The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (55 page)

The
creature
looked up at U’Sumi with huge black eyes
, while
the angry cicadas began to scream in his head louder than ever.

For a fleeting moment
,
those enormous white-less slits
became
swirling vort
ices
of eternal hate. Then its visage shifted like a changing mask. The eyes softened into deep pools of wisdom, while its thin under-muscled arms and legs seemed to suggest a benevolence U’Sumi somehow wanted to embrace. Then he noticed where its
three
-
toed feet touched the ground. It crouched by Isha’Tahar’s head in exactly the spot where she had vomited. The sticky
greenish
bile mess had disappeared entirely.

The implications of this only became clear when the light flashed above the trees. The glow of the floating disk approached from over the river. U’Sumi backed around the tree and stumbled across the clearing until he stood by his father.

Tylurnis followed at a slower pace, but moved over by her sister.

A’Nu-Ahki looked up from Yafutu only when glare from the descending object
shone
in his face.

T’Qinna wrapped her arms around U’Sumi. They both, along with the two sisters, stared transfixed by the glowing craft—if craft it could be called. It was no aerodrone or astra made by the hand of man. Indeed, it looked to be alive somehow, pulsing, undulating, as if it breathed and sensed through its liquid-metal skin. U’Sumi wondered how the thing could fly by the normal rules of physical motion.

Taanyx gave a terrified yowl and bolted into the forest
as
the disk lowered itself to the ground not a hundred cubits away. It touched down just a bit farther off than Isha’Tahar and her strange creature. Three legs grew from its bottom—not like mechanical landing struts, but as great gelatinous pseudopods that hardened into solid prongs as they met the ground. A seamless door opened on the underside fac
ing
the survivors. From it
,
a phosphorescent liquid ramp emerged like some enormous
wet
tongue.

U’Sumi
was certain
that the door was
actually
a mouth that led into some huge mollusk-like digestive tract that would slowly eat away any person that went into it with
its
soaking acid
, b
urn
ing
them
forever
—body and soul—consuming without end
.
The edges of the opening quivered
like
expectant
silvery lips half-hiding rows of metallic blade teeth, all coated
by
a glistening poisoned ooze.
The tongue-ramp had a perverse beauty to it, like a colorfully marb
led living
slab
of mother-of-pearl meat
able to
cause
men
to
burn mad with rage and desire.
In it,
muscle—
shapes of writhing women
flexed, invited, and
teas
ed
him to enter.
He took a half-step toward it.

T’Qinna held his arm
,
and for a blessed second he could see and feel only her. Then
U’Sumi
realized
that
the acid of the floating monstrosity’s digestive tract
and the glistening poisoned ooze
of its undulating lips
was
somehow
just a
chemical
musk
mimicking
his own passions, unleashed to burn him down into a shriveled wanton wreck that endlessly
craved
more and more with an empty heart growing ever less able to enjoy anything. In the end-that-never-ended,
existence
inside that hungry meat-sack
would become a burning, itching
,
everlastingly bitter acid bath
,
aflame with
exploding desires
forever
impossible to
satisfy
.

Six such shriveled creatures with large bug-like eyes and oversized heads
, each soaked in the clinging corrosive resin of their
own
experimental
passions,
descended the gangway-tongue
, which gave softly under their three-toed feet
like raw flesh
. Two moved toward the first man-thing and Isha’Tahar, while the others approached A’Nu-Ahki’s group.

U’Sumi noticed the same otherworldly glow to their skin and clothes, which matched the cold gray-white of the being that hovered over Samyaza’s queen. These creatures were smaller and had no head growths, but the writhing stench of used-up musk curled from their snail-wet bodies like rank filaments
of heat-rippled air
.

Strangely enough, young Yafutu first broke the terrified silence.
He spoke to A’Nu-Ahki, “My Father, do you see how weak they are when faced by E’Yahavah and their brothers who did not fall?”
His soft fading voice became an ocean of tranquility wide and deep enough to cover the jagged breakers of
terror
engulfing
the others.
“Even a mortal man, who trusts the Divine Name, is more than they.”

U’Sumi panted, as the creatures dr
ew nearer. “What do you mean?”

Then
his understanding caught up to his seeing
. The
glowing gray ones
had been reducing in a liquid fire of their own making, stunted and degenerate, just as Yafutu said
,
just as
U’Sumi had surmised
.

The
n the
internal
cicada howl increased
,
until U’Sumi was sure the bugs had burrowed in
side
his skull. T
hese withered gray-glow creatures
might be shriveled, but terror out of mind writhed before
them
in reality-warping billows that stretched and pummeled the very air, as if some horrendous beast
thrashed
behind a thin veil to claw its way through into the visible world.

