Viperhand

EBB AND FLOW

Gultec wandered far from the jungles of Tulom-Itzi, crossing the lands of the Payit, the Kultakans, the Pezelacs. Always he moved toward Nexal.

Sometimes he walked as a man, visiting the peoples he passed among, learning of their fear. In all these lands, he found a deep foreboding, a great and dire anticipation of terrible things to come.

Other times he soared as a bird, or skulked within the mighty jaguar body that still gave him so much pleasure. He found, in his meandering course, several deep, lush valleys where he had thought lay only desert. Much to his surprise, several of these valleys contained ripe meadows of mayz. No one had planted it there, he knew, for this was deepest wilderness. Yet he remembered this abundance of food, enough for many people, as he pressed onward through the wilds of Maztica.

His course steady, his own courage unfailing, he finally reached the shores of Nexal's lakes.

And here he witnessed the source of the True World's terror.

Halloran sensed Erixitl's arms around him, and he clung to her with all the strength of his mindless terror. Around them the world came to pieces. Chaos reigned.

He didn't wonder why they weren't burned to ashes immediately. He saw fire in the form of red, liquid rock, exploding upward and outward in a wave of certain death. But that wave washed around them, and he knew only that Erix was in his arms, that the two of them were together, and it seemed certain they would die that way.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Hal tried to block out the nightmare around them, but he could not. Still he saw glowing crimson liquid splashing, he saw the summit of the huge mountain as it crumbled and collapsed around them. Rain poured into the cavern, creating a hissing inferno of steam, shattering rock and boiling away the instant it reached the ground.

Slowly the horrors around him seemed to fade, and he knew only that he held the woman he loved. He loved her more than he had ever thought he could love, and he desperately wanted to soothe the trembling he could feel in her body.

"Are you… alive?" asked Erix some time later. He wondered at first whether he had dreamed her voice.

"I… don't know," he replied honestly. "I think so, but I don't know how."

"I do," she replied, still dreamily nuzzling her face into the hollow of his neck. "It is the will of Qotal."

Halloran looked around them at the inferno of flame and molten rock and explosive gases. For the first time, he realized that they hadn't remained immobile during the eruption. Instead, they floated with the force of the blast, riding gently in the shelter of the…

What did protect them? He noticed that they watched the fiery chaos through a spiderweb-like grid. Looking closer, he recognized a pattern of feathers and down, creating a globe only large enough to hold the two of them.

"My cloak," explained Erix, still speaking as if she were dazed. "It is truly the gift of Qotal, and so it protects us, holding the fires of Zaltec at bay." Indeed, the Cloak of One Plume encircled them both, protecting them from the inferno yet showing them the full, horrifying devastation wrought by the gods.

"Is this the god — Zaltec?" Hal asked, gesturing to the fiery maelstrom.

"It is Zaltec, and more. This I see now, from a very high place." As Erix spoke, Hal noticed that they had indeed begun to rise above the explosion, floating dreamily in their soft, transparent cocoon, overlooking the god-wracked valley of Nexal so terribly far below.

"I see Zaltec meeting Helm in the struggle for mastery, and both of them threaten to destroy each other. But more, I see a spidery presence, the dark god of the Ancient Ones-"

"Lolth!" interjected Halloran. "Spider queen of darkness! You see her, too?'

"Yes. It is her rage that causes the mountain to explode. She is furious with her children, the drow. They have foresaken her in the quest for earthly rewards, turning to the worship of Zaltec."

Erixitl turned to look at Halloran, and the expression in her eyes seemed very far away. "Erix? What's wrong? You're here, with me!" He spoke loudly, with force, and slowly her eyes focused.

"Yes, I know. Hold me." She was quiet for a long time then as they drifted through the sky.

The cocoon of pluma seemed to float like a bubble on a light spring breeze. Even through the black of the night, they could see ruin wracked upon the city below. Lava flowed into the cool waters of the lakes, erupting in mountainous pillars of steam. The rain stilt fell, but it was a black, heavy rain, and it seemed to punish those under its downpour.

