The bird cried out, again and again. "

It was less than an hour before Fordus reached the site of the eruptions. Larken and Stormlight fol shy;lowed him/and Northstar and the woman Tanila. Gormion and a dozen of her bandits were not far behind.

What they saw was a desert scarred unnaturally by fissures and craters and chasms, glazed over with a steaming, muddy caul. It looked like a country imagined from heat and light and attendant fire. Shadows of indignant desert birds reeled far over shy;head, and at the edges of the spreading lava the sand crackled, melted, and added to the rising flood.

For a moment, the handful of rebels fell silent. For-dus, his injury forgotten, took one firm step toward the smoldering landscape. Stormlight walked to his side, took his arm, and held him back.

Slowly, the sand at the center of the great wound hardened to dark crystal.

"What is it?" Gormion hissed, her hand slipping absurdly to the hilt of her dagger.

She received no answer. Neither Plainsman nor Prophet nor bard could decipher this mystery.

Yet one among them knew. One who veiled her knowledge behind expressionless amber eyes.

There were other gods in the Abyss, just as eager as Takhisis to enter the world and turn the tide of history to their liking. Zeboim had followed Takhisis once, and Morgion-the tempests in coastal waters and the plagues borne out of the marshes were testa shy;ment to their ingenuity-but they lacked the power to stay more than minutes, more than an hour at most.

But when the sand glazed and melted that day in the Istarian desert, spreading slowly toward the Plainsman encampment beneath the Red Plateau and destroying everything in its path, it was prelude to something far greater, far more disruptive. Takhi shy;sis recognized that at once. Another of her kind-a strong one with powers to rival her own-had dis shy;covered her secret and followed her through the crystalline gap between worlds.

And she knew who he was.

"What is it?" Gormion asked again, more insis shy;tently this time as the molten sand slowly swal shy;lowed the dunes.

"Volcano," Stormlight replied tersely, his eyes never leaving the glowing swirl of glass. "I've seen them before. Long ago, from the foothills of Tho-radin. We had best move the camp, and quickly."

Gormion was more than ready to comply. Her sil shy;ver jewelry rattled as she waved wildly at her bandit followers, whistling and motioning them back toward the camp. Fordus and Stormlight made ready to follow, but suddenly, as they turned toward the Red Plateau, they were startled by a loud, unearthly screech.

Tanila lay in the path of the flowing slag, writhing and clutching her ankle.

Without thinking, Stormlight raced toward the fallen woman. In the sand his footing was unsteady, and once, nightmarishly, he stumbled and fell, brac shy;ing himself on his hands not a foot from the glow shy;ing, blistering pool.

He felt the heat like a hundred suns, and his eyes, blinked and smarted.

With a cry, he closed the milky lucerna, pushed himself away from the slag, and staggered to Tanila, slipping his arm about her waist and dragging her blindly toward the safer crest of the nearest dune. She felt incredibly heavy, resistant in his grasp. With a desperate heave, he drew her to safety, toppled over the far side of the dune, and lay breathless, facedown in the sand. Around him a chaos of sounds eddied and swirled-the cries of the bandits, North-star's voice carried on a white-hot wind.

He could not believe Tanila's heaviness, how hard and brittle her body had felt in his hands. It was as though the slag had covered her and cooled, turning her to stone, to glass. He turned toward her, incredu shy;lous, longing to touch her again.

Her foot was missing, the ankle snapped and severed like hewn stone, no blood flowing from the wound. Stormlight gaped at the woman.

She returned his stare coldly.

A shout from Fordus disrupted his thoughts.

He sprang to his feet, and the earth split apart beneath him.

Kneeling in a daze at the edge of the slag, Storm-light watched the creature rise out of the fissured glaze, its broad wings glittering with spark and ash.

Fordus rushed out of the smoke, Northstar and two of the bandits beside him, as the creature took shape out of fire and cloud: an enormous hook-billed bird-its shape that of a condor or vulture, its naked head blistered and ugly, its black eyes glitter shy;ing like gems.

Fordus stopped in his tracks, dumbfounded, as the bird wheeled above the desert, shrieking and smoldering. Below, the bandits hurled axe and spear and imprecation, but all bounced harmlessly off the rough skin of the bird, who pivoted slowly, ponder shy;ously, as though only recently come to its own body.

With another cry, the creature swooped awk shy;wardly. Its attack was predictable and slow, its sharp beak clattering against the shield of one of the bandit spearmen, a young man from Kharolis named Ingaard. Ingaard feinted and laughed, and the bird staggered back, preparing to lunge again.

With a defiant cry, Ingaard braced himself to hurl his weapon, but suddenly, as though the whole desert had fallen under a terrible, malign enchant shy;ment, the lad's feet slipped in the tumbling sand, and he fell on his back, loosing the grip on his spear. The condor's beak crashed against his uplifted shield, again and again until the tough hide tore and the great bird snatched Ingaard into the air, rending his flesh and hurling him into the molten slag.

The other bandits turned and fled, screaming.

Slowly the creature pivoted toward Tanila, its eyes glowing red and smoke rising from its dark, angular feathers. Again, it fanned its wings, and the hot fetid air swirled like a hurricane around the Plainsmen.

Tanila, enraged, lost her balance in the eddying sand, but Stormlight alertly stepped between her and the monster, raising the bronze buckler of one of the fallen bandits. With a shriek, the condor lunged toward Stormlight, lightning blazing from its black, depthless eyes.

The bolts flickered and danced around the elf, who braced himself as the smoldering bird struck him, stopping the searching claws with the little shield and pushing the monster back and away. There was a shattering sound, like porcelain or glass, and the great bird groaned and drew his head back, his long neck arched like a scorpion's tail.

For a moment the desert was silent, as though sound itself had passed through the fissures and vanished. Elf and monster faced one another in a desolation of sand and rising steam.

"Kill him!" Tanila hissed.

And then, with a cry that was no doubt heard at the gates of Istar, the condor lurched after Storm shy;light. The elf stepped back, then lost his balance as the great beast cleared the edge of the slag, for a moment grotesquely in flight above the desert. With another deafening cry the condor swooped, falling upon Stormlight and driving him to the ground amid a gauntlet of slashing talons.

Larken whistled for her hawk and snatched her drumhammer from her belt. Deftly stepping over a widening fissure, she raced toward higher, more solid ground, rifling her memory for a powerful music.

Stormlight fell to his knees, bent backward by the weight of the creature. The condor hovered tri shy;umphantly over the struggling elf, its claws digging at his rib cage, its neck arched for a final, fatal strike.

Stormlight cried out and glanced beseechingly toward Fordus …

Who was about other business entirely.

* * * * *

Fordus stood on a narrow natural bridge of rock and dried earth left by the lake of molten sand that bubbled and swirled on the desert plain. It was a thin strip of solid ground, untouched by the fire and magma, and narrowing slowly as the hot current ate against its foundations.