A murmur spread through the crowd, and a thousand eyes turned to Stormlight, who stepped aside, waiting for the lightning to strike as it always struck, for Fordus's obscure poetry to become clear.
Quickly, with the confidence born of long experi shy;ence, he isolated the symbols from the Prophet's speech.
Fire. A burning city. The crack in the world.
As he felt the words stirring, felt them rise from that mysterious source in the depths of his spirit, suddenly he heard an excited rumble from the crowd.
Stormlight's unspoken words froze in his throat.
"Hear the word of the Prophet!" Fordus pro shy;claimed, blue eyes scanning the encircling faces. "The meaning of my dream has come to me, and to me alone. No longer do I need interpreter!"
Stormlight shivered with a sharp intake of breath. His power, his position, had been usurped.
"For I ljiave passed through the fire and the fever," Fordus continued, his hands raised aloft, "and I have walked on the margins of shadows and looked over into the places from which no man returns."
Uncertainly, with a sidelong glance at Stormlight, Larken beat the drum once, twice.
"My dream has told me that Istar is burning. The fire that will destroy the city has not yet been kindled, but we are the ones who will light it."
Slowly, the circle of people surrounding Storm shy;light widened and dispersed, as the Plainsmen turned in rapt attention toward Fordus. Dumb shy;struck, the elf watched in befuddlement as Larken, too, turned toward the Water Prophet, storing his words for a song.
"Rest tonight," Fordus said softly, his eyes turned north, to where the red moon and the white sat low on the horizon. The Namers and shamans who circled
him strained to hear his words, caught them, and passed them to the Plainsmen and bandits who waited behind them, so that the message spread like brushfire over the listening crowd. "Rest tonight, for tomorrow we march. We march on Istar, and there will not be peace until the city is mine."
Chapter 15
Stormlight decided to speak against Fordus's prophecy. Standing before the assembled camps, his voice rang loud and true and assured, as it had on a hundred occasions before, when he had helped to guide the Que-Nara through long, waterless stretches of the desert in search of oases, of underground pools, of arroyos suddenly and strangely filled by an outburst of subterranean springs.
In the years of drought his voice had been rain, so the people were inclined to listen.
"I have heard the prophecy of Fordus Firesoul," he began, "and I believe his dream has misguided him. Where before have we found the water, and looked in the sand for the approach of Istar, for other dangers and for enemies? Speak, if you know."
The sea of faces was still and quiet. They knew, of course, of the kanaji pit-that there was a magic within the crumbling, sand-swallowed walls that had lasted an age or more. They knew that Fordus entered the pit to seek visions and wisdom. They knew something of the glyphs, and all believed that the gods sent messages through them to the Prophet. But they did not know how. "In all those times," Stormlight continued, "I have stood beside the Water Prophet. I have seen the birth of the visions, and when he has spoken, I have spo shy;ken after him. His words were cloudy, but I have made them plain so that you may understand them. Always we have worked together-the Storm of Prophecy and the Stormlight. We have found water, and when we needed to elude the slavers, they went home with their collars empty. In these wars of liber shy;ation, we have found Istar and the unprotected flanks of the Kingpriest's army."
"Why did the wars start, Stormlight?" Fordus asked softly, and all eyes turned to the Prophet, all ears awaited his answer. "Was it in the kanaji that the gods told me to move against Istar? No, I tell you. This vision came to me in a dream. I alone was its Prophet and interpreter. The Namers and the shamans all know that I speak the truth."
A dozen gray heads in the first circle of watch shy;ers-heads covered in beads and oils, locks caked with penitential and meditative mud-nodded in fierce agreement.
The Prophet was a dreamer. And Stormlight? Per shy;haps he was jealous. Perhaps the gods had moved him aside.
Stormlight himself wavered with a moment's doubt. Was he jealous, as no doubt they must believe? Had the words of Tanila and Gormion struck him so because they were the same words, spoken on the same day, or because they had touched the secret desires of his own heart?
Yet he knew it was foolish-these doubts, these suspicions-because most foolish of all was For-dus's reckless haste. If they moved in accordance with Fordus this time, all of them, Plainsman and bandit alike, would surely fall in the grasslands north of the desert, where Istar's might was ready. There were fifty thousand of them, to the rebels' five hundred.
He could not let that happen.
Stormlight gathered himself for an answer. "It was your dream that began this war, Fordus. I cannot deny that. But did you dream the thousands of slaves, both Plainsman and elf, who wear the Istar-ian collars, laboring in their households and markets on their swarming docks and in their lampless mines? Did you dream the legion after legion that Istar has set before us, and did you dream the great mountains south of the city, and the lake we need to encircle, and then more plains, and, finally, the great Istarian walls, twenty feet thick, of solid stone?
"There will be a time for great victory, a time to march through the streets of Istar in celebration, with thousands more following us, thousands more at our side. And we will set them free, and forever break the bondage Istar has put upon our people. We will leave the desert and have warm homes and restored families. But it is too soon. Istar will crush us like shells."
He looked out over the armies. Some of the lead shy;ers-Breeze and Messenger among the Plainsmen, Gormion and Rann among the bandits-nodded in agreement with his words.
They were war leaders, skilled soldiers all.
A fleeting cloud of distaste moved over Fordus's face, but almost at once he converted it to a limpid sweetness. He lifted his hands-the Prophet's ges shy;ture of inspiration and blessing-and he turned with a smile toward Larken.
"In the time of glyphs and of defense," he said, "Three of us guided you, not two. I call on Larken in this new age. I call on her song to lift us out of ques shy;tioning and debate."
Stormlight's hopes sank as the girl stood and walked slowly to her drum. Larken was Fordus's bard; he was her true love. She had followed him for years, exalting him, adoring him.
There was no question whose story she would tell. How could it be otherwise?
"Let her sing," Stormlight proclaimed quietly. "She will surely sing for you. Once before you led us out of the desert's fastness, and the Kingpriest's army followed us back. There are orphans and wid shy;ows who remember that day sadly, and there are grieving ancient ones who did not expect to outlive their sons.
"And now you lead us forth once again, and again we will follow. I will come behind you-not follow, but come behind-because the Que-Nara are my people as well, and will need someone to defend them from your great foolhardiness. Still, I cannot blame those who choose to stay behind.
"But know this: If your ambitions outstrip your love for your people, if you venture into country that promises death like the death that swept down on us beneath the Red Plateau … why, I shall be the first to turn against you. I will kill you myself"