Na’Amiha’s shrill voice pierced even the tempest outside. “Nu, Sutara’s trying to open the big door!”
Nu and U’Sumi raced aft, down the mezzanine ladder, back to the main hold. They found Iyapeti, ‘Miha, and T’Qinna on the deck, grappling with Sutara to pry her hands from the first locking bolt. Khumi and Tiva maneuvered to the rear and tried to pull Suta away by her kicking feet.
“We’ve got to let him in!” Sutara screeched, as she released the bolt with one hand and clawed at the others.
A’Nu-Ahki then heard the muffled screams from outside, and recognized Satori’s panicked voice.
Of the Lits that had come out with Henumil, Yargat dove first for the ramp’s cover when the waters began to fall. He, with two companions, made it to the shelter of the vessel’s eaves, at the top of the ramp, before the roof run-off became too great to fight. The remainder huddled against the drydock frames, or else were trampled, and swept into the fan-shaped pan drain behind the ship’s stern for trying to press in.
Yargat and his friends were not alone on the upper gangplank’s crowded haven. Satori had climbed the plank just before the rains, and now pounded on the giant hatch, crying for admittance.
Yargat smiled. Sniveling coward had no use for World-end, and now it looks like World-end’s got no use for you! A nasty idea seized him.
Yargat pulled his companions close, and asked them, “What should we do with this traitorous, Khavilak-loving dung eater?”
Both men took the signal, and grabbed Satori in a rough arm lock that spun him around to face Yargat, who brandished a knife.
Satori said, “Please, I don’t want any trouble!”
“I’ve seen him often with A’Nu-Ahki’s clan!” Yargat shouted. “I say we toss him over the side!”
“No, wait! My daughter’s inside! I can get you in!”
Yargat’s lips curled. “All right then; get us in!”
“You have to promise not to kill me or my daughter if I do!”
Yargat laughed into the storm. “Is this the noble Satori, who stands by his higher conscience against the violent God of us poor ignorant followers of Q’Enukki?” He punched Sutara’s father in the gut. “Tell us, O wise prophet of this softer, gentler E’Yahavah, what of the others?”
Yargat stroked his blade suggestively.
Satori dropped his head and sobbed. “Do what you want to them.”
Muffled voices shouted outside the cargo door, beside Satori’s.
“You’ve got to let him in!” Sutara cried. “After all, he came, didn’t he? Isn’t E’Yahavah all-loving, all-forgiving? My father came in the end!”
“Those other voices outside sound hostile,” A’Nu-Ahki replied. “E’Yahavah shut the door for a reason. We’d have to break it down to reopen it. I saw at least a squad of Uggu’s elite soldiers, armed with automatic hand-cannons, from the window. Even with each of us armed by hand-cannons from U’Sumi’s collection, we could not hold the hatch against so many. I’m sorry.”
“You can’t do this!” Sutara shouted. “It’s murder!”
Nu watched his daughter-in-law’s faith die a violent death in her eyes. “I hope someday you can forgive me.”
Sutara shook the locking bolt and wailed into the storm.
Iyapeti pressed on his wife’s fingers until she released the bolt.
The others hoisted Sutara up from the deck.
“Take her forward,” A’Nu-Ahki said.
He shared something akin to her torment, but could not indulge the luxury of showing it right now. Uranna and ‘Nissa hopelessly lost—my only children from Emzara…
Sutara struggled against her husband, U’Sumi, and T’Qinna. “No! Please don’t leave him! Don’t leave my Pahpa out there to die alone!”
Nu watched them drag Suta away, and slumped against the hatch.
After the shipyard’s water tower collapsed, taking Uggu’s soldiers with it, the Titan Emperor managed to gain the starboard scaffolds against the ship, just forward of the ramp. Then the rains became a torrent that not even his size and muscle could long resist. He climbed above the ship’s waterline, where the septic waste scuppers lay open.
Uggu watched with keen interest to see if the men on the now wobbly gangplank would succeed in getting aboard.
“You can’t get us in!” one yelled, barely audible over the storm.
“No wait! Give me more time!” said another fellow held fast by two thugs, who were apparently in league with the first man.
