"If I cannot be opal yet, I shall be salt."
She walked out of the Abyss, out of the dead val shy;ley and into the pathless desert, the massive weight of her delicate feet crushing the sunbaked mosaic and parting the winds in her passage.
Chapter 2
Six hundred and more of thc sack-robed rebels crossed the northern stretch of sand, the horizon shimmering purple and green in the midday heat.
Twice the scouts shouted forth a warning, sending a nervous flurry through their column. The miscalls were forgivable. After all, the lads were young, mas shy;terful on horseback but new to reconnaissance. Mirages they would have ignored a week ago boldly deceived them now.
Towers, they told Stormlight. Towers made of water at the northern edge of sight.
The elf smiled at their rashness, their excitability.
On horseback, hooded against the desert winds, he shielded his eyes and looked to the horizon, where the scouts beckoned and pointed.
"Illusion," he told them. "False light."
He sent them back in the column for refreshment, for shade.
They complied unwillingly, insisting that they had seen the great colored spires of Istar.
Stormlight knew better. The city was thirty miles away, across mountains and the expanse of Lake Istar. Furthermore, Fordus the Prophet had no plan to go there.
Not until he could walk through those gates in tri shy;umph.
That would be years and many followers in the future. For now, there was the Kingpriest's army to reckon with.
Stormlight stared across the tawny grassland, toward the north where the bright red star of Chislev rode low over the bunched backs of the mountains.
It was easy in the desert, where he and Fordus read the faceless terrain much like deep-sea naviga shy;tors decoded the swell and tilt of the waves. It was Stormlight's nature to do so-the sympathy with water and rock that was his inheritance.
However, the fancy, soft generals of Istar had had little chance in the shifting sand and merciless heat.
Remembering it gave Stormlight a savage plea shy;sure.
In late autumn, the Kingpriest had sent an irri shy;tated legion south into the desert, with orders to uproot the bandit, Fordus. That expedition had lasted two weeks in the blowing sand, with never a clear sighting of the quarry. Led by a few old fire pits and wisps of hope, the Istarians trudged south to the borders of Balifor where, short of water and exhausted by a dozen nights of fruitless searching, they were easy prey for Fordus's rebel force, which was half their size.
Twenty-seven Istarian soldiers were still miss shy;ing-their helmets, shields, and bones scattered for miles among the dried, branching riverbeds the Lucanesti knew as the Tine. The rest of the unit had returned to the city with tales of a wolfish, wraith-like commander who could be in three places at once, who moved over sand like the wind and car shy;ried a thousand throwing axes on a belt at his waist, all designed by a mage who had vowed that never would a cast miss its target.
Twenty-seven Istarians and a mythology. Small payment for a hundred elves enslaved in the dark undercity, Stormlight thought bitterly. At least Istar would think twice before venturing into the desert again.
This, however, was a new place-the yellow grasslands south of the city itself, as promising as they were dangerous. It would take a full day of riding across their open expanse to reach the foothills, the mountains, and finally the outskirts of Istar. It was unknown country, treacherous and vague, and Fordus had been forced to leave behind more than two hundred of the Que-Nara, devout and basically peaceful Plainsmen whose gods had forbidden them to leave the desert in any act of aggression.
Still, close to four hundred Que-Nara remained with the rebels, proceeding against the warnings of their clerics, and the rest of the invading force was a ragged assembly of bandits and barbarians only lately come to the cause. Now, somewhere between these rebels and the dark foothills waited two proper legions-two thousand members of the crack Istarian Guard: crossbow, spear, and sword units, along with a cavalry famous throughout Ansalon. Enemy enough to strike fear in the most daring com shy;mander.
Yet there was no fear, no hesitation in Fordus Fire-soul, the pale-eyed Plainsman, Water Prophet and Lord of the Rebels.
Stormlight set his face in approval.
No fear was good.
After all, had not the Prophet routed the Istarians four, five times in the past?
