The Dark Queen (14 page)

Had he been closer to the fortune-teller, he might have seen the man counting quietly,
estimating the beds freshly set in the vacant barracks. And had he watched intently and
followed the augurer, he no doubt would have seen the man slip into a shadowy alcove and
hoist a large sack, bulging with well-worn clothing, then make his way along half-deserted
streets west through the city, past the Banquet Hall and the Welcoming Tower toward the
sound of the roaring crowd as the first gladiatorial contest of the festival began.

Had these three servants of the cityquartermaster, armorer, and barracks keepermet in a
tavern that first festival night, had they compared notes and curious observations over
the last several days, they might well have placed together that all three
passersbymercenary, acrobat, and fortune- teller were exactly the same height, age, and
coloring.

Indeed, the Shinarion was a time of commerce and coincidence. There was one other similar
visit in the central citythe last of the fourin a large stable not far from the School of
the Games. In the shadowy, musty-smelling barn, a solitary groom mucked out a stall amid
the whicker of horses and the buzz of bottle flies. He scarcely noticed when a slave
appeareda dark young man, wearing the white tunic of the Inner Temple. Balandar's servant,
the groom observed dimly, his mind neither on nor off his work. No doubt the old priest
was set to buy another mare. The young slave nodded to the drowsy man and passed between
stalls quietly, as though shopping for horses. The groom left him alone, no more
interested in his business than the quartermaster, armorer, or barracks keeper had been
earlier in the day. Finally, the groom fell asleep over his broom, dreaming of winning a
hefty wager at the First Games of Josef Monoculus, and spending it ... spending it... All
on beer. Vincus, meanwhile, moved from stall to stall, looking for anything odd or out of
place. Most of the animals were familiar to him:the roan that belonged to young Trincera,
a priestess of Mishakal, the two mares that his master Balandar owned, and the
Kingpriest's half-dozen stallions. There were others, however, less familiar. Vincus
approached one, then another. The great beasts were calm and steady beneath his confident
hand, as the young slave quickly checked ears and flanks and teeth. The brands on the
flanks of two geldings clearly indicated that they were the property of merchants from
Balifor. Nothing surprising there. The braided mane of the pony indicated its Tho-radin
origins. Vincus smiled to imagine a dwarf rid- ing the creature, unsteady in the saddle,
cursing and muttering and pulling at his beard. It was the fourth mount that caught and
held the young man's eye. A strong, spirited gray mare, weathered but well tended, stood
in the far stall, eyeing Vincus defiantly. An old, long scar creased her withers, and her
right flank was pocked with four arrow wounds, healed years ago as well. As Vincus
approached, the mare lowered her head and snorted once, menacingly. Vincus slowly extended
his hand. The slice of apple, an offering of truce, settled the animal's tem- per. A bit
skittishly, the mare let him stroke her long dark mane, let him examine her flanks and
hooves for identifying markings. Nothing. The horse was unmarked. Making a soothing,
clicking sound, Vincus reached up and opened the mare's mouth. There, on the pink of her
inner lip, was the blue tattoo. The hexagon. Glyph of the Sixth Legion. Vincus sucked in
his breath. The Sixth Legion was the stuff of legends. Istar's finest, a tough,

relentless group of veterans trained by Solamnics and schooled in the Siege on Sorcery and
in innumerable raids against the ogres. They were noted for their swiftness and endurance
... And utter lack of mercy. Now they camped on the borders of Kern. At least that was
what he had heard in the taverns and the School of the Gamesthe information he had brought
back to Vaananen in their weekly visits.

His thoughts racing, Vincus examined the lip of the black gelding in the adjoining stall,
and the chestnut mare near the entrance to the stables. The blue hexagon marked them both.
The Sixth Legion was in Istar. Quickly the young man's mind rushed over the gatherings of
the day. New provisions, new weaponry, and now a horse that named the stranger. The Sixth
Legion, under cover of darkness and disguised as acrobat, dancer, and merchant, had been
recalled to Istar.

