The Dark Queen v-6

by Michael Williams

  The oldest of the searchers, Spinel, held the lamp above the younger, stronger elves. Seventeen hun shy;dred years had dulled the sharpness of his eyes, the power and resilience of his arms, but the old elf was shrewd, tunnelwise, just as aligned to the dark shift of corridor and passage as the dwarves he had fought for centuries under the earth.

  He held the light in hopes of finding one of his vanishing people.

  Once a noble, if minor, branch of the Dimernesti elves, the Lucanesti had roamed the grasslands south of Istar, their keen woodsense transformed by their travels into an uncanny discernment of hidden underground springs.

  Water in rock. It called to them from its tomb in the dry earth. The Lucanesti had become essential to the early caravans and migrations crossing the face of evolving Krynn. "Dowsers," the wanderers had called them, and hired them at great expense as guides and augurers.

  Dowsers.

  But they were paid well, and the insulting name had become a badge of curious pride. Over the years, though, water had become taken for granted by the wood elf and high elf, native to river lands and watery forests. The scant influence of the Lucanesti dwindled. They were ignored at the high council of the elves, mocked as vagabonds and ruffians.

  The old names returned. "Dowsers." "Hedge elves."

  In the midst of such scorn and contempt, the opals came to them like a favor from the gods.

  Water and rock, it was again, for those stones were formed over thousands of years in which water and rock commingled beneath the Istarian mountains. What it was that led the Lucanesti underground had been forgotten under the tide of centuries, but the maze of cubicles in the opal caverns beneath Istar were evidence that they had mined the roots of the city for ages.

  And yet they remained a people of open country, of fresh winds and the high arrangement of stars. Their sojourns underground were brief and efficient, the white lucerna of their eyes attuned to the water in the opals, their digging precise. The mining took its toll and changed them, their skin hardening with age and silica and water, until the old elves were translucent, shimmering, opalescent like the stones they hunted. They used the change to their advan shy;tage, masking their presence against intruder and predator, fading into the rubble where they stood breathless, indistinguishable from surrounding stone.

  When they were old enough-two thousand years, or maybe less-the opalescence had its inevitable way, and they entered the stonesleep, unable to return from the dark, encrusted dream.

  But while they were young, there were opals to mine and riches to gather. And the Lucanesti mined and gathered, bringing the stones back to the sur shy;face. Soon what had been a poor and marginal tribe flourished with disproportionate wealth.

  A wealth that drew the attention of cities, of the Kingpriest.

  Of the venatica, the hunters and spies in the hire of Istarian clergy.

  Soon the Lucanesti were observed. Then accompa shy;nied-in what the venatica called "the interest of geologic science," though it was really an armed surveillance. Observation and accompaniment changed slowly, like a stone in the swim of under shy;ground water, and the elves found more and more of the red-robed Istarians as companions, advisors. .

  The "cooperative" venture turned into slavery one day when Spinel and a party of followers made for the surface, for fresh air and light, but were stopped by a squadron of Istarian swordsmen.

  The mining Lucanesti never saw the surface again.

  Still, the Kingpriest's request surprised none of them, really. After all, relocation had been the death sentence for a thousand innocent peoples since the dawn of the planet, and the mountains and plains around the spreading, marbled city were littered with abandoned villages, burned hamlets, and the moldering relics of swallowed civilizations.

  It was the way of Istar to finish what greed had started.

  Now, in his waning years, the opalescence spread shy;ing and constant on his pale arms, Spinel could only guide as his companions combed the rubble for the missing child.

  "I never thought it would come to this," he said. "Scarcely a century under the city, and the children are dying."

  Heedlessly, the two younger elves continued at their task. They were spela, what the Lucanesti called the generation born and raised in the caverns under Istar. They remembered no sun, no paired moons in the starry sky. Many, fancying that their greatest ene shy;mies were the crumbling rocks and the nagas that lurked therein, had no recollection of the Istarians.

  Spinel pitied them. They were as buried as the child they sought.

  The older of the two spela, a young female named Tourmalin, held aloft a dark, shining stone.

