The Dark Queen (9 page)

For a moment, it seemed to have wings. *****

Fordus saw the first fires in the crystals. He woke from another fevered dream, from a
reverie of glyph and symbol, to desperate shouts on the wind. Somehow he had circled the
rebel camp in his wandering, had strayed into the Tears of Mishakal. Through the gemlike
landscape the cries and screams intermingled with the chiming, then echoed off the facets
of the farthest glassy growths. For a moment he did not know where he was. Blearily he
scrambled to his feet, drank the last from his water flask, and looked for Larken, for
Storm-light. His swollen foot gave beneath him, and he fell, clutching at the nearest
crystal, which broke cleanly in his iron fever grip, its top flat and level like a
plateau. The wind rushed from him, and he lay on his back in the dark sand, cursing bad
circumstance, the rotten luck of springjaws and falls and poison. Slowly, amid chime and
echo, he recognized the distant cries as the clamor of battle. Shapes milled at the edge
of his vision. There were people in the salt flats, cowering, hiding. Steadying himself
against the largest crystal, For-dus regained his footing and hobbled toward the sound,
toward the people. On all sides the red moonlight glittered, reflected off the crystals
until the rebel chieftain was dazzled and confused, turned about like a wanderer in a
house of mirrors. Through the maze of light and sound Fordus stumbled, his apprehension
growing. He recalled the stories about the Tearsthe vanished travelers even in this new
age of might, the deadly serenades of crystal and wind and evil magic. On the faces of the
crystals he saw towering fires, the glint of bronze armor, the flash of steel. And the
soft, ominous sheen of black silk, as a solitary warrior paced through the shifting light.
He heard the sound of Istarian trumpets, the signaled retreat. For a moment he rejoiced,
shifting his weight from his swollen foot and listening for cheers, for the victory cry of
the rebel troops. Instead, it was the smell of smoke that reached him on the windof
burning wood and straw, and an acrid, unsettling smell he remembered from his youth, when
once a raiding band of Irda had ran- sacked the camp where he lived. The burning dead. The
smell of pyres and the old, barbaric funerals of the Age of Dreams.

And also on the wind, beneath the crackle of fires, the keening of women, the wailing of
men and the moans of the wounded, a solitary voice, no louder than a whisper, came to him
as though borne from the crystals themselves. A whisper on the wind, so soft that he was
never sure whether he really had heard it, or if it was only that his thoughts and fears
had prompted the words.

Without you, the voice insinuated, dark and seductive and denying. They have defeated Mar
without you, Fordus. Dismayed, the rebel lowered himself to the salty sand.

Stormlight lost the Istarian rider in thc pitch black of thc night. At one moment, the man
was a shape ahead of him, flitting in and out of the gloom like a wraith. Stormlight tried
valiantly to keep pace, but the Istar-ian was a seasoned rider, as at home in the night as
in the saddle. Finally, the Istarian vanished entirely. At one moment he was the wraith,
the shadow, and then ... he was nothing, not even sand. The desolate, scrubby landscape
stretched into darkness all around the pursuing elf. Stormlight found himself in an
unknown, bleak terrain, where forked black tree trunks sprouted starkly out of the crusty
earth. “I have followed him too far,” he told himself, wrestling with a rising alarm. “I
can see the foothills to the north, the mouth of the Central Pass. We're out on the plains
somewhere, too close to Istar and its armies ...” Then the horse brushed by one of the
dark trees, which crumbled into powder, streaking the animal's flank with a long, black
stain. Not trees. Crystals. A light wind chimed through the glittering forest. “The salt
flats,” Stormlight whispered. “The Tears of Mishakal.” At once he turned his horse about,
intent on riding out of the perilous region, out to the safety of the desert, out to the
plains. Even the prospect of Istar-ian armies no longer daunted him, faced as he was with
night and magic and the dangerous illusions of this crystalline maze. Slowly the horse
weaved between the crystals, and Stormlight scanned the opaque horizon for signs of
torchlight, of campfires, of a moon or a fortunate star. He refused to think on the old
legends of his people, on how the salt flats would open to swallow the traveler, how they
drew you toward their heart and toward your destruction by the serenade of the wind over
the crystalsa cruel, cold wind that tumbled suddenly into song and language, against
which, the legends said, the listener was powerless. Amid the mist and the high chiming,
amid the shifting dark shapes and the crunch of his horse's hooves through the crusted
layers of sand and salt, Stormlight rode in widening circles, looking for light, for clear
ground. He breathed a string of memorized prayersto Shinare and to his patron Branchala,
to Gilean the Book for knowledge, and of course to Mishakal herself, the goddess of
healing whose tears, it was said, had created these flats. All of his effortsboth strategy
and prayer seemed for naught. As the night wore on, Stormlight found himself moving into a
deeper and deeper darkness. Now, though the stars and planets scat- tered the flats with a
mysterious half-light, the elf could see no more than ten feet ahead of his horse. The
pocked and hoof-churned ground told him he had passed this way before. Instead of widening
circles, his path had spiraled inward, turning toward the center of the salt flats, where
the darkness was most dense, the country most confusing. “Stop,” he whispered, and reined
in the horse. With a rising sense of unease, he scanned the maze

