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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  “What E’Yahavah has shut, let no man open until New-world dawns,” commanded the new Archon. “U’Sumi, caulk the seams.”

  A ghastly screech tore through the cargo bay, bringing Nu’s heart to his throat—as if one of the women had somehow impaled herself by leaping from the mezzanine onto a rusty iron stake. Not even when a vultch gryphon had skewered Tiva’s aunt in the Canyon of Terror, mere cubits from Nu’s face, had he heard female wails so disturbing. He turned, and found that the noise trailed off as Sutara ran into the forward sections.

  Everyone stood stunned for several seconds. Then Na’Amiha, T’Qinna, and Iyapeti went after her, while the others remained with A’Nu-Ahki by the door in a quivering silence.

  After Sutara’s muffled shrieks trailed off into distant sobs, a strange calm settled over the ship. Moments stretched into minutes, which multiplied into a half an hour. No sound filtered in from the outside, but A’Nu-Ahki could sense dreadful shadows stretching toward them.

  Then the real noise started.

  It began with the canines—a mournful howl reverberating through the decks in a beastly dirge. Soon all the animals joined in a wild dissonance that drove the humans forward to escape the din. Nu scrambled up the mezzanine ladder, and ran down the ventilation loft, up into the tiny conning shack below the giant wind foil over the armored, co-joined bowsprit. Something was about to happen outside, and he needed to see it, if only for morbid curiosity. He slid the window shutter open. The screeching of the animals faded with distance, chaotic specters echoing from the borders of madness.

  “What am I doing up here?” He shook; an icy knot in his gut.

  Outside, the terrible calm still pervaded. People stirred in the easternmost end of the village. Nu leaned on the windowsill, and watched them with keen interest. A mob formed by the ruins of Henumil’s home.

  “Am I just gloating?” he asked himself aloud. “Do I really still pity them, or is this where I look down with smug self-satisfaction?”

  A hand rested on his shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” U’Sumi’s voice answered. “Does it matter?”

  Nu turned to face his son, as his light-headed inner quiver grew into a full tremor of his hands and head. “Perhaps it should, but I guess it doesn’t. I didn’t want this, you know. I’m so bloody tired of it!”

  Long minutes passed before they both noticed that the beasts had stopped their noise. Nu gazed again at the dying world outside, while his tremors subsided some. The red sky shifted in wavering sheets, as a breeze gusted in from the west to break the foreboding stillness. More than just the natural colors seemed off—the direction of light was all wrong somehow. The noontime sun shone far too low in the south—farther than the deepest winter course too low! It depleted the world of its normal hues, while emboldening the bloodstained skies.

  Sheltered by the ship, father and son watched sudden winds blast into the town’s Lit Quarter. An undulating motion began under their feet, followed by a reeling lurch. The earth swayed, groaning and cracking, as tremendous pressures forced subterranean fluids upward to freedom. Nu gripped the windowsill, and turned his head to the northeast.

  The blast compressed his lungs and hit his face like a hammer of solid air that nearly shattered his eardrums, tossing him back into U’Sumi. Outside, Mount N’Zar’s steep south slope pulsed outward like an evil gray fungus ejecting its spores over the foothills and pass. Another concussion tore through the ground, up through the drydock and decks, through A’Nu-Ahki’s knees, which felt for an instant as if they would explode.

  An avalanche of stone and dirt tumbled over the easternmost part of the village, burying the old trading post and several homes. Falling rubble halted just short of Henumil’s land, where the crowd had gathered at the ruins of Tiva’s childhood home. The wind shifted to carry the screams of villagers, made all the more traumatic to Nu by their familiarity. He had delivered many of them as infants, treated them during the Firefall Raids, watched them grow up, and had fought beside them in the Aztlan War.

  A third set of quakes screeched under the ship, rippling the meadows beyond the stone culverts like water, as they grew more violent. Nu clutched at the sill to keep his feet, as his neck throttled under the energy transmitted through his own arms. He prayed the flexible drydock braces would hold, as he heard U’Sumi fall back against the compass console.

