Again the dream came to him. The lake of fire. The spindle bridge. The dark, winged form, the flattery and coaxing . . . the promise of finding out who he was.
Briefly, in the flitting fashion of delirium, it seemed like Racer stepped into his dream. Grizzled and venomous, his wrinkled face a sinkhole of mal shy;ice, Racer shuffled onto the narrow bridge and into the winged shadow, his spindly ancient form com shy;mingling with the strange, birdlike cloud until Racer became the condor, the condor Racer.
No. No unexpected dreams.
Fordus woke and stood, drunkenly lurching toward the shimmering stones and the camp and safety. Not a hundred yards into his desperate effort, the cracked earth seemed to rise, to trip him, and he fell to his hands and knees, clambering over the ground like a scorpion, like a monstrous crab.
He reached the level top of the small rise. Ahead, the Tears of Mishakal seemed hazy, even more dis shy;tant, as though in trying to run toward them he had in fact run in the opposite direction.
Fordus looked back, toward the kanaji.
A wide expanse of desert land lay between him and the standing rock and baked, cracked earth, its red-brown surface scored with an intricate webbing of lines.
For a moment, on the horizon, Fordus thought he saw Kestrel. He raised his hand, shouted or thought he shouted …
Then he remembered that his foster father was two years dead, buried at the ancient dry fork of the Tine.
Then who . . . ?
Kestrel's form wavered at the edge of his sight, like a rain cloud. Slowly another form took shape inside it-another man, dressed in brilliant white, his robes dispelling the shadow like smoke in the wind.
Fordus stared at the man until his eyes hurt. A midsized man, balding, with sky-blue . . .
No, sea-blue eyes . . .
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the image was gone, leaving the bare desert bathed in the eerie moonlight, a desolate flatland that stretched for as far as Fordus could see.
His fever still torrid, the Water Prophet stared absently at the cracked earth until the cracks them shy;selves began to take shape.
A glyph. Then another.
The whole desert has become my kanaji, Fordus thought incoherently, triumphantly. He began to read the wavering lines on the earth.
One resembled a tower. The other a chair.
In swift hallucinatory fashion, Fordus put a mean shy;ing together.
"I shall sit on the throne of Istar," he breathed. "I have waited for this summons.
"The rule of empire awaits me. The world has become my kanaji, my ground of visions. I shall lift the tyranny of the Kingpriest…
"And I shall rule in his stead. I know who I am. I am the Kingpriest."
All messages of water forgotten, Fordus rolled exultantly onto his back, staring up at the reeling heavens. The earth had spoken, naming him rightful Kingpriest of Istar.
It was glorious news.
What he had found was better than water.
He was the Prophet and he was the prophecy.
Above him, the hawk banked and rushed on a high wind back to the rebel camp. At his mistress's orders, Lucas was searching for the commander, guided by faint, barely comprehensible voices on the edge of the wind. The hawk heard a dozen lan shy;guages breathed into the air: the sleepy muttering of an elf-child somewhere in the darkness beneath Istar, the last gurgled sigh of a merchant murdered on the edge of the desert, the quiet sermons of the high grass and the ancient vallenwoods far, far to the south in Silvanost.
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.