Ironhelm - Douglas Niles [36]
"Chicha, take the priestess to her apartments and prepare her bath." Kachin spoke to a tall young girl, a lass just approaching womanhood, who nodded excitedly and kissed the floor before an embarrassed Erix.
"Chicha is your slave, my priestess," the cleric explained. "She will see to your needs until we sup."
"I don't need a slave!" she protested, but Kachin simply smiled in his grandfatherly manner and walked away.
"Oh, I will be good!" declared Chicha, and Erix saw that the girl was on the point of tears.
"I'm certain you will, Chicha. I didn't mean…" She paused, wondering if one apologized to a slave. Certainly no one had ever done so to her! "Show me my apartments, please."
The girl excitedly led her through a reed curtain into a room with its own small veranda. A clean straw pallet lay on the floor, and a massive golden sun disk rested in a niche in the wall.
The bath proved even more spectacular, as Chicha merely pulled a plug from a hollow log in the wall to allow cool, clean water to fill the large basin. The princess stripped her travel-worn cloak and mantle away, though she kept her golden token around her neck. She felt almost giddy with excitement. A real bath again!
Erix settled easily into the water, feeling the dust and grime float away from her skin. She leaned back and closed her eyes, the bath as always giving her a feeling of exhilarating freshness and vitality.
A harsh crash made her open her eyes. She saw a male slave fall into the bathing room, his face a gory mask of jagged claw marks. Chicha screamed, and four spotted figures stalked into the room, each brandishing an obsidian-tipped club.
"Who are you?" demanded Erix, feeling more anger than fear.
Her only answer was the sharp blow of a club against her scalp. She slumped senseless into the bathwater that slowly turned pink, then red.
Thirty-ninth day, aboard the Falcon
Darien andBishou Domincus have sustained us, each calling upon the deepest strains of power, bending the wind to their commands. When one collapses from exhaustion, the other takes over, carrying us steadily westward. Now, finally, a natural breeze arises, true from the east, and we sail rapidly again.
And now we have hope! Flocks of birds sighted each of last three days. Crews work with vigor, all eyes…
I must go, hearing a disturbance on deck.
"Land!"
"Land!" Halloran heard the cry and passed it along, racing to the bow of the Osprey. He could see the lookout atop the mast of one of the carracks, perhaps Dragonfly, gesturing frantically.
"What's this? Probably another cloud bank, if you ask me!" Daggrande clumped up to Hal's side, squinting forward in annoyance.
For several minutes, they could see nothing. Other men of the legion gathered around them, as all unoccupied hands stared intently to the westward.
One by one the mast-top lookouts called down their confirmations, and the breeze seemed to freshen with the expedition's aroused hopes.
Gradually Hailoran saw it. Mutters of speculation, quickly growing to a rumble, spread among the men as the image before them slowly took on color, shape, substance. Finally it became a line of green, close to the horizon but extending for many miles from west to east.
Almost imperceptibly, more details became apparent: white-crested breakers upon a wide reef, a smooth shore of tight sand, palm trees and other vegetation growing back from the beach. The lookouts even saw a bright stream flowing into the sea, offering the promise of fresh water.
From the chronicle of Colon:
May the wisdom of the Silent Counselor guide my brushes and my hand.
In the age when the gods and man were young, there came the time of the Great Dust. The rains failed ten years in a row, and heat blistered the land. This was the time of the Ancient Ones, when the cult of Zaltec began to nourish. His priests adorned themselves with blood and cried out that only through sacrifice could the favor of the gods be restored. Deep in their