Still, he hadn't cast the book away. For one thing, he had been studying parts of it – simple, low-power spells such as he had once learned, when he had spent his youth in apprenticeship to a powerful wizard. Also, he felt that the book would be a powerful bargaining chip should a confrontation with the albino wizard ever arise.

Next he came upon the tightly wrapped bundle of leathery snakeskin that had given him his first experience with Maztican magic. This, Erixitl had explained, was hishna – the magic of talon and claw, not the pluma-magic of feathers and air. The snakeskin had bound him tightly upon the command of a cleric of Zaltec, and only the pluma of Erix's feathered token had released him. Neither of them knew how to use the snakeskin, but knowing its value, they had carried it with them.

Finally he found the two bottles of magical potions. One, he knew, contained the elixir of invisibility. The other one he had never examined. Erixitl deeply distrusted the magical liquids, and some of her nervousness had rubbed off on him. Thus he had never taken the sample sip that might have allowed him to identify the stuff.

"Come over here!" Erix cried, suddenly taking his hand and pulling him through the garden. "Look!" she cried, pointing to a small tree where several brilliant birds sat. They had small, hooked beaks, and glowed in shades of red and green.

Halloran saw the birds dimly, thrilling to the touch of her hand, breaking the contact reluctantly when they were interrupted by servants bearing plates of beans, mayzcakes, and venison. These were set upon a low table in the garden. Storm drank deeply from the pool and then began eating leaves from some of the flower bushes.

Erix and Hal sat on the ground beside the table and began to eat. Their eyes met and remained together. Halloran felt a whirlwind of emotions now that their journey was completed. He knew that he couldn't have made it without Erix, but that was only a small part of his internal turmoil.

Their entrance into the city, when they were surrounded by the people of Maztica, brought sharply home to Hal the extent of his aloneness. He couldn't forget that these barbarous folk might place him, without notice, on the evening's sacrificial altar. He had only the friendship of the Eagle Knight Poshtli to protect him – that, and his own wits, skill, and strength. It seemed a slim margin of safety when cast against the presence of tens of thousands of savage Mazticans.

Still, there was Erixitl. The beautiful woman sitting across from him had come to represent life and purpose to the former legionnaire. Now that they had reached this, their goal, he wanted to hold her at his side, to somehow make certain that she would never leave. But he didn't know how to articulate those feelings.

Erix looked at him, and he wondered if she understood his feelings. Perhaps she did, for at length she finally spoke.

"I feel," she admitted with a soft smile, "as though I have finally come home."

Naltecona reclined in the featherlift that slowly raised him to the top of the Great Pyramid. The setting sun cast a rosy glow across Nexal, filtered between the giant mountains that bordered the lush valley that was the Heart of the True World. One, Zatal, rumbled ominously. A cloud of steam hung above the summit, though the counselor took little note. The volcano had loomed overhead throughout the history of Nexal, often it had grumbled, but never had it roared.

Soon the lift reached the top of the structure, pausing as Naltecona slowly rose to his feet and stepped onto the stone platform that loomed high above his city. Hoxitl awaited him here, together with a group of his priests, the evening's sacrifices, and the new initiates to the Viperhand.

The temple of Zaltec was a large square building atop the pyramid. Here stood that hungry god's blood-caked altar, and beside it squatted the statue carved in Zaltec's image – a giant warrior armed with maca and javelins, with a beast-like, leering face. The statue's mouth gaped open, waiting for its imminent feast. Hoxitl went to the altar and turned to Naltecona.

"Zaltec's pleasure will be great now that the Revered Counselor again attends his rites," murmured Hoxitl. He gestured to his priests, and they hauled the first victim – a young Kultakan warrior – to the altar. The warrior's eyes were blank and he made no sound, though he fully understood his fate.

The priests drew him backward across the altar block, and Hoxitl raised his jagged obsidian blade. With one sharp cut, he slashed the warrior's chest and reached in to pull forth the still-beating heart.

Immediately one of the initiates rushed forward, stumbling to kneel before the high priest. Hoxitl raised the heart toward the now-vanished sun, then threw it into the mouth of the statue of Zaltec beside the altar.

The man kneeling before Hoxitl was a Jaguar Knight, who now tore his spotted breast cloak aside. Hoxitil lifted his voice in a shrill, angry chant. His face distorted into a mask of passion, twisted by the intensity of his prayer. Then the priest pressed his hand, still crimson with the blood of the sacrifice, against the warrior's chest.

A hiss of smoke and steam erupted from the Jaguar's brown skin, and the stench of burning flesh wafted through the air. Hoxitl's palm, flat against the man's chest, seared his skin in the diamond-shaped head of a viper. Aided by the arcane power of Zaltec himself, the brand scarred his skin and grasped his soul in a viselike grip. The scarring caused the warrior to grimace with pain, but the man made no sound. Finally Hoxitl pulled his hand away.

There, seared permanently into his chest, the warrior now wore the crimson brand, in the shape of the deadly snake's head. The wound glistened like an evil sore, seeming to give the snake a life of its own.

"Welcome," said Hoxitl, his voice a low hiss. "Welcome to the cult of the Viperhand."

From the chronicles of Colon:

At the bidding of the Plumed One, I continue the tale of Maztica's waning.

The True World cries for the presence of Qotal, but the Plumed One pays no heed – or at least he gives no sign. Perhaps, like his priests, he is bound by a vow of silence. He, too, feels the torment known to us.

To feel the need to speak, to correct wrongs, to teach and guide – that is the curse of our order. But to be bound by the vow, to only watch and wait and wonder – that is our discipline and our command.

And now I see in my dreams that the strangers come toward Nexal. They bring the shining light of their silver swords, their knowledge and magic. But behind them, and even, I sense, unknown to them, follow the shadows and the looming darkness.

The crimson heat of the Darkfyre lit the cavern in a hellish glow. A dozen black-robed figures stood about the vast caldron, watching the seething mass of the blood-drenched blaze.

"More!" commanded the Ancestor, his voice a rasping hiss.

Another one of the Harvesters stepped forward, carrying the basketful! of his night's reaping. Reaching a bloodstained hand into the basket, the Harvester drew forth a lump of flesh that had, hours earlier, pumped life through the veins of a Nexalan captive.

But that heart had been ripped forth by Hoxitl, a bloody tribute to his brutal god. Then, when the priest and his attendants had left the pyramid, the Harvester had arrived. Each Harvester traveled the secret ways of the Ancient Ones, teleporting nightly from the Darkfyre to the sacrificial pyramids throughout the True World.

This one had claimed the hearts left atop the Great Pyramid of Nexal. It had taken him but moments to pull the still-warm hearts from the gaping mouth of the statue where Hoxitl had thrown them. Placing the grisly tributes in his basket, the Harvester had returned them to the Highcave in the space of a blink.