Martine led Hal onto the granite steps, and they quickly joined the four men. Halloran wished he had brought Corporal ashore. The legion's war dogs were adept at spotting ambushes and other unpleasant surprises.

These steps, like the faces and the pyramid, evidenced a more organized and populous culture than the expedition had encountered on the islands. Even so, the level of jungle entanglement showed that they received very little use. Normally he would have enjoyed the exploration, with its splendid view of the lagoon, the strange sculpture, the steep ground. But instead, he found himself miserable, disgusted by his weakness in the face of Martine's manipulations.

It took some time to reach the top of the bluff, and Halloran watched the ships grow smaller below as they climbed. Most of the legion had debarked by now, but he felt quite isolated. He saw Daggrande lead perhaps a score of crossbowmen and swordsmen toward the stairway below and took some comfort from the sight.

"Captain?" One of the swordsmen stepped aside for Halloran as they reached the top of the stairway – Hal saw that they had reached a brushy strip of land atop the bluff, running parallel to the coast to the north and south at the lip of the sleep slope. Several hundred feet back from the edge rose the verdant wall of a tropical rain forest.

"There's the pyramid!" Martine cried, pointing, and Hal saw the squat structure rising from the brush perhaps a mile to the north along the coast.

"Let's head that way," suggested Halloran, knowing they would find other members of the expedition there.

He was mildly surprised when Martine agreed.

Erix awoke suddenly. She sat up, her mind unusually clear, with none of the dullness that usually accompanied emergence from sleep. Her first thought was of Chitikas, and she saw that the serpent was gone.

It was still daylight, and very hot. Her position on the bluff offered some concealment, but she knew that the strangers would be exploring the area. Her clump of brush would not hide her from nearby eyes.

Seeking more secure shelter, she crawled through the strip of brush toward the concealment of the jungle. Quickly finding the trail she had followed earlier, she moved into the forest, glancing around frequently, alert for any sounds from behind her.

She came around a bend in the trail, and suddenly, with dismay, she knew that her attention should have been directed on the trail ahead of her. The high priest Mixtal appeared around another bend, marching toward her, his face twisted into a mask of religious fervor. He stared directly into her eyes as she lunged from the trail, tripping and falling among a tangle of branches.

Twisting behind the bole of a large tree, she listened for his cry of alarm. He could not have failed to see her, and yet now he marched right past her hiding place, his eyes still fixed in that fanatical forward glare!

Erix tried to still the pounding of her heart as she lay beneath a canopy of wet leaves. She saw the feet of Mixtal's apprentices, then the sandaled feet of a long column of warriors, march past. Slowly she realized that, somehow, she had escaped him. Mixtal had seen her and ignored her, and the others in the column, struggling to keep up with the patriarch, had not gotten a glimpse of her before she hid.

Still, the young woman remained under cover for several minutes after the column had passed. Slowly her heartbeat returned to normal, and she emerged from the foliage onto the narrow trail.

The priests and warriors were out of sight. She knew that the sensible thing would be to turn inland, opposite Mixtal's path, and strike out for freedom. The bizarre expression on the man's face remained vivid in her mind. Still, something about him had seemed so unnatural, so strange, that her curiosity was aroused.

Cursing herself for a fool, Erix silently took up the trail behind Mixtal and his column of spearmen.

Mixtal marched along doggedly, driven by a consuming sense of purpose. Everything had become very clear. The words whispered in his ear must have come from the Ancient Ones! Had not the warriors arrived just as he had been told? Now his vision, still somehow hazy and indistinct, remained fixed upon the edge of the forest before him. He stepped from the concealing cloak of the woods and stopped in astonishment.

Mixtal rubbed his still smoke-fogged eyes in disbelief, but there could be no mistaking the sight before him. There she was, the girl who had escaped his altar at the start of this day! She was walking through the brushy clearing at the edge of the bluff, accompanied by five of the strange warriors.

"That's her!" he hissed, backing into concealment as the knights and spearmen gathered around him.

The clerics and warriors remained in the jungle, peering from the thick growth at the strangers. The five men, one of whom was wrapped in silver, walked in a small protective circle around the woman. The party move slowly along the crest of the bluff, less than a javelin's toss away.

Atax, the apprentice, looked at Mixtal in surprise, then looked at the red-haired woman before them. To him, she bore no resemblance to the girl Erix.

"Most Holy Patriarch – " he began, but Mixtal wasn't listening. Instead, the high priest squinted at the girl again, nodding eagerly. Atax still saw the flaming-haired stranger, but obviously Mixtal saw someone else. The apprentice wondered if he himself was going mad, but he suspected the madness lay across the vision of his master.

"You see?" Mixtal earnestly explained to the Jaguar Knights. "These villains seized her from our altar!"

The cleric again studied the girl. The haze over his eyes maddened him, but it seemed like the one place he saw clearly through the mist was toward this young woman, Erixitl. She was not obscured in the slightest. He saw her black hair, her rich coppery skin, even the tattered rag of her captive's gown in crystalline detail.

"We have been ordered not to attack the strangers," demurred the knight.

For a moment, Mixtal blinked in confusion. He saw the warriors looking curiously toward the girl, and then back to him. He thought again of the prospects of defeat, of facing the Ancient Ones with the tale of his failure, of losing his own life in replacement for the girl who had escaped him.

He must not fail! Not when he was this close, when his quarry was once again in sight. "Let the fury of Zaltec fall upon your heads," he snarled at the warriors. "The girl will be mine!"

Mixtal shrieked a challenge and sprang from the concealing undergrowth. He raised his obsidian dagger above his head, still screaming. Then he charged.

Propelled by instincts running deeper than military discipline, the Jaguar Knights hesitated only a split second after the cleric began his attack. Then the knights rose, a hundred spearmen rose behind them, and the warriors of the Payit followed their priest into the assault.

"Send Alvarro after her!" demanded the Bishou, with an angry glance up the bluff. "Halloran has no business taking her into the wilds like this!"

"Daggrande is going," replied Cordell, as soothingly as possible. He knew Halloran. Also, the captain-general understood Martine's headstrong nature, a characteristic of which her father seemed unaware, and he suspected it had not been Hal's idea to move so quickly from the sight of the legion.

"Helm's curses on that scoundrel!" snarled the cleric, looking after Halloran. "Of all the impudent – "

"Now look, my friend." The captain-general silently cursed the Bishou, but his voice remained soothing. "They will be back soon. Alvarro is busy on the right flank, seeking grazing for the horses." Cordell gestured up the coast, to the north. He knew that the bad will between Alvarro and Halloran remained far from settled, and he could think of nothing more disastrous to Hal's confidence than to send his rival to look after him.