The Kingpriest was preparing for the rebels.

For ten days he stood at the border between worlds, as the shamans despaired for his life.
Larken sang healing songs over him, and the music and words trickled into his long, dry
sleep like a dream of water. Fordus would rise toward the surface then, toward light and
waking, but there was another voice inhabiting his sleepa voice deep and tranquil and
alluring.

Lie down, be at peace now, you have fought long and hard and done your best, let someone
else do the hard work henceforth and come to me, come to me in the sweet darkness. I will
teach you everything of prophecy. On the third day after his wounding, he gave in to the
voice, to its soothing and promises and to his own curiosity, and his dreams revealed
wonderful things.

It was always the desert he traveled, a featureless desert with neither rock nor salt flat
nor arroyo to mark it, to distinguish one path from innumerable others. And always in this
dream, he came upon the kanaji pit by surprisean old wide well swallowed by sand, rising
from the heart of nowhere. He entered the pit, the darkness, and his hands began to glow
with unexpected lighta light that seemed to rise from his own veins, filling the high
circle of limestone wall.

But instead of the expected glyphs, the accustomed marks in the sand, the woman Tanila sat
before him, her dark eyes glittering and wild. The words came to her readily, easily, like
the words of Larken's songs. You have opened the rift of the world, she began, as he
extended his glowing hands toward her. Let the new world arise from rift and confusion.
Let it change in the flame of your hand.

Then the light in his veins would extinguish, the blackness would surround him, and he
would sleep heavily, darkly, until the voices returned, Larken's first, then the deep soft
voice in pursuit. The dream would happen again and again. And each time, before complete
and oblivious darkness, he would hear the other voice, melodious and solitary, blending
with his memories of Tanila's voice. And it would tell him the last thing, the thing his
heart remembered as he slept.

Your studies are over, Prophet. Now the world will shake. You no longer need glyphs to
prophesy, nor the customary second tongue. You will speak to the multitudes on your own,
needing neither interpreter nor bard. In the depths of his sleep Fordus tried to argue,
tried to say no, I have not done this before, have not prophesied and interpreted as well.
It is not permitted. The ancient way of prophecy is twofold.

But the voice was insistent. You are a city unto yourself, a wondrous city, Fordus
Firesoul. Istar will pay you tribute, will be subject to your command. The rival you have
longed for awaits you in Istar: the Kingpriest, your

