The air lay dense across the jungles of Far Payit. The great buildings of Tulom-Itzi stood like sentinels against the fog, but the bright mosaics, fountains, and pluma bedecking the structures merged into a pale sameness, diffused by the creeping mists.
The old man tried to shake off a feeling of dull menace, but he could not. Resolutely he turned toward the dome-roofed observatory. There, so many times before, he had found the answers to his questions in the stars.
The city in the jungle was silent at this early hour, as it was silent for all the day and night. The great buildings emerged from the mist and melted away again, monuments to the hundred thousand or more who had once built Tulom-Itzi and mastered the surrounding lands.
But most of them were gone now, and the vast city sheltered a population perhaps a tenth as large as it once held.
Now, as always, Zochimaloc found the emptiness of his city strangely soothing, as if he lived in a library or museum dedicated to the study of people, not among the people themselves.
Yet no longer could he deny that fact, for he knew that the gap between Tulom-Itzi and the world around it would soon close violently The feeling had risen within him for years, and it was the reason he had brought the Jaguar Knight Gultec here, to train the men of his city for war. This Gultec had done, though Tulom-Itzi was no nation of warriors.
Gultec was gone now, and Zochimaloc sensed the importance of his student’s mission. Soon, however, it would be necessary to call him home.
The old Maztican finally entered the observatory. The building, with its domed roof of carefully cut stone, stood in the center of Tulom-Itzi, a place of sacred peace and wisdom. Now Zochimaloc went to the center of the round chamber and looked at the apertures in the roof. The stars lined up with those openings at precise moments, he knew.
But today it was not the stars he sought. Zochimaloc needed deeper, more practical knowledge, and so he produced a small bit of plumage from his belt. He kindled a small fire in the floor, and then dropped the tufts of feathers in a ring about the bright blaze.
The feathers caught the light and dazzled with colors. On the encircling wall of the building, the feather-shadows appeared as black pictures, marching around the observatory, around Tulom-Itzi.
They marched as a file of giant ants.
For a long time, Zochimaloc touched the earth beneath his body He touched it, and he sensed its distress. Waves of pain radiated outward from the ground. He sensed a scourge upon the land, and it was a threat that he now understood to be near.
Hours later, though still well before dawn, the moon rose. The sliver in the east cast its pale beam through a slit in the building’s ceiling, and soon the moonlight washed over Zochimaloc.
He sat, immobile, until the moonlight faded. Even then he waited, until finally the cool blue of dawn lightened the eastern sky. Then his eyes closed and his lips moved.
“Gultec, we need you,” he whispered.
Hoxitl thrilled to the extent of the slaughter, howling gloriously as his minions grunted across the battlefield, ripping and tearing the corpses until the victims no longer resembled humans.
“Let that be their lesson,” chortled the great beast that had once been patriarch of Zaltec. “They will be even less human than us! And the might of Zaltec will prevail!”
For a long night, the beastly army remained on the bloody field. More and more of the monsters joined them, for the attacking group had only been a small advance guard. It pleased Hoxitl to see how effectively they had slain a group of the enemy that had outnumbered them substantially.
Of course, most of the humans had been helpless, but that mattered not to the manned figure. Indeed, he identified the fact as his greatest advantage: His forces could travel quickly and strike hard, unencumbered by non-combatants. The refugees, on the other hand, moved slowly and tried to protect the great majority of their number, the ill, the sick, the aged, a majority that could offer no aid in battle.
Dimly Hoxitl remembered the great sacrifices with which he had celebrated victories as a priest. What a waste, he realized now, to capture and hold captives for ritual execution when it was so much more gratifying and appropriate to slay them on the field.
The idea settled into the beastly, but still shrewd, mind of the monster. Hoxitl began to see some of the reasons that the armies of Maztica had suffered so horribly in combat with the foreign invaders. The strangers had no such compulsion to take their opponents alive.
