The Dark Queen (4 page)

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
resourcefulness 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- plaint. Old Racer had
considered himself passed over by Fordus's father, and had voiced his com- 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. “We obviously did not win,” Gormion concluded with a sneer. “For we
have retreated, and our com- mander repents.” The other bandits laughed and poked at one
another. “You're a fair-weather warrior, Gormion,” Storm-light remarked. “Fordus feeds
you, arms you. He provides your water in this dry and desolate place. You came to him when
you were all nearly dead from the drought. He took you in. And today he gave you a
victory. What else do you ask of him?” “Gold,” the bandit captain replied, flashing her
bracelets in the firelight. “Gold and silver and the jewelry of Istar. I provide my
followers, and he provides the gold. Victory? There is no victory without spoil. We
retreated today because Fordus lost heart!” “No fighter remembers all of the battle,”
Storm-light put forward. “How can we judge these things when we remember only in shards
and slivers: the face of the man in front, a glint of light on a far hill, the brush of an
arrow past our ear. Fragments. You can never claim full memory from them. So we must not
speak of retreat, and who could know if or what Fordus repents? As for gold, other things
are worth more. Every battle brings us closer to Istar. The last one will set my people
free, and bring your gold as well. Be patient, Gormion.” Gormion acted as though she had
not heard him. Her eyes shifted across the circle to Larken. “Let us ask the bard about
the battle. Perhaps she remembers it all, since she fought none of it.” Larken returned
the look with an icy stare. No matter the fragment you remember, she signed, there

was a full battle we won against the pride of Istar. This I will show you. She rattled the
drumhammer across the stony head of the drum. Suddenly, Lucas fluttered awake on his
perch, green-golden eyes wide and attentive. At a second drumroll, the hawk cried out in a
long shriek that trailed away into a high, plaintive whistle. It was all the bard needed
to hear. Compressed in the cry was Lucas's full account of the entire battle, seen from
the high vantage of his flight above the bloody plains. In a matter of seconds, Larken
absorbed a vision of what had come to pass on the battlefield that day, and though the
vision was barely formed and scarcely definable, she began to pick up its rhythm, and to
hum around it, knowing she would discover the truth as she sang it, that it would surprise
her as much as it did those who crouched around the fire, listening to their deeds take
wing into history. The hammer of Istar, the anvil of armies Failed in the forge ofFordus's
desert, Failed on the plains when the sun passed over, And the smoke rose up from a smithy
of blood While lost in the city the women lament, Ash their companion, Fire is their
father And the long war falls As the ravens gather. Gormion laughed wickedly and dismissed
the song with a flick of her hand. But Larken was only beginning. The drumbeat surged and
galloped, and she found full voice. Aeleth of Ergoth, harper of arrows, Yours the first
music the army remembers, The arrow a bolt to the battle's thunder, The string of the bow
a song for Ilenus Spearman oflstar struck in the vanguard: The towers oflstar Mourn
through the night, Bolt and harp And the arrow's flight. The drum beats faded to a long
silence. Aeleth, somber and shaken, lifted his hands to the firelight. In the midst of
Larken's singing, the entire experience had returned to him: the feel of the sunlight
burning through the cloth sleeve pinned up on his right shoulder as he stood atop the rise
in the grasslands, the army of Istar approaching, his arrow nocked and the bowstring taut.
He remembered the thrum of the string, how it brushed against his cheek lightly, quivering
as he brought down the bow ... How the spearman fell to his knees, dropping his weapon,
his hands groping stupidly over the half- buried shaft of the arrow. “Ilenus,” Aeleth
murmured. “The boy's name was Ilenus.” Then silently, as though all this knowledge
struggled for a place in his mind and heart, Aeleth frowned and flexed his long, callused
fingers. Without prompting, Larken resumed the song. With crisp raps on the drum, she sang
out other verses. Rann of Balifor, Sword of the Bandits, Rock of the army at Istar's
coming, The scar on your shoulder a glyph of the moon As it shines on the dead in the
damaged fields As the night passes over the nation oflstar: The long spear remembers The
assembled flight The lodge of the arm In returning moonlight. This was obscure verse for a
Baliforian thug. Rann shook his head in puzzlement, in disgust, but then, slowly, his
attentions drifted to his shoulder, and a fresh wound throbbed with discovered pain. He
remembered it all, now: sidestepping the charging mercenary, the sharp tug at his shoulder
as he drove the hooked kala knife into a wide-eyed captain. He remembered wheeling about
to face another assailant, a mist of blood encircling him. His shoulder throbbed as each
blow and parry rushed back to his blossoming memory. “I remember it. . .” Rann breathed in
wonder. “I remember it all.”

