The drider’s intuitive command, sensing the opportunity in the clash, reached her mindless creatures.
Kill, my soldiers! Kill!
The ant army surged forward, spreading into a broad front, facing the attacking warriors who now spread to the right and left of the column as well as to its front. Insects crawled over the bodies of their fallen kin, seeking human flesh.
“Hittok! Go now! Strike them with missile fire! Take the archers-now!” She barked the command at her drider lieutenant, and the grotesque creature sprang through the tangled column, his eight legs propelling him quickly past the steadily marching ants. The other driders followed, launching their black shafts into the faces of the attacking warriors.
Darien herself muttered a quiet command, instantly disappearing from view with the casting of an invisibility spell. She followed this with another chant, a teleportation spell that carried her to the flank of the human advance.
Here she crouched, unseen, among the underbrush. She saw ant and human alike fall to the assaults of the foe. Raising her invisible hand, she sighted an imaginary line along the Itza attack.
“ Kreendiash!” she snapped, unleashing the power of her magic as explosive energy.
A yellow bolt of lightning crackled from her hand, searing through the fleshen ranks of the humans. Men screamed in shock and pain, horribly wounded, while others fell dead, instantly slain by the hot magic. The bolt seared a black swath through the forest, killing vegetation, ant, and human alike.
Again she shouted, and another bolt blazed its path of blood and pain. Now the arrows of the driders began to take their toll, piercing human skin and muscle with driving power. A flush of ecstasy thrilled Darien. She saw horrible devastation wrought among the humans and knew a joy she had not known since her days as a drow.
Advance! Slay them all!
The ants surged forward now, a wave of inevitable death, tearing into the suddenly faltering Itza attack. Men cried out in pain as they fell to horrible maiming and death beneath the tearing jowls of the inhuman foe.
She saw a warrior, clad in the skin of a jaguar, and sensed instinctively that this was the one who had slain Dackto. She raised her hand, and a bolt of magical energy, like a sizzling arrow of light, hissed forward. It struck the warrior in his left shoulder, spinning him around and dropping him to the ground.
She pointed once more. There was a crackling hiss, and another magic missile exploded from her fingertip. Before the second bolt struck, however, a surge of warriors swirled around the fallen knight. The blast seared the back of one of the warriors, slaying him instantly, but she shrieked her hatred and frustration as her original target vanished behind the protective shield of his fellows.
Again and again her magic crackled through the air, but now the humans fell back toward the sheltering jungle. The cohesion of her insectoid column broken, the creatures scattered after individual targets, often dragging a fleeing man to earth, where others of the ant army set upon him and tore him to pieces.
Many of the warriors escaped, but many did not. Darien counted, with grim satisfaction, the remains of several hundred among the bodies of her own slain ants. Now the insects swarmed about the gory corpses, spreading into a vast feeding horde as the remaining warriors vanished into the forest.
Hittok and the other driders came toward her, with the scuttling, crablike gait of her kind that she still found so revolting. Counting quickly, she saw that none of the driders had been slain.
“They escape!” cried Hittok, with a gesture toward the now motionless forest fringe. “We must pursue!”
Darien raised a restraining hand, her face creased with an ice-cold smile. “Let them go,” she countered. “There will be time for more killing tomorrow.”
From the chronicles of Coton:
In mystification over the acts of the gods.
Lotil continues the steady working of his pluma. His tapestry takes shape slowly before us, though I still cannot tell whether he creates a blossom, a bright bird, or perchance an elegant butterfly. Perhaps he blends all three into a design, a piece of artwork as alive as its subjects.
It is a wonder and a glory to see the skills of this man, to observe him in the creation of something that is such evidence of the sublime glory of the gods-of Qotal, who gave us pluma.
At the same time, I sense a great stirring of evil as Zaltec emerges from his slumber. He has recovered from his battle with his brother and has begun to think again, to plan and to move.
As he schemes, he knows that Qotal can have but one more opportunity, and then he concludes where than chance must come.
And so I feel evil move toward Payit, where it prepares fog the final confrontation with the Feathered Dragon
13
“I don’t like it. It’s not like Halloran to be gone so long.” Daggrande huffed in annoyance, but he couldn’t conceal his concern. Anxiously he paced about the small campsite while Luskag and Jhatli looked at him sympathetically. Lotil listened impassively, his short, blunt fingers dexterously working a tuft of plumage into the cotton mesh he held upon his lap.
The camp of the desert dwarves filled a broad clearing in the forest, with several dozen small fires lighting the area. They had feasted on the forest’s bounty, for several deer had fallen to their bows that afternoon. And still Halloran and Erixitl had not returned.
“He’s always been a good lad-reliable, responsible. A true companion, the kind of fellow you’d like to have at your back in a fight.”
Jhatli looked at Daggrande in surprise. Obviously the characterization of the brawny fighter as a “lad” struck him as somewhat unusual. Still, he hadn’t previously appreciated how far back the paths of the two legionnaires were linked. There was something paternal in the way the gruff dwarf spoke of his human companion.
‘”Course, I never told him that,” continued Daggrande, his tone angry, “The big lunk wouldn’t have understood!” Daggrande looked at the group around the fire, as if he expected someone to challenge him.
“ What’re you starin’ it?” he growled at Coton as the cleric eyed him curiously. The priest made no answer, and Daggrande sat down with a sigh. “I don’t know what’s got into me! Surely they’re all right somewhere. They’ve got to be!” He couldn’t allow himself to think of any other alternate c
“Maybe they just wanted some time by themselves,” guessed the youth. Still, a look at the darkening jungle around them dispelled this suggestion even as he made it The forest at night did not create a very romantic environment.
“Should we search for them?” asked the chieftain of the desert dwarves.
“Yes-but not now,” came Daggrande’s response. “We’ll only get more of us lost in the jungle, and we can’t hope to find anything until morning.”
“They could be back before then, in any event,” Lotil offered, though the blind man’s tone suggested that he shared the dwarven captain’s concern.
“At first light, then,” said Luskag. “If they haven’t returned, we shall commence the search.”
Hoxitl stirred in his stench-filled lair, which had once been the grand temple of Zaltec in Nexal. Now ruined stone walls leaned and tilted around him. Where once a proud archway had created the entrance, now a slimy tunnel cut through the piles of rubble.
Beyond the lair, the monsters of the Viperhand prowled restlessly through the ruins of the city Gangs of orcs snarled and fought with each other, only to scatter, howling, at the approach of looming ogres. After the long march across the desert, the creatures had returned to their city with crude pleasure. Yet now, after many weeks of en-forced idleness in the brackish ruins, the pleasure turned to boredom. The beasts, Hoxitl knew, needed activity.