Below, in Nexal, they could see many thousands of people fleeing in panic from the confines of the doomed city. They saw the causeway, hours earlier the scene of savage battle, now the avenue for countless thousands of terrified Mazticans. As the two of them watched, drifting safely overhead, a steaming wave rose from the lake. Hissing and bubbling, it swept over one of the causeways, carrying the panicked humans away.

Convulsions wracked the earth upon which the city rested, and most of its great buildings tumbled into ruins. Only the Great Pyramid stood, and as Hal and Erix drifted past, high above it, they saw long, serpentine cracks run up the sides of the structure. The three temples atop the pyramid swayed, finally crumbling.

Then the whole great edifice, mightiest of the centers of the True World, twisted and broke and finally collapsed into rubble.

The palace walls buckled and crumbled around the terrified mare. Storm reared in panic, her hooves kicking the cracked adobe. The courtyard where Poshtil had kept the horse abruptly twisted, a great section sinking away. Wild lake waters surged into the opening.

With a maddened spring, Storm hurled herself across the open water, but her leap fell short. Splashing into the turbulence, she kicked free of the tumbling stone, desperately swimming toward the open waters of the lake.

The city surged, exploded, and died, but the horse pressed forward, uncaring of the surrounding chaos. Pressing through widening canals, snorting and kicking in fear, she finally reached the deep waters of Lake Azul. Deepest of the four lakes and farthest from the exploding mountain, its waters had not yet suffered the worst effects of the convulsions.

With strong strokes, the roan struggled through the waves until she reached the far northern shore. With a toss of her water-soaked head, she scrambled onto the shore and immediately galloped toward the wilds of northern Maztica.

The surviving drow sensed the imminence of disaster and teleported from the Highcave to refuge in caverns deep within the mountain. They escaped seconds before the lair — caldron, Darkfyre, and all — dissolved in an explosive convulsion of heat and pressure.

Zatal erupted, spewing lava, ash, smoke, and volcanic stone into the sky. Sizzling rivers of molten rock flooded down the slopes of the mountain, while chunks of the peak tumbled through the sky, wheeling gracefully before plummeting to earth. Steam billowed upward as a hissing black cloud of ash spread across the valley.

With the release of the volcano, like the popping cork of a bottle, Lolth's power surged into the True World. As the gods of the humans wrestled below, she laid her dark curse across the land.

That curse settled first upon the drow, huddled deep within the bowels of their exploding mountain. Most of them had reached temporary, imagined safety in their subterranean lairs, but even here the curse of Lolth crept toward them. Like a dark fog, her spidery essence slipped into the lairs, punishing her children for their dedication to a god of humans. She cast her curse upon the dark elves, and they changed forever.

Crying out in agony and horror, the drow thrashed and writhed, their bodies wracked by the all-consuming vengeance of their dark goddess. The sleek elven shapes grew grotesque and bloated, trailing great, immobile abdomens as their lower limbs withered and fell away. From these abdomens sprouted legs — eight legs each — that were covered with coarse fur. Dark elven heads and torsos — and minds — remained, so that they could know their disgrace. But the grotesque and hateful bodies would belong to them as long as they lived.

In horror, the drow regarded each other, no longer slim, handsome figures. Lolth had visited upon them the ultimate punishment, and the repulsive, spidery forms of the Ancient Ones would serve as a constant, painful reminder of their deity's vengeance.

For they became driders, outcast spider beasts of the drow.

But Lolth's vengeance was not merely directed at her wayward followers. Her power reached the cult of the Viperhand, since that order had flowed from the bidding of the drow. And its members were marked by the crimson brand.

A great, oppressive cloud lowered from the sky. Across the city, the ash of the volcano mixed with the rain to form a thick sludge that dropped, hissing, to the ground, coating the warriors of Maztica, and the legionaires, and the people of the city. Its corrosive touch burned skin and stung eyes, though they brushed it away without permanent hurt.

