The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven)

by Powderly Jr. , K. G.

  U’Sumi knew that the Samyaza Cult of Assuri believed their Watcher to be the divine mouthpiece of E’Yahavah El-N’Lil. The cult inserted the titans of Assur’Ayur’s court, with Samyaza’s lesser Watchers, as intercessor-gods, just above the priesthood. They had divided each realm of life to the oversight of some spiritual patron being or earthly demigod.

  The man in the oracle booth had stopped speaking. Now he nodded in rapid jerks, beating his own breast hard enough to leave bruises. Tears rolled down his face, as he listened to a small speaker device that U’Sumi could barely see. When the message apparently ended, the Elder made a loud cry, produced a ceremonial gold knife from his sash, and sliced a long gash down the top of each forearm, allowing his blood to dribble a little onto the floor of the oracle booth. Then he descended the ziggurat steps backwards, bowing to the crystal kiosk from each level, until he reached the pavement.

  Only then, did the Elder wipe the remaining blood on his sleeves and return to the group, where he whispered something to his Chief.

  “The gods have spoken,” said the Chief, after the Oracle Elder had finished. “You must wait here for a divine astra to take you to the City of the Lord of Heaven, who is the Mouthpiece of El-N’Lil. We shall purchase your two pack beasts and anything you cannot carry into the Sky Chariot, fair commercial standard. Your weapons will be packed and sent along with the honor guard. You must bathe yourselves in the sacred vats and perfume yourselves with fragrant odors, for before the sun sets on the following day, you shall be in the presence of the gods.”

  T’

  Qinna watched U’Sumi peer outside the pressurized glass window of the astra, a fixed-wing flying vehicle that was all sparrow-falcon angles and curves. She leaned in close to him, only partly to see the distant map-like ground drift by below them. They sat on the starboard side of the cabin, just forward of a huge golden swept wing.

  I still don’t understand him, she thought, as she felt the gentle motion of his breathing and wished she could stay pressed against his chest forever. His words still burned in her ears. “I want no virgin! I’ll have you or no one. If you go to them, I will kill whoever touches you first and bring this whole bloody journey to an end!”

  What could she say to that? He says he wants no virgin, yet he treats me as if I’ve kept myself all my life for him alone. Such love exists only in fables and yet this is real—more real than anything I’ve ever seen before.

  “U’Sumi?” She turned from the window and looked up into his dark blue eyes.

  He smiled. “You need me to scoot over some more?”

  “No. This is perfect. It’s just I’m afraid it’s too perfect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The muted roar of the giant tail engines forced T’Qinna to speak louder than she normally would have thought polite, but nobody else could possibly hear her. Yafutu sat with A’Nu-Ahki on the other side of the cabin. Assurim soldiers in gold and red dress uniforms stationed themselves in front and behind.

  “I’m afraid of when we return to your people.”

  “Why?”

  “I might do something to embarrass you. I don’t know how to act in front of them.”

  “You’ll be fine. Pahp and my Mahm will teach you what you need to know. The villagers might be a problem, but who cares what they think! Nobody who really matters will give us any trouble.”

  T’Qinna wished she could share his confidence. “Do I have the Mark of Qayin?” There! I’ve said it!

  “What?”

  Her eyes began to flood. “My skin patterns; I heard what your father said in Nhod. I’m a daughter of the murderer Qayin. The Seer said that E’Yahavah gave him a mark, and that he was the father of the mottled peoples—those people who fed their children to the wurm.” She looked away from him back out the window.

  U’Sumi gently touched her chin and guided her face back toward his. “He said something else too: that I’m also descended from Qayin on my mother’s side. I won’t lie to you. There’s a lot of ignorant guessing among my people about what the Mark of Qayin really was. Our family thinks it had to do only with Qayin as an individual and not with his offspring. This is the most logical take on it because he fathered many pale-skinned and red-skinned folks as well as the spotted tribes. These Assurim are even more ignorant and obnoxious than the people in Akh’Uzan—don’t listen to them.”

  “I’m still afraid I’ll end up hurting you.”

