Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [131]
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.
Man and monsters tumbled over the side of the cliff, a whirling vortex of pluma