The Dark Queen (7 page)

The red oak leaf. The druid's hand. Vaananen focused, and the glyphs glowed and shimmered
and then disappeared. Now, miles away, they would rest in the floor of the kanaji. The
rebels would find water now. They would also learn of the Istarian withdrawals. Briskly,
without ceremony, he crouched and raked over the smooth sand where the glyphs had been.
The area once again matched the rest of the garden's surface. From the rumors that swirled
about the temple, through the corridors, towers, and the roseate Audi- ence Hall of the
Kingpriest, Vaananen was certain that all his meticulously drawn symbols had done their
distant work. So it had been for years. His heart had gone out to the eccentric, alien
Plainsman lad who had found the ancient kanaji, the boy who searched for water. And so,
through the first years of Fordus's Water Prophecy, Vaananen had guided the young man, and
with druidic augury located the underground sources of water for the Que-Nara, informing
Fordus through glyph and kanaji. When, after the inexplicable dream a year ago, the Water
Prophet became the War Prophet, and the rebellion against Istar began, the druid had begun
to shroud even more information in the ancient symbols: the location of Istarian troops
and their movements. He also kept a constant warding spell upon the golden tore around
Fordus's neck. This, too, was magic at a distance, and the druid's sleep was fitful and
unsettled as his incantations protected the wandering Plainsman from the elements, the
Istarians ... And from something else, far more grim and dark and powerful. Vaananen was
not sure exactly what this larger menace was, but he had his suspicions. Zeboim, perhaps.
Or Hiddukel. Or an evil god even more powerful. Of one thing Vaananen was certain. He was
safe, and so were the rebels he protected, only as long as he was beneath Istarian notice.
So he stayed obscure and low, and helped Fordus quietly. Obviously, the lad had a gift. He
could discover both weather and tactics in the shimmering lines on the sand. And then the
elf would translate Fordus's reverie, and the Plainsmen would travel, and Istar would fall
to another desert defeat. So it had been, and so it was. With his finger he traced the
next of the spirals inward, then sat back on his heels. Slowly, the sand began to boil and
turn about the white stone. Good, the druid thought. A sign from the present. Suddenly,
the white stone dulled and grayed, its brilliance transformed to a sick, fish-belly white,
and the whirling sand sent out ripple after ripple, the white stone sinking slowly into
the garden until it rested at the bottom of a widening coil of sand. Then the stone itself
began to bristle and swell. Vaananen watched in horrified fascination as the thing
sprouted eight white, rootlike legs, which suddenly began to twitch and wave ... Like the
funnel trap of a springjaw, the druid thought, and felt the hair on his arms rise. Peace.
Tis but a vision. Yet despite himself, Vaananen shrank from the image. A human form
appeared at the edge of the whirlpool, a wavering translucent shape like a mirage on the
desert horizon. The apparition scrambled vainly.toward the top of the sandy whirlpool, the
springjaw clambering after it, its smaller set of fangs clacking hungrily. “Fordus!”
Vaananen whispered, stepping forward in alarm. He knew that somewhere this was actually
happening. The rebel was fighting with a monster. Here in his chamber, powerless to help,
the druid could only watch and hope. And breathe the warding over the distant tore. At the
edge of the eddying sand, the ghostly man clutched, grappled, slid back. The springjaw
scrambled toward him, a dull light shining in its great green eye. Huge, sand-colored, and
insectlike, it scrabbled at the bottom of a funneling pit, its ragged jaws opening like a
crab's claw, like a Ner- akan mantrap.

Fordus lurched toward the lip of the pit and safety as the creature reared and plunged,
its huge mandibles encircling his ankle, widening, arching ... “Watch the other eyes . .
.” Vaananen muttered, staring at the dull black orbs resting behind the false, brilliant
eyes of the springjaw. The black eyes, the true ones, would signal the attack.

