The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (34 page)

U’Sumi
smiled at her impersonation and
shook his head. “So let me get this straight,
Watcher and Titan
are
, in
this case
, one and the same
?
”

“Not necessarily; just when Klyeto wants
some
.”

“
I
had read the history in one of the library scrolls
in the suite
where
Psydonu kept me
at Thulae
.
C
obweb-thin legitimacy
!
No wonder the
suicidal
sailor on the ironclad
griped
about the changes in the religion of his people
!”

She rolled her eyes. “You would not believe the things I’ve seen.”

“Yeah, but
the r
evolution
and
the war
has
had
Psydonu’s attention
focused north and east
for some time
. His son
—or
brother
—
At’Lahazh, with Psydonu’s
other
eight
‘
son-siblings
’
are
also engaged in the war.
Doesn’t t
hat le
ave
Klyeto
the
effective
queen over Southern Aztlan
?”

“
I guess so
.”

The ferry chugged into the mouth of a main channel toward the massive pyramids of the Temple acropolis on the city’s central hill.
Psydonu had built his mother’s
metropolis on a peninsula
sliced up by
concentric circular canals around that mound. Markets, shops, and mansions lined ring-shaped avenues connected by four sets of draw-bridges that quartered the city at the cardinal compass points.

The channel bisected the waterfront land-belts from the north, until the innermost canal circled
off on
either side at Temple Wharf. Orichalcum spires around the inner perimeter shone with metallic wetness, like great needles coated by a gleaming poisoned resin. The architecture mimicked Pandura’s city, which was about a century older, except that here the pyramids were smooth-faced rather than stepped.

The boat slowed to no-wake speed as it approached Temple Wharf.

A great procession gathered between the pier and the opened acropolis gateway that gave access to a
zigzagging
road up to the base of the nearest pyramid. Before the ferry even tied up, its ramps extended
outward to the docking platform
. The
wharf
came alive with welcome.

It took U’Sumi a second to realize that the commotion had nothing to do with the arriving ferry. He noticed it when the crowds parted on either side of the acropolis gate. A gold and black self-propelled carriage crawled along the waterfront, until it turned into the archway. It carried, standing in its open coach, a dark goddess-like woman dressed in golden breast cups and jewel-embossed lace. The streets thundered with shouts of her name:
“Klyeto! Klyeto! Mother of the God! Mother of the Seed! Pray for your children! Pray for Aztlan
…
”

The woman’s vehicle halted on the ramp beneath the Temple gate’s apex. She turned and loomed over the crowds with her hands in the air. “Watch the orb of the gods!” she cried, bringing the multitude to silence. “Hear over the spiritual ether my son, your king’s voice from afar!”

U’Sumi first noticed the gigantic pearl housed inside the Temple archway’s stone apex when it began to glow with blue flame.
He had never seen such a
large oracle orb, big enough to encase several men standing on top of each other. It came alive
with moving pictures and a blast of sound, while A’Nu-Ahki’s party stepped off the plank onto the wharf.

War raged within the great crystal’s looking-glass world, complete with Elyo
,
a
stra
s,
and foot soldiers. A voice boomed across the gathering throng to explain the battle scenes in the moving pictures.

A’Nu-Ahki mounted Shell-head and took the driving position on the unicorn’s three-seat saddle. U’Sumi helped T’Qinna into the second seat, and then took the third perch himself, high on the crest of the quasi-dragon’s pelvis. Taanyx padded alongside, careful not to get lost in the mob.

A’Nu-Ahki steered toward the acropolis gate with the flow of the crowd. When they drew as near as the crowds would allow, he halted the unicorn
,
and listened to the orb.

B
attle scenes
faded,
replaced by a single, fair-skinned titan face that filled the pearl’s phosphorescent interior. From a quarter of a world away, he smiled down at them with searching eyes that seemed to pan across the crowds as
though
looking for
someone
in particular.

U’Sumi whispered to T’Qinna,
“Can he see us
,
too?”

She giggled. “No, my sweet silly man
; i
t’s all a projection done with quickfire and invisible spiritual vibrations. There’s a lens machine where At’Lahazh is that captures his picture and voice, changing them to
…
”

“Shhh!” A’Nu-Ahki hissed. “We need to hear what it says.”

T’Qinna hushed as the image of Psydonu’s half-brother
/
son spoke.

“Greetings to our devoted multitudes! I speak through the spirit realm from the land of Western Kush, in the city of Bab’Kusha, which has just fallen before my glorious armies! Today we arrived at the coast of the Straits of Kush, where we
have
massed to invade the Sacred Heartlands of the East across the sea. By the time you see this holy annunciation, we shall already have taken the islands in the seaway.”

The crowds cheered on cue, while U’Sumi shuddered. “He’s got Seti, Near Kush, and Khavilakki set up in a pincer. Now all he’s got to do is close the vice!”