  Sulfurous vapor billowed from the mountain’s shattered southern slope. Volcanic ash began to pelt the ship’s roofing, and started several brush fires in the surrounding meadows. Nu glanced up at the ridgeline to see if Nestrigati’s city had survived the explosion. The houses and main ziggurat appeared miraculously undamaged, well above the crater. The Altar Peak to the south, however, had vanished into the caldera. Roiling clouds of steam-driven ash tumbled though the pass, fortunately funneled by the landscape into the Haunted Lands.

  Nu looked through one of the port ventilation slits for a view in the opposite direction. To the northwest, the sky fell as a shroud; the spreading wings of some escaped dragon from Under-world. Before the western shadow engulfed the sky entirely, A’Nu-Ahki saw two other things that left his heart in his throat—the dim moon had moved outside its course, and seemed covered in circles of fire on one side. The core fragments, leering like slit eyes in heaven, the nearer one bulged larger than the other vanished behind the western darkness. Soon, the remaining sky followed.

  The tremors subsided to a rocking aftermath, as if the ship was already at sea. The village writhed as a kicked-over ant mound, its tiny people rushing about in panic, unable to find shelter from the convulsing earth. A stream of yellow-hot, liquid fire oozed down N’Zar’s fractured south face, blood from the mountain’s mortal wound.

  Flaming geysers vomited from Earth’s tormented bowels through the newly-formed crater. The river of lava found the streambed, which was slightly lower than the shipyard culverts, and swept into the village.

  Masses of refugees had already rushed from town, joined by the mob led by a familiar figure in a brilliant priestly headdress. Henumil marched toward the culverts, and crossed the bridges into the shipyard. Behind him, loomed the towering figure of the Titan Emperor Uggu, with a squad of soldiers taking up positions on the teetering water tower, to aim at A’Nu-Ahki with their high-powered shoulder-cannons.

  A loud report brought Nu’s attention starboard. At the limit of the window’s field of vision, a depression sank into the ground between two of the outer diversion channels. From its middle, a plume of steam shot upward into the gloom, only to fall back onto the ship’s cover as a showering protection against the flaming ash. The hot water‘s tangy brimstone smell reminded Nu of rotten eggs.

  The Earth’s swaying subsided for a moment, as the mob drew near enough for Nu to hear their shouts over the volcano. Farther back, he saw yet another familiar adversary from his past, hunched, with defiant arms folded. Yet wolf-headed Avarnon-Set had long ago lost his ability to terrify A’Nu-Ahki. It almost felt good to see him again this one last time—like getting the last word in a long argument. Nu hated the feeling, but felt it nonetheless. For a moment, their eyes met. Nu then noticed Tarbet, who clung to the Titan from behind, like a terrified child. Of all his enemies outside, only the Oath-breaker’s doom brought real satisfaction.

  A’Nu-Ahki made no effort whatsoever to resist savoring it. He growled under his breath, “You blame me for this? Go on, then, blame me! Rivers of flame cannot fill the void between your imaginary images of E’Yahavah, and the reality of the One who actually is now in his rage against you.”

  Henumil stood below A’Nu-Ahki’s window with a small scroll clenched in his waving fist, his yelling barely audible over the hiss of the geyser. “Come out here and face the righteous charges I bring against you!”

  Nu glared down at the ridiculous priest with a feeling that might have once bordered on pity, but said nothing.

  Henumil ranted, “By the order of Archon Tarbet, son of Atum-Ra Archronos I hereby charge A’Nu-Ahki w
ith practicing the black arts against a devout people!”

  U’Sumi laughed bitterly. “They were sure happy enough to have our ship when it provided jobs during their economic slump.”

  A’Nu-Ahki stared down at them, and narrowed his eyes. “It’s not good to converse with the dead,” he said under his breath.

  Lightning and bone-rattling thunder throttled the smoky skies. The western darkness deepened, as the windows of heaven opened to dump their waters on Henumil’s mob. Flaming streaks screeched through the downpour, shooting stars leaving craters that filled with boiling water. The rain’s fury drove the Chief Priest to the mud, while Avarnon-Set and Tarbet vanished.

