Feathered Dragon mt-3

by Douglas Niles

  And shelter it required, for now the encircling tendrils of darkness threatened to smother it, forever blotting its beauty from the face of the earth.

  Luskag did not see a nearby chieftain, overcome by terror, leap to his feet and try to turn away None of the desert dwarves heard him cry out in despair. Even had they watched, they would not have seen the tentacles wrap his body in an iron-hard grip, for there was no thing of substance in the air.

  But they were nonetheless real in the mind. The unfortunate chieftain, his face wracked by horror, toppled inward, rolling and scraping down the steep inner surface of the crater. He did not stop until he reached the great silver lake.

  Still unseen by the others, his body struck the liquid metal and instantly disappeared. No ripples spread outward from the scene of his vanishing.

  Luskag remained transfixed. He saw the darkness more clearly now, as a black blanket of doom that seeped into the House of Tezca and spread across his desert home like an all-consuming plague. Finally the last gleaming brightness from the City of the Gods darkened and then vanished.

  He stared into a vast, limitless expanse of blackness.

  Finally the vision broke as the sun climbed higher into the morning sky The chiefs awakened from the thrall of the gods, frightened and dismayed. They did not talk of their vision, yet by looking into each other’s eyes, they knew that they had shared a common experience. Even the absence of one of their number went, for the time being, unremarked. They had all come perilously close to such a fate.

  Yet now, at least, they knew what they had to do.

  Halloran watched them carefully as they walked. He was relieved to see that her gait was steady, her spirits high. Indeed, she paid heed to little else than the great eagle that soared lazily before and high above them.

  “Remember,” he finally offered, “you can ride if you start to get tired.”

  “Really, I’m fine. The walking feels good.” She smiled patiently at him. Her humor remained even as Xatli caught up with them. The priest puffed slightly mopping his brow.

  “This sun is enough to broil me!” he groaned. “But I guess that’s why they call it a desert.”

  Erixitl laughed, then looked upward, making sure that the great eagle remained in view. Poshtli wheeled majestically just to the south.

  “His return is a miracle, don’t you think?” inquired Xatli.

  “A miracle, perhaps. A just reward for his courage. Is it the magic of pluma?” she queried in turn.

  “Or the blessing of Qotal. Can you not admit, sister, that his goodness could have brought Poshtli back to us?”

  For once, Erixitl seemed to ponder his question. “Perhaps. I know that it is the most joyous news I can imagine.”

  “It is a sign to you of the Plumed One’s pleasure,” observed the cleric quietly.

  “How do you know that?” asked Erix in good-humored skepticism.

  Xatli shrugged, grinning. “I don’t. But it could be, couldn’t it?”

  Erixitl looked at him curiously, without replying, so the puffing priest continued. “1 only mean to suggest that you need not fight the will of the god. You are his chosen daughter; that much we all know. He spared your life on the Night of Wailing, and you have led your people away from the horrors behind us. He has a great purpose in mind for you, Erixitl of Palul!”

  She turned back to the trail before her, her expression serious. “1 have fought against that will-that purpose.” Once again she looked at the great eagle, wheeling lazily above. Her joy at Poshtli’s return remained, and she admitted to herself that his presence seemed miraculous.

  “I shall try to accept his wishes, to do as he wills,” she finally promised, almost inaudibly.

  Jhatli hurried toward the rise in the undulating desert terrain, panic urging him forward. How could he lose a thousand people? He asked himself the question angrily, but then his body weakened with relief as he reached the crest and looked into the shallow, windswept vale beyond.

  Quickly the youth tensed again, mindful that he would let no one know that he had been lost. Already the hours of fright faded, and he began to look upon his daylong trek as a sort of grand exploration.

  That, in fact, is how he had gotten separated from the column of refugees in the first place. In the valley before him trudged a small part of the survivors of Nexal, trailing the vast mass by several days. These included some of the weaker and injured folk, many of whom had already perished on the trek through the desert.

