Read The Dark Queen for Free Online Page B

about.
    As always, the landscape grew red and took on a fiery quality. Molten, volcanic, it
     bubbled and boiled with a strange, unnatural vigor. In his dream, For-dus followed the
     narrow, arching bridge above the roiling lava flats, and at the other end of the bridge a
     dark cloud hovered, like an opening into the void.
    Then the dark cloud unfolded. Black wings took shape in the shadows, and the cloud rolled
     and kneaded like the hot lake below. Now the enormous black bird perched on the narrow
     bridge, turning its dirty, featherless head to regard him curiously, eagerly.
    I name you Firesoul, the creature pronounced, its words inaudible, yet strangely felt
     along the
    muscle and tendon of Fordus's arm. He did not hear the voice as much as touch it. “But I
     am Fordus,” he said. He always said that. Fordus is a Water Prophet, murmured the shadowy
     bird, steam rising from its matted pinions. Fordus is a nomad, a vagrant. But Fordus
     Firesoul... Fordus smiled in his sleep. He loved this part of the dream. Fordus Firesoul
     is the breaker of armies, the strong arm of the desert. The rightful heir to marbled
     Istar. The condor flapped its wings, and hot fetid air, heavy with the strong smell of
     creosote and sulfur and carrion, coursed over the bridge. Claim your own, Fordus Firesoul,
     it murmured, and Fordus felt the words in the tips of his fingers. Claim your inheritance.
     My inheritance? Claim Istar, commanded the bird. There you will find the source of your
     being. You will find your origins. And you will discover who you really are. In the dark
     of early morning, Fordus awoke reassured, satisfied. He lay amid the rubble atop the Red
     Plateau, the highest point in the Istarian desert, as the eastern stars swam over him. He
     was alone except for a solitary guard, a Que-Nara spearman who drowsed, in untroubled
     oblivion, at his post. Fordus let the man sleep in peace. The sentry had earned that much.
     So had all the rebel army. The short battle, despite the Istarian surrender, had exhausted
     them all, had claimed the lives of many. They had carried threescore from the fields, and
     for others, whose wounds were too great, they left blessings, full waterskins, and a death
     watch of loved ones. Stormlight had come to him at sunset with the tidings. Two hundred
     and six rebels lay dead in the grasslands. “Istar can lose three thousand,” Stormlight
     warned him. “And three thousand again. What does the Kingpriest care for the wailing of
     widows? But two hundred is a grievous loss for us.” Fordus sat up, draping his long,
     powerful arms over his knees. The distant planets of fiery Sirrion and blue Reorx slowly
     converged over the tipped cup of Solinari, the white moon. He wished he could read the
     augury of stars, but the sky was opaque to him, for all its beauty. Who knew the future
     from the shifting heavens? Not even Northstar, the tribe navigator. And the mysterious
     glyphs Fordus had found in the kanaji, the ancient symbols that resonated in his thoughts
     and stirred him to the strange poetry . . . that stirred the armies in turn? Well, the
     glyphs had not returned. The wind had passed over the fine, soft sand, and the kanaji's
     floor had remained faceless, unreadable once more. Four hundred Que-Nara awaited his
     return from battle, pitching camp beneath the Red Plateau at the edge of the Tears of
     Mishakal. Though their gods had told them not to follow him out of the desert, that
     invasions and wars of aggression were iniquitous and wicked, they waited nonetheless. No
     one deserted Fordus Firesoul. They would stand beside him in the sands when the time came,
     braving Istar, Solamnia ... ... the gods themselves ... ... only if he, Fordus Firesoul,
     asked them to. He thought of ungainly Larken, lovely beneath the grit and rawness, of her
     mute, unquestioning devotion. Then there was Stormlight, to whom he had given a measure of