  Those nearest the ship threw themselves in close to the hull for protection, but suddenly found themselves washed away, when drainage outlets became jets of water funneled into the drydock trough from the culverts. Only those that made it to the stone-based gangplank, or onto the remaining scaffolds, survived the onrush.

  Henumil huddled on the kapar cement knot around the embedded anchor ring of the ship’s forward tether chain; a tiny island in the midst of the flow. He leaned on the chain’s gigantic rungs, and pulled himself up against the sky’s torrent, baleful eyes locked on A’Nu-Ahki’s window. Huge balls of hail clattered down on the roof, like a stampede of angry unicorns. The Seer Clan’s Chief Dragon-slayer received his answer when a speeding chunk of ice the size of a melon shattered his skull, and dropped him into the hungry swirling mud.

  The Jewish oral tradition says Og, the King of Bashan, stowed away on Noah’s ark and was the only survivor of the flood outside Noah’s family. Og was descended from the Nefilim, deities who fell from the heavens.

  —Rabbi Yisrael Herczeg, on an ancient Midrash

  7

  Stolen Time

  Satori had heard the explosion of Mount N’Zar, and left his house only moments before a river of magma swept it away in liquid flame. His concubine Petara, who had gone back inside for her luck charm, had not been so lucky.

  Covering his head against the firestorm, he stumbled across the quaking meadowland, glad that A’Nu-Ahki’s invitation remained open.

  When he noticed the angry Lit mobs massing out of the village rubble, however, Satori quickened his pace, and circled around the shipyard from the other side to avoid them. He made it to the top of the loading ramp just as the rains began to fall.

  Wind and hail shredded the trees above the hundred or so Grove Hollowers caught in their long walk back from an overnight group encounter with the Helpers up at the Wisdom Tree.

  Farsa now wished she had taken Tiva up on her invitation to join A’Nu-Ahki’s family. His sons aren’t bad looking, and it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d shared a man—or a woman.

  She huddled under Varkun’s arm, as the band of young people plodded from tree to tree to avoid the falling ice balls. The forest floor got muddy as they crossed dozens of new streamlets. Varkun kept loping ahead, yanking Farsa along.

  Last night’s Encounter had not gone well. The Helpers had hovered around as always, but had done nothing to stop the infighting. The usual sensations of harmony and well-being had been conspicuously absent.

  Sariya had led the Witchy Girls in a shouting match against Tsulia and Moon-chaser, accusing them of pandering to the Archon, which had made Farsa’s brother fighting mad. Farsa, having made the same accusation to Tsulia’s face not long ago, now had second thoughts after seeing where Sariya wanted to take things. Varkun wisely kept silent—probably to cozy up with, and manipulate, whoever won the debate.

  Silliness had given birth to stupidity, then name-calling, until the Witchies had demanded that all the women do some stupid ritual to appease their Helper—who kept communing with one of the newer girls in a way that made her shriek and sob the whole night. Sariya had insisted that the women all shave their heads, and take Leviathan tattoos on their faces. Tsulia had shouted her down, and Moon-chaser had joined his wife—probably because he didn’t want to fool around with a bunch of uglified bald girls.

  Tsulia had won out when she finally asked Sariya why she didn’t just cut off her other breast if she hated being a woman so much. The other girls, except some hardcore Witchies, had sided with Moon-chaser and his wife after that—including Farsa, who wondered how things had gotten so ridiculous over the years. Sariya adds another layer to being out of control!

  The hail let up, and they were able to make better time. Farsa broke free of Varkun, and pushed ahead on the trail, after her brother and Tsulia.

  Moon-chaser turned, and called back to the others over the rain, “I think we should head for shelter at my tree-house!”

  Varkun called out in agreement.

  Farsa would have preferred something on the ground. Even the forest giants whipped back and forth in the savage winds.

  Another explosion from Mt. N’Zar halted them all in their tracks. Farsa could not see it because they were under the mountain’s opposite face, but the noise buckled her knees through the earth like a sledgehammer. The girls—and many men—screamed when the hilly ground began to ripple.

  Tiva was right! This is World-end! Farsa dared not shout it.