match in valor and worthiness. But you will triumph. And this I promise: In the heart of
Istar you will find out who you are. Who I am? he asked, with the same insistent yearning
he had felt upon first learning of his strange adoption. Hurry. You must hurry to know.
You must storm Istar now. Do not delay. But we are too few. Do not delay. On the plateau
the rebels held hopeless vigil over their wounded leader. Northstar knelt at his feet and
Stormlight at his head, praying the deep prayers to Mishakal. Larken stood above the three
of them, beating the drum slowly and singing the Three Songs of Healing, over and over.
They stopped only for an hour's fitful sleep. On the second night, Gormion took her
followers back to the red tents of the bandits. It was enough, she concluded. The man was
dead, and all that remained was to name Stormlight as his successor. The Que-Nara were
more faithful. Many of them stayed through four, five nights, but on the sixth day the
number of watchers began to dwindle. Women led the children to their tents, and some of
the older warriors and the shamans returned to camp on the seventh day. The grumbling
began. Stormlight heard it first from Gormion, when he returned after the seventh night's
vigil, headed for his tent and three hours' sleep before sunrise. All responsibility had
fallen on Stormlight. In the seven days that Fordus had lain silent atop the Red Plateau,
he had come to see how unwieldy the sole command of this irregular army could be. It was
sleep, however, that he thought of now, and when he heard the rattle and ring of jewelry
approaching from behind, for a moment Stormlight envied Fordus his coma. He turned to face
the dark-haired bandit, his expression level and impassive. “It is time to decide,
Stormlight,” the bandit captain declared, her eyes flashing with impatience and anger.
“What would you have me decide, Gormion?” His voice remained calm, he believedno hint of
the rising irritation he felt as the woman drew near him and raised a solitary, thin
finger, pointing and jabbing at him like she wielded a dagger. “The fate of the rebellion,
Stormlight. I would have you decide what is next. Instead of waiting for the ... visionary
to die.” Stormlight remained impassive. “While we crouch on our haunches,” the bandit
continued, “and await the passing, Istar is moving troops to the north.” “You know this
for a fact, Gormion?” He knew that she didn't. “What would you do if you were Kingpriest,
Stormlight?” “I am not Kingpriest, Gormion.” “You could be. You are resourceful and
brave.” Stormlight laughed wearily. Seven days had worn thin his patience, but this was
the most ridiculous of Gormion's proddings. Was she foolish enough to believe that an elf
whose greatest enemy sat on the Istarian throne .. . “And you command these armies.”
Tanila had spoken the same words a week ago when he first met her at the fireside.
Astonished, Stormlight stared at the bandit leader. Gormion's face, once beautiful, had
wrinkled and lined over the years with scheming and anger. Not yet thirty, she looked
twice her age. “What did you say, Gormion?” With a sniff of disgust, the woman backed away
from Stormlight, who continued to stare at her, his dark eyes intent and wide. “I said
what I said, elf,” she decreed, the menace in her voice brittle and thin. She wheeled
about in a chiming of bracelets and a rattle of beads. “I said what I said,” she repeated,
calling the words over her shoulder as she fled to the darkness of her tent, to safety and

concealment. “And you, Stormlight of the Lucanesti, had better listen. Or be lost like the
rest of your people!” Back in the Abyss, her female crystalline body abandoned in the
fires and eruptions, Takhisis banked in the windless air and laughed exultantly. Gormion
would be easy, when the time came. Hers was a spirit primed for hatred and strife.
Takhisis beat her wings, her laughter settling to a low, contented rumble. For wherever
strife and hatred abounded ... there was confusion . . . and confusion was an inroad for
her every evil work. Her defeat was only a temporary one, and not without some
satisfaction. For Sargonnas's glowing condor also had crumbled in the air, the bard's song
changing the vaunting god into a harmless shower of sparks. It had been rather beautiful.
A bright show of fireworks in the desert sun. It had given Takhisis an image as well... an
idea how to punish her insolent consort. When they returned to the abyss, she had set upon
him like a hawk on a sparrow, swooping through the bottomless darkness, folding her wings
in a searing dive through the nothingness, sensing him somewhere below her. Her thoughts
called out to Sargonnas in the blackness, and he answered. Penitently. Fearfully. He told
her of Fordus's weaknessof the man's great desire to discover his origins, his parentage.
Then suddenly she found herself above him, and dove, and he was there, turning his ruddy
face, his lidless eyes wide in astonishment and terror as she crashed into him like a
merciless black comet. He exploded from the power of her assault, shattering into a
hundred thousand shards and frag- ments, which squeaked and twittered as they scattered in
aimless flight through the void. It would take him a century to reassemble. Now, as she
remembered the moment, her rage subsided. Or rather, it turned back to the world, to the
Plainsmen who ranged the fringes of the desert in clear defiance of her Istar, her
Kingpriest, her plans for the Cataclysm. This Fordus had shown himself well nigh
indestructible. Neither the desert nor its creatures, the Istarians nor Sargonnas's fire
and clumsiness had had enough power to bring down this man. Yet, he was suggestible. His
ancestry weakened him. Which was why Takhisis had come to the man in his dreams, breathing
lies and nonsense about his great and far-reaching destiny. He was ambitious enough to
believe anything. Takhisis purred contentedly. She had lingered awhile in the Plainsman's
dreams, burrowing deeper and deeper into the recesses of his memory, past the layers of
adolescence, of childhood, past the time he was brought to the desert's edge, in secrecy
and in night. His mother was a slave girl, an attendant in the Kingpriest's Tower. She
learned that, easily. Now, more importantly, Takhisis knew his father. And there is great
power in knowledge, great free- dom. She would use that knowledge to destroy him. Now the
Prophet was rising from sleep. Fordus lay in a pool of sweat, his breathing easy and his
fever broken. But his spiked golden tore tightened ever so slightly upon his wasted neck.
The ends then welded in a silent, seamless joining, symbol of a new alliance that could
never be broken. Fordus would waken with an altered heart. She would leave the final,
brutal work to her earthly minions, when time and opportunity con- verged. When the moment
came, the Prophet would beg for oblivion. In the evening of the tenth day, when the Water
Prophet opened his eyes, only a handful of the faithful were left on the plateau. Kneeling
beside him, Northstar offered him water. “I have dreamt strangely,” Fordus announced after
a long drink, a new sound in his voice. His eyes were bright and sunk deeply into their
sockets from the ten-day fast of his sleep. Northstar and Stormlight bent over him, and
Larken, jubilant, ceased her drumming. “And I have seen signs and wonders in my dream,” he
concluded, sitting up painfully. “Assemble the people for a new word.”

