The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (44 page)

Dragon-breath knew the location of the hidden mountain trails—the same paths legend said
that pack-hunting wurms drove
Qayin and his wife
along
during their wanderings after
they left
the presence of E’Yahavah. As Dragon-breath was the only one willing to take the job at the price offered, U’Sumi was stuck with him.

“We stay following Uqid Valley up to pass, then over to my uncle’s salt works by Cup of Bitterness,” explained Dragon-breath, two days out from Kai-yin. “Uncle-Sarv put us up and water us. Drink no stream that flows from Umara—bitter she is, the star that fell, bitter she is—rotten lady! Rotten lady that take all you gut, and then leaves you wit yer throat swellin’ shut. Eeeee, she a rotten lady!” He ended with a hyena laugh.

Both T’Qinna and Yafutu looked to U’Sumi with unsure eyes. This
hardly went
unnoticed by their smiling Guide, who rode alone on the second unicorn next to them, with most of the stores.
I should fix our seating when we mount up tomorrow,
U’Sumi thought.
I need to sit right behind
him
.

A’Nu-Ahki sat in the forward saddle
and remained quiet
. The trail soon narrowed, so that Dragon-breath had to pull ahead. From here, until they came down the opposite side of the pass,
they needed to go single file. U’Sumi held the hand-cannon on his lap
,
thankful he had their Guide in front where he could keep an eye on him.

The heat became more oppressive as they climbed the winding trail. At noon of their tenth day out from Kai-yin, they reached the highest point of the pass. Here U’Sumi got his first real look at the Desolation of Nhod.

The bare
Kharir Umara
split off in
to rocky crags in
either direction northwest and south to leave a wide table land filled with nothing but gray pumice sand.
On
the horizon
, dead ahead about four
days’ journey distant as the crow flew
,
lay a great crater
of
stagnant yellow-brown muck.

U’Sumi asked, pointing to the gigantic mountain-rimmed ring in the west,
“So that’s where Umara hit?”

“Distance fools the eye from up here,” answered Dragon-breath. “It be a day’s march from one side-a that scummy cup-o-filth to the other, straight across. It take six days to walk around the rim full circle.”

U’Sumi surveyed the wastes. “Imagine what it
was
like for Father Qayin to watch from some vantage point
,
maybe this
very
pass
,
while the great comet struck
—smoke and flame for as far as the eye could see.
”

His father said,
“
The impact instantly reduced a
wide fertile plateau to a flaming desert of toxic salts
.
Ancient records describe
it
as so fierce that
people
felt
it
all the way
to
Sa-utar. The fallout even reached there in concentrations enough to kill an entire year’s crops. The sky was black for a month.
F
or another three hundred years afterward
,
Atum-Ra had thought his roaming son destroyed for having murdered his brother.

“
Atum should have known better.
E’Yahavah
had placed a mark on Qayin
to
warn
men not to
kill him.
Why do that, if he intended Qayin to die so swiftly in a distant land before any other men had reached it?
Qayin and his wife
must have hidden
in some ravine, maybe here
,
as you say.”

They began the long descent into the desolation. The road widened out for a stretch
, where the unicorns could maintain double-file until they reached the first switchback.

Yafutu asked, “How did Atum find out that Qayin had survived?”

“Qayin’s original wife,
his sister
Lilitua, founded a great civilization north of the gray wastes, in a place less tainted by
Umara—by Lake Mataq—the first land also where packs of
wurms
did not drive them away. Once allowed to settle, Qayin began to build a city, which he named for his firstborn son, Q’Unukku. It was completed and later enlarged by Y’Raddu, Q’Unukku’s son—the earliest city in the world
.

“In
many
ways,
as a city,
it
existed
even
before Sa-utar—Q’Unukku had to be architecturally designed and built, while Sa-utar
was merely a system of natural caves where people lived
for
the
first few generations. I guess it depends on your definition of
city
—
a
community of people, or a cluster of buildings. Either way, it was in the land of Y’Raddu that ‘kingship first descended from heaven,’ according to their chronicles—which I have in my library at home. Unfortunately, they had an utterly man-centered view of both heaven and authority. The first murderer was also the first tyrant.
”

T’Qinna said, “He must not have been a very effective one.”

“
No tyrant ever is in the long-run.
Eventually Q’Unukku and his mother overthrew Qayin. They drove him back into the Desolation, along with a few of his youngest sons and some under-aged daughters whom he had perversely taken as concubines—though some of these were allowed to remain when they pleaded that Qayin had forced them. The exiles fell to savagery, spawning the mottled tribes of Nhod. Some wandered into the far southeastern jungles above Zhri’Nikkor, where doubtless
floating jungle mats growing from the swamps along those coasts cut off
a few clans from
the main
land
. These became the Qingu.
”

T’Qinna asked, “Is anything more known of father’s people?”

A’Nu-Ahki said,
“
Unfortunately, Qayin was an even less effective chronicler than he was a tyrant.
History has little record from the mottled tribes because they were illiterate. Back in Y’Raddu
,
it was different. Lilitua invented
Lilithuform
Runes and her son even made three crude laws, which Y’Raddu wrote down as
The Code of Three
. They claimed the Code had descended from heaven
as the basis for Q’Unukku’s kingship
.