He breathed a prayer that Fordus would know this as well. The great jaws hinged and
wavered over the Plainsman's leg. Sliding down the sandy incline, Fordus snatched an axe
from his belt, pivoted, and hurled the weapon solidly into the thorax of the attacking
monster. The springjaw roared, staggered back, its black eyes rolling swiftly beneath the
chiti-nous exoskeleton of the head. “Now!” the druid cried, and thirty miles away, in the
heart of the desert, the Prophet felt the tore at his neck quiver and draw him up. With a
last burst of furious energy, Fordus set his other foot on the springjaw's head and
pushed. Crying out as the swiftly closing jaw flayed the skin of his ankle, the Plainsman
rolled clear of the trap, pulling himself onto level ground as the springjaw slid back
into crumbling darkness. He sat on the edge of the sand funnel, thankful to be alive,
clutching his wounded foot. Which already was beginning to swell with the monster's
poison. Vaananen leaned forward, trying vainly to judge the severity of the wound. But the
white sand whirled in the other direction, and slowly the stone rose to the surface of the
garden. Innocent and mute, it lay where the druid had placed it, next to the red stone,
where its shadow formed a soothing pattern on the manicured sand. Vaananen exhaled. The
vision was over. The sand was smooth, featureless again. He was alone and safe in his
sparely appointed room, the shadows on the walls lengthening and deepening as the colored
lamplight dwindled. Vaananen raised his head at the soft sound on the windowsill. Vincus
gracefully lowered himself into the room. “What did you bring me?” the druid asked,
smiling and turning to face his visitor. The young man's dark hands flashed quickly,
racing through an array of ancient hand-signs. “Of course you may sit,” Vaananen said,
chuckling as he detected the smell of sour hay. “And the pitcher of lemon-water on the
table is for you.” Vincus drank eagerly, then seated himself on the druid's cot. Swiftly
his hands moved from sign to sign, like a mage's gestures before some momentous conjury.
“So they all mention this dissent among the rebels,” Vaananen mused. “Mercenary, augurer,
salt sellersame story.” Vincus nodded. Vaananen turned slowly back to the sand. “But no
more than a passing word?” Vincus shook his head, then noticed the druid's back was to
him. He shrugged and took another drink of the water. “And what do you make of it,
Vincus?” Vaananen asked, glancing over his shoulder. The young man flashed three quick,
dramatic signs in the lamplit air, and the druid laughed softly. “Nor do I. But you have
done your job. Now I must do mine.” Vincus gestured at the water pitcher. “Of course,” the
druid replied. “Have all you like. Then you should leave quickly, the same way, I think.
Prayers are short in these times, and your master will expect you in his quarters.” A
scowl passed over the open face of the young man. Balandar, Vincus's master, was not
unkind, and his library boasted the best collections among the Istarian clergy. But
servitude was servitude, and it went hard to trade the freedom of the streets and the
night for confinement and the slave collareven if the collar was made of shining silver.
Vaananen turned away uncomfortably. In a moment Vincus would climb back through the window
and into the garden. He would reach Balan-dar's quarters in plenty of time to make the
fire, pour wine from a rare and valuable stock for the ancient cleric, then set out his
robes for the next morning. In an hour, old Balandar would be snoring, and Vincus would
recover the timefor reading, for sleeping or eating.

For anything but freedom. Vaananen did not like to think about it. Vincus's father had
died in servitude, and the Kingpriest had visited the man's punishment on the next
generation, but unlike the elves miles below them, digging into rock and oblivion, Vincus
could have his freedom eventually. Someday, he vowed silently, Vincus will go free.
Carefully, the druid traced the glyphs once more in the pristine sand. Fordus would live.
He had to. And he would need water and tactics at once. The Tine. The sign that would take
him to the ancient dried fork of the river. There was water underground. Easy enough.
Third day of Solinari was more complex. The compressed, multiple meaning of the glyph.
Water three feet below the surface, Istarian forces three days away... Blanking his mind,
Vaananen looked at the third symbol. No Wind. Favorable weather, favorable strategy. The
principal Istarian force lay miles and miles away, regrouped in defensive positions. Good
news on all frontsnews to be sent to Fordus over the miles. But there was also this
unsettling news Vincus had brought to him. Rocking back on his heels, the druid inspected
his handiwork. He needed a fourth glyph, to show warning. He drew the chitinous
exoskeleton, the antennae, the wide, hinged mandibles. Springjaw. It would be fresh in
Fordus's mind. Beware. The ground is unsteady.

