The Dark Queen by Michael Williams Page A

dreams. But so be it. Would the battle come, or the
     light? One or the other always appeared in his dreams, and he learned from them both, from
     what the battle showed him or the light told him to say. A purple rise, dotted with fir
     trees and blasted vallenwoods, rushed to meet him. Above them, a dozen birds wheeled
     slowly. Hawks? Was Larken's hawk Lucas among them? He called to the birds in his mind;
     they approached, descended. Not hawks. Scavengers. Then it is a battle dream, he thought.
     I shall feel my dreaming in the morning run, in new soreness and stretching. But I shall
     win this battle as I win them all. Larken will finally sing of how I
    defeated Istar in desert, in grasslands ... Even in dreams. He had no time to savor the
     prospects. Suddenly the rise fell away, as though the earth itself had collapsed beneath
     him. Fordus leapt over a spinning, white-hot void and landed stiffly and unsteadily at the
     crumbling edge of a bluff. A solitary Istarian warrior instantly appeared before hima
     golden man, hooded and helmed, his shield adorned with seven alabaster spires, his broad
     shoulders draped with a black tunic. Well, then, Fordus thought. He reached for the axe at
     his belt. It was not there. For a moment, fear surged through him, dreamlike and obscure,
     then he brushed it aside with a laugh. After all, it is a dream. What is the worst that
     can happen? Across the arid, level ground, in the wail of a hot wind, the warrior beckoned
     slowly, trumpeting a challenge in an inhuman tongue. His seven-spired shield glittered
     ever more brightly until the dream was swallowed by its light. Then shadow returned, and
     the man stood closer, alone and unarmed, as though he had cast aside his weaponry out of
     contempt. Now he assumed a wrestler's stance: a low, feline crouch, fingers spread like
     claws. With long strides, moving so slowly it seemed that he waded through waist-high
     sand, Fordus closed with the warrior. They collided to the sound of distant thunder. The
     arms of the enemy were cold and metallic, hard and heavy as bronze. The Istarian warrior
     spun about with a roar, hurling Fordus over his head. Whooping in delight, Fordus released
     his grip at the height of the violent arc, and somersaulting through the air, landed
     lightly on the sun-scorched ledge some distance away. Behind him, rocks and dust toppled
     into a bottomless crevasse. It is my dream. I can master it. The warrior now bristled with
     six waving arms like an angry burnished insect, like a living statue of some barbarian
     harvest god. The sunlight danced like flame on his helmet. It is my dream ... Fordus
     hurtled toward the warrior, who cried out and braced himself for the impact. This
     collision was totally silent, as though all sound had fled at the force of the impact. The
     golden warrior rocked on his heels but kept his balance, lifting the struggling Fordus off
     the ground, four of the arms drawing him closer . .. Fordus heard the hissing, smelled the
     fetid breath of his adversary. Fascinated, distracted, he gazed into the warrior's eyes.
     Lidless and lifeless. Reptilian, the vertical slits in the heart of the eyes opening like
     a parted curtain, to reveal a dark nothingness, a deep and abiding void ... Fordus shook
     his head, wrestled the enemy's multiple grasp, his own sudden drowsiness and lack of
     resistance, the growing trust that it Would not be so bad, this defeat, that it would all
     go for the better if he gave up the struggling ... if he gave in ... and looked into the
     curtained eyes that opened to perpetual blackness. Fordus bolted upright, stifling a cry.
     His head rang with pain, and his skin felt raw and tender. His arms ached, the muscles
     cramping like they'd been gripped in the jaws of some monstrous, relentless creature. But
     he was safe atop the Red Plateau. Not twenty yards away, the young sentry still snored at
     his post. Fordus leapt to