Dawn Apocalypse Rising (The Windows of Heaven Book 1)

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  Nu got the impression they would not be staying in Paru’Ainu for long, though he wondered if it might not be safer if they did. A squad of four acolytes was assigned him to unseal the First Crypt, prepare the removal of Atum-Ra’s inner sarcophagus, and ready it for travel. Nobody had any idea where they would ultimately go with it, least of all Nu.

  After some two weeks of provisioning from the island storehouse for a long journey, A’Nu-Ahki finally broke the silence he had imposed against his grandfather, and asked him what the plan was.

  Muhet’Usalaq regarded him cautiously, as if afraid to reopen wounds. “We go to determine the fate of your father, Emzara, and the others. Perhaps some were able to escape to the mountains after all. If so, they will have established sentinels along the upper Gihunu River to watch for us.”

  “And if not?”

  “Then we return here to wait on E’Yahavah.”

  A’Nu-Ahki nodded his approval. “When do we leave?”

  “Dawn tomorrow.”

  E

  arly morning brought another unexpected setback, however.

  An acolyte assigned to guard the Chamber of the Three Gifts—that innermost recess of the Treasure Cave catacombs, just outside the sealed crypts—rushed into the North Palqui Sanctuary, where Muhet’Usalaq and A’Nu-Ahki reviewed a last-minute inventory of travel supplies.

  “Worthy Father,” cried the ‘tween-ager, waving a papyrus scrap over his head and jostling back and forth on either foot as if about to wet himself.

  “What is it, son?”

  The lad could barely speak coherently. He rushed forward, and pushed the scrap into the Elder’s hand. “I found this before the Treasures!”

  Muhet’Usalaq took a moment to read the note. Nu watched his grandfather’s normally rich bronze face pale to the color of yellowed parchment. Without a word, he handed the fragment over to A’Nu-Ahki. The hastily scrawled ideographs read:

  My family,

  I suffer doubts about myself and where the Work leads us. I do not say this to discourage you, only to tell you that I must seek answers found in only one place. It is a two-day journey to the Great Sphinx of Seti at Aeden’s Pass, and on the living Kherubar beyond. If they permit me to enter and leave, I should be back in five days. If I am not back by then, you must presume me dead and go on without me. If that my fate, then I wish you farewell. Pray for me.

  —Urugim

  A’Nu-Ahki demanded of the young acolyte who had brought the note, “Do you keep any onagers, or other riding mounts?”

  “We’ve a stable on the upper island, in the meadow above the falls.”

  Muhet’Usalaq grabbed his grandson’s arm. “You are not thinking of going after him?”

  Nu pulled free. “He didn’t say if it was a two day journey mounted or on foot, did he?”

  The Acolyte said, “Every hundred years, we go to maintain the Great Sphinx. I went only last year—it’s two days by onager at a gentle pace.”

  “I’ve no intention of riding gentle!”

  “But the roads twist against chasms, and are poorly maintained!”

  “Do you think you can overtake him?” Muhet’Usalaq said, as if he had suddenly realized that, with Urugim gone, he alone would be the last witness of Q’Enukki.

  “Not if we stand here talking about it!”

  A

  wide shelf concealed behind the waterfall rose up through an airy cave to the other side of the North Palqui Cataract from the Isle of the Dead. It opened onto the ancient trail skirting the northwestern lip of the Aeden River’s canyon. By this same path, an age ago, Atum-Ra and his wife had fled the Orchard, descending into mortal lands doomed to decay and die.

  A’Nu-Ahki kicked his onager to a gallop as soon as he cleared the cave, but soon found that the Acolyte had been right about the terrain. Fallen rocks and twisting switchbacks along the canyon rim forced him to ease back to a more moderate gait.

  Urugim’s trail was often easy to see. Spacing and lack of dirt spray around the hoof prints indicated a slow pace. The old man had not expected pursuit. Yet he could have as much as an eight to ten hour lead.