Three days into Fordus's absence, the rebel camp grew more and more uneasy. They were
nomads, and three days in one place was too long. The livestock had grazed the scrub
completely to the cracked and stony ground, and the last water was nearly gone. All the
while, the camp was abuzz with new arrivals, as Plainsmen from all over the region came
and went in Fordus's itinerant quarters.

It was not unusual for Fordus to be gone a day, perhaps even overnight. The rebels were
accustomed to their commander's retreats into the desert fastness: Fordus leaving
Stormlight in charge and departing for the kanaji, to the level lands beyond, in search of
water or, sometimes, enlightenment. Frequently, after a night alone in the wasteland,
fasting and meditating, he returned to the encampment exhausted but strangely alert,
speaking cryptically of his desert visions.

The elf would give them words of direction, settle poetry into policy, oracle into
tactics. Then the battles would follow, and the victories. It had been that way since
Fordus became the War Prophet. It was the way things worked when they needed water. But
this time they were three nights waiting, in the wake of their most costly victory. Even
Larken began to watch the horizons with more than a little fear. Apprehension spread like
poison through the rebel camp, and Stormlight gathered scouts and out- runners to search
for the missing commander. However, a different sort of gathering took place where the
plains tumbled down into desert, not a mile from the site of the recent bloody battle.
Just north of the grassy rise where Fordus had watched the battle unfold, scarcely an hour
before sunrise on the second day of his absence, two Istar-ian cavalrymen rode south
toward the Tine, cloaked in black against the fitful white moonlight. They were lean
veterans of a dozen campaigns, hard and cynical and almost impossible to fool, borne by a
mysterious summons to a moonlit council with the enemy. They had come to this spot in the
boulder-strewn rubble, awaiting the man who approached them now on foot and alone,
trudging across a wide expanse of packed sand and sawgrass.

“No place for 'em to hide an escort, sir,” the older of the cavalrymen observed. Absently,
he stroked the sergeant's bar on the shoulder of his breastplate. “There's a mile between
him and the cover of shadow.” The younger man nodded. He was the officer, the one in
charge. By reflex, he rested a gloved hand on the hilt of his sword and traced the cold
carving on it.

There was something very odd about this walking stranger. He moved heavily through the
uneven terrain, never once dodging briar or gully. He did not break stridenot until he was
within hailing distance. Then, in a low, conversational voice, he greeted the Istarians.
“The time is now, gentlemen,” he declared. His amber, slitted eyes narrowed, and he drew
the black silk tunic close around him as cover against the desert night. “The time is now,
if you're men enough to seize it.”