Gormion rose and stalked from the firelight. But the bard was not finished. As Larken
continued, into the Song of Passing that named and her- alded each of the fallen, the
Plainsmen fell silent, remembering the battle in its swift and brutal entirety.
Stormlight, listening, recalled the fluttering high grass, the Istarian infantry passing
so closely that he could smell the sweaty leather, read the elaborate gold insignia of the
Istarian Guard. He recollected his troops, their painted faces and robes swathed with
browns, blacks, and yellows, lying still until the sunlight and shadow and grass seemed to
swallow them ... Northstar alone summoned to mind no earthly army, no array of spears or
line of soldiers. Only the darkness of the sandstorm returned to him, abiding and deep,
broken only by the unnatural movement of stars. Within that darkness dwelt the sound of
inhuman voices, a clash of energy and movement he could not find the words to describe,
and even the songs of Larken could not approach its menace and danger. When the last note
of the Passing sounded and the dead receded into their long, forgetful rest, some- thing
dark passed over and through the young scout. He thought he saw a constellation, high in
the vault of heaven, scatter and tumble onto the darkened plain. The dark woman crouched
in the valley of crystal bones. Overhead the red moon reeled crazily into the desert sky,
but even that subdued light hurt her eyes. She must learn to master this body. Learn its
heaviness and inelegance in the short time before it dried and crumbled, in order to do
the tasks she had set for herself. Already the blank, airless chaos of the Abyss seemed
like a nightmare, like a harsh season in another age. Takhisis pushed that time to the
back of her memory, breathing the night air, the faint smell of sage, the salt of the
surrounding crystals.

Now was the time to scheme and countermine. Now, while the rebels divided and scattered,
uncer- tain. There is great power in knowledge, she told herself again. Great freedom.

She groaned and practiced again the casual lifting of her incongruously heavy arm, the
blinking of her eyes at proper intervals. The red-lit landscape glittered eerily, as
though she watched the world from the heart of a gem. These eyes of crystal reflected an
angular moonlight. Nearby, the salt flats, the pillars, seemed massive, disproportionately
large. The plateau and arroyo, not a league away, seemed diminished, mysterious, as though
glimpsed at the end of a thousand-mile tunnel.

The strange triad of Plainsman, bard, and elf seemed mysterious and distant as well, their
thoughts and passions and motives still veiled to her. Takhisis glanced up at the riding
moon. Red Luni-tari passed slowly over the eastern sky, over a gap in the heavens where
the black moon rested, still unknown to the worldly astronomers.

A mask for Nuitari. A bright veil over the dark moon. The girl would be the place to
start, the goddess thought. Slowly, the crystals that housed her spirit began to change,
to restructure. To a passerby it would appear that one of the columns of salta large one,
out in the middle of the flatswas melting, dissolving, reforming at the same time.
Takhisis's body hardened, became more angular. The shoulders broadened and the legs, once
long and smooth and tapering, knotted as though an ancient wind had twisted and gnarled
them. It was a man now who walked the cooling sands of the desert. A man handsome and
muscular and

cold. As he moved through the moonlight, his skin slowly grew translucent, then
transparent. He was a ripple of darkness rising out of the desert night, no more visible
than heat wavering over the cooling sands. Silently, he slipped by the outermost circle of
Fordus's sentries. Safe behind rebel lines, the warrior paused and listened, sinking
slowly back into view, his skin darker, more opaque. Now the distant sound of a lyre
chimed over his brittle hand, as the crystals in his fingers vibrated to the soft sound.
Good. The bard was playing. The music was uncomfortable, even disturbing, but it signaled
her whereabouts. Somewhere in the dry gulch, Takhisisor rather the dark man who called
himself Tamexwould find Larken. And the winnowing would begin.

