"Those were the times," he said, the song ended and the drum silent after a last, fading roll. "The times and the great adventures. When the shape of the story was larger than the lives of men.

"We have fallen on meaner times, Larken. The great villains are gone, and the great heroes. Who will stand against me now?"

They both fell silent as the rising red moon streaked the tents of the Plainsmen. Overhead, in a last circling- flight before evening, Lucas called and banked in the light westering sun, amber rays still dancing over the tips of his wings like mastfire.

"Josef Monoculus was a fool," Fordus declared. "So are all the Istarian generals, all the fabled and fine Solamnic commanders. But perhaps the King-priest …"

He propped himself on his elbows, stared eagerly at Larken.

"Perhaps the Kingpriest!" he said again. "For he is a mystery who stands at the head of a great army. He is not only a man-he is a great and wondrous idea.

"And he speaks with the gods, as do I. Or so the starians say."

Fordus stroked his red beard thoughtfully.

"I pray that he is worthy of me. A man must have great enemies when his friends are small. If he has neither enemy nor friend to match his noble spirit, he is straitened, imprisoned. Forced to grow crooked in confinement.

"Without a worthy enemy, the world is a damnable wasteland."

For a long time he scanned the darkening camp below, and the sun sank from view, and only the red moon rode in the desert sky.

Chapter 3

By day Fordus's world was barren, sun-beaten, a country of exotic colors-of red and black rock and ochre earth and of hazy white salt flats, their crystals rising over the lifeless landscape like frozen, abstract trees. It was a country of extremes and sharp edges, of large sufferings and small deaths.

It was the desert night that Fordus loved most, especially when red Lunitari rode high overhead. In the darkness, the desert was transformed. The deso shy;late landscape deepened with shadows, the salt flats glittered like discarded gems, and strange, nocturnal creatures ventured out of the dried arroyos. The air became temperate, almost cool, and sometimes a stray wind coursed over the dunes, bearing in its wake the faint whiff of cedar from Silvanesti or salt from the seas south of Balifor, snaking over the flats and the dry arroyos as though seeking water, or a body into which it could breathe its distant life.

The night sands were Fordus's refuge and his school, his peace and his nourishment. And so, after every victory, he returned to them.

But this time he returned in doubt and double-mindedness. His long robe wrapped around him, he dreamed. This night it was the lava dream-vivid and long known to him-the same dream that had first come to him at the edge of the Tears of Mishakal a year ago.

This dream had exalted him, lifted him from a destiny of water prophecy, a station of more impor shy;tance than he'd ever dreamed or sought, and made him king of the desert.

The dream came as it always did-every detail the same as it had been the first time. And his response, as well, was the same, as though he acted in an ancient ritual play, performing an eternal seasonal role: Lord Winter, perhaps, or Branchala in the intri shy;cate elf-dramas Stormlight had told him about.

As always, the landscape grew red and took on a fiery quality. Molten, volcanic, it bubbled and boiled with a strange, unnatural vigor. In his dream, For-dus followed the narrow, arching bridge above the roiling lava flats, and at the other end of the bridge a dark cloud hovered, like an opening into the void.

Then the dark cloud unfolded. Black wings took shape in the shadows, and the cloud rolled and kneaded like the hot lake below.

Now the enormous black bird perched on the nar shy;row bridge, turning its dirty, featherless head to regard him curiously, eagerly.

I name you Firesoul, the creature pronounced, its words inaudible, yet strangely felt along the muscle and tendon of Fordus's arm. He did not hear the voice as much as touch it.

"But I am Fordus," he said. He always said that.

Fordus is a Water Prophet, murmured the shadowy bird, steam rising from its matted pinions. Fordus is a nomad, a vagrant.

But Fordus Firesoul…

Fordus smiled in his sleep. He loved this part of the dream.

Fordus Firesoul is the breaker of armies, the strong arm of the desert. The rightful heir to marbled Istar.

The condor flapped its wings, and hot fetid air, heavy with the strong smell of creosote and sulfur and carrion, coursed over the bridge.

Claim your own, Fordus Firesoul, it murmured, and Fordus felt the words in the tips of his fingers.

Claim your inheritance.

My inheritance?

Claim Istar, commanded the bird. There you will find the source of your being. You will find your origins. And you will discover who you really are.

In the dark of early morning, Fordus awoke reas shy;sured, satisfied. He lay amid the rubble atop the Red Plateau, the highest point in the Istarian desert, as the eastern stars swam over him. He was alone except for a solitary guard, a Que-Nara spearman who drowsed, in untroubled oblivion, at his post.

Fordus let the man sleep in peace. The sentry had earned that much.

So had all the rebel army.

The short battle, despite the Istarian surrender, had exhausted them all, had claimed the lives of many. They had carried threescore from the fields, and for others, whose wounds were too great, they left blessings, full waterskins, and a death watch of loved ones.

Stormlight had come to him at sunset with the tid shy;ings. Two hundred and six rebels lay dead in the grasslands.

"Istar can lose three thousand," Stormlight warned him. "And three thousand again. What does the Kingpriest care for the wailing of widows? But two hundred is a grievous loss for us."

Fordus sat up, draping his long, powerful arms over his knees. The distant planets of fiery Sirrion and blue Reorx slowly converged over the tipped cup of Solinari, the white moon. He wished he could read the augury of stars, but the sky was opaque to him, for all its beauty.

Who knew the future from the shifting heavens? Not even Northstar, the tribe navigator.

And the mysterious glyphs Fordus had found in the kanaji, the ancient symbols that resonated in his thoughts and stirred him to the strange poetry . . . that stirred the armies in turn?

Well, the glyphs had not returned. The wind had passed over the fine, soft sand, and the kanaji's floor had remained faceless, unreadable once more.

Four hundred Que-Nara awaited his return from battle, pitching camp beneath the Red Plateau at the edge of the Tears of Mishakal. Though their gods had told them not to follow him out of the desert, that invasions and wars of aggression were iniqui shy;tous and wicked, they waited nonetheless. No one deserted Fordus Firesoul.

They would stand beside him in the sands when the time came, braving Istar, Solamnia …

… the gods themselves …

… only if he, Fordus Firesoul, asked them to.

He thought of ungainly Larken, lovely beneath the grit and rawness, of her mute, unquestioning devotion. Then there was Stormlight, to whom he had given a measure of importance, and Northstar, whose confusion he had calmed.

He felt a strange emptiness as he stood above the rebel watchfires-the barbarian blazes interspersed amid the muted, efficient glow from the Plainsman camps like diffracted light on the face of a polished gemstone.

They would follow him, bandit and Plainsman both. But where would he lead, if the sands told him nothing?

* * * * *

Throughout her childhood, Larken had scavenged at the edge of the camps, companion to the dogs and birds of the Que-Nara hunters, able to imitate any sound she heard, outcast because of her freakish col shy;oration and her constant vocal disturbances.