Another earthquake hit. The growing sinkhole on the ship’s starboard side reached the stone base of the dock platform, which supported the ramp. The shift in weight distribution made the gangplank frame lean outward from the hull. It drew the struggling men into the pounding run-off from the eaves. The men before the closed hatch fell to their deaths in a clatter of collapsed timber, barely audible in the growing typhoon.
Uggu felt his own scaffold leaning out into the torrent from the eaves. He leaped for the ship’s hull, to a squat pylon between the opened waste scuppers, and pulled his legs up to brace his feet on the end of the slot-shaped hole. Now able to support his weight, he jammed himself headfirst inside the starboard septic duct as far as he would go. A smaller man might have made it all the way in. With no other survival option left open, the Emperor of Lumekkor began to scream upward through the foul-smelling hole that led to the starboard flushing latrines.
Tarbet had heard the details about Floodhaven from the people of Farguti Crossroads, who told him that their wealthy zaqen had financed the place. The Archon had stared up at the crest-top city only moments ago, and seen that it had survived N’Zar’s eruption, straddled, as it was on a line of peaks well north of the new volcanic caldera, and far above it. The access trails were also on the sheltered northwest slopes.
When the rains intensified, Tarbet ran with Avarnon-Set back into Henumil’s village in search of shelter. They found most of the buildings ruined from the earthquakes. The Titan grabbed a broken door from its shattered frame, and held it over their heads just in time to escape the hail. It was then that Tarbet reminded him of Floodhaven.
“It’ll be a tough climb, but it’s worth a try!” Avarnon-Set said.
When the hail stopped, they circled the volcanic slag mound that covered the base of what used to be the trail to Grove Hollow, Q’Enukki’s Retreat, and Floodhaven. N’Zar remained intact on that side, with the lava flows running through the village from out of the pass. Tarbet and Avarnon-Set crossed the river of hissing, rain-cooled magma paste on a fallen tree trunk. From there, the trail remained passable, while the giant trees offered shelter for most of the way against the typhoon’s full force.
They trudged uphill through the cold torrent for more than an hour, eyes down at the eroding path. Avarnon-Set grabbed Tarbet’s shoulder and pointed up at a darkened fortress that loomed over the cliff above the trail.
“That’s Q’Enukki’s Retreat!” Tarbet shouted. “We can rest there!”
The cliff face ran in dreadful cascades that threatened to wash out the trail at any time. The refugees fought through by clutching the rock wall behind the falling water, or crawling in the running mud. When they reached the gate, they found it open. Tarbet stumbled across the castle keep, and fell inside the great stone-block hearth hall from exhaustion and chill.
He was glad to lower his voice. “Maybe we can stay here!”
Avarnon-Set closed the doors behind them. The ceiling leaked in streams in some places, where the earthquakes had damaged the structure. Yet there were still many dry spots on the floor. “I’m not sure it’s sturdy any more. I doubt A’Nu-Ahki left any food,” he said.
Tarbet began to explore the adjoining chambers. The pantry and scullery were bare, except for two hard loaves of moldy bread. In the hall, he noticed a foul odor from one of the back chambers. He pushed through the rooms until he found the source.
A divan sat in the shadows of the last room, where the odor was strongest. Lightning flashed in the wind
ow, and Tarbet screamed. A face with a hideous death grin, writhing in maggots, mocked him from the bed.
Avarnon entered, and laughed at the cause of Tarbet’s fright.
“Here lays the legendary Muhet’Usalaq,” the Titan said. “Looks like the great divine prank is on us, eh Tarbet?”
The Archon felt the bile rise in his throat. It was more than just a nightmare—his entire framework for reality caved in around him. The ultimate, unthinkable cruelty shattered Tarbet’s sense of what was right and fair. “We believed this way as children! Why would E’Yahavah absolutely litter the cosmos with evidence against the old interpretation of the obelisks, and then trick us by bringing them to pass after all! It’s not right! This can’t be real! We disproved this possibility centuries ago!”
Avarnon-Set roared with laughter. “What are you ranting of now?”
“The evidence—our sages said World-end couldn’t happen—not enough water! Not enough air for such a fire! You said it couldn’t happen!”
“Why’s it impossible?” the Titan said. “Sages are often wrong!”
