And the next, and perhaps the one after that. However long it took, Hoxitl knew that his force would prevail.
Darien had slowly carefully pulled herself up the last portion of the bluff. Now that the sun had risen, she had to take care not to be seen by the humans, yet instinctively she knew that they would not be looking for her.
She had seen the great dragon soar overhead, and she understood implicitly that it was her enemy-more to the point, the enemy, even the very antithesis, of her hishna. But now its passage gave her the chance she needed.
She saw the creature, its broad, brilliantly colored wings flapping gently, perch upon the top of the small pyramid. It faced away from her, toward the looming colossus in the jungle.
Darien scuttled across the field to the base of the pyramid, certain that she had not been observed from above. Slowly carefully she climbed the steep stairway She held her body low against the steps to avoid being spotted.
When she was partway up the stairs, the great dragon sprang into the air. The drider cowered against the pyramid as the serpent soared away. Awestruck, she watched it race toward the stony giant that was Zaltec.
The two deities collided, and the earth splintered around them. Great fissures opened in the ground, swallowing trees and earth, as the force of the onslaught caused the colossus to stagger backward. But then a massive, mountainous fist crashed into the neck of the Plumed One, and the
dragon tumbled back. For a moment, one wing folded back against its side.
Qotal fell to the earth, crushing dozens of trees and sending more fissures tearing through the soil of Payit. The pyramid rocked upon its base, and Darien clung with her hands as well as her legs to keep from being shaken off the stairs.
The dragon reared back, a hissing cloud of flame and smoke erupting from its widespread jaws. The sizzling inferno surrounded the god of war. but Zaltec ignored it. Again he lunged at Qotal, and this time the dragon pounced away.
The gods waged their war, uncaring for the living things around them, be they trees or animals or humans. The destruction of their combat crushed miles of forest and spread earthquakes and chasms that threatened to consume all of Payit.
Darien sensed her opportunity She crept up the last few steps of the pyramid and cautiously peered onto the crest. There, as she expected, all eyes were directed away from her, toward the battle between the gods.
Black hishna surged in Darien as the moment of her triumph lay before her. There was the wife, sitting up weakly staring in awe at the war god. She held a bundle to her breast, and Darien’s smile tightened savagely.
Very slowly the drider climbed onto the platform atop the pyramid. The talonmagic within her caused all of her energy to focus on the target of pluma before her.
Then she attacked.
“ How many did we lose?” Cordell spoke to Grimes atop the rampart, where he could keep a careful eye on the beasts arrayed around the fort.
“Thirty horses-only twenty riders, though” The cavalry captain sighed in weariness and despair.
“You saved a hundred times that many” the captain-general told him. “Without you to screen us, we never would have made it back to the fort.”
Grimes smiled faintly. “Still, don’t know what good that does us,” he said, with a gesture to the horde gathered beyond.
“ More than you might guess. It buys us time. Time to rest Time for Rodolfo to get here with the ships. Time for Erixitl to work a miracle. Time, and whatever that time can do for us.” Cordell clapped the horseman on the shoulder. “Now, you get some rest. There’ll be plenty of work later on I’m sure.”
The captain of horse nodded gratefully and turned to leave the rampart. As he did so, his eyes swept across the la-goon and the ocean to the north and east. Immediately he stiffened.
“What?” Cordell, seeing his reaction, spun to look out to sea.
The white sails were barely visible on the horizon but coming swiftly. At first indistinct, they quickly became identifiable-the fleet! The carracks he had sent to the Sea of Azul were returning! In a few moments, they could count them-all twenty-five vessels.
“Rodolfo!” Cordell shouted, and the cry resounded and echoed through the fort. The carracks swiftly pulled closer and all of Helmsport shouted.
As the ships drew near, they could see their Kultakan allies lining the decks, as well as a few of the legionnaires who had remained behind in the desert-in all, more than five” thousand fresh troops, eager to throw their strength into the battle.
“There you are. What happened? The baby!” The voce pulled Hal’s attention away from Poshtli in surprise. He looked into the equally surprised face of Jhatli as the youth ascended the last steps to the top of the pyramid. For a moment, the epic struggle between the gods was forgotten at his joy in seeing his companion.
