summit twisted and collapsed, vanishing quickly into the massive cloud.
A few of the ants crept around the fringes of the landslide, still heading implacably upward, as if unaware of the disaster visited upon their fellows. The great majority, however, perished in the crushing assault of rock.
A rolling dust cloud, far greater than that raised by the human rockfall, billowed outward, swelling across the swamp toward the watching driders. A smell like bleak decay filled the air as rocks and debris crashed into the stagnant waters. Finally the cloud swept around them, and the image before them vanished from view.
Most of the ant army vanished with it, their tough bodies crushed under a thunderous deluge. To the right and left of the wide gap, small bands of the giant insects struggled to retain their footing, though more and more of these tumbled from the sheer cliffs as the mountain trembled beneath them, falling into the rumbling maelstrom below, crushed by millions of tons of mauling stone.
Gultec gaped in shock, staring at the place where the top of the mountainous ridge had stood. It was gone! And with it, he knew, had died the army that had so terrified and relentlessly pursued his people for the last weeks.
He and the Itza warriors had been making their way] down the western slope of the pass. The route here was not so steep as that on the east, following as it did a wide and relatively shallow valley. The valley floor was lined with dried brush, and the Jaguar Knight had been eyeing its potential as a firetrap, preparing for the inevitable pursuit he had expected from the ant army.
Now he stared, horrified by the might that had claimed Zochimaloc. Then slowly he forced himself to understand that which seemed to defy explanation. Yet he knew that it had to be the truth:
Somehow his teacher had summoned the power to tear the mountain apart. The damage had been total in the area of the summit, yet the destruction had stopped short of Gultec and his retreating warriors. The army of ants, however, had been caught in the full brunt of the earthquake.
The warrior shook his head. What kind of power was it that could cause such damage to the very world itself? With- out thinking about it, he knew that it had to be the power of a god, and he said a silent prayer of thanks.
Still dazed by the event, he looked around, and then his shock deepened to a consternation that made him wonder if he was losing his mind.
He saw another army approaching! And this one came from the west, opposite the ants! A vast band of men advanced hurriedly along the valley bottom, coming toward them, apparently from the flatlands below. They marched in files and carried axes and short bows and arrows.
Even more unreal, however, was the appearance of these men. Most of them were only half as high as a normal human! Some of them were broad-shouldered, with bristling beards sprouting from their faces. They looked like the dwarves who had come with the Golden Legion, except that they were dressed as crudely as any desert- dwelling savage.
Who were these newcomers? Would the Itza have to fight
again so soon after the climactic battle with the ants?
A shout from one of his men pulled his attention back again to that original threat. Here came more of the ants now, finally emerging from the chaos around the fringes of the destruction. They were but a pitiful remnant of the army, to be sure-the former thousands numbered but a few hundred-but still they came implacably onward. Desperately Gultec swung around to study the army approaching from below.
The Itza warriors raised their weapons against this new threat, and the approaching force slowed. The small warriors did not lift their axes and their bows; indeed, they did not look as if they intended to attack.
Then the final, stunning event told him his mind was certainly gone. There, in the lead of these newcomers, was Halloran! And there, upon the horse that trailed them, was Erixitl.
In the next moment, the group separated, the diminutive humans breaking to the right and the dwarves to the left. Immediately Gultec’s warriors perceived that these were allies, here to combat the remaining ants,
“My friends! You have found us!” Gultec shouted at Halloran as the soldier approached, and the two men took a brief moment to clasp hands. “Thank you,” the warrior said quietly.
Behind Hal and his warriors, Erix followed, riding Storm at an easy walk. The surviving ants crept toward them, but now the defenders far outnumbered their monstrous foes.
“Let’s finish this thing,” said the Jaguar Knight. Halloran merely nodded as the halflings and dwarves rushed past, weapons ready. With whoops, shouts, and whistles, the Itza warriors turned and joined the attack.
Out of the dust of the shattered mountain, giant red ants straggled forward, to be met by the plumastone weapons of me desert dwarves or paralyzed by the kurari-tipped arrows of the Little People. And when the men of Tulom-Itzi swarmed around the shapes of their enemy, hated and ‘eared for so long but now finally vanquished, not a one of the monsters was left alive.
Darien watched the slaughter from the high vantage to which she had teleported, trying to see what could be salvaged from the disaster.
Nothing. Not today, in any event. The ant army was gone, wiped out by the cataclysm, the few survivors falling to the humans and their fortuitous reinforcements.
The drider considered, for a moment, a vengeful idea. She could teleport herself into the midst of the humans and launch spells of great destruction-fireballs, lightning bolts,
even clouds of poison gas. She wouldn’t be able to slay them all, but she could make them know her wrath.
Something held her lips as she began to mouth the spell. A. spot of color appeared among the onrushing army-behind them, actually. A brightness struck the drider’s eyes with painful intensity.
It was a familiar pain.
Suddenly Darien hissed her rage, for she knew that brightness. It was the woman who had thwarted her in the Highcave, the one who was responsible for the disaster!
For the first time, the drider backed from her crest, crouching to make certain she avoided detection. Now her rage was tinged with another emotion, a stranger to the vicious drider.
Darien was afraid. She remembered the power borne by I that woman.
In the face of that fear, she paused. There would be no vengeance today. This was no longer an attack against an anonymous human population, motivated by only the fundamental need to slake her hatred with blood.
Now she had an enemy with a face and a name. A potent enemy-one who could be overcome only with a careful and meticulous plan, but indeed a foe who would be overcome.
Darien shook herself angrily, her torso flexing like a dogs when it dries its soaking fur. The power of Lolth had twisted her shape, corrupted her soul, and given her an army. But now that army was gone, and the enemy of her life was a
woman of pluma, feathermagic. Hatred and rage seethed within her, and since she was a creature of Maztica, these emotions fused into her own power, into might that could challenge the feathermagic of the woman Erixitl.
The opposite force would be needed, Darien understood, and her arcane knowledge and skill, fed by her hatred, fused toward the magic of hishna, the magic of talon and claw. Hishna was the power that would allow her to overcome the Chosen Daughter of Qotal.
Cordell and his picked group of legionnaires pressed through the forests of Payit, as often as not dismounting to hack their way through encloaking brush, leading the horses at a painstaking crawl. Overhead, Chical and the eagles soared, marking the progress of Zaltec, Hoxitl, and the beasts of the Viperhand.
Of all of these, the massive and animated statue of Zaltec seemed most menacing to Cordell and his men. Though they couldn’t know that they saw the form of a deity among them, the fact of its awesome power and apparently irresistible strength were obvious simply from its size.
Cordell still hadn’t told Kardann about the giant figure that marched with the monster army. Indeed, the captain-general had often come to wonder about the wisdom of bringing the whining assessor along on this arduous journey. Such thoughts, then, brought him back to the questions at the very root of their march:
Who were these adventurers who had landed at Helm-sport? Why had they made captives of Cordell’s
