Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [16]
“Fools! Imbeciles!” Hoxitl’s shrieks of rage terrified them, yet, perversely, rooted their feet to the trail.
With one savage blow, he sent an ogre tumbling off the cliff, the beast’s dying scream shattered by the jagged rocks below.
“This is the fate of the weak and the foolish among you! Let all pay heed!” he howled. “Save your warfare for the enemies-humans who still escape our vengeance!”
In the next instant, his paw, tipped by wicked talons, reached forward. The claws sliced into the other ogre’s belly, tearing the creature’s flesh and bowels in a spray of gore.
With a grunt of astonishment, the beast looked down as its insides gushed out onto the stony trail. Hoxitl’s other paw lashed forward, tearing into the creature’s neck and ripping the heavy skull away from the dying beast’s body. Contemptuously he kicked the gory corpse off the edge, where it tumbled like a bundle of wet rags onto the jagged spines of rock below.
A flush of excitement tingled the cleric-beast’s body as the scent of blood reached his nostrils. He felt the presence of the god of war-Zaltec was near.’ Eagerly Hoxitl turned his
thoughts to the trail and the victims ahead.
“Advance!” howled the manned beast. Mindless of the blood spattering his feet, Hoxitl started through the pass.
Behind him, his grumbling file of monsters started to follow.
Through the long subterranean night, the driders crept onward, gradually leaving the flaming seas of lava behind. No path upward greeted them, but this was satisfactory to the corrupted creatures of the drow. As dark elves, they had shunned the sun; now, as driders, they had little desire to walk the surface.
Yet only on the surface, sensed Darien, could they begin to wreak their vengeance. The queen of the driders now, she led her creatures eastward, thirsting for the blood of her enemies, desperately craving the chance to attack. Her albino skin, which had allowed her to conceal her drow nature among the humans, now set her apart from the black driders. Yet the fire that drove her to lead them came from within, blazing in hatred and power, giving her the strength to master her kin,
Her bitterness and hatred encompassed all the world and beyond, even including the dark form of Lolth, goddess of the drow. Yet, though she hated all things, she feared Lolth. Lolth had wounded her too profoundly, taking her lithe, female body and corrupting it into this malformed monstrosity, this hideous creature! And because of this, she feared Lolth.
She knew that the lime for vengeance must wait for now until the driders recovered their strength. Allies-an army of them- would-be necessary before the humans could be made to suffer the full wrath of the spider-beasts. She could not know that Lolth herself propelled her toward these allies.
Darien led her followers to the east, far from the volcanic reaches below central Maztica. Through great schisms in the limestone subsurface of the world they crept, finally reaching the jungled stretches of Payit. Always they traveled underground. Here great pools of water blocked their passage, but they plunged ahead, swimming for hours.
Once a channel of brine rose around them, and here she turned southward, for she knew that they approached the sea. Ever onward they pressed, until the dank, impenetrable recesses of the Far Payit jungle lurked above them. Now she was guided by a deep, primordial memory, a lingering awareness of a presence that the driders could employ for their own ends. Here, she sensed, they would find the tools of their vengeance, awaiting only her masterful command.
Darien did not sense the hand of Lolth in her discovery She did not know that, once again, she had become a tool of that hateful goddess. Instead, she only knew that she herself burned with hatred, and perhaps now she discovered the means to act upon that malevolence.
They came upon the nest in a great, moss-draped cavern, far below the steaming jungles.