Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [1]
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“Water here, too!” Luskag scratched his bald, sunburned pate. The desert dwarf felt a great puzzlement, tinged with a little alarm. True, extra water in the sun-baked wastes of the House of Tezca could not possibly be bad. Or could it?
“More strangeness, like the beasts rumored to control Nexal,” muttered Tatak, his equally sunburned companion. Like Luskag, Tatak wore a smooth leather loincloth, with a band of snakeskin about his scalp. In the younger dwarf’s case, this served to restrain his long, shaggy growth of hair. Both dwarves concealed mouths and chins behind bristling, waist-length beards.
The pair stood beside a long pool of clear water in a twisting, rocky vale, where two days previously had lain a dust-filled depression in the desert. Craggy bluffs, their red stone faces glowing like fire in the hot daylight, towered overhead. Ripe, green shoots sprouted from the stony ground around the precious moisture. If the pattern observed throughout much of the House of Tezca was repeated, within weeks this former wasteland would produce an abundance of life-giving mayz.
“And the humans? How do they proceed?” inquired Tatak, knowing his chieftain had ordered spies to observe the great exodus from the wasteland that had once been fabulous Nexal.
“Southward, as before,” grunted Luskag. “They cross the House of Tezca like locusts, descending on these newly created water holes, scourging them of food, and then starting south again.”
“As if the gods had placed the food for them…” mused young Tatak.
Luskag huffed, uncertain and annoyed. He, the chief of Sunhome, had known an unchanging world for more than a century of life in the desert. He and his folk coped with that harsh environment, and if they did not master it, neither did the land master them. They found what water they needed from the plump sand mother, the cactus that grew to serve their needs. Food remained scarce, yet the desert dwarves needed little to survive.
Now, when confronted with a multitude of changes, Luskag could not dispel a sense of unease that closed in around him, disturbing him like a shadow on this bright, sunny day.
Indeed, as if to echo his thoughts, a great flicker of darkness passed over the land- The dwarf ducked reflexively, as if a monstrous hawk passed overhead, but when he looked upward the great dome of azure loomed empty above him.
“Did you see that?” Luskag inquired.
“What?”
Not answering, the chief of the desert dwarves studied the sky for some clue as to the origin of the shadow. “We must beware,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “And prepare.”
“Our craftswomen work hard on the plumastone,” offered Tatak, though of course his chieftain knew this fact very well. “Already they have built many sharp arrows.”
“Indeed. Another group, ten sturdy dwarves, left just this morning on the journey to the City of the Gods. In ten days, they will return with yet more of the gods-blessed obsidian.”
“How is it, Chieftain,” asked Tatak, scowling in confusion, “that the gods can allow the desert to claim a place like that? A pyramid such as stands there shows the work of many faithful followers, does it riot?”
Luskag grunted. “Our lot is not to question the acts of the gods. Perhaps they placed the City of the Gods in the desert so that only we could find it-only we could master the plumastone.” The chief chuckled wryly. “Though perhaps the gods will now show us why we need such weapons.”
They both knew that it had been luck, more than any recognizable destiny, that had allowed Luskag to discover the shiny. super-hard obsidian. The stone seemed to exist only in the ridges around the City of the Gods, the sand-swept ruin that stood in the heart of the bleak desert. From the stone’s icy smooth surface, the stoneworkers of the desert dwarves had begun to form weapons far stronger than any they had known in Maztica, indeed, the blades were reminiscent of the steel edges dating back to the dwarves’ origins, before the time of the Rockfire.
“They say that the arrowheads are hard enough to shatter boulders,” observed Tatak.
“Yes,