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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  A’Nu-Ahki asked, “What did you say to her, and why?”

  “I sensed that Tiva’s family had somehow wounded her horribly—I think we all did at one time or another. I told her she should not try to break the cycle started by her wounding without help. She assured me she did not intend to repeat her parent’s sins against her own daughters. I think she was sincere, and still is.”

  The Patriarch said, “My only question for Tiva is, what about repeating it on your sons?” Then he saw his wife’s finger raised, and realized that he had cut her off. “My apologies, Mother. Please continue.”

  ‘Miha said, “I don’t condemn you, Tiva. I remember what it was to be an object of scorn in your father’s community. They called me ‘whore’ and a ‘sorceress’ long before you were born. Certainly, what you did was wrong and lacked self-control, but it is not past learning from, nor past forgiving and healing. I counsel mercy in your case.”

  Tears ran down Tiva’s face.

  A’Nu-Ahki could not tell if she felt picked-apart in a family feeding frenzy, or if ‘Miha’s soft tone had successfully eased the gravity of her words. He desperately hoped for the latter. How now do I walk the line between meddling in-law, and Archon—roles strained by mutually exclusive demands?

  Nu rubbed tired, dust-filled eyes. “Mother’s words are well taken. I think we should spend a week here before moving on. The husbands should meet together and the wives also. We need a time of healing.”

  Khumi scowled. “What of winter? There’s no time for this!”

  “As for my judgment,” A’Nu-Ahki continued, ignoring his youngest son’s outburst, “E’Yahavah has been merciful to us all in preventing an even greater outbreak of evil among us.”

  Khumi clenched his fists, “The animals need wider pastures!”

  A’Nu-Ahki glared at him. “Be silent! We cannot overlook the seriousness of what happened, but we can be thankful that we need not invoke the Pact against Tiva! Your wife has always been a good contributing member of our clan! Certainly the wounds inflicted on her in youth help us to better understand the events of last night, if nothing else.”

  “What about my son?”

  A’Nu-Ahki looked down at the boy. Khana’Ani’s large eyes stared into space, as if all the talk had nothing to do with him. Nu wondered what went on behind those eyes—dead shark eyes misplaced in one so young. Nu had never noticed that in them before. Hovering behind the boy, his twin sister, Rhea, had eyes that seemed just as empty. They somehow frightened her grandfather on a visceral level he could not explain. Her dull black hair was unbrushed, and her face dirty. It seemed that Tiva had let her duties slip a little at least; I wonder how much? Is there something to Khumi’s rage?

  Nu spoke; “Be that as it may, we are responsible for our actions, and there are consequences to every choice we make—especially our failure to make a choice when one is called for. Tiva shall undergo special instruction with my wife in a secluded place during this week of rest. In addition, Tiva shall publicly apologize to the lad, and explain to him the impropriety of his actions. As for the future correction of the boy, to protect him from further weakness in his mother, it is my judgment that when he misbehaves, he should be taken to his father.”

  Khumi raised an eyebrow with his hands. “What?”

  Nu continued, “Khumi shall correct Khana’Ani with the switch only on the soft seat of his behind, where it will sting, but not wound. At that time, both mother and father shall then embrace the child tenderly until the weeping stops. This shall be done diligently, with self-control, the first time the boy knowingly misbehaves. It must never be done because of boyish accidental mishaps, or parental irritation. Tiva shall also do the herding duties of Khana’Ani for six months, because of the wounds. This is the judgment I give as a delegate of A’Nu, as clan patriarch.”

  Winter never ended, the year Anchorage Mountain blew. Heavy snows and biting winds howled, with no thaw, for three consecutive years.

  A’Nu-Ahki reluctantly ordered the aerodrones disassembled and stowed, as best as could be managed, after spring never came that first year. The Clans took shelter in a network of caves amid the narrow canyons far beyond the string of small river lakes that U’Sumi had spotted from his aerodrone before the first winter. They averted starvation only by slaughtering most of their flocks and herds. Fortunately, the cavern system contained hot springs, as there was no fuel for fire in the frigid desolation outside, and too few animals remained to provide much dung.

