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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  Suta didn’t want ‘Peti to experience pain any longer, but she didn’t know how to explain her own loss of emotion. “I still love you. It’s just I can’t feel things so much—just a little. I’m sorry.”

  “So, you only like me a little then?”

  Sutara laughed for the first time. “That helped.”

  He looked like a puzzled golden bear. “What?”

  Suta leaned up and kissed his cheek. “That’s not what I mean, silly.”

  “What then?”

  “I still love you with as much heart as I have,” she answered. “Most of my heart is dead. There’s only just a little there—but I promise, what little is left belongs only to you.” She didn’t say the, who else is there?

  His eyes lit up. “I don’t think your heart is dead. It’s just healing.”

  Suta looked away at the steep cliffs across the water. “I hope so, but I’m not so sure. It’s scary to feel nothing when you make love to me.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Well, sorry, but almost nothing.”

  “Almost nothing is still a little bit of something, isn’t it?”

  She looked back to him. “That’s a good way to see it.”

  He winked. “What do you say we sneak back to our cabin to check on ‘a little bit of something’ before my father decides to put us to work.”

  Sutara was surprised when she felt a little pleasant anticipation.

  T’Qinna gazed off into the sweeping greenish-brown lowlands, her feet planted in the warm brook that tumbled from the mouth of the grotto. The water offset the chill in the wind—a cold unlike the universally mild climate they had all grown up in. Mushrooms and ferns, with a few wild grasses, grew all over the gentle slope—a great pack of sediment that had somehow survived dissolution in the out-rushing waters. The anchorage peak was taller than most mountains in the old world. Even with the thunderous water gone, it still left her breathless.

  U’Sumi said, “We shouldn’t have much problem herding the beasts down this slope, even from this height. There seems to be a natural trail that begins just over there.” He pointed to it.

  “It’s not as bad as I feared,” she said. “The greenish tinges to the lowlands are sprouting ferns and grass—slow growing—but eventually there’ll be plenty of grazing land. I’ve never seen so many mushrooms.”

  “Spore growths have the advantage under cloud cover. I imagine the grass would grow faster if we could get some sunlight,” he said.

  “Perhaps. I’m just glad something’s growing.”

  “I know what you mean,” U’Sumi said, drawing her under his arm.

  Nevertheless, the apparition of a lesser Umara sat between them like a white behemoth. T’Qinna tried not to imagine a world of dark gray skies forested by giant mushrooms, and carpeted with mold-rot meadows.

  A’Nu-Ahki inspected a little hollow Khumi found on the wide upper peak. It nestled just beneath the highest point, opposite a second caldera that had not been visible from the big crater where the ship rested.

  “This is perfect,” he announced. “It’s sheltered from the winds, but open enough that the smoke won’t gather.”

  “Are you sure this is such a great idea?” Khumi asked. “I mean, can’t it wait until the herds give more young? It’s just a few months—we’ll have everything moved to the bottom of the slope, and be settled in…”

  “No. It can’t wait. I’ll offer the first and best—while it’s still the freshest thing in our minds—or not at all.”

  “As you say.” Khumi shrugged. Black curls fell over the doubt in his eyes. “Should I start lugging some broken shelves up here for the fire?”

  “Good idea. I’m heading down to see how the off-load goes.”

  A’Nu-Ahki left his youngest son when they both reached the bottom of the small ravine that gave access to the upper slope. The shore of the volcanic pond had become a trampled mass of baying, bleating, and roaring bodies in fur, feather, and scale.

  By the grotto’s mouth, T’Qinna, Sutara, and U’Sumi tried without success to drive an indolent family of woolly rhinos to freedom through the cave. The rhinos seemed content to take a mud bath in the warm arm of the pond that drained into the outer brook.

  Iyapeti and Tiva led other animals up from their stalls to accumulate outside the ship’s hatch. A’Nu-Ahki had instructed them to release only the herbivores, to give them a good head start on the flesh eaters. Fortunately, with the exception of Taanyx, the carnivores had not proven as prolific breeders as the plant eaters. However, it seemed that the vegetarians’ indifference to their new environment might prove their own undoing if they did not decide quickly to move on.

