erupted from the wreckage, In moments, orange flames licked upward, and soon the ruined temple crackled into a hot blaze. Sparks, wafted by the gentle wind, floated tantalizingly over the dying village. Some of these nestled among the heaps of torn thatch, and soon the ruined huts began to burn.
In a few minutes, there was little sign of any human habitation here, save for the squat stone pyramid amid the glowing piles of crackling ashes and coals.
At the edge of the clearing, the driders watched the destruction with grim satisfaction.
“You have found us our army,” hissed one of Darien’s driders, a sleek male with a powerful longbow. He, like the rest of her kin, had looked quietly on while the ants attacked.
“My soldiers kill very well,” agreed Darien.
Lolth, too, was well pleased by the carnage, though of course her driders could not know it.
From the chronicles of Coton:
In the embrace of the Plumed One, may we live to see another day.
The door to Lotil’s hut crashes inward, and a great beast stands there, slavering- It is monstrously tall, green of skin, and possessed of long, wicked claws upon its fingers. The crimson brand of the Viperhand throbs on its chest. Its black, sunken eyes focus on the featherworker and me as we cower in the corner.
But then the presence of Qotal becomes manifest.
Lotil’s loom, decked with feathers and cloth, stands in the corner. As the beast advances, the partial tapestry tears free from the loom. It floats toward us, then hangs motionless in the air, between the monster and our terrified selves.
The creature stands dumbfounded, but no more so than I. For upon this uncompleted scrap of tapestry appears an image of a place, an image rendered so clear, so unmistakable, that it would seem to be the place itself.
The beast stumbles backward in confusion. Finally, silently, it departs from the house. I stare, transfixed by the image before me.
Then the blind featherworker beside me, who cannot see the sun in the noonday sky, speaks.
“It is the Pyramid of Tewahca,” he says, and I agree.
6
MARCHES AND AMBUSH
Luskag felt a strange mixture of sadness and pride as his dwarves marched past. They left Sunhome in the care of the young and the old, while all the strong adults-males and females alike-joined the file toward war. All across the House of Tezca, he knew, the other villages of desert dwarves mustered as well.
He counted barely a hundred souls among the warriors, and he did not know how much they could accomplish against the apparently numberless horde of monsters spreading southward across the desert. But the vision of chaos had been so clear, so threatening, that they all knew they had to try.
Most of his dwarves were armed with weapons of plumastone, but his village was still unique in the desert. The others had only begun to acquire the secrets of the super hardened obsidian and were for the most part bearing crude weapons more typical of Maztica.
Work progressed steadily, following the council at Sun-home, as each village had sent an expedition to the ridges around the City of the Gods. They had since returned to their homes, laden with the shiny black rock with which the dwarves now labored to create the tough, deadly weapons.
A few desert dwarves wielded metal axes or swords that predated the Rockfire, but these artifacts were reserved for chieftains and other venerable warriors. Luskag himself had borne such a battle-axe, but he had bestowed the weapon upon his eldest son, Bann. The chief himself carried a heavy axe of plumastone.
Regardless of their armament, all of the villages had sent companies of doughty warriors, albeit warriors who had never known war. Yet the tradition of courage and combat lay deep within the dwarven race, and Luskag knew that they would fight well. So, too, he reflected sadly, would they die.
Luskag trotted to the head of the column, and the desert dwarves started across the sun-scorched realm of their home. They would gather at the City of the Gods, and there they would make their stand.
Gultec nodded to Halloran, then bowed deeply before Erixitl. The sun had not yet risen, yet the sky was clear and blue, already promising a day of extreme heat. Eastward over the trackless desert, Poshtli soared in tight circles, as if impatient with the humans so far below.
“Lady of the Plume,” Gultec began, “1 must leave now. My destiny calls.”
She embraced the Jaguar Knight but did not try to dissuade him. “1 know of destiny,” she whispered softly. “May it be a load you can hear.”
Gultec looked into her face, holding her shoulders. “It can be a blessing as well as a burden. Whatever its form, it is laid upon you. You must not fight it.
A frown creased her forehead, but Erixitl sighed slowly and relaxed. She sensed a deep kinship with the Jaguar Knight, and she knew that he spoke wisely. “1 will try to remember,” she promised.
“The acts of the gods are not easily understood. Once I fought wars for the cause of Zaltec, and even worked with priests to further the causes of that god of war-god of death, more rightly!”
“I remember,” Erixitl said dryly. They both smiled now, though the memory was not pleasant. Gultec had bound Erix and led her to an intended sacrificial death on the shores of the Eastern Sea. Only the arrival of the white-winged “sea creatures,” later proven to be the ships of the Golden Legion, had saved her.
“But my own destiny took me to Far Payit, and there I
learned the ways of this god you call Qotal. His wisdom is proven in that he has chosen you as his herald.”
Once again Erix shook her head. “What does that prove? How am I aiding the cause of his arrival-his promised arrival?”
“That I do not know. But know this, Erixitl of the Nexala: When the knowledge comes, you will be the first to receive it.”
Around the two, the vast camp of Mazticans came slowly awake. Dawn’s pale blue light filtered across the desert, shining on the feathers of the eagle that still circled to the east. Already word of the problems facing them on this day had spread among the refugees.
All had heard of the massacre the previous day of the band of stragglers, a thousand lives snuffed out in one brutal attack. Though the news caused tension and fear, Erixitl noticed no sign of panic among her countrymen, and this made her proud.
The people had heard of the bountiful valley discovered by Gultec and reported by other scouts as well. The swiftest of the marchers could expect to lie there by nightfall, while the rest of the band would reach it by the middle of the following day.
Yet what good was such a fertile place if it would merely be swept over by the surging wave of war? At best, it seemed to offer a temporary sanctuary-a respite of a day, perhaps two-in a journey that threatened to become a way of life.
And then there was the matter of the great eagle. Many had witnessed the miracle, as the tale of the bird’s appearance as Poshtli was now called, and they had insured that the story spread throughout the camp. But now the eagle veered away from the promised route to food and water, and the path to safety was no longer clearly defined.
Abruptly Gultec turned away Erixitl gasped as his shape shifted, his transformed appearance clear in the cool light, He moved quickly then, in a flash of bright green feathers, and disappeared. She saw a large parrot take to wing, and then the bird turned one bright eye toward her as it fluttered higher into the air. In a few moments, it was go: winging strongly toward the east.