  Fish teemed beneath ice-crusted rivers, but each year, the tiny remnant of humanity had to wander farther afield to keep from over-fishing the streams nearest the heated caves. Only the fourth year after the fire-mountains erupted brought enough summer sunlight to lay in a small crop of tubers in melt patches, and in the fifth through ninth years, additional swaths for barley. It was not enough without the fish, however.

  Despite harsh conditions, the Clans experienced a boom in new births. Holed up in the caves most of the year, there was little else to do for the growing number of young couples but make babies. Unfortunately, the infant mortality rate also rose sharply for the first time.

  The Zaqenar met inside a small grotto—one with a particularly steamy hot spring for Nu to soak his screaming legs in, while he and the other seven “First-born” conferred. Actually, there was little real business—just hunger pangs from strict food rationing. The smell of the highly mineralized water was the best appetite suppressant A’Nu-Ahki could think of, and being there simply killed two wurms with one lance.

  Khumi held one of the remaining glow-stone lanterns taken with them from the World-that-Was. His sleepy eyes brooded in the pale blue light, while his shaggy hair and thin beard made craggy shadows like ghostly river gullies running down his face. “So, uh, could someone please refresh my memory again—the Divine M’Ae did say something about ‘winter and summer;’ not an endless winter? I did hear that right, didn’t I?”

  Nu was too tired to smack the back of Khumi’s head again. Even if he had the energy, he could not have guaranteed enough control to prevent his youngest son’s brains from flying out through his eye sockets.

  U’Sumi answered, “The Messenger of E’Yahavah said, ‘summer and winter,’ plus a cycle of some other ‘cold and heat.’ We’ve been over this before. We had a summer of sorts last year, which was longer than the tiny thaws we got over the previous six years. It’s getting better slowly.”

  Khumi rolled his eyes. “Maybe, but I’m feeling just a little cheated. Haven’t you noticed that this year’s thaw is over two weeks late? Wasn’t the deal supposed to include a summer every year? We missed several, at least, somewhere along this migration, and it’s supposed to be that time of year.”

  A’Nu-Ahki knew he should have silenced Khumi, but what good would it do? The pattern was getting as tedious as the drifts of endless snow.

  T’Qinna said, “We’re trapped in the highlands. The thinner air since World-end doesn’t hold heat as well. That makes high altitudes cold, instead of like before. I’m sure it’s been summer in the emerging lowlands.”

  Khumi laughed. “Oh, you mean in that restored Orchard of New-world where we used to see the giant waves destroying everything in their path every few weeks or so, from the safety of our aerodrones—which, by the way, are now losing their surface webbing to mold? Um, have any of you noticed that this new Aeden seems to raise more questions than it answers?”

  Nu had had enough. “Shut up, you whiny little stoat, for the love of the Ten Heavens! Life wouldn’t seem so hard if people didn’t expect it to be so bloody easy! Maybe the world needs a few decades to work itself out or something; it’s only been totally torn up and re-laid, after all! The summers during the cold cycles must not be as pleasant as in the warm ones! Such inconvenience, being rescued from the end of the world—sorry I couldn’t arrange the sweetbreads on your pillow! But what do I know? I’m just the old guy who listened to E’Yahavah and built a ship!”

  A scraping of
gravel brought everyone’s attention to the grotto’s exit into the main chamber. One of the young men crouched in the opening.

  Iyapeti said to him, “What is it?”

  “Bad news. The fishing party returned with only a tiny catch. They had to stop to search, when Rhea wandered off in the snow. Arrafu told the rest to wait while he tracked her. He said that if he didn’t return by an hour before dusk, for them to go back without him. He didn’t return.”

  U’Sumi jumped up, and nearly hit his head on the low cave ceiling. “They’ll freeze to death out there after dark!”

  A blizzard hit on the night after the first day of searching for Arrafu’Kzaddi and Rhea, obliterating any footprints in the snow. U’Sumi had followed Arrafu’s tracks across the frozen lake to where the fishing party had lost track of Rhea. A break in the ice had stopped him cold, fearful that he had found where his son had fallen through to his death.

