp edges, of large sufferings and small deaths.

  It was the desert night that Fordus loved most, especially when red Lunitari rode high overhead. In the darkness, the desert was transformed. The deso shy;late landscape deepened with shadows, the salt flats glittered like discarded gems, and strange, nocturnal creatures ventured out of the dried arroyos. The air became temperate, almost cool, and sometimes a stray wind coursed over the dunes, bearing in its wake the faint whiff of cedar from Silvanesti or salt from the seas south of Balifor, snaking over the flats and the dry arroyos as though seeking water, or a body into which it could breathe its distant life.

  The night sands were Fordus's refuge and his school, his peace and his nourishment. And so, after every victory, he returned to them.

  But this time he returned in doubt and double-mindedness. His long robe wrapped around him, he dreamed. This night it was the lava dream-vivid and long known to him-the same dream that had first come to him at the edge of the Tears of Mishakal a year ago.

  This dream had exalted him, lifted him from a destiny of water prophecy, a station of more impor shy;tance than he'd ever dreamed or sought, and made him king of the desert.

  The dream came as it always did-every detail the same as it had been the first time. And his response, as well, was the same, as though he acted in an ancient ritual play, performing an eternal seasonal role: Lord Winter, perhaps, or Branchala in the intri shy;cate elf-dramas Stormlight had told him about.

  As always, the landscape grew red and took on a fiery quality. Molten, volcanic, it bubbled and boiled with a strange, unnatural vigor. In his dream, For-dus followed the narrow, arching bridge above the roiling lava flats, and at the other end of the bridge a dark cloud hovered, like an opening into the void.

  Then the dark cloud unfolded. Black wings took shape in the shadows, and the cloud rolled and kneaded like the hot lake below.

  Now the enormous black bird perched on the nar shy;row bridge, turning its dirty, featherless head to regard him curiously, eagerly.

  I name you Firesoul, the creature pronounced, its words inaudible, yet strangely felt along the muscle and tendon of Fordus's arm. He did not hear the voice as much as touch it.

  "But I am Fordus," he said. He always said that.

  Fordus is a Water Prophet, murmured the shadowy bird, steam rising from its matted pinions. Fordus is a nomad, a vagrant.

  But Fordus Firesoul…

  Fordus smiled in his sleep. He loved this part of the dream.

  Fordus Firesoul is the breaker of armies, the strong arm of the desert. The rightful heir to marbled Istar.

  The condor flapped its wings, and hot fetid air, heavy with the strong smell of creosote and sulfur and carrion, coursed over the bridge.

  Claim your own, Fordus Firesoul, it murmured, and Fordus felt the words in the tips of his fingers.

  Claim your inheritance.

  My inheritance?

  Claim Istar, commanded the bird. There you will find the source of your being. You will find your origins. And you will discover who you really are.

  In the dark of early morning, Fordus awoke reas shy;sured, satisfied. He lay amid the rubble atop the Red Plateau, the highest point in the Istarian desert, as the eastern stars swam over him. He was alone except for a solitary guard, a Que-Nara spearman who drowsed, in untroubled oblivion, at his post.

  Fordus let the man sleep in peace. The sentry had earned that much.

  So had all the rebel army.

  The short battle, despite the Istarian surrender, had exhausted them all, had claimed the lives of many. They had carried threescore from the fields, and for others, whose wounds were too great, they left blessings, full waterskins, and a death watch of loved ones.

  Stormlight had come to him at sunset with the tid shy;ings. Two hundred and six rebels lay dead in the grasslands.

  "Istar can lose three thousand," Stormlight warned him. "And three thousand again. What does the Kingpriest care for the wailing of widows? But two hundred is a grievous loss for us."

  Fordus sat up, draping his long, powerful arms over his knees. The distant planets of fiery Sirrion and blue Reorx slowly converged over the tipped cup of Solinari, the white moon. He wished he could read the augury of stars, but the sky was opaque to him, for all its beauty.

  Who knew the future from the shifting heavens? Not even Northstar, the tribe navigator.

  And the mysterious glyphs Fordus had found in the kanaji, the ancient symbols that resonated in his thoughts and stirred him to the strange poetry . . . that stirred the armies in turn?

  Well, the glyphs had not returned. The wind had passed over the fine, soft sand, and the kanaji's floor had remained faceless, unreadable once more.

  Four hundred Que-Nara awaited his return from battle, pitching camp beneath the Red Plateau at the edge of the Tears of Mishakal. Though their gods had told them not to follow him out of the desert, that invasions and wars of aggression were iniqui shy;tous and wicked, they waited nonetheless. No one deserted Fordus Firesoul.

  They would stand beside him in the sands when the time came, braving Istar, Solamnia …

  … the gods themselves …

  … only if he, Fordus Firesoul, asked them to.

  He thought of ungainly Larken, lovely beneath the grit and rawness, of her mute, unquestioning devotion. Then there was Stormlight, to whom he had given a measure of importance, and Northstar, whose confusion he had calmed.