  "Glain," she said tersely, extending the gem to the older elf. "At least we will bring something home."

  Reluctantly, almost ashamedly, Spinel took the opal from her and placed it in a pouch on his belt. Another stone to crush into powder for the King-priest's mysterious rituals.

  "We'll find the child," the old elf asserted, his voice thin and wavering in the torchlit alcove. "By Reorx and the lamps of the eye, we shall find that poor creature!"

  With pickaxe and dagger, they moved slowly and delicately through the ragged volcanic rock. The frail voice called to them faintly from somewhere behind the baffle of stone and darkness, the child begging for water, for her mother. . finally, for Branchala and the Sleep He Brings.

  When Spinel heard the hymn begin, the low bird-like keening that heralds the stonesleep of the Lucanesti, his orders became urgent. Intently, his hand on Tourmalin's shoulder, he guided the three diggers through convoluted layers of rock.

  Steady, he told himself. Do not lose faith or judg shy;ment or the faint sound coming from somewhere beyond that wall of stone.

  Barely audible, the stonesong continued. For a moment, Tourmalin seemed to gather strength. Muttering a mild oath, she redoubled the speed of her digging, and her companions followed her example, the corridor ringing with the sound of metal on stone, the shallow breathing of the four miners.

  Yes, we are breaking through, Spinel thought as the sound of the pick took on a new resonance. Only a matter of minutes now, and if the child survives, if we can bring the poor innocent to air and light…

  "Faster!" he commanded through clenched teeth.

  And then, Tourmalin's hammer crashed through the last layer of rock. Exultantly, Spinel surged by his younger companions, reached for the new pas shy;sageway, his torch aloft…

  But another wall of rock, not two feet behind the breakthrough, blocked his passage. He swore, scrab shy;bled at the hard stone with his nails, pushed madly against it with his shoulder …

  As somewhere in the deep recesses of the earth, the stonesong of the child dwindled.

  Spinel rested his forehead against the cold, divid shy;ing wall and wept. The years would take the child's bones and transform them. Someday, perhaps, descendants of those who dug for the babe in vain would find the form-small, curled, and glowing, in the midst of the rock that had swallowed her and made her its own.

  "Opal," Tourmalin breathed, the light of compas shy;sion fled from her eyes. Her callused, pale hand touched the new, dividing wall. "Glain opal."

  So they all would come to glittering dust, in the heart o.f this indifferent place.

  Above the rocks and the rubble and the sorrows of elves, miles away in the city of Istar, the Kingpriest's armies watched and waited in boredom and uneasy readiness.

  The Shinarion approached-the great festival of gaming, industry, and trade, the great time of com shy;merce and coincidence. Istar and all its tributaries came together to celebrate the glory of the goddess who, it was said, watched over the vast, interwoven economies of the region. As usual, the city was adorned with silk and gold leaf, the inns were swept and strewn with fresh rushes, and throughout the narrow streets of Istar, everyone-from the gray-robed, exclusive diamond merchants to the painted bawds and nimble pickpockets-readied their wares and skills for the coming week.

  Even the Temple of the Kingprie
st prepared spe shy;cial ceremonies in honor of Shinare. Jasmine incense billowed in the great square, and the tower bells chimed in the dawn carillon that dedicated each morning to the goddess.

  It seemed that nothing was amiss in Istar-that the great business of ritual and trade continued gracefully and quietly, as though there were no nasty, ill-starred wars erupting in the desert. The mourning banners had come down in the noble houses, and the black cloth on the doors of the poorer dwellings had been replaced by the bright reds and yellows of Shinarion. The fallen soldiers, buried scarcely a week ago, were forgotten.

  But the guards on the walls still watched ner shy;vously, the cavalry stopped and inspected all of the caravans, and in the high temple towers a thousand eyes turned regularly and apprehensively south. There were rumors that the rebel commander, the Water Prophet, stalked the city like a wounded lion.

