Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [42]
In this mercy, I sense the destiny of this old blind man and the necessity of my aid to him. We are bound together now,
not just by the danger we have endured, but also by the road that beckons before us.
The horse of the strangers stands ready to carry us, and on this new day we prepare to embark. Both of us have dreamed vividly of the great pyramid in the desert, with its vibrant colors and the secret wonders, concealed beneath the surrounding sand.
The vision of pluma tells us where we must go.
And Qotal! The Plumed One will soon be here, and we understand that die great pyramid will be the place of his arrival. The horse, when we have mounted, carries us toward the south, toward the altar of the Feathered God’s advent.
Both of us sense the rightness of the horse’s course.
THE CITY OF THE GODS
The nearest troll lunged upward, and Halloran slashed it away in a shower of black blood. Daggrande fired the last of his quarrels, then grimly unslung his axe, ready to fight to the last. The two fighters stood before the rest of the companions as dizzying cliffs plummeted into sheer gorges beside and behind them.
Halloran growled inarticulately, slashing at a troll, but then a strange dizziness whirled in his mind. Stumbling, he stepped backward and planted his feet firmly.
A cocoon of color swirled around them. Startled, Halloran looked at Erixitl and saw that she was equally amazed. Her cloak puffed outward and began to spin in a brilliant kaleidoscope of color. Slowly the brilliance reached out to encircle the desperate party on the ridge.
The trolls gaped dumbly. The companions saw the desert through the filter of pluma, everything painted in bright greens, deep blues, and vibrant reds. The colors grew to blazing brightness, and the monsters cowered involuntarily backward.
“What’s happening?” gasped Jhatli, gazing wide-eyed at the rainbow dervish.
Then, with a sudden blink, the world around the companions shifted. The ground fell away, and everything became a blurry maze of motion. In another second, they stood together, still, but in a different place. The ridgetop below their feet was wider, firmer. Most importantly, there was no sign of the trolls-
Below them lay the same bleak chasms and barren rocks that had blocked their passage this day. Yet now that landscape lay to the west, behind them!
“Here, where we stand! This is the ridge we saw this morning,” Erix said. She pointed to the west. “We were over
there!” “How-what happened?” demanded Jhatli, sitting heavily
on the rocks.
“Teleportation,” Daggrande said gruffly. “And a mighty timely bit of it, too. We moved somehow across all that stuff down there.” The dwarf gestured at the chaotic land. “It would have taken us days to walk this far!”
Slowly Halloran adjusted to the shock of the teleportation. He and Daggrande gazed westward, relieved that all sign of the trolls had now disappeared in the distance. Jhatli sat on the ground, an expression of blank astonishment on his face.
“Poshtli’s coming!.” Erixitl pointed to the sky. The eagle winged toward them in a shallow dive, accelerating out of the western sky. It soared forward, then flashed over their heads, continuing its dive into the valley to the east.
“And look,” Erix said softly as her eyes followed the eagle’s flight to the land beyond the high ridge on which they stood. “This is the place where he leads us.”
“What in Helm’s name is fhat?” gasped Halloran. Jhatli and the dwarf, equally surprised, could only stare in astonishment.
The valley to the east was surrounded by steep ridges, its floor an expanse of dry, sandy flats broken by massive clumps of jagged boulders. It was a place of wilderness, uninhabitable and uninhabited.
Vet that was the most astonishing thing about it, for in the center of the valley rose a structure so magnificent, so immaculate in its crisp lines, so fresh-looking in its brightly painted colors, that it could have been completed yesterday.
It was