But not so with those who wore the brand of the Viperhand. When it struck those warriors, those priests and fanatics, a terrifying transformation occurred.

Once-human faces twisted into bestial expressions of hatred and rage. Bodies distorted, becoming grotesque and misshapen. Some grew into hulking brutes, surrounded by thick sinew. Stooped and hideous, they chomped mouths full of dull fangs and raised rocklike fists to crush any who stood before them.

Others became green and scaly, tall monsters with great, hooked noses and gangly, yet powerful, limbs. Warts burst from their horrid skin, and black eyes, sunk deep into monstrous faces, gleamed wickedly at a world gone mad.

The great masses of warriors who had been branded became ores. Snuffling through broad snouts, baring wicked tusks, the brutish, evil beasts quickly formed bands and turned upon the humans — Mazticans and legionnaires alike — of the city. Still armed with their stone weapons, they also used savage jaws to tear at the helpless victims of their rage.

The knights, Jaguar and Eagle, who had been branded by Hoxitl became ogres, huge, hulking brutes who cuffed the smaller ores around them, gruffly commanding their attention and obedience. The giantlike ogres seized beams, trunks, and other huge devices to use as clubs.

And finally, the priests of Zaltec who had been branded into the order grew to twice their height, with a ripping and tearing of skin and sinew. Their appearance distorted most horribly from the human norm, as their skin turned dark green, their features horrible in the extreme.

For they became the trolls. And so the ultimate contortion of war seized the land, while death spread through the city and lava spilled ever closer.

"Run, man! Run for your Men" Cordell gasped at Daggrande. The two legionnaires staggered like drunks along the nightmarishly contorted causeway. Finally they reached the city, even as waves crashed over the narrow roadway and carried it into the black depths of the steaming lake.

"Where?" groaned the dwarf, pausing to fill his straining lungs with air. The ground heaved and buckled underfoot, and they both sprawled to the stones of the street.

"The lakeshore — it's our only chance! We can steal some canoes and get out of here!"

Once again they lumbered forward. A huge beast reared out of the darkness before them, chomping its fang-filled maw. It reached out a wickedly clawed hand, striking for Cordell's face.

"Look, by Helm!" cried the captain-general, stumbling backward in horror.

On the breast of the beast, like a blood-red scar, Cordell saw the diamond-shaped brand of the Viperhand.

Daggrande chopped at the troll with his axe, driving the monster backward and pushing it out of the stream of escaping refugees. Then the men swept past, losing sight of the beast in the swirling advance of the mob.

The fleeing Mazticans, like the few legionnaires among them, hurried toward the lake, trying to escape the crumbling city. Buildings fell, toppling across roadways and crushing hundreds of people at a time. Great cracks opened in the ground, and these swiftly filled with water, forming deep and treacherous moats where moments earlier had stood a pastoral garden or graceful two-story manor.

More and more of the soldiers joined with them as they passed. Cordell saw the weeping form of Kardann huddled beside the road. He roughly pulled the assessor to his feet and dragged him along in their flight.

"Monsters — ores, ogres! They're everywhere!" wailed the assessor. "I saw them attacking the people, the women, even the little children. They — they simply tore them to pieces!"

"Stop it, man!" Cordell barked. "Just worry about getting away, getting to somewhere safe!"

But this testimony to the savagery of the monsters of the Viperhand made him wonder if there could be anyplace safe left to them. As if to emphasize his fear, bands of ores, ogres, and trolls snapped at the fringes of the crowd.

Then they reached the shore of the lake. Cordell vaguely recognized the dark, brackish water called Lake Qotal. But now its surface tossed chaotically, too turbulent by far to bear the passage of any canoe.

Hoxitl tossed back his huge, maned head and howled his rage at the skies, his widespread maw revealing long, wickedly curving fangs. He stomped a massive foot, sending cracks shooting outward through the ground. Around him stretched the wreckage of the pyramid.

"You have betrayed me!" he cried, though the words made sense to him alone. All others heard the yapping and snarling of a savage beast. He shrieked his fury at his god, sensing Zaltec's weakness even as he saddled him with blame.

