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.The power of fiery magic blasted the lush barrier, and the leaves and branches crackled into smoke.Without a pause, she pressed forward, creeping for the first time in months into the surface world.Behind her followed the rest of the driders, their black longbows held ready.The spider-beasts walked with mechanical, insectlike motions of their eight legs.Their weapons, however, they wielded with the familiar fluid movements of drow veterans.Following the driders came the army of giant ants.The red insects lurched awkwardly but quickly from the cavern.Antennae tested the air before them while their huge, blank eyes looked about the jungle.The creatures of Lolth emerged from the darkness into a world that lay vulnerable and unsuspecting before them.Immediately the ants began to eat.and as the file emerged from the cave, a steadily expanding area of devastation grew around the entrance.The ants turned to trees, bushes, even grass, tearing and chewing, reducing all to a wasteland.They pulled the bark from the trees, killing centuries-old forest giants in a matter of moments.Hard, knife-edged mandibles ripped and splintered the wood of the forest, while more and more of the monstrous insects poured from the cave.Darien and the other driders began to move, compelling the ants to follow their new masters.Still more of the creatures emerged from the cave, expanding into a column twenty paces wide, steadily growing in length, pressing through the jungle.And everywhere the ants destroyed.“Do you know where he’s leading us? Or why he comes in the body of an eagle?” Halloran wondered aloud about the majestic bird wheeling gracefully above them.“No.of course not.” Erixitl, too, followed Poshtli with her eyes.“I saw something in his eyes, though, when he perched on that rock.A message, or a plea of some kind.It seemed to promise hope.”“We could use a little of that,” Hal agreed.They looked backward from the low rise where they rested, along with a hundred others who had collapsed to the ground in exhaustion.The file of refugees filled the valley behind them, stretching to the dusty horizon in the north.Before them, the column continued unbroken to another rise, perhaps a mile away.A further elevation, even higher, beckoned beyond the next ridge.“How is your strength, today, sister?” The voice, behind them, signified the approach of Xatli.Erixitl looked at the priest, a wan smile across her dust-and sweat-streaked face.“I’ll make it the rest of the afternoon, but I think I’ll sleep well tonight.”The priest chuckled and lowered himself to the ground beside the couple.“You will have earned your sleep, for certain,” he agreed.“May Qotal see that you are untroubled by dreams of ill.”Erix looked upward, quickly spotting the eagle as Poshtli soared over the winding trail that led steadily, endlessly southward.“Once I would have argued with you, you know,” she told the priest.“But now 1 can only hope that the blessings of Qotal are real, that he will return to us.”She sighed, then asked no one in particular, “Without that hope, what do we have?” She met the eyes of an old woman who walked slowly along the trail, clutching the arm of a young man.The woman smiled, and then the steady march carried her away.But her face was replaced by others—a pair of young children holding hands; a man carrying a child; a husband and wife.All of them looked at Erix, and each sought some measure of comfort and hope from her face.She tried desperately to communicate her own sense of hope.“ Faith can only lighten your burdens,” declared the priest.“The signs have been fulfilled; his return is imminent! Accept his help, and you will gain his everlasting strength!”“But it must be soon” the woman said, sitting up and staring into the priest’s dark eyes.Slowly Xatli nodded.He understood.“My friends!” A voice pulled their attention toward the front of the column and they saw the broad-shouldered form of Gultec approach.The Jaguar Knight wore his tunic of spotted jaguar skin, with the helmet that framed his face through the open jaws.“Gultec!” Erix cried, brightening immediately.The lanky Jaguar Knight crossed the ground in long strides, coming back toward them beside the file of Nexalans who marched steadily southward.In moments, he reached them and squatted, resting easily on his haunches.“What did you find?” she asked, seeing the look of promise in the warrior’s thin smile.“Water.A day and a half away
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