Douglas Niles - Viperhand

"See what? What are you talking about?"

"Up there," the wizard said, pointing coolly. Darien's shocking white skin showed as she raised her hand to point toward the ridgetop. Normally she disliked exposing any patch of her skin to the sun, but the heavy overcast of the day spared her discomfort.

"That feathered pole?" asked Cordell, his mind quickly grasping Darien's meaning, if not her intent. "That must be the war chief. The Payit did the same thing."

"A great chief," mused the wizard. "That was a clever trap, and it was his pole that signaled the attack."

Cordell looked skyward again, his black eyes flashing. "I see what you mean," he breathed softly.

"Of course!" Takamal, carefully watching the battle, saw the horseman fall and instantly understood the monsters. "They are only beasts that carry men into battle!"

His heart surged, full of pride at the noble attack of his Jaguar Knights. Dozens had been slain beneath the feet of the lumbering beasts, but still they pressed their attack. And now the riders had been pushed back!

"Magnificent!" whispered Naloc. "Zaltec has smiled upon us this day."

"Perhaps he will smile upon us," cautioned the chief. "But the attack isn't broken yet. Witness how the silver soldiers resist, even when surrounded." He gestured toward the field below, where the circle of swordsmen still stood amid the howling mass of Kultakan warriors. For many minutes, they had been cut off from the rest of the legion, yet no more than a dozen had fallen — and at the cost of many hundreds of Kultakan dead.

"Now! Signal the advance!" barked Takamal.

Two of his signalmen raised banners, each of which glowed bright crimson under the heavy gray sky. The pennants streamed in the slight wind, stretching weightlessly into the air. For a moment, the battle paused as the Mazticans took note of the command fluttering from the knoll atop the ridge.

But then they saw something else up there. Naloc, and Takamal himself, whirled in astonishment as a figure suddenly appeared on the ridgetop, barely thirty feet away.

The newcomer was a woman, Takamal saw — a woman with shockingly pale skin, and hair the color of snow. She wore a dark robe, but now the wind whipped that robe away from her body and he saw the bleached skin on her arms, her legs, her torso.

He saw, too, that she was very beautiful, in an icy sort of way. A golden circlet surrounded her brow, and her high cheekbones suggested nobility. Her eyes were wide, pale… and empty.

"By Zaltec!" gasped Naloc. The cleric seized his sacrificial dagger and held the stone blade over his head, lunging toward the woman. She seemed to be unarmed, though Takamal noticed a slender stick thrust through her belt.

She raised a hand and spat a word at Naloc — a word — and the cleric grasped his chest with a dull moan and collapsed to the ground. He kicked his feet reflexively, as does a sacrifice sometimes even when his heart has been torn away. Takamal knew that Naloc was dead.

The war chief of Kultaka stood tall, unbent even after his seventy years. He looked up at this slender female, who now turned those icy eyes on him. Takamal stood and watched. So, too, did the warriors of Kultaka, gathered on the field below.

A bolt of yellow energy, like a shot of lightning from the clouds, exploded from the woman's hand. She pointed her finger, and the power surged forth with a hiss and a crackle, faster than the eye could follow.

The magic drove into Takamal, for a moment outlining his body in sizzling blue flame. The smell of burned flesh wafted through the air. Still the great chief of the Kultakans made no sound, no movement. The energy of the lightning bolt exploded past, striking two of his flag-bearers dead behind him.

Then Takamal toppled, his life burned away by sorcery. Rigid and scarred in death, the war chiefs body fell forward, tumbling from the ridge to spill down the long slope, finally crashing to a halt among the still, stunned members of his army.

A few feathers from his singed headdress floated through the air, coming to rest on the ground atop the ridge, far above the Revered Counselor's shattered corpse. Those feathers, and two footprints outlined in black soot, were all that remained to show where Takamal had been.

From the chronicles of Colon:

The legend of the Plumed One's departure includes the promise of his return.

Qotal journeyed to Payit and climbed aboard a great feathered canoe, to sail onto the Eastern Ocean. He turned his back upon Maztica, for everywhere the people followed gods of lust and blood. Zaltec smiled, to see the Feathered Serpent sail away.

But Qotal promised that one day he would return. He told of three signs that would preface his arrival and bade the folk of Maztica to watch and to wait.

First would come the couatl, messenger of Qotal and harbinger of his return.

Second would be granted the Cloak of One Plume, to be worn by Qotal's chosen one, offering protection and beauty so that all may learn the glory of his name.

Third, and most mysterious, would come the Summer Ice.

But for now, these tales are mere legends. Even the couatl, who tantalizes me, I see only in my dreams.

Tulom-Itzi sprawled across the jungle hills of Far Payit, a large city that looked like no city at all. Several stone pyramids jutted steeply above the treetops, and the great dome of the observatory squatted atop the highest hill. Wide grassy paths twisted among trunks and vines of forest, and several large green expanses of land had been cleared of trees altogether.

But the overwhelming presence of the forest ruled the land. The structures of men, such as they were, became a part of the jungle rather than its conqueror.

"Of course," Zochimaloc had explained to Gultec, "at one time the city housed tens of thousands of people." Now a mere fraction of that number dwelled there, the descendants of Tulom-Itzi's long-forgotten founders.

The people of Far Payit differed little from his own in appearance, Gultec realized. Short and well-muscled, deep brown of skin, they were an industrious, inventive folk. Their culture, however, seemed very foreign to the Jaguar Knight.

Never had he seen people of such gentleness. They knew nothing of war, save that it was a scourge known in their distant past. Yet their knowledge in other areas astounded him.

The surgeons of Tulom-Itzi knew cures for the poison-that-sickens-blood, for the disease of body rot, and for other horrors that would result in sure fatality for a Payit or other Maztican. Astronomers studied the skies, predicting even such things as the irregular passage of the Wandering Stars. Here musicians created lyrical ballads of legend and romance.

Gultec had come to know and love these folk, but none did he revere so much as his teacher. He thrilled to each minute with Zochimaloc, and each day seemed to open the door to new wonders of knowledge and understanding. Today, Zochimaloc walked with him to the cetay, the great well that lay to the north of the jungle city. It was, Zochi promised, to be an important lesson.

"Once the cetay was used for sacrifice," explained the wizened teacher as they reached the lip of the depression. "But now it serves best as a source of wisdom. Come, sit with me here."

The cetay was a circular hole several hundred paces across. Stone walls plummeted, with many jagged outcrops, to a clear surface of water hundreds of feet below them. Zochimaloc, who walked with a long wooden staff today, settled easily onto a benchlike boulder at the very lip of the well. Gultec sat beside him.

For a long time — more than an hour — the two sat in silence. Gultec studied the smooth, blue water so far below him. He saw slight swirls in its surface, as if a hidden current agitated its depths. Gradually, unconsciously, his mind emptied of its external concerns.