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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  Arrafu said, “It was like she knew me. It all happened so quickly. I acted foolishly. But I love her, and I will marry her. The child is mine.”

  T’Qinna said, “How sure are you?”

  “Completely. I know I’ve proven no better than whichever of her brothers have, well… taught her. But this much I promise: With me, it’s not a game. I will keep her for life. I’ve shamed you both, but that ends now.”

  U’Sumi said, “Enough then. I’ll consult with my brother. If he and Tiva are willing, Rhea shall be your wife.”

  The thaw turned into the first real summer since before the Fire Mountains blew. Wildflowers blossomed everywhere in the canyon meadows, while several flocks of birds flew up from somewhere south, to sing amid the cavern openings for the first time. A’Nu-Ahki presided over the marriage of Arrafu’Kzaddi and Rhea with quiet graciousness. Any words of admonishment to the young couple happened in private, and the eight Zaqenar each found the responses adequately contrite. On the day of the wedding, the canyons rang with celebration.

  Rhea came to full term just as the winter solstice approached. The snows had yet to return, and the unseasonably mild weather brought with it a hopeful anticipation.

  Arrafu waited with the men and boys outside the cave where his mother and the other women served to midwife his firstborn.

  Khana’Ani sidled up to the expectant father, and slipped his hand onto Arrafu’s shoulder to lean there in a way that always irritated Arrafu.

  Rhea’s twin brother smirked. “Your sonny-boy is a good omen. He comes, and the winter holds off. That’s a goodly-rightly thing, huh?”

  “Yeah Khani, good—but the baby might be a girl.”

  “I think a boy for my—for our—Rhea.”

  Arrafu stepped away, allowing Khana’Ani to stumble at the sudden loss of support. Khani glared up at him, but then resumed his childish smile.

  At first, Arrafu had suspected one of Rhea’s big brothers of forcing her. Now he was almost sure it had been her twin. What disturbed him most was the sense that, most likely, little if any force was involved. Despite that, he was also sure that his young wife had changed through her love for him. Whatever the case, Rhea clearly clung to her husband as her rescuer from far more than simply drowning under the ice. She had dreaded returning, and had even tried to convince Arrafu to remain “lost” with her on the far side of the lakes, once he had brought home several decent catches of fish.

  Since their return, Rhea had become increasingly agitated whenever Khana’Ani came around to visit, which was with annoying constancy. Only Khani’s boyish features had slowed Arrafu’s developing suspicions. The more he watched Khani fawn over his twin sister, however, the less convincing the boy’s baby face and infantile mannerisms seemed.

  Rhea screamed from inside the cave as another round of hard labor pains must have hit. Arrafu heard the midwives shuffle about inside the cramped space in whispers. A second later, his mother poked her head outside the curtain and called him in. The bleakness of her eyes said it all.

  Arrafu rushed into the close dimness where Rhea lay; drained gray of her normally rich color, on a pile of warm pelts. Her mother held a softly crying boy baby wrapped in a woolen fleece.

  He almost stopped to admire his son, but Mother pulled him past Tiva and the baby, to his wife.

  T’Qinna whispered to him, “Arrafu, she’s bleeding out, and I can’t stop it. I don’t have the tools. She has minutes at most. I’m sorry, Son.”

  Arrafu crumpled by his wife. His stomach seemed to fall into a vast inner void with no bottom—only an endless careening.

  Rhea met him with her eyes before they glazed over for the last time. “You rescue me always, Arrafu, always. Thank you.”

  She said no more. She did not need to.

  After weeping several hours, Arrafu named his son “Qe’Nani” almost as an afterthought. The ceremonial language convention of sacred contractions, used for naming children since humanity’s dawn, was second nature to the new widower-father.

  “Qe’Nani” meant Metal-Hardened Grief.

  “...viticulture (grape-growing) probably had its beginnings in the area around the Caspian Sea, which is generally recognized as the place of origin of the best known grape.”