*****

Larken, too, had spent a sleepless night. Alone in a weathered arroyo, at any time a place
of danger, she waited for the inspiration of song and insight, she touched the three
strings of the elven lyre, and she thought of Fordus. “To the north he went,” she began,
her low, mellifluous voice unsteady as she searched for the melody in the darkness. Lucas
turned on his ring perch, head cocked alertly at the sound of the lyre. “To the north came
Fordus in the face of Istar ...” Larken fumbled with the lyre strings, striking a quiet
but dissonant chord. Lucas shrieked, raising the feathers on his head into a menacing
crest. “What? I know it was bad. Sorry,” she replied to him, and his feathers smoothed
over again. For an instant, a chill passed over her. Had she heard human words in the
hawk's cry? Forgetting the moment, she dropped the lyre indifferently onto her lap. Larken
was glad her bardic instructors could not see her grope for words and flounder with
strings. It would confirm what they had told her all along, about Plainsmen and the bardic
calling, about her especially. About this instrument they had hung upon her, useless and
discordant in her hands. Lucas cocked his head and stood very still on the round perch.
His green eyes flashed with unearthly fire. Larken looked at Lucas questioningly. “What?”
she asked, this time wanting an answer. Suddenly, a coldness overwhelmed her, as though
the dry riverbed breathed the memory of violent water, of ice. A shadow passed between her
and the moonlighta cloud, a night bird ... The shadow paused above her. Lucas covered his
head with his wing and made a low, painful cry. Slowly, Larken turned. The dark man smiled
handsomely, his face framed in moonlight. His tight-lidded amber eyes moved over her, and
the black silk tunic rose rhythmically on his shoulders and chest. His legs were long and
powerful, and he wore black leather bootsan odd choice for the desert, Larken thought
somewhere at the edge of her mind. He was a strange combination of beauty and eeriness,
like a distorted reflection of the moon in water. Larken regarded him suspiciously, her
hand drifting slowly and surely to the knife at her belt. The dark man held her gaze,
nodded. “You are Larken the bard,” he said, as though he named her for the first time with
his words. With a movement lithe and graceful, he stepped toward her, wrested her hand
from her knife . . . and kissed her fingers elegantly, his eyes never leaving hers. Lucas
shrieked from his perch, swelled with copper light, and tried to fly at the man, but his
jesses tangled. Larken swallowed hard and nodded, recovering her hand and soothing the
hawk. “Hush, Lucas. It's all right.”

The bird fluttered and hopped, but obediently kept to the perch. “I am Tamex,” the man
said. “I come from the south, from the shining foothills.” Larken composed her face into
neutrality. The man's hand had been very cold and hard. She started to sign a greeting,
but something baffled her hands. “While your army fought in the grasslands, I... crossed
the desert. I searched for the Que-Nara camp, and awaited your return. Will you speak with
me?” I speak to no one but Lucas. I only sing, she motioned. “I don't understand,” said
Tamex. “I know you can talk. I can hear what you say. Will you try?” “You can hear me
speak?” Larken's voice was husky, uncertain. Tamex nodded. “I have come to serve your
leader. I have come to undo the bondage of Istar. And I have come to listen to you.”
Larken shook her head, deflecting his last offer. “ 'Tis a tall order, to undo that city.
Istar is the heart of the world.” And then, after a moment, “How is it you hear my speech?
It has been cursed.” “Does it matter?” Tamex dissembled, his reptilian eyes at last
flickering away from hers. “Does any of that matter?” He let his eyes play lazily across
Larken's kneeling form, over her blond hair, her bronzed shoulders, and her slim thighs,
bared to the evening's coolness. His gaze flickered over the lyre and paused. The black
diamonds in the heart of his eyes shuddered, narrowed, and vanished. Then, almost
casually, his glance rested on the drum at Larken's side and the bone drumhammer. “I have
heard you play,” he said. “Not the lyre. The drum. Your songs and words are worthy of
heroes.” Flustered, the bard set down the lyre and reached for the drumhammer. It slipped
from her hand and rattled noisily against the drum. Tamex continued. “You are the one who
exalts the Lord of the Rebels.” “ 'Exalts'?” “You magnify him beyond his deeds.” For a
moment, brief as the gap between lightning and thunder, the bard's eyes widened. She felt
exposed, uncovered by a sudden, surprising welling in her heart, as if she swirled in dark
airlessness. Then the world tilted back into focusthe arroyo, the twining moonlight, the
tall handsome warrior standing above her. “Tell me about him,” the dark man whispered. She
rose unsteadily and took a deep breath. Again she was Larken; the words stumbled back to
her. “About his gifts? His prophecies?” She turned the drumhammer in her hand. “Tell me.”
“Twenty-five years ago,” Larken began, “the Que-Nara found a child nestled against a dune.
”We never knew who left him there, who had abandoned him to the harsh desert elements. It
was great fortune, almost a miracle, that anyone noticed the baby. Fordus had not cried or
called out, not even then, and the man who found him, a Plainsman chief named Kestrel,
feared that the child was damaged, addled ... “ 'Touched by Sirrion,' the Namer had said,
as Kestrel held the silent infant before him on the Nam- ing Night. 'The Firemaster is in
his eyes.' ”It was the call of the poet, the madman.“ ”Then he was touched ... by the
gods?“ Tamex asked, a brief, enigmatic smile passing over his pale face. ”So the Namer
said,“ Larken replied, her eyes downcast, looking at the lyre on the ground. ”But none of
the Plainsmen understood or even wanted to. “In each generation, only a few are touched by
the fire god. Sirrion's mark comes double-edged: For each child who is blessed with
inspiration, with insight and poetry, a thousand others become bab- blers, lunatics who
dance at the red moon's rising, the responsibility for their complete care falling to
their families, their people.” “ 'Tis a hard life for those bearing the gods' touch,”
Tamex observed dryly. "But how did the

