Feathered Dragon mt-3

by Douglas Niles

  “May 1 join you?” asked the cleric of Qotal.

  “Please sit with us,” Hal replied as Gultec nodded.

  Xatli looked toward Erix, her cloak dimly visible even in the darkness. “It is good she sleeps. Her burdens weigh heavily upon her, and slumber is the greatest healer of all.”

  “It seems that she only knows peace when she is asleep now,” Hal agreed softly.

  “1 have heard that a lush valley awaits us,” ventured the cleric after a short while.

  “Gultec has seen it. There’s food and water aplenty.”

  “Yes,” the Jaguar Knight said, nodding. “The first of our people will reach it late tomorrow; by the morning after, everyone should be there.”

  “A good place to camp,” Xatli said, squatting on the ground, “A thing to look forward to.”

  “A good place to camp, perhaps,” agreed the warrior. “But a bad place for war.”

  “You know,” the cleric announced, sitting upright again and fixing his two companions with his gaze, “there is a place in this desert that was made for war.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Hal.

  “It is called Tewahca, the City of the Gods. I have never seen it, but the tale of its making is known to all priests. It was the scene of Qotal’s last victory over his brother Zaltec.”

  “Zaltec, Qotal… brothers?” Hal was genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know this.”

  “Brothers indeed, though very different from each other. The one desired only killing and blood; the other could not bear to hurt a living soul.”

  “That must have been a liability if he had to fight a war,” Hal observed dryly, and Xatli chuckled.

  “lb the point,” the priest continued. “The gods commanded the humans of the world to build them a great edifice for this war, a pyramid greater than any in the True

  World. They made the desert fertile so that the people could build this place.

  “Of course, the details are as old as legend, but all the tales point to a place somewhere here, in the House of Tezca. No man has seen it, certainly not in a dozen lifetimes or more. Perhaps the desert has swallowed it.

  “But I am certain Tewahca is out there somewhere, long abandoned by man. Could not the gods again desire a confrontation there? And the tales of the desert made fertile… is this not what sustains us, what sustains all these thousands now?”

  “Do you think we are being led to Tewahca?” Gultec asked, his tone telling Hal that the tale of the great ceremonial center was familiar to him.

  “I doubt it,” said Xatli. “The gods created a wasteland around the place to keep humans away. It seems unlikely they would desire to bring us back in great numbers.

  “Still, the building of such a place makes one think that it could be done again,” mused Xatli. “It gives me faith that the Nexala will again have a home.”

  Hal nodded, for a moment almost relaxing in the vision of the cleric’s hopes for the future. In the next second, he remembered Jhatli and the cruel and violent presence that loomed close in the desert night.

  The beasts of the Viperhand remained a great cudgel hanging over them, prepared to smash any hopes into a hundred thousand bleeding shards.

  Steam hissed from wide cracks in the ground, forming a dense fog, a funeral shroud for the valley of Nexal. Now the beasts had departed, and except for the rats that picked their way through the ruins, the rubble on the flat island lay still and lifeless.

  From the center of the dead city, the pillar of stone towered like a great monolith, a hundred feet tall. Only by the most careful inspection could one make out the details of arms and legs, the snarling, tooth-filled maw, that caused this rock to be regarded as the image of Zaltec.

  But its strength did not lie in its visual power, but rather within the essence of the pillar itself, Hundreds of years ago, this same rock-at that time, not much larger than a man-had been discovered by a faithful cleric of a primitive, warlike tribe. The pillar had spoken to the cleric, commanding him to lead his tribe on a great pilgrimage through desert and mountain, until they came at last to the great valley with its cool, clear lakes.

  Others dwelled here already, in cities around the shores of the lakes. The newcomers chose for their own rude village a low, marshy island. Still bearing the pillar that had come to symbolize their god, the people placed the stone monolith at the site of their first small pyramid.