T’Qinna screamed
,
and seemingly could not stop
,
no matter how tightly U’Sumi held onto her.

T’

Qinna had nothing left. She was sure t
he spindly glow-men would somehow get her
;
that
they would pull her
down
onto that hideous pulsating tongue-ramp
, which then would lift up and slide her
downward
into eternal
ly
devouring kisses
from
that giant reeking mouth
!

Yafutu
’s
adamant
voice somehow rose above
her
terrible wails and quieted them.
The boy was dying. His eyes now opened, he saw things as they really were. He cried out in his agony,
“
C
an’t you see the ones stand
ing
by us,
all around
? Great kherubar I see, with lion bodies and wings
of
storm
that overshadow us
,
claws
of diamond
unsheathed for battle,
with
fiery swords drawn in their hands. With them are
the F
laming
O
nes, warning the little uglies not to step out of line.”

“He’s right,” A’Nu-Ahki whispered. “I can’t see them, but I know they’re here.”

T’Qinna found her composure again, ashamed
out of mind
because she wasn’t normally a screamer
.
“Who are these creatures
,
and what do they want?”
she
asked,
trembling beneath U’Sumi’s arm, fighting
to
keep control
.

A’Nu-Ahki opened his mouth to answer. T
hen everything changed.

The Old Man
laughed—a sound
rising
against the
relentless
wave
s
of fear like a great sea wall. “Have you lived
most of
your
life in the Temple and served the Watchers with unknowing zeal, yet never seen them?”

T’Qinna
looked up again at the cold gray-glow-men, this time with all the observation skills Mnemosynae had trained into her.
“The
y’re the
strange men in my mother’s chamber while she was pregnant
—or ones
almost
like them
! I saw them inject some kind of black fluid into her arm. Even after I remembered her death, I wasn’t sure if that part hadn’t still been a dream.”

She looked up at U’Sumi. “They speak through the priests and priestesses, or in an oracle. Few of us ever saw them. In fact, some of us
in the lower orders
even secretly doubted they really existed
at all
. Only those chosen for direct sacred marriage in Aztlan spoke as if they’d seen.”

A’Nu-Ahki said,
“Oh they exist, all right
. M
ake no mistake, they are powerful and dangerous to those who don’t know their true nature and
who
are seduced into doing their bidding. But Yafutu’s right. They cannot stand against us as long as we stand in E’Yahavah’s protection. They come now merely to collect their own.” His words broke with an agonized sob, as the implications must have come home to him.

T’Qinna wanted to
rush over
and hug U’Sumi’s father, but he still worked
on
Yafutu to sta
nch the bleeding.

The creature that crouched over Isha’Tahar stood and appeared to give some kind of directions to the others. He then stooped again, gently lift
ed
the Queen, and carried her up the tongue ramp into the
breathing
liquid
meat—
metal abomination.

“Samyaza!” U’Sumi shouted
.
“
That
was Samyaza!”

Tylurnis spoke.
“Of course it’s Samyaza!
Who did you think?”

“You’ve seen him like that before?”

She glared at him with a hatred far beyond Isha’Tahar’s scorpion eyes—an entirely human contempt that needed no demonic enhancement—infinitely deeper
in substance
, yet incapable of expressing itself
so
fully only because of
its form in
human frailty. “I’ve seen Samyaza unclothed in all his glory! I’ve kept his bed and shared him with the Queen for decades, you young idiot! Not all the children I have
belong to his two sons.”

U’Sumi’s head reeled at her words, but his first thought went to his father, as if to somehow shield him from them.

A’Nu-Ahki looked up at his daughter from Yafutu’s wound, his face ashen. He said nothing, but U’Sumi saw the triple agony in his eyes.

Tylurnis cooed,
“You look surprised, Pahp.
”

A’Nu-Ahki trembled, pressing on Yafutu’s injury, while tears flowed at the corners of his eyes.

U’Sumi stepped between them. “
L
eave him alone!”

At his sudden movement, the four Watchers leaped forward as if to grab U’Sumi away. They never made contact.

All four flew backwards, little stick figure dolls caught in a heat-lion’s windstorm. Yet not a breath of air stirred in the clearing. When they landed, they simply picked themselves up again, brushed themselves off
,
and walked slowly back to stand before U’Sumi and his half-sisters. Only this time
,
they
avoided
the son of A’Nu-Ahki
like fire
.