  They followed the wide valley on the well-trodden trail blazed by the main body. For most of its length, that pathway wound through parched desert valleys, surrounded by bleak, rocky heights or vast expanses of rolling dunes. But every so often-two to three days’ march apart-the trail descended into a deeper valley, and here water had somehow burst from the ground. In these valleys, the procession remained for a few days, resting and preparing for the next march before the food was totally exhausted. Thus the straggling groups such as Jhatli’s still found sustenance as they moved along after the rest.

  Jhatli and several other youths approaching the age of warriorhood served as the scouts and runners for the band. In this constant, wearing routine he had begun to find solace from the nightmare he had left behind in Nexal. The images of his mother, swallowed by the steaming crack opening in the ground, or his older brother, torn asunder by a monstrous green beast even as he bought time for Jhatli to flee, still lived in his mind. He had not seen his father die, but Jhatli knew he could never have escaped the crumbled house alive.

  These visions remained with Jhatli throughout each long night, and so he filled the hours of light with hard work and complete vigilance. At dawn of this day, the young man had taken up his bow and obsidian-tipped arrows and his flint dagger, setting out to explore a shallow canyon that seemed to parallel the course of the valley

  But the canyon had deepened and diverged in course from the valley followed by the rest of the group. Finally forced to scale a rough, cactus-studded cliff, Jhatli had hurried in order to rejoin his family by sunset.

  Or at least, what remained of his family He had fled with his father’s brother and the man’s two surviving wives. In a wide, straggling column a mile long, the folk of that family

  and a hundred others marched steadily southward, along the trail of the Nexala. Weary, but determined not to let his exhaustion show, Jhatli strutted toward the distant group.

  Then he froze, suddenly alarmed. He hadn’t noticed the clouds of dust roiling along the opposite side of the vale. Now, however, he saw creatures-huge creatures! — trundling from the rocks. Vaguely manlike in shape, they loomed over the humans before them. Hundreds of others followed these monstrous forms, merely human-sized but just as beastlike of aspect.

  Even at this distance, he could tell that they were armed and that they were attacking! Wave by wave, the creatures burst from concealment. Jhatli heard snarls and howls, mingled with the terrified screams of women and children.

  “No!” Jhatli howled his anger and sprinted forward, watching the people reel backward from the surprise attack.

  The initial slaughter quickly gave way to full massacre as the mostly defenseless Mazticans tried to flee, but quickly fell to the talons of the attackers. The few warriors and armed youths leaped bravely to the defense, but the superior numbers of the foe and crushing strength of the attack soon doomed them to a man.

  Gasping and sobbing, Jhatli slowed his pace. He realized that he was too late to fight, for already the killing was complete.

  “Monsters!” he cried, shaking a fist. Several of the beasts, a few hundred paces away, looked up and growled.

  “I will avenge my people! You will all be slain!” Furiously he nocked an arrow to his bow and let fly, though the missile carried barely half the distance. Now, he saw with grim satisfaction, several of the smaller man-beasts started toward him. The creatures’ pig eyes were narrow in their bestial faces, above beastlike muzzles that gaped to display long, curved teeth. Ye
t their hands and arms were manlike and clutched the macas and shields of Maztican warriors.

  Jhatli nocked another arrow, drew back his bow, and waited, using the first shot as his range mark. Squinting, he released the missile and watched it soar true toward its target. It struck the beast in the chest with a solid thunk, and the creature cried out as the force of the shot knocked it to up from the gory trophies around them.

  Jhatli sensed the futility of further combat and quickly turned away. He paced himself slightly faster than the lumbering beasts pursuing him, and as he had expected, they soon broke off the chase.

  The young man jogged southward as night fell across the House of Tezca. He felt a dull pain for the deaths he had witnessed this day. But too much of his recent life had been spent in sorrow and mourning. Now, Jhatli decided, it was time to think of revenge.

  A dense thicket of jungle growth masked the mouth of the cave, indistinguishable on the outside from the rest of the bramble-covered slope. From within, however, the verdancy merely proved that the surface world lay beyond.

