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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  Farsa tore after him, and pulled him to a stop at the forest edge. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked, panting.

  “It’s him! It’s him!”

  “Who?”

  “The man—the man that came out of the feed market!”

  “Him?” Farsa scowled. “What about him? It’s only Wet Nu!”

  “Wet who?”

  “Wet Nu!” she said, “One of the Lit Wetters—the one with that big ugly ship! He’s the one you scared Tiva into taking up with, remember?”

  Varkun’s disorientation passed. He couldn’t understand why Farsa was so sore at the mention of Wet Nu. “I thought he was somebody else.”

  “I guess! You’d better get back there, and try to salvage what’s left of your business with those two contacts from your boss-man.”

  “Can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t? Those two aren’t exactly the kind you want to cross, Vark!”

  “Look, I’ll deal with it! You told them where to find me, right?”

  “Yeah,” Farsa said. “Up at the Wisdom Tree.”

  Dried garbage littered the near-deserted streets outside Psydonu’s Polar Tower at Thulae—the northern-most tip of Aztlan. The palace where the Titan had received A’Nu-Ahki and U’Sumi almost fifty years ago loomed above the rest of the island in tomb-like silence. Cool arctic breezes blew dried seaweed through what had once been the market square. Maroon sunset marked an hour past noon—the autumnal equinox approached.

  In the lengthening shadows, a few rag-draped figures scuffled over the bloated carcass of a two-headed goat. They seemed to be the beggars one might find in the seedier side of any large city. Here that similarity ended, as they were now sole inheritors of Psydonu’s island metropolis. Still, the children of Ekhid-naa and long dead Typhunu had fallen on hard, lonely times, and not simply because they lacked the physical robustness and prestige of their engineered parents, while they could have no children of their own to care for them in their premature old age.

  Many of similar parentage had fled the Temple’s Genetic Purification Edicts, wandering from one abandoned city to another across Northern Aztlan. This tiny brood had good reason to fear for their lives. Their leader had three eyes, and teeth like a gryndel. Each bore deformities called “stigmata,” which a generation ago would have exalted them to near-deity status. Their dying mother, whom they had housed in one of the nearby buildings, constantly harped about “the good old days” when men used to fear and revere them.

  Men and women were getting scarce now—themselves unsure of their own humanity under the Temple’s increasingly arbitrary genetic purity standards. The three-eyed, gryndel-toothed one had even heard stories of “normals” that had lost their “human” status because their noses or ears were too big or because they couldn’t lose weight or gain it. Not that he had any pity for them. He even knew of a woman who lost her humanity because her breasts didn’t stick out far enough, and she had a slight over-bite. He would love to have witnessed her getting the news in that smarmy conciliatory tone Temple emissaries affected so famously:

  “Aw, there, there now, sweetie, we’re sorry, but you just don’t fill the old scallop shells enough, and while you’re not quite a beaver-face, you do have that slight hint of rodent about you when you smile at just the right angle. It’s a nice smile in its own way, but we have to be sure that it’s a fully human smile—try to understand. Anyway, we, the Sentinels of Human Purity, can’t take the chance, so it’s off to the ovens with you—crackle, crackle, pop—nothing personal, no use playing the weepy bynt now. Be a big girl. After all, who’d want to kiss you anyway?”

  Three-eyed Gryndel Teeth knew one thing well. The Temple gave and the Temple took away. Since the gods were just a Temple fiction, there was no use appealing to a non-existent higher authority. The same Temple that had conferred a demigod’s honor on Ekhid-naa and her kind now realized that too many “stigmata” constituted a plague. The beggar’s parents had lived as kings, but today men hunted them as dangerous beasts. Now that most of the cities were deserted, the thinning population of “clean” people had retreated to the countryside, to revive an agrarian economy with seeds from genetically hybrid fruit that produced poor crops at best.

  Gryndel-teeth, and his small knot of vagrants, looked up at a hissing sound from the dark skies over the calm Polar Sea. A shooting star flared over the ruined arena, and then everything dissolved into white heat that vaporized the malformed beggars before what remained of their brains could even register information from their eyes about this final indignity.

