The Dark Queen (8 page)

red-brown surface scored with an intricate webbing of lines. For a moment, on the horizon,
Fordus thought he saw Kestrel. He raised his hand, shouted or thought he shouted ... Then
he remembered that his foster father was two years dead, buried at the ancient dry fork of
the Tine. Then who . . . ? Kestrel's form wavered at the edge of his sight, like a rain
cloud. Slowly another form took shape inside itanother man, dressed in brilliant white,
his robes dispelling the shadow like smoke in the wind. Fordus stared at the man until his
eyes hurt. A midsized man, balding, with sky-blue . . . No, sea-blue eyes . . . Then, as
suddenly as it had appeared, the image was gone, leaving the bare desert bathed in the
eerie moonlight, a desolate flatland that stretched for as far as Fordus could see. His
fever still torrid, the Water Prophet stared absently at the cracked earth until the
cracks them- selves began to take shape. A glyph. Then another. The whole desert has
become my kanaji, Fordus thought incoherently, triumphantly. He began to read the wavering
lines on the earth. One resembled a tower. The other a chair. In swift hallucinatory
fashion, Fordus put a meaning together. “I shall sit on the throne of Istar,” he breathed.
“I have waited for this summons. ”The rule of empire awaits me. The world has become my
kanaji, my ground of visions. I shall lift the tyranny of the Kingpriest... “And I shall
rule in his stead. I know who I am. I am the Kingpriest.” All messages of water forgotten,
Fordus rolled exultantly onto his back, staring up at the reeling heavens. The earth had
spoken, naming him rightful Kingpriest of Istar. It was glorious news. What he had found
was better than water. He was the Prophet and he was the prophecy. Above him, the hawk
banked and rushed on a high wind back to the rebel camp. At his mistress's orders, Lucas
was searching for the commander, guided by faint, barely comprehensible voices on the edge
of the wind. The hawk heard a dozen languages breathed into the air: the sleepy muttering
of an elf-child somewhere in the darkness beneath Istar, the last gurgled sigh of a
merchant murdered on the edge of the desert, the quiet sermons of the high grass and the
ancient vallenwoods far, far to the south in Silvanost. Among these sounds arose at last
the murmur of the Water Prophet, strange, distracted talk of runes and water and the fall
of cities. Lucas found him on a flat stretch of desert south of the Tears. Sharp-eyed and
vigilant, the hawk saw Fordus crawling and babbling, coming to rest at last on a rise
midway between the salt flats and the standing stone from which he had been returning. He
seemed to be talking to someone, but there was nobody there.

The hawk swooped through the firelight, and the smoke, and rising cinders scattered in his
path. With a shrill, whistling cry, glowing red and amber in the midst of his nightfire,
Lucas swept over the rebel campsite like a meteor, startling sentries, rousing the bandits
from talk of discontent and sullen conspiracy. Gormion, crouched at dice in a circle of
her followers, looked up sullenly and

made a warding sign with a flash of silver bracelets, while Rann and Aeleth reached
instinctively for their weapons. Larken was standing by Northstar and Stormlight at the
arroyo's edge. She heard Lucas's cry, lifted her padded glove, and braced to receive the
bird. With a sudden, graceful dive and an upsweep, the hawk struck hard on the underside
of the glove, bells jingling while his talons fastened in the layered wool and leather.
Then he murmured and pulled himself upright, Larken adjusting his jesses until he perched
comfortably on her arm.

Despite her strength and preparation, Larken had staggered this time when the hawk landed.
Her arm still shocked a bit, Larken began to look the bird over, spreading his feathers
with her ashy fingers, making sure Lucas had not been attacked by a larger raptor.
Northstar and Stormlight stepped back apprehensively.

The hawk leaned against his mistress, crying softly like a waking child into her coarse,
matted hair. Larken stopped her inspection and listened. Fordus is approaching, she
signed, translating Lucas's cry. He is near, but there is a cloud above him. Lucas saw no
more of the Prophet.

“But he saw other things.” The bird's eyes glittered greenly. “Then sing us that sight,
Larken,” Northstar urged. The bard glanced uncomfortably at her younger cousin. For
Northstar, the solutions were easy: he read the stars, the paths of the desert, and his
destination was mapped. He did not understand the wild moment in which the singer gives
her heart to the bird, when the light expands, when the hawk's cry becomes words and the
words become song. When you sing because you cannot choose otherwise. Almost unwillingly,
in a soft voice unaccompanied by her drum, Larken began the hawk's song. The music was an
old sea chantey from Balifor somehow she remembered the musicbut the words, as always,
were new and fresh, gaining power as they came to her in the firelit dark of the campsite.
The dark man in the desert The dark man on the plain The dark man in the gap of the sky Is
no dark man. His home is not in moonlight His home is not in sun The dark man on the
grassy hill Is no dark man. O his arms are stone and water O his blood is stone and sand
The dark man in the circled camp Is no dark man. As swiftly as they had come, the words
ceased. Lucas fluffed contentedly, the last of his ruddy light sprinkling onto the desert
floor, and the fires themselves seemed to contract once more around the huddled campsites.
Larken placed the bird on his perch and sat down, resting her face in her hands. Already
she could barely remember what she had sung, for the words had risen unbidden, had passed
through her like light through a faceted glass. The eyes of the listeners turned to
Stormlight, who stared silently into the fire. This time the elf was not sure of the
meanings. This was an exotic musing of bard and bird. It was like a foreign language he
almost knew. Stormlight cleared his throat, the white lucerna lifting from his golden
eyes./'There is a spy come in the midst of us,“ he declared. ”Someone who is not what he
seems. That's what the hawk was saying, as I follow it. Yes. That is what the bird said.“
Larken and Northstar exchanged an uncomfortable glance. ”A spy," Stormlight repeated, this
time with more certainty. Tamex stepped into the firelight. The hawk cried out, and raised
his wings high, his hooked beak open and threatening. At one moment, the firelit margins
of air seemed to waver and glimmer, and then Tamex was among them, visible, tangible.
Silently he moved into full view, his black silk tunic shimmering. He shook the dust from
the tops of his boots and scanned the circle of rebels indifferently. The firelight glowed
through his skin, and for a moment, the sharp-eyed Northstar thought that the warrior's

