The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (38 page)

The sea dracan uncoiled its neck, raising its head so that yellow bio-glow eyes could survey the chaos it had made. Its cold gaze settled upon U’Sumi, who had frozen, sword poised before its
spiky teeth
. Taanyx retreated, hissing
and growling
, back to the tunnel, where Yafutu lean
ed
against the archway.
The boy
watched as if
none of it really mattered.

The monster pivoted its neck to give itself a variety of observation angles on this new foe. It seemed to consider its next move with great care.

U’Sumi set himself as a steel sculpture, following the marine reptile’s motions only with his eyes.
Alt
hough
he
stood
still
,
the battle-dance time-dilation
had not released him
.

When
L
eviathan’s head began its lightning thrust, it first withdrew backward and up, muscles like teeming worms constricting beneath black scaly
chainmail
.
T
he coils unleashed, launch
ing
the monstrous head
with a slow-motion snap of its jaws
.
U’Sumi twisted aside with preternatural ease
and
swung his
blade, using the momentum of his turn
to strike
hard against the creature’s neck.

Startled at closing its teeth on thin air, the
sea dracan
did not
seem
aware of i
ts own wound
. A gash oozed blood like a ruptured gill behind its head. U’Sumi had missed the main artery. Again
,
it flailed its head at him, only to close jaws on a dissolved wraith. Broken teeth tinkled like porcelain on the stone floor.

U’Sumi had tumbled under its neck to swing up on the other side. Another slash tore into
Leviathan’s
serpentine coil. Yet the creature’s scales, like rocks embedded in hardened rubber, deflected much of the blade’s force.
While
ugly, the new wound was no more serious than the first.

U’Sumi realized that he had succeeded
only
in angering the beast. For its black scales were more tightly knit together than a crocodile’s
,
and far more flexible. The sea dracan lashed out again, faster in its pain-driven fury.

The
side of its
jaw caught U’Sumi and bludgeoned him into
one of the
few
remaining
mirrors. Shards exploded in angry diamond-stars across the flagstones and into his flesh.
L
eviathan heaved forward on its flukes, awkwardly straining like a giant black maggot to where U’Sumi had fallen.

H
e rolled
to his feet in time to face it
.

The dracan was out of its element. If the space between the cave wall and the pool were only a bit wider
,
it would have been easy to run around the creature.
Instead,
U’Sumi po
sitioned
himself before the monster to defend the tunnel where Yafutu still wobbled in his dream fog. A long while they stared each other down, while
each caught their
breath.

Dracan
leviathans were smaller than
the kind that
had snapped the Piper from the ironclad. U’Sumi began to consider himself a
reluctant
expert on them. Strangely, he felt no fear—even when the monster shuffled at him again with cautious half-motions from its flippers. Perhaps the spiritual combat gift still rested on him.
In e
ither
case,
he glared at the creature
and took a defiant step forward, raising
Phoenix Fire
with elbows behind his shoulder to jab
upward at its throat
, as if with a giant dagger.

True to his uncanny expectation, the
d
racan
faltered, lowered its head, and swung it to one side. U’Sumi
took another step
. This time the creature
shoved
its great oar-like flukes in reverse, slid
ing
backward with the sound of dragging wet leather. Another step
proved
that
this was no mere tactical retreat. The monster somehow feared him
. W
hy?

An eerie knowing possessed U’Sumi
,
a new dimension of his battle anointing.
He
again
stepped forward and pointed his sword at the pool.

“Back to the pit prepared for you!” he shouted.

The sea dracan hesitated, as if trying to comprehend this new thing.

“Go, by the Divine Name!” U’Sumi commanded, shaking
Phoenix Fire
toward
the pool.

The beast blew a puff of noxious phosphorescent gas from its mouth and blow-hole as it wriggled back to its pool. With a lamenting squeal, it slid over the side into familiar murky depths.

U’Sumi raced to his father, outrun by a joy-crazed Taanyx.

Again the tide turned.

A flash of white light and purple smoke exploded on the floor in front of U’Sumi, cutting off the idol pedestal from view. Taanyx scrambled back to the portal in panic, where Yafutu now clutched at the
arch
stone
s
.

As the violet haze dissolved back to green
dimness
, a
last
swords
man dressed in
a tied
black robe
and
wearing a golden masque appeared
from
the dying flame.

“Light tips the scales well by your sword!” shouted the
golden masque
d
man in a strangled voice.

U’Sumi rushed forward and locked blades with him, pressing too close for his opponent to swing. Then he butted heads with a quick diagonal thrust that knocked the masque from its wearer. The first thi
ng he saw as he leaped backward
to evade the counterstrike
was
his adversary’s broad teeth, grinning with yokel pride. The second
was
his dead
,
sharky eyes.