"You, Zaltec! I curse you and your name!" Hoxitl knew dimly that the curse that had wracked him and the members of his league was more than the work of one god, even a god of Zaltec's might. The influence of Helm, the strangers' god, could not be denied. Nor the presence of the dark punisher of the Ancient Ones, the one who had corrupted her followers even as Zaltec had twisted and deformed his own.

With a snarl of animal rage, Hoxitl tore himself from the rubble of the collapsed pyramid, rising to his full height of nearly twenty feet in the courtyard beyond. Around him, snorting and groveling, cavorted the bestial masses of his league, slaying those human warriors who still lived and had not yet fled.

The beast howled again, a shrieking, devastating sound that blasted through the ruins, causing all who heard it to stop and tremble in abject terror. Lurching forward with a rolling, lumbering gait, like an ape's, Hoxitl led his creatures through the ruins.

His eyes saw much, through the smoke and haze of destruction. And on the shore, pinned against Lake Qotal, he saw his victims. Directly, with his monstrous army following at his heels, the huge form of Hoxitl started toward Cordell and his surviving legionnaires.

Poshtli didn't sense consciousness returning as he crawled toward the mouth of the Highcave. Indeed, had he been aware, he would never have left his companions. But motivated by a kind of daze, he crept away.

Then the warrior felt the ground drop away below him. He opened his eyes and saw things with exceptional clarity, a clarity of vision he had not known in many days. He saw a rocky slab falling away, and he dimly realized that he had lain on that slab. When the mountain exploded, that stone bed had carried him high into the sky, and now he looked down upon the death of the peak below him — or was it the death of the True World itself?

He turned to the side, banking easily away from the spume of fire and ash. Poshtli soared in a great arc, slowly descending. Circling the great pillar of destruction, he flew lower and lower.

Slowly he realized the change, yet his body seemed so natural that it took him many minutes of concentration. But then he knew.

He had no fingers now — only feathers. His teeth were gone, replaced by a sharp, curving beak. Keen, bright eyes did his seeing and detected a wealth of detail that would have escaped his human vision. And his arms! His arms were wings, wings of feather and sinew — the wings of a great eagle.

How the change had occurred he couldn't know, nor did he question. It seemed only right and proper now that he should dwell in the body of a bird.

Diving toward the city, Poshtli skimmed above its blackened streets, ruined buildings, and the grotesque, deformed beasts that rampaged through the chaos. He saw it all with a dull sense of familiarity.

This had been his vision of Nexal. The darkness, the monsters, the destruction. He saw the doom of the great city, and from his serene avian detachment, he realized that the city had not been destroyed by the war waged between men.

The city died because the gods tore it apart.

The cocoon of pluma carried Hal and Erix inexorably over the dying city, settling slowly toward the earth. They saw a block of houses below them topple forward, falling into a widening canal to sink from sight in black, boiling water. A huge crevasse opened in another area, emitting a steaming column of hot gas. Dozens died before they could escape the explosive effect.

To all the death and destruction below them, the pair in their magical globe remained strangely detached. Perhaps it was because the real extent of the suffering would have driven them mad had they even begun to comprehend the true magnitude of the disaster.

They drifted like a bubble on a light breeze, falling gently toward the dark, choppy surface of a lake. A teeming crowd swarmed below them, people clamoring for safety, trapped between the brackish, marshy waters and the dying city. They saw the horrifying approach of a bestial army, the monsters of the Viperhand.

Halloran clung to Erix, wondering what would happen when their cocoon of protection struck the water. Would they sink? Would the water boil around them?

But as the Cloak of One Plume touched the tops of the waves, the water suddenly ceased its thrashing. Hal and Erix settled onto a solid surface, rough and uneven but unquestionably firm.

"Ice!" Hal exclaimed as the cloak collapsed around them. "The lake's frozen solid!"

Erixitl looked at him with that same dazed expression. "The coming of Summer Ice," she whispered. "The third sign of the return of Qotal."