  Centuries passed. The village grew to a town, and the people formed shrewd alliances. Layer upon layer was added to the pyramid, and the town became a city. The people of the crude tribe practiced diplomacy and war, and at last came to be masters of the beautiful valley. Never did they forget that they owed their success to Zaltec, god of war.

  Now that god claimed his reward, and the people who had praised him fled in terror across the fertile desert. The pillar grew, bursting out of its confines, looming far above the rubble strewn around it.

  Then, in the dead city, even the rats fell still. A tremor rippled through the earth. Mount Zatal, lost in the gray fog above the valley, rumbled.

  And the statue began to move.

  The swath of death cut through the jungle like a cosmic scythe, leaving behind torn tree trunks, shredded brush, and the skeletons of any creatures foolish enough to stand before the inevitable advance of the ants. Whole meadows became festering swamps of brown mud, while great tracks of forest were reduced to bare, twisted trunks and a decaying wasteland of rot and waste.

  The track followed an apparently random route, twisting and turning at whim, fording the occasional streams of the Payit jungle or easily cresting the steep limestone ridges that sometimes jutted from the land. It followed a northerly course, then twisted east and south, even turning around and crossing itself as it again swung to the north.

  The track may have seemed random, but it was not.

  In fact, the giant ants followed the commands of an intelligence every bit as keen as it was evil. Darien used the march to gain absolute control over the ants, directing them to follow her commands. She narrowed the column to a file of five or six ants abreast when she wished it to move quickly, for she found that she could turn it more easily this way and avoid obstacles such as marshes or thick brambles. When she desired a wide swath of destruction, she broadened the column; though it moved more slowly, with a hundred or more ants marching at its head, it left nothing living through its broad path.

  Each of the ants was a mindless monster in its own right: bigger than a huge jaguar, with a mechanical intensity that knew neither fear nor dismay, each ant marched and attacked and devoured wherever and whatever its mistress commanded.

  All the while Darien’s mind seethed with hatred. She grimaced at the pictures in her mind of humankind, its miserable failings and faithlessness. She spat her venom upward at the thought of the arrogant gods, wreaking havoc among the mortals at no risk to themselves.

  And she drove her ants, the thousands of massive insects that spewed from the bowels of the earth, ready to obey her every command. Finally she felt ready to begin her revenge.

  This region of Payit, though sparsely populated, hosted several small villages. It was toward one of these that, at last, she marched her ant army. Soon she reached the fringe of jungle around her goal, and she looked across several small fields of mayz toward a cluster of thatch huts.

  Wait, my soldiers.

  Her command, silently compelling, reached all of her subjects. The leading ants held at the edge of the jungle while their brethren marched up to join them from behind. Gradually the marching file expanded into a broad front of twitching antennae and slowly flexing mandibles. Black and hulking, the ants trembled with energy, yet remained in place. As more and more of the army reached them, Darien smiled thinly.

  Forward-kill!

  Now the rank of massive insects broke from the jungle, sweeping through the fields of mayz. Great jaws snatched the grain from its stalks, devouring ears, leaves, and all. Jerking forward with steady momentum, the ants quic
kly scuttled toward the village.

  First to see the horrifying attackers were several women who were gathering corn when the nightmare horde suddenly burst around them. They screamed only for a second, dragged down even before they could turn to run.

  Their screams brought men running from the huts, and they met the ants at the fringe of the village. The powerful forelegs of the soldiers knocked their weapons aside and cracked the bones of these warriors. Then the insects’ mandibles seized them with bone-crushing force.

  The first rank of the ants ripped through the line of spearmen, whose missiles merely bounced off the hard insectoid carapaces. They tore and crushed, ripping limbs away and leaving bleeding, helpless victims still alive to face the hunger of the second rank.

  Screams rang through the air, sending flocks of noisy parrots and macaws squawking from the trees. All the villagers not caught in the first wave of disaster turned to flee. The ants scuttled awkwardly after these morsels and quickly overtook most of them. The smallest humans, the ants snatched up and carried back to their new queen. The larger ones, they cut dawn where they caught them, tearing them to pieces so that each ant could carry a portion.