Tarbet suddenly realized that he had merely accepted repetitive claims from popular sages without ever questioning their assumptions or the reasonable limits to what they could know. He shoved it from his mind by force of habit, and changed the subject. “What a savage this A’Nu-Ahki is to leave his ancestor there to rot!”
Avarnon laughed even harder. “I rather admire his sense of irony.”
A noise from back in the hearth room silenced them.
Somebody had just shoved open the front doors.
‘Miha had just taken a few seconds away from the ongoing attempt to calm Sutara to relieve herself. As she reached to use the rain-catch flush system to clean out the scuppers for the first time, the final stroke of that terrifying day came up to her.
Her latrine pleaded for help.
She dropped the chain pull without using it, and counted to five so she wouldn’t scream. I will not be a hysterical woman!
“Please help me!” whined the latrine.
‘Miha took two steps toward the door of her stateroom, and then scurried out onto the mess deck. Her husband, alone and seemingly in a daze, occupied himself there with building a fire in the central stove.
“Nu,” her lips quivered, “there’s a man under our water closet.”
A’Nu-Ahki’s tired eyes reflected something between laughter and tears, as he followed her back to their privy room.
“Don’t open the purge valve!” a coarse male voice pleaded from deep inside the septic system.
Nu called down through the hole, “Who are you?”
“Do you promise not to flush me?” said the voice.
“No promises! Tell me who you are!”
“I’d be a help to you if there’s some way you can pull me up through these ducts! I promise, I’ll be your slave, and I won’t trouble you anymore!”
‘Miha felt that on any other day this would have almost been funny.
Nu rolled his eyes. “What do you mean by, ‘you won’t trouble us anymore? What kind of trouble have you been?’”
The voice in the latrine hesitated. “I… ah… Just don’t flush me yet if I tell you, okay?”
“All right, I’ll wait two minutes if I decide you need to go.”
“That’s fair! I know this is going to sound funny, but I’m Uggu. You know, the one who really liked the way you slew that gryndel long ago?”
“I know who you are.”
“Remember, you promised not to open the purge valve right away!”
“Well, you’re not coming aboard, so what do you want me to do?”
“I can accept that! It’s not so bad down here once you get yourself wedged in just right. How about this; you all just use your port latrines, and every once in a while—whenever you think of it—just toss me a scrap of bread and some water now and then? I’ll be very grateful!”
A’Nu-Ahki shook his drooping head, but ‘Miha saw the prophecy in her husband’s blue eyes. “Face it, Uggu, your time is up. From now on, Uzaaz’El will be a wandering spirit in the desolate places. In fact, your father will be stuck in a situation similar to yours. The people of a special nation that E’Yahavah will create in the last days shall ceremonially lay their sins upon the head of a wandering goat each year. They will drive it out into the wastes where only Uzaaz’El dwells, banished and alone. The very name of Uzaaz’El shall come to mean like a rebellious goat in their language.”
“That can’t be so! I won’t let it be so!”
Nu’s eyes became ice. “As your father shall join the spiritual refuse of that future nation; so you now join our waste. Your time is up, Uggu. A prison of mud hardened to stone awaits you in the deep.” A’Nu-Ahki pulled the purge lever, and held it until the Giant’s shrieking stopped forever.
Tsulia watched Moon-chaser push the great doors open, and wished more than anything that Tiva would still be there to greet them.
“See, I told you it would be empty!” Farsa shouted over the storm.
The survivors of Grove Hollow filed into Q’Enukki’s Retreat. Tsulia shivered under Moon-chaser’s arm, clinging as if to suck from him any warmth she could. All she got was the nervous energy of his last mushroom.
Moon whispered hungrily in her ear, “Let’s go to one of the back rooms where I can heat you up good.”
“Now?” she said. Tsuli’s rush of boldness from her victory over Sariya at the Wisdom Tree had dissolved like sugar in the storm. She hadn’t had a draught of her Girl’s Elixir in over a week, and suddenly felt the confidence deficit like a hole in her stomach. How can I become a Speaker to the Helpers, as the Archon wants me to be, if I can’t even keep my nerve?
The doors closed behind them.
“Come on, girl, it might be our last chance!” Moon’s voice pined in a manner that always made her feel guilty somehow.
