"We'll get out," Poshtli said grimly, pushing himself to his feet following a brief rest. They had paused only for at moment, but he, too, felt the urgency that would not allow them to remain idle.
"I'm sure we've been going down," Hal guessed, frantic at the thought that they had left Erixitl far behind them. "We're underground by now."
"You might be right. Let's look around for some way to climb." Poshtli gestured to the stone ceiling. They had seen several rotting wooden ladders leading upward in various places.
Shatil remained silent, watching Hal and Poshtli growl and bluster. A part of him – the man – admired the passion with which they wanted to rescue his sister; another part – the servant of Zaltec – hoped with equal passion for success, so that he could perform his god-appointed task and slay her.
The priest lit another of his reed torches from the tump of the last one. "I have only two left," he reported softly. "We will soon find ourselves in darkness."
Halloran whirled on the priest, ready to snarl his anger with this last announcement. Shatil met his gaze coolly, and suddenly Hal felt very foolish. "All the more reason to keep moving," he grunted.
Once again they started along a narrow corridor – a corridor that looked just like a hundred other such passages. "How long have we been down here?" Hal asked, trying to bite back his despair.
"Most of the day, I think," Poshtli replied. "It must be approaching sunset." He didn't elaborate. Both of them fully understood the significance of Erix's premonition. With sunset would come the rising of the full moon, and – if she had seen the truth – shortly afterward would follow the death of Naltecona.
As they plodded along, Halloran turned and saw Shatil studying him, an expression of puzzlement across his features. "What is it?" asked the former legionnaire.
"I am wondering," replied the priest, pointing to Hal's waist, "how it is that you come to carry a band of hishna. Talonmagic, so I believed, is used only by the priests of my order. Or are you a master of hishna as well?"
"No," Hal replied. He looked at the snakeskin strap wound around him. "This was used to imprison me once, long ago in Payit. When I was freed, I kept it."
"It is a potent token," the priest declared.
"So I learned." Halloran vividly remembered the difficulty he had had with the snakeskin. It had grown into a long, flexible thong that had wrapped around him tightly. When Daggrande tried to cut it with his dagger, the steel edge had dulled without making a mark on the strap.
"Look!" Shatil cried suddenly as the other two marched quickly before him. He pointed to a small alcove beside the corridor that Poshtli and Hal, in their haste, had somehow missed.
"What is it?" grunted Hal, peering into the shadows.
"A ladder" replied Shatil. "Leading up."
"Look at them, Captain. They just sit there, watching. What do you make of it?" Cordell turned to Daggrande, waiting for an answer. The dwarf stood beside him on the roof of the palace of Axalt. The broad expanse of planks stretched flat around them, surrounded by a low parapet at the edge of the roof. In the center of the palace, several great peaks of thatch extended high into the sky, marking the throne room and the larger halls. Except for these peaks, the top of the palace consisted of a broad, open platform.
"Makes me damned uneasy, General." The dwarf squinted across the sacred plaza, through the long shadows cast by the lowering sun.
He saw tens of thousands of Nexalan warriors gathered all around the fringes of the plaza and spilling forward in great groups around their temples and pyramids. They wore feathers and carried clubs, macas, and spears. Occasionally one group would mutter some kind of chant, not loud enough to be a battle cry but nevertheless a sinister and unsettling sound. All day long the warriors had gathered, their numbers swelling from the apparently inexhaustible populace of the great city.
Below them, arrayed in camps around the palace of Axalt, the ranks of Kultakan and Payit warriors watched nervously, weapons close at hand. The twenty-five thousand-men of their allies, appearing so numerous when they marched into the city, now seemed badly outnumbered by the Nexalans. The five hundred men of the Golden Legion, garrisoned within the walls of the palace itself, looked across this formidable array and prayed for peace.
"There's that priest again," grunted Daggrande.
Cordell looked to the highest pyramid, and he saw the black-robed patriarch of Zaltec. Many of the Nexalans gathered around that edifice, and they could see him gesticulating. The harsh bark of his voice carried across the plaza, though even had they known his language, the words would have remained indistinguishable because of the distance.
"It looks ugly," Cordell muttered. "You can feel the hatred and the anger"
"Can't really blame them for that," Daggrande noted. "They have to know Naltecona's not here of his own will."
"And the gold?" challenged the captain-general angrily. "They've stopped bringing it to us." Indeed, the steady deliveries of golden objects and dust had abruptly ceased earlier in the day.
Daggrande looked at his commander with a trace of alarm. The pile of gold they had already collected would be a challenge to transport from Nexal. More importantly, one look at the obviously hostile assemblage around the legionnaires should have warned them all that they had more pressing concerns.
Cordell looked at the sun, about to set over the shoulder of Mount Zatal. A plume of steam marked the summit of the massif, casting a shadow across much of the city. He looked back at the Nexalans, worried.
"Send for Naltecona," he ordered abruptly. "He will speak to his people. He must convince them of the folly of an attack!"
Daggrande nodded and turned away. As he went to the ladder that led down into the palace, he cast a last look at the vast and growing horde around them.
Folly for whom? he wondered.
"Chitikas!" Erixitl gasped in shock, and then delight. "You have returned!"
The couatl hovered in a loose coil, the brilliant down that covered his brightly colored body gleaming in the last rays of the sun. His long, slender form remained airborne, with only the tip of his plumed tail trailing on the floor. His huge golden wings beat very gently, their trailing plumes floating up and down with each leisurely movement.
Flicking his forked tongue in and out of his mouth, the couatl fixed Erixitl with a level stare. His yellow eyes, vertically slitted, did not blink.
"I have returned – that is what I said," hissed the feathered snake with more than a hint of impatience. "When mortals fail to understand and act upon their circumstances, one such as I -"
"Fail to act!" Erix held her voice low, but her delight became sudden fury that struck the smug couatl like a blow in the face." Who has failed to act? Where have you been since you disappeared in Payit? What do you mean coming here now, on the very night portrayed in my dream, and telling me I have failed to act?" She gestured at Alvarro's corpse, still warm beside her. "Why couldn't you have come an hour ago? Or a tenday ago?"
"That is enough," said Chitikas, with a trace of his old haughtiness. "Let us act now."
"What do you propose?" Erix, her anger not forgotten, regarded the feathered serpent suspiciously.
The sunlight, streaming in from the west, began to fade. Erixitl pictured the full moon, cresting the horizon to the east.
"Perhaps we should go to the roof." The way Chitikas phrased the words, it sounded almost like a question.