pausing meaningfully, "there are those of us … secretly loyal to Istar. Those whose future is tied intimately to the fortunes of the Kingpriest." • The Istarians exchanged a skeptical glance and a curled smile.

"I tell you, their commander is missing," the informer insisted. " 'Tis now, or 'tis a long and bloody war, I tell you. I offer you a great gift!"

The officer considered this ultimatum. A dozen miles to the north, the defeated Istarian army huddled against the outer walls of the city, awaiting reinforcements recalled posthaste from their stations along the Thoradin border. Until relief arrived, the decimated remnants of Istar's pride crouched ner shy;vously at their campsites, imagining rebels in the shadows of rocks, in the moonlit tilt of the grass.

No. Though something about the informer's words edged on the truth, the time to attack was not now.

And yet. ..

Accustomed to quick, uncompromised decision, the young Istarian officer resolved the issue at once. He would send this veiled informer packing, then follow at a distance.

"What you advise is impossible," he said.

The man scowled. "And why?"

"I owe you no explanation."

"You already regret your decision," the informer growled, pointing a pale, almost translucent finger at the two men on horseback.

The officer did not reply, his gaze on the distant plateau. Out there, if the informer spoke the truth, hundreds of rebels camped by fires carefully banked and concealed so that their collected light would not lift the purple shadows on the horizon. "After all," he finally said, "how do we know that you are not sent to lure us into even greater troubles? Perhaps you are Fordus himself!" He laughed mockingly.

Angrily, the informer turned away, casting a last venomous glance over his shoulder. He moved quickly and silently back into the desert, a dark shape passing over the moonlit sands. The cavalry shy;men sat silently atop their horses until, on a dune at the farthest reaches of sight, the informer stopped and lifted his arms to the cloudy heavens.

"Dramatic sort, ain't he, sir?" the sergeant asked with a chuckle.

There was no answer.

For a long, idle moment, the sergeant watched the horizon. "Shall we follow him, sir?" he asked, turn shy;ing slowly toward the younger man.

Who had vanished entirely.

The officer's mare stood wide-eyed and trem shy;bling, black powder tumbling from her saddle, pool shy;ing on the ground in a murky pyramid, rising with a horrifying symmetry as though it lay in the bottom of a bewitched hourglass.

A bronze Istarian breastplate rocked pitifully on the hard ground, a helmet and a pair of white gloves not a dozen feet away.

Inanely, the sergeant reached for his sword.

A lone nightbird wheeled above, the moonlight silver on its extended wings.

Poison. Delicious poison.

The venom of ten thousand years flowed through the Dark Queen as, in her faceted, crystalline body, she stalked across the desert's edge toward the dis shy;tant fires of the Plainsmen.

She thought of the dead cavalryman with glee and relish.

Such to all, Plainsman or Istarian, who crossed her purposes. Especially the one who escaped her springjaw minion.

Such to the gods themselves who stood in her way.

In the starlit dome of the desert sky, the son of the goddess tilted into view, still invisible to the mun shy;dane eye-to human and elf, to dwarf and kender. Even the most powerful sorceries would strain to locate the black moon, for Nuitari awaited his time, eluding eye and glass and augury, the deluded fore shy;casts of Istarian astrologers.

But Takhisis could see him, of course, as he glided high overhead, obscuring bright Sirrion and Shinare in his passage.

Her son. Her dark pride.

From his birth, Nuitari had been the wedge between her and her consort, the black incident in the Age of Starbirth that drove apart Takhisis and Sargonnas before the world began.

Oh, I won that battle at the waking of time, Takhi shy;sis thought. And I shall win all battles hence.

The dark moon had been her oath, her promise to the other gods. To seal their agreement to never again make war on the face of the planet, each fam shy;ily of gods had agreed to create a child who would become blood-brother to the children created by the other families. Bound in kinship and in covenant, they would bless the world of Krynn with magic.

The silver child of Paladine and Mishakal, bright Solinari, was the first to ascend into the heavens. This eldest child showered forth a warm, beneficent magic, and the people of Paladine, the highborn elves, had lifted their arms to the descending moon shy;light. And the humans, the Youngest Born, had lifted their arms as well to the red light of Lunitari, the child born of Gilean the Book, chief god of the neu shy;tral pantheon.

Both of them sailed through the heavens now, aloft in an egg of silver and an egg of scarlet. When they hatched, the moons-husks of the gods, the ancient philosophers would call them-sailed through the skies of Krynn as refuge and home for the godlings …

And, in the binding age of the Kingpriest, their prisons.

But this was long before Istar, long before the Age of Might.

In the void above the whirling planet, Takhisis and Sargonnas had created the child. Their coupling was joyless, loveless, for already both gods had fallen away from one another into the dark abyss of themselves. In a dark cloud above the swelling Courrain, the goddess had overwhelmed her con shy;sort with a powerful magic, and forced Sargonnas to bear the child.

For a day and a night, the great scavenging god had lingered in the cloud of steam and volcanic ash, the miasma hovering sullenly over the ocean sur shy;face. Takhisis, watchful in her strange motherhood, circled the cloud and waited, as deafening cries of labor and rage burst forth from the eddying dark shy;ness.

For a day and a night and another day, she circled and waited, her hidden consort bellowing and vow shy;ing vengeance.

"Let it come," Takhisis taunted. "Oh, let your worst return to me, Sargonnas. I shall forego the pain and the labor, and when you have fulfilled your part…

"The spirit of the child will be mine alone."

At sunset on the second day, as the ocean waters flamed with the setting sun, the golden egg of the Condor sailed from the cloud.

The third moon. Nuitari the gold.

She remembered it well. How the great Condor, steaming and reeking with volcanic fire, had circled over the golden egg, menacing and boding.

"No, Takhisis!" Sargonnas had challenged, for the first time defying her, setting his contemptible, smoldering form against her will and desire. "I have borne this thing through magic and darkness and searing pain! I shall foster it, and it will be my emis shy;sary in the night sky of Krynn."

She had not expected the rage that rose up and nearly choked her. The eastern sands of the Ansalon coastline, those rocky beaches that would in time become Mithas and Kothas, islands of minotaurs, blackened in the heat of her passing wings as she swooped and circled the despicable rebel, the trai shy;torous god and his bright, golden trophy.

"Nuitari is mine!" she shrieked in reply, and the Worldscap Mountains erupted with the first volca shy;noes. "Mine, do you hear?" Lightning riddled the evening sky, and for the first time the forest crack shy;led, struck by the kindling heat from the heavens. "Or I shall destroy the thing. Shell and godling and all!"

The two gods circled the golden oval, the black batwings of Takhisis whirling in narrowing circles about the matted, smoking feathers of the scavenger, who fanned the ocean air with the stench of carrion.

"You would not destroy the godling," Sargonnas croaked, fire and sunlight brindling over his mottled apterium. "Not when you could master him!"