“Come with us,” the officer demanded curtly. “Tell me what you know.” The man stood his
ground and turned stiffly to his left, his black hair cascading over his face, and pointed
to a mesa low and dark on the horizon. “The rebels are there,” he announced, ignoring the
circling horses. “Camped at the base of Red Plateau. It's been three days since they've
seen For-dus Firesoul, and in his absence a dozen warring factions have sprung up in the
camp. The old guard, the ones with Fordus since he became the Prophet, they all follow
Stormlight and Larken. But some of the Que-Nara and many of the barbarians are looking to
Northstar, while the bandits go with Gormion. And then . . .” the informer concluded,
pausing meaningfully, “there are those of us ... secretly loyal to Istar. Those whose
future is tied intimately to the fortunes of the Kingpriest.” The Istarians exchanged a
skeptical glance and a curled smile. “I tell you, their commander is missing,” the
informer insisted. “ 'Tis now, or 'tis a long and bloody war, I tell you. I offer you a
great gift!” The officer considered this ultimatum. A dozen miles to the north, the
defeated Istarian army huddled against the outer walls of the city, awaiting
reinforcements recalled posthaste from their stations along the Thoradin border. Until
relief arrived, the decimated remnants of Istar's pride crouched nervously at their
campsites, imagining rebels in the shadows of rocks, in the moonlit tilt of the grass. No.
Though something about the informer's words edged on the truth, the time to attack was not
now. And yet. .. Accustomed to quick, uncompromised decision, the young Istarian officer
resolved the issue at once. He would send this veiled informer packing, then follow at a
distance. “What you advise is impossible,” he said. The man scowled. “And why?” “I owe you
no explanation.” “You already regret your decision,” the informer growled, pointing a
pale, almost translucent finger at the two men on horseback. The officer did not reply,
his gaze on the distant plateau. Out there, if the informer spoke the truth, hundreds of
rebels camped by fires carefully banked and concealed so that their collected light would
not lift the purple shadows on the horizon. “After all,” he finally said, “how do we know
that you are not sent to lure us into even greater troubles? Perhaps you are Fordus
himself!” He laughed mockingly. Angrily, the informer turned away, casting a last venomous
glance over his shoulder. He moved quickly and silently back into the desert, a dark shape
passing over the moonlit sands. The cavalry- men sat silently atop their horses until, on
a dune at the farthest reaches of sight, the informer stopped and lifted his arms to the
cloudy heavens. “Dramatic sort, ain't he, sir?” the sergeant asked with a chuckle. There
was no answer. For a long, idle moment, the sergeant watched the horizon. “Shall we follow
him, sir?” he asked,

turning slowly toward the younger man. Who had vanished entirely. The officer's mare stood
wide-eyed and trembling, black powder tumbling from her saddle, pooling on the ground in a
murky pyramid, rising with a horrifying symmetry as though it lay in the bottom of a
bewitched hourglass. A bronze Istarian breastplate rocked pitifully on the hard ground, a
helmet and a pair of white gloves not a dozen feet away. Inanely, the sergeant reached for
his sword. A lone nightbird wheeled above, the moonlight silver on its extended wings.
Poison. Delicious poison. The venom of ten thousand years flowed through the Dark Queen
as, in her faceted, crystalline body, she stalked across the desert's edge toward the
distant fires of the Plainsmen. She thought of the dead cavalryman with glee and relish.
Such to all, Plainsman or Istarian, who crossed her purposes. Especially the one who
escaped her springjaw minion. Such to the gods themselves who stood in her way. In the
starlit dome of the desert sky, the son of the goddess tilted into view, still invisible
to the mundane eyeto human and elf, to dwarf and kender. Even the most powerful sorceries
would strain to locate the black moon, for Nuitari awaited his time, eluding eye and glass
and augury, the deluded forecasts of Istarian astrologers. But Takhisis could see him, of
course, as he glided high overhead, obscuring bright Sirrion and Shinare in his passage.
Her son. Her dark pride. From his birth, Nuitari had been the wedge between her and her
consort, the black incident in the Age of Starbirth that drove apart Takhisis and
Sargonnas before the world began. Oh, I won that battle at the waking of time, Takhisis
thought. And I shall win all battles hence. The dark moon had been her oath, her promise
to the other gods. To seal their agreement to never again make war on the face of the
planet, each family of gods had agreed to create a child who would become blood-brother to
the children created by the other families. Bound in kinship and in covenant, they would
bless the world of Krynn with magic. The silver child of Paladine and Mishakal, bright
Solinari, was the first to ascend into the heavens. This eldest child showered forth a
warm, beneficent magic, and the people of Paladine, the highborn elves, had lifted their
arms to the descending moonlight. And the humans, the Youngest Born, had lifted their arms
as well to the red light of Lunitari, the child born of Gilean the Book, chief god of the
neutral pantheon. Both of them sailed through the heavens now, aloft in an egg of silver
and an egg of scarlet. When they hatched, the moonshusks of the gods, the ancient
philosophers would call themsailed through the skies of Krynn as refuge and home for the
godlings ... And, in the binding age of the Kingpriest, their prisons. But this was long
before Istar, long before the Age of Might. In the void above the whirling planet,
Takhisis and Sargonnas had created the child. Their coupling was joyless, loveless, for
already both gods had fallen away from one another into the dark abyss of themselves. In a
dark cloud above the swelling Courrain, the goddess had overwhelmed her consort with a
powerful magic, and forced Sargonnas to bear the child. For a day and a night, the great
scavenging god had lingered in the cloud of steam and volcanic ash, the miasma hovering
sullenly over the ocean surface. Takhisis, watchful in her strange motherhood, circled the
cloud and waited, as deafening cries of labor and rage burst forth from the eddying dark-
ness. For a day and a night and another day, she circled and waited, her hidden consort
bellowing and vowing vengeance. “Let it come,” Takhisis taunted. "Oh, let your worst
return to me, Sargonnas. I shall forego the pain and the labor, and when you have
fulfilled your part...