At the shore, pressed by the horde, the humans started out onto the ice. Many slipped on the treacherous footing. Each one who stood helped another next to him, and slowly, lurchingly, the refugees started across the lake. Legionnaires helped Nexalans, the old helped the young, and in a slow, creeping mass, thousands of people started across to safety.

Erixitl turned to the heavens, suddenly looking at the ruinous convulsions. "The return of Qotal?" she demanded of the skies. "This is the sign? The destruction of a city — the deaths of thousands of people? What kind of a god are you to torture us so?"

The rain ceased suddenly, and they saw people struggling across the lake, with howling, snapping monsters close behind them. Screams of panic and despair arose from the mass of miserable humanity as they desperately strived to reach safety.

"I ask you, Qotal," Erixitl shouted, still looking up, "what is your purpose? Is this how you prepare for your return?"

Her rage blistered the air, and Hal stared at her in awe.

"Hear me, Plumed One! We do not need — we do not want your return! You have forsaken us too long. Now stay away forever!"

Suddenly Erix started to weep and would have fallen if Hal hadn't caught her.

The monsters lunged onto the ice after the fleeing survivors. Mistrustful of the slick surface, they slipped and fell. Ores growled and snapped, while the heavier ogres felt the ice cracking underfoot and hastily retreated. Snarling, the beasts watched the humans flee the ruins of their city. They followed too slowly to catch them.

The distance between the pursued and the pursuers lengthened, until finally the humans reached the far snore. There they streamed away from the valley, to seek shelter in the mountains, the forests, or even the desert.

Behind them, the ice began to break apart. Many ores fell through and were drowned in the lake. Those who fell in shallows scrambled back to the shore of the ruined city. There they stood, waving fists at their escaping quarry. Finally they turned and disappeared into the smoking ruins around them.

A pale gray dawn illuminated the miserable masses huddled along the fringe of the valley. No human lived, any longer, in the city. Those who had not escaped had died in the convulsions, or beneath the talons and fangs of the ravenous beasts of the Viperhand.

Rivers of lava still spilled down the slopes of Zatal, sending hissing columns of steam exploding upward when they contacted the lake waters. The steamy clouds of mist spread like a gray fog, masking visibility, covering despair.

"Perhaps it's a blessing, the clouds and the haze," said Erix quietly. She and Hal sat beneath a withered cedar tree, not far from the lake. "They cannot see what they leave behind."

Halloran looked at the people, thousands of them, slowly trudging away from the lake, upward and out of the doomed valley of Nexal. A few ragged bands of legionnaires stumbled among them, but no one showed any heart for further battle.

"Where will they go? Where is there to go?" he wondered aloud. He knew from their own travels that parched desert lay to the south and west, and yet this direction had been the only escape from the city.

"I don't know. Into the House of Tezca, perhaps, to starve or die of thirst." Even the contemplation of this inevitable tragedy, it seemed, could bring Erix no further pain, so shattered was her heart and spirit.

"What about Poshtli?" Hal asked hesitantly. "He must have died on the mountain."

"No!" she replied, somehow finding strength in her voice. "That I cannot believe!"

Halloran looked at her in wonder, and then sighed. He wouldn't argue with her, but quietly and privately he grieved for his friend.

"Erixitl? You are Erixitl of Palul?" The soft voice behind them pulled their attention swiftly around. They rose to their feet in alarm at the sight of the tall Jaguar Knight who stood there.

"What do you want?" Hal demanded harshly.

"Forgive me," replied the warrior, speaking calmly through the open jaws of his helmet. "I am Gultec."

"I remember you," said Erix. Once this knight had helped place her across a sacrificial altar, but strangely now she felt no fear. "What is it?"

"We must gather these people and lead them," said the knight. "They will listen to you. And I know where there is food and water in the desert. Come with me, and I will show you the path to safety."

They looked at him in surprise for a moment. He waited patiently. Finally he turned, and Halloran and Erixitl started after Gultec as the Jaguar Knight headed toward the rim of the valley.