Hoxitl trembled as he entered the Highcave. Never had he so feared the result of a visit to the Ancient Ones as he did now. Two young priests, promising apprentices, accompanied him. He bade them to follow him into the cave instead of taking the usual apprentices' role of waiting outside. The high priest couldn't bear to face the drow alone.

A flash of smoke puffed from the caldron of the Darkfyre, and then he saw them: a dozen black-robed figures standing immobile around the huge, seething mass of crimson heat.

"Why do you come to us?" hissed one, the Ancestor.

"The girl – the girl has disappeared again. She departed Nexal before we struck. We are searching for her, but we do not know where she is – yet. But soon -"

"Silence!" The Ancestor raised a black-cloaked hand. For a moment, Hoxitl stood frozen in terror, wondering if the gesture meant his death.

Instead, the Ancient One flicked his hand toward one apprentice. The young man gasped, and then moaned in deep, wracking pain. He staggered and stumbled, then stiffened spasmodically and toppled forward into the caldron. The other young priest turned to flee, but the Ancestor moved his hand slightly and this one, too, gasped and choked, then fell into the crimson coals.

The apprentices writhed and twitched, slowly sinking into the horridly pulsing fuel of the Darkfyre. Soundless screams twisted their mouths. One turned desperately to face Hoxitl, and the high priest flinched at the look of hopeless agony on the man's face. Then he disappeared into the gory mess. In seconds, his companion followed.

Nearly gagging, Hoxitl stumbled back on weak knees. For moments, he feared to raise his eyes, but the Ancestor did nothing to him. Finally he took a breath, beginning to believe that he would be allowed to live.

Weak with relief, Hoxitl mentally congratulated himself on bringing the two others. Had he been alone, he felt certain that the Ancestor would have punished him directly.

"Do not fail me again – or I shall come to you!" The Ancestor's white eyes burned forth from the darkened depths of his hood.

Hoxitl bowed silently and then scuttled away.

"That cloak," said Lotil. "Where did you get it?"

Erix looked at her father in surprise. Her cape from the feather-worker in Nexal lay beside the door. She knew that Lotil hadn't touched it, and yet his blind eyes were now directed toward the garment with the first hint of focus she had detected.

"Can you see it?" she asked in wonder. She felt a confusing mixture of emotions, now that the initial shock of their meeting was beginning to fade. An overriding sense of happiness warmed her, to know that her father was alive and that they were together again. Still, he looked so very much older – as if he had aged far more than the ten years she had been gone – and this truth she found heartbreaking.

Lotil shook his head sadly. "I can sense the pluma, that's all. Tell me, child, where did it come from?"

She told him of the craftsman in the market, of his insistence that she take it, and her inability to find him later. She was surprised when Lotil smiled knowingly. "Do you know someone like this?" Her father, a renowned worker of pluma for many decades, was familiar with most of the masters of his craft.

"No," he said with a chuckle. "But you do. The cloak goes very well with your amulet, don't you agree?"

Erix nodded, laughing and crying at the same time. "Your eyes," she said hesitantly. "When-"

Lotil held up his hand, brushing off the sympathy in her voice. "They left me as I aged – but age cannot take my fingers! See?"

Erixitl looked at his featherloom and saw an elaborate mantle of brilliant pluma taking shape there. Lotil had placed the colors carefully, so that the cape depicted a golden hawk with its wings spread wide. "It's beautiful," she whispered reverently.

"My fingers can see to weave the pluma", he said. "And now the daughter I thought was dead has returned to me. What more could an old man ask for?"

Erix told her father of her life since, ten years ago, the Kultakan Jaguar Knight had snatched her from the ridge above this very house, of her slavery in Kultaka, and then her sale to the Payit priest of Qotal, who had taken her to his distant jungle land. And how she had met the stranger, Halloran, and been visited by the feathered serpent, the couatl.

Her father listened silently, only remarking about the couatl. "Nobody has seen one for many centuries," he had announced, impressed.

"What of Shatil?" Erix asked hesitantly after concluding her tale. "Is my brother well?"

Lotil sighed. "As a priest, he does very well. He is already the first assistant to the high priest here in Palul."

Erix understood her father's mixed feelings. While she and her brother had been raised, as all Maztican children, to understand the necessity of the blood rituals demanded by Zaltec and many of the other gods, she knew that her father had never approved of those rites. Although he had never told her bluntly, she had always suspected that he despised the bloodthirsty practices of the priests.

Yet now, as first assistant, her own brother was a main practitioner of those rites. Palul, a much smaller community than Nexal, offered but an occasional sacrifice at dawn or at sunset. Shatil undoubtedly performed a significant number of those rituals himself.

"He is an important man in the town," continued her father, "but he listens only to those who say what he wants to hear, who echo the chants of Zaltec and his ilk. He has even told me he intends to journey to Nexal to take the vow of the Viperhand."

Erix took her father's shoulders in her own hands, surprised at his frailty. The thought of the Viperhand emblazoned on Shatil's chest caused her sharp panic. She knew little about the cult, except that its members espoused hatred and warfare against the approaching strangers from the Realms.

"Father, who is this?" The voice from the door spun them both around.

"Shatil?" asked Erix hesitantly.

"Erixitl? Can it be you?" Her brother stepped into the house, then swept her in his arms. "Zaltec has been kind to bring you home!"

She clung to him, for a second remembering the youth she had admired so much in her childhood. Then they separated, and when Erix looked at her brother, her memories vanished. Shatil's head bristled with the customary spikes of hair worn by the priests of Zaltec. Scars covered his arms and his ears and cheeks, where he had marked himself in ritual penance.

"You have become a woman," Shatil said approvingly.

"And you are… a priest," she replied.

She looked from the young man to the old, wondering if the sun had suddenly set. Then, with a shudder, she knew that she saw that darkening premonition again, settling across the men and the room.

All through the house, everything was shadows.

"Captain Daggrande." Cordell looked up from the table, which was covered with maps and rosters on parchment sheets.

"General?" The dwarf stood before his commander, carrying a padded cotton tunic such as the Maztican warriors wore as armor.

"Have you tested the stuff?" The captain-general indicated the armor.

"Yessir. It seems to stop the arrows and darts pretty well. It also takes the sting from a chop with one of those swords-macas, they call 'em. With a buckler, a fellow could protect himself pretty well."

"And comfort? Encumbrance?"

"Sir, in this heat, these cotton things put a steel breastplate to shame. The men who wore 'em moved faster and farther than those who wore steel." The dwarf reported on a series of tests he had conducted outside Kultaka while the legion refitted for its next great march.