  Moon-chaser’s sister suddenly recalled one of her first conversations with Tiva, on that very same trail, a few decades ago. Neither girl had been serious back then, but something in the air, near the place where the sky chariot had supposedly taken Q’Enukki into the heavens, had gotten to them.

  Tiva had explained to Farsa something strange about the Ancient One, who lived nearby at the castle of A’Nu-Ahki—the man the Hollowers called ‘the Old Crow’; “Q’Enukki’s Retreat was originally built by Q’Enukki the Seer. According to history, he named his firstborn son, ‘Muhet’Usalaq,’ which means, ‘When This One Dies, the End will Come’… When he dies it will be the end of the world!”

  Farsa remembered her response. “Oooh, that’s creepy! So that’s why all the Lits live here in Akh’Uzan?”

  “Something like that,” Tiva had answered.

  Farsa’s next words had surprised even herself back then, but not now: “So if I live here too, I’ll also survive the end of the world?”

  The Voice that answered Farsa’s thoughts came both from inside her madly pumping heart, and from deep beneath the shaking earth. “Living here will not keep you from dying in the waters. It is too late to take Tiva’s offer.”

  “So why bother with me now?” Farsa hissed through clenched teeth; too scared for it to register that she wasn’t speaking to any of the Hollowers.

  “I give hope beyond death to whomever I will.”

  “So why give it to me? What did I ever do for you?”

  The quake subsided. Then a white-hot flare hissed down through the trees and struck the hillside with a big explosion. “Worse than nothing! You have repeatedly opposed the very life I self-evidently designed you for, chasing impulse after bizarre impulse, as a slave to increasingly warped desires, all the while arrogantly insisting that you knew better than I.”

  Something in Farsa softened. “I know I’ve lived like a pig.”

  None of the drenched walkers heard her over the wind’s howl.

  “Do you wish to die like one?”

  “No!”

  “If you could still take Tiva’s offer, would you?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then trust me, and do as I say. There will be pain, but the hurt will be brief, and you will have peace, with the love you have needed all your life afterward.”

  Farsa was tired of fighting, tired of the cycles of rage and despair.

  They arrived at Moon-chaser and Tsuli’s tree house to find the nearby brook a roaring torrent that had undermined the giant maple’s roots, and brought everything down.

  Farsa knew then what she must do. She pulled her brother and Varkun together, and shouted, “I think we should go to Q’Enukki’s Retreat! It’s empty, and there’s shelter there built of stone!”

  Belkrini, World-end Seer of E’Yahavah’s Fiery Breath,
felt vindicated by the rising heat in the cavern, even after the quakes. So far, none of the chambers had caved in. He had hired mining engineers to assess the grotto’s structural integrity before building there, and it had paid off.

  Earlier that week, Belkrini had feared reports by his surface sentries of rain for several days in a row. The word, as of a few minutes ago from the young man sent up to investigate the growing noise, was that flaming ash fell from the sky. The Seer of Fire has had the true message all along!

  Nevertheless, the noise out of the moving earth continued to grow.

  Belkrini soon noticed that the heat, rather than radiating down from the cavern’s roof, seemed to come up through the floor.

  The “World-end Seer of E’Yahavah’s Fiery Breath” got what he wanted in the end—after a fashion. The blast of super-heated sulfur dioxide exploded through his cavern and flash-burned every member of Belkrini’s cult to ash in a fraction of a second. The magma that swelled into the chamber a moment later only served as overkill.

  Never did any of them see even one drop of water.

  Nestrigati gripped the sides of the main ziggurat’s south exit as the ground shook beneath him. The wind howled mere cubits from his face like enraged gryndels. He felt many sets of eyes burn into his back, from the people that had made it to the ziggurat in time to escape N’Zar’s eruption. The hottest gaze came from old Farguti, who did not have to say, “I told you so.”

  Outside, the southern third of Floodhaven had just tumbled off into the chasm made by the volcano’s explosion. With it went the storehouse, and its barn. Nobody now had more than a day’s ration of food.

  What happens when I try to confiscate and re-distribute the little that is left? Nestrigati did not really want an answer.

  He suddenly realized that having his back turned on a room full of his followers could prove more dangerous to him than the storm outside.