around him for some clue, some glimmeringsome definable light to guide him anywhere. In
seven hundred years of roaming the desert, it was as close as he had ever come to being
lost. When he reached what appeared to be the center of the salt flats he dismounted
slowly, testing the ground beneath his feet and carefully leading his horse toward the
centermost crystals. It would be a long timefour, maybe five hours until dawn. If the
Tears of Mishakal were the legendary death trap, why, he was already dead. And yet, if
they were only confusing and impassable terrain ... If nothing else, the sunrise would
show him reliable east. Stormlight sat at the foot of the crystal, leaning back against
the dark surface, which crumbled slightly against his weight. He sat, and waited, and
watched for light. After a whileStormlight was unsure whether it was an hour, three hours,
five hoursthe darkness began to lift, and the wind chiming through the crystals calmed in
the anticipation of approaching dawn. Now he could make out his face reflected on the
facets of crystal. It was distorted. In the nearest crystal, one eye was magnified,
outsized, while in another not three feet away, his face was grotesquely narrowed, as
though he had passed through a crack in a wall. Yet another facet showed him as squat,
shorter than he ever remembered. Always sensitive about his height, Stormlight turned
quickly away. And saw yet another, and another, each one bending, twisting, or otherwise
translating his form into something bizarre and grotesque, some even reflecting those
other reflections in an infinity of confusion. Like the visions and prophecies that milled
through the rebel camp, he thought. Each was a way of looking at the world, of holding the
light so that it reflected the beholder as much as what he beheld. “It is all too
confusing,” Stormlight murmured. He closed his eyes and prayed again to Mishakal, for
insight and healing wisdom. After all, this land was named for her, and hers as well was
the power of healing, to restore the fractured and distorted body to its natural health.
No voice of the goddess did he hear, whistling through the crystal fields with revelation.
And yet The solution came to him softly and slowlyit was so simple that his laughter rang
through the Tears in recognition. He would need eyes, of course, to guide him out of the
salt flats. And his own eyes were subject to the mirror maze of the crystals, the
distraction and distortion and misdirection. Still chuckling to himself, Stormlight
mounted and, leaning back in the saddle, laid the reins gently over the animal's withers.
He closed his eyes, brought down the lucerna, and surrendered to the horse. The animal
serenely wandered through the crystals, bent toward the edge of the salt flats, toward
open country, and toward his breakfast. Stormlight let himself be carried homeward, his
thoughts on cool waterif water indeed had been foundand the morning's quith-pa and bread.
A sudden lurch from the horse snapped him back to alertness. Instantly wary, Stormlight
opened his eyes and sat upright. Dark shapes lay ahead of him, gray lines and imprints on
the surface of the black salt. Stormlight took up the reins and guided the horse toward
them. One of the crystalsonce a very large one, he guessedlay in powder and rubble, a
forlorn heap in the middle of a wasteland. Half out of idleness, half out of curiosity,
Stormlight dismounted to examine it more closely. The facets of the crystals caught the
first pink light, and for a moment they shone softly, warmly, like freshly mined gems. Was
it this that had prompted his people to go underground years ago? Had they mistaken
something like this black glimmering for the stone more rare, for the glain opals their
priests and Namers had told them lay deep beneath the Khalkist and Vingaard Mountains? It
was a story older than his own memorieshow, adopted, he had come to reside with the Que-
Nara. Stormlight had little recollection of his people. He recalled a face half-revealed
by firelight, the smell of buckskin and pine, the touch of a soft hand ... Memories from
childhood, or from a hundred years of wandering. He could not distinguish which.

