Viperhand mt-2

by Douglas Niles

  Chitikas hovered outside the Highcave as the companions came up to him. The feathered snake floated between the bodies of two jaguars — unmarked by visible wounds, but undeniably dead. Halloran didn't even want to know how the snake had killed them.

  "Let's go," he said. He and Chitikas started into the cave, while Erix came right behind them, followed by Shatil. Poshtli brought up the rear.

  The entrance led to a smooth, wide passageway, obviously excavated from the soft volcanic rock. Still, no evidence of hammer or pick stroke could be seen in the walls or floor.

  A stench of noxious gas burst around them. Hal clapped his hand to his face, squinting. Fortunately a blast of fresher air cleared the hot vapor away.

  Chitikas floated out in front as they entered a larger cavern, with a high, domed ceiling. A deep crater filled the center of the room, emitting a dull crimson glow that seemed to pulse in varying intensity. They couldn't see inside the pit, but the surging light frightened them, alternately hot and cold. The feathered snake drew himself into a coil.

  They're in here. Halloran sensed the snake's message, though Chitikas had not spoken. The Ancient Ones. They are invisible.

  The information sent a chill through Halloran's body. He unconsciously tightened his grip on his blade. From the tension in Erixitl's hand, resting on his shoulder, he knew that his wife had received the same news.

  Chitikas hovered before them, his tail touching the ground but his twisting neck and head a full ten feet in the air. His great wings beat slowly, supporting him, as the snake turned his head this way and that, looking about the large chamber.

  Suddenly a pale white light flashed in the cave. "Ice-tongue!" shouted Hal, involuntarily flinching backward. At the same time, he noticed that he and Erix weren't even the targets of the attack. Instead, the cone-shaped blast of the wand had struck only one of them.

  "Chitikas!" Erix cried. They stared in horror at the feathered snake. Chitikas crashed to the floor before them, his brittle, suddenly frozen wings snapping into many shards of different colors. The wingless couatl writhed there silently.

  At the same time, Hal saw Darien appear on the other side of the glowing fire crater. The wizard, her invisibility spell broken by her attack with Icetongue, regarded the intruders with a faint smile that Halloran found more disturbing than a grimace of hate and rage.

  She didn't wear her customary robe. Instead, her white skin showed plainly through the tiny, gold-rimmed garments that barely preserved her modesty.

  "My spellbook!" she demanded.

  "I brought it," Hal answered, sensing that it was foolish to lie. Yet his mind worked desperately, seeking any kind of plan.

  They saw other forms blink into sight, then, one by one, until more than a dozen black-skinned elves appeared. They wore tight-fitting armor of fine black chain, and each was armed with a dark longbow. The bows were stretched taut, with arrows nocked and aimed at the small party of intruders.

  Another one, a wrinkled, ancient drow, appeared beyond the caldron, seated in a great stone throne. Skeletal of visage, this one sat back, cool and aloof, obviously the leader.

  "You will give it to me now," Darien commanded, starting to walk around the caldron toward Halloran.

  Desperately seeking a delay, Hal reached into his pack and slowly withdrew the bound, heavy tome. "Wait," he said slowly. He knew that they had been caught in a trap of powerful, deadly cunning. He also understood that once Darien had her spellbook, they would all be killed.

  Surprising even Erixitl, who had a hand on his shoulder, Halloran suddenly dove forward, lunging into a headlong slide along the floor. In a split second, he stopped before any of the archers could fire.

  Halloran lay still on the floor, the book in his hands extended before him, just over the lip of the smoking crater. Below it flickered and flamed the depths of the Darkfyre. If his grip relaxed even slightly, the book would plunge into the inferno, gone forever.

  "Now," Halloran continued, still speaking very slowly, "let's talk."

  "Kill him!" urged the Ancestor, rising from his throne and gesturing toward Halloran.

  "Wait!" hissed Darien. The pale wizard turned back to Hal. "Speak, then."

  Think! Think of something, anything! his mind raced. "The betrayal of the legion — you must have prepared that for years."

  Darien smiled again smugly. "For more than ten years, I have been seeking a way back to my people — a way that would bring us closer to our ancient goal. In the legion, I found the perfect vehicle — in Cordell, the perfect tool."