  With the swiftness, if not the grace, of deer, they raced among the buildings and through the small village square. Without pause, the ants overran the tiny cluster of huts, probing inside each building, emotionlessly gobbling those too infirm or young to flee. Soon they started on the thatch itself, tearing and ripping until the buildings fell in ruins.

  The center of the village sheltered a small pyramid, topped by a typical Maztican temple. The ants swarmed up all sides of the structure, brushing aside the few warriors who stood in their path. At the top, the village priest stood in the temple door, brandishing his stone dagger. An ant sliced his arm off at the elbow before he could strike a blow. Another seized his foot and dragged him, screaming, down the pyramid steps, while still more ants plunged into the temple building itself, tearing at the wooden walls with their steel-hard mandibles. Soon the entire building collapsed, crashing around the stone altar “in a heap of rubble.

  Somewhere within, a brazier must have contained hot coals, for shortly after the collapse, a wisp of smoke erupted from the wreckage, In moments, orange flames licked upward, and soon the ruined temple crackled into a hot blaze. Sparks, wafted by the gentle wind, floated tantalizingly over the dying village. Some of these nestled among the heaps of torn thatch, and soon the ruined huts began to burn.

  In a few minutes, there was little sign of any human habitation here, save for the squat stone pyramid amid the glowing piles of crackling ashes and coals.

  At the edge of the clearing, the driders watched the destruction with grim satisfaction.

  “You have found us our army,” hissed one of Darien’s driders, a sleek male with a powerful longbow. He, like the rest of her kin, had looked quietly on while the ants attacked.

  “My soldiers kill very well,” agreed Darien.

  Lolth, too, was well pleased by the carnage, though of course her driders could not know it.

  From the chronicles of Coton:

  In the embrace of the Plumed One, may we live to see another day.

  The door to Lotil’s hut crashes inward, and a great beast stands there, slavering- It is monstrously tall, green of skin, and possessed of long, wicked claws upon its fingers. The crimson brand of the Viperhand throbs on its chest. Its black, sunken eyes focus on the featherworker and me as we cower in the corner.

  But then the presence of Qotal becomes manifest.

  Lotil’s loom, decked with feathers and cloth, stands in the corner. As the beast advances, the partial tapestry tears free from the loom. It floats toward us, then hangs motionless in the air, between the monster and our terrified selves.

  The creature stands dumbfounded, but no more so than I. For upon this uncompleted scrap of tapestry appears an image of a place, an image rendered so clear, so unmistakable, that it would seem to be the place itself.

  The beast stumbles backward in confusion. Finally, silently, it departs from the house. I stare, transfixed by the image before me.

  Then the blind featherworker beside me, who cannot see the sun in the noonday sky, speaks.

  “It is the Pyramid of Tewahca,” he says, and I agree.

  6

  MARCHES AND AMBUSH

  Luskag felt a strange mixture of sadness and pride as his dwarves marched past. They left Sunhome in the care of the young and the old, while all the strong adults-males and females alike-joined the file toward war. All across the House of Tezca, he knew, the other villages of desert dwarves mustered as well.

  He counted barely a hundred souls among the warriors, and he did not know how much they could accomplish against the apparently numberless horde of monsters spreading southward across the desert. But the vision of chaos had been so clear, so threatening, that they all knew they had to try.

  Most of his dwarves were armed with weapons of plumastone, but his village was still unique in the desert. The others had only begun to acquire the secrets of the super hardened obsidian and were for the most part bearing crude weapons more typical of Maztica.

  Work progressed steadily, following the council at Sun-home, as each village had sent an expedition to the ridges around the City of the Gods. They had since returned to their homes, laden with the shiny black rock with which the dwarves now labored to create the tough, deadly weapons.

  A few desert dwarves wielded metal axes or swords that predated the Rockfire, but these artifacts were reserved for chieftains and other venerable warriors. Luskag himself had borne such a battle-axe, but he had bestowed the weapon upon his eldest son, Bann. The chief himself carried a heavy axe of plumastone.