  A’Nu-Ahki pressed on as quickly as conditions allowed, awestruck by the severe beauty of rushing water, jagged stone, and brightly flowered vegetation that border-dressed a sheer drop to the rapids below. High above, red gryphons sailed on wings of translucent sun-infused skin, their crested heads acting as rudders in the breeze. Whenever one spotted a fish in the foam far below, it would dive on it like a fiery meteor. A’Nu-Ahki kept his eyes peeled for larger more fearsome relatives of these winged dragons, though rarely would that kind attack anything the size of a mounted rider.

  He hoped to overtake Urugim by riding all night, assuming from the Elder’s leisurely pace that rest stops would probably be visible along the trail. The moon would be past full, but still large, minimizing the danger of falling through some unseen crevasse.

  Day wore on, as the trail bent north to arrive at the western shore of a mountain lake. From here, the rapids poured over yet another cataract, down the rocky stairs towards Paru’Ainu. The road now ran at beach level, gentle and straight, which allowed A’Nu-Ahki to increase to a full gallop. Hope returned as he saw by the same close-stepped, spray-less print from Urugim’s mount that the elder had not changed his pace.

  A’Nu-Ahki had traversed only half the lake’s span northward when dusk fell. He galloped long into twilight, slowing to a trot only when darkness became full. By then he had nearly reached the water’s northern limit, where another falls out of the upper canyon graced the reservoir with immortal flows destined for dying lands.

  Nu worried, as he still saw no sign of Urugim’s encampment. Had he missed it? Could it have escaped his notice along so narrow a tract of land as what lay between the lake and the cliff-face looming upward on his left? He dug from his pack a phosphor lamp and shook it to agitate the fine crystals suspended in fluid that made it glow.

  To the left of the northern falls, the trail climbed another set of switchbacks to gain the upper reaches. Apparently, Urugim had gone on, heedless of the dangers—both natural, and those beyond nature. If Nu’s memory of the ancient maps served, the River of Aeden took a sharp turn west above this cataract. From there, the path supposedly ran near its bank at the bottom of the upper gorge, rising further on until it overlooked the final cascade. Then it wound over a pass into the eastern gate of hidden Aeden.

  Guarding that pass, the ancient sentinel of Seti’s Sphinx glowered down upon all who dared transgress the Sanctuary beyond. If the man-made warning proved insufficient, the Holy Tablets assured that a living Fire-Sphinx waited over the pass to assure any mortal glimpse of the Forbidden Orchard would be a final one.

  The night grew interminable as Nu picked his way up the winding trail on foot, leading his onager because of the many pitfalls and wind-eroded gullies. Whatever time he had gained along the lake he now lost.

  Dawn highlighted the eastern crags before he reached the top. Exhausted, he threw himself down next to a streamlet that tumbled down from the heights to join the river. Eating some way bread, he closed his eyes for what he meant to be just a moment of rest.

  When he awoke, the sun had already reached its zenith. Nu cursed himself as he brushed the dust off his cloak. He took a long draw from the stream, filled his skin, and remounted.

  The upper river trail hugged the bed for a while, smooth and easier riding than further down. By late afternoon, however, the road began to climb sharply. He could hear the bellow of the last great cataract echoing around a bend in the ever-narrowing canyon.

  Despite the open rugged grandeur of the terrain, the air started to grow close and difficult to breathe, as if a peculiar haunting drew away the life-giving essence from its domain. Nu sensed something or someone watching him from the rocks above.

  The trail hugged a sheer cliff wall, now high above the raging torrent. As Nu rounded the canyon bend, he reined his onager to a stop. The path continued to climb, zigzag
ging up a near vertical mass of granite to a height far above even the top of the waterfall. Gloating over the apex of the pass was the Great Sphinx of Seti. Her eyes of giant ruby caught the sun’s rays with an eerie sparkle that made them seem alive. They sent dreadful warnings to come no closer. The woman’s head attached to a cat’s body smiled her knowing smile, keeping secrets from the children of men.

  A’Nu-Ahki, by heritage, knew some of those secrets, but not enough to stifle the crawling sensation from his groin into the pit of his stomach. He twitched the reigns and continued up to the megalithic feline’s massive paws, hope now gone that he could catch his granduncle before the old fool reached Aeden. Nu thought now only of his own chances.