“The spirit of the child will be mine alone.” At sunset on the second day, as the ocean
waters flamed with the setting sun, the golden egg of the Condor sailed from the cloud.
The third moon. Nuitari the gold. She remembered it well. How the great Condor, steaming
and reeking with volcanic fire, had circled over the golden egg, menacing and boding. “No,
Takhisis!” Sargonnas had challenged, for the first time defying her, setting his
contemptible, smoldering form against her will and desire. “I have borne this thing
through magic and darkness and searing pain! I shall foster it, and it will be my emissary
in the night sky of Krynn.” She had not expected the rage that rose up and nearly choked
her. The eastern sands of the Ansalon coastline, those rocky beaches that would in time
become Mithas and Kothas, islands of minotaurs, blackened in the heat of her passing wings
as she swooped and circled the despicable rebel, the trai- torous god and his bright,
golden trophy. “Nuitari is mine!” she shrieked in reply, and the Worldscap Mountains
erupted with the first volca- noes. “Mine, do you hear?” Lightning riddled the evening
sky, and for the first time the forest crack- led, struck by the kindling heat from the
heavens. “Or I shall destroy the thing. Shell and godling and all!” The two gods circled
the golden oval, the black batwings of Takhisis whirling in narrowing circles about the
matted, smoking feathers of the scavenger, who fanned the ocean air with the stench of
carrion. “You would not destroy the godling,” Sargonnas croaked, fire and sunlight
brindling over his mottled apterium. “Not when you could master him!” “You contemptible
parasite!” spat the goddess. “You gem-hoarding adjunct] You sniveling, emulous, dunghill
fowl\” Fire raced through the salty air and scattered, and Sargonnas perched atop the
sailing golden egg, mantling his wings above the bright treasure. “ 'Would not destroy the
godling,' you say?” Takhisis rumbled. “I will show you all my compassion, Sargonnas. I
will show you the abundance of my heart.” Arching in the sky, her black wings shadowing
the older moons, Takhisis drew the ocean wind into her lungs and belched forth a column of
black fire. For a moment the condor and his glittering prize vanished in the dark blaze,
and the heavens fluttered and extinguished. Deprived of sunlight and star, the planet
cooled and frosted, and the deepest winter settled on Ansalon, unnatural in the month of
Summer Run. But slowly, because the goddess was not the only force on Krynn, the stars
returned one by one, the first ones rising in the constellation of the Dragon, then the
surrounding luminaries and, finally, the planets and the moons. A dark shape hung in the
heavens, its burnt wings still brooding above the egg, above the blackened shell and the
seared godling within. Nuitari was never the same after that. Dark-haired and sickly,
suffering a fiery malady in the depths of his lungs and throat, he spoke in hoarse
whispers from the first days, from his hatching time. So Takhisis remembered as she passed
over the unsettled sands. Above her the dark moon drifted furtively between the stars, and
she looked up approvingly at the twisted path of her son. Sargonnas had been right. Why
destroy the child you can bend to your will completely? She thought of the Kingpriest in
his high tower, counting the opals that would bring her to the sur- face of Krynn. She
glided toward the lights of campfires, and a solitary bird, circling over her cautiously,
called softly and sped away. The same bird shrieked again as it sailed over For-dus, who
knelt on the floor of the kanaji. Exhausted and much the worse for his struggle with the
springjaw, his grazed ankle swelling with a trace of the creature's poison, Fordus had
struggled to the edge of the Tears of Mishakal. There he found the kanaji, and there he
waited for the glyphs amid the strange, chiming music of the wind