  “Do you not want to be my wife when the time comes?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “E’Yahavah’s changing us both to prepare us for the dark years ahead. Don’t be afraid. I don’t know how, but I know things are gonna be okay. I love you—even if you do something embarrassing—it won’t matter near as much as my love for you. I’m probably going to be the embarrassing one in this arrangement, anyway. Stands to reason; I’m the man.”

  T’Qinna quickly glanced across the cabin and saw that A’Nu-Ahki and Yafutu were busy staring out the window on the other side. She quickly kissed U’Sumi full on the lips and sat back up in her seat.

  Taanyx lay on the aisle next to them, her claws dug into the camel hair carpet. The feline still tolerated her muzzle and leash, but thrashed her tail and made her eyes wild with an irritable growl for freedom and solid ground. T’Qinna reached her left hand down and stroked behind the cat’s ear in calming circles—whether to quiet the sphinx or her own pounding heart, she was not sure.

  After awhile she leaned over U’Sumi again, this time actually to get a good look at the lands below.

  “Where do you think we are now?” she asked him.

  They had been in the air almost three hours. Two wide rivers met at a T-shaped junction, the cap of which ran east to west beneath them. Dead ahead to the south lay a sprawling metropolis of stone pyramids and shimmering gold canals like a playland of children’s sand castles by the beach, all soon to be washed away in the tide.

  “I’d guess we just crossed the apex of the Hiddekhel Delta,” he answered. “That city ahead of us on the horizon must be Assur’Ayur. Assuri, who was one of Seti’s older brothers, founded the place. It was once a great vassal of Seti’s confederation, but we lost it after the Zhri’Nikkor War. They all caved in to the Watcher Samyaza, whose cult swallowed up the whole region. It’s a place I really wish we could avoid.”

  T

  he astra began to descend until the earth lost its map-like quality and took on that of a field filled with model toys like the Tacticon’s old collection U’Sumi so fondly remembered. Home—if they ever managed to reach it again—would be an empty place without Lumekki and Iyapeti.

  The flying machine touched down on a long kapar block strip that paralleled vast plazas with fountains, courtyards, markets, and palaces. It ended before the gates of a pyramid complex larger than any U’Sumi had yet seen in all his travels—even at Psydonis.

  Gold overlaid the pyramid’s crystal sharp precision-cut blocks—enough to buy an entire kingdom with king and subjects as slaves. Not even the merchant-priests of Khavilakki, the land of gold and jewels, could boast such opulence. It was the Samyaza Cult’s only center to survive the reparations imposed by Tubaal-qayin Dumuzi after the Century War.

  The astra’s engines unleashed a blast furnace outside U’Sumi’s window, curling the air into heat wraiths in a powerful reversal of thrust that rapidly slowed the vehicle down, yanking U’Sumi and T’Qinna forward against their safety straps. Taanyx yowled between her muzzled teeth, her claws dug into the carpet. The pyramid loomed closer—now visible only through the portholes on the cabin’s opposite side. Large as that was however, only what U’Sumi saw arrayed on the broad pavement outside his own window squeezed an involuntarily noise from his throat.

  Hundreds of flying astra chariots, each ready to take its own titan “demigod” into some soon-approaching battle, parked in rows stretching before Samyaza’s Temple as far as the eye could see. A low plaza reached out from the pyramid complex into the gigantic air
fleet’s service pavement.

  U’Sumi’s astra taxied in a loop to this structure and came to a stop.

  The captain of the sky-lord guards stood and motioned for A’Nu-Ahki’s people to follow him out a hatchway that opened just aft of the pilot’s bubble. The outside air hit U’Sumi like a balmy sledgehammer as soon as he stepped free of the temperature-controlled cabin and descended the narrow ladder. A row of soldiers on either side directed them through the plaza, past some colored fountains, and up several ramps, toward the palace.

  Beyond the fountains, a curious throng of tanned children and ‘tween-agers watched, all painted in stylized eye shades and decorated with gold hieroglyph talismans that hung from identical blue thong garments. The boys, shaved bald except for one black royal lock, looked effeminate in this unisex dress. The girls simply pouted a jaded sultriness at the new visitors. They seemed dreadfully out-of-place to U’Sumi, given that the society just outside their Temple complex severely punished women who ventured out of their own homes merely for lack of a face veil.

