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 shy;runners to search for the missing commander. How shy;ever, 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 ter shy;rain, never once dodging briar or gully. He did not break stride-not until he was within hailing dis shy;tance. 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 ner shy;vously 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 shy;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, turn shy;ing slowly toward the younger man.
Who had vanished entirely.
The officer's mare stood wide-eyed and trem shy;bling, black powder tumbling from her saddle, pool shy;ing 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 dis shy;tant 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 mun shy;dane eye-to 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 fore shy;casts 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, Takhi shy;sis 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 fam shy;ily 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 moon shy;light. 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 neu shy;tral pantheon.
Both of them sailed through the heavens now, aloft in an egg of silver and an egg of scarlet. When they hatched, the moons-husks of the gods, the ancient philosophers would call them-sailed through the skies of Krynn as refuge and home for the godlings …