The Dark Queen by Michael Williams Page B

his feet, intent on throttling the lad, but his legs shook with
     the dream's exertion, and a cold sweat rushed over him like a desert downpour. Leave the
     lad alone. No sentry could protect him from his dreams. Angrily, he looked up into the
     spacious desert sky, where the starry horns of Kiri-Jolith menaced the Dark Queen's
     constellation. “Where were you in all of this, old bison? Old grandfather?” Fordus asked
     sullenly. He stood up slowly. The heavy gold tore at his neck felt tight. With a last look
     at the sleeping sentry, Fordus began to run.
    Since his early childhood, running had carried him away from deceptions, from confinement
     and complexities. When he sprinted over desert or plain, when the wind took him up and
     carried him over dune and moon-dappled rise, when in the power of his stride he seemed to
     become the wind only then could Fordus think clearly. He could cleanse his mind of the
     mystery of glyph and sand, of the prophecies that passed through him. When he ran, his
     blood pounding in his ears, he was purely, completely free.
    Tonight Fordus outran the wind itself. Suddenly, with a dreamlike swiftness, he found
     himself crossing the dunes. The Red Plateau appeared on the far horizon, and from the
     rebel camp arose a faint array of lights. He crowed with delight and ran even harder
     toward the widest expanse of the desert. The red moonlight bathed the landscape ahead, and
     soon he passed altogether from sight of the plateau, to a point in the desert where the
     hard red ground stretched in all directions, uninterrupted to the edge of the horizon.
    All the while, Fordus had the strangest sense that something was running beside him. From
     the corner of his eye, he saw it, a black spot coursing over the moonlit desert floor. It
     stayed at the margins of his vision like a specter, like the dark moon rumored by
     astronomers and mages. No matter how quickly he moved, the darkness kept precise pace.
    Something in Fordus's fears told him that it was his , dream in pursuit, that somehow the
     golden warrior on the sunbaked ledge had ridden his thoughts into the waking world to
     follow him, to run him down. He would not have that. His strides lengthened.
    Across the desert they ranged, runner and shadow, their swift path turning toward the
     sunrise. Suddenly, as the full sun breasted the horizon, the shadow lurched toward Fordus.
     With a cry, he wheeled to meet it, throwing axe ready in his hand. The shadow loomed above
     him, transparent and faintly faceted, no more visible than heat wavering over the cooling
     sands. He saw, in its swirling depths, a pair of amber eyes.
    Lidless and lifeless. Reptilian. Never breaking stride, Fordus charged at the enemy. The
     shadow closed around him, blinding him, then suddenly it was sunlight and sand again, he
     was sailing in midair over a dune, the shadow was gone, and the ground had fallen away
     beneath him, just like in his dream. Softer sand cushioned his fall, but it began to swirl
     beneath him as he tried to scramble to his feet. Clumsily, helplessly, he spiraled lower
     and lower into a funnel of slick sand, a whirlpool delivering him into a dark hole, a
     central pit. In the heart of that pit, the morning sunlight glinted on a bulbous green
     eye, several sets of clicking antennae, and a huge set of widely opened mandibles.
     Springjaw! Fordus thought frantically, groping for another axe as the creature scuttled
     toward him hungrily.

Dragonlance - Villains 6 - The Dark Queen
    Chapter 6
    From his vantage point in the lofty tower, the Kingpriest watched a meteor plummet through
     the distant sky above the Tower of High Sorcery, dropping out over Lake Istar, where it
     crumbled and collapsed into the water like dust sprinkled from the heavens. Like dust.
    The ruler of Istar turned from the window. His private chambers were as spare as a novice
     monk's. So he insisted, despite the flattery of the attendant