Douglas Niles - Feathered Dragon

“It is a sign to you of the Plumed One’s pleasure,” observed the cleric quietly.

“How do you know that?” asked Erix in good-humored skepticism.

Xatli shrugged, grinning. “I don’t. But it could be, couldn’t it?”

Erixitl looked at him curiously, without replying, so the puffing priest continued. “1 only mean to suggest that you need not fight the will of the god. You are his chosen daughter; that much we all know. He spared your life on the Night of Wailing, and you have led your people away from the horrors behind us. He has a great purpose in mind for you, Erixitl of Palul!”

She turned back to the trail before her, her expression serious. “1 have fought against that will-that purpose.” Once again she looked at the great eagle, wheeling lazily above. Her joy at Poshtli’s return remained, and she admitted to herself that his presence seemed miraculous.

“I shall try to accept his wishes, to do as he wills,” she finally promised, almost inaudibly.

Jhatli hurried toward the rise in the undulating desert terrain, panic urging him forward. How could he lose a thousand people? He asked himself the question angrily, but then his body weakened with relief as he reached the crest and looked into the shallow, windswept vale beyond.

Quickly the youth tensed again, mindful that he would let no one know that he had been lost. Already the hours of fright faded, and he began to look upon his daylong trek as a sort of grand exploration.

That, in fact, is how he had gotten separated from the column of refugees in the first place. In the valley before him trudged a small part of the survivors of Nexal, trailing the vast mass by several days. These included some of the weaker and injured folk, many of whom had already perished on the trek through the desert.

They followed the wide valley on the well-trodden trail blazed by the main body. For most of its length, that pathway wound through parched desert valleys, surrounded by bleak, rocky heights or vast expanses of rolling dunes. But every so often-two to three days’ march apart-the trail descended into a deeper valley, and here water had somehow burst from the ground. In these valleys, the procession remained for a few days, resting and preparing for the next march before the food was totally exhausted. Thus the straggling groups such as Jhatli’s still found sustenance as they moved along after the rest.

Jhatli and several other youths approaching the age of warriorhood served as the scouts and runners for the band. In this constant, wearing routine he had begun to find solace from the nightmare he had left behind in Nexal. The images of his mother, swallowed by the steaming crack opening in the ground, or his older brother, torn asunder by a monstrous green beast even as he bought time for Jhatli to flee, still lived in his mind. He had not seen his father die, but Jhatli knew he could never have escaped the crumbled house alive.

These visions remained with Jhatli throughout each long night, and so he filled the hours of light with hard work and complete vigilance. At dawn of this day, the young man had taken up his bow and obsidian-tipped arrows and his flint dagger, setting out to explore a shallow canyon that seemed to parallel the course of the valley

But the canyon had deepened and diverged in course from the valley followed by the rest of the group. Finally forced to scale a rough, cactus-studded cliff, Jhatli had hurried in order to rejoin his family by sunset.

Or at least, what remained of his family He had fled with his father’s brother and the man’s two surviving wives. In a wide, straggling column a mile long, the folk of that family

and a hundred others marched steadily southward, along the trail of the Nexala. Weary, but determined not to let his exhaustion show, Jhatli strutted toward the distant group.

Then he froze, suddenly alarmed. He hadn’t noticed the clouds of dust roiling along the opposite side of the vale. Now, however, he saw creatures-huge creatures! — trundling from the rocks. Vaguely manlike in shape, they loomed over the humans before them. Hundreds of others followed these monstrous forms, merely human-sized but just as beastlike of aspect.

Even at this distance, he could tell that they were armed and that they were attacking! Wave by wave, the creatures burst from concealment. Jhatli heard snarls and howls, mingled with the terrified screams of women and children.

“No!” Jhatli howled his anger and sprinted forward, watching the people reel backward from the surprise attack.

The initial slaughter quickly gave way to full massacre as the mostly defenseless Mazticans tried to flee, but quickly fell to the talons of the attackers. The few warriors and armed youths leaped bravely to the defense, but the superior numbers of the foe and crushing strength of the attack soon doomed them to a man.

Gasping and sobbing, Jhatli slowed his pace. He realized that he was too late to fight, for already the killing was complete.

“Monsters!” he cried, shaking a fist. Several of the beasts, a few hundred paces away, looked up and growled.

“I will avenge my people! You will all be slain!” Furiously he nocked an arrow to his bow and let fly, though the missile carried barely half the distance. Now, he saw with grim satisfaction, several of the smaller man-beasts started toward him. The creatures’ pig eyes were narrow in their bestial faces, above beastlike muzzles that gaped to display long, curved teeth. Yet their hands and arms were manlike and clutched the macas and shields of Maztican warriors.

Jhatli nocked another arrow, drew back his bow, and waited, using the first shot as his range mark. Squinting, he released the missile and watched it soar true toward its target. It struck the beast in the chest with a solid thunk, and the creature cried out as the force of the shot knocked it to up from the gory trophies around them.

Jhatli sensed the futility of further combat and quickly turned away. He paced himself slightly faster than the lumbering beasts pursuing him, and as he had expected, they soon broke off the chase.

The young man jogged southward as night fell across the House of Tezca. He felt a dull pain for the deaths he had witnessed this day. But too much of his recent life had been spent in sorrow and mourning. Now, Jhatli decided, it was time to think of revenge.

A dense thicket of jungle growth masked the mouth of the cave, indistinguishable on the outside from the rest of the bramble-covered slope. From within, however, the verdancy merely proved that the surface world lay beyond.

Darien, leading the column, paused and listened. The white drider sensed the sunlight before her, and her old sense of revulsion returned. But she was a dark elf no longer, and the light of day was not a thing that could master her.

“Incendrius!” she cried, pointing a pale finger at the obstructing foliage. The power of fiery magic blasted the lush barrier, and the leaves and branches crackled into smoke. Without a pause, she pressed forward, creeping for the first time in months into the surface world.

Behind her followed the rest of the driders, their black longbows held ready. The spider-beasts walked with mechanical, insectlike motions of their eight legs. Their weapons, however, they wielded with the familiar fluid movements of drow veterans.

Following the driders came the army of giant ants. The red insects lurched awkwardly but quickly from the cavern. Antennae tested the air before them while their huge, blank eyes looked about the jungle. The creatures of Lolth emerged from the darkness into a world that lay vulnerable and unsuspecting before them. Immediately the ants began to eat. and as the file emerged from the cave, a steadily expanding area of devastation grew around the entrance.