during the Night of Wailing.
“Feast and give thanks to Zaltec for his mercy!” cried the priest-monster, startling the vast assemblage of gore-soaked humanoids.
“Yes, you hear me true-thanks to Zaltec!” Hoxitl’s voice rumbled through the shallow valley as he surprised even himself with the power he felt thrumming through him at the name of his god. He thought of the great stone monolith, the statue back in Nexal that had come to embody all the might and terror of this bloodthirsty god.
“We will wage war in your name across the width and breadth of the True World!” gloated the beast, tearing a heart from the cold corpse of an old man and holding it upward.
And Zaltec heard, and rumbled his pleasure.
From the chronicles of Coton:
7n the nearness of Qotal, now the True World knows its hope.
I sit with the blind featherworker, Lotil, and we hear the beasts snuffling outside the house. The horse of the legionnaire remains in the building with us, while the monsters of the Viperhand prowl without.
They plunder each home on the ridge above Palul, smashing and burning and looting. Great cries of glee explode from monstrous maws when a golden treasure or piece of salted meat is discovered.
I fear not so much for myself, but for the old man. The blessing of the Plumed One surrounds me, and if his pleasure brings me to my end amid this sea of chaos, so be it. The pluma worker, however, must be spared this fate. He is needed for something greater. What this is, I cannot know, hut I shall stay with him and try to help him fulfill his destiny.
For some reason, they pass the house of Lotil, these panting monsters, and do not enter. And so we wait out the scourge, alone and helpless, yet somehow alive.
Again I sense die imminence of the One Plumed God.
5
A GOD ALIVE
Sea-birds wheeled above the great white sails, cawing and diving at the foaming wake. Don Vaez left Murann at the head of a proud fleet of twenty-five heavy carracks and more than fifteen hundred armed men, all of them thirsting for gold.
The young captain, his silver-blond locks flowing freely in the wind, stood in the bow of the lead ship. Scribes, sorcerers, and clerics had briefed him well on Cordell’s voyage, and though he sailed toward a land of mystery, he at least knew that land lay before him.
“And by Helm, it will be mine!”
Like many men of action, Don Vaez had little use for gods, except as they could help him in his endeavors. As such, he had casually adopted Helm as his patron deity, for a god of eternal vigilance is of obvious worth to a soldier.
Don Vaez struck a determined pose, well aware that his men watched him. A great believer in leadership by appearance, he constantly took pains to see that his troops saw him in the best possible light. To this end, he had no less than four wardrobe trunks stored in his cabin, so that he could insure a fashionable and well-groomed presence at all times.
The captain allowed himself to reminisce as the sea wind tugged at his hair. He had followed a long and convoluted road to reach this point, but now every audacious step of that dangerous path would be made worthwhile.
The fleet progressed steadily, under the guidance of a veteran navigator named Rodolfo. Indeed, the man had been hailed as one of the most fearless sailors on the Trackless Sea. Years before, he had served Cordell when the captaingeneral had needed a fleet. Since then, the navigator had returned to land, though he had been willing enough to accept the fee offered by the princes to induce him to join this expedition.
“A fresh wind moves us. We make good time,” remarked Rodolfo, coming to join Don Vaez at the rail. The commander nodded disinterestedly, content to leave such details to his navigator. With a thin grimace, Rodolfo stalked away, but Don Vaez was still lost in his own thoughts.
He chuckled wryly as he thought of his earliest training, at the Academy of Stealth in Calimshan. What a terrible thief he had made! Why sneak through the night to snatch something surreptitiously, he had wondered, when he could walk up to the owner, bash him over the head with his sword, and take it in broad daylight?
The masters of the academy had reached the same conclusion, and Don Vaez and Calimshan had parted ways – for the most part amicably, since the masters had not taken a thorough inventory until their ex-student was a good distance away Aided by the disguises of a guileless servant girl, he had escaped from the city and journeyed north along the coast. The girl, he assumed, had paid for her complicity with her life, though he had never bothered to find out for sure.
Following these experiences, Don Vaez had served in one of the mercenary companies aiding Amn in its two-decade war against the pirates of the Sword Coast. After the unfortunate and mysterious demise of the company captain-no one had ever been able to identify the archer that had slain him from behind while he led his troops into battle-Don Vaez had risen to command the company. In this capacity, he had first attracted the attention of the merchant princes.
And in the same capacity, he had been forced to compete with the soldiering of Captain-General Cordell and his Golden Legion. When Cordell had won the ultimate victory against the scimitar-waving horde of the pirate lord, Akbet Khrul, Don Vaez’s rival had been assured the place of highest honor before the Council of Amn.
For the suddenly unemployed Don Vaez, there had been a lady-a very wealthy, albeit very married, lady Vet somehow her favor had carried him to the council again, now that Cordell had apparently disappeared and, the don hoped, betrayed his employers. Don Vaez had even wondered if the lady might be one of the merchant princes herself, though of course that fact would remain secret.
Nevertheless, her influence must have been significant, for he had been selected to command this glorious endeavor.
The merchant princes of Amn had given him a great force and a strong charter. Somewhere out there, he felt, his old rival Cordell was still alive. The gods would not, could not be cruel enough to deprive Don Vaez of the confrontation he so rightly deserved.
“You know that he lives out there, do you not?” The question came from Pryat Devane. The cleric, wearing a close-fitting cloth cap and a woolen cape, joined him at the rail of the ship.
“Cordell?” Don Vaez turned to the cleric, surprised at the man’s accurate guess. He smiled thinly. “Yes, I believe that we will… encounter him.”
“Good!” The pryat spoke sharply. “His reckless behavior has no doubt cost my mentor his life!”
“Bishou Domincus? You feel that he has been slain?”
“I’m certain of it,” announced the cleric. “But he will be avenged!”
“Indeed,” agreed the captain, turning back to the sea. It seemed that he had an ally, a spiritual brother, in this dour priest of Helm. And, remembering the flying carpet the princes had told him about, he felt that Pryat Devane could prove to be a very useful ally indeed.
In his mind, Don Vaez pictured the encounter with the defeated Cordell. The man would beg for mercy, and Don Vaez would make him wriggle and plead for his life. Of course, all the while he knew he would grant that life, for his moment of true triumph would not arrive until he returned with Cordell to Amn and marched the traitorous mercenary through the streets of Murann in chains.
Or in a cage, perhaps. Suddenly Don Vaez had an inspiration! He would take the gold of this new world-some of the gold, anyway-and he would have a cage made. The cage would be mounted on gilded wheels, and within it would ride the grand prisoner of his expedition.
Yes, thought Don Vaez. That would be a fitting return home for the leader of the Golden Legion. With this idea, and a thin smile on his too-handsome lips, Don Vaez went to his cabin below decks to sleep.
And, of course, to dream.
