The great cats crept forward, threatening growls rumbling from their deep chests.
Poshtli ignored the feline attackers for a moment. Then slowly, deliberately, he lifted his Eagle helmet off his head and tossed it aside, shrugged his cloak of feathers from his shoulders, and let it settle to the ground around his feet.
Now he crouched into a fighting stance with his maca raised toward the cats. "Tell me when," hissed Hal, lifting the silver shaft of his longsword.
Poshtli nodded. "Now!"
Slashing downward with the wooden club, Poshtli leaned forward. The blade, studded with razor-sharp bils of obsidian, chopped into the back of one of the jaguars. The creature howled in agony, trying to twist away, but Poshtli circled with the creature's turn, using it to block him from the attack of the other enraged feline.
Meanwhile, Halloran darted at the third cat. The animal reared up, slashing toward the man's face, but Hal ducked under the attack and drove his blade into the beast's heart. Before it had stopped twitching, he leaped across its fallen body and drove his blade into the last of the jaguars.
For a few moments, they stood panting among the four bleeding bodies. The last three shifted back to human form as they died, feet and arms and legs and hands growing from the spotted feline limbs.
"Erixitl?" asked Poshtli, slowly and fearfully.
"She's… safe. She's gone," Hal answered.
"Gone?" The Eagle Knight didn't hide his surprise.
"Back to Palul, to her home." Hal explained Erix's sudden decision to the knight, omitting the details of their argument. He found it hard to rekindle his jealous anger, much of which had previously focused on Poshtli. While he missed Erixitl already, he was grateful that she had been gone on this night.
To Hal's surprise, Poshtli seemed pleased to hear of her departure. Indeed, Hal couldn't figure out why the warrior wasn't more distraught at the sudden absence of his bride-to-be.
"That could be the safest thing," he replied. "Who else knows where she's gone?"
"No one, so far as I know. Just you and me." "Let's keep it that way. I think it is best for her if Erixitl of Palul disappears for a while."
From the chronicles of Colon:
Seeking the light among the deepening shadows…
The darkness haunts my dreams nightly, this same blackness of which Poshtti speaks. It is a vision of a wasteland, a place of death and decay, of monstrous deformity and perversion. It is a ruined expanse of ash and grime, and it is called Nexal.
I fear this vision more than I have feared any other thing in my life. It is a grim destiny that may be greater than any of the humans who hope to stand against it.
And if it prevails, I fear that we of Maztica — our city, our nation, our people — I fear that we will soon be but a memory, a distant vision that will vanish forever with the lives of our children.
PALUL
"That light — what is its source?" Poshtli gestured to the milky glow that still emanated from Halloran's room.
"It's… sorcery. Something like your pluma" Hal pointed to the glowing aperture. "Kirishone" he said, and instantly darkness cloaked the rooms.
"Kirisha!" He repowered the spell, enjoying the look of surprise on Poshtli's face.
"Can all of your people do this… sorcery?"
"No. I studied this craft when I was much younger, but I know very little of real power. I can illuminate a room, shoot a bolt of magic, maybe make someone fall asleep if I try hard — that's about all. But there are those who devote a lifetime to the practice of magic — they are to be feared greatly." The picture of the elfmage Darien came vividly to mind. It was a picture he hoped he would never have to face in the flesh.
The knowledge that he held her spellbook intruded itself once more, uneasily, into Hal's mind. Often he wished that he could simply return the tome to her, but that was impossible. Undoubtedly, however, she was very much interested in regaining it.
"You come from a wondrous and frightening people, Halloran. My only hope is that you are not to be the ruin of Maztica."
Poshtli fixed him with a level gaze, and Hal squirmed, finally looking down in discomfort. His eyes fell on Poshtli's cloak, now stained with the blood of a dead Jaguar Knight, on the floor.
"Why did you take your cloak off?"
The immediate pain in Poshtli's face shocked Hal, all the more so since it was the first such emotion he had ever seen the stoic warrior express. He regretted the question as soon as he uttered it.
Poshtli took a deep breath. He knelt, wiping the blood from his weapon on the spotted cloak of one of the slain men. When he rose and looked at Hal again, his face was lined with strain. "I cannot tell you. But I have no regrets, and I am no longer an Eagle Knight."
The inference was not difficult. By aiding Hal, the knight had violated some trust of his order. He had shed his cloak and helmet before the fight deliberately. And yet it was a decision he had made resolutely.
"Thank you," said Hal, suddenly finding it difficult to speak.
Poshtli nodded, a half-smile on his face. He held up his weapon, and Halloran saw that several of the obsidian teeth were chipped. "Hard skin," the Maztican grunted, indicating the corpse at his feet.
"Just a minute." Turning to his saddlebag, neatly stowed in a corner, Hal withdrew a weapon from within a rolled-up blanket. It was a straight, slender longsword, with a double edge of razor-sharp steel. Halloran had kept it even after he had regained his lost Helmstooth, knowing that the weapon was priceless in the True World.
"Will you take this?" he asked, extending the hilt to the former Eagle Knight. "Now that you don't have your order behind you, perhaps you'll need a good weapon in front of you."
Poshtli took the weapon and hefted it, surprised by its tightness. He knew, having seen Hal use his blade in combat, that it could cut through any weapon wielded by his countrymen and render their cotton armor useless.
"Thank you," said the Maztican sincerely. "It may not replace my feathers, but it gives me an effective claw."
"Perhaps we'll need it. I've left my legion, and now you have departed your order. It looks like it's you and me against Maztica, friend."
Hal fell his comradeship with this brave man deepen. He regretted his earlier jealousy, though the memory of Erixitl in Poshtli's arms still gave him a sharp jab of pain. Still, the terrible sense of loneliness he had felt at her departure began to lessen. Was there any real purpose in his being here? Could he in fact make some kind of difference? Halloran resolved to find out.
Poshtli laughed, but there was a serious edge to the sound. "We're both lone wolves, Halloran of the Sword Coast. But perhaps not so alone as we might think."
"What do you mean?"
"At first light, I suggest we seek an audience with my uncle. We'll see what the great Naltecona has to say about an attack under his own roof."
Her first night out of Nexal, Erix had barely enough time to cross the causeway to the mainland before sunset brought a temporary end to her journey. She sought shelter for the night in one of the travelers' inns that commonly dotted the landscape near Nexal.
These simple hostels offered a straw mat for sleeping and a bowl of beans or mayz, for a few cocoa beans or other barter goods. Fortunately, she had brought a small pouch of beans with her when she left the palace. The beans, her new feathered cloak, the pluma token from her father, and her dress were the only things she had taken with her.
She paused outside the inn and looked back at the valley, sharply etched as it was in the slanting rays of sunset. Shadows wisped like black smoke through the streets and across the lake, and she could no longer tell if they were the products of her disturbing premonitions or the actual descent of evening.
Beyond the city, she saw Mount Zatal clearly outlined against the sky. The mountain seemed ready to burst, swollen as it was from the volcanic pressure within. She imagined the folk of Nexal, busily going about their evening tasks. Cant they see it? Don't they understand the danger? With a deep sigh, she tried to accept the fact that they could not.