Plainsmen ... receive him?“ ”The chief took the news ... well, like a chieftain,“ Larken
began. ”After all, he had found the child and chosen to rescue it. Kestrel was a widower;
no woman's hand graced his tents. He tended the child himself, awkwardly but well enough.
He handed Fordus over to an attentive wet nurse, carried him in a pouch sewn into his
shirt lining. “The blue-eyed baby was hale enough, and grew tough, thin, and sinewylike
any Plainsman child. But always the tribe watched for the sign of Sirrion's touch, for
vision or madness. ”It was fifteen years before they knew for sure.“ Tamex started to
speak, to interrupt, to ask a question, but Larken had begun the first great story, the
one she had sung a hundred times around the rebel campfires when morale was low, when
faith in For-dus ebbed or wavered. It felt strange to say the words again. It felt strange
not to sign or sing them. ”To the eye of the warrior and the eye of the outrunner, young
Fordus seemed normal enough hunting with the other children, helping with the fire, and
the catching of lizards for the cook pot. He sat watch when he was old enough to hold a
spear and wait out the night. “Yet when he first began to speak, at the late age of five
or six, his talk was veiled and bizarre, a peculiar poetry of riddle and paradox. ”He
spoke of moons and of black sand, of crystal and hawk, and sailing, ominous planets.
Kestrel was afraid of no man, but the touch of the gods unnerved him. He continued to feed
and shelter the boy, but he could not bring himself to love him. “The other boys welcomed
Fordus on the hunt; after all, he was the chief's adopted son, fleetest of foot and
stronger than any. His was the axe that felled boar and leopard, goblin and giant
scorpion. But in the Telling Time, when the hunt was relived around fire and tent, when
the smallest deed staggered beneath the largest boasts, he spoke not at all. Stormlight
spoke for him, telling his stories to the listening tribe. ”Fordus they called him on his
naming night when he took on his name and passed from boy- hood. Fordus. The old Kharolian
word for the desert storm, the high wind racing out of nowhere and the blinding deluge of
rain. The force that fills the arroyos, that drowns the entire world in its hour.“ ”What
about before the naming?“ Tamex asked, leaning toward the girl intently, almost hungrily.
”Before?“ It was as though the idea was alien to her. ”Nothing of ... opals, then?“ he
asked. ”Opals?“ Larken frowned. ”Nothing more than the tore found beside him as a childthe
necklace that grew in size as Fordus grew to maturity.“ ”How intriguing,“ Tamex observed,
lightly, almost casually. ”What else do you know of this ... tore?“ Larken knew nothing.
And something within her told her it was dangerous to guess. ”I know what I am telling
you,“ she said, her eyes fixed on the dark interloper. ”Nothing more.“ Tamex's eyes fell
suddenly flat and cold. ”Tell me of the prophecy, then,“ he whispered. ”Tell me.“ Larken
shifted, wiped her hands on the front of her tunic as she met the dark man's odd stare.
Had one eye blinked more slowly than the other? ”At fifteen,“ she continued, ”Fordus was
faster than the tribal outrunners, faster than the leopards and able to pace the gazelle
at the desert's edge. Nor would he use that speed in cowardice or caution; he was brave to
the borders of recklessness, and yet he calmed and sustained the boys who followed him.
“Then the rains failed, for the first time after the death of the old Water Prophet. ”And
the chieftain called council. "The Namers had searched the sky for months. They tried the
old methods of insight and augury what the old Prophet had done to serve the tribe for
fifty years. They augured by star, by stone, by the twining moons, but no rain was
promised and no rain came.

