Read Online The Dark Queen by Michael Williams - Free Book Online

Larken the bard,” he said, as though he named her for the first time with
     his words. With a movement lithe and graceful, he stepped toward her, wrested her hand
     from her knife . . . and kissed her fingers elegantly, his eyes never leaving hers. Lucas
     shrieked from his perch, swelled with copper light, and tried to fly at the man, but his
     jesses tangled. Larken swallowed hard and nodded, recovering her hand and soothing the
     hawk. “Hush, Lucas. It's all right.”
    The bird fluttered and hopped, but obediently kept to the perch. “I am Tamex,” the man
     said. “I come from the south, from the shining foothills.” Larken composed her face into
     neutrality. The man's hand had been very cold and hard. She started to sign a greeting,
     but something baffled her hands. “While your army fought in the grasslands, I... crossed
     the desert. I searched for the Que-Nara camp, and awaited your return. Will you speak with
     me?” I speak to no one but Lucas. I only sing, she motioned. “I don't understand,” said
     Tamex. “I know you can talk. I can hear what you say. Will you try?” “You can hear me
     speak?” Larken's voice was husky, uncertain. Tamex nodded. “I have come to serve your
     leader. I have come to undo the bondage of Istar. And I have come to listen to you.”
     Larken shook her head, deflecting his last offer. “ 'Tis a tall order, to undo that city.
     Istar is the heart of the world.” And then, after a moment, “How is it you hear my speech?
     It has been cursed.” “Does it matter?” Tamex dissembled, his reptilian eyes at last
     flickering away from hers. “Does any of that matter?” He let his eyes play lazily across
     Larken's kneeling form, over her blond hair, her bronzed shoulders, and her slim thighs,
     bared to the evening's coolness. His gaze flickered over the lyre and paused. The black
     diamonds in the heart of his eyes shuddered, narrowed, and vanished. Then, almost
     casually, his glance rested on the drum at Larken's side and the bone drumhammer. “I have
     heard you play,” he said. “Not the lyre. The drum. Your songs and words are worthy of
     heroes.” Flustered, the bard set down the lyre and reached for the drumhammer. It slipped
     from her hand and rattled noisily against the drum. Tamex continued. “You are the one who
     exalts the Lord of the Rebels.” “ 'Exalts'?” “You magnify him beyond his deeds.” For a
     moment, brief as the gap between lightning and thunder, the bard's eyes widened. She felt
     exposed, uncovered by a sudden, surprising welling in her heart, as if she swirled in dark
     airlessness. Then the world tilted back into focusthe arroyo, the twining moonlight, the
     tall handsome warrior standing above her. “Tell me about him,” the dark man whispered. She
     rose unsteadily and took a deep breath. Again she was Larken; the words stumbled back to
     her. “About his gifts? His prophecies?” She turned the drumhammer in her hand. “Tell me.”
     “Twenty-five years ago,” Larken began, “the Que-Nara found a child nestled against a dune.
     ”We never knew who left him there, who had abandoned him to the harsh desert elements. It
     was great fortune, almost a miracle, that anyone noticed the baby. Fordus had not cried or
     called out, not even then, and the man who found him, a Plainsman chief named Kestrel,
     feared that the child was damaged, addled ... “ 'Touched by Sirrion,' the Namer had said,
     as Kestrel held the silent infant before him on the Nam- ing Night. 'The Firemaster is in
     his eyes.' ”It was the call of the poet, the madman.“ ”Then he was touched ... by the
     gods?“ Tamex asked, a brief, enigmatic smile passing over his pale face. ”So the Namer
     said,“ Larken replied, her eyes downcast, looking at the lyre on the ground. ”But none of
     the Plainsmen understood or even wanted to. “In each generation, only a few are touched by
     the fire god. Sirrion's