The Dark Queen Read online

  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.

  Chapter 8

  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 jin shy;gling 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 desti shy;nation 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 other shy;wise.

  Almost unwillingly, in a soft voice unaccompa shy;nied by her drum, Larken began the hawk's song.

  The music was an old sea chantey from Balifor- somehow she remembered the music-but 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 them shy;selves 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 uncomfort shy;able 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 part-knife 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 warriors-the elf and the pale, mysteri shy;ous Tamex-were 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 shout shy;ing, 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 cry-a 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 bar shy;barians 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 sho
uted, 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 ban shy;dits, 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 shy;ian-women, old men, and children, exposed in the open country between the campsite and the salt flats-fell 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, rac shy;ing 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 inven shy;tiveness 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, signal shy;ing 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 con shy;trol, 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 slaugh shy;terhouse. 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 company-the 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 survivors-those 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 shy;sion, the bandits had spread through the battle shy;ground, 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 kin shy;dling 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 constella shy;tions, 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 bril shy;liant 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. Some shy;thing 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.

  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 Tears-the vani
shed 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 sig shy;naled 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 wind-of burning wood and straw, and an acrid, unsettling smell he remembered from his youth, when once a raiding band of Irda had ran shy;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 seduc shy;tive and denying. They have defeated Mar without you, Fordus.

  Dismayed, the rebel lowered himself to the salty sand.

  Chapter 9

  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.