The Dark Queen (23 page)

her song with her ruined voice, the cry of a hawk fractured the expectant silence. Like a
herald, Lucas flew north, out of the pass, in the fore of a great rumbling. Then the
Istarian Mountains gave back Larken's lost song. It powered forth, strong, clear, and
sweet, resounding with magic she had never known she possessed, of a love that sheltered
her adopted people. Larken heard her own voice surge over her, echoing off the facets of a
thousand rocks, a chorus magnified and deepened, echo upon echo, until the ground shook
under her feet. At the edge of the lake, the shape of the dragon began to crumble and
fall, harmlessly sifting into thtsvvater. The lake hissed as it received the fiery sand,
and great columns of steam rose from the boiling surface. A horrendous shriek of anger and
futility drowned swiftly in the rising song, and the steam hovered in the air, molding
itself into the form of a bearded Plainsman warrior, a spiked tore about his neck and a
celestial sadness in his countenance. Then a soft rain fell from the steaming clouds, and
the last image of the Prophet vanished into the Istarian skies. Neither sand nor salt
would ever be the same: every crystalline structure changed to the core, all geology
translated, no mineral of Krynn would ever again harbor a god. For a moment the
Kingpriest's Temple looked like a shining spire in the afternoon sun, pristine and washed.
Larken's songher last songhad done this. “So be it,” she whispered, softly, absently, her
thoughts on old memories, on private, inexpressible things. “Things will change after
this. Things will have to change.” Beside her, to her great surprise, Vincus nodded in
agreement. The bard had spoken, and for the first time in a long time, her people had
heard her voice. Another voice thundered in the depths of the Abyss. In black fire
Takhisis rolled and raged, stirring a hot and lethal wind. The godlings scattered before
her, twittering like bats. Defeated! By a squeaking bard and her attendant elves! The
darkness whirled in disarray, the Abyss spangling with bright stars, white and violet and
crimson. Slowly, the goddess enfolded herself in the leathery sheath of her enormous
batwings. She soothed herself in the permeating darkness, turning and calming her anger.
Perhaps this time they had won. Perhaps these petty weaklings, in their great good
fortune, had postponed her entry into Krynn for a few, paltry hours. But Fordus was dead,
his insurrection crushed. She had seen to that. Now, her thoughts burst in flames on the
tough, leathery surface of her inner wings. As though she watched a mural of light take
form and evolve, Takhisis guided the images, shaped them and gave them purpose. The fire
from her anger and magic splashed violet and crimson and white in the leathery cocoon of
her folded wings. It shone upon a burning, collapsing city, the fall of great towers and
the rending of the earth. It shone upon the Kingpriest's Tower, where the most powerful of
her minions sat amid the dust of a hundred opals, chanting the last of a hundred spells
she would begin to teach him today. Oh, it was not the inalterable future. Not yet. But in
dream and insinuation, through his guilt and through the darker promptings of his heart,
she would bring the Kingpriest to this spell, this moment, this pass. Her time would still
come, was still coming. The Kingpriest would see to it all.