A’Nu-Ahki’s son almost dropped his weapon in surprise. The Caretaker,
Iskui
of the Gates of the Setting Sun, used that moment to lunge. He nearly succeeded in running U’Sumi through where he stood.

“If you wanted me dead, why didn’t you just take me up at the shrine where you had me unarmed?” U’Sumi asked, as he twisted aside.

“Would’ve been sacrilege,” huffed the Caretaker, who evaded U’Sumi’s counterstrike.

“Why should that bother you?”

Iskui
, panting, somehow managed to take on the tone of a sage in lunging phrases that chopped with his sword; “E’Yahavah and the Winged Basilisk—they’re one and the same! They’re balanced forces of light and darkness, good and evil. One cannot exist without the other!”

The Caretaker jumped back to evade U’Sumi’s counter-stroke.

A
time transcending insight from U’Sumi’s battle gift
revealed that
Iskui’s
fish
-cold
eyes
and lecturing mouth
somehow
called their wisdom up from
the
nearby offshore ocean trench
,
a place where fire and water met
under pressure; a place
that would
soon be glutted
by
the world’s silt
-infused
dead.

Iskui
attacked again, chattering,
“We’re made in E’Yahavah’s image, are we not? Is not every man a mix of light and darkness—good and evil? Can you separate the good in you from the bad? Can one
get rid of
the other? No matter how good you try to be, you will still catch yourself doing evil—or at least wishing you could!”

U’Sumi swung and missed.

The Caretaker
said,
“No matter how far a man flees from goodness, his heart betrays
a
desire to love, and be loved. Can Q’Enukki
’s son
not know this?”

U’Sumi locked blades with
him
in a metallic
clang
that echoed in the stony blackness above. “No darkness at all!”

Iskui
shoved him away
, waving his sword as they circled each other looking for the next opening to strike
.
“You can’t deny it!
The Old Ones—they tried to deny the truth! They lied and cheated
, r
aped children, stole wives, twisted law
s
, and perverted justice! Yet still they claimed to serve the Shrine only in the Light!
T
hey wouldn’t admit how they pretended—that they couldn’t stop pretending! I was there! I saw
,
and I gathered the young with me! Every revolution of positive change starts with the young!”

“So you rose up in united treachery and in one night slew them all in their sleep!” U’Sumi finished for him
, and then thrust his sword
tip
at the Caretaker
who blocked the stroke
.

Iskui’s babbling was slowing him down.
“It started that way
,
then spread to other cities. They wouldn’t listen! They wouldn’t face the truth! People can’t deny who they are and what they feel!”
He
pushed
himself forward
sloppily
in wild
,
arcing chops.

U’Sumi
jumped clear.
“And who are you?”

“Nobody!
But, a
t least I’m
authentic
and
balanced! I can see
whom
I reflect
, and
know when to be what!”

U’Sumi parried and jabbed. “You’ve forgotten the Curse! This isn’t how we were
made
in the beginning! When is it
ever
right to molest and murder young boys?”

Iskui
smiled. “E’Yahavah’s
darker half is insatiable!”

The suggestion that any of this reflected E’Yahavah
made U’Sumi’s blood boil. He
attacked
faster than at eve
n
before. The Caretaker quickly fell back toward the gryphon idol, outmatched by such speed. Within seconds, U’Sumi hacked his opponent’s sword hand, causing his adversary to tumble backwards onto the pedestal steps
and drop his weapon
.

A’Nu-Ahki’s son commanded
,
“
Release
the prisoners!”

The Caretaker
gripped his bleeding wrist.
“
The key is on my belt.”

U’Sumi snatched it and unlocked his father, keeping a steady eye on Iskui. He then gave the key to his father to release T’Qinna.

Iskui said, “
I don’t think you’ll get far
, but not because I have any others on their way down from above.
”

“I got farther than you thought
;
else you wouldn’t have armed me.”

“The will of E’Yahavah’s Light gave you the sword and bow. I serve the Light in my Above Times. Now the forces balance again. You have your people
,
and they will not be sacrificed to the Divine Shadow
,
since they obviously were not meant to be.”
Iskui
turned to A’Nu-Ahki, “You, Elder, are the Seer our fathers said would someday come. Meet me again at the Shrine
above
, and tell us what message you have from the heavens.”

A’Nu-Ahki looked down at him in loathing. “You murdered your fathers and murder your sons. How can you hope to survive when you cut off the life of your past and betray your future?”

The Caretaker trembled
, losing blood
. “But that’s down here! You can’t blame
those of
the Shrine above for down here! We all have a dark side!”

U’Sumi’s father
glared down on
the Acolyte with eyes of withering flame. “World-end comes in forty-eight years—utter destruction from E’Yahavah, in whom there is no darkness! There is nothing you can do to stop it
,
and nothing you would do to be saved from it, were I to give you that option.”