The Tides of Nemesis (The Windows of Heaven Book 4)

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  The Archon recoiled at the Giant’s callous sacrilege against the religious sensibilities of nearly every tribe on Earth, including his own.

  Avarnon said, “The question, my Brother, is how can we tell if this is so, and if so, what can we do about it? Retro-demons use creation code information robbed from their hosts to both reproduce and mutate. That’s what makes them so unstable. The disaster potential is staggering!”

  “Bring in Gununi from Ardis, or Duruvanu from Ayar Adi’In?”

  Avarnon shrugged. “Gununi is old and resistant to new ideas. Duruvanu has too many hidden agendas to be trusted—even with his experience. Perhaps some of their younger priest-alchemists—but I’d rather set up a Guild laboratory. Less intrigue, quicker results—face it, Brother, Ayar Adi’In is not what it used to be, and the facilities at Ardis are outdated. With Gununi’s Red-sore Elixir leaving so many men sterile or mutagenic, I’m not sure I’d want to trust what could be our salvation to his doddering hands. Nor do I think we could convince the people to either.”

  Uggu looked hesitant—the first time Tarbet had ever seen him do so.

  Avarnon said, “Consult with our father. I’m sure he will agree. The Temple was not his first choice as a cultural host vehicle to begin with. I think it is time again to move on, and recent developments seem to confirm this.”

  What does he mean by that? Tarbet was afraid to ask.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Uggu said. “We need a more believable vessel. The Guild has provided work and commerce in peace, and invincible weapons in war, for centuries. I’ll see you have any live subjects you need.”

  The Giant Emperor turned to Tarbet. “You, O Archon—since you have taken it upon yourself to be a global prophet of hope and prosperity—see to it that the people are comforted and happily ignorant. The resources of the orbs and oracles from Kush to Y’Raddu are at your disposal. No matter how bad things get, I want the masses convinced that your Golden Age has dawned. Better yet, I want you convinced! Say whatever it takes, and accept whoever will work with you—no more fussing over your people’s silly theology. We cannot afford such luxuries any longer.”

  Tarbet let the questions drain away with his last gulp of wine. “I am convinced,” he answered, certain it was the right thing to say.

  Then, suddenly, in a magical wave of euphoria, he actually was.

  The giant warehouse-like barn bulged with small animals and birds, which had arrived steadily for most of the last three years since Lumekki’s death, many in large groups. Then, just a few months ago, the “mini-migrations”—as T’Qinna liked to call them—came to a sudden halt. Tiva sensed the others were more disturbed about this than they let on. She also could never quite get past the feeling that something more lurked behind the disquieting mood that had settled over the inland shipyard.

  “Go to! Three years since the phoenixes!” Tiva chattered at the others, while she cleaned cages inside the menagerie’s aviary. She had never done so much work, except maybe during the ship’s kapar shellings. At least this required no technical skills.

  U’Sumi grumbled from the stalls, where he had just built new partitions to house the overflow from the pens up at Q’Enukki’s Retreat. “Didn’t Pahp say they would come ‘by twos’?”

  T’Qinna helped with the aviary cages; her multi-colored hair tied in a ponytail that revealed the natural leopard-spot markings swirling down the sides of her face and neck. “He told me once how prophecies come to pass true to their pattern, but not always how we expect. I’ve suggested that—E’Yahavah permitting—we take the final pairs later, from larger populations. The beasties have two years yet to interbreed. Mongrelizing them gives the final pair optimal creation code variety. It may not be absolutely necessary, but why not do it, since they came in larger groups than we expected…”

  U’Sumi stepped away from the stalls to stifle the rest of his wife’s explanation with a well-planted kiss. When he came up for air, he said, “I guess the genetic mysticism of a former priestess has its uses after all.”

  T’Qinna ruffled her husband’s dark curls, and laughed.

  Tiva loved watching U’Sumi and T’Qinna interact as a couple, and wished that she and Khumi communicated so naturally that they could joke about her own past. However, Tiva’s past lurked much closer to home than T’Qinna’s did. Every night, she heard the revelries of Grove Hollow through the trees. Worse, she had to pass her brother Yargat each day, on her way to the shipyard. He always stood at the mouth of his stupid cave shrine, trailing her with octopus eyes that seemed to leer right through her clothes.