  As he climbed, the heat and closeness of air grew more constricting. The brooding monument cast a spell over the entire gorge that stole the breath like a cat in humanity’s cradle. It reminded all comers that flesh and blood could no longer abide the immortal lands and live. Even so, one man since Atum-Ra had succeeded, although he had later vanished.

  A’Nu-Ahki reminded himself that the stone sentinel was more than a mere warning. It had once served a happier purpose, long ago.

  The Sphinx was made of poured kapar stone blocks, reinforced by bronze bars; the cement-like blocks colored green by copper oxides to contrast with the tawny granite of the surrounding rock formations of the pass. Seti, in his final years, and Q’Enukki, in his youth, had planned the project together—one of many megalithic structures all over the world they had initiated during the height of Sa-utar’s power.

  They had infused each such monument with prophetic, astronomical, and scientific information—the great battle cat with a virgin’s head served as far more than a glorified scarecrow. The sun of the vernal equinox rose at midpoint between the constellations of the Virgin and the Battle-lion, which marked the start and end of the heavenly cycle since creation.

  Likewise, the Sphinx also marked in its form the beginning and end of the prophetic story told in the Twelve Star-signs of Heaven. It started with the Virgin, who would bring forth the Promised Seed. The hindquarters spoke of the Battle-lion, representing conquest made by the matured Seed, as Lion-king, who would crush the Basilisk’s head in the Last Battle. The Sphinx imitated the dawn of vernal equinox by its form, and marked the place in the circle of constellations where the story began and ended. It faced due south, allowing the path of the sun on the equinox to divide its halves.

  Nevertheless, the Sphinx still crouched as a warning, because of its location and because the kherubim of Aeden were said by legend to have the form of winged battle-cats with the heads of men. At least that was how Nu’s ancestors had imagined them. The Sphinx marked a division—both in the heavens and on earth. On earth, it divided the mortal from the immortal lands—between respect for the ban of E’Yahavah and its transgression—between life and death. It did that even in happier times.

  As Nu considered this, a scraping noise in the rocks above drew his eyes upward. A stream of pebbles tumbled down onto the trail. He thought he saw the swipe of a leonine tail disappear among the high boulders.

  Mountain cat or Kherub? He shuddered.

  Fortunately, his onager did not spook easily, and kept to the trail at a steady pace. By the time Nu reached the last switchback near the top of the pass, the sun had set into a rose-purple orb. The fiery sky silhouetted the massive Sphinx into an overhanging black gargoyle ready to lunge down and pluck him off the last leg of the path in its mouth to devour him in one gulp.

  When the road finally turned back again, it lay on the level of the Sphinx’s paws, beyond which any traveler would have to go who wished to transgress the Ban of Aeden. The skulls of presumptuous pseudo-seers littered the dry grass before the stone beast-woman, as if she had plucked them from the path like a gryndel wurm and spit out their deluded foul-tasting heads to bake in the mountain sun.

  An unearthly wail echoed across the blood-tainted peaks, an undulating sound made by no beast A’Nu-Ahki had ever heard of, and certainly by no man. The eyes of the Great Sphinx still glowed with a peculiar blood-red life in the failing dusk. In the wine-lit shadows between the megalith’s house-sized paws, he noticed Urugim’s onager cowering against the night terrors. The old man was nowhere to be found.

  Nu pulled his own mount into that three-sided shelter, kicking a skull outside, the Sphinx suddenly no longer a predator, but a guardian of his safety and sanity. No force on earth could make him go any further by night.

  Under normal conditions, A’Nu-Ahki could never have slept in such a place, but weariness outweighed the abnormality. Soon after he sat with his back against the innermost recess between the statue’s extended forelimbs, sleep abducted him from the realm of the living.

  Fitful nightmares fell, diving red gryphons, shrieking, incoherent, upon his dream-scape. Blood ran through the streets of Salaam-Surupag in a river flowing from a gruesome spring in Emzara’s slit throat.

  His father, Lumekki, did battle in the jungle, first against soldiers, then with a gryndel wurm near twice the height of a man.