  Regardless of their armament, all of the villages had sent companies of doughty warriors, albeit warriors who had never known war. Yet the tradition of courage and combat lay deep within the dwarven race, and Luskag knew that they would fight well. So, too, he reflected sadly, would they die.

  Luskag trotted to the head of the column, and the desert dwarves started across the sun-scorched realm of their home. They would gather at the City of the Gods, and there they would make their stand.

  Gultec nodded to Halloran, then bowed deeply before Erixitl. The sun had not yet risen, yet the sky was clear and blue, already promising a day of extreme heat. Eastward over the trackless desert, Poshtli soared in tight circles, as if impatient with the humans so far below.

  “Lady of the Plume,” Gultec began, “1 must leave now. My destiny calls.”

  She embraced the Jaguar Knight but did not try to dissuade him. “1 know of destiny,” she whispered softly. “May it be a load you can hear.”

  Gultec looked into her face, holding her shoulders. “It can be a blessing as well as a burden. Whatever its form, it is laid upon you. You must not fight it.

  A frown creased her forehead, but Erixitl sighed slowly and relaxed. She sensed a deep kinship with the Jaguar Knight, and she knew that he spoke wisely. “1 will try to remember,” she promised.

  “The acts of the gods are not easily understood. Once I fought wars for the cause of Zaltec, and even worked with priests to further the causes of that god of war-god of death, more rightly!”

  “I remember,” Erixitl said dryly. They both smiled now, though the memory was not pleasant. Gultec had bound Erix and led her to an intended sacrificial death on the shores of the Eastern Sea. Only the arrival of the white-winged “sea creatures,” later proven to be the ships of the Golden Legion, had saved her.

  “But my own destiny took me to Far Payit, and there I

  learned the ways of this god you call Qotal. His wisdom is proven in that he has chosen you as his herald.”

  Once again Erix shook her head. “What does that prove? How am I aiding the cause of his arrival-his promised arrival?”

  “That I do not know. But know this, Erixitl of the Nexala: When the knowledge comes, you will be the first to receive it.”

  Around the tw
o, the vast camp of Mazticans came slowly awake. Dawn’s pale blue light filtered across the desert, shining on the feathers of the eagle that still circled to the east. Already word of the problems facing them on this day had spread among the refugees.

  All had heard of the massacre the previous day of the band of stragglers, a thousand lives snuffed out in one brutal attack. Though the news caused tension and fear, Erixitl noticed no sign of panic among her countrymen, and this made her proud.

  The people had heard of the bountiful valley discovered by Gultec and reported by other scouts as well. The swiftest of the marchers could expect to lie there by nightfall, while the rest of the band would reach it by the middle of the following day.

  Yet what good was such a fertile place if it would merely be swept over by the surging wave of war? At best, it seemed to offer a temporary sanctuary-a respite of a day, perhaps two-in a journey that threatened to become a way of life.

  And then there was the matter of the great eagle. Many had witnessed the miracle, as the tale of the bird’s appearance as Poshtli was now called, and they had insured that the story spread throughout the camp. But now the eagle veered away from the promised route to food and water, and the path to safety was no longer clearly defined.

  Abruptly Gultec turned away Erixitl gasped as his shape shifted, his transformed appearance clear in the cool light, He moved quickly then, in a flash of bright green feathers, and disappeared. She saw a large parrot take to wing, and then the bird turned one bright eye toward her as it fluttered higher into the air. In a few moments, it was go: winging strongly toward the east.

  “There, to the east,” she said softly as Halloran turned to her. “That is where Poshtli flies, now Gultec as well. It is where I must fly, too. I know Poshtli shows us the path- toward what I’m still not sure.” She looked at her husband, and he nodded. He, too, had observed the eagle’s change of course. While a sheltered valley, with food and water, lay a day’s march to the southwest, Poshtli now soared over arid lands, a broken waste of jagged ridges and deep, barren gulches.