  At four other near-deserted Northern Aztlan port cities, identical mushroom clouds roiled skyward in useless protest. The remainder of the Guild’s limited supply of the Fire of the Gods fell on Far Kush, at suspected supply depots cleared out only hours before.

  Uggu and Avarnon-Set’s answer to the attacks on their bases at Burunatu, Akko, and Kushtahar went virtually unheard.

  Uggu’s First Arch-straticon, a titan named Ahgni, gazed at the great dark ship in the highland valley, his lumpy brow knit with a scowl. The curious raised structure along the vessel’s dorsal line grew into a large fin over a bronzed armored prow, where the twin keels met. Unlike any naval ship, however, the narrow blade of the fin faced amidships, with the wide end squared over the prow—as if its builder had gotten the reason for fins backward. A wide system of empty channels, set-stone culverts, tanks, and sheds around the drydock served no useful purpose the Giant could divine.

  “What’s it for?” he asked his new adjutant.

  The young army Altern explained, “It’s an embarrassing piece of local color. Its builder, like every other yokel in this valley, believes the world is about to end. They all swear by this idea, but none of the fools can agree on how it’s going to happen. Nearby there’s a cave community of several hundred, who think fire will strike the Earth, while up along that ridge yonder you have a city built by those who expect a flood.”

  “Must be some flood—why both a ship and a mountain retreat?”

  The Adjutant said, “The ship’s builder had some kind of a falling out with the leader of the mountain people. The most sensible of the locals—and believe me, that’s not saying much—think that somehow this World-end, as they call it, will spare only their valley. They live in the older part of that town back there, just beyond these culverts.”

  Ahgni tapped one of his six-fingered hands on his giant sword hilt. “The man must be a lunatic. The ship doesn’t even have a rudder, and that fin’s positioned against any headwind. How does he expect to navigate, assuming his waters are more than just a fable?”

  “He thinks their local deity will guide it. He insists the waters are coming to punish the world for its evil and, well…”

  “Go on!”

  “And because of you titans.”

  “You say the local priests and Dragon-slayers oppose him?”

  “They accuse him of sorcery. The odd beast migrations keep trampling their fields. We’re close to the Haunted Lands here.”

  “Is he a sorcerer?”

  The Altern hesitated. “We’re not sure, Lord. Some among both the Archonic Orthodox settlers, and the World-enders—whom the Archon’s people call Lits—claim they’ve seen him walking among the beasts. Some say that he has even led several of the monsters aboard his vessel.”

  “Yes,” Ahgni nodded, “and each day the two fragments of Tiamatu’s heart grow larger and nearer. If you ask me, that fool Archon of theirs has an impossible job, trying to keep a world on the verge of collapse convinced that everything is fixable! People aren’t that stupid. The smart ones get more discouraged the more idiots like Tarbet try to patronize them. I’ve never seen such mass demoralization! Even the best warrior can’t fight long, unless he feels part of a winnable war. That ship sends a message that mocks them. It tells them there’s no hope! I want it destroyed.”

  “Shall I return to base for some men?”

  “No. Go to that villag
e, and ask for volunteers to help burn it.”

  “What about the cave and the ridge city?”

  “No time to bother with those—this ship is the most visible and easily accessible. It will send message enough.”

  Ahgni’s Altern did not have to search long or hard for volunteers.

  Less than an hour later, the soldiers led a mob of about twenty men, including the son of the Chief Dragon-slayer Priest, out to the drydock, carrying torches, and wood spirits.

  If the Shipwright saw them coming, he made no sign.

  The villagers doused the hull and scaffolding generously with the spirits, and laid their fires against them.

  The wood of the scaffold and the final coat of kapar, which had not yet set, refused to ignite.

  “What’s the matter?” growled the Titan. “Give me a torch!”

  Ahgni snatched the firebrand, and shoved it up to a well-soaked part of the hull. The half-hardened globs of kapar would not even melt.

  Then they heard motion inside the ship.

  Ahgni tossed the torch. “Find the door! I want whoever’s inside!”

  The Chief Priest’s son—a thin fellow with sunken cheeks and huge, half-shut eyes— said, “It’s on the other side. I’ll take you.”

