journey to Nexal, to witness the shape of the threat looming over the world. But always 1 await his summons to return, and when he calls I must obey.”
“Have you been called?” asked Halloran.
“No, but I sense… things in the air around me, in the earth beneath my feet, terrors stalk the land-terrors beyond those we know and already fear. It is this, I am certain. that will call me back to Tulom-Itzi.”
Erixitl nodded, meeting the warrior’s gaze as her own eyes misted. “We cannot long escape the needs of… fate,” she said.
“Or gods.” Gultec smiled, raising his eyes but still speaking to Erix. “Perhaps we can use whatever help is offered.”
Erix sighed. Abruptly she turned away from the priest, from all the Mazticans, and started away from the procession. Halloran stepped after her.
He took her hand, silently accompanying her as they walked slowly over the brushy, rock-strewn ground. He sensed her need to get away from the silent, shuffling mass of people. He tried, by his presence, to comfort and shelter her.
Finally Erixitl sat on a boulder. She was not out of breath, but lines of strain showed around her eyes and mouth. Halloran sat beside her.
“They all need so much,” she said finally “And all we can offer them is hope! When will something happen? How long do we have to wait?”
“We’re alive, we’re healthy” Halloran said. “The important thing is to stay that way. The rest will take care of itself.” It has to! he added silently.
While the people of Maztica marched past, she leaned against him and he held her for a while. Then Halloran saw a horseman galloping toward them. At the sound of hoof-beats, Erix stiffened and stood up.
“Hello, milady… Halloran,” grunted the rider, Captain Grimes, as he dismounted. “We’ve got some bad news.”
“What is it?” asked Erixitl.
“A young lad just caught up with the rear scouts. Seems he was with a group bringing up the rear. They were attacked, massacred almost to the last man, woman, and child! He gave some details. Sounds to me like it was ores and ogres.”
“How far back?” asked Hal.
“Don’t know. He said it happened this morning, so not more than a few miles.”
“It’s more than that to the next water,” Erix reminded them.
“There’s another question,” said Hal, suddenly looking skyward. “Gultec said that the water lay to the southwest, right?”
“Yes,” Erix said, also looking upward. And as she did, she understood Halloran’s concern.
The eagle had veered away from their path, now soaring with greater speed. His path lay eastward.
Zochimaloc arose early on a mist-shrouded morning, passing from his small house through his garden. Soon he reached the broad, grassy street leading to the observatory
The air lay dense across the jungles of Far Payit. The great buildings of Tulom-Itzi stood like sentinels against the fog, but the bright mosaics, fountains, and pluma bedecking the structures merged into a pale sameness, diffused by the creeping mists.
The old man tried to shake off a feeling of dull menace, but he could not. Resolutely he turned toward the dome-roofed observatory. There, so many times before, he had found the answers to his questions in the stars.
The city in the jungle was silent at this early hour, as it was silent for all the day and night. The great buildings emerged from the mist and melted away again, monuments to the hundred thousand or more who had once built Tulom-Itzi and mastered the surrounding lands.
But most of them were gone now, and the vast city sheltered a population perhaps a tenth as large as it once held.
Now, as always, Zochimaloc found the emptiness of his city strangely soothing, as if he lived in a library or museum dedicated to the study of people, not among the people themselves.
Yet no longer could he deny that fact, for he knew that the gap between Tulom-Itzi and the world around it would soon close violently The feeling had risen within him for years, and it was the reason he had brought the Jaguar Knight Gultec here, to train the men of his city for war. This Gultec had done, though Tulom-Itzi was no nation of warriors.
Gultec was gone now, and Zochimaloc sensed the importance of his student’s mission. Soon, however, it would be necessary to call him home.
The old Maztican finally entered the observatory. The building, with its domed roof of carefully cut stone, stood in the center of Tulom-Itzi, a place of sacred peace and wisdom. Now Zochimaloc went to the center of the round chamber and looked at the apertures in the roof. The stars lined up with those openings at precise moments, he knew.
But today it was not the stars he sought. Zochimaloc needed deeper, more practical knowledge, and so he produced a small bit of plumage from his belt. He kindled a small fire in the floor, and then dropped the tufts of feathers in a ring about the bright blaze.
The feathers caught the light and dazzled with colors. On the encircling wall of the building, the feather- shadows appeared as black pictures, marching around the observatory, around Tulom-Itzi.
They marched as a file of giant ants.
For a long time, Zochimaloc touched the earth beneath his body He touched it, and he sensed its distress. Waves of pain radiated outward from the ground. He sensed a scourge upon the land, and it was a threat that he now understood to be near.
Hours later, though still well before dawn, the moon rose. The sliver in the east cast its pale beam through a slit in the building’s ceiling, and soon the moonlight washed over Zochimaloc.
He sat, immobile, until the moonlight faded. Even then he waited, until finally the cool blue of dawn lightened the eastern sky. Then his eyes closed and his lips moved.
“Gultec, we need you,” he whispered.
Hoxitl thrilled to the extent of the slaughter, howling gloriously as his minions grunted across the battlefield, ripping and tearing the corpses until the victims no longer resembled humans.
“Let that be their lesson,” chortled the great beast that had once been patriarch of Zaltec. “They will be even less human than us! And the might of Zaltec will prevail!”
For a long night, the beastly army remained on the bloody field. More and more of the monsters joined them, for the attacking group had only been a small advance guard. It pleased Hoxitl to see how effectively they had slain a group of the enemy that had outnumbered them substantially.
Of course, most of the humans had been helpless, but that mattered not to the manned figure. Indeed, he identified the fact as his greatest advantage: His forces could travel quickly and strike hard, unencumbered by non- combatants. The refugees, on the other hand, moved slowly and tried to protect the great majority of their number, the ill, the sick, the aged, a majority that could offer no aid in battle.
Dimly Hoxitl remembered the great sacrifices with which he had celebrated victories as a priest. What a waste, he realized now, to capture and hold captives for ritual execution when it was so much more gratifying and appropriate to slay them on the field.
The idea settled into the beastly, but still shrewd, mind of the monster. Hoxitl began to see some of the reasons that the armies of Maztica had suffered so horribly in combat with the foreign invaders. The strangers had no such compulsion to take their opponents alive.
“Feast, my children! Feast and exult!” he howled in the language that had become his own. The ores and ogres and trolls understood their master, for they, too, spoke in the bastardized tongue that had come to them