fingers seemed crooked and arched, like talons. Who was this man, born of the midnight
desert? “The dark man,” Stormlight breathed. “Who is not what he seems.” Larken shot him a
sullen look. And then she flushed, uncertain why she wanted to defend this man. Tamex
turned to meet them, black eyes angry and glittering like polished onyx. Gormion, Rann,
and Aeleth, never true loyalists to Fordus or his officers, rose to stand beside Tamex,
their hands already on the hilts of their weapons. “Where have you been, warrior?”
Stormlight asked, his voice cold and low. Tamex shrugged. The bandits closed behind him.
At a nearby campfire, three Plainsmen rose and, clutching their spears, walked slowly,
menacingly, toward Gormion, casting wavering shadows over the warring lights. Something
brushed Stormlight's shoulder. North-star had appeared beside him. Though more scout than
warrior, the young man was ready to do his partknife drawn and keen eyes shifting alertly
over the dark man and his bandit following. Larken watched with rising alarm, and Lucas
whistled uneasily. The two warriorsthe elf and the pale, mysterious Tamexwere locked in a
stare that could end only in combat. Then the cry of a sentry fractured the tense silence,
and nearly all eyes whipped toward the sound. The young Plainsman atop the Red Plateau
pointed north and shouted. “Cavalry! Two hundred from the north!” Tamex broke off the
stare with Stormlight and smiled wickedly. So they had come, after all. Trained by the
Solamnics over the three centuries of their alliance, the Istarian cavalry were almost as
brilliant, as swift and effective as their teachers. Accomplished swordsmen and deadly
bowmen, they fought from horseback, frequently tied to the saddle to keep them astride
their mounts in close combat. They were also much more ruthless than the Solamnics. A
Solamnic Knight stayed his hand in occasional mercy against the enemy, whether man or elf
or dwarf or even ogre, for his Oath told him “Est Sularus oth Mithas”“My Honor is My
Life.” Istarians, on the other hand, followed neither Oath nor Measure. The stories of
their raids were horrible. Stormlight's heart sank at the sentry's alarm. For a brief
moment he struggled for a plan, for the words to express it. When Tamex seized that moment
to begin shouting, the rebels jumped at his words. “Smother the campfires!” the
black-cloaked man ordered. Quickly Rann kicked sand over Gormion's banked fire, and
throughout the campsite, the smoke disappeared from the night air. “To the Plateau!”
Stormlight ordered, but his words were lost in Tamex's bellowing crya voice inhumanly
loud. “Back to the Tears!” the dark man ordered. “We'll fight them from the rocks!” The
old and the young abandoned their campfires and did what they were told, hurrying to the
safe maze of standing crystal. Stormlight called to the surrounding Plainsmen, but they
were already moving, following Tamex and Gormion toward the eerie field. It was five
hundred yards from the campsite to the rocks, over level and open ground, but Tamex led
the way, gathering barbarians and bandits as he skirted the edge of the salt flats. More
campfires winked out to darkness, and then, at the edge of the camp, a column of Istarian
torches wavered and bobbed and advanced. “Plume! Stardancer!” Stormlight shouted, but the
two young men lingered foolishly, ardent to shed Istarian blood. Desperately Stormlight
grabbed for Stardancer, but the lad was too quick as he brushed past. A group of young
Plainsmen and younger bandits, whooping and beckoning to the approaching torches, girded
themselves for battle. “You fools!” Stormlight shouted. Then the sound of hoofbeats,
distant at first, became deafening, inevitable. The first horse breasted into view, the
bronze Istarian armor glistening in the torchlight. With a cry, Northstar wrestled the
rider from his saddle, but the ropes that tied the Istarian in place tightened and held,
and the startled

