thoughts of the looming confrontation with the gods returned, and it would be as if a heavy cloud had moved across the sun.
Several days after leaving the sea behind, they called an early halt so that the dwarves and Jhatli could hunt While Coton and Lotil rested in the camp, Hal and Erix went for a quiet walk on their own. It was their first opportunity to be alone together in a very long time.
“These are good lands here,” observed Halloran. Beautiful and fertile. I wonder why there are no settlements of humans.”
“I don’t know. We have not yet reached the lands of Far Payit. Yet [had always thought nothing but desert lay beyond. Perhaps this place has not been discovered by humans yet.”
The thought was an intriguing and pleasant one. For a while, it seemed as if they were on an exploration. However, the long trek had been marking their days, and it seemed wrong somehow to stroll aimlessly for a few hours, as if they had nowhere important to go.
“It seems that life has become nothing but a series of long marches,” Erixitl sighed wistfully. “I look forward to the time when we can make a home again and live there in peace:
“It will be soon,” Halloran promised. “When this child it born, he-or she-will not have to run from enemies or chase after gods! And neither will we.”
How much longer will that be?” she wondered lightly. “I’m afraid I’ve lost track. 1 think 1 have about two more. months.” They both knew that their estimation was rough at best.
For a while, they walked through a shady vale, past meadows of brilliant flowers. They approached a rocky niche where, earlier, they had observed the top of a waterfall Now they pressed through mossy underbrush, hearing the growing noise of a cascade that told them they were getting closer.
Finally they broke from the brush to stand on the smooth sandy shore of a small pool. Before them, tumbling from
high above into the other side of the pool, flowed the object of their exploration.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked him. He could only stare in
wonder at the falls, a narrow plume of white far above that grew from a whispering ribbon of water into a foaming cloud on its plummet into the clear pool.
“A place made just for us,” he said softly. He took her hands in his, and for a moment, the despair wracking Maztica was forgotten, an unwanted intrusion into this splendid Grotto and its quiet solitude.
A slight movement off to the side of the grotto drew Halloran’s attention, and he turned with shock to stare into the face of a feathered warrior. The man was naked, with black and red paint in alternating stripes covering his face.
More significantly, he carried a short, sturdy bow, with a wooden arrow. The tip of the missile pointed unwaveringly at Halloran’s face. He saw a gummy liquid, brown and thick, smeared on the tip of the arrow.
Poison!
Only then did he notice that the man stood barely three feet tall.
From the chronicles of Coton:
When the great gods created humankind, according to the wishes of Qotal and Zaltec and their children, they made man tall and strapping, fitted for war and for hunting. Soon, they knew, he would become master of his world.
But other gods-Kiltzi and her younger sisters-stole the mold used to make man. They found their brothers’ tastes too warlike and saw that man was too big. They desired a toy, a little person that could become part of (he forest world without becoming its master.
So the sisters began to work on their own mold. They copied everything that they could from the shapes created by
their brothers, but they made their humans smaller, that they might more easily serve as toys.
And when the little people had been made, the sister gods set them free in the deepest forests, where they might for. ever escape the notice of their larger brethren. They bade them to hunt and fish and populate the forest, but not to become its masters.
The Little People promised to obey, and they did.
12
“Who was it?” Darien inquired, her voice icy cool yet taut with seething rage. Hittok had found her in a grassy clearing, and now they squatted among the tall blades, only their elven torsos showing above the vegetation.
“Dackto. The cat bit him right through the neck and broke his spine.” Hittok explained the death of the drider dispassionately, yet the news had struck them all a shocking blow. For the first time since Lolth had corrupted their drow forms, one of their number had perished.
“The cat was a human, no doubt-probably a Jaguar Knight,” guessed the albino. “No animal would be so brave or so foolish.”
“One of those we pursue, whose city we took?” Hittok ventured.
“Certainly. And when we catch these humans, they-all of them-shall pay for this affront. How fares the chase?”
“The humans flee quickly through the forest, remaining just ahead of the leaders,” Hittok explained. “Yet the ants are tireless, and the people will eventually begin to fatigue. Then we shall encircle them and take them all.”
“Very well. We must maintain the pace at all costs. Have you plotted their course?”
“Yes, mistress. It seems that they head for a pass through the mountains we have observed before us. Perhaps there they will be foolish enough to stand and fight so that we may overwhelm them.”
Hittok gestured to the purpled massif that lay to the northwest. For days, they had been approaching it, and now they could discern individual peaks and ridges, softly outlined by verdant, jungled slopes. In another day of pursuit, if the people of Tulom-Itzi held to their present course, they would enter the foothills of the range.
“Press forward with redoubled haste!” Darien barked The command, raising her own swollen abdomen from the ground to stand on her eight spidery legs. “Let us insure that the humans are fatigued when they reach the mountains.” She gestured to the others of her tribe, the nineteen remaining driders, who pressed forward in the wake of the marching column of ants.
“There we will finish the matter, for once and for all.”
“Don’t move. Don’t startle him,” Halloran said quietly. Slowly and carefully he stepped between Erixitl and the short man with the lethal-looking arrow.
“Look. There’s more of them,” Erix whispered.
He risked a glance around and saw that suddenly they were surrounded by the diminutive warriors. Each bore the shocking stripes of red and black war paint, and several wore feathers in their earlobes or tied to their elbows and knees.
Each native also carried a short bow and arrow, with a black daub at the head.
Desperately Halloran’s mind whirled through the few spells he knew: enlargement, light, magic missile… a few others. None offered any hope of extricating them from this crisis. Indeed, a sudden use of magic might be enough to provoke an attack. That was the last thing he wanted to do. The gummy substance tipping the arrows of the short warriors seemed a clear indication of fatal results.
Erixitl placed a hand, involuntarily he thought, to her throat. He knew she remembered the token she had given up to purchase their passage past the dead of Tewahca. He doubted that the thing would have helped them in this predicament, but the gesture made him feel their terrible vulnerability more acutely than before.
The first bowman gestured sharply with his weapon. Several others pressed forward, although they stayed out of
sword range-not that Halloran could have risked a fight here. A terrifying picture flashed in his mind. He saw his wife’s pregnant body, unprotected by armor, punctured by those obviously venomous darts.