The Dark Queen Read Free

an explosion of
     fragmented light, the goddess regath-ered, tried again. 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 thousand years. Godsblood indeed. That, too, she
     would put into the hands of the pliable 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 eventsCataclysmic events, she thought, with a sinister
     smilewould rise amazingly out of the Kingpriest's droning, everyday pol- 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- monya few words changed, along with a powerful
     magic, and most of all, a fostered, vaunting pridewould 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 homeon 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 freedom,”
     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 thrumming 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.
     Scavenging 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 fighterÇlse why the great threat to her plans? But there
     was more. There had to be more. The past denied her, Takhisis rummaged the present 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