  Darien, leading the column, paused and listened. The white drider sensed the sunlight before her, and her old sense of revulsion returned. But she was a dark elf no longer, and the light of day was not a thing that could master her.

  “Incendrius!” she cried, pointing a pale finger at the obstructing foliage. The power of fiery magic blasted the lush barrier, and the leaves and branches crackled into smoke. Without a pause, she pressed forward, creeping for the first time in months into the surface world.

  Behind her followed the rest of the driders, their black longbows held ready. The spider-beasts walked with mechanical, insectlike motions of their eight legs. Their weapons, however, they wielded with the familiar fluid movements of drow veterans.

  Following the driders came the army of giant ants. The red insects lurched awkwardly but quickly from the cavern. Antennae tested the air before them while their huge, blank eyes looked about the jungle. The creatures of Lolth emerged from the darkness into a world that lay vulnerable and unsuspecting before them. Immediately the ants began to eat. and as the file emerged from the cave, a steadily expanding area of devastation grew around the entrance.

  The ants turned to trees, bushes, even grass, tearing and chewing, reducing all to a wasteland. They pulled the bark from the trees, killing centuries-old forest giants in a matter of moments. Hard, knife-edged mandibles ripped and splintered the wood of the forest, while more and more of the monstrous insects poured from the cave.

  Darien and the other driders began to move, compelling the ants to follow their new masters. Still more of the creatures emerged from the cave, expanding into a column twenty paces wide, steadily growing in length, pressing through the jungle.

  And everywhere the ants destroyed.

  “Do you know where he’s leading us? Or why he comes in the body of an eagle?” Halloran wondered aloud about the majestic bird wheeling gracefully above them.

  “No… of course not.” Erixitl, too, followed Poshtli with her eyes. “I saw something in his eyes, though, when he perched on that rock. A message, or a plea of some kind. It seemed to promise hope.”

  “We could use a little of that,” Hal agreed.

  They looked backward from the low rise where they rested, along with a hundred others who had collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. The file of refugees filled the valley behind them, stretching to the dusty horizon in the north. Before them, the column continued unbroken to another rise, perhaps a mile away. A further elevation, even higher, beckoned beyond the next ridge.

  “How is your strength, today, sister?” The voice, behind them, signified the approach of Xatli.

  Erixitl looked at the priest, a wan smile across her dustand sweat-streaked face. “I’ll make it the rest of the afternoon, but I think I’ll sleep well tonight.”

  The priest chuckled and lowered himself to the ground beside the couple. “You will have earned your sleep, for certain,” he agreed. “May Qotal see that you are untroubled by dreams of ill.”

  Erix looked upward, quickly spotting the eagle as Poshtli soared over the winding trail that led steadily, endlessly southward. “Once I would have argued with you, you know,” she told the priest. “But now 1 can only hope that the blessings of Qotal are real, that he will return to us.”

  She sighed, then asked no one in particular, “Without that hope, what do we have?” She met the eyes of an old woman who walked slowly along the trail, clutching the arm of a young man. The woman smiled, and then the steady march carried her away. But her face was replaced by others-a pair of young children holding hands; a man carrying a child; a husband and wife. All of them looked at Erix, and each sought some measure of comfort and hope from her face. She tried desperately to communicate her own sense of hope.

  “ Faith can only lighten your burdens,” declared the priest. “The signs have been fulfilled; his return is imminent! Accept his help, and you will gain his everlasting strength!”

  “But it must be soon” the woman said, sitting up and staring into the priest’s dark eyes. Slowly Xatli nodded. He understood.

  “My friends!” A voice pulled their attention toward the front of the column and they saw the broad-shouldered form of Gultec approach. The Jaguar Knight wore his tunic of spotted jaguar skin, with the helmet that framed his face through the open jaws.

  “Gultec!” Erix cried, brightening immediately. The lanky Jaguar Knight crossed the ground in long strides, coming back toward them beside the file of Nexalans who marched steadily southward. In moments, he reached them and squatted, resting easily on his haunches. “What did you find?” she asked, seeing the look of promise in the warrior’s thin smile.