  Khumi would kill Yargat if he ever discovered the truth about Tiva’s childhood in the house of Henumil. That would spark a blood feud that the numerically smaller house of A’Nu-Ahki could only lose—even with U’Sumi’s collection of hand-cannons. Henumil controlled over two hundred Dragon-slayers; and itched for an excuse to use them. Besides, there were other reasons for her silence—reasons still too painful to discuss with anyone, even T’Qinna—reasons that clung to her inside like black flaming tar.

  Tiva shook off her gloomy memories, and looked up into the main aviary. “Well, I hope those finches start going at it soon—we have dozens of them in there, and I’m getting tired of shoveling up their scat!”

  The huge menagerie doors slid open from the outside. A’Nu-Ahki, Iyapeti, and Sutara herded some livestock in—a wide assortment of wild and domesticated goats and sheep—for the stall space U’Sumi had just prepared.

  “I want multiple flocks to breed together into as near a generic meta-kind as time will allow,” A’Nu-Ahki explained to his oldest son, as they guided the bleating flow into the enclosure. “I’m letting T’Qinna supervise the same thing with the smaller animals. Then E’Yahavah can decide which offspring pair we should take from each major kind.”

  Iyapeti said, “I’m worried that the animals have stopped coming.”

  “And what about all the stories we hear about freaks and monsters growing from normal livestock?” Sutara added, her big fawn eyes widening.

  Everyone paused in their work, and gathered around A’Nu-Ahki.

  T’Qinna said, “Those tales spread from Aztlan, Sutara. We did something terrible in the Temple there, and it’s spreading. I wish I knew exactly what. Eventually the same thing will start happening to beasts here. I’m also concerned about why we’ve had no new arrivals for so long. I estimate only half the basic animal kinds are here. Where are the others?”

  U’Sumi arched his brow. “Yeah, Pahp, the other day, a merchant from Kush said that across the Straits freakish parasitic insects and worms afflict entire towns—killing livestock, and even people, from the inside. He said that in many places women have stopped having children altogether. It makes the Temple Red-sore Elixir disaster over here look tame.”

  T’Qinna said, “Most of our animals migrated in from other places. It worries me that the creation codes of the wild ones break down so fast now. How can we know an animal isn’t affected?”

  “Aren’t these freaks pretty obvious?” Iyapeti asked. “I mean, two heads or three legs is a dead giveaway, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not that simple,” U’Sumi’s wife answered. “The plague has many patterns. Some creatures are defective because of an internal malady or something in their brains that causes them to behave self-destructively. Contamination doesn’t always reveal itself immediately.”

  “Maybe that’s what’s happening to people,” Tiva mused aloud. She cast a melancholy stare at no one in particular, and to everyone in general.

  “To some, no doubt,” T’Qinna said. “But with humans the problem is deeper. People made choices to start all this. Causes had effects. Many did not want their Creator as he is, so they dreamed for themselves gods that would tell them what they wanted to hear. After that, they greedily imagined that they knew more than they really could; even as the Watchers came down to breathe life into their delusions. These deformities are only one result of the widespread spirit
ual and ethical breakdown in humanity—not its cause.”

  Tiva gazed at A’Nu-Ahki to either confirm or deny her words, and discovered the others also staring at him.

  “Why do you look at me?” he growled. “Do you think E’Yahavah pushes people away who honestly search for him?”

  Tiva said, “No, but what if they don’t even know enough that they need to search for him? It doesn’t seem as if my generation, who grew up knowing only what the Watchers and the false Seer Clan sects feed them, have much of a chance! Were they just born too late for A’Nu to care?”

  A’Nu-Ahki’s tone softened. “It’s true that they don’t have many chances anymore, Tiva. Time is running out. But they still have a conscience that gives them enough information to sense that they need to search for truth and goodness. T’Qinna knew nothing of E’Yahavah when U’Sumi and I found her, but she knew things weren’t right, and she knew enough try to find out what ‘right’ was. Perhaps we ask the wrong question.”