But he remembered well the ambush at the desert's edge. The red armor and white banners of
Istar, the knives of the slavers and the white-hot pain in his side. He shrugged, pushing
away the memory. Alone then, he was even more alone now in the Tears of Mishakal. That was
the past, and to dwell on it was foolish, especially here in the deceptive salt flats,
where a despairing thought could be your last.

Idly, the elf shifted his foot through the odd rubble. Then the new light shone on a
tracka single deep footprint in the black salt. Stormlight crouched in the rubble, peering
more closely. A woman's print. Two days old, maybe three. Narrow and graceful, and
incredibly deep. As though she had sunk to her knees in the packed sand. Yet the print was
strangely delicate. The soft whorls of the heel marked the fine-grained, com- pressed
salt, and the foot was clearly defined and free of callus and scar. She did not walk much.
At least not barefoot. Even a child among trackers would know that. With a rough, leathery
finger, Stormlight traced the graceful instep of the print. He should know something more.
The footprint taunted him with a mystery, with a secret in its spi- rals and simple, deep
lines ... Lines. Like the foot of an infant. Stormlight rested on his heels. Slowly, with
a judicious sweep of his hand, he blew the drifted black salt from another print, and
another. Then risingto his feet, he mounted the horse and followed the trail of the woman
out of the Tearsa trail that seemed to rise out of nothingness, out of the blank center of
the flats. It could be a trap, he cautioned himself. The gods know there is danger in this
. . . there is danger . . . Yet he followed with a strange, fascination as the path weaved
sinuously through the standing crys- tals. Leaning low, face pressed against the horse's
withers, he read the dark sand with a skill born of centuries in the hunt. When the slowly
rising sun gave him direction, it revealed the footprints again, a thin path stalking over
the salt flats, the steps wider and wider apart. Had he looked up from this close, intent
scrutiny, he might have seen the Plainsman's form reflected in the mirroring crystalthe
wounded man lying in the salt flats, his ruddy beard matted with the last swallow from his
now-empty waterskin. He might have found Fordus, helped the Prophet to safety. But in his
oblivion, Stormlight passed near the wounded commander, who stared at him blearily,
resentfully, through the maze of crystals. She's running now, Stormlight thought, rising
in the saddle, his thoughts focused on the strange, feminine tracks. But running to what?
Or from what? Now it seemed that the woman's foot had expanded, widened, kept changing,
the toes fusing and splaying. Stormlight leaned against the warm neck of the horse and let
forth a slow, uneasy breath. It was a clawed creature he followed now, an enormous thing
that had trampled a path over the salt flats, crushing rock and crystal in its heedless
journey. All of his instincts told him to leave well enough alone, that the danger he had
only suspected when he took up the trail was close to him now, a rumbling just at the edge
of his hearing, an acrid smell beneath the smoke of a distant campfire. The fires of the
rebels. The monster was headed toward the Red Plateau, toward his drowsing, battle-dazed
people. With a click of his tongue and a shrill whistle, Stormlight spurred his horse
through the black flats, longing for Fordus's speed, for the speed of the wind or a comet.
You are too late, a deep, denying voice told him, its cold, resonant words mingling with
his thoughts until Stormlight could not tell whether it was the voice he heard or the
bleak suggestions of his own worst imaginings. “No!” Stormlight shouted. Suddenly the
trail ended before him, the monstrous tracks vanished into unruffled black salt. Alarmed,
confused, the elf wheeled the horse in a wide frantic circle and

