Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [46]
“We have come, Lord Poshtli,” said Erix quietly as they finally reached the summit. “You have called us and we have come.”
The eagle cocked its head to the side, and it seemed to Halloran as ii” the bird understood her words perfectly. He remembered the noble warrior who had been his friend, and he wondered how this bird could be that man. Yet he never questioned the fact that this was Poshtli.
The top of the pyramid formed a broad square plaza, perhaps fifty paces on a side. The temple building itself occupied most of the square, though a wide shelf passed around the building on all four sides. Though the wall had appeared featureless from the distance, now they could see that intricate carvings of snakes, birds, and jaguars covered the sides of the temple building. The creatures, carved in detailed relief, had been left unpainted.
The huge door yawned before them, larger now even than it had seemed from the ground below. It loomed a good thirty feet high and nearly that wide.
But their sense of proportion vanished entirely as they stepped through the door. They entered a monstrously huge chamber, with floor and walls of stone and a roof of thatch supported by the longest tree trunks they had ever seen. A dim glow lighted the temple interior, though no source of light was visible.
It took only an instant to realize that the building, on the inside, was a far larger structure than it was on the outside.
“This is truly a place of the gods!” whispered Jhatli, staling around in open-mouthed awe. The cleric Coton stepped lightly past them and turned to the companions. His face bore an impish, almost childlike smile.
The carvings on the outer walls continued within, extending across the high walls. A pattern of inlaid stones, depicting butterflies, fish, and hummingbirds in square relief covered the entire floor.
The eagle stepped through the door behind them and then, with a beat of powerful wings, took flight. Poshtli soared into the air and then coasted in gentle circles, high above the floor.
At the center of the vast chamber stood a clean white block of stone. No one had to tell Halloran that this was an altar dedicated to Maztican gods, though he felt a sense of relief at its pristine cleanliness. It was unmarred by the sinister, rust-colored stains that so often designated these sacred altars as the feeding plates of the bloodthirsty deities.
“What do we do now?” asked Hal, with a look at his wife.
“I know,” she said. “I don’t know how, but 1 know!’
Erixitl, with Hal at her side, advanced slowly toward the center of the huge chamber, reaching it after a hundred steps. There she removed her cloak and placed it on the altar. Then the pair hurried back to join the others just inside the door.
“What was that all about?” Daggrande wondered aloud, but he lapsed into silence when Erix ignored him. Instead, he, like the others, focused on the center of the room.
The shade of sunset spread across the entire valley floor around them, but the top of the pyramid towered high enough to linger in the last rays of daylight. Straight to the west now, the sun’s illumination spilled directly through the western door, spreading across the temple floor and flickering across the Cloak-of-One-Plume.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then the cloak, laid carefully across the altar, started to shimmer. Us colors whirled and shifted, spreading like a rainbow across the
room-many rainbows, actually spreading outward from the altar of the gods.
Slowly majestically a dim outline took shape there. They saw its huge size first, then the serpentine shape of a sinuous body. Next they saw dimly a pair of monstrously massive wings, beating slowly but not stirring the air.
Coton and Lotil threw themselves face-first on the floor. After a second, Jhatli did the same. Halloran and Daggrande stared, awestruck, while Erixitl