  U’Sumi had noted an exception to this rule for spotted female slaves back at the bridge village, during the day spent waiting on the astra. This was fortunate and unfortunate for T’Qinna; good in that she faced no punishment for showing her face publicly; bad that it meant she was “open game” for unwanted sexual advances. Her only likely protection would be U’Sumi’s fists, as the vendors back at the village had refused to sell him a veil for her. Apparently, “spotted bynts” were not to “put on airs.” It remained to be seen how that double-standard would play out here.

  The strange children gave no hopeful clue. U’Sumi felt their eyes—particularly those of the girls—swarm all over him like hungry ants. He even began to itch under his clothes, though probably this was only from the beads of sweat now erupting from his pores.

  The palace arch looked even less welcoming.

  Once inside the dark glass doors of the great stone building, the humidity diminished. The temperature change should have been refreshing. Instead, a clammy chill seeped into U’Sumi’s bones like a focused night draft. The shadow that had fallen on him at the bridge village’s ziggurat now screeched from the darkened halls like cicadas in his ears. Something lived here that did not belong to this world—something ancient and deranged.

  The ornate religiously-themed decor, had he seen it anywhere else, might have seemed tasteful, even beautiful—the incense, fragrant and soothing. Here they were none of these things. Rather, the hangings and sculptures depicting familiar stories like Atum’s Walk in Aeden, the Temptation of Ish’Hakka, and Qayin’s murder of Heh’Bul, all bore a garish quality that—for all their exquisite correctness of form—only seemed to parody what they portrayed. An odor of mold and rotting flesh somehow permeated the place—a decay that no amount of incense could mask.

  “We meet again.”

  The woman’s shrill croak came from the shadows of a curtained dais at the far end of the darkened audience chamber.

  A’Nu-Ahki’s party stepped toward the platform. Their feet tapped maddened echoes, while captive twisted-light faces seemed to cry silently up at them from distorted reflections in the glassy floor. The soldiers kept pace on either side of them with fearful eyes flashing below their ceremonial gold hauberks.

  “That is close enough,” commanded the voice on the shrouded dais.

  The curtain slid open to reveal an ancient woman with long, stringy hair dyed to a dull black. The heavily painted skin of her face, stretched by so many cosmetic surgeries, prevented her from moving her lips with much expression. Purple-rimmed eyes were craters of exhaustion surrounding tiny glass pits of vortex clarity. She rose from her throne, trying to thrust out limp desiccated breasts as if she could still make them stand firm and full again by sheer force of will. Her gnarled hand slid down a bony hip in unconscious parody of the seductiveness she seemed unaware that she had lost ages ago.

  “A’Nu-Ahki, son of Q’Enukki,” she crooned as if to herself, “you have much gall to simply come marching into our lands. Yet I am glad to see that you have finally arrived after all these decades.”

  U’Sumi’s depression ignited like some seeping volatile gas into full-blown terror. She knew we were coming long before the oracle sent word; perhaps long before I was even born!

  The gloss-twisted reflection patterns like trapped faces on every floor tile silently began to scream in flickers like the burning damned.

  A’Nu-Ahki replied, “Thank you for your gracious reception. I must say that to fly like one of the birds of the sky is most exhilarating. I appreciate the opportunity you have afforded us to experience it.”

  She gave a narrow smile that nearly split her face wide open to reveal the grinning skull underneath. “You will shortly have the opportunity again. But I get ahead of myself.”

  A’Nu-Ahki said, “Where is your spirit-husband? In what way does he choose to manifest himself these days?”

  U’Sumi’s blood froze. These days?

  The woman scowled—a position to which her disturbingly taut face seemed more accustomed. “You come before Isha’Tahar, the Queen of Heaven, and demand of her an audience with her Lord? He speaks through me! Goodness knows he uses me for precious little else anymore.” A distant longing for pleasures long spent lingered in her bleary eyes.

  “What new terror will he unleash upon the world?”