  “Water. A day and a half away. A large lake, with marshes-and even fish!” The warrior’s eyes flashed as he conveyed the news. “To the southwest… this trail leads directly there.”

  “That’s splendid.” Erixitl looked skyward. The great eagle wheeled overhead, as if patiently waiting for them.

  “Perhaps we can remain there for a while,” said Halloran. “Let everyone rest and restore their strength.”

  “Yes,” said Erixitl absently as she cast another look skyward. Hal knew that she would only be content to rest as long as the eagle did not urge them on.

  There was also the matter of her father. When the two of them had journeyed to Nexal before the Night of Wailing, he had seemed safe in his house, high on the ridge above the town of Palul. Now, with chaos spreading across the land, the blind old man’s life could not help but be endangered. Erix spoke of him only rarely, but Halloran knew that Lotil was much on her mind. He, too, worried and wondered about the old man. Yet he accepted the fact that they could not go to him-not with the horde of the Viperhand looming between them.

  With the growing life of their child, the man knew that his wife needed a quiet, secure place to live, to go through her pregnancy and to make a home. Yet for now they could have none of that, and this knowledge tore deeply at his soul.

  “I hope that we may have that time,” Gultec added, “but I fear it will not be so. I myself may have to leave you.”

  “Leave us? Why?” Erixitl looked at the Jaguar Knight with genuine fondness.

  “I owe a debt to one who is my master in all ways, in a place very far from here. He granted me freedom to journey to Nexal, to witness the shape of the threat looming over the world. But always 1 await his summons to return, and when he calls I must obey.”

  “Have you been called?” asked Halloran.

  “No, but I sense… things in the air around me, in the earth beneath my feet, terrors stalk the land-terrors beyond those we know and already fear. It is this, I am certain. that will call me back to Tulom-Itzi.”

  Erixitl nodded, meeting the warrior’s gaze as her own eyes misted. “We cannot long escape the needs of… fate,” she said.

  “Or gods.” Gultec smiled, raising his eyes but still speaking to Erix. “Perhaps we can use whatever help is offered
.”

  Erix sighed. Abruptly she turned away from the priest, from all the Mazticans, and started away from the procession. Halloran stepped after her.

  He took her hand, silently accompanying her as they walked slowly over the brushy, rock-strewn ground. He sensed her need to get away from the silent, shuffling mass of people. He tried, by his presence, to comfort and shelter her.

  Finally Erixitl sat on a boulder. She was not out of breath, but lines of strain showed around her eyes and mouth. Halloran sat beside her.

  “They all need so much,” she said finally “And all we can offer them is hope! When will something happen? How long do we have to wait?”

  “We’re alive, we’re healthy” Halloran said. “The important thing is to stay that way. The rest will take care of itself.” It has to! he added silently.

  While the people of Maztica marched past, she leaned against him and he held her for a while. Then Halloran saw a horseman galloping toward them. At the sound of hoof-beats, Erix stiffened and stood up.

  “Hello, milady… Halloran,” grunted the rider, Captain Grimes, as he dismounted. “We’ve got some bad news.”

  “What is it?” asked Erixitl.

  “A young lad just caught up with the rear scouts. Seems he was with a group bringing up the rear. They were attacked, massacred almost to the last man, woman, and child! He gave some details. Sounds to me like it was ores and ogres.”

  “How far back?” asked Hal.

  “Don’t know. He said it happened this morning, so not more than a few miles.”

  “It’s more than that to the next water,” Erix reminded them.

  “There’s another question,” said Hal, suddenly looking skyward. “Gultec said that the water lay to the southwest, right?”

  “Yes,” Erix said, also looking upward. And as she did, she understood Halloran’s concern.

  The eagle had veered away from their path, now soaring with greater speed. His path lay eastward.

  Zochimaloc arose early on a mist-shrouded morning, passing from his small house through his garden. Soon he reached the broad, grassy street leading to the observatory