“Feast, my children! Feast and exult!” he howled in the language that had become his own. The ores and ogres and trolls understood their master, for they, too, spoke in the bastardized tongue that had come to them during the Night of Wailing.
“Feast and give thanks to Zaltec for his mercy!” cried the priest-monster, startling the vast assemblage of gore-soaked humanoids.
“Yes, you hear me true-thanks to Zaltec!” Hoxitl’s voice rumbled through the shallow valley as he surprised even himself with the power he felt thrumming through him at the name of his god. He thought of the great stone monolith, the statue back in Nexal that had come to embody all the might and terror of this bloodthirsty god.
“We will wage war in your name across the width and breadth of the True World!” gloated the beast, tearing a heart from the cold corpse of an old man and holding it upward.
And Zaltec heard, and rumbled his pleasure.
From the chronicles of Coton:
7n the nearness of Qotal, now the True World knows its hope.
I sit with the blind featherworker, Lotil, and we hear the beasts snuffling outside the house. The horse of the legionnaire remains in the building with us, while the monsters of the Viperhand prowl without.
They plunder each home on the ridge above Palul, smashing and burning and looting. Great cries of glee explode from monstrous maws when a golden treasure or piece of salted meat is discovered.
I fear not so much for myself, but for the old man. The blessing of the Plumed One surrounds me, and if his pleasure brings me to my end amid this sea of chaos, so be it. The pluma worker, however, must be spared this fate. He is needed for something greater. What this is, I cannot know, hut I shall stay with him and try to help him fulfill his destiny.
For some reason, they pass the house of Lotil, these panting monsters, and do not enter. And so we wait out the scourge, alone and helpless, yet somehow alive.
Again I sense die imminence of the One Plumed God.
5
A GOD ALIVE
Sea-birds wheeled above the great white sails, cawing and diving at the foaming wake. Don Vaez left Murann at the head of a proud fleet of twenty-five heavy carracks and more than fifteen hundred armed men, all of them thirsting for gold.
The young captain, his silver-blond locks flowing freely in the wind, stood in the bow of the lead ship. Scribes, sorcerers, and clerics had briefed him well on Cordell’s voyage, and though he sailed toward a land of mystery, he at least knew that land lay before him.
“And by Helm, it will be mine!”
Like many men of action, Don Vaez had little use for gods, except as they could help him in his endeavors. As such, he had casually adopted Helm as his patron deity, for a god of eternal vigilance is of obvious worth to a soldier.
Don Vaez struck a determined pose, well aware that his men watched him. A great believer in leadership by appearance, he constantly took pains to see that his troops saw him in the best possible light. To this end, he had no less than four wardrobe trunks stored in his cabin, so that he could insure a fashionable and well-groomed presence at all times.
The captain allowed himself to reminisce as the sea wind tugged at his hair. He had followed a long and convoluted road to reach this point, but now every audacious step of that dangerous path would be made worthwhile.
The fleet progressed steadily, under the guidance of a veteran navigator named Rodolfo. Indeed, the man had been hailed as one of the most fearless sailors on the Trackless Sea. Years before, he had served Cordell when the c
aptaingeneral had needed a fleet. Since then, the navigator had returned to land, though he had been willing enough to accept the fee offered by the princes to induce him to join this expedition.
“A fresh wind moves us. We make good time,” remarked Rodolfo, coming to join Don Vaez at the rail. The commander nodded disinterestedly, content to leave such details to his navigator. With a thin grimace, Rodolfo stalked away, but Don Vaez was still lost in his own thoughts.
He chuckled wryly as he thought of his earliest training, at the Academy of Stealth in Calimshan. What a terrible thief he had made! Why sneak through the night to snatch something surreptitiously, he had wondered, when he could walk up to the owner, bash him over the head with his sword, and take it in broad daylight?
The masters of the academy had reached the same conclusion, and Don Vaez and Calimshan had parted ways — for the most part amicably, since the masters had not taken a thorough inventory until their ex-student was a good distance away Aided by the disguises of a guileless servant girl, he had escaped from the city and journeyed north along the coast. The girl, he assumed, had paid for her complicity with her life, though he had never bothered to find out for sure.