  Hal stared at her in growing horror. "This whole expedition, the crossing of the Trackless Sea, conquering the Payit, marching on Nexal? This was all your plan?"

  "Yes! For generations of human lives, we have strived to gain mastery of this land. With the league of the Viperhand, our numbers grew organized and controlled — humans, branded with the sign of Zaltec, and the priests of Zaltec controlled by us, the Ancient Ones!" She laughed aloud, but her laughter was a dry and empty sound, devoid of humor.

  Halloran couldn't see his companions. He was unaware of Shatil, gaping in horror at the woman who had just explained away his life's order as a tool of these manipulative elves. The young priest swayed on his feet, woozy, as it seemed that the world came to pieces around him.

  "But we needed an enemy," Darien continued," a force to give focus to that hatred, to bring Maztica together under the hands of the cult. The Golden Legion filled that role very well indeed."

  Chitikas lay still, his shattered wings in pieces around him. The snake's feathered flanks rose and fell slowly, the only indication that he still lived.

  "I am going to my husband" Erixitl announced, stepping forward to kneel at Halloran's side. The bowmen tensed with her movement, but Hal glared at Darien, who raised a hand to restrain them.

  None of those before him saw Shatil slowly, carefully unwind the strap of hishna from around his wrist. The priest's eyes were locked upon the white-skinned wizard. Only Poshtli, bringing up the rear, saw the movement. The warrior started easing to the side, clenching his sword.

  With a sudden gesture, Shatil flung the snakeskin at Darien. "By Zaltec, take her!" he shouted, springing after it.

  The scaled strap stretched and twisted in the air, growing into a netlike web. Darien darted to the side, but the growing hishna form followed. It struck her arm and instantly, like the lash of enchanted tenctacles, wrapped itself around her, dragging her to the ground and holding her tight.

  At the same time, Poshtli charged out of the shadows. The drow archers let fly their missiles, and many of the black-tipped arrows struck the priest of Zaltec, propelling him backward and driving him to the floor. One struck Poshtli's shoulder, while others clattered against the stone walls of the cave.

  Then the Ancestor rose from his chair. He raised his hand and started toward Halloran and Erix.

  Desperately Hal dropped the spellbook at the edge of the pit and leaped to his feet. He turned toward the archers and saw them swiftly draw additional black arrows from their quivers, nocking them into the bows.

  "Kirisha!" he cried, suddenly inspired. He cast his light spell directly in the faces of the nocturnal Ancient Ones. The white glow blossomed, illuminating the cavern brightly.

  With cries of pain and anguish, many of the drow archers dropped their weapons or turned away from the painful blast of light. In another second, Halloran charged among them, and Helmstooth found the bodies of many of the blinded, stumbling drow.

  Poshtli followed, striking a drow with his steel sword, knocking the blow of another aside. The warrior staggered, weakened from the arrow wounds he had suffered just moments before and atop the palace, and one of the dark elves saw his weakness. With a sudden lunge, the drow drove his blade toward the Nexalan.

  Twisting away, Poshtli tried to stop the blow, but the black blade knocked his own sword aside. Continuing the lunge, the drow stabbed the warrior in the chest. With a dull moan, Poshtli sprawled onto his back, bl
eeding.

  Erixitl faced the Ancestor as the wizened, decrepit drow hobbled forward, coming around the deep pit of fire. The elf held a wand or some kind of weapon in his hand, a short staff with an evil-looking tip like the outspread claws of a small dragon.

  Erix stood, strangely unmoving, before him as he raised the clawlike staff. He was perhaps halfway around the crater when a sudden, searing hiss filled the cave, and red light exploded in tiny beams from the claws on the Ancestor's wand. Each of these rays of light merged with the others into a heavy bolt of solid crimson energy that smashed into Erixitl with crushing force.

  Her pluma token puffed upward, and the gust of wind that had sheltered her from Darien's magic swiftly swirled around Erix. But the power of the attack blew this protection aside, bashing Erix backward and flattening her to the floor. The Cloak of One Plume billowed behind her.