Easy in the saddle, his translucent skin mottling with glittering green and orange flashes of an early opalescence, Stormlight watched the first shadows or the peaceful blue evening stretch across the level grasslands.
No fear was very good.
He cast aside his darker speculations.
In a small advance party not fifty yards away, For shy;dus the Prophet, on foot as usual, dropped to the ground in midstride. Behind him, two lieutenants and the bard paused and did likewise, Larken muf shy;fling the variegated head of her drum with the flat of her callused hand.
"Istar approaches," the commander whispered to them, with no more drama and moment than if he were observing the color of a horse or a strange cast of light in the clouds.
The tiny bard stared toward the foothills, straining to see what Fordus saw through the patch of knife-edged grass. Nothing.
But he knew. Fordus always knew about water and armies.
"If indeed it is two legions, we'll know it by night shy;fall/' Fordus continued. "We'll count the lights of their campfires, like they want us to. Then I'll send Stormlight and six men to scout them closely and part the flesh from the shadows. If they've set enough fires for four legions, they're even more afraid of us than I've reckoned."
And tomorrow? the bard signed with one hand. Fordus lifted his eyes, anticipating her gesture, her question.
"They'll want to meet us in the open fields, Larken, to use their numbers and horse to advan shy;tage." The Prophet rose to a crouch, drawing a line with his finger along the sandy ground. "When they see our ragtag troops, only Que-Nara and bandits and a handful of Balifor crossbowmen, they'll think those are all who stand with me."
The lieutenants nodded, oblivious to the softly plodding hooves of Stormlight's horse some dis shy;tance behind. Long ago they had learned to give their entire attention to their commander, to wait before they spoke.
Stormlight dismounted silently, bade the horse to lie down, and slipped through the circle of squatting ..rebels.
He knew well his old friend's ways. The plan would be simple, direct, and clean. Fordus was the type who'd take a sword to a knot rather than suffer a second more to untie it.
Yes, simple. And as always, successful. Fordus was no tactician, but in his hands, the most basic maneuvers blossomed to brilliance.
"The desert is with me, wherever I go," Fordus concluded quietly, his gaze focused on a distant place. "And we will bring them the desert, bring them sand and wind and mirrors of air, the deception of birds in the high grass."
One of the lieutenants, a young archer from Bali-for, shifted his weight and stifled a cough. It was always this way when the Prophet spoke in riddles.
But that was where Stormlight's task began. The elf let the Prophet's words settle on the assembled officers, then hooded his eyes with the white, translucent underlids of his people and stepped slightly away from the circle surrounding the chieftain.
"Second eyes," the Plainsmen called them-the white lucerna of the mining elves. Through that milky film, legacy of their race, the Lucanesti could see gems in dark tunnels, long veins of water in the heart of the sand …
Could see other things as well. The vein of truth in the subtle strata of words and images.
"The Prophet has spoken!" Stormlight proclaimed quietly, standing to survey the wave of mystified faces. The lucerna lifting, he raised hands that glit shy;tered purple with reflected light. It had come to him again, as it always did, in the midst of murmuring. Like lightning, the meaning of Fordus's cryptic poetry had struck his second in command.
"We'll hide half of you on the flanks," Stormlight continued, "and close around the Kingpriest's army when they charge. Gormion will command the southernmost troops, and when the Istarian lances contact her lines . . . the rest of us will spring out of the grass behind them. And may the axe of Jolith cleave through their ranks! There will be such a storm of sand and wind as never they have seen, and it will not touch us. The powers gather already." He pointed into the distance, where a rising cloud of dust marked the southern horizon. A hot breeze began to blow from the same direction.
The sterim. The wild desert storm that raced up into the Istarian mountains, gathering speed as it coursed over the plains, blinding and fierce in its fury. The elf's eyes glazed over, the brilliant lucerna closing once more, this time protectively against the anticipated wind.