  “Hey, Yargat,” said one of the others, “your sister’s in there!”

  Yargat ignored him, and motioned for Ahgni to follow.

  As they rounded the vessel’s bows, the Titan decided to prod his guide. “What of your sister? Why don’t you object to burning her out?”

  Yargat turned his soft, owlish eyes to the Straticon, and said, “She played the whore, bewitched by A’Nu-Ahki’s heretical spells. If she burns, it is only E’Yahavah’s just punishment against her.”

  “This A’Nu-Ahki built the ship?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he a sorcerer?”

  Yargat shrugged. “Some say yes, others no—nobody knows. I think so. How else can he bend people to his will the way he does? All I know is that he’s abandoned the good Work of our ancestor, Q’Enukki the Seer.”

  Ahgni decided to let the matter go before the little muck-viper began to rant about things he really didn’t care to know.

  The towering ramp up the drydock scaffold to the cargo bay door lay before them. A dark, solitary figure guarded the top with arms folded. Stern coal-like eyes glared at the intruders.

  “Is that the shipwright?” the Titan asked Yargat.

  “N-No,” Yargat said. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  A deep rumble shook the earth beneath their feet. Ahgni turned to see a vast cloud of dust billow up from beyond the diversion channel berms.

  The woolly elephants spilled around the breakwaters, and over the inner culverts. Racing outside the herd, was a clan of biped gryndels—the largest of all meat-eating wurms. The dragons were not hunting, however, but butting the trumpeting mammoths toward the ship with their heads!

  Ahgni turned back to the ramp, but found the unknown sentry gone. Instead, a gigantic, scimitar-fanged battle lioness guarded the long gangplank.

  “Run!” the Titan shouted, as he drew his hand-cannon and fired at the battle-cat. The creature retreated up the ramp and into the ship.

  The villagers and his adjutant were already past the pan drain, halfway across the meadow. Ahgni turned and ran after them. He barely escaped being trampled to death, as the elephants and dragons spread out around the ship like grim sentinels summoned from Under-world’s nightmare realm.

  As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,

  Disasters in the sun; and the moist star

  Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands

  Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.

  And even like precurse of fierce events,

  As harbingers preceding still the fates

  And prologue to the omen coming on,

  Have heaven and earth together demonstrated

  Unto our climatures and countrymen.

  —Shakespeare

  Hamlet; Act I, Scene 1

  4

  Muhet’Usalaq

  A’Nu-Ahki had heard what sounded like a hand-cannon from inside the ship. The crew of Barque of Aeons now looked down from the cargo hatch over a herd of grazing mammoths. A pack of gryndels moved away from them, east, back up into the pass, strangely uninterested in the wool elephants. Some striped wyvernas replaced them, rushing down on powerful hind legs from out of the southern foothills. Nu was sure they would attack the mammoths, which were their staple diet. Instead, these other biped dragons began to patrol among them, as if protecting both them and the ship.

  Nu had little experience with this kind of wurm, a slightly smaller cousin to gryndel, only with varied head crests, and longer, more powerful, forward limbs capable of bringing food to its huge mouth.

  “How are we gonna get the Ancient back up to the house?” Khumi asked, breaking the sense of awe.

  Muhet’Usalaq had joined the day’s work party for a change. He had spent the last several hours napping in one of the staterooms. He looked addled, as he leaned on Khumi’s arm.

  “Have any of you seen Mamu?” said the Old Man, speaking of his long-dead wife. “I’m afraid she’ll be late for supper.”

  A’Nu-Ahki had noted his grandfather’s senility since Lumekki died; the biggest sign yet that World-end would come in a matter of weeks. The prophetic contraction Muhet’Usalaq meant when he dies, it shall come.

  Muhet’Usalaq shouted to the mammoths, “Hey, you down there! Have you seen my wife?”

  A’Nu-Ahki’s sons chuckled, until their father eyed them to silence.

  “They don’t hear me either!” said the Old Man. “Are they deaf?”

