The Dark Queen

by Michael Williams

  "The Prophet King!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  He knelt, examined more closely.

  There was something deep and important he was forgetting.

  It was time for the Anlage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  He extended his pale, encrusted hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  He stepped forward, sank to his chest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  It was all he could do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 21

  The gold and gray plains at the edge of lstar stretched out sandy and rock-littered-little more hospitable than the desert in which Fordus had wandered and prophesied and fought for most of his life. There was said to be forest somewhere farther north-a land of thick and luxurious green, dripping with soft autumn rain or the hard, thunderous downpours of an Ansalon spring.

  Standing in the midst of his ragged army, for a moment Fordus let himself imagine that northern country. He had never seen a landscape of lush and resplendent green, never walked beside brooks or looked up into a vault of leaf and evergreen. His country was brown and red and ochre, its land shy;marks visible for miles over the level terrain.

  Landmarks like the towering city of Istar, carved of marble in the Age of Dreams, the heart of an empire.

  Soon to be his. City and empire alike.

  What did it matter that so few warriors stood behind him now? What did it matter that his num shy;bers were not the thousands, the hundreds of thou shy;sands, he had dreamed long ago in the Tears of Mishakal and again, a few nights ago, high up on the Red Plateau?

  It was not loss, not attrition. It was a weeding out, a culling. Only the finest fighters remained, their worthiness proved by their survival.

  For Northstar was still with him, and Rann and Aeleth. Somehow Gormion had wrestled down her natural cowardice, and she was beside him as well, as were threescore of the younger men and women, their sunken eyes alight with adulation, their thoughts upon the liberation of the Plainsmen enslaved in Istar.

  Stormlight is dead, Fordus hallucinated. He is a forerunner, a harbinger, the vanguard of an invisible legion.

  For the dead would arise and follow Fordus Fire-soul. So he had read in the fissures on this cracked and graven plain.

  Oh, he had not told the others yet. Not even Northstar knew. At night Fordus found himself laughing at his little surprise, at the army he knew was coming. For the dead army would fear nothing … especially not death.

  He held back a high and rising laughter as he crouched among his lieutenants on the stubbled plains. Milling before the city walls, the Kingpriest's army assembled-soldiers and mercenaries called from all corners of Ansalon.

  Because the Kingpriest was afraid now. Fordus's dreams had told him that as well.

  It was the time of the Water Prophet, and the War Prophet, and the Prophet King. The Prophet King's army, bound for Istar, set to marching around the lake, rising to Fordus's demand yet again, tired beyond belief and helplessy enthralled. Their torches fanned the shoreline like glowing gems set in the half-circlet of a crown. Fordus would be Istar's new monarch, and their native prince. They needed no songs, no chanting of bards to dismantle the walls of Istar. With his gallant following and the huge invisible army at his back, Fordus would scale the walls himself.

  Into a city promised him before the beginning of the world.

  * * * * *

  Stormlight watched from the encampments, as Fordus organized his few men for the assault.

  Just as he had previously seen huge, destructive storms brewing and approaching, he could see this disaster in the making-less than fourscore rebels marching against the assembled might of the city. Left behind were the children and grandfathers and pregnant wives, starved and vulnerable amid smok shy;ing campfires and tattered tents.

  Even if, as a last resort, he killed Fordus, the others would still attack, propelled by the martyrdom of the Prophet King and by his final prophecies-some delirious foolishness about armies of the dead.

  Stormlight had known it would come to this when he bade Larken farewell, told her to wait with his followers while he set out after Fordus's quick-marched forces. He had looked over his shoulder once, twice, and she stood as he had left her, silhou shy;etted against the red light of Lunitari.

  "Wait here," he had told her. "I shall return."

  Now he was not so sure.

  Miles away, on the other side of the lake, Larken stood in the Western Pass, staring across the water toward the harbors and walls of the marbled city.

  Vincus stood at her shoulder; stroking Lucas, who danced back and forth eagerly upon her gloved hand. The young man believed that Lucas was his closest friend among them, the creature most wor shy;thy of his trust and reliance. Larken's sign language was soothing and familiar, as well.

  Through the afternoon he had guided Larken and her hundred followers to the Western Pass. There they meant to wait-for tidings of the battle, for Stormlight and returning survivors.

  All of them sensed the disaster approaching, doom riding the air as heavily, as corrosively as the wind-driven sand in the southern sterim.

  Oddly, the bard had set aside her drum. She held the lyre now, softly fingering its bow as though reluctant to touch its strings. Lucas hopped to her shoulder, raining amber light into the moonlit shad shy;ows, his soft voice mewling, encouraging.

  Vincus tugged at Larken's tunic. How long do we wait? he signaled.

  The bard blinked, as though awakened from a light sleep.

  Three days, she signaled in reply. Longer would be dangerous, but news travels slowly across the lake.

  If we had the glyphs … Vincus offered hopefully.

  But Larken shook her head. Those were the old days.

  Now we have belief and waiting. Belief in Stormlight, in his skill and resourcefulness.

  Larken turned again to her harp, and the young Istarian, cast back into his own thoughts, stared north over Lake Istar.

  The distant walled city reflected serenely on the glassy surface of the water.

  With a fumbling of weapons, the ranks closed behind the Prophet King. Solemnly, as though at the beginning of a great and somber ritual, the rebels marched toward the city-toward Istar, shimmering in refracted light.

 
; In the distance, they saw the Istarian army group shy;ing-red banners aloft and fluttering in the rising wind. The rebels had seen these flags before, had eluded them over a world of high grass and sand, striking from the flanks and the rear with the swift shy;ness and surprise of swooping birds.

  But now, they marched to meet Istar head-on. Sev shy;enty, seventy-five warriors arrayed against ten thou shy;sand. It was certain madness.

  Were it not for the promise of the Prophet King.

  For Fordus had sworn their deliverance in the council fires of the night before. Never trust simple numbers, he had urged them, for I have a magic that no numbers can quell.

  Now, as they saw the army assembled against them, the banners and the bright, approaching stan shy;dards of four legions, for a moment it crossed their minds that the magic might fail and the prophecies go dry.

  Yet each man stood at the shoulder of Kis cohort, and pride and illusion prevailed. Having come this far, they would not run and they would not waver.

  Ahead, dressed in a dirty white robe and a brown kaffiyeh, indistinguishable from his followers, his golden collar hidden under the loose robes, the Prophet King shouted and beckoned.

  Past judgment and past wisdom, they lifted their shields and followed.

  The first wave of arrows rained down upon the rebels.

  The archers perched in the distance, perhaps two hundred yards away, and their efforts, spent and inaccurate, clattered against the rebels' uplifted shields and fell harmlessly on the hard ground.

  Good. The Istarians were nervous. Too quick to shoot.

  The pikemen in the forward ranks lowered their weapons. Men of the Fourth Legion-old foes with a score to settle-quickened their pace, breaking into a run, a shouting, shrieking charge across the level fields where the rebels, woefully outnumbered, braced to face the first assault.

  "Now!" Fordus shouted as the lines collided. Rebel weaponry flashed amid the lunging pikes, and Istarian after Istarian fell to the more mobile rebels. The Fourth Legion's attack billowed and eddied around Fordus, Northstar, and Rann, then the Istarian lines broke, the pikemen withdrew, and the distant archers showered arrows once more.