Following these experiences, Don Vaez had served in one of the mercenary companies aiding Amn in its two-decade war against the pirates of the Sword Coast. After the unfortunate and mysterious demise of the company captain-no one had ever been able to identify the archer that had slain him from behind while he led his troops into battle-Don Vaez had risen to command the company. In this capacity, he had first attracted the attention of the merchant princes.
And in the same capacity, he had been forced to compete with the soldiering of Captain-General Cordell and his Golden Legion. When Cordell had won the ultimate victory against the scimitar-waving horde of the pirate lord, Akbet Khrul, Don Vaez’s rival had been assured the place of highest honor before the Council of Amn.
For the suddenly unemployed Don Vaez, there had been a lady-a very wealthy, albeit very married, lady Vet somehow her favor had carried him to the council again, now that Cordell had apparently disappeared and, the don hoped, betrayed his employers. Don Vaez had even wondered if the lady might be one of the merchant princes herself, though of course that fact would remain secret.
Nevertheless, her influence must have been significant, for he had been selected to command this glorious endeavor.
The merchant princes of Amn had given him a great force and a strong charter. Somewhere out there, he felt, his old rival Cordell was still alive. The gods would not, could not be cruel enough to deprive Don Vaez of the confrontation he so rightly deserved.
“You know that he lives out there, do you not?” The question came from Pryat Devane. The cleric, wearing a close-fitting cloth cap and a woolen cape, joined him at the rail of the ship.
“Cordell?” Don Vaez turned to the cleric, surprised at the man’s accurate guess. He smiled thinly. “Yes, I believe that we will… encounter him.”
“Good!” The pryat spoke sharply. “His reckless behavior has no doubt cost my mentor his life!”
“Bishou Domincus? You feel that he has been slain?”
“I’m certain of it,” announced the cleric. “But he will be avenged!”
“Indeed,” agreed the captain, turning back to the sea. It seemed that he had an ally, a spiritual brother, in this dour priest of Helm. And, remembering the flying carpet the princes had told him about, he felt that Pryat Devane could prove to be a very useful ally indeed.
In his mind, Don Vaez pictured the encounter with the defeated Cordell. The man would beg for mercy, and Don Vaez would make him wriggle and plead for his life. Of course, all the while he knew he would grant that life, for his moment of true triumph would not arrive until he returned with Cordell to Amn and marched the traitorous mercenary through the streets of Murann in chains.
Or in a cage, perhaps. Suddenly Don Vaez had an inspiration! He would take the gold of this new world-some of the gold, anyway-and he would have a cage made. The cage would be mounted on gilded wheels, and within it would ride the grand prisoner of his expedition.
Yes, thought Don Vaez. That would be a fitting return home for the leader of the Golden Legion. With this idea, and a thin smile on his too-handsome lips, Don Vaez went to his cabin below decks to sleep.
And, of course, to dream.
“How many were there? Did you have a chance to count?” asked Halloran.
The youth, Jhatli, looked at him suspiciously. Intelligence gleamed in the lad’s eyes, but so too did anger and hatred. I can’t blame him for that, Hal thought.
Along with Daggrande and Gultec, Hal tried to coax description from the youth. Erixitl slept nearby, exhausted finally by the day’s march. Somewhere overhead, Hal knew, the eagle waited for them. In the morning, they would need to face a difficult decision: head for water, or follow the path of this great bird of prey.
For now, they sat around a small campfire, using some of their precious firewood to light this council. Some of the Maztican scouts had told them Jhatli’s tale, and his heart broke for the pain the young man had suffered. At the same time, anything he could tell them about the nature and tactics of the pursuing horde could prove very useful.
Not as many as my band… less than a thousand. They burst from the rocks as we passed, attacking by surprise. I don’t know of anyone else who escaped,” Jhatli said after a brief pause. “I got away only because I was just returning from my hunt. I was separated from the main group, but I could see them.”
