Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [34]
Somewhere within, a brazier must have contained hot coals, for shortly after the collapse, a wisp of smoke erupted from the wreckage, In moments, orange flames licked upward, and soon the ruined temple crackled into a hot blaze. Sparks, wafted by the gentle wind, floated tantalizingly over the dying village. Some of these nestled among the heaps of torn thatch, and soon the ruined huts began to burn.
In a few minutes, there was little sign of any human habitation here, save for the squat stone pyramid amid the glowing piles of crackling ashes and coals.
At the edge of the clearing, the driders watched the destruction with grim satisfaction.
“You have found us our army,” hissed one of Darien’s driders, a sleek male with a powerful longbow. He, like the rest of her kin, had looked quietly on while the ants attacked.
“My soldiers kill very well,” agreed Darien.
Lolth, too, was well pleased by the carnage, though of course her driders could not know it.
* * * * *
From the chronicles of Coton:
In the embrace of the Plumed One, may we live to see another day.
The door to Lotil’s hut crashes inward, and a great beast stands there, slavering- It is monstrously tall, green of skin, and possessed of long, wicked claws upon its fingers. The crimson brand of the Viperhand throbs on its chest. Its black, sunken eyes focus on the featherworker and me as we cower in the corner.
But then the presence of Qotal becomes manifest.
Lotil’s loom, decked with feathers and cloth, stands in the corner. As the beast advances, the partial tapestry tears free from the loom. It floats toward us, then hangs motionless in the air, between the monster and our terrified selves.
The creature stands dumbfounded, but no more so than I. For upon this uncompleted scrap of tapestry appears an image of a place, an image rendered so clear, so unmistakable, that it would seem to be the place itself.
The beast stumbles backward in confusion. Finally, silently, it departs from the house. I stare, transfixed by the image before me.
Then the blind featherworker beside me, who cannot see the sun in the noonday sky, speaks.
“It is the Pyramid of Tewahca,” he says, and I agree.
MARCHES AND AMBUSH
Luskag felt a strange mixture of sadness and pride as his dwarves marched past. They left Sunhome in the care of the young and the old, while all the strong adults-males and females alike-joined the file toward war. All across the House of Tezca, he knew, the other villages of desert dwarves mustered as well.
He counted barely a hundred souls among the warriors, and he did not know how much they could accomplish against the apparently numberless horde of monsters spreading southward across the desert. But the vision of chaos had been so clear, so threatening, that they all knew they had to try.
Most of his dwarves were armed with weapons of plumastone, but his village was still unique in the desert. The others had only begun to acquire the secrets of the super hardened obsidian and were for the most part bearing crude weapons more typical of Maztica.
Work progressed steadily, following the council at Sun-home, as each village had sent an expedition to the ridges around the City of the Gods. They had since returned to their homes, laden with the shiny black rock with which the dwarves now labored to create the tough, deadly weapons.
A few desert dwarves wielded metal axes or swords that predated the Rockfire, but these artifacts were reserved for chieftains and other venerable warriors. Luskag himself had borne such a battle-axe, but he had bestowed the weapon upon his eldest son, Bann. The chief himself carried a heavy axe of plumastone.
Regardless of their armament, all of the villages had sent companies of doughty warriors, albeit warriors who had
never known war. Yet the tradition of courage and combat lay deep within the dwarven race, and Luskag knew that they would fight well. So, too, he reflected sadly, would they die.
Luskag trotted to the head of the column, and the desert dwarves started across the sun-scorched realm