“Hush!” whispered A’Nu-Ahki.

“On a less joyous note,”
continued At’Lahazh’s image,
“there has been a slow-down in the progress of our armies in the North and in our naval campaign for the Yawam Tsafuni and North Central Sea. An enemy fleet is massing off shore even as I speak. Nothing we shall not
overcome, simply a few additional obstacles in our quest for
New-world
…
”

U’Sumi mulled this new information over—this time to himself—lest he elicit another hush from his father.
Aztlan
must be facing major military setbacks in Balimar and in the polar seas to admit this much to the public.
Maybe
that’s why the big dandies invaded Far Kush
—
for a second attack column away from the stall in the North. Maybe
things
are not going so gloriously for them after all. Perhaps their naval problems might still prevent a southern amphibious assault on Seti’s side of the Straits.

At’Lahazh closed his address with a flurry of praises to his brother, after which the great picture orb went black. The crowds murmured as they dispersed or went inside the Temple for worship.

Klyeto signaled the worshipers to follow her carriage up the hairpin turns to the acropolis. An army of prostitute priests and priestesses stood in the gate to welcome them. U’Sumi felt something akin to the revulsion of watching a pack of wurms prepare for a feeding frenzy.

A’Nu-Ahki turned to face the youngsters. “The Consortium has over-extended itself. At’Lahazh only got so deep into Far Kush because he took a neutral country by surprise. If Aztlan losses the naval war,
Tubaal-qayin
Dumuzi will be able to send troop ships and ironclads over the North Pole to invade from the
north and
west. If Q’Unukku joins, Y’Raddu’s king will also send units. If they break Psydonu’s Polar Fleet
,
it will be stalemate, with each side poised to strike deeply into the other’s heartland.”

“As long as Samyaza stays quiet,” U’Sumi said, realizing now that his father’s earlier mention of Assuri’s Watcher had not been a displaced memory from the Century War after all. With the warring powers effectively stalemated, even a diminished player like Samyaza could tip the scales.

A’Nu-Ahki seemed to gaze at something in the distance. “Though he’s recovered from the heavy reparations levied by the Century War Armistice, I think the Watcher of Assuri still has problems of his own. At any rate, we need to get moving. I want to reach the Gates of the Setting Sun within another two months. We don’t have much time.”

T

he narrow coastal plain between the Mountains of Dragonwood and Earth’s expansive Outer Ocean proved sparsely populated, once the hilly rift settlements of the Psydonis-Klyetoron Mining Consortium were behind them. The frequent ruins and ghost towns they passed
on
the long march south suggested to U’Sumi that this had not always been so.

Since arriving at Psydonis, the people they had encountered in greatest number
s
were red-skinned descendants of early Setiim settlers. Now, all
of the
few passersby they met on the long coastal road
,
or found in its rare inhabited villages
,
fell into that lot. One would have never suspected otherwise that these were descendants of Seti or Q’Enukki. Night sounds in the squalid towns gibbered with drunken laughter, screeching women, and fights amid the
ever-present
rings of
abandoned buildings
surrounding each city
with imploding
collars of
haunted ruins
.

Children wandered the streets unsupervised; dirty waifs who fended for themselves scavenging through garbage heaps, picking pockets, or selling their bodies. These faces too U’Sumi had seen in his
W
orld-end
vision.

In one village, he
gave
his food ration to
a
naked little girl, who had offered herself to them from one of the ruins.
The food
had hardly seemed enough. She took it and wolfed it down
, once she realized he was giving it to her freely
. A band of older boys, who hid amid the rubble to watch her
, prevented
her
from
leaving
with A’Nu-Ahki’s expedition
, however
. When they
saw
that U’Sumi’s group
was
not interested in sex, the
y
jumped out, snatched her,
and
vanished back into the maze of crumbling walls. U’Sumi tried to
give
chase, but
a hidden army of rock-throwers
forced
him
to retreat
.
It
became
clear from the boys’ jabber that the girl was their little sister.

That night,
Shadow-mind
visited more nightmares on him—images of shrieking naked children hurled down into great flaming cracks in the earth by U’Sumi’s madly laughing father—until he woke up crying and disoriented. His father and T’Qinna both hugged him and prayed over him until he remember
ed
where he was and stop
ped
shaking.
Humiliation kept him from any further sleep that night.

As
they neared their destination, the surrounding ruins became larger and more ominous; lonely spires with endless labyrinths of crumbling walls
that
stretch
ed
from the foothills to the
beach
.
It surprised
U’Sumi when they reached a
rise
that
enabled him to see their objective for the first time. He
had
expected an inhabited city larger than the run-down harbor town at the base of the flat-lapped mountain straddled by the Gates of the Setting Sun.