  —Encyclopaedia Britannica

  16

  Vineyard

  Winters began to shorten the year Rhea died giving birth to Qe’Nani. The grassy valleys recovered enough during the lengthening summer months to support a modest growth of the flocks and herds. Nevertheless, it was barely enough to sustain the rapidly growing clans.

  A time of increased earthquakes began the seventeenth year after Anchor Mountain erupted—fortunately not accompanied by renewed volcanism. The Clans of A’Nu-Ahki quickly abandoned the caves, and soon after, the canyon region altogether. They headed back east.

  Then the winds came.

  Howling dust storms blasted from the south, hot and dry, which drove the Clans northeast into the higher mountains, to live off the rapidly melting glaciers. By now, a much taller Anchorage Mountain had settled into dormancy again. The earthquakes also settled. Nevertheless, A’Nu-Ahki never led his children back to their original settlement near the volcano, except to inspect the Treasure Cave. There, they paused to give thanks to E’Yahavah that no one had died of starvation, exposure, or in the quakes and storms. The infant mortality rate had also declined.

  Eventually the growing tribes discovered another wide river valley flowing northeast of Anchorage Mountain, in the opposite direction of the New Ufratsi. U’Sumi first spotted the stream, and named it the River T’Qinna over his wife’s laughing objections. The mountains were taller there, providing shelter from the hot prevailing winds from the south.

  When the migrating families reached a valley that carried a tributary down from the southern mountain chain, they saw tree saplings growing in large numbers for the first time. Nu established a permanent homestead on a brisk stream that tumbled from the slope of a mountain just north of the great Eastern Bitter Lake, which he named Mount Lubar. The new settlement was several weeks’ hike east—as the raven flew—from Anchor Mountain, and greener than any land they had yet seen.

  Nu and ‘Miha built a house of brick and stone, around which Nu cultivated the long-dormant seeds salvaged from his grandfather’s winter grapes at Q’Enukki’s Retreat. He had allowed some to grow wild in the various places they had wandered in, but had never gotten them to take properly until now. After twenty more years of tender care, his home lay wrapped in trellises of vine, with wide, shady leaves terraced up into the steppes. Nearby trees climbed taller than a man’s reach now, the faster-growing kinds twice as high. Their branches nested birds in greater numbers each year, as shade returned to the world in one of its few quiet corners.

  One early summer day, A’Nu-Ahki tended a new cutting, guiding its curling fronds into the weave of a stick lattice. The cool soil in Mount Lubar’s shadow soothed his ankles. He needed a cane to walk these days, and the pain in his legs and back rarely let up. He relished the slow pace viticulture allowed, and thanked E’Yahavah again for his peaceful oasis.

  “Livestock is work for the young,” he cackled to himself, as he tasted an early green grape from another vine.

  The rapidly changing environments since the Deluge had forced the expression of greater diversity in the descendants of Muhet’Usalaq’s winter seeds—everything from large purple, to small white, and all shades in between. Something similar affected the livestock. Although the wild animals had scattered, those that stayed local seemed to show signs of it too. Bears were still bears, cats still cats, and grapes were still grapes, but often much differently shaped than their forebears aboard the ship. Nu smiled to himself, recalling one of T’Qinna’s rambling monologues on the subject:

  “Extreme environment changes not only favor some over others within each kind of beasty, they may even drive other creation code based diversification mechanisms. What the Temple tried and botched, E’Ya
havah seems to have woven right into the fabric of life. Each created kind has varied forms. Shifting conditions kill off forms that can’t adapt, erasing seed-code information. When only a few forms of that animal kind survive, say, when the cold years shifted to hot, then the varied forms no longer breed well with each other for loss of too much common seed-code information.”

  Nu remembered the sadness in her voice. “Many animals we knew and loved are vanishing forever, while new combinations arise from within each created kind. I love the new ones, but the others are like lost friends.”

  T’Qinna often came by and helped Nu with transporting soil and laying trellis. They would labor together, and talk for hours—often about the new sub-varieties of plant and animal forms they found, or on the latest match-making gossip in a community made up mostly of ‘tweenagers at or near courtship age. Na’Amiha had a “black thumb” with grapes, and preferred to midwife down in the village. There was much of it for her to do, and she had better fortune with animals and people than with plants.

