"Great Branchala!" Larken spat, turning from the fire and stalking back toward the camp, whistling to the hawk as she broke into a run.
Of course, Fordus's gaze never wavered.
"I shall study to be deserving of your kindness," Tanila replied, almost formally and yet with a subtle and sinuous heat.
It was Stormlight's turn to mutter.
Then, overhead, Larken's hawk screamed in alarm.
All eyes shifted to the bird, the moment forgotten in the outcry and the approaching tumult of his wings. Lucas swooped out of the pale morning sky and, gliding low across the shadowy sand, struck the gloved hand of his mistress and frantically pulled himself upright. His shrieks and whistles were shrill, almost deafening, and a strange green light flashed over his pinions. Larken soothed the creature, her fingers stroking his feathers like harp strings.
Stormlight rushed to the side of the bard. Fordus was not far behind, the pain in his foot forgotten.
Larken stared at them, her brown eyes wide with alarm.
"Istarians?" Fordus asked, his right hand reaching instinctively for the throwing axe at his belt. Still the bird screeched and yammered. Larken raised her hand to the two men, motioning for their silence.
Not Istarians, she signed with one hand, inclining her ear toward the loud, insistent bird. Not sandlings nor ankheg, not panther …
"Then what?" Fordus exclaimed impatiently.
Larken shook her head, her fingers slow and deliberate.
Their fresh hostility forgotten for the moment, Fordus and Stormlight exchanged troubled glances.
It is nothing he knows, Larken concluded, as the bird whistled once more and fell silent. Nothing he has ever seen. There is no word for it in Hawk.
"Then we shall find the words for it," Stormlight declared.
Fordus nodded and drew forth his axe.
By the cooling ashes of the fire, Tanila regarded them impassively. The black pupils of her amber eyes slitted and closed.
Chapter 11
There was no word in hawk for what happened next, either.
Though Fordus's scouts were sharp-eyed, skilled in reading trail and terrain, the subtle change in the nearby sands raised no alarm at first. By morning the dunes had shifted to encircle a huge, undulating mass of sand. The men were curious. A dozen of them, veterans of a hundred journeys and a score of battles, crouched around the disturbance, regarding it cautiously, intently.
It was a springjaw at worst, they told themselves, setting its funneled trap for unwary travelers. More likely a sandling, or the simple change of an overnight wind.
So the scouts kept their posts and turned their sights to the far horizons, to the edge of the salt flats-to anything, in short, except the whorling, lift shy;ing sands at their feet.
Indeed, they had almost forgotten this strange movement when the first rumbling shook the ground around them. The youngest of the scouts, standing not twenty yards from the disturbance, pointed and screamed . ..
And was swallowed by the first spray of molten sand that surged from the ruptured heart of the desert.
Dumbstruck, two other scouts fell seconds later, as the sands all around them erupted and, like an eerie, hidden volcano, rained glowing glass upon Plains shy;man and bandit alike. Overhead, the bard's hawk soared to a great height, the heat on his wings unbearable even at a thousand feet above this sud shy;den holocaust.
The bird cried out, again and again. "
It was less than an hour before Fordus reached the site of the eruptions. Larken and Stormlight fol shy;lowed him/and Northstar and the woman Tanila. Gormion and a dozen of her bandits were not far behind.
What they saw was a desert scarred unnaturally by fissures and craters and chasms, glazed over with a steaming, muddy caul. It looked like a country imagined from heat and light and attendant fire. Shadows of indignant desert birds reeled far over shy;head, and at the edges of the spreading lava the sand crackled, melted, and added to the rising flood.
For a moment, the handful of rebels fell silent. For-dus, his injury forgotten, took one firm step toward the smoldering landscape. Stormlight walked to his side, took his arm, and held him back.
Slowly, the sand at the center of the great wound hardened to dark crystal.
"What is it?" Gormion hissed, her hand slipping absurdly to the hilt of her dagger.
She received no answer. Neither Plainsman nor Prophet nor bard could decipher this mystery.
Yet one among them knew. One who veiled her knowledge behind expressionless amber eyes.
There were other gods in the Abyss, just as eager as Takhisis to enter the world and turn the tide of history to their liking. Zeboim had followed Takhisis once, and Morgion-the tempests in coastal waters and the plagues borne out of the marshes were testa shy;ment to their ingenuity-but they lacked the power to stay more than minutes, more than an hour at most.
But when the sand glazed and melted that day in the Istarian desert, spreading slowly toward the Plainsman encampment beneath the Red Plateau and destroying everything in its path, it was prelude to something far greater, far more disruptive. Takhi shy;sis recognized that at once. Another of her kind-a strong one with powers to rival her own-had dis shy;covered her secret and followed her through the crystalline gap between worlds.
And she knew who he was.
"What is it?" Gormion asked again, more insis shy;tently this time as the molten sand slowly swal shy;lowed the dunes.
"Volcano," Stormlight replied tersely, his eyes never leaving the glowing swirl of glass. "I've seen them before. Long ago, from the foothills of Tho-radin. We had best move the camp, and quickly."
Gormion was more than ready to comply. Her sil shy;ver jewelry rattled as she waved wildly at her bandit followers, whistling and motioning them back toward the camp. Fordus and Stormlight made ready to follow, but suddenly, as they turned toward the Red Plateau, they were startled by a loud, unearthly screech.
Tanila lay in the path of the flowing slag, writhing and clutching her ankle.
Without thinking, Stormlight raced toward the fallen woman. In the sand his footing was unsteady, and once, nightmarishly, he stumbled and fell, brac shy;ing himself on his hands not a foot from the glow shy;ing, blistering pool.
He felt the heat like a hundred suns, and his eyes, blinked and smarted.
With a cry, he closed the milky lucerna, pushed himself away from the slag, and staggered to Tanila, slipping his arm about her waist and dragging her blindly toward the safer crest of the nearest dune. She felt incredibly heavy, resistant in his grasp. With a desperate heave, he drew her to safety, toppled over the far side of the dune, and lay breathless, facedown in the sand. Around him a chaos of sounds eddied and swirled-the cries of the bandits, North-star's voice carried on a white-hot wind.
He could not believe Tanila's heaviness, how hard and brittle her body had felt in his hands. It was as though the slag had covered her and cooled, turning her to stone, to glass. He turned toward her, incredu shy;lous, longing to touch her again.
Her foot was missing, the ankle snapped and severed like hewn stone, no blood flowing from the wound. Stormlight gaped at the woman.
She returned his stare coldly.
A shout from Fordus disrupted his thoughts.
He sprang to his feet, and the earth split apart beneath him.
Kneeling in a daze at the edge of the slag, Storm-light watched the creature rise out of the fissured glaze, its broad wings glittering with spark and ash.
Fordus rushed out of the smoke, Northstar and two of the bandits beside him, as the creature took shape out of fire and cloud: an enormous hook-billed bird-its shape that of a condor or vulture, its naked head blistered and ugly, its black eyes glitter shy;ing like gems.