Feathered Dragon

16

“They gain the summit!” cried Hittok. Along with the other driders, he stood with Darien in the valley bottom, looking upward at the ants creeping steadily toward the rounded, rocky crest. The creatures of Lolth had witnessed the attack of their army, had seen it weather the heaviest defenses the humans could muster.

Impassively they had watched their soldiers slain by the hundreds. They had seen the march up the mountainside slowed by the deluge of arrows and rocks. Imperturbably they had observed the dust cloud that cloaked the slope, obscuring the ants from their sight. Then they had seen the dust fall away, and were not surprised when the ants appeared. still numerous and still steadily ascending.

True, a great number of ants had fallen during the attack, especially to the destructive power of the man-made rockslide. Yet more than half the ants survived, and they represented more than enough power to overwhelm the last mortal line of resistance.

The driders remained behind, at the fringe of jungle before the swamp. They watched the army advance and anticipated its inevitable triumph. They didn’t shout or cheer, yet each drider’s eyes blazed with a frightening intensity, like the wicked gleam of a cat before it crushes the life from the hapless mouse.

“Indeed, they have done as I expected,” Darien said quietly. Hittok looked at his pale-skinned companion. Why did she not share his triumphant joy?

“Do you feel that?” Darien asked, her voice a harsh whisper. The white drider settled her great body to the ground, cowering as if in fear.

“What? What do you mean?” the black drider asked.

She didn’t reply. Instead, she kept her eyes fixed upon the summit of the pass. The six-legged insects continued to work their way up the wall, the first rank already disappearing from sight.

“The human warriors-they have gone,” she said, still in that soft, thoughtful tone.

“They flee-not that it will do them any good!” Hittok replied with a sneer. “They will live a few moments longer. That is all.”

“No, wait.” Darien stared at the pass. “Look. One remains, the man sitting at the very top.”

Hittok squinted. The sky was overcast, but the brightness still caused him discomfort. “Where?”

“He is very dangerous. I can feel it,” replied the female.

“I see him! Wait… no, I don’t. Where is he?” Hittok squinted at the sky, cursing the shimmering that seemed to trail along the top of the ridge.

“He was there, moments ago. Now 1 cannot see him, but worse, I feel him, down deep. I feel a great menace in the air.”

Then they heard, or felt, a rumbling within the earth itself. The ground below them heaved and buckled, staggering the driders. Gaping upward in terror and awe, the creatures saw waves ripple across the land. Several shelves of rock broke away from the slope, slowly tumbling downward, carrying a few of the ants with it.

The ground heaved again, and even the eight-legged beasts of Lolth had to squat low to keep their feet. Energy surged through the earth. The crashing of the rock shook the very foundations of the mountains.

An explosion wracked the valley then, like an unspeakably monstrous crash of thunder. The man at the top of the pass vanished in a cloud of dust and smoke. More rumbles emanated from the ridgeline, and the horizon shimmered and shifted under a wave of convulsive pressure.

Great cracks, each with the explosive volume of a thunderclap, shot along the rock face of the high ridge. More convulsions twisted the ground, sending huge rocks soaring

into the air. Many of the ants tumbled from the sheer wall, shaken free by the force of the upheaval to crash among the bodies at its base.

Suddenly the whole mountain collapsed in a deluge of rock and earth. Sheets of cliff broke away, and the ridge itself collapsed. Thunderous explosions rocked the driders, and they watched the heart of the ant army swept away by rockslide and avalanche. Darien and her companions remained safe, beyond the destruction, but they watched the instruments of their power obliterated before them.

Massive sheets of gray rock broke free, tumbling and pounding into shards on the stone shelves below. The ridge collapsed, swept away by a force the driders could not see but with effects that wracked the broad vista before them.

The roar reached a crescendo as clouds of dust and debris sailed into the air. The entire crest of the ridge dropped, as if it had been lowered gently to the ground. But then lower support fell away completely, and the 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 garrison? And what would be their reception for Cordell himself, once he arrived?

Unfortunately the fate of the men he had left behind offered no encouragement for him. Now Cordell began to wonder about plans and schemes-about ways to reach these potentially lifesaving men and bend them to his will. But now he would have to use his wits, for the force of strength certainly belonged to the other side.

And even then, supposing he could gain mastery of these newcomers, using them as the reinforcements lie so desperately needed, how could they stand against a hundred-foot-tall giant? Perhaps the newcomers had brought mages and their power would give them hope.

Still, it seemed an impossible task, with several other impossible tasks to accomplish before it could even be at-! tempted.

“What will it be, Father?” asked Erixitl quietly as she watched her father weave tufts of red feathers into his work of pluma. The marchers rested comfortably, scattered among many soft glades in the forest. Tomorrow, with the Itza warriors joining them, they would embark on the final leg of their journey to the Payit country and the sacred site of Twin Visages. Many weeks of travel remained, but the roads were known and the land ahead was fertile.

Lotil smiled, not slowing in the deft workings of his fingers. “1 do not know,” he said, with a hint of secrecy in his voice.

“Certainly you must have something in mind,” she prodded. “At times it looks like a great blanket, with an image of an eagle, and I think you are making a cloak for a warrior. Or else it looks like a lake, with forested hills all around, and I think you are making us a home.”

The plumaworker chuckled. “It is all these things and more, my daughter.

“Sometime, perhaps, it will be a feathered shield for our young warrior here, to protect him from the blows that one so brave is certain to attract.”

Jhatli looked up sheepishly at hearing the words. Though the youth had been silent, Lotil had somehow known where he sat, for the old man gestured to the youngster as he spoke.

The tale of his fight with the ants had spread rapidly through the group. Jhatli had sprung on the back of one of the creatures and sawed it in half with his maca as it squirmed and twisted beneath him. It was a feat that had earned him the instant respect of the Itza warriors.

“Or perhaps 1 weave a birthing blanket for you, my daughter. Your time draws near, I know, and we have little chance of knowing where we shall be then. You will need a proper mat upon which to give birth to such a child, the first to be born of both Maztica and the world beyond.”

Erixitl nodded, resting her hands over her round abdomen. She felt a kick and looked at Halloran, surprised to see tears in the corners of his eyes.

*Or, again, maybe I shall create a royal robe for your husband. Who better to wear the mantle of a king, eh?”

“No!” Hal sat upright, his voice taut. “I want no part of kings or armies when we are done with this. I want a place to live with my wife, to raise our child. That is all”

Lotil lapsed into silence then, his sightless eyes passing around the group in the glade. His fingers, tireless and unerring, continued to work their pluma.