But high above them, a solitary bird soared after the dark wind.
The bard's hawk, Lucas, his wings extended, watched the curious cloud from a distance as it raced from the desert into the plains. Skimming low over the dry terrain, the bird watched the ripple of the high grasses and followed the path of the wind through that wide and deceptive country.
Soon the grasslands gave way to rocky slopes, to foothills, as the dark wind hurried over farmlands and villages, headed toward mountains and the daunting walls of Istar beyond. Soaring at hunting speed, Lucas at last overtook it as it skimmed across the great expanse of Lake Istar, and from his high vantage, the bird looked down upon the gritty, undulating spine of the wind.
It seemed to the bird that he flew above a huge serpent or above the thrashing tail of an even greater beast. Cautiously, he kept his distance and contin shy;ued to follow and watch.
As the wind neared the city seawalls, its writhing form condensed and compressed. The wind became liquid, then solid, darkening and coalescing until, to the hawk's acute eyes, it looked like a watersnake, glittering like crystal in the harsh sunlight, wrig shy;gling swiftly over the lakeside to the city waits, winding and thrashing across the steep, rocky incline.
Now, his confusion over, Lucas swooped for the snake, gliding low over the water behind it, extend shy;ing and flexing his fierce talons. He narrowed the gap in seconds, caught a glimpse of faceted edges in the skin of his quarry, the smell of salt, and the smell of something older than salt, brilliant and sinister. He shrieked, struck out with his talons, but the snake was swift, elusive. Slipping through a small crevice at the base of the great wall, it vanished, the tip of its tale flickering tauntingly against the gray stone.
Lucas landed hard by the city walls and ruffled himself in frustration. Then he climbed steeply on a thermal close to the Istarian walls and, turning above the Kingpriest's Tower, made for the south and Fordus's approaching forces. He would not for shy;get the snake and its strange transformations.
And somewhere in the dark beneath Istar, the long, serpentine form altered and grew.
Chapter 16
Shinare's festival was doomed from the outset.
From the abandoned Tower of High Sorcery, its gates draped in drooping golden ribbons in honor of the goddess, all the way across the central city to the School of the Games, where tarnished bronze griffin wings hung as a reminder of earlier, more vibrant festivals, the city stiffened under a turgid pall. The few paltry booths, decked with the ribbons of the goddess, looked muddy and stained in the hot, windless afternoons. The goods sold in the Market shy;place seemed tawdry and cheap: shoddy earthen shy;ware statuary from Thoradin replaced the customary carved stone, the scrimshaw from Balifor seemed abstract and rushed, and the scaleless fish from northern Karthay was the worst of all failures.
This fish, brought to the markets in thousands of pounds and kept on ice from the Karthayan moun-^ tains, was intended as the principal delicacy of this" year's Shinarion. But the heat of the city grew sud shy;denly unbearable, and the catch had spoiled by the second day, leaving the air of the city tainted, almost unbreatheable.
The visitors could not help but notice. Despite the fuming incense on the windowsills of houses, despite the cloves hung by the thresholds and the attars of roses and violets let run in rivulets through the gutters of the streets, the city stank.
By the second evening of the Shinarion, those who were leaving the festival outnumbered the arrivals. Into the adjoining towns about the bay they retreated, past the monastery or through the Karthayan forest, rushing on horseback, in carts, on foot toward the fresh, cool air, shaking the odors of incense and dead fish from their clothing.
The few among them who looked back, nostalgic, no doubt, for the merriment of earlier festivals, saw the lights of Istar flickering and dim across the dark water. The Shinarion candles, once used to mark the festival time in such profusion that the light was vis shy;ible ten miles away, had dwindled to a few sad thou shy;sand, barely producing light to steer by.
It was not long before the travelers lost the city behind them in the rising dusk.
Alone on the Temple battlements, gazing out over the putrid city, Vaananen marveled at the quiet and darkness of this most unusual festival time.
The city looked besieged.
Of course, the rumors had spread through Istar more quickly than the smell of the rotten fish.
A rebel force had come out of the desert again, headed toward the city, its numbers unknown. At its helm was the same man-the Water Prophet-who had burst into the grasslands less than a month before, inflicted great casualties on the Twelfth and Seventh Istarian legions, then hastened back into that godless country of rock and sand, where he had vanished like a dying wind.
Vaananen shook his head. It was too soon.
No matter the powers of this Fordus Firesoul, he and his rebels were not ready. The forces arrayed against them were more than formidable, the road ahead of them perilous and long.
With Fordus away from the kanaji, there was no chance to warn him. Vaananen leaned against the cooling stone wall and stared out over the city. In the distance, the School of the Games blazed with gaudy purple light, and a roar erupted from a crowd accus shy;tomed to gladiatorial slaughter and reckless horse races.
Now was the most dangerous time-for his own mission in the city, and for Fordus's rebellion in the outlands.
For the Sixth Legion had indeed arrived in Istar. Of that much Vaananen was certain.
After his trip to the stables and the other discover shy;ies, Vincus had rushed back to the druid's quarters, scrambled through the window in a net of torn vines and brambles, and gesticulated so wildly that it took Vaananen the goodly part of an hour to calm the young man down.
By now, the druid believed the servant's story, but he accompanied him back to the stables anyway, and the horse's tattooed lip had confirmed the unpleasant truth.
Not even three legions of Solamnic Knights could hope for victory against Istar's garrison of over five thousand veteran soldiers.
He had warned the Prophet accordingly, drawn the glyphs in the rena garden, four symbols bold in the dark sand.
But who would be there to read it?
Vaananen pulled his cloak tightly about his shoul shy;ders. It always seemed to happen during the Shinarion: the last days of summer blended unaccountably into the first of autumn, and sometime, usually in midfestival, one cool, unforeseen night would signal a change in the season.
Vaananen descended the battlements. The sun had drifted behind the delicate white spires and domes of the western city, staining the luminous buildings with an ominous red.
He had one desperate hope. The Kingpriest, for all his skill in ritual and politics, was not known for his perfect choice of generals. Each successive comman shy;der had been worse than the last, culminating in the abysmal Josef Monoculus. To find a good leader had become next to impossible when the Solamnic Order, disgusted with Istar's.policy of oppression, had ceased to support the Kingpriesf s sterner measures.
And a good thing that was, Vaananen concluded, because the Istarian army with a real general at its head would be matchless.
Shivering at the thought, the druid pulled up his hood and entered the great Council Hall of the Temple, where, in his guise as a loyal follower of the Kingpriest, he would join a handful of other chosen clerics in receiving the next, no doubt, in a sorry line of military leaders.
"The fool of the season" Brother Alban had called the new commander.
None of the priests had met the new man.
Always an occasion for curiosity, the moVnent arrived, and Vaananen was somewhat shocked when, entering the torchlit hall, he saw the clergy crowded around the impressive figure of a black-robed man. The man stood next to the Kingpriest himself.