Ironhelm - Douglas Niles [117]
A great disk of silver lay fiat in the crater, like a lake of molten metal. The inside of the caldera was dry and lifeless, a baked surface of black rock. But the disk, nearly the size of the great plaza of Nexal, seemed to gleam with a life of its own.
Poshtli could not have torn his eyes away even if he had wanted to. He squatted on his haunches, spellbound. He sensed Luskag sitting beside him, also facing the inside of the mountain.
Slowly, majestically, the sun crested the opposite side of the crater. Higher it climbed, warming them with its heat, but never did their eyes waver from the silver disk. Poshtli saw the metal begin to move, starting to swirl slowly in a great circle.
Faster and faster the metal whirled, and more magnificent, more enthralling grew the spell. The Eagle Warrior and the desert dwarf did not move, did not twitch a muscle or blink.
Finally the sun reached high across the mountain. Its light struck the disk in a scorching reflection, pouring brilliance in its concentrated beams.
Poshtli felt the force wash over him, almost knocking him backward. Grimly he fixed his gaze against the glare, feeling his body grow warm, then hot. His vision had suddenly become a white nothingness, but then a hole opened in the vast blank.
In the very center of his vision, the hole grew, until he could see through it, into a region of clear blue sky. He looked through the hole in his vision and saw buzzards circling, wheeling downward, away from him.
Poshtli forgot his pain, forgot the heat. He dove with the buzzards, which had now become eagles. Soaring, he remembered sensations of flight, but never had they created such joy.
With sudden, sickening abruptness, he flew with the eagles over a vast black wasteland. Through the ashes, he could see the outlines of canals, a tumbled mound that might have been a pyramid, the swamps that outlined what once had been lakes.
Nexal! He cried for the city, his voice a harsh wail. This was truly Nexal that stood below him, but a Nexal of death and disaster. There were no people here, but strange, frightening things wandered among the muck and ruin: creatures of grotesque appearance, malformed shapes, and bestial, hateful eyes.
Poshtli still looked through the hole in his vision, though now he tried to look away-but he could not. He thought the sight would drive him mad. Despair threatened to burst his heart.
Then he saw, before him, a woman of indescribable beauty. She stood among the blackened ruins, and the darkness fell back from her. Where it recoiled, the city did not reappear, but at least the land emerged, green and whole again.
PoshtH's avian form reeled under the brutal assault of the vision. He twisted and squirmed in the air as if he would escape the horror below it, but it seemed that everywhere he turned he faced new scenes of devastation.
Then he saw jungle below him, broken by patches of savannah. The sun appeared in his vision, rising directly above an overgrown pyramid. Poshtь's vision fell toward the pyramid, and here he saw a strange sight: a beautiful woman, fighting desperately for her life. He saw a pack of coyotes snapping at her legs.
Beside her stood one he recognized as a white man from across the sea. He, too, fought the coyotes. Poshtli saw that the attackers were small, shaggy creatures of several colors-pale yellow, brown, and black.
The next thing he knew was Luskag's hand on his shoulder, shaking him. He sat up and blinked, unable to remove the glaring yellow spot from his vision-the spot where the hole had been. Dimly he realized that it was night.
"Come," said Luskag. Poshtli saw that the dwarf, too, blinked often. "Were the gods kind to you?"
"They were," Poshtli said softly. "I know now what to do."
Kardann, the assessor, reported to Cordell at noon. The captain-general kept the bookkeeper waiting outside the