  She lay there, moaning, as the Ancestor took another step and raised the weapon again. He had come nearly all the way around the caldron and soon would loom directly over her. Halloran started for Erixitl, not knowing what he could do. He heard the Ancestor laugh, a harsh, cruel sound.

  But neither he nor the aged drow anticipated another reaction. Chitikas — coiled, motionless, and apparently unconscious throughout the battle — suddenly exploded from his coil. The wingless couatl drove like a spear toward the Ancestor.

  Chitikas's fangs sought the throat of his victim, but the Ancestor barely managed to knock the snake's bead to the side. For a moment, the two of them teetered on the brink of the bubbling caldron. The snake's tail lashed around, striking the spellbook where Hal had left it. Darien, still imprisoned by hishna, screamed as the tome toppled into the Darkfyre.

  Hal reached Erixitl's side, kneeling to sweep her into his arms. She sobbed against him, helplessly watching the struggle. "Chitikas!" she cried.

  Then, locked in their desperate fight, the couatl and the Ancestor fell slowly, following the spellbook into the flaring caldron.

  Hoxitl paused for a long, splendid moment, basking in the full scope of his triumph. Below him, the cleric of the strangers' god stared bug-eyed at his poised dagger. The Bishou's lips were flecked with spit, his tongue protruded, and the veins in his face seemed ready to burst.

  The priest of Zaltec leered at him, and then began to lower the dagger. With a quick, sharp slash, the stone tip met the skin of the cleric of Helm.

  And it pierced that skin, slicing a deep wound into Domincus, though the cleric still lived. Hoxitl thrust his bloody hand into the wound, grasping the Bishou's heart as he had taken thousands of hearts before, ready to pull it forth and offer it to the gaping maw of the statue Zaltec.

  But this time, when his hand met the Bishou's flesh, the two gods came together with a force that overwhelmed the cleric's mortal powers.

  Behind and far, far above Hoxitl, unseen in the rain but heard by them all, the top of Mount Zatal exploded.

  From the chronicles of Colon:

  At last the gods converge, and in their meeting, they tear the world asunder.

  In the temple of Qotal, I feel the powers come together. Zaltec and Helm clash as the cleric of one tears the heart from the cleric of the other. Such a sacrifice must forever change the face of the land.

  And even Qotal through the harbinger of his couatl, meets Zaltec, as Chitikas gives his life to the Darkfyre. The feathered snake is a meal even hungry Zaltec cannot digest.

  Below them all, but rising fast, Lolth seethes now with the passion of her vengeance. She explodes into this world through the Darkfyre, laying her punishment upon her children, the drow.

  And the gaming board is swept of its pieces.

  EBB AND FLOW

  Gultec wandered far from the jungles of Tulom-Itzi, crossing the lands of the Payit, the Kultakans, the Pezelacs. Always he moved toward Nexal.

  Sometimes he walked as a man, visiting the peoples he passed among, learning of their fear. In all these lands, he found a deep foreboding, a great and dire anticipation of terrible things to come.

  Other times he soared as a bird, or skulked within the mighty jaguar body that still gave him so much pleasure. He found, in his meandering course, several deep, lush valleys where he had thought lay only desert. Much to his surprise, several of these valleys contained ripe meadows of mayz. No one had planted it there, he knew, for this was deepest wilderness. Yet he remembered this abundance of food, enough for many people, as he pressed onward through the wilds of Maztica.

  His course steady, his own courage unfailing, he finally reached the shores of Nexal's lakes.

  And here he witnessed the source of the True World's terror.

  Halloran sensed Erixitl's arms around him, and he clung to her with all the strength of his mindless terror. Around them the world came to pieces. Chaos reigned.

  He didn't wonder why they weren't burned to ashes immediately. He saw fire in the form of red, liquid rock, exploding upward and outward in a wave of certain death. But that wave washed around them, and he knew only that Erix was in his arms, that the two of them were together, and it seemed certain they would die that way.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Hal tried to block out the nightmare around them, but he could not. Still he saw glowing crimson liquid splashing, he saw the summit of the huge mountain as it crumbled and collapsed around them. Rain poured into the cavern, creating a hissing inferno of steam, shattering rock and boiling away the instant it reached the ground.