“You’re alive!” cried the swordsman. He seized his young companion and looked into his face. Jhatli’s eyes were bright and curious. Hal saw, with a cautious look at his chest, that no wound showed there, even as a scar.
“The magic of pluma,” said Erix, softly so as not to disturb her child. The baby suckled noisily, content with his world now that he was being held by his mother and fed.
Halloran turned back to Poshtli, clapping his companion on both shoulders. “And to see you again, my friend, is a wish I would not have dared make.”
“1 have been… fortunate,” Poshtli said dryly.
“But what- Look out!” Jhatli’s eyes widened as he looked past Halloran.
Colon turned with sudden quickness, surprising Halloran into looking away from the spectacle before him. And in that instant, he saw Darien, hissing and spitting and racing toward his wife and child.
But even before the swordsman could react, the priest of Qotal seized the cloak-the brilliant plumage that lay over the altar, that had, after its miraculous transformation during Erix’s childbirth, opened passage for Qotal into the world. The cleric whirled it at the drider.
Darien shrieked in hatred and revulsion. At the same moment, the cleric threw himself upon her. Coton moved with surprising quickness, and by the time Halloran had drawn his sword, the cleric and the drider were clasped together like a pair of grim lovers, the cloak of plumage bright between them.
Again the gods clashed, and the world shook. The dragon breathed another spout of fire, and whole sections of forest burned away to ashes. Zaltec pummeled the dragon with his great stone fists, and where the blows fell, great barren craters opened in the ground. The chasms in the earth widened, and it seemed as if the loser must take Maztica with him when he perished. Earthquakes wracked the point, and parts of the bluff fell away, crashing into the ocean below. The world seemed ready to fall apart around them.
Coton, too, sensed this imminent peril. A lifetime of service to his god had led him to this, to the end of all life. Once again the land rumbled, and the pyramid settled lower on its foundation. The drider and the cleric lashed around atop the pyramid, a mingling of hishna and pluma, of the respective magics of Zaltec and Qotal.
The battle continued to rage, and then the cleric of Qotal did a thing that surprised even his god. For more than two decades, he had remained silent, bound by a vow to this god who now threatened imminent destruction.
Coton threw back his head, and he cursed out loud.
“Damn your pretensions!” he shouted, and the gods paused in their strife. “Damn your greed and your cruelty- yes, both of you!”
For a moment, the gods held their blows, turning their great heads to this impudent mortal. Then Qotal bellowed in rage, lunging toward the cleric who had betrayed his vow and now cursed his god. Zaltec, too, lumbered toward him, ready to slay the one who dared interrupt the immortal tasks of the gods.
Coton twisted to look at Halloran. The cleric’s face tightened with the agony of his struggle as he clasped Darien, still holding the blanket of pluma around her, enclosing her own power of hishna.
Then the priest spoke to Halloran. “They will destroy
us! We must send them back-remove them from this world. They do not belong here!”
“But-but how?” demanded Halloran, his blood chilling as the monstrous figures loomed closer.
“You dare curse my name?” Qotal’s voice was a rumbling bellow, nearly shattering their ears. “You, who have prayed for my return, pleaded for my presence?”
The two gods loomed overhead, one the source of pluma, the coalescence of all its power; the other, the dark font of hishna and the root of its dark might. They looked with cold detachment at the mortals. They saw a man of pluma, bearing a cloak of high feathermagic, wrapped about a foul creature of hishna. The essence of the two powers flowed through the blood of these tiny creatures and gave them the vitality to carry their fight across the world.
The priest whirled back to Halloran. “Kill me!” he hissed, his voice taut. “Kill us both-now! It’s our only chance!”
The gods loomed closer, rearing above the pyramid, ready to squash them all into nothingness. But Halloran couldn’t force his hand.
“Now! There is no time!” Coton’s voice was a desperate plea.
Halloran stood mute and helpless. He couldn’t bring himself to strike this old companion who had silently and patiently accompanied them across the True World. He tried to force his hand to his blade, but it wouldn’t move. Erixitl looked at him in terror, clutching the baby in her encircling arms.
But one man was free of those restraints. Poshtli suddenly grasped the sword from Halloran’s hand. Whirling toward the combatants as the spread his jaws, ready to immolate them all, the warrior sprang.
And he thrust the keen blade home.