  The young runner from the village found Nu and T’Qinna in the vineyard on the summer afternoon when the latest survey team returned.

  “Come! Come! The Phoenix is back!” Iavanni, son of Iyapeti called.

  Of the four aerodrones from Barque of Aeons, only Sun Phoenix remained airworthy. Khumi had managed to restore it by cannibalizing the others for parts. U’Sumi and Arrafu’Kzaddi had just flown the longest aerial mapping run yet, using a crude second fuel tank forged of copper.

  T’Qinna helped A’Nu-Ahki to his feet, and escorted him to his cart. Iavanni squeezed in between them. The two-wheeled dray clattered along a winding path down the steppes, pulled by a single donkey under T’Qinna’s rein. They passed through the village, and into the fields beyond, where a crowd had gathered around the travelers and their rickety machine.

  The young people parted to allow the Ancient to approach. Nu’s wife, who had been down at the fields to supervise the delivery of a new ox calf, helped her husband out of the carriage.

  U’Sumi approached his father, and kissed A’Nu-Ahki’s ring finger.

  “How went your flight?”

  “Fantastic! We surveyed to the southern river plains, and saw three monster waves in ten days—the lowlands are still unstable, but not as much as before. What a sight!”

  Arrafu’Kzaddi embraced his son, Qe’Nani—now a gangly pre-tween —and said, “You should have seen it, Pahpi! When we first over-flew the river lands, jungle and reeds covered them. Big dragons lived there—herds of spade-backed spike-tails and behemoth—until the first wave hit! The place must have had many decades of peace to become so overgrown.”

  U’Sumi picked up the story. “It rolled in as huge as the Tides of Nemesis, sweeping up the river plains like a speeding wall, and consuming vast swamp drake pods, all buried instantly in their nests. Most of the grassland dragons had no time to even look up, much less flee! When the water departed, wet sand with stranded schools of fish flapping on it covered everything. The second wave hit about twenty minutes later, leaving a layer of darker mud. The third came days after and even hit the foothills below our highland airfield. But for there to have been so large a jungle means that the lowlands must have been stable for a long time.”

  Arrafu said, “After that, we decided to go north,”

  “We came back up the New Hiddekhel River to Anchor Mountain. Everything’s mapped out for you to name on the scroll.” U’Sumi handed the rolled piece of vellum over to his father.

  “And the Treasure Cave?”

  “Still intact. We stopped by Anchor Mount, and climbed to the caldera after over-flying the peak. It’s not easy to reach these days—quakes since the big eruption have sunk the gentle side farther down the slope into a gorge. I think the mountain is still getting taller somehow. We reached the mouth of the grotto, though. It’s barely passable—more of an ice cave now. The caldera is snowed-in. We managed to find the ship intact though. Arrafu and I camped inside for two nights and a day—even used the old hearth, and a few scraps of reed and wood for a fire. We slept in my old stateroom.”

  “How nostalgic. Did you recover anything?”

  “We’d stripped the place before. There’s still some decent building material to cannibalize, just no way to get it down the mountain. We only dismantled about half the ship before Anchor Mountain blew. Too bad. All we can get now are a few trinkets of stoned wood for the children.”

  A’Nu-Ahki chuckled. “It’s good to know the Old Lady’s still there. I always wanted to leave enough of her intact to be a monument if possible.”

  U’Sumi said, “I don’t know how much of a Paru’Ainu she’ll be. We may not be able to reach her for much longer. As the snows fill the caldera, they harden to ice. If the rock facing breaks out in a quake, the ice floe will start moving down the slope, and crush the ship in some crevasse below. The volcano seems dormant, but things are none too stable up there.”

  “No place for acolytes here, it seems.”

  “Not yet, anyway. We’ve taken our aerial surveys to the limits of fuel range—even with our remote tanking bases. From here on, we’ll need extended coastal and marine expeditions of several generations’ duration. We can’t start those until the giant waves die down—if they die down.”

