Douglas Niles - Ironhelm

Erix awakened with a pounding headache, and for a long time, she could not remember where she was or how she had come to be there. She remembered that something was wrong, but what had happened?

Darkness surrounded her, and the air smelled of masonry. The stone floor had no reed mat nor straw pallet, accustomed amenities for even the lowliest of slaves. Erix couldn't tell whether it was day or night.

She remembered more, but her mind seemed to go backward. She pictured her family's cottage in Palul, she saw her father's face. With a gasp, she reached for her neck, then sighed with relief as she found her feather token still suspended there, her only remaining link to that distant era.

The picture of a Jaguar Knight snatching her from Palul came into her mind, and then she remembered Kultaka, where she had known Huakal's gentle mastership, Callatl's brutality. With a low moan, she sat up as the rest of the pieces fell into place: her purchase by Kachin, the journey to Payit.

Her head throbbed with agony as she remembered the eager grimaces of the Jaguar Knights who had intruded into her bath. Had they hurt Chicha? she wondered, desperately hoping the girl was all right. Why did they want Erix, anyway? And where was she?

Erixitl almost sobbed in despair. Her entire life had been spent following the dictates of authority. Since childhood, she had been subject to masters who had claimed her by force, or who had purchased her from her captors. Even the feather-lined comfort of her journey to Ulatos was in reality simply a softer form of bondage.

The dingy cell around her indicated that she had now been taken by harsher masters. In fact, the lack of comforts suggested strongly that she was not intended for slavery but for sacrifice. She knew that victims who might be expected to resist the Flowered Altar were often imprisoned in bleak cells until the moment of ceremony that would end the prisoner's life.

Strangely, the thought of dying on the altar did not particularly terrify her — at least, no more than had her sale to Kachin or her battle with Callatl. Instead, she began to grow angry, and as her anger grew, it turned into a fiery resentment against the fates that had swept her along for so much of her life.

"No!" She surprised herself with her vehemence.

Feeling groggy, ignoring the pain in her skull, she stumbled to her feet and leaned against the stone wall of her enclosure. She took a step and felt another wall before her, quickly ascertaining that her cell was a square about three paces on a side. She felt a low wooden door in one wall.

They will not have me! Her anger burned with steadily increasing fury, until her body began to tremble. She pushed away from the wall, growing stronger, and turned to face the door. Sooner or later, she knew, they would open that door for her.

And when they did, she would attack.

"I don't like it! I just don't like it, not one bit!" Mixtal, priest of Zaltec, wrung his hands and nervously bit his lip. He took handfuls of cold ashes and smeared them across his face and arms, habitually covering himself in a manner befitting a high priest of the war god.

"Be quiet!"

Gultec's voice came out a rumbling snarl. The Jaguar Knight reclined on a bench and glared contemptuously at the cleric through the jaws of his spotted armor. "Who are you to question the will of the Ancient Ones? Even I know that when your god and his counselors make a Sending, the likes of you and I had best obey!"

The two men conversed in the courtyard before their apartments, where they had been observing the night sky over Ulatos. Behind them rose a small pyramid, not far from the looming bulk that was the Pyramid of Qotal.

"But our Temple of Zaltec here in Payit is not the esteemed institution that it is in Nexal! Hoxitl must know that, but he fears to tell the Ancient Ones! I don't like it!" Mixtal raised his hands to his scalp, tearing at the blood-caked spikes of his hair.

"The sign of the Viperhand is the ultimate command," Gultec reminded the priest. "And it is granted to the patriarch of Zaltec in Nexal, not Payit. The order is Hoxitl's to give and yours to obey.

"Just be thankful we shall accomplish our task with little further difficulty," growled the warrior. In truth, the priest's anxieties made him nervous.

"And we had to take her from the temple apartments!" Mixtal wailed. "It's not like Nexal, where Qotal is a silent, forgotten god! Oh, no, not here! They worship the Plumed Father here in Payit! And they will not overlook a transgression such as this!" The priest whirled anxiously, then continued.

"Caxal will not protect us. Even he, ruler of all the Payit, fears to challenge the power of Kachin's temple!" Indeed, Caxal, Revered Counselor of the city of Ulatos, never interfered in the workings of the temples. The Jaguar Knights, headed by Gultec, formed the largest and most influential group in the city, and their might was all that kept the temples of Zaltec from banishment.

"What would you have us do?" Gultec sprang to his feet in one fluid motion, towering over the trembling cleric. "Send her back? Ignore the ones who are your masters… and mine?"

"How many days?" The cleric looked at the stars once again, groaning.

"One Tenday, as I told you! We hide the girl till then — the night of the new moon. Your knife will do the rest." The Jaguar Knight took a silent step away from the cleric, his spotted cloak blending into the darkness.

"I just don't like it!" the cleric hissed behind him, but Gultec had already vanished.

Seventh day following landfall, aboard the Falcon.

Each day brings new islands, more information, greater boundaries to these undiscovered realms. Darien speaks to these natives, and always we learn of still greater lands to the west.

I begin to suspect we have come not to Shou Lung, nor even its peripheries. Instead, we have discovered new lands, entirely unknown to East or West — lands claimed in the name of the Golden Legion!

And they are lands of richness! Our casks brim with fresh water, our holds bulge with salted game and many fruits and vegetables. Chief among these is a grain the natives call mayz, which seems to grow in great abundance.

But more than food and water, these are lands of gold. We have stopped at four islands, and each time were met by bands of native humans. Each gave us presents of food and gold, and we saw that the farther we traveled west, the greater the abundance of gold.

The villages of these island peoples are poor, but all of them tell us, through Darien, of great lands to the west, a "world that climbs into the sky." That can only mean mountains, and a mainland.

And the source of the gold.

Halloran stood at the base of the waterfall, letting the spray cool him. He faced away from the deep lagoon where the fleet had at last gained a sheltered anchorage, looking up at the staircase progression of cataracts emerging from inland heights. Impenetrable tropical plant life surrounded the stream before him, but a stretch of lush grasses backed the beach to either side.

"Nice scenery. Still, just an island," muttered Daggrande, joining Hal at the sandy streambank. The dwarf pulled his dagger from its sheath and clucked in alarm, flicking several grains of sand from the blade. "I won't be happy till we set foot on the mainland!"

"You won't ever be happy. Still, how do you know it's just an island? The scouting ships have only been out for one day."

"I can feel it in these old feet of mine."

The dwarves, in their ancient, deliberate manner, had a way of understanding things about the earth that superseded the senses of humans. Halloran believed the veteran campaigner.

They looked up the beach to the center of its arc around the cove, where Cordell, Darien, and the Bishou engaged in negotiations with a contingent of the local natives.