  Isha’Tahar sighed. “Nothing quite as final as what you bring.”

  “I do not bring World-end. I simply announce it. The folly of your husband and sons and that of humankind brings it.”

  Her face twisted into a sudden fury that made even her soldiers step backwards. “Have I given birth to these, my own people, only to glut the sea with their bodies as though they were fish?”

  A trickle of blood ran down her forehead and paused at her brow.

  A’Nu-Ahki replied softly, “So, you too think it will be water.”

  “I read the Star Signs too and remember well enough how Seti laid out the skies.” She daubed the blood from her face and flopped back down onto her golden chair. “My husband, however, is no longer so convinced.”

  “Not surprising. Neither are any of the other Watchers. They all seem to think that E’Yahavah won’t follow through; that he treasures this world and its people too highly and will likely grant your husband and his rivals the time they think they need to complete their experiments.”

  “Is there no hope of that then? Is it not a reasonable compromise?”

  “What your husband and the others refuse to realize is that it is precisely because E’Yahavah treasures humanity that he will not let the Watchers finish. He will destroy Man with the Earth rather than allow the eternal defacing of the human race into something of infinitely unfolding evil. He will not permit all humanity to be lost beyond hope of redemption. This can’t be solved by negotiation, sorcery, technology, or even the most benign effort to civilize society. Do you think the Divine Name would let himself to be out-maneuvered by a group of bickering celestial amateurs?”

  She shrugged, as if she knew he was right. Her voice, however, took on a plaintive whine. “Isn’t a defaced world better than no world at all?”

  U’Sumi marveled at this exchange. He had no idea that his father had ever spoken to Isha’Tahar before. That she talked of World-end as if she believed in it shocked him out of his terror and strangely elated him.

  A’Nu-Ahki answered her, “You forget that E’Yahavah cannot deny his own nature. He cannot ignore justice any more than he can forsake love. It would betray the essence of who he is. The Wergild of Blood must be satisfied. It is the only way to regain any part at all of what has been lost.”

  Isha’Tahar slumped in her chair like a petulant little girl. “Samyaza and the others meant to win back humanity for E’Yahavah! Why should they be treated this way when they meant well?”

  “Did they really? E’Yahavah told them plainly that they would only make things worse. Samyaza and his band imagined tha
t they knew better. Rather than winning humanity back, they only played into the Basilisk’s hand by speeding up the spiritual—and now genetic—erosion of life. Seeking to impose their own image on Man, they further distorted what was left of the Divine image there. This accelerated the need for judgment before it would have otherwise been necessary. No plan that Samyaza or the others devise can reverse that. How can the dead breathe life into the dead?”

  The howling shadow in the darkened alcoves now swelled into the central chamber like a pressurized fluid, stifling U’Sumi’s very breath. It was like Shadow-mind, yet somehow different—less calculating, more explosive in its passions. Until now, it had also been silent.

  An old woman’s terrorized whimper pleaded briefly from the dais.

  U’Sumi looked up at Isha’Tahar and noticed that a foreign gleam had suddenly animated her eyes.

  “My plan will work because I now have the strength to strike the Basilisk at his stronghold!” a hideous masculine gryndel-voice roared through the Queen’s mouth. “I will never be his slave!”

  T’Qinna and Yafutu clung to U’Sumi’s sides. He wrapped his arms over both of them to keep his own limbs from shaking.

  A’Nu-Ahki, animated by the Divine Wind, faced the gender-mingled incarnation of the mad Watcher alone. “Where is this stronghold?” he asked.

  “Where it all began!” howled the Old Woman’s shell, “in Aeden! Don’t you see? It is where he has hidden all along!”

  A’Nu-Ahki shook his head and laughed. “How can you be so naive, Samyaza? The Basilisk has played you like a pawn since long before you fell upon Mount Ardis. Will you now carry out his masterstroke out against yourself? Don’t you see? That’s his plan for all of us! Drag us through the mud of greed, violence, false pretenses of virtue, and lust, until we’re totally driven by our own out-of-control impulses. Then he laughs while he watches us kill ourselves in our own madness!”