  Nu clasped his son’s shoulder. “They will. They must, if we’re to fulfill Iyared’s Charge. Perhaps we can man a post at some high point near the ocean, to record the frequency of waves, and maybe gather information that will allow us to predict their end somehow.”

  “Good idea. But it needs to be for the long haul. It really had to have been some time since the last set of waves for those dragons to settle the river plains so thickly. The jungle seemed tall enough to account for at least a few decades of growth. If we had been there a week earlier, we’d have wrongly concluded that the oceans have settled down. E’Yahavah has saved us from a great disaster in the timing of our flight. We need a plan.”

  “We can discuss the details over a feast to celebrate your return,” Nu laughed, hugging his son and grandson at the same time, as he steered them both towards the village cooking fires.

  Q’Enukki awoke to find the interior of the star-creature’s transit node opaque again. Food and drink were set before him, and a small compartment opened aft, which contained facilities for his bodily needs. This made him feel so uncomfortable that he began to find it easier to think of the gate-creature as a “star chariot” once again. For a moment, he wondered if the previous “day” had been nothing more than a dream or a vision. Then he looked outside the viewport.

  Earth approached below, gray and wounded, yet well on the long road to recovery. Another “ice age” peaked, though the clouds did not obscure the whole ground. Either way, his enhanced sight could still pierce the blanket. The continents had moved farther apart, and some had radically changed coastlines even since the Deluge had ended. It was no dream.

  Samuille’s glowing form entered from the forward chamber.

  “How long was I asleep?” Q’Enukki asked. “Down there, I mean?”

  “At least several centuries; I have not been counting.”

  The gate-creature had just swung around the sun again, and now slowed into Earth’s orbit. Q’Enukki spotted tiny settlements in the mountainous region of what would one day be the Kingdom of Urartu, place of the Khaldini; People of the Ram. The Time’s Enders would much later call it Armenia, Eastern Turkey, and Northern Iran. Other tribes dotted the coast around the northern inland sea, and the Fertile Crescent to the south.

  Young forests coated strips of the new continents by warm seas, and in temperate latitudes. Ice packs grew and retreated between rapid intervals of mountain-building. The dry spell of the last global-warming phase was long-gone—along with many of the dragons favored by that incubation era. Each year now had many rainy seasons, with erosion etching the landscape in rapid cycles that would not fall off for centuries to come. The sages at Time’s End would assume that the yearly
precipitation rates of their own drier age had prevailed throughout history, and read the fossil lakebed “varves” accordingly.

  Narrow, warm-climate coastal ribbons lined volcanically heated ocean currents, even along arctic shores. This enabled men and animals to cross the “Bering Land-bridge” while the worst of the ice age buried the continents under heavy glaciers, only a short distance inland. Animals—and later, men—spread along these slender coastal temperate zones on the shores of future Siberia. During the longer intervals between tsunamis, lush grasslands and subtropical forests grew on the seaboard plains of the Arctic Ocean. Mammoths, wooly rhinos, and giant camelids grazed along the rich ribbon of warmth, spreading their herds rapidly across the north, to future Alaska, and from there into the Americas.

  Without systematic hunting by man to halt them, even large mammals spread almost unchecked. Often only a few hours’ walk inland from icy wastes and howling snows that covered most of the northern continents now, plants and animals existed from several climatic zones, often within walking distance of each other.

  The crystal sheets of the northern interiors ground rocks to sand, pushing vast gravel fields toward the oceans, which would often become large semi-circular peninsulas, once sea levels rebounded. Q’Enukki heard one of the mysterious People of Time’s End call one such place, on the northeastern shores of the northern American continent, Cape Cod, after a local eating fish.

  Everything seemed bright and clean, until Q’Enukki again saw that the Great Shadow from the decayed ziggurat on the river plain had somehow multiplied into many such pyramids. Its fallout was not like the lingering clouds, or the dredging fury of World-end; in many ways, it was much worse. The Shadow engulfed humanity’s inner thought-world as a howling vortex of gibbering voices, echoing from madness to madness...