Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [27]
The air lay dense across the jungles of Far Payit. The great buildings of Tulom-Itzi stood like sentinels against the fog, but the bright mosaics, fountains, and pluma bedecking the structures merged into a pale sameness, diffused by the creeping mists.
The old man tried to shake off a feeling of dull menace, but he could not. Resolutely he turned toward the dome-roofed observatory. There, so many times before, he had found the answers to his questions in the stars.
The city in the jungle was silent at this early hour, as it was silent for all the day and night. The great buildings emerged from the mist and melted away again, monuments to the hundred thousand or more who had once built Tulom-Itzi and mastered the surrounding lands.
But most of them were gone now, and the vast city sheltered a population perhaps a tenth as large as it once held.
Now, as always, Zochimaloc found the emptiness of his city strangely soothing, as if he lived in a library or museum dedicated to the study of people, not among the people themselves.
Yet no longer could he deny that fact, for he knew that the gap between Tulom-Itzi and the world around it would soon close violently The feeling had risen within him for years, and it was the reason he had brought the Jaguar Knight Gultec here, to train the men of his city for war. This Gultec had done, though Tulom-Itzi was no nation of warriors.
Gultec was gone now, and Zochimaloc sensed the importance of his student’s mission. Soon, however, it would be necessary to call him home.
The old Maztican finally entered the observatory. The building, with its domed roof of carefully cut stone, stood in the center of Tulom-Itzi, a place of sacred peace and wisdom. Now Zochimaloc went to the center of the round chamber and looked at the apertures in the roof. The stars lined up with those openings at precise moments, he knew.
But today it was not the stars he sought. Zochimaloc needed deeper, more practical knowledge, and so he produced a small bit of plumage from his belt. He kindled a small fire in the floor, and then dropped the tufts of feathers in a ring about the bright blaze.
The feathers caught the light and dazzled with colors. On the encircling wall of the building, the feather-shadows appeared as black pictures, marching around the observatory, around Tulom-Itzi.
They marched as a file of giant ants.
For a long time, Zochimaloc touched the earth beneath his body He touched it, and he sensed its distress. Waves of pain radiated outward from the ground. He sensed a scourge upon the land, and it was a threat that he now understood to be near.
Hours later, though still well before dawn, the moon rose. The sliver in the east cast its pale beam through a slit in the building’s ceiling, and soon the moonlight washed over Zochimaloc.
He sat, immobile, until the moonlight faded. Even then he waited, until finally the cool blue of dawn lightened the eastern sky. Then his eyes closed and his lips moved.
“Gultec, we need you,” he whispered.
* * * * *
Hoxitl thrilled to the extent of the slaughter, howling gloriously as his minions grunted across the battlefield, ripping and tearing the corpses until the victims no longer resembled humans.
“Let that be their lesson,” chortled the great beast that had once been patriarch of Zaltec. “They will be even less human than us! And the might of Zaltec will prevail!”
For a long night, the beastly army remained on the bloody field. More and more of the monsters joined them, for the attacking group had only been a small advance guard. It pleased Hoxitl to see how effectively they had slain a group of the enemy that had outnumbered them substantially.
Of course, most of the humans had been helpless, but that mattered not to the manned figure. Indeed, he identified the fact as his greatest advantage: His forces could travel quickly and strike hard, unencumbered by non-combatants. The refugees, on the other hand, moved slowly and tried to protect the great majority of their number, the ill, the sick, the aged, a majority