The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (56 page)

“If you’ve let Samyaza have you, that’s your business! But why torment our father with it?”

She shrugged and smirked. “Just felt like it, I guess.”

Tylurnis made a step to go around U’Sumi, and join the glow-frog crew of Samyaza’s devouring monster-disk, but her brother blocked her.

“You saw what happened to the Watchers when they tried t
o touch me!
” he said, wanting to save her life despite the rage he felt against her. “
You don’t have to go back there.
”

“Pahp
a raised you well, boy!” She spi
t in his face. “E’Yahavah’s going to wipe out the world, but you can save your own skin, little mahm, if you leave your babies to die in the flames—or drown in the flood—or whatever! Nothing ever changes with you people, does it? It always comes down to an inhuman and impossible choice!”

At that moment, faster than thoughts could form into words, U’Sumi knew that his seer’s gift
was
upon him.

“The bruises on you and your sister—that you hide with cosmetics—they didn’t come from Ayyaho and Ivvayi, or Samyaza, did they?
And how would you even know if any of your sons are Samyaza’s? Based on what you just said, they could be sons of the Giants, which Samyaza only says are his. And what about the priests, sister? What about all those priests and all those potions? Dreams or reality—you have no way to know anymore, do you?
”

A
sinking terror grip
ped
her eyes
, with a
squeaking sound caught in her throat
that
tried, but failed
,
to become a reply.

U’Sumi pressed his advantage. “Such sons of joy must grow fast and strong to be able to beat their mothers so. Which side of the family do you think this little violent streak comes from?”

“Please!” cried A’Nu-Ahki, “I’m begging you, ‘Nissa, ‘Ranna, don’t go into that thing! The Basilisk owns them heart and soul!”

Uranna, still dazed from her head wound, said nothing. Tylurnis looked for a moment as if she were weighing her father’s plea. Then her eyes went cold
,
and she shoved U’Sumi aside.

This time he made no move to stop her. When she and her sister reached the polypy hands of their Watcher escorts, Tylurnis paused, and turned for one last word.

“If you really want to know why I did it, Pahpa, it’s not that hard. You were marry
ing
me off to that gawky army
sub-altern
—you know the same clam-headed bunch that sent us women and children out the wrong gates and got us slaughtered like sacrificial sheep!
B
ack in Salaam-Surupag
,
soldier-boy and
I
used to sneak out at night. A pathetic excuse for lovemaking it was too!
Now the titans, after I got used to their looks, they knew how to please a woman
,
and they were competent protectors! And if they were good,
then
their father was—well, to put it bluntly—their father was divine.”

The women and the gray Watchers turned and made for the pulsating disk. Once they disappeared into the belly, the thing retracted its tongue and legs, as it slowly lifted from the ground until it hovered just over the trees. Then it whisked away silently eastward, over the wide river. The velocity was so instant that it should have crushed its passengers to death.

U’Sumi noticed that three small indentation marks remained where the disk’s landing prongs had touched the earth
. A
burn stain curled the ferns and mosses inside the triangle. When the object disappeared beyond the forests on the other bank, so did the sense of oppression in the clearing.

But not the sorrow.

Yafutu began to cough up large amounts of blood. U’Sumi knew the boy was fading fast and
that
his father could do
nothing to save him
.

“She shouldn’t have said those horrible things to you, my Father,” whispered the dying boy.

A’Nu-Ahki said, “Shhh. Save your strength, Son.
”

“I’ll be okay,” Yafutu coughed more blood. “All those—all those lion men—those kherubar—they’re here to carry me to a
place—a place with a name like yours—
Comfort
. I’m going to the
Fields of A’Nu-Ahki
, to the place called Comfort with the lion people.
Amirdu
would be happy.”

The
b
oy
smiled at his adopted family
,
and said no more.

T

he astra had crashed at a point where the Gihunu river turned south, nearest the eastern slopes of the N’Zar mountain chain, not two days march from the pass between the lower Haunted Lands and upper Akh’Uzan.

After U’Sumi stripped several intact rotary automatic hand-cannons, with as many ammunition belts as he could wear, from the dead sky-lords around the wreckage, they set out for home.

A’Nu-Ahki and U’Sumi carried Yafutu’s body high up into the mountain gap, where
they
laid the boy to rest under a cairn of heavy rocks. His remains would be safe from the scavenging wurms of the river forests.

