Sinister and marginal, the spirit naga were a mys shy;tery to the Lucanesti, to the Istarians, to dwarf and druid as\well.
But nojt to Takhisis.
Long ago the goddess had found them and made them her minions.
The time had come to deploy them.
Now, an ancient naga crouched in the shadows beside the last clear entrance to the Istarian mines, hissing with hungry anticipation. The sinuous, scaled form flashed once in the rubble.
It was answered by another movement in the darkness on the other side of the entrance.
Which was enough for the old elf to understand.
Two of them. And no sign of Jargoon.
The monsters would make short work of the chil shy;dren, here at the edge of freedom, unless …
How did the words of the chanting go? It had been a hundred years since he used the spell, four hundred seasons with his thoughts on tunnels and corridors and hidden veins of opal.
Yet it was there, if he mined his memory wisely.
Slowly, Spinel lowered the elf-child to the tunnel floor. A faint rumbling from the rocks let him know the naga awaited them, had begun their long and treacherous incantations.
"Culet," he whispered to the little elf-maid. "When I tell you to run toward the light, you will do so. It is a game we can play, you and I, but remember to keep running when you reach the light and the wind. The rest of the people will follow."
Two of the older elf-children exchanged troubled glances, andthe corridor filled with the sound of a dry rustle, like something crawling over a century of leaves.
"Do not concern yourselves with me," Spinel assured them, affecting bravery, confidence, hoping his voice did not betray him. "You will follow Culet on my signal, and I shall join you later."
May the gods grant that reunion, he thought, his gaze flickering over the stirring darkness, the deep muttering in the rocks.
Slowly his arm encircled the elf-maid. Spinel guided her to the forefront of the company and, with a last, quick embrace, pushed her forward and away from him.
"Now!" he commanded, and the girl ran dutifully toward the light, the others following. Spinel ran with them, his old, stony bones creaking with sud shy;den movement, and there, at the entrance to the mines, he turned to face the waiting creatures.
Mouthing an old elven incantation, Spinel stood in the opening, and a globe of amber light formed around him. As each child, each youngling passed through the glow, it was as though they were cleansed and delivered. Shielding their eyes, they burst into sunlight and fresh airland a new, unex shy;pected life.
The nagas, unable to penetrate the amber glow of magic, groaned angrily in the darkness.
Finally, the last of the elf children leapt free of the mine. The light around him fading, Spinel prepared to follow, but the incantations, faint during his own swelling magic, grew louder and louder still.
Blocking out thought, and will, and memory.
Wearily, he took a last step toward the light, and his unveiled eyes looked longingly at the rockface, a patch of green and a spray of wildflowers in the midst of the black obsidian.
Gentian, he thought. And I had almost forgotten.
The monsters slithered into the light, blockingxthe entrance, Rising and arching, their pale, human› faces expressionless, they chanted the last of the spell to the humped, opalescent pillar at the edge of the cavernous dark.
Spinel became one with his ancestors and the earth that covered them.
The Dark Queen hovered in the upper chambers of the opal mines. A black dust whirling in the stag shy;nant passages, she heard the rumbling deep in the ground and rejoiced.
What difference did it make that the mines col shy;lapsed? That the elven younglings had escaped?
Most of the Lucanesti were far underground, easy prey for rockslides and spirit naga. As for the rest…
They would suffer the most in her impending return.
For now was the hour, when the Kingpriest chanted and the glain dust, the godsblood, filled with her fierce and abysmal life.
This did not go according to her schedule. Had it not been for that impudent ancient elf-the one who lay stony dead at the very edge of light and free shy;dom-she could have planned all things in her own time.
But now, the remaining opals darkly glittering in the depths of the earth, far from the grasp of her minionsTitwas as good a time as any. And a time to demolish the twenty or so remaining Plainsmen in the southern passes, the fool of a slave, the bard- the lot of them.
As though a wind rose from the deepest recesses of the planet, the dark dust rose and sifted through the cracks in the earth, merging into a hulking black cloud, sprouting tail and talon and tattered wings in its headlong flight for the lofty parapets of the King-priest's Tower.
When the windows spoke to him, clouded in smoke and approaching evening, their message was urgent, angered.
Now is the time, they told the Kingpriest. Your bride awaitsryou in the collected dust.
But he no longer believed the voices. It was fear that prompted his magic, rather than hope and desire. Sifting the glain dust through his trembling hands, he began the first of the incantations, his breath enkindling the dust, spangling it with a harsh, artificial light.
I must not fail, he thought. Bride or no bride, I must do the bidding of the voice.
He did not notice the clouckpf smoke and sand until it surrounded him, pouring through the stained opalescent windows and filling his chamber with a thick, choking haze.
Then the dust in his hands rose and mingled with the blinding air.
You have done your part, the voices proclaimed. I will let you live for now.
He knew better than to ask for the woman, the bride-the beautiful girl crafted of dust opalescent and promised him years ago by the dark voice in the clerestory. She would not come. He knew that he had been deceived. Duped and humiliated, weaker than he had ever imagined himself to be, the King-priest watched helplessly as the cloud darkened and solidified and poured out the opened windows.
Emerging from the temporary stonesleep that had saved him from Takhisis's anger, Stormlight watched from the foot of the Tower as a new whirlwind stirred on the balcony.
Dark sand eddied and rose, and within it the flat, opaque dust of the glain opals. The elf saw three shapes intertwined in the heart of the cloud: Tamex and Tanila, their amber eyes glittering with a strange, reptilian identity…
And the other one, bearded and long-haired …
The one with sea-blue eyes.
The shapes were insubstantial, ever shifting, sometimes indistinguishable from each other, sometimes individual and distinct. He watched, horror-stricken, and he knew, as the sand and opal dust rose into an enormous, boiling cloud above the tower, that his old friend was no more and that the fabled city they had sought together was nothing but glittering, hollow marble.
"Beware, Istar," he whispered, retreating through the streets toward the gate, the burning fields, and the people beyond who were his care and charge.
"Beware in the years to come. For the ground is unsteady."
Larken watched in alarm as the storm rose over the city.
A deep, brooding shadow settled on the tallest of Istar's towers, and above the marbled horizon swirled a shapeless cloud, shot through with wind and lightning.
Suddenly, the cloud took form and settled on the spire, dark wings emerging from the whirling chaos. Now a tail, now a thick, muscular neck and a strong reptilian jaw.
With a cry, Lucas vaulted into the air. Wheeling once above the mouth of the pass, he shot south ahead of the building storm. In dismay, Larken watched him fly-watched her people scatter in fear and panic.