Viperhand - Douglas Niles [112]
The priest lit another of his reed torches from the stump of the last one. "I have only two left," he reported softly. "We will soon find ourselves in darkness."
Halloran whirled on the priest, ready to snarl his anger with this last announcement. Shatil met his gaze coolly, and suddenly Hal felt very foolish. "All the more reason to keep moving," he grunted.
Once again they started along a narrow corridor-a corridor that looked just like a hundred other such passages. "How long have we been down here?" Hal asked, trying to bite back his despair.
"Most of the day, I think," Poshtli replied. "It must be approaching sunset." He didn't elaborate. Both of them fully understood the significance of Erix's premonition. With sunset would come the rising of the full moon, and-if she had seen the truth-shortly afterward would follow the death of Naltecona.
As they plodded along, Halloran turned and saw Shatil studying him, an expression of puzzlement across his features. "What is it?" asked the former legionnaire.
"I am wondering," replied the priest, pointing to Hal's waist, "how it is that you come to carry a band of hishna. Takmmagic, so I believed, is used only by the priests of my order. Or are you a master of hishna as well?"
"No," Hal replied. He looked at the snakeskin strap wound around him. "This was used to imprison me once, long ago in Payit. When I was freed, I kept it."
"It is a potent token," the priest declared.
"So I learned." Halloran vividly remembered the difficulty he had had with the snakeskin. It had grown into a long, flexible thong that had wrapped around him tightly. When Daggrande tried to cut it with his dagger, the steel edge had dulled without making a mark on the strap.
"Look!" Shatil cried suddenly as the other two marched quickly before him. He pointed to a small alcove beside the corridor that Poshtli and Hal, in their haste, had somehow missed.
"What is it?" grunted Hal, peering into the shadows.
"A ladder/' replied Shatil. "Leading up."
"Look at them, Captain. They just sit there, watching. What do you make of it?" Cordell turned to Daggrande, waiting for an answer. The dwarf stood beside him on the roof of the palace of Axait. The broad expanse of planks stretched flat around them, surrounded by a low parapet at the edge of the roof. In the center of the palace, several great peaks of thatch extended high into the sky, marking the throne room and the larger halls. Except for these peaks, the top of the palace consisted of a broad, open platform.
"Makes me damned uneasy, General." The dwarf squinted across the sacred plaza, through the long shadows cast by the lowering sun.
He saw tens of thousands of Nexalan warriors gathered all around the fringes of the plaza and spilling forward in great groups around their temples and pyramids. They wore feathers and carried clubs, macas, and spears. Occasionally one group would mutter some kind of chant, not loud enough to be a battle cry but nevertheless a sinister and unsettling sound. All day long the warriors had gathered, their numbers swelling from the apparently inexhaustible populace of the great city.
Below them, arrayed in camps around the palace of Axalt, the ranks of Kultakan and Payit warriors watched nervously, weapons close at hand. The twenty-five thousand-men of their allies, appearing so numerous when they marched into the city, now seemed badly outnumbered by the Nexalans. The five hundred men of the Golden Legion, garrisoned within the walls of the palace itself, looked across this formidable array and prayed for peace.
"There's that priest again," grunted Daggrande.
Cordell looked to the highest pyramid, and he saw the black-robed patriarch of Zaltec. Many of the Nexalans gathered around that edifice, and they could see him gesticulating. The harsh bark of his voice carried across the plaza, though even had they known his language, the words would have remained indistinguishable