over the salt crystals, the lights of the camp a mile away glowing on the other side of
the Tears. Fordus closed his eyes. Clutching his ankle, he stared at the windswept sand in
the open, circular chamber. For a terrifying moment, he confused it with the springjaw's
lair and then remembered where he was. But his ankle had been touched by a plume of the
acid that was the clumsy springjaw's other defense.

“Come forth,” he muttered finally, teeth clenched. And then, the new glyphs formed in the
eddying sand. The Tine. The sign for water. Of that he was sure. Third day of Solinari.
That was more puzzling. But when he gave it voice in the midst of his people, when
Stormlight heard the prophecy and interpreted it in the common language, his mind would
know what his heart now sensed here in the kanaji. No Wind. It was a mystery to him, an
obscure arrangement of shape and line and half-resemblance. And then, emerging from the
pristine, level sand, came a fourth, extraordinary glyph. Springjaw. Fordus blinked in
confusion. But it had already happened! The funnel, the ground giving way beneath him ...
This fiery sting in his ankle and the rising fever. Slowly he set his thoughts asidethis
time with more difficulty, as the pain in his foot and his leg thrust him again and again
into the labyrinth of his mind, into doubts and fears that the words would not come, that
Stormlight and Larken would not find him, that the gods themselves had turned away.
Instead, he stared at the symbols, closed his eyes. There. He had it. The four glyphs were
committed to memory, and then as always, they vanished immediately, leaving the floor of
the pit clean and unruffled. Fordus tightened the neck of his robe, his opal collar hot
and constricting. He could not remove the tore. Long ago the glyphs had warned of dire
consequence if he did so. But he was pained and uncomfortable. His fever made the desert
chill almost unbearable. Fordus tried to stand, and suddenly the kanaji rocked with a red
light, throwing him back to his knees. He closed his eyes and saw the acid spurt again,
eating relentlessly into the flesh of his booted ankle. Leaning against the limestone
wall, he pulled himself up on his feet again. Have to get out of here, he thought. Into
the light. Into the air. Get home. Get warm. Painfully, his skin hurting with every touch
of his robe, he crawled out of the pit and restedfor a minute, ten minutes, an hour?on the
baked earth at its rim. Dimly his fevered mind registered the faint music of the salt
crystals, and for a while, he slept or tried to sleep. Again the dream came to him. The
lake of fire. The spindle bridge. The dark, winged form, the flattery and coaxing . . .
the promise of finding out who he was. Briefly, in the flitting fashion of delirium, it
seemed like Racer stepped into his dream. Grizzled and venomous, his wrinkled face a
sinkhole of malice, Racer shuffled onto the narrow bridge and into the winged shadow, his
spindly ancient form commingling with the strange, birdlike cloud until Racer became the
condor, the condor Racer. No. No unexpected dreams. Fordus woke and stood, drunkenly
lurching toward the shimmering stones and the camp and safety. Not a hundred yards into
his desperate effort, the cracked earth seemed to rise, to trip him, and he fell to his
hands and knees, clambering over the ground like a scorpion, like a monstrous crab. He
reached the level top of the small rise. Ahead, the Tears of Mishakal seemed hazy, even
more distant, as though in trying to run toward them he had in fact run in the opposite
direction. Fordus looked back, toward the kanaji. A wide expanse of desert land lay
between him and the standing rock and baked, cracked earth, its