  Slowly the horrors around him seemed to fade, and he knew only that he held the woman he loved. He loved her more than he had ever thought he could love, and he desperately wanted to soothe the trembling he could feel in her body.

  "Are you… alive?" asked Erix some time later. He wondered at first whether he had dreamed her voice.

  "I… don't know," he replied honestly. "I think so, but I don't know how."

  "I do," she replied, still dreamily nuzzling her face into the hollow of his neck. "It is the will of Qotal."

  Halloran looked around them at the inferno of flame and molten rock and explosive gases. For the first time, he realized that they hadn't remained immobile during the eruption. Instead, they floated with the force of the blast, riding gently in the shelter of the…

  What did protect them? He noticed that they watched the fiery chaos through a spiderweb-like grid. Looking closer, he recognized a pattern of feathers and down, creating a globe only large enough to hold the two of them.

  "My cloak," explained Erix, still speaking as if she were dazed. "It is truly the gift of Qotal, and so it protects us, holding the fires of Zaltec at bay." Indeed, the Cloak of One Plume encircled them both, protecting them from the inferno yet showing them the full, horrifying devastation wrought by the gods.

  "Is this the god — Zaltec?" Hal asked, gesturing to the fiery maelstrom.

  "It is Zaltec, and more. This I see now, from a very high place." As Erix spoke, Hal noticed that they had indeed begun to rise above the explosion, floating dreamily in their soft, transparent cocoon, overlooking the god-wracked valley of Nexal so terribly far below.

  "I see Zaltec meeting Helm in the struggle for mastery, and both of them threaten to destroy each other. But more, I see a spidery presence, the dark god of the Ancient Ones-"

  "Lolth!" interjected Halloran. "Spider queen of darkness! You see her, too?'

  "Yes. It is her rage that causes the mountain to explode. She is furious with her children, the drow. They have foresaken her in the quest for earthly rewards, turning to the worship of Zaltec."

  Erixitl turned to look at Halloran, and the expression in her eyes seemed very far away. "Erix? What's wrong? You're here, with me!" He spoke loudly, with force, and slowly her eyes focused.

  "Yes, I know. Hold me." She was quiet for a long time then as they drifted through the sky.

  The cocoon of pluma seemed to float like a bubble on a light spring breeze. Even through the black of the night, they could see ruin wracked upon the city below. Lava flowed into the cool wate
rs of the lakes, erupting in mountainous pillars of steam. The rain stilt fell, but it was a black, heavy rain, and it seemed to punish those under its downpour.

  Below, in Nexal, they could see many thousands of people fleeing in panic from the confines of the doomed city. They saw the causeway, hours earlier the scene of savage battle, now the avenue for countless thousands of terrified Mazticans. As the two of them watched, drifting safely overhead, a steaming wave rose from the lake. Hissing and bubbling, it swept over one of the causeways, carrying the panicked humans away.

  Convulsions wracked the earth upon which the city rested, and most of its great buildings tumbled into ruins. Only the Great Pyramid stood, and as Hal and Erix drifted past, high above it, they saw long, serpentine cracks run up the sides of the structure. The three temples atop the pyramid swayed, finally crumbling.

  Then the whole great edifice, mightiest of the centers of the True World, twisted and broke and finally collapsed into rubble.

  The palace walls buckled and crumbled around the terrified mare. Storm reared in panic, her hooves kicking the cracked adobe. The courtyard where Poshtil had kept the horse abruptly twisted, a great section sinking away. Wild lake waters surged into the opening.

  With a maddened spring, Storm hurled herself across the open water, but her leap fell short. Splashing into the turbulence, she kicked free of the tumbling stone, desperately swimming toward the open waters of the lake.

  The city surged, exploded, and died, but the horse pressed forward, uncaring of the surrounding chaos. Pressing through widening canals, snorting and kicking in fear, she finally reached the deep waters of Lake Azul. Deepest of the four lakes and farthest from the exploding mountain, its waters had not yet suffered the worst effects of the convulsions.

  With strong strokes, the roan struggled through the waves until she reached the far northern shore. With a toss of her water-soaked head, she scrambled onto the shore and immediately galloped toward the wilds of northern Maztica.