"When the moment is right, you, my dear Darien, should begin the destruction." Cordell's voice was softer than it had been with his captains. He took the mage's hands in his and looked directly into her pale eyes, wondering as always at the hidden depths there. In the ten years since she had joined him on the bloodstained field of Cordell's only defeat, she had become a necessary fixture of his life and his legion. Indeed, the two of them had, together, recruited the captains who now formed the legion's core.
"Icetongue will give them pause." Darien's slender fingers gently pulled a short black stick from her robes. "But their numbers are many."
"We will take them today," Cordell replied. "All veteran captains, the best men I've ever commanded. The Golden Legion is the finest company along the Sword Coast, and they answer to me alone!" Darien smiled ironically at him, her lips faintly visible in the depths of her robe.
The pirate army, preceded by the smoking columns of its fiery cyclones, surged closed. The shrill cries of three thousand voices reached their ears, a dissonant backdrop to their speech.
"Be careful," Cordell warned earnestly. "But kill them!"
"I shall," whispered the hooded one, her voice ice cool. Cordell felt a slight chill. As always, he found her dispassion toward death faintly disquieting. But that dispassion was unquestionably a great military asset, and he forced the feeling away.
"By tonight, all of Amn will celebrate our victory," Cordell reminded her. "And by tomorrow, we shall have an appointment with the Council of Six itself!"
The general turned back to the pirate army. He paid no attention to the fire magic, studying instead the colorful buccaneers. The enemy moved in a shimmering wall of silken splendor, their crimson shirts, emerald tunics, and blue and golden sashes all giving the force a festive holiday appearance. And still they advanced in their broad formation.
Darien let go the general's hand, with a lingering caress. The tight smile still creased her tiny mouth.
"Come, my dear." Cordell doffed his helm, broad-brimmed like Daggrande's, and gestured gallantly toward the field below. "We have a battle to win."
Hoxitl, high priest of bloody Zaltec, picked his way into the cavern of the Ancient Ones. He came in darkness, leaving his attending band of young initiates to wait on the windswept slopes near the great volcano's summit. As always, his hair was blood-caked and pointed, and ashes thoroughly covered his skin.
He wondered, as he had wondered throughout the long climb, why his counselors had summoned him. It had been ten years since last he had spoken with the Ancient Ones. Then he had reported that the girl Erixitl of Palul had disappeared into the brush, presumably the victim of a jaguar. Though Zaltec had been robbed of his sacrifice, the Ancient One had seemed satisfied with the girl's disposal.
No jaguars guarded the entrance this time, but in the dim red glow of the cavern, he saw a pair of knights, dressed in their spotted hides, casually watching him through the open jaguar jaws of their helmets. The claw necklace of one jangled as he turned his head slightly, reminding the cleric of the potent talonmagic that armored the Jaguar Knight. These warriors did not carry the typical lances or javelins for guard duty in this confined space. Instead, they wielded clublike swords studded front and back with teeth of jagged obsidian.
Quickly Hoxitl passed deeper into the cave, leaving the guards behind. Bubbling mud pots chuckled softly, like thick red slime, and every now and then a gout of steam emerged from some fissure with a sharp hiss.
A column of green smoke suddenly erupted from the floor before Hoxitl, and the startled cleric almost leaped backward. Swiftly the smoke dispersed, and he saw the black-shrouded shape standing there. Hoxitl's astonishment grew as he saw several more figures cloaked all over in cloth and gauze.
"Praises to Zaltec!"
"High praises to the god of night and war!" The Ancient One completed the greeting, and the cleric stood nervously, wondering at the unprecedented number of shrouded figures surrounding him.
"The girl has been located," said the slight form, his whispered voice nonetheless strong and vaguely menacing. "She is in Kultaka and has been a slave there these past years."
"The girl?" Hoxitl's mind tripped for a minute, then leaped backward a full decade. "Erixitl of Palul?"
"Indeed. She is owned by a man who pays Zaltec no heed, a worshiper of Qotal and former Eagle Knight. It was only through the fortuitous travels of a young Jaguar Knight that we learned of her capture."
"What — what is to be done about her?" The cleric felt disturbed by the news, only because he sensed that the Ancient Ones were somehow afraid of this girl.
"That is why we have summoned you. Our talonmagic will go to Kultaka tonight, aided by your spell of sending. A vessel of reception already awaits the enchantment."
Hoxitf nodded. He understood that. Though the Ancient Ones could wield far mightier talonmagic than either the clerics or the Jaguar Knights, they still needed the help of a priest for such a long-range casting.
The priest knelt on the stone floor together with the dark-swathed Ancient Ones. The latter lowered themselves with a supple grace, not at all like elderly humans. Hoxitl, as always, dismissed any speculation as to his counselors' nature, for he felt certain such questions could only lead to trouble.
The temple guards stood aside, each pounding his wooden drum in steady cadence. The throng, citizens of Nexala numbering a hundred thousand or more, stood in awe about the great plaza. Finally the grand procession emerged from the palace!
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd as the woman came into view. Resplendent upon her gilded litter, supported by ten Eagle Knights, she rode in lordly luxury, casting her eyes across the multitude…
"Ouch!" Erixitl started as a drop of scalding water splashed onto her bare arm. Annoyed, she forced herself away from her daydreams to pay attention to her task, lest she burn herself more seriously.
"Young master needs his bath!" she chanted ironically. She carried the full jug of steaming water on her head, carefully following the footpath through the garden. The bathhouse of her owner's estate lay just before her.
Erix sighed as she sighed a hundred times a day, had sighed a million times over the last ten years. Truly she had been fortunate, for Huakal, her owner, was kind, gentle, and one of the wealthiest men in Kultaka. Once an Eagle Knight of great repute, he had commanded several hundred men in the wars with Nexal. He had used his influence to purchase her immediately following her arrival in Kultaka, offering the Jaguar Knight who had captured her an unusually high sum. She had been assigned tasks in his large home before the priests of Zaltec had even had a chance to see her. Since then, he had treated her more like a slightly bothersome niece than a slave.
Never had she feared from Huakal condemnation for sacrifice — a common fate for a Maztican slave who displeased a master. Huakal had even allowed her to retain her feather token, now the only memento she carried from her childhood in Palul. She usually kept the jade object concealed under her robe, so as not to call attention to it, but nevertheless Huakal knew of it. It would have been well within his prerogatives to claim it for himself.
For ten years, she had grown up in Kultaka. Only rarely had she even seen, and never had she spoken with, anyone of her own Nexalan people. Always a pretty girl, she had become a beautiful young woman. Unlike many slaves, however, she had not been touched by her master. He had even, somehow, managed to keep his unruly son away from her.