The bloodstained tip of Helmstooth cut easily through the cleric’s body, tearing the cloak of pluma and driving into the drider’s bowels. Darien shrieked in pain, staggering backward with a force that pulled the blade from Poshtli’s hand.
But the cleric clung to her even as he died, and as the blood of pluma and hishna mingled and flowed onto the top of the pyramid, the power of the gods waned.
Qotal’s jaws emitted a short gasp of smoke, but already the dragon had begun to fade from sight. The stone behemoth of Zaltec, meanwhile, staggered weakly backward. Then it teetered once and crashed to the ground with thunderous force, shattering into so many lifeless boulders.
By the time the dust had settled, Qotal could no longer be seen.
Tokol joined Cordell and the defenders of Helmsport on the field before the fort. Together they watched the beasts of the Viperhand withdraw from the field, disappearing into the jungle.
“Did our arrival scare them away?” the Kultakan war chief wondered.
“Perhaps,” replied the captain-general. “Or perhaps it was
something else. All of the urge to fight seemed to leave! them.”
“Let’s hope the urge is gone for good,” growled Daggrande, with a scowl at the retreating foe.
“Chical tells me there’s no sign of the colossus, either;’ added Cordell.
A weary party approached along the shore, and they hurried over to greet Poshtli, Halloran, and Jhatli. Erixitl, carrying the baby, rode in a makeshift travois pulled by her husband.
“The gods are gone-back to their own immortal planes,” Halloran told them quietly. “They have left the world to us.”
“lb make of it what we will,” said Poshtli, with a meaningful look at Cordell.
“What’s that’” wondered Daggrande, pointing to a scroll of painted symbols that Halloran carried.
“Coton’s chronicles. He painted the tale of our adventures on these scrolls. They tell a good part of the history of the True World.”
“A history that changes by the hour,” Cordell added in a rare thoughtful moment Then he shook his head quickly, as if forcing his mind back to the present. He looked at Halloran. “The first ships sail for Amn in a few days. You’ve earned passage, should you desire it.”
The weary swordsman looked at his former commander and shook his head. “My home is here now, in Maztica. It may be that I’ll return to the Sword Coast, sometime, for a visit. But for now, I-we-won’t be going anywhere.”
EPILOGUE
A wind sweeps in from the Trackless Sea, blowing from the east and carrying with it an unstoppable force. It whips the waves and hurls breakers against the shore.
The wind sweeps up the bluff of Twin Visages, abandoned now, its surrounding jungle torn by fissures and chasms, the trees splintered and trampled. The pyramid still stands, and the two faces still stare outward from the bluff into the teeth of the wind, but the sea before them remains empty for now.
Next the wind swirls and soars on to Ulatos, which has burgeoned into a bustling trade city, combining with the harbor of Helmsport to become the main port of call along the entire coast of the True World. From Ulatos, treasures beyond gold-treasures such as rich cocoa and lush may a- are carried to the east. And other cargoes-horses, steel, wagons, livestock, and more-arrive here from the Sword Coast and make their way across Maztica.
Westward with the wind, now, to Kultaka. The city has lost its traditional enemy, for Nexal is an empire no more. But instead, the Kultakans stand at the border of a hellish land, and so their warlike vigilance remains undying.
Then the wind swirls past the volcanoes of Zatal and Popol, touching only briefly the still smoldering valley of Nexal. It is as if the air here is an affront to this wind from the sea, and so it quickly soars upward and past the valley, leaving it as a stinking ruin, lair of many thousands of monstrous inhabitants. Somewhere, of course, beneath the muck and the ruin, an empire’s ransom in gold lies buried. And so it shall remain, if it is up to the wind.
Now the wind whistles to the south, along freshly ripening fields of mayz, down fertile valleys where once barren desert had lain. The wind follows these valleys to the rapidly growing city of Tukan, where the ways of the True World remain, but not untouched by the arrival of the foreigners. The gods of sacrifice are gone, banished by men who claim the world for themselves.
Here, in this strong city, a man and a woman come to live, and between them bring the strongest things of each of their worlds. Their child-soon, their children-grows and flourishes, and their home knows love and peace.
And the wind, as if satisfied, turns gently back to the sea.
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Feathered Dragon mt-3 Page 31
