"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.

"You must tell them to disperse!" Cordell barked. Darien immediately translated, and Naltecona looked at the general with an expression of utmost fatigue.

"You ask the impossible. Can you not see that they have been summoned by a higher command than my own? You yourselves have robbed my voice of the authority it once had. They will not listen to me."

"Do you want to avoid a war?" demanded Cordell, his voice dropping to a menacing snarl. "Or do you want us to unleash our powers against your city?"

Naltecona sighed, a heartbreaking sound. "The unleashing of power is something neither I nor you can any longer control. No, I do not wish to see this war. My dreams have shown me the inevitable result – a disaster for all."

"Then speak to them, Helm curse you!" Cordell snapped the words and then whirled away, struggling to regain his self-control. The Revered Counselor was a proud man, he knew, and one could push a proud man just so far.

Surprisingly, however, Naltecona started for the edge of the roof overlooking the plaza below. He stopped, clearly visible to all the warriors on this, the eastern side of the palace. Though the sun had set, the full moon before him rose into a sky still blue with the fading light of dusk. Naltecona's voice, when he spoke, thrummed with the vibrant power of rulership.

"Hear me, my people!" A dull silence settled over the assembled masses of warriors, extending slowly, like a ripple across a pond, to the far limits of the plaza.

My heart knows the pain you feel, and my soul understands the needs of honor! But this is a time when we must swallow our pain. As for honor, my own allows me to dwell here, as the guest of the foreigners. Does that not prove that we are not dishonored?"

A rumble of displeasure rose from the Nexalans. Below them, next to the palace wall, the Kultakans nervously fingered their weapons.

"I must ask you to to show patience – more patience even than you have shown already. I understand the difficulty of restraint."