Epilogue

It is fitting that I, who am voiceless, should have the last word. The druids have kept me
well for a hundred years. Even in the Rendingthe time that others call the Cataclysmthey
sheltered me and nurtured me through the long night of this Age of Darkness. for Takhisis
won after all. She stopped the rebellion, turned us all back to the deserts south of
Istar, and though the bravery of the elves prevented her early entry into the vulnerable
world, she came later and more violently, when the city of Istar was torn asunder by her
return, and millions died as the continent split in her fury. In all this enveloping
darkness, it has not been so dark for me. Here in the north of Silvanost, in the last
years of a long and happy life, I write in the final pages of the book Vaananen gave me in
his chambers a century ago. “One will ask for it soon,” he told me. “And yoiji will know
it is right.” How was I to know that the one who would ask for it would be the one to whom
it was already given? One who would return it mysteriously, giving it to me so that I
might finish what had been written there? In the aftermath of the storm and the singing,
we tended to the injured and gathered the dead. Five more perished in Takhisis's rage over
the mountains. For a day we lingered, offering prayer and song. When we started our trek
back through the desert, picking our way through rubble and wreckage, Larken chose as our
rear guard one of the Que-Nara, a man named Raindiver, whom the others had jibed and
ridiculed when, aided by the zizyphus seed, I slipped past him into Fordus's camp. This
time he was more vigilant. We had not gone a mile when word reached us up the column that
Stormlight was approaching, and with him twoscore survivorsperhaps a dozen of the freed
Lucanesti all bent for the safety of the desert fastness. They were good reunions.
Plainsmen and bandit embraced and traveled south in harmony, caring for the elf-children
like adopted sons and daughters. Shaken by what had just come to pass, all of them forgot
the bickering and strife of the months and years in the Prophet's rebellion. They saw each
other clearly for the first time since Fordus had moved on Istar. All except Gormion.
Unchanged, the bandit captain whined and menaced, lied and inveigled, but her words had
lost their power to wound and divide. Now, Stormlight's followers ignored her. It was as
though the curse under which Larken had labored fell on Gormion's conniving head. She
lived the rest of her short life in the desert, finally falling victim to a guardsman's
arrow in an ill-advised attack on a caravan. She had always said something like that would
probably happen to her. I do not know what became of the druid Vaana-nen, except that he
was no more after the Battle of Istar. I have since thought many times on the things he
did for me. To honor him, I have taken his name as my patronym. So his name begins this
story and ends it. Stormlight and Larken, on the other hand, created a different story.
When they met again, neither spoke of Fordus. Once Stormlight tried to tell Larken what
had hap- pened, tried to put words around what he had seen pass through the Tower window
to join the whirlwind dragon in the hushed Istarian sky. But a resounding chord from
Larken's rediscovered harp silenced him. He was gone long ago, she told him. Neither, in
my hearing, brought up the subject again. I knew by the time our company reached the
plains that a new, quiet understanding had passed between Fordus's bard and his
interpreter. The enmity between them had dissolved, and the distance as well. They
conversed in whispersStormlight was delighted to hear, for the first time, Larken's
speaking voiceand they spoke also with their eyes on long walks in the high, wind-torn
grass as we traveled south toward the desert's edge. Lucas the hawk, still Larken's loyal
companion, kept a greater distance now, his circles expanding

to surround two people instead of one. It did not surprise me, two years later, to hear
that they had wed. I left the forest for the last time at the birth of their childa
golden-haired girl who resembled her mother, and with the strange, distant cast of her
father's eyes. But by then, the Que-Nara had aban- doned their fear of the imilus and
joined in the parents' joyous celebration. At which Larken sang. Her voice, it is true,
had been ruined according to all bardic standards. The wind and the scarring sand had
taken from her a singular and famous gift. Yet she made something new from that damaged
instrument. From that tattered voice arose a depth of phrasing, a power of celebration and
creativity thaV her clear, exalting, and sometimes mimicking voice had never owned. No,
the sands never again altered or melted at her singing, nor did water rise from the desert
nor storms subside. Instead, the hearts of listeners transformed. Accompanied by her harp,
the new songs turned fear into faith, and sorrow into resolution and joy. Songs of her own
composing, all. False prophecies passed for truth in Fordus's time. Now, a century later,
Takhisis has returned. She stalks like a lion across Ansalon, and it is time for new
prophecytrue words to stand against her in the continuing darkness. I am no prophet, but
this I write, in the ninety-seventh year since the Rending. The half-elven child I saw in
the desert, held by her mother as gracefully, as lovingly, as that mother once held the
shallow drum of her calling ... That girl will be a mother as well, and a grandmother, and
a great-grandmother. For Larken and Stormlight peopled my vision, and from their line, two
centuries from now, a child will be born under a gilded orb, and the Namer's task will be
easy that night. Goldmoon, they will call her. Priestess of Mishakal. She will dry the
tears and commence the healing. And she will not travel alone, but gather others to her.
And their deeds will echo like the lost song in the mountains. Hear the word of the
prophet. Vincus Uth Vaananen Silvanesti 97A.C.