The two or three seconds of its flight passed like hours.
Then the world around them erupted into searing light. Tongues of liquid flame exploded from the pebble, encircling them, hissing with infernal heat. Moist, succulent plants sizzled into ash. The ring of encircling legionnaires stumbled backward, many suffering burns on their faces or hands.
Halloran felt the heat pressing around them, bringing sweat to his forehead. Numb with terror, he awaited the devouring kiss of flame that would end their lives. He sensed Erix's fear beside him as her hand squeezed his arm with viselike pressure.
But then the flames faded away, and they were unharmed! They stood amidst a large, circular patch of blackened, smoldering garden, but Erix's pluma had protected them from the spell.
'Take them, you cowards!' He heard Darien's voice, uncharacteristically shrill, commanding the legionnaires. Perhaps two dozen of them still stood, and once again they pressed forward.
'Stay close to me,' warned Erix as Hal started to lunge toward the swordsmen. He saw, from the devastated plant life, that the ring of protection around Erix seemed to extend some ten feet away from her.
Feinting toward the men before him, he drove them back. Then he turned and, with Poshtli at his side, attacked those rushing from the rear. In three blows, three more men fell, and the Maztican stayed another. Hal noted that Poshtli readily adapted his skill with a maca to the use of the hard steel blade.
Halloran saw Darien raise her hand again. A bolt of magic hissed from her finger, a magic arrow forming in the air. It crackled toward him, and he grunted with pain as it hissed into his hip, leaving a smoking burn.
Again a bolt crackled, and he flinched backward, knowing he couldn't avoid the attack. But then a lithe form stepped before him. The magic arrow struck Erixitl between her breasts, where the pluma token lay against her skin, unseen beneath her dress.
The bolt crumbled into sparks and fell harmlessly to the ground. The swordsmen paused for a moment as Darien's shrill cry of hatred split the air. Bolt after bolt shot forth, each one popping into nothingness against the Maztican woman. Finally Darien dropped her hand, her spell exhausted. The other attackers closed tentatively.
'We've got to get out of here,' Poshtli grunted. 'They knew we were coming. Naltecona's too well guarded!'
Sensing the truth of his friend's words, Halloran cursed in frustration. He felt he could go anywhere, attack at any odds, with the pulsating might flowing into his muscles from his pluma wristbands. But he knew this was an illusion. He might be strong and quick, but he was still mortal.
'Come on!' said Erix, starting back toward the concealed door they had used to enter.
Hal and Poshtli fell back beside her, fighting off the approaches of the attackers. Feeling no remorse in the heat of the battle, Hal struck brutally to the right and left, slaying his former comrades as he would kill any foe in any battle. If anything, the presence of Erixitl beside him and the need to protect her drove him to greater heights of savagery than he had ever known.
The door stood open before them. The three guards still slumbered incongruously as the battle raged around them. One of them began to stir as Hal and Erix turned back to the smoldering garden. The legionaires pursued at a safe distance, giving the bone-crunching sweep of Halloran's sword a wide berth.
'Get through — I'll close the door!' Poshtli leaped into the portal, stepping aside so that Hal and Erix could slip past him.
'Go!' Halloran urged Erix, facing outward to hold back the pursuit.
Neither of them saw the groggy legionnaire sit up near the doorway. The effects of the sleep spell melted away as he saw the fight raging before him.
Swiftly the man sprang to his feet and dove into Erixitl, carrying her heavily to the ground. The two rolled away from the doorway, away from Halloran.
'Erix!' he cried, his voice cracking. He leaped after her, seeing other legionnaires reach down, helping their companion to pull her away.
Dimly he saw Darien raise her hand, her spell a sharp bark of sound amid the chaos in the garden. Erixitl disappeared before Halloran as he crashed into a wall of stone — a hard granite barrier conjured between him and his wife by the elfmage.
'No!' he raged. Legionnaires swarmed around either side of the wall, blocking his passage with their bodies. The stone barrier towered over his head, extending across half the garden to the right and left. Behind him, he sensed Poshtli at the open door.
With a growl of inarticulate rage, Halloran threw back his fist and smashed it into the wall. His knuckles met the granite with stone-crushing force, and the arcane power of his pluma, coupled with the berserk rage of his own strength, shattered the barrier. Leaping through the wreckage like a wild beast, Halloran saw Erix, firmly grasped by four swordsmen, disappear into one of the compartments.
Blinded by his own fury, Halloran stumbled forward. Swordsmen fell away from his path, knowing their fate if they came within reach of his blows.
Suddenly a dark reality penetrated his frenzy, and he saw a rank of legionnaires standing between him and the place where Erix had disappeared. No swords for these, however — this was a line of Daggrande's heavy crossbows.
Blinking, halting in a desperate attempt to regain his self-control, Halloran stared at the figure of his old companion. The grizzled dwarf stared back, the set of his mouth firm. Only his eyes showed his pain. With deliberate speed, he ordered the crossbows, their steel-headed missiles glinting in the magical light, raised.
Don't make me do it, lad! Halloran read the message in the old dwarfs eyes and knew beyond a doubt that a volley of those missiles would mean his death.
'Shoot, fools! He's getting away!' Darien's shrill scream followed Hal through the door as he turned and darted into the safety of the secret passage. Tears of frustration and rage choked him, and he didn't even see Poshtli pull the portal shut behind them.
From the chronicles of Coton:
In dreams, may we find the hope and promise that eludes us awake.
Again the feathered snake came to me in my sleep. The golden couatl, brilliant of plume and mighty of power, circles about, taunting with his near presence, frustrating me as he vanishes before daybreak.
And so the couatl remains a dream, a fantasy specter of hope and significance, all the more miserable because of its empty promise. The clouds of doom gather around Nexal, and the city prepares to bathe in blood.
O' couatl, harbinger of the Plumed One, we need more than your promise now!
TO HOLD THE MOON
Three bearded legionnaires threw Erixitl against a wall with enough force to drive the air from her lungs. Gasping, she faced them — not afraid, but bitterly disappointed. One of them pulled her stone knife — her only weapon — from her belt. A fourth walked up to her and scowled into her face.
'What d'you got under them feathers?' he demanded. The Cloak of One Plume covered her shoulders and her back. He reached a hand to its clasp to tear it away. Suddenly a blue spark crackled from the cloak, and he drew his blistered hand away.
'Ouch! Helm's curses, she's a witch!'
Erix was as surprised as the legionnaire. A growing sense of despair seized her, and she took little pleasure in the protection. True, it hid her pouch, but the only thing that contained was the tiny bottle of potion she had insisted Hal let her carry — a potion that frightened her too much to ever allow her to drink it.
'That was Halloran!' she heard one of the men say. 'The bastard fought like a demon!'
'Killed Garney, he did,' grunted another. Their eyes settled, murderously, back on Erixitl,
Halloran! She struggled to contain her grief. They had failed. Did he live? Had they escaped? Lost in her despair, she didn't notice the captain-general's entrance until the black-bearded leader stood before her, his dark eyes smoldering.
'You were the translator at Palul,' Cordell stated, his voice vaguely accusing, confident of its assertion.