By dusk of the fourth day, they climbed the trail to Q’Enu
kki’s Retreat. Even in the half-light
,
U’Sumi noticed things had changed considerably in the two years he
ha
d been away. The village, which they avoided, had grown by as much as a third. In the foothill woods, past the village meadow, they found a new shrine carved into the rocky facing where the
bat
caves
used to open from
the lower cliffs. There they bumped into an acolyte, who was just locking up for the night.

The young man did
no
t recognize A’Nu-Ahki and U’Sumi in the shadows. “Sorry,” he said, “Shrine’s closed for the evening. Come again tomorrow. There’s an inn down in the village.”

U’Sumi said,
“What kind of shrine is this?”

The Acolyte seemed taken aback. “Don’t you know where you are? This is Q’Enukki’s Retreat! That’s the shrine of Atum-Ra’s Barque, and the Three Gifts that used to rest at Paru’Ainu.”

A’Nu-Ahki thanked him
,
and they continued up to the fortress gate.

U’Sumi pounded for admittance and shouted out who they were. Finally
,
movement came from inside. The sound of the lock bar preceded the opening of the great creaking doors.

Both U’Sumi and his father almost dropped to the
ground
.

Before them, lit by the courtyard fire, stood Iyapeti, alive, and looking as healthy as the day they had all left Akh’Uzan with the war party. He
froze; jaw hanging for what seemed several minutes, but probably was only about ten seconds. Then he
threw himself at his father and brother, and wept.

U’Sumi broke free of
his brother’s
enormous arms. “How are you even alive? I checked your pulse!”

‘Peti laughed. “I always said you’d make a lousy healer—no bedside manner at all!”

As if in a surreal dream, U’Sumi’s mother and the Ancient came out to greet them.
Na’Amiha
pushed a wheeled chair that carried an old man who was barely recognizable. Half the elder’s face drooped in a numb loss of motor control. Were it not for the gaze of his single good eye and the partial upward curl of half his lip, U’Sumi would have never guessed that he looked upon his grandfather Lumekki.

Iyapeti quickly told them how Nestrigati had led some commandos down through the trenches and managed to ambush the enemy chain cannons before they had reached the command bunker and the dugouts beyond, where U’Sumi and A’Nu-Ahki had been. The Chief Acolyte had been able to pull out Lumekki with several of the wounded. However, by the time he had reached A‘Nu-Ahki and U’Sumi’s trench, the Elyo had already picked up U’Sumi, and A’Nu-Ahki had been captured.

“Fortunately,” Iyapeti concluded, “the enemy had left me for dead
too—thank you very much!
But it turned out I only had a bad concussion and a lot of blood lost. The wound itself was clean and easily stanched.”

U’Sumi asked, “Where’s Khumi and Mamu?”

‘Peti slumped a little.
“Mamu passed away last year, and Khumi? Well, I think I have a pretty good idea where he might be.”
He
said the last with a scowl.

“Well, go get him,” commanded their mother. “Our prayers have been answered!” She then gazed upon T’Qinna and the beautiful striped sphinx that rubbed at her thigh. “And who is this exotic young maiden?”

U’Sumi said,
“
T
his i
s
T’Qinna, Mahm
.
She helped us escape.”

A’Nu-Ahki added, “
M
ore than that
; i
n three more years, when their espousal period is complete, U’Sumi
and T’Qinna
are to be married!”

U’Sumi and T’Qinna turned to A’Nu-Ahki.

“But a traditional betrothal is seven years
!
”
said the groom-to-be.

A’Nu-Ahki smiled. “Don’t you think you two have served the equal of four of those, after all we’ve been through together?”

“
Where’s my
say in this?”
Na’Amiha
gave a feigned huff.

Her husband laughed.
“What do you wish to say?”

Na’Amiha hugged the girl from Aztlan.
“T’Qinna, welcome to the Seer Clan! You smile now, but you’re going to need all the help you can get—believe me, I know!”

THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY
|
367

T

he living star chariot glided through deep space, the very fabric of which bent before and after its passage. Time itself dilated to a crawl within the liquid metal of its boat-like body. Inside the passenger bay, a man and a person somewhat more than a man continued their age-long discussion while the hours slipped by outside as centuries.

Q’Enukki said, “The last generation is being born now?”

He was not so sure now that he really wanted to see his visions vindicated
as
he had sometimes wished during weaker, angrier moments back on Earth.
The Earth where I woke up and broke my fast this morning is already ancient history. Even the smallest lad back then is now an old man.