  Nu muttered to himself, “I wonder if they haven’t gotten too used to the easy life, and figure we feed them better than the wilderness?”

  “They’d better figure again!” said his wife, who had overheard his thinking aloud. She stirred a vat of lentils over an outdoors cooking fire.

  “What can we do about it?” He shrugged.

  “I know some with skins that would make fine tent material!”

  He laughed, until ‘Miha looked up from her fire and glared at him.

  Nu turned, and signaled for U’Sumi and the others to join him. It took some time for them to push through the milling beasts to reach him.

  Khumi emerged from the hatch with a barrow full of broken stock shelves, and began pulling it up the ravine to the tiny hollow near the peak.

  “It’s time to do the offering,” A’Nu-Ahki told the others. “U’Sumi, pick out the best-looking male from the flocks, and from the cattle. T’Qinna, I’d like you to do the same with the doves and poultry. Secure each offering, and lead them up the little ravine to the ridge. Khumi and I are building an altar and fire up there. Fetch everyone else when you come.”

  After they went to their tasks, A’Nu-Ahki turned and followed Khumi up the gully, past the second caldera. He found his youngest son stacking the wood inside the hollow, ready to go back for more.

  They did not speak to each other.

  Nu began to pull some large volcanic stones from the sediment, and stack them in a big semicircle at the center of the depression.

  The wind picked up a little, and the sky brightened. He paused to look up for a moment, and saw the sun’s disk through the thinning overcast.

  “Perhaps today,” A’Nu-Ahki muttered to himself. “Perhaps you return, to warm us for the first time in an age. What are your courses now?”

  He returned to his rock pile. When the meager supply of stones in the shallow cavity depleted, Nu wandered around the summit for more.

  The air rifled his unkempt hair and beard. The foot Nu had broken a year ago, saving Sutara, throbbed as if spikes jabbed into the anklebones. His lower back, where he had fallen during his escape from Temple Epymetu, felt like a quickfire current burned along the spinal cord. It had not bothered him so much during the months when the ship lay at rest, but bending to lift rocks and traipsing across the peak stirred it up like burning dragons. I’ll take some powders after the sacrifice—but not before!

  As the last stone dropped onto the fire pit, Nu heard the bleating of sheep echo up the ravine. The lowing of an ox followed, along with the hushed talk of the others. Khumi headed the procession with one last load of wood. Iyapeti and Sutara led the two large beasts, while T’Qinna carried a dove with an assortment of tied poultry inside a bronze basin. ‘Miha came with a torch from her cooking fire. Last walked U’Sumi, brandishing the sacrificial cutlery forged by Q’Enukki, and handed down from father to son, through A’Nu-Ahki, to him. All fell silent as they approached the hollow.

  Although the air was chillier than any Nu had ever felt in the old world, he still removed his outer clothing down to his loincloth. Slaughtering an ox, then a sheep, was messy work. He did not anticipate how much the cold wind would aggravate his muscle and joint pains.

  A’Nu-Ahki felt old. He was old—gray, withered, tired, old. He had become the most ancient man
in the world hundreds of years before his time. Moreover, half a millennium sat like a fiery mountain range between him and the next generation, uncrossed, uncross-able.

  U’Sumi presented him the cutlery case, and the hood to blind the ox long enough for the blow to fall without fear of the beast goring in its death throes. T’Qinna laid the basin beneath the outside of the altar, but held on to the poultry tethers. ‘Miha handed off the torch to U’Sumi, who placed it under the wood cradled behind the rough semi-circle of stones. Some dried hay provided enough kindling for the pile to take. Nu placed the blinder over the ox, and lifted the ceremonial striking blade over his head.

  “E’Yahavah Eluhar Anu, maker of ten heavens and one Earth, we give you first and best of our flocks and herds,” A’Nu-Ahki cried, “to satisfy the Wergild of Blood that should be shed from our bodies, to pay for the sins of our fathers, and ourselves. We thank you for mercifully granting that we may substitute blood from our flocks, until the Day of Heaven’s Ram!”