His dark eyes flashed. “We could return and kill them. with your warriors and their silver weapons! They can all be killed!”
“No,” Hal sighed, with a shake of his head. “By now they’ve certainly grown in number. You saw just a small portion of the mob that pursues us.”
The youth’s eyes darkened and his body tensed. Then he settled back, though his voice carried a hint of a sneer. “Very well, but I will kill many of them when 1 get the chance!”
“A warrior, eh?” said Daggrande, the dwarf’s voice uncharacteristically gentle.
“Yes… one who is not afraid to seek a battle!”
“Careful, young man,” Gultec growled, his face grim between the fanged jaws of his jaguar-skull helmet. Jhatli’s eyes widened, then fell to the ground.
“I–I’m sorry,” the young man sighed, his breath ragged.
“I know the fury that compels you to battle,” Halloran told Jhatli, “but that rage must be tempered by wisdom, or it will only destroy you.”
The youth looked at him, anger still flashing in his black eyes. But then he lowered his gaze back to the fire, a weakness suddenly collapsing his posture.
“Come on, lad.” The dwarf, speaking his awkward Nexalan, clapped Jhatli on the shoulder. “Let’s go find something for you to eat.”
Gultec and Halloran sat in silence for a time, the desert growing dark around them. Finally the Jaguar Knight spoke. “It galls me, this constant flight from an enemy we cannot see.”
“And me,” Halloran agreed. “Yet what choice do we have- to stand and die, along with all these people, before a horde of unnatural beasthood?”
“How long must we fly?” Gultec persisted. “Is it right to move farther into the desert? Could not the gods have laid for us a cruel trap, and we will reach the end of this chain of food and water only to starve and perish of thirst?”
“This new valley you found… it sounds as though there is food there, enough to last a long time,” Halloran observed.
“ Indeed there is, and enough land to cultivate. If the water remains, a city could be built there that would rival Nexal.”
“Provided we’re not driven away like a herd of goats,” Hal said bitterly.
“I do not know what goats’ are,” Gultec said, “but I share
your feeling.” The warrior paused a moment before raising a question that had obviously occupied his mind for some time.
“You and your people have used powers in the bat
tles against us-sorcery, you call this. Is there not some sorcery that could defend us against the Viperhand?”
Halloran shook his head in resignation. “Sorcery is a skill known only to a few. Among the legion, there was the wizard Darien, the albino elf. She had great powers of wizardry, but she used them in the service of the drow. She died-she must have-when the top of the volcano exploded.”
“She was the only one?” asked the Eagle Knight.
“The cleric, Domincus, had powers of clerical sorcery. He perished on the altar of Zaltec. Otherwise, there are a few men among the legion who practiced low levels of magic- not many, and their skills are not very great.” Halloran chuckled.
“I am one of them, as a matter of fact. I once studied as an apprentice to a great sorcerer, and I still know a few spells. An enchantment of light, for example, or a magic arrow. I can increase the size of an object with an enlargement spell.”
Gultec looked at him in amazement, but could see that Halloran spoke the truth. They both remembered the great fireballs or the blasts of killing frost or the poisonous smoke with which Darien had made her presence known. “As you can see,” Hal concluded, “there is little I could do to change the course of a battle.”
For a while longer the men lapsed into silence. Then Halloran looked back toward the sky
“There’s the matter of Poshtli,” he ventured. “He flew east late today, over land we know is dry desert. How can we take all these people on such a path, simply because of a bird, despite what he used to be?” Halloran understood that the folk of the Realms he came from would never have made such a choice; about Mazticans, he was not so sure.
“Perhaps he does not mean for all of the people to follow him.” mused Gultec. “Just those who can make a difference.”
Halloran looked at the Jaguar Knight in surprise. He had never considered that possibility, but the notion seemed to make a lot of sense. Before he could reply, a shape materialized from the darkness, and they saw the priest, Xatli, approach.
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