In any event, Gultec slipped silently along a trail as night fall settled around him. His padded paws fell silently on the soft grass of the ground. Every few steps, the great cat paused to sniff the air and look around.

Impatient, he picked up his pace to a trot. Once an irritated growl even rumbled from his throat before he recalled the need for stealth. As he paced along the trail, he heard something rustling ahead. A current of breeze carried to him the delightful scent of a plump turkey – food enough to fill the great cat's belly.

Gultec crouched and crept forward, slinking soundlessly on his belly. There! He saw the turkey, standing oddly still at the base of a great tree. The bird fluttered and twisted, but it did not move from its location. Even Gultec's keen eyes did not see the narrow tether holding the bird in place.

With one lightning bound, Gultec sprang toward the bird. His attack was planned perfectly. He would land once, ten feet from the bird, and instantly spring again for the kill.

His paws settled to earth, already preparing to push him forward, but the earth proved yielding, crashing away beneath his weight. With a screech of feline rage and panic, Gultec fell through the network of branches concealing the deep pit and plummeted to the bottom with a heavy thud.

Instantly the jaguar sprang at the sides of the pit, his powerful muscles carrying him upward a prodigious distance before the steep, smooth walls sent him tumbling back down. Again and again the cat hurled himself toward the top of the pit, and again and again he fell back.

Finally, exhausted and ravenous, he settled into a crouch. His unblinking eyes stared upward at the night sky, beginning to sprout stars above his pit. For all his rage and all his strength, Gultec could not deny that he was trapped.

Several dozen men remained in Ulatos, while the rest of the legion moved to the sheltered anchorage barely three miles away. There construction of Fort Helmsport began as two hundred legionnaires, armed with pick and shovel, assaulted the rocky crest a short distance from the sandy shore. Darien used a powerful earth-moving spell to begin a jetty out into the lagoon, and now men labored with wheelbarrows and shovels, extending the pier into deeper water. The wizard and the captain-general, meanwhile, moved from the palace to their quarters aboard the Falcon.

Late at night in this luxurious cabin, two figures lay in the great bed. Cordell snored deeply, while Darien lay wide awake, her pale eyes staring across the cabin, her elven senses seeing everything despite the pitch darkness.

A sense of danger gripped the elf woman, and she sat up in the bed. Something unseen warned her of attack, and she placed her feet on the floor. Her robe, with its many packets of spell components, hung beside her.

Suddenly a gust of wind rushed through the crack under the cabin door. Darien's keen vision, unnaturally sensitive to such conjured creatures as the invisible stalker, recognized the thing instantly. In the next moment, she perceived its intent.

The stalker reached out for her, a sudden gust of wind whirling in the cabin, extending invisible but powerful tendrils of air toward Darien. She sensed immediately that it wanted to kill her.

But Darien's spell was ready. She spat, her saliva flying toward the invisible attacker. " Dyss-ssymmi!" she cried, raising both hands before her face.

With a horrible sucking sound, the wind twisted into a vortex and whirled in an ever smaller cyclone in the center of the room. It writhed as it shrank and then puffed into nothingness. Her spell of dismissal, she knew, had sent it back to the plane of air.

Cordell had awakened at the sound of her spell, and now he stretched an arm around the elf woman, amazed and impressed by her calm demeanor.

"What was that?" he asked. He sat up in the bed, blinking. He had seen nothing of the attacker, though he had heard the wind.

"My stalker. It has failed to kill Halloran, thus it sought me out instead. It is a risk of the spell." Darien shrugged, the attack already forgotten except for its implications.

"And this means Halloran still lives. If he had perished from the poison, the stalker would not have come after me. It would simply have gone away."

Cordell flopped backward with a sigh. "Helm's damnation! That lad makes things very difficult."

Darien squinted in anger, an expression Cordell could not see. "Difficult, perhaps. But he will not escape!"

"What makes you so certain?"

"Where can he go? We have control of Ulatos, and through the city, we can keep tabs on the entire nation. Sooner or later, someone is bound to report him. He'll probably leave a whole wealth of stories behind everywhere he goes." Darien leaned over Cordell, gently pressing him back on the bed.

He grinned. "Come closer. I'd like to hear you scheme some more." And he pulled her down to him.

"There is no way that I can repay the kindness you have shown me. It has meant my life, and much more, to me." Poshtli bowed deeply to Luskag, blinking and finally looking to the side. The golden dot still burned before his eyes.

But the vision had been worth the price. If he could but complete the tasks before him, a city, a whole people, might be saved.

"You have been a worthy companion, Poshtli of Nexal," said Luskag sincerely. The dwarf mopped the sweat from the top of his bald head, then reached into a quiver slung at his belt.

"I would like you to take these on your journey," he said, offering Poshtli six slender arrows. The Eagle Knight took the gifts reverently, bowing deeply.

The arrows bore no marks to distinguish them, but each was perfectly straight, made from an exceptional reed. The heads were of shiny obsidian, deftly chipped from flawless rock. Tiny fluffs of feather marked the tail of each arrow, and though the feathers were small, it was here that Poshtli sensed the true strength of the gift.

The desert dwarf chieftain and a score of his dusty, suntanned warriors had gathered in the center of Sunhome to bid farewell to the stranger, one of only a handful of humans ever to have found Sunhome, according the Luskag. Many of them had come seeking the Sunstone, but only a few had departed alive.

The village itself was simply a circle of ground-level cave homes around the inside of a box canyon. A clearing in the center of the canyon floor had long ago been smoothed, and here Poshtli nodded to the others, then turned back to Luskag.

The Eagle Knight wore his full regalia, black-and-white-feathered cape and beaked helmet, with his bow and arrows, his spear, and his maca all suspended from his belt or harness.

Suddenly Poshtli whirled around in a circle. The desert dwarves scurried backward as he raised his arms, causing the feathered cape to swing in a wide circle. Then he squatted and beat his wings, falling several feet and then swooping above the ground.

The Eagle Knight enjoyed the stunned expressions on the faces of the dwarves. His wings beat steadily as his sleek form circled, climbing into the canyon above Sunhome. He cried a challenge and a farewell that echoed through the canyon long after he soared from sight. A cold mountain up-draft lifted him and carried him eastward.

Poshtli flew steadily toward the sunrise, as his vision had shown him.

Vast reaches of land passed below him, and desert slowly turned to savannah, then mountains, and finally jungle. The eagle subsisted upon the power of pluma, for Poshtli did not stop to eat nor to sleep, though the sun rose and set during his flight.

He flew on through the damp, heavy air above the jungles of Payit, and now his muscles thrummed with renewed energy. He sensed the goal of his flight in the distance. Somewhere ahead he would find the green pyramid.