Samuille switched back to speaking aloud rather than projecting his words into Q’Enukki’s mind.
“Now they have reached adulthoo
d.
”

“Adulthood?”

The luminescent Watcher continued, his large white-less eyes pools as deep as the ebony expanse outside. “We need to slow down again on this approach. Some of us have business to conduct below. If you like, I can make it so that you can see things almost as we do.”

Q’Enukki half wanted to scream,
No more seeing! I have seen enough! My eyes are weary! I have vanished from the world of men! That part of my story has ended! Just let it die!

Yet the other half—the philosopher, the observer, the learner—could not resist. They would be far away, these people of the
world’s end—too far for Q’Enukki to feel the full horror he knew he ought to feel—he hoped.

Samuille rose from his couch and swept a shimmering hand over the Seer’s head. The inside of the cabin began to fade, as the outer skin of the star chariot took on the same crystal transparency as its oval view-ports. For a moment
,
Q’Enukki sensed the chariot as a living thing—with a silvery heart that pumped gold-fire blood
—and that it was something else; not a chariot at all, but more of a living gate
. Now he seemed to hurtle through space without a vehicle, except he could still feel his couch and the deck.

He screamed
; no so much at the
helpless
sensation of
speeding through
the endless deep uncontained
and unprotected
, but at the
sudden realization
that it was the endless deep that actually hurtled around him—that
the
living-gate-chariot was
completely
stationary
someplace else, while
it somehow moved
the
entire
universe
,
and all it contained
,
around itself
.
A
wareness of the “someplace else”
completely outside
was what
got to him.

Samuille laughed warmly in the background.

When Q’Enukki realized he now had a perfect view in all directions, he began to chatter like an excited child. “This is fantastic! I can see it all! Look—if I focus, I can
magnify
and observe even the smallest detail!”

Focusing on objects that seemed to pass
by
him in space lessened Q’Enukki’s uneasiness about the sensation of that stationary “someplace else” completely outside.

Samuille, now also invisible, touched Q’Enukki’s head.
The Watcher’s hands throbbed with warmth and energy that could blast a man to ashes or restore one to life from the very brink of death.

Q’Enukki’s perception of reality changed, or rather
,
grew beyond its former limits. He could not completely express in human language, even to himself, exactly what happened because no human words in any present or future earthly tongue
existed
to describe the experience. The closest he could say was that he no
t only
saw
present
events
,
but also
their direct and indirect consequences stretch
ing
off into branching futures
,
all of which seemed to happen at once in multiple layers.
The
new
sense of being partly “someplace else”
grew, but his fear of it shrank.

The stationary-ness
of the “someplace else
completely outside
”
now lent a sense of stability
somehow. He turned toward where
he sensed the “someplace else” should be, but felt Samuille’s hand on his shoulder.

“Do
n
o
t
try to look there
. You are not ready for that yet.”

Q
’Enukki obeyed without question
,
and focused only
on
the relative motions of the universe he
had once thought he
partially knew.

Comprehension of
his added dimensional perception
suddenly caught up with him, as if he were simply a child who had learned a
few new words. He
could
now also
examine the past event-layers of objects
, as he could the future branches
, but only if he focused hard.

Like Samuille,
he could not penetrate the
secret thoughts of living beings—whether Watcher, human, or something farther up the heavenly ladder—
directly
.
Unspoken t
houghts and intentions
were o
nly imperfectly
deducible
from past events or
from
watching what
was visible
of individual futures or through hearing the distant echoes of words—whether spoken or mind-projected. Not
everything
was visible or audible
;
some view-paths and layers
seemed
blocked by huge
“opaque”
objects.

Q’Enukki wondered why this bombardment of simultaneous sensory patterns did not overload his mind. The Watcher must also have imparted a limited ability to process the new information. Q’Enukki suspected he would have made only a mentally challenged Watcher at best. For a human
,
the influx of new sights, even in the solitude of deep space,
taxed
the mind.

Behind it all
,
like a warm pulsing light, from the furthest beginnings to the last bitter consequence from the final evil defeated at time’s end, stood the Creator
,
E’Yahavah. He sent forth life from the past and stood to receive what would remain beyond all outcomes
,
to
weave
even
from
the bloodiest evils of humanity’s dark history a pattern of greater good.

