Then suddenly she found herself above him, and dove, and he was there, turning his ruddy face, his lidless eyes wide in astonishment and terror as she crashed into him like a merciless black comet.

He exploded from the power of her assault, shat shy;tering into a hundred thousand shards and frag shy;ments, which squeaked and twittered as they scattered in aimless flight through the void.

It would take him a century to reassemble.

Now, as she remembered the moment, her rage subsided. Or rather, it turned back to the world, to the Plainsmen who ranged the fringes of the desert in clear defiance of her Istar, her Kingpriest, her plans for the Cataclysm.

This Fordus had shown himself well nigh indestructible. Neither the desert nor its creatures, the Istarians nor Sargonnas's fire and clumsiness had had enough power to bring down this man.

Yet, he was suggestible. His ancestry weakened him. Which was why Takhisis had come to the man in his dreams, breathing lies and nonsense about his great and far-reaching destiny.

He was ambitious enough to believe anything.

Takhisis purred contentedly.

She had lingered awhile in the Plainsman's dreams, burrowing deeper and deeper into the recesses of his memory, past the layers of adoles shy;cence, of childhood, past the time he was brought to the desert's edge, in secrecy and in night.

His mother was a slave girl, an attendant in the Kingpriest's Tower. She learned that, easily.

Now, more importantly, Takhisis knew his father. And there is great power in knowledge, great free shy;dom. She would use that knowledge to destroy him.

Now the Prophet was rising from sleep. Fordus lay in a pool of sweat, his breathing easy and his fever broken. But his spiked golden tore tightened ever so slightly upon his wasted neck. The ends then welded in a silent, seamless joining, symbol of a new alliance that could never be broken.

Fordus would waken with an altered heart.

She would leave the final, brutal work to her earthly minions, when time and opportunity con shy;verged.

When the moment came, the Prophet would beg for oblivion.

In the evening of the tenth day, when the Water Prophet opened his eyes, only a handful of the faithful were left on the plateau. Kneeling beside him, Northstar offered him water.

"I have dreamt strangely," Fordus announced after a long drink, a new sound in his voice. His eyes were bright and sunk deeply into their sockets from the ten-day fast of his sleep.

Northstar and Stormlight bent over him, and Larken, jubilant, ceased her drumming.

"And I have seen signs and wonders in my dream," he concluded, sitting up painfully. "Assemble the people for a new word."

Larken sounded the gathering call on her drum. Its message echoed from the heights of the Red Plateau, borne on the shouts and calls of the sentries, passed from encampment to encampment, from the white tents of the Que-Nara to the red of Gormion's bandits. They came in throngs, from the battle lead shy;ers and shamans and Namers down to the youngest child, for Larken's drum was a powerful summons.

When the gathering drum sounded, the gods were ready to speak.

Stormlight waited with the rest of the company as Fordus stood weakly in the midst of the jostling crowd. Fathers lifted children onto their shoulders to better see the Prophet, and the rumor circulated among the awestruck Que-Nara that Fordus had passed through the land of the dead and come back with the deepest prophecy of all. Leaning on North-star's shoulder, the blood on his mending side caked and dried as though he might brush away the wound, Fordus trained his sea-blue eyes toward the horizon.

"My dream has spoken to me," the Prophet pro shy;claimed. "Istar is burning. The fire has come, and the world has opened."

A murmur spread through the crowd, and a thousand eyes turned to Stormlight, who stepped aside, waiting for the lightning to strike as it always struck, for Fordus's obscure poetry to become clear.

Quickly, with the confidence born of long experi shy;ence, he isolated the symbols from the Prophet's speech.

Fire. A burning city. The crack in the world.

As he felt the words stirring, felt them rise from that mysterious source in the depths of his spirit, suddenly he heard an excited rumble from the crowd.

Stormlight's unspoken words froze in his throat.

"Hear the word of the Prophet!" Fordus pro shy;claimed, blue eyes scanning the encircling faces. "The meaning of my dream has come to me, and to me alone. No longer do I need interpreter!"

Stormlight shivered with a sharp intake of breath. His power, his position, had been usurped.

"For I ljiave passed through the fire and the fever," Fordus continued, his hands raised aloft, "and I have walked on the margins of shadows and looked over into the places from which no man returns."

Uncertainly, with a sidelong glance at Stormlight, Larken beat the drum once, twice.

"My dream has told me that Istar is burning. The fire that will destroy the city has not yet been kindled, but we are the ones who will light it."

Slowly, the circle of people surrounding Storm shy;light widened and dispersed, as the Plainsmen turned in rapt attention toward Fordus. Dumb shy;struck, the elf watched in befuddlement as Larken, too, turned toward the Water Prophet, storing his words for a song.

"Rest tonight," Fordus said softly, his eyes turned north, to where the red moon and the white sat low on the horizon. The Namers and shamans who circled

him strained to hear his words, caught them, and passed them to the Plainsmen and bandits who waited behind them, so that the message spread like brushfire over the listening crowd. "Rest tonight, for tomorrow we march. We march on Istar, and there will not be peace until the city is mine."

Chapter 15

Stormlight decided to speak against Fordus's prophecy. Standing before the assembled camps, his voice rang loud and true and assured, as it had on a hundred occasions before, when he had helped to guide the Que-Nara through long, waterless stretches of the desert in search of oases, of underground pools, of arroyos suddenly and strangely filled by an outburst of subterranean springs.

In the years of drought his voice had been rain, so the people were inclined to listen.

"I have heard the prophecy of Fordus Firesoul," he began, "and I believe his dream has misguided him. Where before have we found the water, and looked in the sand for the approach of Istar, for other dangers and for enemies? Speak, if you know."

The sea of faces was still and quiet. They knew, of course, of the kanaji pit-that there was a magic within the crumbling, sand-swallowed walls that had lasted an age or more. They knew that Fordus entered the pit to seek visions and wisdom. They knew something of the glyphs, and all believed that the gods sent messages through them to the Prophet. But they did not know how. "In all those times," Stormlight continued, "I have stood beside the Water Prophet. I have seen the birth of the visions, and when he has spoken, I have spo shy;ken after him. His words were cloudy, but I have made them plain so that you may understand them. Always we have worked together-the Storm of Prophecy and the Stormlight. We have found water, and when we needed to elude the slavers, they went home with their collars empty. In these wars of liber shy;ation, we have found Istar and the unprotected flanks of the Kingpriest's army."

"Why did the wars start, Stormlight?" Fordus asked softly, and all eyes turned to the Prophet, all ears awaited his answer. "Was it in the kanaji that the gods told me to move against Istar? No, I tell you. This vision came to me in a dream. I alone was its Prophet and interpreter. The Namers and the shamans all know that I speak the truth."