Was shattered again.

The stone was impermeable, proof against her priest-bound energies.

But if the smooth, flawless stone were broken . . .

The moisture within it would house her a thou shy;sand years.

Godsblood indeed.

That, too, she would put into the hands of the pli shy;able Kingpriest.

Thirty years in the forming had been Takhisis's plans. Three decades as she drew closer and painfully closer to the moment when disastrous, irretrievable events-Cataclysmic events, she thought, with a sinister smile-would rise amaz shy;ingly out of the Kingpriest's droning, everyday pol shy;icy. It had taken that long to push the city, the continent, the very matter of the world to the edge of a precipice lovely and sheer.

Now she was only five years away, six at most, from that moment when some regular rite or cere shy;mony-a few words changed, along with a power shy;ful magic, and most of all, a fostered, vaunting pride-would collapse the city, the government, the empire, and rend asunder the face of Krynn.

It would be a summoning ritual that would seem harmless and ordinary, perhaps even beneficent to all the clergy by then. But in it, the Kingpriest would chant words that, ten years earlier, he would have found blasphemous, abominable.

He would breathe into the dust of a thousand stones, seeking his dream, his shadow. So that her spirit might move freely in the world long denied her, he would shape her a body from the watery glain dust. And she would be home-on the throne of Krynn, as Istar fell and the world was renewed in chaos.

But all of this would fail, be grievously delayed at best, if the rebels prospered. There Would be no compliant Kingpriest if this bearded Plainsman ever saw his campaign through.

Perhaps no Cataclysm.

How could she have missed him!

Her dark wings fanned the liquid void of the Abyss. Light rushed at her suddenly, as great gaps in the fabric of her prison plane opened briefly, tanta-lizingly on the bright world that Huma and the gods had denied her, and mountains, seas, and deserts rolled under her cold eye.

"There is great power in knowledge, great free shy;dom," Takhisis whispered to herself. Her dark heart yet full of fear, she composed her vast mind to call forth the broken pieces of the Plainsman's history, for in his past, she thought, lay her best weapons against this horrifying future.

The black wind congealed and wavered, and Takhisis spread her wings and rested on its thrum shy;ming current. Scanning the past, searching for the key to this mystery, she saw … . Nothing. His past had been erased.

Sargonnas again.

Oh, she knew the power behind such veil and vanishment.

Quickly the goddess glanced around, her brilliant black eyes flickering over the gloom, the void. Scav shy;enging wings circled at the edge of sight, and a mocking laughter rose from the darkness.

Sargonnas. He wanted to be first as well. But he was a buzzing insect to her, insidious vermin in the barren night.

Takhisis would treat with him later. This red-bearded rebel was more immediate, perhaps more dangerous.

The Plainsman was a hunter, no doubt. They all were. And a fighter-«lse why the great threat to her plans? But there was more. There had to be more.

The past denied her, Takhisis rummaged the pre shy;sent of her new adversary. Scenes of a bright and relentless desert rushed at her. Twice more she brushed away the obscuring wings of Sargonnas. When she bellowed, the rebellious god drew back, tucked into the safety of the void.

She had not even discovered his name. Not yet.

She knew he had some kind of power with words. He spoke, and then the tribe moved, always finding the water they needed in their desert travels. She had watched him as he grew older and changed, his words taking on the colors of war, and his adoptive people gathering to make armies of men who respected him and women who not so secretly wanted him. His enemies-goblin and ogre, Solam-nic and Istarian-fell before him by the thousands. At the end of every battle, there was a new song sung about this hero.

A small blond singer stood ever at his side, unkempt, her beauty masked by dry wind and miles of travel, a shallow flat drum in her hand and a hawk upon her thin arm. Her features were those of the Plainsmen-the high cheekbones, the deep brown eyes with their intelligent fire. Though she was lithe and long-limbed and gracefully formed, she was rough and awkward in movement, as though unaccustomed to the rule of her own body.

She was small, almost elven, and the white-blond hair was odd, freakish among the dark Que-Nara. She was the kind of child they would, during the Age of Dreams, have left exposed to the elements and fates. At their most merciful, they would have left a child such as she with sedentary villagers, where she would live life as a changeling, an oddity, in a humdrum farming hamlet where no one would ever look at her anyway.

But this one was different. Imilus, they called her kind-"gifted outlander." She traveled with the Que-Nara, singing the old songs of their legends, inventing new songs as the stories passed into myth.

There was power in her voice; she could be formi shy;dable …

Takhisis's laughter rumbled viciously in the dark void.

There was history between these two, the hero and the outlander, a subtle energy that surrounded them, creating a space, a distance. The Plainsman ignored the girl's worship and spoke to her sel-domly, foregoing a place beside her at the nightly fires to watch and patrol with his warriors. Occa shy;sionally, he even took other women, indifferent to her obvious heartbreak.

More often he spoke to and fought alongside another: a small Lucanesti male, with the dark braided hair and mottled, opalescent skin of his kind.

This elf was ropy and flexible, a sinewy specimen who would never tend toward extra weight. He wore the leggings and tunic of the Que-Nara, yet his overshirt spoke of his own people-dark blue to ' match the height of the sky, or brown to match the depth of the desert, depending on how you looked at the garment, which way the light caught it.

Another outsider, this elf. And more interesting.

Takhisis chuckled, and the darkness shivered and tilted.

The elf fought without spear or throwing knife or kala. Hands and feet alone were his weaponry-all the protection he thought he would ever need.

Takhisis sighed in relief as the images of these three continued to flicker and dance in the darkness of the Abyss. The opals protected them all, proof against her magic-the tore of the Plainsman, the skin of the elf.

Nonetheless, all of them were outlanders-all treading a very narrow path of acceptance and power in this tribe of clannish, superstitious people. An easy structure to alter, to invade, to break. The pieces of her plan were coming together.

Ah… my fragile, pretty singer, Takhisis cooed to the light-haired girl, your song of Istar's fall at your beloved's hand will never be sung. For he cannot out shy;run me, the little man cannot resist me, and you …

I will shatter your song like glass.

The elf would be easy. Revenge must be what he was after, revenge and freedom for his hostage people.

So it always was for the Lucanesti. In the intricate world of elves, oppression had made them simple, binding them, freeborn and slave alike. She could not destroy them herself-the opalescence of their skin and blood saw to that.

But again and again, the Kingpriest was useful. His mines were filled with the Lucanesti, digging and dying.

Takhisis turned in the great void and laughed low and sweetly. A slight echo of her uncertainty still rang in her ears. She rode the warm, swirling nightwinds of the Abyss through darkness on dark shy;ness, darkness layering darkness until those places where light had fled entirely seemed hazy, almost pale compared to the kind of darkness that sur shy;rounded them-a gloom of the spirit.