horse galloped through the ashes of a smothered fire, dragging both men over the hard
ground. Stormlight crouched in his fighting stance as a dozen cavalry took shape in the
darkness. Bursting into the camp, swords drawn and spears readied, the riders tore into
their quarry like leopards into a helpless herd of sheep. Young Plume fell with a scream,
impaled on an Istarian spear, and an even younger boy, an orphan named Lightfoot, fell
beside him. Indifferent as a storm or a desert wind, the horsemen hurdled the dying bodies
on their way toward a handful of bandits clustered around Aeleth at the edge of the Tears
of Mishakal. “No!” Stormlight shouted, as the rebel resistance broke into rout and panic.
Plainsman and barbar- ianwomen, old men, and children, exposed in the open country between
the campsite and the salt flatsfell before the swords of the Istarians as they scrambled
through ash and sand and rubble. Their swords blooded with threescore innocents, the
cavalry closed with Aeleth's bandits in a racket of war cries and clashing metal. The
Tears echoed dolefully with the screams of the wounded and dying. Where are you, Fordus?
Stormlight thought, racing toward Mishakal's Tears. You would know what to ... what to ...
He stopped in horror as a dark wind passed over him. Tamex appeared and, hook-bladed kala
raised aloft, rallied the rebels against the circling Istarians. The mysterious warrior,
whose bravery and inventiveness had rescued two hundred noncombatants from the merciless
cavalry, had apparently returned to avenge the deaths of those he could not save. As
veiled and unsavory as the black-robed man might seem, at least he fought like a hero. The
first strong sweep of his weapon drove an Istarian lancer from horseback, the saddle cords
snapping with the force of the blow. Tamex wheeled like a ritual dancer, slowly and
confidently blocking two spear thrusts and the downward swipe of a sword that seemed to
pass through his arm but obviously did not, the blade shimmering bloodless and ineffectual
in the firelight. With a laugh that rang through the crystals, Tamex hooked his blade into
the chest of the attacking swordsman, through shield and bronze and leather and bone. The
Istarian fell, and the cavalry scattered before the strange and formidable champion. Like
a mythic figure from the Age of Huma, Tamex pivoted amid the horsemen, pulling one, two, a
third from their saddles. Aeleth's bow felled another two, and Rann, his battle-rage
enkindled by Tamex's valor, leapt up behind the saddle and slit the throat of a hapless
officer. Suddenly, the brazen call of a trumpet rose from the chaos of battlesound and
resounding laughter. The Istarian commander rose in his stirrups, signaling frantically at
his disorganized troops. One of Gormion's black:feathered arrows flashed through the
moonlight and lodged in his shoulder, and the officer cried out and wheeled his horse back
into the darkness. Nor was Stormlight idle, as Tamex and the bandits turned the tide of
the battle. Breathing a prayer to Branchala, the wiry elf raced between galloping horses
and, with a powerful, high kick, drove his heel soundly into the helmet of an Istarian
spearman, shattering bronze and skull. The man toppled dead from the horse, and wrestling
the animal under control, Stormlight mounted and galloped off after the escaping Istarian
commander. And then it was all over, leaving an eerie silence, punctuated by only a few
distant shouts and the soft cries of the dying. Northstar and Larken cautiously waded
through the grisly campsite, where the dark, clean sands of the Istarian desert had become
a shambles, a slaughterhouse. Over a hundred rebels lay dead or dying among the
extinguished fires. Over half of them were the very young and very old, unable to move
with the quickness that the situation had demanded. The others, forty or so, were the
young braves of the companythe blustering youths who had thrown themselves recklessly at
the attacking enemy. Sprawled amid sand and ash, run through by short sword and cavalry
spear, they were mute testimony to the fate of a leaderless army. The survivorsthose the
dark man had led into the Tears of Mishakal returned to the camp slowly, soberly. It could
have been even worse, Larken signed to her cousin. Had not Tamex saved those he could,
then rallied the bandits and come to our aid ... Northstar turned to argue, but the sight
of the black-robed man stopped his words.

Framed in torchlight, Tamex stood haughtily before a mound of Istarian dead. Under his
supervi- sion, the bandits had spread through the battleground, gathering bodies for a
huge, midnight pyre. Roughly, indifferently, they threw the last of the Istarian corpses
on the heap, and Tamex signaled to the torchbearers, who crouched and ignited the kindling
beneath the bodies.

In the new, fitful light, the black-robed warrior watched the flames rise with a look that
Northstar could only describe as exultant. His,broad arms folded across his chest, Tamex
laughed softly. The fire touched the first of the dead, and the dark man's amber eyes
flickered with their burning reflections.

With an eye accustomed to reading the constellations, Northstar followed the flames to the
heavens. Gilean was there, the starry Book in the height of the sky. Half encircling it,
spread along the western sky, was Paladine's constellation, a huge and brilliant arc
almost obscured by the clouds and the smoke.

Northstar strained to see the eastern sky. There would be the sign of the Dark Lady, the
stars in a dim and sinuous pattern always facing those of Pal-adine, as if in perpetual
war . . . But the smoke was now too thick. And yet something had changed up there.

As he gazed into the shrouded sky, Northstar shuddered with a cold and dark sensation.
Something passed over him and through him. He was afraid again, afraid and weary. Suddenly
he was dizzy; he lowered his gaze. Tamex was staring at him, his eyes burning like
distant, hostile stars. The shadow he cast in the fierce light of the fire was enormous,
spreading.