Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [64]
Darien strode among the pyramids and great stone palaces, looking in wonder at this city in the jungle. Her eight legs carried her smoothly up the steep stairways, until at last she stood upon the platform of a high pyramid. She saw that the forest pressed close around this great open plaza of stone buildings. The wooden structures stood within the forest, and these were currently and systematically destroyed by her army.
The ants spread like a scourge from the city center, tearing the leaves from trees, trampling and devouring the mayz in the fields, and tearing the lush gardens into rubbish and rot. The stone buildings the ants plundered for food, but they left the structures intact.
“That domed place-what is it?” Darien wondered, pointing to the observatory on the low hill in the center of the city
“It was empty,” replied Hittok. “It has gaps in the roof-holes to let light in, 1 think, though they are oddly placed.”
“And the humans? You say that they have fled into the jungle?”
“Yes, mistress.”
For the first time since entering Tulom-Itzi, Darien smiled. She nodded her slender, milky-white head. “Very well.
When we have finished with their city, we shall pursue them. They cannot hope to long avoid my army.” “Indeed. We shall quickly overtake them.” And then-“ Darien concluded, her thin smile growing light and menacing, “then we shall kill them all.”
* * * * *
“The faces, Captain! The faces on the cliff!”
Don Vaez emerged from his cabin, trying to conceal his excitement from the crewmen who clamored for his attention. The leader of the expedition, always conscious of appearances, was determined to display no untoward sign of agitation.
Yet internally his heart pounded with the news. They had almost reached their goal! Pryat Devane had given him a good account of Cordell’s route, and he knew that this massive edifice had been his rival’s first landfall on the shores of Maztica itself.
Despite these preliminary reports, however, Don Vaez was not prepared for the awesome impact of the scene before him.
The cliff at the headlands of the Payit country loomed some five hundred feet in the air. The clear blue waters of a sheltered lagoon lay placid, protected by a coral reef encircling the shore. Beyond the water, a slim belt of white sand fringed the base of the cliff, backed by a strip of jungled greenery.
But over all, the two faces-Twin Visages, he had heard them called-stared ominously eastward. A male and a female, the faces were similar in aspect: oval-shaped, with thick lips, broad noses, and keen eyes that belied their sculpted origins as they seemed to stare into Don Vaez’s soul itself.
He shook his head, trying to break the thrall. “Pilot! Fetch me the charts!”
“Here they are, Captain.” Rodolfo, the grizzled navigator who had plotted their course across the Trackless Sea, offered several rolled sheets of parchment to Don Vaez.
The captain took them without a word but looked up as he unrolled them. He would need the navigator’s help in de-ciphering the rough charts, since map-reading had never been one of his strengths- And besides, these crude guides had only been prepared through distant and brief communication with the late Bishou Domincus. They were altogether lacking in crucial detail.
“Cordell sailed along this coastline,” offered Rodolfo, indicating the course with a blunt finger. “Until he discovered this city-the natives called it Ulatos.’”
“And that’s where he erected his fort?”
“Yes… at the anchorage near the city. It’s likely just an earthen redoubt, but the harbor there is supposed to be well protected. He called it Helmsport.’”
“Helmsport.” Don Vaez let the name roll off his tongue. “I like that. The name will stay. The fort, however,” he added with a grim chuckle, “is about to gain a new master.”
Barely pausing before the huge carvings in the cliff, the. twenty-five carracks of Don Vaez’s fleet set a new course due westward along the coast. All lookouts kept their eyes peeled for the first sign of Helmsport.
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