“It was a dark time, they tell me, and soon augury passed into grumbling, and grumbling
into the silence of growing despair. Then Kestrel called them all togetherboy and man,
warrior and outrunner, and sentry and firekeeper. ”He told them he was sending them for
water."

Larken paused, tilted her head as though she listened to the air. “The desert abounds with
hidden springs,” she said. “Sometimes there are oases, unexpected or suddenly,
mysteriously newborn from the desert's lack and dry-ness. Sometimes there are springs
under rocks, a thin brown trickle in a muddy arroyo. But without a Prophet, the chances of
finding water are thin. ”When the chief ordered the water search, he ordered it in
desperation. And after a week, even the oldest and wisest of the Namers had given up.
“Racer pressed to be named the tribe's Water Prophet; the title was his by right arid age.
He pleaded for the ceremonythe vow to be said before his blood kin, acknowledged on sacred
ground, and beneath the shining north star. Then he would fast, and meditate, and perhaps
find water, perhaps not. It was a hard and thankless task, water prophecy, and yet Old
Racer desired it with all his might. But while Racer sued and cajoled and threatened, the
water-skins dried and the youngest children took on the parched, haunted eyes of the
drought-stricken. ”At fifteen, for the first time, Fordus spoke for himself at the
Telling. “In the midst of the boasts and dreary bravado he stood, as the firelight mocked
the false cheer of the thirsty men around him. He stood, and at his standing, the camp
fell silent. ”With the kala, Kestrel pointed to his adopted son. All eyes turned to the
lean, muscular youth, who stood resolutely, confidently, flanked by his friends Stormlight
the elf and Northstar, almost still a child. “ 'What do I care of your little hunts,'
Fordus asked, 'of your spears and your bola, your journey of leagues and nights?' ”He took
the old language of the hunter's boast and returned it to them, scalding and unforgiving.
“Racer spat, and his company of Namers nodded their beaded locks in support. ”A murmur
rushed through the assembled hunters, but Fordus only smiled. 'Save your water, Racer,' he
cautioned. 'With your prophecies, you will need it. Boast and brood and despair of water.
As for me, I shall find the water we need.' “Then Fordus turned and stalked from the camp,
with two of his friends at his side. The older men talked of it all night, but by morning
they had forgotten, departing on their own search for the legendary god-given spot from
which the water would rise. ”Meanwhile, the three young men hunted on their own.“ ”A rebel
even then,“ Tamex observed, his voice cold and insinuating. ”But a rebel then for the good
of all,“ Larken replied. She reddened and avoided the dark man's stare. ”Then? And not
now?“ This Tamex was no fool. He had heard the wound in her voice, the regret and
resentment. ”Judge for yourself,“ Larken answered blandly, and resumed the story. ”The
lads combed the desert within sight of the camp, keeping the low fires of the Que-Nara
con- stantly to their left as they circled the settlement. Fordus loped ahead of them, not
even winded, as I have seen him do many times since in the vanguard of armies. And I am
sure he paid no more attention to his two companions than to the missing red moon or the
slow clouds straddling the western sky. “When he reached the rise,” she continued,
absently stroking the glowing drumhead, “Fordus stopped and leaned against a smooth,
upright stone. Stormlight and Northstar were a step behind him, as always. ”Overhead the
white moon sailed serenely out of the clouds, and suddenly the entire desert stretched
before them, desolate and featureless as the face of that moon. Salt crystals dotted the
arid landscape, catching the moonlight like blades, like slivers of glass. "Salt and
stone, but no water.