  He felt a strange emptiness as he stood above the rebel watchfires-the barbarian blazes interspersed amid the muted, efficient glow from the Plainsman camps like diffracted light on the face of a polished gemstone.

  They would follow him, bandit and Plainsman both. But where would he lead, if the sands told him nothing?

  * * * * *

  Throughout her childhood, Larken had scavenged at the edge of the camps, companion to the dogs and birds of the Que-Nara hunters, able to imitate any sound she heard, outcast because of her freakish col shy;oration and her constant vocal disturbances.

  Again and again the Namers awoke to the sounds of dogs outside the tent, the dry hiss of the spring-jaw and the underground rumblings of the spirit naga. Arming themselves hastily and blearily with warding spells and the hook-bladed kala, they would emerge from the tents . . .

  And find the little girl, singing all of these sounds uncannily into the night air, her matted, tangled hair an eerie white in the glow of the campfi
res.

  Sending her away seemed the best thing to do, so that she could be among her own kind. As her unusual looks marked her as threateningly gifted, normal life in the tribe was an impossibility. Her parents could hardly contain their relief at her departure. It was, of course, for her own good.

  Her gifts blossomed in a foreign country. She had come to Silvanesti natively superior to most of her instructors, intent and tireless at her songcraft. She rose through the great Bardic College of Silvanost too fast for everyone, until she was above them all.

  Larken readily learned the first eight bardic modes, the traditional arrangements of note and rhythm that carried the bardic songs. She studied diligently and alone, as was her way, far from the flarings of temper and temperament displayed by her fellow students. As the bardic initiates, the high Silvanesti and the noble Solamnics, the Istarians and the western elves from Qualinesti, bickered and plotted in the tall towers of Silvanost, the girl sat by the waters of the Thon-Thalas, her knobby, callused feet submerged in the dark current, practicing the songs in her harsh, flexible soprano.

  They had laughed at her, elf and highborn human alike. Called her "churl" and "guttersnipe." She ignored them serenely, mimicking the sound of floodwaters in the quarters of discomfited masters, the chitter of black squirrels in the vaults of the tower, which sent apprentice and novice alike up ladders with brooms. All the while, despite her echoes and pranks, Larken's thoughts remained serious, intent on the intricate bardic music.

  By her second winter she had mastered all eight of the modes, mastered the drum and the nillean pipes, and most of all developed and strengthened a soprano voice that, though never melodious, never beautiful, left her teachers breathless, admiring its power and range.

  Admiring, and fiercely resentful.

  In the groves along the Thon-Thalas, where elf and human still mingled in green and quiet, the sub shy;ject of her voice produced a jarring note of contro shy;versy. No student, the masters maintained from their green solitudes, especially no gritty slip of a girl from the plains, had ever learned the modes in only six seasons. There was foul play, no doubt- some hidden magic. It was not right.

  Yet Larken learned all the modes, swiftly and readily and gracefully. Soon she tired of the tradi shy;tional modes and began on the veiled ones, the intri shy;cate magical music that dwelt in the gap between audible notes. She learned the first four-the Kijon-ian for happiness, the Branchalan for growth, the Matherian for serenity, and then, alarmingly, the Solinian mode of visions and changes.

  At a recital, when her mighty voice changed table water into snow, her teachers took the threat in hand.

  In a ceremony usually saved for the seventh year, five green-robed bards-representing earth, air, fire, water, and memory-ended her brief apprentice shy;ship. They all said it was for her own good, so that she could sooner return to her own kind.

  She received the lorebook and her chosen com shy;panion, a young hawk she named Lucas-an out shy;landish bird whose bright green eyes, strikingly unusual for his species, promised that he could be schooled to magic.

  The next decision rested with the college: the instrument, to be presented to the graduate by the resident bards of high Silvanost.

  Larken had fully expected a drum, since that was the perfect musical complement for her voice, rough and rhythmical, the instrument of her people when they summoned the water or prepared for a distant battle. Yes, the drum would be most fitting.

  But they gave her the lyre instead.

  How appropriately taunting, they mused. A chamber musician's pretty little harp. A stringed dainty to be used to soothe some lord from his day's troubles. An instrument of peace, a fine thing if in the hand of one who cared not for battle and the ris shy;ing of the blood and the clash of war.

  They had chosen her trophy with a last, biting meanness in mind, and the message was clear: Be quiet, and be gone. To ensure this, they consulted a dark mage near Waylorn's Tower, a Master Calotte, who, with a curious smile, gave them the harp, and then loaned them his preoccupied apprentice to bur shy;den the young bard with a binding curse.

  Larken could never compose an original melody, said the curse. A talented mimic, she was sentenced to mine her memory for songs recalled and half heard in a marginal childhood and in as marginal a stay at the bardic college.

  But the apprentice botched the complicated spell. Nodding over the components, he mixed one moss with another, then reversed two words in the long incantation, so that although Larken was cursed to compose no original music, only her spoken words were affected, discredited. That seemed bad enough, for whenever Larken spoke, she spoke discordantly. Those around her thought they heard only the wind, or they forgot instantly what she said.

