Now, fragmented and abstract, he spread through the void like a cloud of locusts, like a monstrous contagion.

There would be a time. He would watch and wait. In her desire to destroy Fordus, Takhisis's attentions would shift elsewhere, and there would be a time for him to strike.

He would precede her into the world. His clerics would build their fortresses of stone and lies. And even if they failed, he would spoil the plans of the Dark Queen.

His mind on vengeance, Sargonnas dropped a thousand miles through the chaos, glittering darkly as he fell like a fiery rain.

Alone in the rena garden, Vaananen stirred the sand over yet another futile message of glyphs.

The druid had done all he could. And the hope that stirred within Vaananen was now the hope of flight. Solitary and recklessly brave, the druid had remained in the city, gathering information and sending it nightly through the white, decorative sands to a distant point in a distant country-infor shy;mation that could save rebel lives, perhaps ensure rebel victory.

Absently Vaananen rubbed his tattooed arm. His efforts had gone unheeded. And now Fordus stood at the outskirts of Istar, and it was time for the druid to save himself.

He'd tied his belongings in a hide bag not much larger than the one he had given Vincus. Three druidic texts, as yet uncopied, took up most of the space. For the last time, in the hopes that somehow Fordus would receive the message, Vaananen scrawled the five glyphs in the sand of the garden, beside the yellowed, rapidly swelling cactus.

Desert's Edge. Sixth Day of Lunitari. No Wind.

The Leopard and the fifth and warning symbol- the sign of the Lady beneath the sign of the Dark Man.

It was all he could do.

The turgid cactus beside him trembled. The plant, usually deep green and healthy, had suffered like this for days. Three nights before, searching for rain, the druid had passed his hand just above its spiny surface and sensed a tremor, a boiling from the cen shy;ter of the cactus, as though it heralded a new and unnatural life.

He had ignored it at first, and now he chided him shy;self for his negligence, searching his memory for a healing chant, for something to soothe and settle the plant.

He began slowly, whispering an old warding from Qualinesti. But a humming sound from the heart of the cactus, unlike any song or language of plants the druid had ever heard, drowned out the chant before he had really begun. Alarmed, Vaananen stepped back from the plant, which swelled more and more rapidly, like a grotesquely inflated waterskin, its shiny yellow surface mottling and browning.

Vaananen realized that the cactus was no longer just a plant, but had been transformed into some shy;thing monstrous and menacing. Run! the druid's instincts told him.

He turned to the lectern to gather the last of his belongings-his copying pens and inks-as the cac shy;tus sizzled and whined, the sound reaching above audibility. Mesmerized, the druid stayed one second too long-and with a shattering boom, the cactus burst open. The room filled with a hot, swarming rain of something fierce and stinging and relent shy;lessly hungry and alive. Vaananen felt searing heat course up his legs and run down his back, and he futilely lifted his arms to shield his face.

Tiny black scorpions covered his shoulders, his neck, the hidden red oak leaf on his wrist.

The druid cried out once, briefly, but the poison that raced through his blood felled him like a cross shy;cut oak. He sank to his knees in the midst of the white sand, with a last painful brush of his hand erasing the final glyphs he had written for Fordus, the message the War Prophet would never read.

I am again surprised, thought Vaananen, sinking into green darkness. How remarkable.

Swarming over the room, their dark mission accomplished, the scorpions turned upon one another until all of them, stung by their own poison, lay as dead as the druid.

The next day, the stunned acolytes found that the sand from the rena garden covered the floor, the bed, the lectern, the dead scorpions, and Vaananen, too, in a thin white layer like a fresh new snowfall. It was pristine, almost beautiful, except for a wide stain of sand hardened into dark volcanic glass, in the center of the garden between three standing stones.

Chapter 21

The gold and gray plains at the edge of lstar stretched out sandy and rock-littered-little more hospitable than the desert in which Fordus had wandered and prophesied and fought for most of his life. There was said to be forest somewhere farther north-a land of thick and luxurious green, dripping with soft autumn rain or the hard, thunderous downpours of an Ansalon spring.

Standing in the midst of his ragged army, for a moment Fordus let himself imagine that northern country. He had never seen a landscape of lush and resplendent green, never walked beside brooks or looked up into a vault of leaf and evergreen. His country was brown and red and ochre, its land shy;marks visible for miles over the level terrain.

Landmarks like the towering city of Istar, carved of marble in the Age of Dreams, the heart of an empire.

Soon to be his. City and empire alike.

What did it matter that so few warriors stood behind him now? What did it matter that his num shy;bers were not the thousands, the hundreds of thou shy;sands, he had dreamed long ago in the Tears of Mishakal and again, a few nights ago, high up on the Red Plateau?

It was not loss, not attrition. It was a weeding out, a culling. Only the finest fighters remained, their worthiness proved by their survival.

For Northstar was still with him, and Rann and Aeleth. Somehow Gormion had wrestled down her natural cowardice, and she was beside him as well, as were threescore of the younger men and women, their sunken eyes alight with adulation, their thoughts upon the liberation of the Plainsmen enslaved in Istar.

Stormlight is dead, Fordus hallucinated. He is a forerunner, a harbinger, the vanguard of an invisible legion.

For the dead would arise and follow Fordus Fire-soul. So he had read in the fissures on this cracked and graven plain.

Oh, he had not told the others yet. Not even Northstar knew. At night Fordus found himself laughing at his little surprise, at the army he knew was coming. For the dead army would fear nothing … especially not death.

He held back a high and rising laughter as he crouched among his lieutenants on the stubbled plains. Milling before the city walls, the Kingpriest's army assembled-soldiers and mercenaries called from all corners of Ansalon.

Because the Kingpriest was afraid now. Fordus's dreams had told him that as well.

It was the time of the Water Prophet, and the War Prophet, and the Prophet King. The Prophet King's army, bound for Istar, set to marching around the lake, rising to Fordus's demand yet again, tired beyond belief and helplessy enthralled. Their torches fanned the shoreline like glowing gems set in the half-circlet of a crown. Fordus would be Istar's new monarch, and their native prince. They needed no songs, no chanting of bards to dismantle the walls of Istar. With his gallant following and the huge invisible army at his back, Fordus would scale the walls himself.

Into a city promised him before the beginning of the world.

* * * * *

Stormlight watched from the encampments, as Fordus organized his few men for the assault.

Just as he had previously seen huge, destructive storms brewing and approaching, he could see this disaster in the making-less than fourscore rebels marching against the assembled might of the city. Left behind were the children and grandfathers and pregnant wives, starved and vulnerable amid smok shy;ing campfires and tattered tents.