  A’Nu-Ahki flexed his sword arm behind his head, and felt a tear in the small of his back. His teeth clenched against the sudden pain, as if the blade had just pierced his own body. He jabbed diagonally, deep into the ox’s throat, straight through to its heart. Before the bull could jerk at the shock, Nu pulled back enough to free the blade from ribs or collarbones, and completed the stroke by slitting the creature’s throat in two practiced fluid motions. The beast shuddered, and then collapsed with its head over the bronze basin, which captured its escaping blood.

  “As the life is carried in the blood, and this life drains out before us, and before you, E’Yahavah A’Nu, E’Yahavah El-N’Lil, and E’Yahavah Who Speaks as a Man, we ask that you remember your provision for the Wergild until the day when it is truly paid by the Ram of Heaven. Cover our sin, and see it not! Give us hearts unstained by Qayin’s mark!”

  A’Nu-Ahki then slit the ox’s belly, and with his son’s help, butchered it. He collected as much of its blood as possible, then poured it over the altar. The divided carcass, with its fat and entrails, he laid onto the now brightly burning wood as a holocaust offering. He repeated the procedure on the sheep, the dove, and the poultry.

  Once finished, Nu sprinkled the remainder of the mingled blood over his family, and painted on U’Sumi’s forehead the encircled cross of Seti’s house, indicating that through him, by sign of prophecy, would continue the line of the Promised Seed.

  Shaky, weak, and barely able to keep from screaming in agony, A’Nu-Ahki then led his family to their knees on the bloodstained ground before the flaring altar. Despite his pain, Nu felt compelled to wait for an objective response from E’Yahavah—something he could point back to in the years ahead that all present would remember.

  A disturbing sensation overcame Nu that he had never experienced before during sacrifice. Normally the smell of burning flesh nauseated him. As weak as he felt, he had feared the smoke would overpower his stomach. It terrified him when the scent of the roasting flesh made him hungry—not just hungry, but ravenous! Am I now a gryndel that I should crave red flesh?

  “My E’Yahavah,” he said, “I cry to you as a father for his children! Watch over my descendants. Please protect them from further disasters in earth, skies, and seas. Thank you for bringing us through. Tell us how you want us to do things in this vast new land.”

  His words trailed off in the breeze. Slowly, the winds on the upper peak increased to a steady howl. Gusts whipped around the hollow, and through cracks in the walls of both calderas. The undulating air and spit-crackle of the fire somehow coalesced into distinct words in a way that reminded A’Nu-Ahki of the stormy El-N’Lil upon vanished Mount N’Zar—only without the fury. At first, it seemed he only overheard, as if the Divine Wind spoke to another, and had allowed Nu’s family to eavesdrop.

  “No, not again,” the Breeze whispered. “I will not curse the ground any further because of Man, because the imagination of Man’s heart—evil it is from youth—from a baby, before he can even speak or remember. Nor will I again strike every living thing, as I have done.”

  A’Nu-Ahki felt his anxiety dissolve. Now he could quiet the murmuring specter of global Umara. The soil below would bear no poisoned fallout. The skies had scrubbed them with water, so that the cold air on his face smelled clean and new. What had, at first, seemed a lonely desolation became a washed land—virgin and rich—waiting to be planted with good seed from the silos and holds of Barque of Aeons. The brisk wind sighed with a contentment that permeated the sacrifice hollow. Heat from the altar brought a measure of ease to Nu’s muscles—enough to get by.

  The airy Voice continued, “While Earth lasts, cycles of seeding and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will not stop.”

  Cold and heat, Nu considered. So the cold will be with us off and on forever. One planting and harvest a year, instead of two—that’s going to slow our growth. Then he remembered the Century War, and the perpetual slaughter humanity’s former abundance had enabled for generations on end. Perhaps it’s for the best. At least there will be some stability again.

  “Helloooo!”

  The call came from the peak above them. A’Nu-Ahki peered up into the rocks, and saw a man scramble down the slope toward the sacrifice hollow. When he reached the ledge above the altar, the newcomer descended no further. The Visitor who had called them all into the ship, over a year ago, sat down on a bank above the fire, and motioned them all to approach.