“Are you sure the Helpers will pick us up?”
He frowned. “Here or up at Floodhaven. Now come on!”
Tsuli dropped her half-shut eyes to the floor, and let her dripping near-black locks fall over her face. Moon-chaser led her out of the crowded hearth room, into an adjoining back corridor. Everybody seemed to watch them slip away in the fading half-light. She felt Farsa and Varkun scowl at her, although she knew in her mind that they probably didn’t even care.
What does it matter? If I don’t go with him, he’ll just find another.
Tsuli noticed that the Youngblood girl she had caught him with was still among them. That bynt is looking at us too! She wants him, and he’d go with her just to punish me. He knows I won’t stray. He knows I’m still too Orthy! One of these days, I’ll surprise him good! But Tsuli had been telling herself that for years. The truth was, in spite of his wandering, Moon-chaser had stuck by her in his own odd way. Not even her contact with Sa-utar had done that—the Archon’s directorate had replaced him last year.
She knew that the other Grove Hollow men would never have stayed with her after the Monster. Moon and she shared that horror like a bond of steel. Tsulia couldn’t help the feeling—instilled by an upbringing she could not shake—that for good or evil, she and Moon were joined for life. If only I could get over that!
With nothing else left to her, she cuddled into Moon-chaser, and tried to mean it. The next room swallowed them like a cave dragon.
Moon-chaser savored the power his wife’s Orthy guilt gave him—especially when she couldn’t take that Girl’s Elixir her academy marms had given her. She needs me more than I need her, and now she knows it again! The Face from the Edge of Madness could not win as long as Moon had control—even if it was just over little-girl-still-playing-dress-up Tsuli.
They tumbled onto the floor, as darkness enveloped them.
Then Moon-chaser sensed another presence in the room, beside his wife. His eyes shot up into the blackness at the sound of a cocking hand-cannon. Tsuli trembled beneath him, as a huge blackness filled the chamber like a living shadow.
“I am Avarnon-Set, and with me is the Archon,” a voice answered.
Moon-chaser laughed. “Yeah, and I’m Uzaaz’El!”
The Titan stepped out of the darker shadows. His feral eyes gleamed phosphorescent red, like some gigantic night predator. “When my father takes form, it is more imposing than yours, boy.”
Moon-chaser’s cherished sense of control fled.
Another form emerged from behind Avarnon-Set, like a ghost. Moon recognized Tarbet from the village orb. There was no mistaking that chin, even when it quivered.
Tsulia squirmed out from under Moon, re-did her clothes, and crawled toward the Archon on all fours. “Eldest Father!” she bawled, pawing at his knees. “Save us!”
For a moment, Tarbet seemed as repulsed as Moon-chaser by her. However, when the Archon got a better look at Tsuli’s goods through her soaked wrap, Moon noticed that he quickly changed his face—his chin stopped quivering, and his shoulders straightened.
“Of course, my Daughter,” Tarbet assured her in what Moon-chaser figured was his finest “sympathetic elder” voice.
Avarnon-Set said, “How many people are in the outer room?”
Moon found his tongue, “Ahh, about a hundred, your Excellency. Sorry about my earlier…”
The Titan didn’t let him finish. “We wish to speak with them.”
Tsuli got up and scurried into the main room ahead of them—Moon thought like a blemished lamb spared from sacrifice. “The Archon’s here! It’s the Archon! E’Yahavah’s sent him to save us!”
“Shut up! You sound worse than a Lit!” Moon-chaser said, as he led Avarnon-Set and Tarbet into the main room. He slid in next to a Youngblood girl he had recently slept with, just to punish Tsuli for embarrassing him.
The Titan seemed to fill the room. “You all know who I am, and I’m not terribly interested in who you are, so I’ll make this brief. I’ve checked the ceiling of this building thoroughly, and I’m convinced it will not survive another earthquake. On the northern peaks, opposite N’Zar, is Floodhaven. There is food, warmth, and real shelter up there designed to weather this… ah, storm. Still, our chances of all making it are slim, even if we stick together. The trail is probably already washed out in some places, not to mention possible exposure to more ice stones, and landslides.”
The Tides of Nemesis (The Windows of Heaven Book 4) Page 17