Larken sounded the gathering call on her drum. Its message echoed from the heights of the
Red Plateau, borne on the shouts and calls of the sentries, passed from encampment to
encampment, from the white tents of the Que-Nara to the red of Gormion's bandits. They
came in throngs, from the battle leaders and shamans and Namers down to the youngest
child, for Larken's drum was a powerful summons.

When the gathering drum sounded, the gods were ready to speak. Stormlight waited with the
rest of the company as Fordus stood weakly in the midst of the jostling crowd. Fathers
lifted children onto their shoulders to better see the Prophet, and the rumor circulated
among the awestruck Que-Nara that Fordus had passed through the land of the dead and come
back with the deepest prophecy of all. Leaning on North-star's shoulder, the blood on his
mending side caked and dried as though he might brush away the wound, Fordus trained his
sea- blue eyes toward the horizon. “My dream has spoken to me,” the Prophet proclaimed.
“Istar is burning. The fire has come, and the world has opened.” A murmur spread through
the crowd, and a thousand eyes turned to Stormlight, who stepped aside, waiting for the
lightning to strike as it always struck, for Fordus's obscure poetry to become clear.
Quickly, with the confidence born of long experience, he isolated the symbols from the
Prophet's speech. Fire. A burning city. The crack in the world. As he felt the words
stirring, felt them rise from that mysterious source in the depths of his spirit, suddenly
he heard an excited rumble from the crowd. Stormlight's unspoken words froze in his
throat. “Hear the word of the Prophet!” Fordus proclaimed, blue eyes scanning the
encircling faces. “The meaning of my dream has come to me, and to me alone. No longer do I
need interpreter!” Stormlight shivered with a sharp intake of breath. His power, his
position, had been usurped. “For I ljiave passed through the fire and the fever,” Fordus
continued, his hands raised aloft, “and I have walked on the margins of shadows and looked
over into the places from which no man returns.” Uncertainly, with a sidelong glance at
Stormlight, Larken beat the drum once, twice. “My dream has told me that Istar is burning.
The fire that will destroy the city has not yet been kindled, but we are the ones who will
light it.” Slowly, the circle of people surrounding Stormlight widened and dispersed, as
the Plainsmen turned in rapt attention toward Fordus. Dumbstruck, the elf watched in
befuddlement as Larken, too, turned toward the Water Prophet, storing his words for a
song. “Rest tonight,” Fordus said softly, his eyes turned north, to where the red moon and
the white sat low on the horizon. The Namers and shamans who circled him strained to hear
his words, caught them, and passed them to the Plainsmen and bandits who waited behind
them, so that the message spread like brushfire over the listening crowd. “Rest tonight,
for tomorrow we march. We march on Istar, and there will not be peace until the city is
mine.”