"Don't you admit the . . . family resemblance?" asked Tamex, a sinister glee in his voice. "Why, the two of you are exactly alike!"

He gestured to the Kingpriest, who had fallen to his knees, moaning and shaking his head.

"You, sir," Tamex said, "are nought but a backwa shy;ter king. A ruler of ghosts and little fictions. And you, Fordus Firesoul…"

His amber eyes fixed Fordus once again.

"You are as much a tyrant as the man you sought to overthrow. I knew you always had it in you. In all your talk of liberation, you have only shackled, only oppressed!

"Yes, the two of you are identical! And you are both my creatures!"

With a cry, Fordus leapt for Tamex, but the crystal warrior tumbled into dust and swirled in a blinding cloud through the room. The dust rose, glittering and eddying, and flashed suddenly, painfully, into the Prophet's eyes.

Blinded, Fordus fell to the hard stone floor, grop shy;ing for his dropped dagger, for anything. Slowly the Kingpriest approached the helpless rebel.

"Forgive me," the Kingpriest murmured ironi shy;cally, as delicately he touched the collar at Fordus's neck, removing the opals with a whispered spell. He stalked from the room as the golden tore around the Prophet's neck began to sparkle, tighten, compress.

Blute lightning played over the glittering metal, whichVontracted with a slow, inexorable motion. Fordus, writhing and gasping, clutched savagely at the strangling collar, tried to cry out. He fell face first to the floor, stirring the unswept dust with his last, desperate thrashing. Slowly, with a choking cry, he sank into a black, abiding darkness, where the army of the dead opened their ranks to receive him. His last breath eddied on the dusty floor of the Great Tower of Istar.

At the door, the Kingpriest turned, looking guiltily back into the rooni He whispered a last incantation, waving his hand over the dead Prophet, and the body of his son, now unprotected, hardened, blanched, and crumbled quickly into sand.

"I could not have done otherwise," he declared, to nothing but theidust and his conscience. "He was found in the salnds of tljie desert,/fhe protective tore I had devised around his neck. Sand and opals were the unsteady ground of his prophecy. Now to sand he returns, but his memory ….

Nor will the world remember, Takhisis replied, min shy;gling the remains of Fordus with the whirlwind that rose and vanished through the chamber window. We will veil it all, y0u and I.

We shall decide what history is. Create it…

Or destroy it.

The Kingpriest reeled, as relief and sorrow and secret ambition warred for mastery in his heart.

Now do my bidding.

"But…" began the Kingpriest, but the last wisp of dust spiraled swiftly out the window, leaving a whisper in its wake.

Prepare for the incantation. The one we planned in the first days.

"But it is too soon . . ." began the Kingpriest, and his protest died in his throat.

Be ruled by me, the window murmured, and the chamber settled into unnatural darkness.

* * * * *

The Prophet was vanquished.

In a chaotic swirl above the Kingpriest's Tower, a faint, reptilian outline coalescing and dissolving in the whirling sand, Takhisis watched and laughed.

Now the Cataclysm was inevitable. Now the world would begin again in chaos; the gods would be readmitted.

And she would await them all.

From her stronghold she could seize them as they tried to enter the plane. Oh, yes, they would all come-good and neutral and evil alike-but her clergy would be there before them, her way estab shy;lished, and the blandishments of their followers would fall on deaf ears.

The age to come would be hers entirely, and last for thousands of years.

All that remained was the Kingpriest's ritual, the binding of her spirit in the glain opals, the gods-blood stones. Then her stay would be permanent.

Never again would she be driven from-Krynn.

How long yet would she wait? A year, perhaps two. The elven miners brought forth an abundance of gems from the dark.

From a dark far deeper than they imagined, Takhi shy;sis thought, and chuckled as her whirlwind moved through the cloudy Istarian sky.

But thoughts of the Lucanesti brought her back to StormlightyThe last of the rebel triad.

She wpmd see to that elf. If only out of thoroughness.

With a shriek, the whirlwind dove into the streets of the city.

* * * * *

The elf reeled and stumbled in the wind. Full of gravel and sand, it encircled him, whirling him about, smothering him in a harsh and stinging flood.

In the heart of the wind, Takhisis swirled and laughed.

Swept along by the bizarre sandstorm, the elf gasped and choked as the salt rushed into his nostrils, down his throat, into his eyes until, blinded, he groped his way across the Tower yards, looking for shelter, for covering, for the lee side to the pummeling wind.

Takhisis laughed again, more harshly as the pitiful creature tried to raise his lucerna against the gritty blast.

His hands clutched stone, mortar. With great effort, he pulled himself against the Tower wall as the wind Shrieked and battered.

Like a fly in a gale he was. Like a straw in a whirl shy;wind.

So fare all who vie with the power of a god.

Takhisis watched contentedly, her low purr rum shy;bling in the air like thunder over Istar as the elf encrusted with sand and stone.

I have vitrified him, she thought. Only a moment more…

Then, from somewhere far below her, imbed shy;ded in the depths of rock and water and earth, arose a murmur, a cry of a thousand voices so deep and remote that only a god's hearing could discern it.

The miners! Takhisis shrieked and hurled hysteri shy;cally against the ancient stone of the tower, sand and salt rattling against the windows. Then with a strange and urgent sighing, she settled on the cobbled streets of Istar, pouring like sand through the cracks of the stones in a sudden and frantic descent to the depths of the earth. The goddess was air and fire, salt and sand and glittering dark light, and as she poured through the crevasses~of the undercity, she forgot her victory, the dead reheL chieftain and his broken, abandoned bard, and the\ elf translated into crusted, dried stone.

* * * * *

Deep in the tunnels beneath the city, Spinel knew that something had changed-that for a moment, and perhaps only for a moment, the chains of the Lucanesti were loosened ever so slightly.

The old elf crouched in the lamplight and whis shy;pered the last of his directions to Tourmalin. The younger elf turned away, and raced with a handful of followers down the deepest incline.

They would leave the mines collapsed in their wake, burying the fabled opals under a hundred foot of rock. It would be decades before anyone-human or elf or even dwarf-could mine them again.

Tourmalin had cleared the rubble of a hundred cave-ins. She knew how the stones fell, how a slip shy;ping shelf of rock, an ill-guided pick, or a miner's spell might collapse the whole spindly arrangement of tunnel and winze and shortwall until the ground above them shuddered as the planet fell in on itself.

Jargoon, younger still, and a band of reckless younglings, would set pick and adze to the new beams supporting five of the six adits to the opal mines.

One lasfentrance would remain, and the Lucanesti would use it, overpower their guards by sheer number.

Then would be the fresh light of moon and stars, and breezes the likes of which Spinel barely remem shy;bered, and the smell of cedar and open water.

With a wakened resolve that bordered on hope, the old elf rose and made for the last of the adits.