  Nu circled the altar to where he could stand by the Visitor’s bent knees. The others formed two rows on either side of the burnt offering.

  The man gave a wild laugh. Bright eyes danced with the flame’s reflection. He leaned forward, and placed his hands on A’Nu-Ahki’s head. Then he breathed in the roasting meat aroma, and nodded with approval.

  Nu wondered if the smell of the offering caused his Master to salivate as well. No! Keep a clean mind about you, man!

  “Bear fruit, multiply, fill the earth!” the Word-speaker of E’Yahavah said in what sounded almost like the metered chant of a patriarchal blessing, except that it came out with an intimacy often lacked in the bittersweet overtones of family legacies passed on from human fathers. “From now on, the fear of you shall be a terror to every land creature; and upon all birds of the air, on all that moves out across the earth, and on all fish in the sea. Into your hand they are given. Every animate thing shall be meat for you, just as I have already given you the green plant, so have I given you all things…”

  Nu almost objected. The sons of Qayin ravened after red flesh like the wurm they worshipped! Are we to do the same? Shall we drink blood also? Is this why I now feel hunger at the smell of burning flesh?

  “But flesh with the life still in it, that is, blood; you shall not eat.”

  A’Nu-Ahki’s objection died. He figured, on second thought, that he could get used to red meat if well-cooked, just as he had once acquired a taste for fish. The substance of truth would not change—only the forms.

  The Visitor’s voice darkened as he spoke in archaic prose, “This is the Divine M’Ae—the civilizing authority I grant to you from the heavens. Expect me to hold accountable your blood—your lives. At the hand of every beast that sheds human blood will I hold it liable, and at the hand of a man who does the same. At the hand of every man’s brother, I will require the life of a man. Whoever sheds man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed; because man was made in the image of the Great God…”

  A’Nu-Ahki thought of Qayin, who upon murdering his brother, had demanded, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” I guess we have our answer.

  The Word-speaker removed his hands from A’Nu-Ahki’s head, tilting it upward so they could look each other in the eyes. Such eyes! “So, you bear lots of fruit, and multiply,” he repeated with a laugh. “Bring forth everything you plant, and raise it in multiplying swarms across the earth!”

  “We will,” Nu answered. The others nodded and smiled. It seemed everybody sensed the profound good will of
the moment.

  The Messenger tried to continue, but he had to pause and recapture their attention. “Watch!” he said. “For I set up my pact with you, and with your posterity after you—as well as every living creature among you—birds, livestock, every beast of the land with you that goes out from the vessel.”

  The sun’s disk burned through the thinning overcast onto the peak. Golden white light shot diamond splatters onto the formerly drab ridge. Even the earthen tones took on a brilliance Nu had never seen before. A patch of sky appeared around the new sun, the orb of which seemed smaller and more brilliant than that of the old world. Everyone gasped at the brightest shade of blue any had ever seen. It hurt Nu’s eyes for its shine, as it surrounded the sun with the glory of a newly opened celestial flower.

  T’Qinna cried, “A new heaven!”

  “Who would have imagined a blue sky?” Tiva said, “But I like it!”

  “I will set up my pact with you,” the Messenger repeated. “Never again shall all flesh ever be wiped out by the waters of World-end—indeed never again shall there be a deluge to destroy the whole Earth.”

  The Messenger of E’Yahavah paused, while the break in the sky widened to reveal even richer blues, and tall cotton clouds of which only the steely undersides had been visible until now.

  “This is the seal of the pact I make between me and you, and every living creature with you, for every generation to come.”

  The Word-speaker gestured for them to turn away from him, and the cloud-break. Nu craned his neck to where he pointed, and saw something that left him breathless. Arcing over the Barque of Aeon's caldera stretched the most brilliantly colored mist-prism he had ever seen. Often observed at the base of waterfalls, or among gentle drizzles, or in the morning and evening fogs of the old world, prisms had always been dim phenomena, visible only as playful ghost tints.

  Not so, this shining arch—it had a translucent light of its own, with all colors of the spectrum clearly defined as if divided by a crystal triangle onto a sheet of bleached papyrus. The sheer size of it left Nu’s jaw hanging.