“Things were not good, however. By this time, Lilitua had only dim memories of her parents and
of
E’Yahavah
.
She fashioned their
religion
to her own liking. Eventually her people suffered a great plague after some of her priestesses concocted a crude agrarian fertility cult to bring in more income for the city. Lilitua tolerated this because she feared
becoming
a tyrant,
as
her
husband had been. Much evil would come of
this
for many centuries, even down to our own day
,
but that’s too long a story for now.

“Some of these younger priestesses had been of Qayin’s concubines that Lil
i
tua had allowed to remain because they had been forced by their father. After King—
El
Q’Unukku died of the plague, along with half the city, Lilitua sent out an expedition to search out Atum-Ra for aid. Most died along the way, but a few got through and re-established contact. Seti and Mother Khuva went to them and brought relief. Lilitua received them gladly, to the saving of her civilization and of the one to follow it
—
Lumekkor.

T’Qinna’s eyes
went
bleak as the Desolation. “So it all started here
—even fertility worship. My family tree bears
only
poisoned fruit
!
” she said.

A’Nu-Ahki smiled at her. “Don’t feel bad, child. We all come from a tainted line. The Great Curse came from Atum’s rebellion and that was bigger even than Qayin’s bloodshed. It brought death to everything—even someday
,
the stars. If Qayin hadn’t been the first to murder, some other one would have. You mustn’t despair—my wife is a direct descendant of Qayin. You are no more a child of Qayin in genealogy or character than U’Sumi is.”

She smiled back at him, but quickly averted her distant eyes.

Yafutu asked,
“Did Qayin ever return?”

The Seer gazed over the blazing sands
far below
. “After Lilitua and Q’Unukku cast him out, he was never heard from again—at least not by reliable history. Much later, L’Mekku the Great
claimed
to have killed an old man in a hunting accident near Kai-yin. The first Emperor of Lumekkor believed to his dying day that he had slain his own ancestor. However, as L‘Mekku lived to a ripe old age and passed on a great empire, I doubt my long-dead father-in-law suffered E’Yahavah’s seven-fold curse
against
the one who killed Qayin. Or else the curse may not have applied to an accidental killing.”

“Yeah,” U’Sumi said, “even if Qayin lived out his full years,
I
doubt he could have lasted to see L’Mekku’s expedition. Look at this place! The cursed soil must have worn him down long before his time.”

Dragon-breath broke his long silence with a hyena laugh. “Nice story, Ol’ Man. You think you know ‘bout my people. You
don’t know nothin, ‘cept what
some dead Wester-men made up in his
cumfy palace!”

A’Nu-Ahki asked him, “What do your own legends say?”

Dragon-breath spat. “Eh? Nothin’ worth weaving many tales over
—
Fire-salt lands
too hard
!
Red men come through western gap and kill some, take others as slaves. Pale nomads come down from north and slaughter
more
. They rape the women, like my mudder. Hey, a’least the ol’ man make her into a cunk-bine so she not starve, or work salt pits. Same story far back as it goes! Some go marry wit cannibals in south jungles. They be animals
—c
annibal mannibal animals!” His oversized jaws
dragon
-chomped the air,
while
he screech-laughed like some
creature
being eaten alive in the night.

U’Sumi asked,
“
Then
where do your people say they came from?”

Dragon-breath reigned in his hysterics and stared morosely at the great crater of putrid yellow-brown scum. “
Earth-mudder
spread herself over the hills all rutty an’ crazed with sky-fire. Laughing sky-demons come
,
beat her, rape’er, an’ leave her half-dead. She
become Umara and curls herself up all womb-baby—
weepy in the Cup of Bitterness out there to die. Instead she birth twins that crawl up outa the crater muck—spotty girly an’ spotty boy.”

T’Qinna scowled at him.
“That’s horrible!”

“Yeah, girly, ‘orrible! You ast!”

They reached the first switchback, where Dragon-breath pulled ahead again as the road narrowed.

T’Qinna
turned to A’Nu-Ahki. “What really happened?
Surely there must be
unwritten
tales of my father’s people
, even garbled ones!
”

U’Sumi’s father hung his head. “Their origins I’ve told you as best as I know them. As time went on, the Desolation couldn’t hold them.
Better weapons and planning always repelled
attempt
s
made by
the
mott
led tribes to push into Ufratsia
, Assuri, Zhri’Nikkor, or back up into Y’Raddu. Only in the jungles and islands now held by the Corsairs did some of them escape the poisoned sands. Unfortunately, some there really sank into cannibalism.”

Dragon-breath
called back at them without turning around
. “Tell’er the rest
,
Ol’ Man
,
or I will!”

A’Nu-Ahki continued, “Some sages say that the cannibals were first to contract Short-lifer’s Syndrome—a hereditary disease that soon spread north via the slave trade. Children born with it aged and died in less than a hun
dred years—some even sooner. It
s spread eventually forced Lumekkor, with their Y’Raddim forebears, to divide the mottled and
even
some of their own pale and red peoples, in an attempt to isolate the infected clans. The Archons of Seti—with the Seer Clan—tried to give relief and to ensure that this was done as humanely as possible—at first.”