  So her masters had promoted her and abused her at the same time. They set her on the road, far from Silvanost and the haunts of the Thon-Thalas, bound in a last tutelage to Arion Corvus, a master among traveling bards. When that was done, Larken was sent home, far more angry than when she'd left.

  But old Corvus was wise, and knowing in the way that a bard is knowing. At Larken's departure, he gave her the drum she carried now-a light, sturdy instrument with a head of sheer glain opal.

  The drum was stone, and the sound from it was muffled, even ungainly. But Corvus insisted that it was the drum for her.

  Muffled. Ungainly.

  And useful, he added, a strange gleam in his ancient eyes. The drum is your companion. It will protect you.

  Since that time Larken had wandered with the Que-Nara. Now she was Fordus's bard. She had come to sing the cause of the downtrodden, come to stand with him against the cold white rigors of Istar and its adamant righteousness, to free the thousands of Plainsmen who wore the collars of Istarian slav shy;ery.

  She believed Fordus could eventually break any curse, even her misplaced one. She was the muse of sand and plateau and arroyo, taking the deeds of a rebel commander and breathing them full of poetry and legend and light. Through her song and the thousand cadences of her odd glain drum, Fordus the Water Prophet had become Fordus the Storm, Lord of the Rebels … Fordus the hero.

  Still, the curse of Calotte's apprentice stayed with her, and when Larken spoke, her words fell into a great void. The result of this ludicrous situation was that she never spoke at all anymore, except to Lucas. The hawk seemed to understand her words, no mat shy;ter how jumbled they sounded to human ears. Over the years she had invented a form of sign language nearly everyone could understand, and she had learned how to write in glyphs, runes, and common letters.

  All the while, the magic of her music grew ever more powerful. Her song remained loud and clear and perpetually true, and sometimes it seemed to border on prophecy when the marveling Plainsmen heard it at the start of a hunt or a battle.

  When her song rose to prophecy, it was as though the desert blossomed, the arroyos filled with the waters of the sung rivers, and the stars shifted in the winter sky, Branchala's harp brilliant on the north shy;ern horizon. It was as though all prophecy resounded in its ancient strings. They could not but choose to listen, then, from the most wretched tone-deaf bandit to Stormlight himself. Even Fordus would turn to her and stare, with those sea-blue desert eyes, and believe completely everything that she sang about him.

  And wonder if he could ever afford to set her free.

  At the campsite the men were gathered-bandit and barbarian and Plainsman, bound by wounds and dirt and exhaustion, their eyes fixed restlessly on the heights of the Red Plateau where the Lord of the Rebels kept lonely vigil.

  Larken slipped into the firelight, seating herself between Stormlight and her cousin Northstar, the slender young Plainsman who steered the Que-Nara across the broad, featureless expanses of the Istarian desert, guided by stars and prayers. Northstar regarded her defiantly. At first he had refused to accompany Fordus into the grasslands and had matched words unsuccessfully against Larken's battle song. Larken liked almost everything about her cousin, from his quiet intelligence and resource
shy;fulness to the hawk tattoo on his shoulder. And she loved him in spite of his irritating piety, as strict and somber as any Istarian's.

  She shot him back a crooked smile. Northstar turned proudly away, and Stormlight's greeting, as usual, was little more than an uneasy nod. With a shrug, Larken settled in between the men and drew forth her drum. Lucas alit drowsily on her gloved arm, and she settled him on his ring perch, where he fluffed and fell quickly asleep, lulled by the warmth of the fire.

  Across the circle, one of the bandit leaders, her long black hair glinting red from the firelight, was speaking loudly. Larken searched for memory. The woman's name was something harsh, unpleasant…

  Gormion.

  Yes. It fit her. The jumbled Tarsian name, taken when the woman had left the Que-Nara seven years ago. She was back now, at the head of a company of Thoradin bandits, momentarily allied with the rebels.

  "He should never have been made Water Prophet, Stormlight," Gormion hissed. "You were there ten years ago. You know it's true."

  "He prophesied," Stormlight declared, "and his words drew a map to the water. I would call that water prophecy. I would call that true."

  "My grandfather should have been . . ." Gormion began. It was the same old story of strife and com shy;plaint. Old Racer had considered himself passed over by Fordus's father, and had voiced his com shy;plaints until his dying day. His sons, the oldest of whom was Gormion's father, had left the Que-Nara in anger, seeking residence among bandits in the Thoradin foothills.

  Only in this discord did Gormion, granddaughter of Old Racer, acknowledge her Plainsman blood.

  "Nor is he a better general," she spat, dark hands waving in the glow of the firelight, a dozen stolen silver bracelets spangling her wrists. The bandits on either side of her, two rough men named Rann and Aeleth, could only nod in agreement since their mouths were stuffed with the bread Fordus had provided. "Retreat. What else do you call it," she continued, "when an army goes forward, fights, and falls back?"

  "Repentance," Northstar replied, staring long into the fire.