He stopped in horror as a dark wind passed over him.
Tamex appeared and, hook-bladed kala raised aloft, rallied the rebels against the circling Istarians. The mysterious warrior, whose bravery and inven shy;tiveness had rescued two hundred noncombatants
from the merciless cavalry, had apparently returned to avenge the deaths of those he could not save.
As veiled and unsavory as the black-robed man might seem, at least he fought like a hero. The first strong sweep of his weapon drove an Istarian lancer from horseback, the saddle cords snapping with the force of the blow. Tamex wheeled like a ritual dancer, slowly and confidently blocking two spear thrusts and the downward swipe of a sword that seemed to pass through his arm but obviously did not, the blade shimmering bloodless and ineffectual in the firelight.
With a laugh that rang through the crystals, Tamex hooked his blade into the chest of the attacking swordsman, through shield and bronze and leather and bone. The Istarian fell, and the cavalry scattered before the strange and formidable champion.
Like a mythic figure from the Age of Huma, Tamex pivoted amid the horsemen, pulling one, two, a third from their saddles. Aeleth's bow felled another two, and Rann, his battle-rage enkindled by Tamex's valor, leapt up behind the saddle and slit the throat of a hapless officer.
Suddenly, the brazen call of a trumpet rose from the chaos of battlesound and resounding laughter. The Istarian commander rose in his stirrups, signal shy;ing frantically at his disorganized troops. One of Gormion's black: feathered arrows flashed through the moonlight and lodged in his shoulder, and the officer cried out and wheeled his horse back into the darkness.
Nor was Stormlight idle, as Tamex and the bandits turned the tide of the battle. Breathing a prayer to Branchala, the wiry elf raced between galloping horses and, with a powerful, high kick, drove his heel soundly into the helmet of an Istarian spearman,
shattering bronze and skull. The man toppled dead from the horse, and wrestling the animal under con shy;trol, Stormlight mounted and galloped off after the escaping Istarian commander.
And then it was all over, leaving an eerie silence, punctuated by only a few distant shouts and the soft cries of the dying.
Northstar and Larken cautiously waded through the grisly campsite, where the dark, clean sands of the Istarian desert had become a shambles, a slaugh shy;terhouse. Over a hundred rebels lay dead or dying among the extinguished fires. Over half of them were the very young and very old, unable to move with the quickness that the situation had demanded. The others, forty or so, were the young braves of the company-the blustering youths who had thrown themselves recklessly at the attacking enemy. Sprawled amid sand and ash, run through by short sword and cavalry spear, they were mute testimony to the fate of a leaderless army. The survivors-those the dark man had led into the Tears of Mishakal- returned to the camp slowly, soberly.
It could have been even worse, Larken signed to her cousin. Had not Tamex saved those he could, then rallied the bandits and come to our aid …
Northstar turned to argue, but the sight of the black-robed man stopped his words.
Framed in torchlight, Tamex stood haughtily before a mound of Istarian dead. Under his supervi shy;sion, the bandits had spread through the battle shy;ground, gathering bodies for a huge, midnight pyre. Roughly, indifferently, they threw the last of the Istarian corpses on the heap, and Tamex signaled to the torchbearers, who crouched and ignited the kin shy;dling beneath the bodies.
In the new, fitful light, the black-robed warrior watched the flames rise with a look that Northstar could only describe as exultant. His,broad arms folded across his chest, Tamex laughed softly. The fire touched the first of the dead, and the dark man's amber eyes flickered with their burning reflections.
With an eye accustomed to reading the constella shy;tions, Northstar followed the flames to the heavens.
Gilean was there, the starry Book in the height of the sky. Half encircling it, spread along the western sky, was Paladine's constellation, a huge and bril shy;liant arc almost obscured by the clouds and the smoke.
Northstar strained to see the eastern sky. There would be the sign of the Dark Lady, the stars in a dim and sinuous pattern always facing those of Pal-adine, as if in perpetual war. .
But the smoke was now too thick.
And yet something had changed up there.
As he gazed into the shrouded sky, Northstar shuddered with a cold and dark sensation. Some shy;thing passed over him and through him. He was afraid again, afraid and weary. Suddenly he was dizzy; he lowered his gaze.
Tamex was staring at him, his eyes burning like distant, hostile stars. The shadow he cast in the fierce light of the fire was enormous, spreading.
For a moment, it seemed to have wings.
Fordus saw the first fires in the crystals.
He woke from another fevered dream, from a reverie of glyph and symbol, to desperate shouts on the wind. Somehow he had circled the rebel camp in his wandering, had strayed into the Tears of Mishakal. Through the gemlike landscape the cries
and screams intermingled with the chiming, then echoed off the facets of the farthest glassy growths.
For a moment he did not know where he was. Blearily he scrambled to his feet, drank the last from his water flask, and looked for Larken, for Storm-light. His swollen foot gave beneath him, and he fell, clutching at the nearest crystal, which broke cleanly in his iron fever grip, its top flat and level like a plateau. The wind rushed from him, and he lay on his back in the dark sand, cursing bad circumstance, the rotten luck of springjaws and falls and poison.
Slowly, amid chime and echo, he recognized the distant cries as the clamor of battle. Shapes milled at the edge of his vision. There were people in the salt flats, cowering, hiding.
Steadying himself against the largest crystal, For-dus regained his footing and hobbled toward the sound, toward the people. On all sides the red moonlight glittered, reflected off the crystals until the rebel chieftain was dazzled and confused, turned about like a wanderer in a house of mirrors.
Through the maze of light and sound Fordus stumbled, his apprehension growing. He recalled the stories about the Tears-the vanished travelers even in this new age of might, the deadly serenades of crystal and wind and evil magic. On the faces of the crystals he saw towering fires, the glint of bronze armor, the flash of steel.
And the soft, ominous sheen of black silk, as a solitary warrior paced through the shifting light.
He heard the sound of Istarian trumpets, the sig shy;naled retreat. For a moment he rejoiced, shifting his weight from his swollen foot and listening for cheers, for the victory cry of the rebel troops.
Instead, it was the smell of smoke that reached him on the wind-of burning wood and straw, and an acrid, unsettling smell he remembered from his youth, when once a raiding band of Irda had ran shy;sacked the camp where he lived.
The burning dead. The smell of pyres and the old, barbaric funerals of the Age of Dreams.
And also on the wind, beneath the crackle of fires, the keening of women, the wailing of men and the moans of the wounded, a solitary voice, no louder than a whisper, came to him as though borne from the crystals themselves.
A whisper on the wind, so soft that he was never sure whether he really had heard it, or if it was only that his thoughts and fears had prompted the words.
Without you, the voice insinuated, dark and seduc shy;tive and denying. They have defeated Mar without you, Fordus.
Dismayed, the rebel lowered himself to the salty sand.
Chapter 9
Stormlight lost the Istarian rider in thc pitch black of thc night.
At one moment, the man was a shape ahead of him, flitting in and out of the gloom like a wraith. Stormlight tried valiantly to keep pace, but the Istar-ian was a seasoned rider, as at home in the night as in the saddle.