  The snowstorm lasted four straight days, completely reshaping the drifts amid the maze of narrow canyons beyond the thermal caves. Little hope remained of even finding frozen bodies by the time U’Sumi and his brothers could lead new search parties out. After two days, the Zaqenar formally gave the two up for dead. They could no longer afford the diversion of so much of their labor force from essential fishing operations to continue an endless search over constantly reshaping snow drifts, and avalanches that would eventually only claim more lives.

  Summer, such as it was, waited another four weeks to break through the snows. Only U’Sumi and Khumi’s mutual grief over lost children kept them from killing each other. Tiva retreated into the nether regions of the cave system—sometimes for days at a time—while T’Qinna spent much of her free time tracking her down to try to console her.

  The barley and tubers were in by the second week of the thaw.

  That was when everything began to change.

  Tiva emerged from the inner cave hot streams after supervising the cleaning of the great clay soup pots. She hoped to get some of the exquisitely rare sunshine before the orb vanished behind the canyon rim. Despite the lightness of her duties, she had never been more tired. A quarter hour in the sunshine revived her more than any meal. It had been many years since she had looked anything remotely like over-fed—as Khumi had once accused her of being, back when they had lived at Grove Hollow, in a world that tolerated such self-indulgence.

  Khana’Ani blocked the narrow gap into the main chamber. Despite the fact that he was just reaching puberty, his big octopus eyes still reminded her of Yargat’s in the dim glow-stone light. It was all she could do to fight down the helpless rage. His incessant disingenuous whine never helped.

  Khana’Ani spread his hands to wedge himself inside the gap. He said in his loathsome chant, “I know something you don’t know, Mahmsy.”

  She wanted to push him through the hole, but dared not. Khana’Ani effectively ruled the household, now that Rhea was gone. Khumi had allowed the twins to mock Tiva openly in front of the older children for years—especially since the trial a decade ago. After they had declared Rhea dead, her brother became doubly insufferable.

  Tiva knew the only way to get by him was to play along. “What do you know that I don’t, Khani?”

  His enormous eyes danced in the pallid glow-stone light. “Ghosts from the past, they always come back,” he sang.

  Tiva knew she was visibly trembling, but could not stop herself. “What do you mean by that?”

  Khana’Ani giggled and licked his lips. “It’s happy news, Mahmsy, all happy news, when they come back. I’ve missed playing with them so much. You want them to come back, don’t you, Mahmsy?”

  “Stop calling me that, and tell me what you mean!”

  He stepped up, right into her face. “They’ve come back, Mahmsy. Rhea and Arrafu returned just a few minutes ago. They be sunning outside.”

  Tiva slipped around him, through the gap, into the main cave just to keep from throttling him again. She knew it must be one of his cruel little games, but no mother could resist checking for herself, even in the face of sure ridicule afterward. Outside, the sun still shone, as she scrambled up the cavern’s slope to the wide opening. Her heart pounded in her ears.

  In the dazzling sunshine, down by the tiny river, a chattering knot of people surrounded a young couple still dressed in heavy winter furs. Tiva’s eyes could not adjust fast enough to see them clearly. The small crowd parted as she approached. Her vision focused only as she reached the two.

  Rhea threw her arms around her mother and wept. “I’m so sorry Mahma, I’m sorry for being so mean to you, and for wandering off!”

  Tiva took her daughter into her arms, still in a state of dull shock. Rhea had always been a female counterpart to Khana’Ani—cruel and manipulative. This girl somehow seemed like another person.

  U’Sumi and T’Qinna appeared and embraced Arrafu. Tiva heard him only distantly as he described how he had rescued Rhea from falling through the ice, and discovered another network of hot spring caves on the opposite side of the river lakes. There, he had removed her frozen furs and revived her in a thermal spring. Arrafu had kept them both alive by spear fishing nearby streams, until Rhea’s condition improved enough for her to travel.