  “Which question is the right one, my Father?” Tiva used the formal voice because she did not want to seem flippant. She really wanted to know.

  A’Nu-Ahki smiled at her. “Were any of you really looking for E’Yahavah when he found you? I know I certainly wasn’t, not really.”

  “Neither was I,” Tiva said.

  The others nodded too.

  “Yet each of you, in one way or another, wanted to know what was true and good—as far as your abilities to see things at the time went.”

  Tiva scrunched her mouth into a lopsided grin. “That’s an awfully generous way to put it in my case, Pahpi Nu.”

  A’Nu-Ahki hugged her sideways. “I don’t think so. E’Yahavah knows who really looks for truth and who doesn’t. He also knows how to get the truth to those who want it. The trouble with humanity is that the same skills we use to seek truth, we also use to obscure it. The same reasoning that helps us to embrace goodness and knowledge with greater fullness can also rationalize evil with endless mind games.”

  Blackness engulfed Tiva like the web of some enormous spider, that she kept struggling in. “But how can there be so few of us?”

  Pahpi Nu kissed the top of her head, and said, “Since the Curse, those wanting to know truth and goodness are extremely few. Our rescue is a gift, Tiva, not a reward for service. Does the world deserve more chances? Do even we who believe actually deserve the chances we’ve had? I know I don’t. We are all faulty servants at best.”

  Tiva pulled away from him and stood her ground. “But how can we be the only ones, even in a valley full of people who all claim to still follow the Seer? Are people really that twisted inside? Or does E’Yahavah ask too much of his ‘faulty servants?’”

  A’Nu-Ahki threw up his hands, and sat down on a barrel. His voice cracked like the lines on his face. “Can’t say I don’t wonder that myself at times. But I see too much evidence—especially within myself—that people really are that twisted. We must trust at the bottom line that our Creator’s character and purpose is good. He altered the entire cosmos, which he originally created good, to fit our fallen nature, Tiva. That is what the Curse is. He changed it so that we could continue to exist—not to spite us. We could not survive, as we are now, in a cosmos that reflected his white-hot holiness—not for half a second. He did it so he could fulfill the Promise to those who trust him.”

  Tiva’s heart softened. “I want to trust. But trust is getting so hard!”

  A’Nu-Ahki nodded. “Yes, I feel it too. But our trust is not blind. You all know that after Q’Enukki vanished, his sons went to every corner of the world to teach from his books. They each gathered followings—some as far away as Nhod and Aertimikkor. But the world mostly decided—either actively, or by refusing to choose—that to believe would be ‘irrational,’ or ‘sacrilegious’—though what it really amounted to was that belief would be inconvenient. That had awful consequences on later generations, which grew up complacent and self-centered in the face of huge injustices.”

  U’Sumi stared off into space. “Cause and effect. Ideas—or their suppression—have consequences that gain momentum over time.”

  His father nodded. “Unable to silence the Q’Enukkian Renewal with reason or moral integrity, the titans had each of the Seer’s sons murdered where they worked, until only the Ancient and his brother Urugim remained. Then they pretended that any further opposition from us was irrelevant—they had control of the academies after all, and could wait for a few older generations to die off. The Lumekkor elites called it all a ‘necessary evil to keep humanity from stumbling back into the dark ages.’”

  T’Qinna pounded on the stall. “What dark ages? Today there’s no end to the stupid, self-destructive fantasies supposedly intelligent people believe! I grew up under this stuff! Powerful orb networks reinforce the insanity by repetition, while academies condition people to think only in slogans, instead of equipping them to reason! People have no clue how susceptible they are to suggestion when all the orbs say the same things in different stories, through many voices. There’s an illusion of diversity, when in reality the system merely presents varied shades of the same tyrannical demand to conform to the latest Temple fad!”

  The Old Man cupped his chin in his hands, with elbows supported by his knees. “So I ask; does anybody deserve anything—did you? Do I?”

  Tears streamed down Tiva’s cheeks. “What about all the baboes?”

  A’Nu-Ahki raised his head. “Babes, young children, the simple-minded with no ability to understand—perhaps even other innocents that I cannot discern—these shall go to the Fields of Comfort to wait in hope for the Promised Seed, though their bodies will die in World-end. I’m sorry.”