  He was coming, the rumors said. In a month's time, if not sooner. Fordus Firesoul was headed north, torch in hand and wading ankle-deep in Istar-ian blood. His goal was the city and the temple itself, its ornate walls to be ransacked and stained with still more Istarian blood.

  For the first time in memory, the city was hum shy;ming with the threat of invasion.

  Yet the Shinarion would take place as it always had. So the Kingpriest had decreed. Daily life would not give way to panic; the city would not become an armed camp.

  And the city would profit, above all. Most impor shy;tantly, the metal from Thoradin, the silks from Ergoth, the grain from the Solamnic plains, would not have to go elsewhere to be sold.

  Already the caravans had embarked for Istar, laden with expensive and exotic goods, and as the time approached, the first of the merchants arrived and the first booths and bazaars went up in the rapidly filling city. By the end of the week the num shy;bers would be greater still. Balandar claimed that the population of Istar doubled during the Shinarion.

  Hidden by a carved screen, Vincus watched the arrivals from his master's library window. As wine steward for the Kingpriest's Tower, Balandar was busy all the time now, and Vincus was often left to his own devices. He divided his time between secretly reading obscure manuscripts and nosing through the crowded Marketplace, watching the preparations for the festival.

  In most years, the arrivals were exotic-almost enough to make the young servant believe that the city did not go on forever-that the legendary lands that travelers described were actual and true.

  The acrobats had come, and the fortune-tellers and dancers. A band of dwarven musicians was expected on the festival eve, and rumors even had it that Shardos, the fabled blind juggler, would attend and entertain.

  But this year the first arrivals were somehow dis shy;turbing. Vincus wandered the Marketplace, seem shy;ingly casual, but totally observant. The acrobats, huge and hulking, practiced their stunts badly, the dancers seemed surly, and the fortune-tellers tight-lipped and private. The dwarves and the juggler were long overdue and the young servant began to suspect that the more famous, legitimate acts would not perform this year.

  He saw few rehearsals, and the fortune-tellers' predictions, when they came, were tentative and vague:

  Today is your lucky day.

  You are more insightful than ordinary folk.

  Your future is bright.

  Not legitimate. That was it, Vincus was sure. The arrivals were impostors.

  At first, Vincus was hesitant to bring up the matter to the druid. Vaananen, preoccupied with his rena garden, had little love for acrobats and dancers- they did not suit his austere western ways.

  But finally, two nights before the festival was scheduled to begin, Vincus slipped through the druid's window. Vaananen did not stir. He crouched, as usual, in the rena garden, drawing a rairfglyph.

  The rena garden had grown, Vincus noted. Vaana shy;nen had dismantled one of the wooden walls that kept the sand in place, and now it sprawled onto the floor, spreading like a creature with volition of its own. The druid had added another stone and a squat green barrel cactus to the stark, mysterious arrangement of objects in the sand, and two new glyphs adorned the far walled edge of the garden.

  Then Vaananen noticed him, rose and turned, his meditations over.

  "What have you brought me, Vincus?" he asked with a weary smile.

  Vincus's dark hands flashed the first of four elabo shy;rate signs.

  Vaananen laughed. "Impostors? Why, Vincus, all fortune-tellers are impostors."

  Vincus shook his head, his fingers a blur.

  Vaananen turned back to the garden. "You have tried hard," he announced. "Thank you."

  Vincus shrugged, scratched beneath his silver col shy;lar. Perhaps he was wrong after all. He rose and turned toward the window, stepped to the sill…

  And climbed out into the close Istarian night, leaving the druid to contemplate the cactus, the stone, the shifting shapes in the sand.

  Vaananen might dismiss the suspicion, might laugh it away in his quiet meditation. But there was something different about the city-something strange and curiously out of line. Vincus was accus shy;tomed to watching the streets, to sensing with eye and ear and an insight more subtle than the senses when something had shifted, when something was not right.

  And it was that feeling, that insight, that took him back to Balandar's library.

