Douglas Niles - Feathered Dragon

Shouting a dark curse, Halloran whirled on the killer, driving Helmstooth with the power of his pluma and his rage. The drider’s eyes widened in terror, and it raised its weapon, only to have the blade shatter like glass when it met Hal’s blow. The gleaming scythe that was Helmstooth continued its driving force, slicing through the skull and the neck and half the chest of the creature.

But he had no time to tend to his friend nor grieve for him. He saw the white shape of a drider, a pale freak among the black creatures, and deep in his gullet, he recognized her. Then her creatures swarmed toward him, and he stood before his wife and the priest and the blind featherworker, raising his sword, the only barrier between the helpless trio and certain, horrifying death.

Halloran fought the fight of his life. He charged the driders, feeling the pluma cuffs at his wrists driving his blade forward with a power he had never imagined. He sprang to

his right, leaped to his left, darted forward and back again as the driders closed in. Helmstooth struck an arm from a drow torso and a leg from an arachnoid body. The blade carved deep into a dark elf trunk and shattered another sword of black steel.

A quick drider scuttled sideways past Halloran, while two more lunged in frontal attacks. Helmstooth found the heart of one as Hal’s entire being cried out from the threat of the flank attack-not for him, but for the suddenly silent Erixitl behind him.

Flexing every muscle in his body, he tore the blade from the first victim, slicing the head from the second drider in front of him without slowing the momentum of his spin. His momentum carried him through a sideways tumble, and as he rolled, he cut two of the drider’s left feet out from under it.

The creature hissed its frustration, slipping backward and raising its sword. With a snarl of pure rage, Halloran sprang at the drider, driving it backward with two hammering blows. The second knocked the creature’s sword from its hand, and without hesitation, Hal swept Helmstooth through a vicious arc, severing the upper portion of the drider from its monstrous, eight-legged body Both halves twitched grotesquely as the drow hands seized the body, as if to pull itself together once more. It died while Halloran turned back to the threats before him.

Now more of the creatures rushed forward, and he realized his vengeance had cost him a second of time he could not afford. He deflected the first blow, losing his balance and stumbling. The second he avoided by twisting away as he fell. But then he was on the ground, and the driders were swarming around him, some of them straight past him!

“Erixitl!” He thought of her name but did not realize that he called it out loud-He saw a black sword raised over him, and then he saw only darkness.

Her first plan had been to obliterate the man with a blast of magic, so that she could linger over the death of the woman beyond. But then Darien had remembered: too often in the past she had wasted powerful magic at Halloran and his woman, only to have the spells thwarted by the woman’s magical protection.

Instead, Darien had crept carefully down the steep steps of the pyramid, letting her driders fight the battle for her. She had only one goal: the sweet flower of light that beckoned her with irresistible temptation-She saw the woman now, curled on the ground in the agonizing prelude to childbirth. She sneered at Erixitl, caught as she was in such a moment of weakness, a weakness that would prove fatal.

The white drider crept around the periphery of the fight watching her creatures attack and die at the hands of Halloran. In a cold, aloof sense, she admired the human for the savagery of his battle. Indeed, she found the sight of his sweat- and blood-streaked form exciting in a way she had not known since the Night of Wailing.

Yet she had known that his fight would be futile, and she watched him fall with a vague sense of pity, as if a good horse had been wasted.

Now Darien advanced toward the woman on the ground. She saw two old men beside her and heard her cry out in pain. But Erixitl’s dark brown eyes met Darien’s and surprised the drider with their anger and their power of will.

Erixitl groaned and threw back her head as convulsive pressure pushed against her womb. She saw the horrid, leering face of the white drider, and she knew that Halloran had fallen. She feared that she would lose her mind.

Lotil suddenly stood up beside her. The blind pluma-worker held in his hands a soft, rich blanket, a blanket of lush colors and deep, seductive shades.

Darien paused for a moment, feeling oddly confused Around her, the others of her kind hesitated as well.

Lotil spun the blanket gently in his hands, and the colors whirled in a most alluring fashion, forming a swirling vortex that seemed to pull the white drider forward with compelling, deeply persuasive force.

The man shuffled away from his daughter, moving carefully so that he did not trip. The blanket he raised before him, spinning it faster and faster. He stopped walking, though he kept twirling the blanket as he reached the still form of Jhatli.

“Father-no!” Erixitl whispered.

But Lotil dropped the blanket. It settled like a shroud over the lifeless form, and then the blind man stepped to the side. His hands spun only the air before him; the pluma cloth lay on the ground. Yet somehow the colors lingered in the air, a spinning column that pulled the driders together, compelled them to follow.

Lotil moved on, the center of a whirlwind of pluma that grew into a column taller than his head, rotating faster and faster. He drew away from the pyramid, crossing the flat clearing and his daughter watched him go. The light of his magic illuminated the entire clearing, and she saw the driders, the eight or ten that still lived, following her father in a dense pack. The white one, Darien, led the way.

The swirling colors around Lotil swelled up like a tornado, towering high into the sky. The area of the mist expanded, reaching out to clasp all of the driders in its brilliant embrace. The group moved slowly, steadily toward the precipice at the clearing’s edge.

“No, please,” Erixitl whispered, collapsing in the brief respite of the passing contraction. “Father…”

But her voice was weak, and Lotil undoubtedly would not have heeded her even if he could have heard.

Darien couldn’t take her eyes off the seductive, powerful luminescence before her. The power of the spell of pluma enthralled her, captivated her and her companions as surely as could any physical snare.

They followed the man as he shuffled across the meadow. Sometimes he paused to twirl and bow, as if he performed some kind of ritual dance. Then quickly he started moving again, and the driders followed.

Somewhere within Darien’s being, a nervous twinge of alarm began to pull at hen The objects of hishna, the talons and venom and snakeskin that she carried in her pouch, lugged against her side, their weight an oddly increasing burden. That dark power surged in her mind, trying to tear her eyes from the potent and hypnotic image before her.

But always that compelling brilliance lurked before her. She struggled to push forward as the other driders crowded past, but the weight of hishna held her back.

She did not see the cliff as it fell away behind Lotil. indeed, none of the driders did. They all knew that it was there, but that knowledge lay in some distant, logical part of their minds, a part that was no longer functional. Instead, they knew only the maddening desire to seize this brilliance, to take it to themselves and consume it.

Then the driders lunged together, and Lotil stepped backward. The creatures grasped at him, their fingers snaring his robe, their legs propelling them after him.