retraced his path. In the heart of the last track, in the very center of the enormous,
splayed claw, a man's booted footprint lay in the dark sand as though he had stepped in
that spot only, dropped from the sky or born from the swirling earth. Stormlight reined in
his horse. The human print was like a deep embedded thought of the clawed thing, like a
glyph drawn in a time of dreams and dragons. Out of the monstrous print, boot prints
ledthe heavy steps of a man walking resolutely toward the rebel camps.

Cautiously, with his horse slowed to a walk, the Plainsman followed. *****

Tired and dirty, Larken watched the last of the flames lick the black rubble of the pyre.
Children, the old, and the flower of Plainsmen manhood had been put to the Istarian
swords. Inno- cent and defenseless or ill-prepared and rash, they had fallen before the
enemy like sacrificial offerings. Their deaths were even more monstrous because of the
dishonor involvedthe cavalry ambush that savaged graybeard and infant alike. In the
brilliant dawn, there was no way to mask the night's slaughter. The Istarian cavalry had
left over a hundred rebels dead. Now, as the funeral fires themselves died and smoldered,
it was the bard's duty to sing the Song of Passing, a farewell to all the departed, from
the youngest to the wizened old. Each of the dead would be remembered in a verse, a line,
a phrase of the song, so that none left the world unheralded. Larken's song would probably
continue through the next night. And longer still, if the augurers found no water. Already
miserably fatigued, Larken struck the drum once, twice, and waited for words and music to
come to mind. The drumhead mottled and darkened in her hand, as though it, too, was
mourning. When no song came, Northstar sat down beside Larken, draping his arm consolingly
over his cousin's shoulders. Tamex approached them, smoke curling over the black silk of
his robe. Larken gave the dark stranger a sidelong glance. Though she had nothing for the
dead, words that would attend Tamex's deeds and the music that would exalt his glory
suddenly flooded her mind. The bard felt unsettled, troubled by the strange, unbidden
music. The melody was simplea Plains- man ballad from her deepest childhoodwith the first
lines about the dark man and the mystery and the desert night. Still, some part of her
refused to give voice to them. Her drumming was soft and tentative as she hovered like a
hawk between singing and silence. Then a cry arose from the Plainsmen, and a dozen or so
ragged children rushed toward a solitary rider emerging from the Tears of Mishakal. It
took Larken a moment to realize that the rider was Stormlight. The elf leapt from the
saddle and, with a swift and relentless stride, made his way through the group of children
and past the smoldering campfires, brushing by Gormion and Aeleth as though the bandits
were mist or high grass. Taking Larken's drum hand firmly and gently in his grasp, he
guided her away from the fireside, away from her startled listeners, and when the two of
them had passed out of earshot from the rest of the rebels, he spoke to her fervently,
whispering through clenched teeth. “Whatever you do, singer, whatever the magic you wield
by drum and song, I command your silence now!” Command? Larken signed, bristling at the
elf's rough words. Take your hand from me, Stormlight! Her gestures snapped sharp and
final in the air between them. Slipping his grasp, the bard stalked off toward the Red
Plateau. Stormlight caught up with her. Overhead, Lucas soared out of the black salt
flats. “I know the power of your song,” the elf insisted. “How it raises up and it casts
down ...” “Stop!” Larken shouted, but Stormlight continued, never hearing her. "You were
set to sing the glories of Tamexthis new and sudden hero. I could see it. But think of
this before you sing. Whose bard have you been through the long months of exile and
wandering