  Always before, the library had been a place of peace for Vincus-a maze of sanctuary amid tower shy;ing shelves, with its powerful smells of mildew and old leather emanating from the long-neglected vol shy;umes. As a slave boy, illiterate at first, sold to the tower to repay his father's debts, he had taken books down from the high, obscure shelves to pore over at night after his master was abed. Slowly, his intelli shy;gence had matched the illuminated drawings in the margins of the ancient texts with the shapes of let shy;ters. It was like reading glyphs, this long process that had translated indecipherable scrawls into meaning, into things and ideas.

  It had taken all of a year, but he had taught him shy;self to read in the shadowy, candlelit room.

  Each time he returned he felt the same absorbing calm and quietude. This time he came as an intruder, a spy, gathering intelligence.

  Silently, he thumbed through old Balandar's records. In a shabby old book the priest had kept account of the temple wineries for years, since before the Siege of Sorcery and long before Vincus himself had been born. He had dwelt upon this very book learning his letters and numbers: "claret" and "malmsey" were among the first words he could read.

  Looking at the most recent records, those of the last several months, Vincus quickly tallied the num shy;ber of wine barrels brought from the warm north into the Kingpriest's cellar.

  The expensive claret was the Kingpriest's favorite, reserved for only the highest clergy. One barrel^ month sufficed, and Vincus noted no change in the order. Nor in the malmsey, which the lesser clerics and the officers drank with a certain. . license. Seven barrels this month, six the month before, and six before that.

  Vincus nodded. A slight increase in the malmsey. Festival time.

  The port, however, was the soldiers' wine. Rationed to the Istarian men at arms, it was issued in the barracks and taken afield. The Istarian soldier was naked without his wineskin.

  Vincus smiled, adding the numbers.

  Ten barrels, then eleven, and this month. . twenty-two.

  Vincus absently fingered his silver collar. There was a marked increase in the port wine, far beyond festival allowances, beyond common sense. It defi shy;nitely supported his suspicion.

  Someone new was in the city. Unannounced, unaccounted for.

  And port was the wine of soldiers.

  Chapter 13

  The first night of the Shinarion spangled the city with a gaudy light. In the quiet, less-traveled pockets of the city, marbled squares and opal windows shone with the borrowed glow of Lunitari, red and darkly bril shy;liant like candlelight on wine. But the lamps and the torches drowned the busy commons and thorough shy;fares with the flashy light of commerce, and like a
respected matron who has drained the glass once too often, the elegant city burgeoned with a loud, inelegant life.

  Yet those who had been here before knew other shy;wise-knew that this year was unlike any that had come before. This time the celebration was fevered, almost desperate, and the promised thousands of pil shy;grims, merchants, and performers had yet to arrive.

  Nonetheless, the festival caroused from the center of the Marketplace, the beating heart of the trading, where jewelry, silks, and spices changed hands, to the booths by the gates of the city, where vendors and hucksters sold fireworks, knives, and the red glass bottles of godslight-the strange, everburning mixture of phosfire and salt, dangerous and volatile, that, if handled wisely and cautiously, would pro shy;vide steady light for weeks.

  No one, however, expected wisdom and caution from a drunken reveler. Already Peter Bomberus, commander of the city militia, had been called to extinguish three fires by the city walls.

  Two had been simple wooden lean-tos-the kind of makeshift dwellings that followed the festivals from Hylo to Balifor. But the third was different: a permanent dwelling, hard by the School of the Games, the dry wooden rafters and interiors ignit shy;ing almost by themselves-a careless spark from a torch, perhaps, or godslight discarded by a drunken reveler.

  By the time the commander reached the building, black smoke billowed from a marble husk, and the red flames joined with the red lamps of the Istarian night to create a harsh, hellish light. Two hours of frenzied work had quenched the spreading, danger shy;ous fire, but the building still smoldered at mid shy;night, the woodwork inside glowing faintly as the interior slowly fell in upon itself. Reckless revelers tossed fireworks into the burst opal windows, and the racket resounded into the dark Istarian morning.

  But Bomberus and his militia arrested no one. By the time the fireworks began, they were far away, bound toward the abandoned High Tower of Sor shy;cery, where yet another fire had erupted-a metal gate ablaze with phosfire.