  Tiva stepped over to the barrel he sat on, and hugged the man she would always think of as her true father. “I know. I know E’Yahavah would do differently if the world would let him, too.”

  Iyapeti said, “But what about these monsters and plagues? How can we know which animals are sound if the deformities are not obvious?”

  A’Nu-Ahki stood up again. “T’Qinna is right about the spreading contamination. In fact, it’s worse than she imagines. It flies from the Temple on wings of darkness, in many forms, to penetrate all flesh. Once inside a host creature, it rewrites its creation codes so that the host cannot conceive offspring, except of monstrous deformity and madness. Few places are untouched—few whose generations remain intact—either man or beast.”

  Tiva listened with the others in silence. Even the cattle had ceased to low, and the sheep had stopped bleating.

  That night, she watched the sky by herself from the monastery-fortress’ stone parapets. The heavens had returned to a deceptive normality —minus one planet. Across the keep, past the castle, and up on the telescope ziggurat, A’Nu-Ahki updated his astronomical calculations for the arrival of the broken planet’s debris, which he knew must be spiraling at them across unthinkable distances. While far below, when everything else was quiet, the Earth sometimes moaned in her depths like a grieving mother.

  Q’Enukki watched the planetary rubble gain on the gate-creature, as the inner solar system grew nearer. They appeared to slingshot past the small red planet of L’Mekku, which his enhanced language and time-sense revealed that men would someday call Mars, after a distant future war god.

  Tiamatu’s core fragments also had their course deflected by the planet. Several asteroids in the debris field struck L’Mekku’s surface, one large nickel-iron chunk with a ferocity that sent the entire world into a wobble. The impact penetrated to the planet’s mantle, causing massive amounts of magma and water to out-gas to the surface in multiple volcanic plumes. The largest of these erupted opposite the impact crater—the product of catastrophic energy transmission around the crust—on the planet’s far side. It reared the largest volcano in the solar system. Q’Enukki listened, as future voices named this horrendous mountain of fire Olympus Mons.

  The out-gassing water briefly condensed to liquid form through the cold surface
sand and gravel, carving huge canyon systems in a matter of hours, before it either froze into subterranean permafrost, or evaporated into what was left of the planet’s thin atmosphere. Most of it diffused into space.

  “Will this happen to my world?” Q’Enukki asked under his breath.

  “No,” Samuille said. “Our Master plans for a living Earth. It will return from the ashes like the phoenix, but it will never again be as it was.”

  Again, the faces met inside the great sphere of quickfire and glass.

  At’Lahazh and Psydonu shared space inside the orb that Pandura had installed aboard her private astra. The triangular sub-orbital airship shuttled her back to Temple City Epymetu from her most recent summit talks at Sa-utar with Tarbet. It seemed she practically lived on the thing these days.

  “You have not been completely forthright with us, Pandura,” said Aztlan’s High King, from the far southern vassal state of Aertimikkor.

  Pandura shrugged. “What would you have me say, Lord At’Lahazh? At the time, I felt a conservative estimate was best. I still recommend we wait the full five years. The amount of sacred substance available to us is not the only consideration.”

  Psydonu shook his curly head. “I agree with my son, Pandura. Too many men in the fleet have symptoms. If we wait too much longer, it could jeopardize the entire operation. We must complete the prophecy before the contagion runs its course! How many sacred arrows are in the quiver?”

  “Only one as yet; we must have three for a successful first strike!”

  At’Lahazh roared, “Don’t play the panicky woman; we know what is needed! We also know what you have. Did you think we would give you such latitude without having our own eyes and ears in place?”

  Pandura silently cursed Mnemosynae—their likely spy. Then she realized that Mnemosynae couldn’t be their source—she wanted even more time than Pandura did. In fact, if Mnemosynae had her way there would be only an endless string of delays. It had to be someone else, but she could not give it any more thought now. Pandura decided it was best to come clean, and amend her readiness report. “The second arrow is nearly complete. A third and forth should be ready by year’s end. How is it with the army?”