"A chest of cocoa, ten mantles, and two quills of gold dust, then. The girl is yours." Huakal nodded with finality.
Erix's heart sank. She had been sold! Then she thought a moment about the fee that had just been detailed. A man could buy a dozen able-bodied workers for that price!
Huakal turned to Erix, his voice firm. "This is Kachin. He is your new owner. He will be taking you to Payit." She looked at him with her proud, wide eyes, disturbing him. She has never acted like a slave! Huakal thought. She doesn't know what it is to be a slave! But those eyes…
The Kultakan noble walked brusquely past the girl, and she wondered if she saw tears in his eyes.
For a moment, she felt a sincere impulse to embrace him, to thank him or comfort him or say farewell. But even more quickly a sense of panic and foreboding flooded her, and she silently cursed Huakal for sending her away.
True, many nobles would have had her sacrificed without a second thought after such a fight as she had won. Callatl's scars would never heal. She had, in fact, expected, and prepared, to die.
But Huakal had spared her, selling her now instead for some absurd price to a cleric from the far fringes of Maztica. She knew little of Payit, other than that it was a land of jungles, swamps, poisonous serpents, and near-savage people.
The strange cleric's odd speech patterns and unusual dress also puzzled and frightened her. He wore a simple white cotton mantle, unadorned. He wore no feathers nor gold nor stones. His skin was very dark, his hair gray and long and tied in a single knot. His face, while creased with many wrinkles, was round and quick to smile. He moved his short, somewhat rotund form easily for an obviously old man.
Unlike the other clerics she had known, worshipers of Zaltec or his hungry offspring, this priest was obviously well fed. The only recognizable thing about him was the pendant of the Plumed One hanging about his neck, marking him as a cleric of Qotal. Perhaps the Feathered God did not require his devotees to fast as frequently as did those who worshiped Zaltec and the younger gods.
The faith of Qotal was not so widely spread as that of the warlike Zaltec, or the essential Calor and Tezca with their life-giving rain and sun. Still, Erix knew her father had revered Qotal, though this had been a private matter with him. Huakal, too, had maintained a shrine to the Plumed One. Huakal's son, like her own brother, had chosen to worship Zaltec instead of the gentle god of their fathers.
But Erix had learned to fear clerics, for they too often had but one use for a slave. And now she had been sold to a cleric who would take her to the distant shores of the True World, who for some mysterious purpose had paid an exorbitant sum for her.
She saw Huakal standing before her. Vaguely she noticed his eyes lingering on her token before he raised them to look at her face. As a woman of Maztica, she should have lowered her gaze then, but she did not, instead meeting her former master's gaze with her own penetrating dark eyes.
"You are a rare treasure, Erixitl." Huakal's voice came to her, seemingly from a great distance. The noble had indeed succumbed to emotion, and he made no effort to hide his tears as he spoke. "You are a child of grim destiny. My line has ended with Callatl, and now you are swept away. You shall go to Payit, and the land will not be the same for your being there.
"May the gods be kind to you."
From the Chronicle of the Waning.
May the wisdom of the Feathered One shine across the True World!
Now, just as swans take to the air, I see the strangers spread their wings and put to sea. But these creatures that glide ever closer to Maztica are more hawks than swans.
They come with powers beyond my understanding, devices and tools the likes of which I have never seen. I cannot imagine the uses of many of the things I am given the vision to observe. But most frightening of all my auguries is not the tools, nor the powers of these strangers.
It is the men themselves.
I sense — even across worlds of distance — that these men are somehow different. Their god is a fierce lord, perhaps more than the equal of the younger gods of Maztica. They are drawn by things, compelled by forces that I cannot comprehend. Visions of metal and stones move them with a power that leaves me mystified and awed.
I only know that they terrify me!
JOURNEY
Everywhere the city of Murann, the main seaport of Amn, smelled of fish. From its plastered villas and elegant gardens to its teeming slums and bustling mercantile districts, the penetrating, oily odor intruded throughout each building, penetrating walls and floors and every fiber of clothing.
But nowhere was the smell so strong as at the shore of the harbor itself, where Halloran now found himself laboring under the blaze of a hot afternoon sun. The waterfront bustled with activity — the cries of animals, the creaking of cranes and timbers, and the shouts of men. A pounding din arose behind him, where one of the greatest shipyards of the Sword Coast churned out vessel after vessel — heavy galleys for war or trade; stocky, seaworthy caravels; or large carracks, with their towering rear decks.
It was one of the latter, a short, blunt-bowed vessel with three tall masts and the characteristic raised deck at her stern, that stood at the dockside by the young cavalryman. Like the other carracks and caravels, Osprey carried no oars, depending upon the rigging of her sails to maneuver with or against the wind. Stores of salt pork and bacon had been stored belowdecks, and Hal now watched a group of stevedores roll huge kegs of water over the ship's aft gangplank.
Suddenly an anxious whinny pulled his attention to the bow.
"Easy now! She's not to be struck!" Halloran barked the rebuke at the swarthy stevedores who struggled to lead his mare onto a narrow gangplank.
The trio of men set back to their task with more patience, and soon had coaxed Storm onto the sheltered deck of the Osprey. Two other horses already stood there, under the partial shelter of a taut tarpaulin.
"And what will be the shore she next trods?" mused a gruff voice.
Halloran heard familiar clumping footsteps and turned to greet Captain Daggrande.
The spice fields of Kara-Tur, I should think."
Daggrande snorted. "Not in the Realms I know! Sailing west to go east… it's preposterous!"
Halloran himself still wondered at the audacity of Cordell's mission. Nonetheless, his utter confidence in the captain-general dispelled any doubts he may have held regarding the eventual success of the voyage.
Since the mission had been announced six months earlier, a whirlwind of activity had preceded this day as the legion prepared for its most daring expedition ever. A small fleet of six car-racks and nine caravels had assembled in Murann. The men of the legion had been informed of the mission and told that it was voluntary. Only a few dozen had declined the opportunity for adventure, and those had quickly been replaced.
Cordell had trained his five hundred legionnaires for shipboard transport, and the men practiced loading and unloading the horses for landings where ports and quays might not be available. Two hundred sailors were recruited, brave men or simply foolhardy. Even with the uncertain destination of the voyage, a festive sense of adventure accompanied all of the preparations.
Now the horses whinnied in agitation. Hounds barked and scrambled underfoot. They were taking several dozen of the large, shaggy greyhounds that served as camp sentries and war dogs.
Ample supplies of food and water, extra weapons and armor, and all the provisions for march and battle had been collected in warehouses along the wharf, and were now being moved by laboring dockworkers into the holds of the ships.