  A deluge of questions drowned out Arrafu’s voice. Tiva lost track of what went on around her, until a rough set of hands pulled her away from her daughter, and shouldered her aside.

  Khumi gathered Rhea up into his arms and carried her inside the caves. Only then did Tiva notice how sallow and yellow the girl’s normally dark tan skin appeared. The crowd seemed to shift and shuffle all around her, as the sun dipped below the rim of the tiny gorge.

  In a mélange-like blur, Tiva suddenly stood shivering and alone, with only the icy gurgle of the river for company.

  The blue pallor of the glow-stone lantern in their cramped side-cave bed chamber made Khumi’s face into that of some wretched ghost.

  Tiva repeated, “I tell you, she’s pregnant. I saw her as she bathed in the hot spring. She waited for the other girls to leave.”

  “Rhea’s too young! She’s just putting on weight again after her long ordeal! I’ve had enough of your prattling!”

  “If she was just gaining weight, it would be even. Her neck, legs, and arms would show it too! No! She’s beginning to show!”

  Khumi tossed off a layer of pelts from his side of the fur pile. For a second, Tiva was sure he would hit her. Instead, he just sat up. “You’ve never liked her—just like you’ve never liked Khani.”

  Tiva hung her head. “That used to be true, Husband—though I’ve never wished her any harm. But you’ve seen how well we’ve warmed up to each other since her return. She’s changed—I think for the better.”

  “Yet you accuse her of playing whore!”

  “I accuse her of nothing. Even if I did, it would not be of anything nearly as bad as what I did to win you. I only tell what I saw. If I’m right, I want it handled gently—for her sake. She’s been through enough.”

  Khumi’s craggy face softened. “All right, what do you suggest? Do you think she was with child before she wandered off, or by Arrafu?”

  “I have no way to know. Arrafu’s always been an honorable boy. Yet even honorable men, under extraordinary pressure, do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. I want to examine her to make sure, but I don’t want to intimidate her. I want to tell her the story of how we came to be together, so she can know that I’m not angry with her. You can do it with me if you think I’ll botch it, or something.”

  Khumi pondered this a moment. “Better if I’m not there—she’ll speak more freely to another woman. You’re right; you and she have gotten on better since her return. I don’t like this. But it’s better than waiting for someone else to notice; if she’s really with child, that is.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. If you’re right, it’s only the beginning. What if it turns out that the golden son of my golden brother mossed her up?”

  It did
not take long for news to unravel through the tiny cave community. U’Sumi sat inside the bedchamber with his wife, and held his head in his hands.

  Arrafu’Kzaddi’s voice seemed to bleat at him from a tremendous distance away, “…I wanted to ask you both for a betrothal as soon as we returned, but then I realized how young Rhea is, and how it would look…”

  T’Qinna’s red-gold streaked hair haloed her face like rivers of volcanic flame winding through dark earth. “How it would look? Just how did you expect it would look in another couple months? How could you be more concerned with ‘how it would look’ than with how it really is?”

  “I, I love her. But she told me not to say anything.”

  U’Sumi threw his head up and glared at his son. “She’s a child of twenty years! You’re almost thirty five! Shouldn’t you take the lead here? You ‘love her,’ but you seem willing to let her stand alone as a whore?”

  “It’s not like that! She insisted! She doesn’t want me in trouble.”

  “How thoughtful of her!”

  “I think one of her brothers was taking advantage of her.”

  T’Qinna asked, “Which one?”

  Arrafu fidgeted. “She wouldn’t say. She changed the subject whenever I asked. I told her I wanted to marry her, but she said that nobody would allow it because she’s so young.”

  U’Sumi rolled his eyes. “Well, that says something for her common sense. Now I’m left with trying to discover what happened to yours!”

  “I had to revive her in the hot spring! Her clothes needed to dry or else she would have frozen. I had to carry her into the water and hold her there, and when she revived…”

  T’Qinna snapped, “Don’t lecture us about temperature extremes! I know how the human body functions better than anyone alive! You did what you had to do, up to that point. It is after that point that is at issue here!”