2
THE FERTILE DESERT
“We’d better get back to the camp. It’s dark already.” Erixitl slowly rose to her feet as Hal followed. They had only to turn, to look down the other side of the ridge, to see the scene they had escaped for these few precious moments.
The vast, straggling camp lay like a muddy blotch on the land, barely visible in the light of its thousand campfires. Still, that mud was a sign of good fortune-the blessings of gods, or of providential nature. A year earlier, there could have been no mud, for there would have been no water.
Now water was reasonably plentiful in the desert, and the humans who churned its neighborhood to mud lived where they would have died. The nature of the life, it must be said, gave these miserable folk little thought of thanksgiving.
Halloran and Erix did not know how many people fled in this great procession, moving gradually southward, away from ruined Nexal and the beasts that now claimed the city as their home. Like a swarm of locusts, the humans scoured each water hole, quickly baring the surrounding fields of mayz and berries. No single location provided a long rest; in a matter of days, the great march southward would commence again, for this was the only way the people could eat.
For now, this new water hole promised a brief respite. Even in the darkness, women moved through the fields, gathering mayz, while children splashed around the fringes of the once-blue pool, washing away the dust and weariness from the long day of marching. The water occupied the center of a shallow, bowl-shaped valley. The desert stretched for miles beyond the rim of the vale, an expanse of brown, windswept dunes and even harsher patches of rocky plain.
Within the bowl, a miraculous transformation had shown itself. Green fields of sweet, waving mayz formed a belt around the valley, below the crest of the hill but some ways above the water. Around the water’s edge grew a lush circle of wild rice, while plump berries sprang from bushes that ringed the marshy fringe.
The spaces in the valley that had not grown food, or where such food had already been harvested, now served as living space for the population of a massive city. Nexalans, the citizens of vanished Nexal, formed most of this group, but a small fraction of the humans showed different origins. The latter were bushy of face and wore breastplates and carried weapons of steel. The Mazticans, of course, carried obsidian-edged clubs, called macas, as well as arrows and spears and knives of stone, and they wore armor of padded cotton.
Now these folk lived in uneasy truce, bonded by a mutual fear of the greater, and common, enemy lurking in the nightmare of Nexal. The truce did not approach camaraderie, but it was eased by the fact that the spokesmen for the deep religious schisms between these two diverse peoples were no longer with them.
Indeed, the fleeing Mazticans had even abandoned their practices of human sacrifice. The priests of Zaltec, universally transformed into trolls on the Night of Wailing, no longer hounded them for victims. The devastation, commencing at the height of a sacrificial orgy, had caused many to question doctrine they had always accepted at face value. Who were they to question the hunger of the gods?
But now, in the face of the potential starvation of their children, the hunger of the gods did not seem so tragic a thing to the people of Maztica.
Erixitl and Halloran slowly descended from the ridgetop, through a fringe of the camp in a clean-plucked field that had yesterday grown lush with mayz.
“Sister! Sister of the Plume!” A voice called out, and more of them joined in as several women recognized Erixitl. They quickly gathered around her, eagerly thrusting their children forward so that Erix could touch them. Gently she brushed her hands across their tousled, black-haired heads.
“And see? See her cloak,” said a round-faced mother, looking at Erixitl’s garment with an expression approaching rapture. “The sign! Soon Qotal will be here, and then all will be well again!”
Abruptly Erix’s throat tightened and she turned away, led by Halloran farther into the camp.
A small stand of stunted cedars, a rare grove in the House of Tezca, proved that this vale had once retained some minimal moisture, enough to grow these hardy desert trees. Now the grove, newly green and lush from the suddenly increased water supply, sheltered a group of people from the growing night. Here gathered those who led the procession and protected it.
A fractious group, formed by disaster and held together by necessity, they nevertheless strived for cooperation, for they knew this was the only way they would survive. Their numbers included Eagle and Jaguar Warriors, priests of Qotal, Azul, and Calor, and even several steel-helmed officers of the Golden Legion.
As Erixitl approached, her cloak puffed outward from her shoulders and colors seemed to rise in the silky plume. Like an aura, bright hues surrounded the woman, and all the others in the group stood back a small distance from her. The blessing of Qotal lay upon her, and it was to Erixitl of Palul that the people turned for leadership, hope, and comfort.
She looked at them now, despairing. What did she know about leading people? Why did they look to her? Because, she knew, of the cloak she wore-the brilliant, scintillating Cloak-of-One-Plume that signified the blessing of Qotal, the Plumed Serpent. Erixitl silently cursed the blessing of that god, for this was her feeling now toward all gods. What kind of deities could wrack their people with a cataclysm like the Night of Wailing?
“Greetings, Gultec,” she said quietly to a dark, smooth-chinned warrior wearing the spotted tunic of a Jaguar Knight. Gultec was the warrior who had told them of food in the desert on the morning after the destruction of Nexal, thus insuring their survival.
He, together with Halloran, formed Erixitl’s strength and her shield on this hellish journey. Gultec had come to represent to her the same kind of friendship, she realized with a twinge of pain, as had the Eagle Knight, Lord Poshtli. He had aided Halloran and her on their desperate attempt to avert the catastrophe.
Now, as she despaired of leading these people, her heart ached for Poshtli’ The great lord and warrior had been a true friend to her and Halloran, and he had been with them atop the volcano at its moment of eruption. Though her cloak had protected her husband and herself, there had been no immortal shield for Poshtli. Rationally, as Halloran had tenderly tried to convince her, there could be no hope that Poshtli had survived. Yet still somehow, in her heart, she believed that he had to be alive.
White-robed priests of Qotal who had escaped the chaos in Nexal stood anxiously behind the pair, eager to counsel Erix. The Plumed Serpent would now return, for all the prophecies had been fulfilled, and they now preached a newly vitalized faith. The preaching was done by the younger priests, those who had not yet taken their vows of silence. But only the younger priests had escaped Qotal. The patriarch, Colon, was assumed to have perished in the chaos.
A warrior sprinted toward them from his guard post at the edge of the camp. He reached the group among the cedars and threw himself flat upon the sand before Erixitl.
“My lady, the foreigners return!”
Moments later, a trio of horses appeared behind him, cantering through the encampment. One, the leader, dismounted, while the other two held back some distance from the proud figure of Erixitl.
“What have you learned. General?” she asked, as the black-bearded rider bowed before her.
“The monsters move out from Nexal,” Cordell reported. “My scouts have observed long columns of ores, commanded by ogres and flanked by trolls, moving into the desert. They come southward, following our trail.”
The commander spoke in the common tongue of the
Realms but Halloran smoothly translated his speech into Nexalan. A rumble of concern rippled through the gathering until Erixitl raised her hand.
“How far away?” she asked.
“Still four or five days,” replied the captain-general. “But they march swiftly. Their columns extend to the east and west, barring our flight in those directions.”
“Stand and fight them here, then!” growled Totoq, a grizzled Jaguar Knight. A chorus of assenting voices joined him.
“Wait.” Gultec, also dressed in the spotted skin of a veteran Jaguar Knight, lifted his hand. Though not a man of the Nexala, his steadiness on the long flight had earned him the respect of the others.