  Nu watched U’Sumi gaze at the giants, with a bronzed hand keeping wind-blown strands of his black curly hair from whipping into his eyes. “Should I go down and pick out a pair of calves?” he asked.

  “Not without me, you don’t,” T’Qinna said. “The last time you did it yourself, we got stuck with two male ground sloths.” U’Sumi’s wife sidled up, and led him by the arm down the ramp. Her dark brown, gold and red-streaked hair danced in the breeze, revealing symmetrical leopard-swirl body markings on her neck—a legacy of her unknown father’s Nhoddic tribe.

  For weeks, large creatures of every kind had again hopped, crawled, slithered, and trotted up the ramp, each guided into stalls and cages by the crew. All the “missing” beasts converged on Akh’Uzan in sudden new migrations, mainly out of the Haunted Lands. Nu finally understood the reason why so many wurms and other strange creatures had flocked to the jungles of Southern Aeden for over three hundred years now. Doubtless, E’Yahavah had done for the larger, longer-lived animals what he and T’Qinna had for the domesticated, livestock, and smaller short-lived varieties.

  Most of the new arrivals fell into a form of hibernation after eating whatever was set out for them. Those that did not sleep remained oddly docile, and took on a pet-like status with the family.

  Which sub-varieties of each animal kind came for rescue, and which did not, fascinated Nu. Often only one couple from an interbreeding family-kind were represented, maybe two or three at most. These usually arrived in oddly matched pairs—a female from a large-bodied sub-variety with a male from a smaller-bodied one.

  Only hours ago, the cat complement had climbed aboard—a battle-lioness took up instantly with a striped male giant sphinx, which oddly would have nothing to do with T’Qinna’s smaller female sphinx, Taanyx. Taanyx, still good for a few more litters, seemed to be getting fussy in her old age. The only male cat she would allow near her was a spotted pygmy panther little more than half her size. If nothing else, Nu thought, the cat family of the next world will have some quirky new relatives.

  And nightly, the two hemispheres of Tiamatu’s shattered core grew larger, until they appeared as star-studded crescents with the naked eye.

  The Gryphon class attack astras hissed overhead like their screeching namesakes in defense of nest.
The people of Farguti Crossroads, in Lower Akh’Uzan, enjoyed the air show. The town orbs had assured them that the new airships based nearby existed as little more than a precaution.

  Tarbet knew people suspected that the war had badly escalated, but he could do little to stop their speculations. At the local marketplace, he had overheard grumbling about the new travel permits, which forbade use of the Inland Highway any farther south toward Ayarak than Farguti. Nobody without flag rank on Avarnon-Set’s staff, or a direct need to know, realized that an enemy army advanced toward them less than a few days southwest. Refugees flocked north, but always under a heavy guard that forbade them to speak with any of the locals. Tarbet had heard rumors of their being led off to special internment camps in Balimar to insure their silence.

  The Archon had arrived at the new army post with Avarnon-Set in the Guild-master’s all-terrain sun chariot. They both gazed up at the looping astras. Uggu had flown in last night for their emergency meetings.

  Tarbet grew increasingly concerned for his benefactor. “You’ve been silent since we left Sa-utar. Is it true that our divine fire struck Aztlan too late?” If there was any accusation in the question, it was unconscious.

  Avarnon-Set flashed his black-metal eyes down at the Archon, and changed the subject. “That ship up by the mountains—it should be just a fanatic’s folly, but I sense it’s more. I found out today from Ahgni that it was built by the husband of Na’Amiha, the sister of Tubaal-qayin the Great—much of it from materials purchased from me without my even knowing it! First, the little vixen dupes me into setting up her marriage, and now this! I’ve never been had by anyone so easily my entire life!”

  Tarbet had paid little attention to the house of Muhet’Usalaq, since the aforementioned A’Nu-Ahki had promised almost fifty years ago that no genuine spokesmen from the Seer Clan would trouble Sa-utar any further. That hadn’t stopped the occasional unauthorized representative, but since the tribe of Q’Enukki was so fragmented and marginalized from the mainstream, it hardly seemed worth the effort to keep track of them anymore. The cult at Grove Hollow, on the other hand, intrigued him. It seemed to be growing.