Faces flew out at Q’Enukki from a distant Sacred Orchard inside a
new
Holy City, all restored on New-world. Trees grew from soil fertilized by the death and decay of nations, yet decorated with blossoms and fruit beautiful in depth
,
color, and fragrance—peoples called out of evil times and places, tested by suffering, bought back, and preserved from every land. Q’Enukki had taught that the Divine Name dwelt from everlasting to everlasting, but now he possessed
a
partial ability to see it.

Such vision also made the revolt of the fallen members of Samuille’s Watcher order all the more unconscionable
. They must
have seen! They had merely closed their eyes in the delusion that they could create their own branching realities apart from the real cosmos of E’Yahavah.

Samuille said, “There
,
do you understand now why we sometimes must be careful how we communicate with you?”

“I guess.”

“There are more dimensions than the four your people perceive.”

“I know. I went through them on our former journeys. We first met in one of the upper ones, remember?”

“
Alt
hough you visited those heavens in a sense, you were only allowed to perceive them through symbols that referenced the dimensions your natural abilities equipped you to handle. You could not see the vast majority of what actually went on around you there. In fact, though you call them heavens, even your use of that word is imprecise. I have increased your ability to see by two dimensions.
Any
more
,
and your mind as it is
currently
configured would suffer damage.”

“Two
i
s enough
, thank you
!”

“I
ha
ve done this because you are going to need all the confidence this sight can give you, both to watch what you are about to see and to bear up under what you will be called to do when we reach our final destination.”

Q’Enukki gazed ahead into space, not quite hearing the Watcher.

Growing like an icy agate in the void, a large comet they had passed a short while ago swung back into view. Q’Enukki knew it was the same comet because he recognized the shapes of several asteroids trapped in its snow-cement body. Something was also different
, however
.

“Why have we looped back to the comet again? Is this what you meant when you said we needed to slow down, or were you referring to another pass by Earth?”

“Watch and see.”

Q’Enukki had only observed the comet with natural eyes on their previous encounter. It had appeared then as simply a solar wind-bombarded, near-planet-sized chunk of asteroid debris cemented together by dirty ice. Now he perceived something more.

His senses transcended the temporal
,
captur
ing
the voices of future storytellers recounting the memories of this heavenly
interloper. It was the Sword of the Breaker, the Arrow of
E’Yahavah
on its way to pierce the body of Tiamatu,
Leviathan
of
primal chaos; that wandering star between the planets of red L’Mekku and great Mother Khuva
…

The names and images shifted.

In a future instant, all knowledge of the name E’Yahavah vanished from the recollections and stories of men. The air itself sucked
away
from Q’Enukki’s lungs
in
the sudden vacuum.
What happened to the voices of my children rescued from
W
orld-end?

He had been listening in on a conversation of sages, when sudden madness broke out—a fevered insanity that reduced these fine speakers to gibbering idiots that reasoned like children at best and animals at worst.

The lines split and continued to divide further from there. A complex and distorted tangle of names and folk tales replaced the entire idea of E’Yahavah in the words of future humanity—a tangle that grew more twisted with the passage of time. Even the names Q’Enukki
thought he
recognized
were
warped and redefined—
Anu
,
Enlil
,
Ea,
Enki
,
Ninurta,
and later
Marduk
,
Osiris,
Perseus, Hercules,
and
Quetzalcoatl,
echoed by—brutish deities that no longer remotely resembled the original cleaver of the water dragon, but who
got
credit for his works.

In multiple streams of ethnic consciousness came other stories with other names. Each described the same fragmented pseudo-divine personages by different aliases
with
many more quickly forgotten. Each took future memory of the comet further into distortion and mythology, mixing it with the deeds of men and those
reputed
to be more than men.

Soon almost all knowledge of it drowned in a convulsing ocean of confusion and folklore. Even the widely separate historic events of creation and cataclysm coalesced into a childlike notion of prehistory that survived mostly as fragmented fables, with characters and events from each crossing over to the other. Fortunately
,
E’Yahavah restored his
name and knowledge through a revelation to a special future nation—but Q’Enukki had to disengage from
tracing
the streams before
becoming
lost in their currents.

He shook himself free
,
and looked ahead of the comet at the planet Tiamatu. Largest of the solid inner worlds, shrouded by a chaotic blue atmosphere of gases he somehow knew were called
nitrogen
and
methane
, it had seven great reddish-brown features
that the astronomers of Earth called its continents—though probably they represented portions of the surface rich in iron oxides. In prophetic interpretation,
Seti had called
the red continents
“
the Seven Heads of Tiamatu.
”