  Lumekki fought, as in his days as Tacticon Captain of Thousands during the Zhri’Nikkor War. He lunged under the snapping gryndel, and rose beneath its jaws to clasp the creature’s tiny arm claw. The little appendage was too short to even bring food to the monster’s mouth, and found use only during its mating ritual. Here Lumekki remained beyond reach of its teeth. The gryndel suddenly understood its own danger, and thrashed about wildly to throw A’Nu-Ahki’s father from his grip on its one weak spot.

  Lumekki gritted his teeth, and wrenched the atrophied arm-claw backwards with all his might. The gryndel bellowed, unable to reach this usurper with its dagger teeth or throw him with any contortion.

  Lumekki gave a loud battle cry, followed by a sickening snap. He tore his enemy’s limb from its socket and then, in a monumental feat of strength, pulled the arm-claw free from the gryndel’s thrashing body altogether, skin, muscle and sinew, until one of the creature’s major arteries ruptured. Nu then watched his father dive for freedom between the wurm’s two ring-mailed legs and roll away from the swiping range of its tail.

  The beast staggered about from loss of blood. It bled to death in a few short minutes—or so it seemed in the dream. Lumekki, whose sandals A’Nu-Ahki could never hope to fill, stood again heroic…

  Nu opened his eyes.

  The strange face that gazed down at him seemed almost human, with deep dark eyes that peered quizzically through Nu’s soul, and the long curled beard of an ancient patriarch-king. However, the head was much larger than normal. Nu looked down at where the man’s body should have been but instead saw paws—huge cat’s paws. Wings unfolded from behind the creature’s head with a swoosh, and A’Nu-Ahki screamed.

  “Peace, friend,” the Kherub said in a voice that softly thundered over the muted roar of the waterfall nearby. Then he disappeared.

  A’Nu-Ahki dropped instantly back into a dreamless slumber that refreshed him undisturbed until the sun rose.

  So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

  —Genesis 3:24 (NKJV)

  6

  Orchard

  T

  he sky already shined a bright goldish-white when A’Nu-Ahki opened his eyes again. The two onagers stood outside the shelter of the Sphinx’s forelimbs, nibbling some grass amid the skulls along the edge of the outer flagstones. A lonely breeze rippled through their meal.

  The vision of last night’s Kherub filled Nu’s thoughts. However, when he examined the layer of dust on the pavement between the graven forelimbs, he saw only his own prints and those of the onagers. Apparently, Urugim had not taken shelter there. None of the skulls littered about were recent.

  He pulled himself to his feet and stretched. Ruby Sphinx eyes gazed down on him, almost friendly in the late morning sunlight. The woman’s inscrutable smile was worlds away from
last night’s gargoyle scowl. Nu hoisted his knapsack and stepped from under the shelter of her giant paws.

  To his right, the trail continued upward to a rise, then down into what only three sets of human eyes had ever seen and lived to speak about. Had Urugim managed to become the fourth? If not, would A’Nu-Ahki?

  He tethered the two onagers for single-file march, and led them on foot up the rise. As he walked, he called out with cautious reverence to the Holy Watchers, “I mean no offense! I wish to steal no fruit! I come only to look for an old man who may have lost his way! I ask you who guard this place to pardon my presumption, if presumption it be, and let me find who I seek. I have no wish to intrude, or to violate the ban!”

  As he neared the top of the pass, bluish-white radiance grew upward from the other side, until it became brighter than the Sun. A bone rattling hum filled the air, and an anti-magnetic repulse froze A’Nu-Ahki in his tracks. He would have fallen on his face to escape the piercing glare, but a strange paralysis locked him upright.

  Voices whispered all around him, while a fragrant breeze blew down over the pass out of Aeden. The onagers panicked and tugged at their tethers. Nu released them to gallop back toward the shelter of the Sphinx.

  A dark form emerged over the road’s horizon, a black gash against the backdrop of unstained brilliance. Gradually the crack in the light coalesced into the silhouette of a man who staggered as if drunk to make the top of the rise. Nu, suddenly able to move again, lunged forward to reach him, just as Urugim collapsed into his arms.

  A’Nu-Ahki lifted and carried his granduncle down to the shelter of the Sphinx, to lay him in the shade beneath the great lady’s chin. As he passed between the statue’s giant paws, he turned to look back up at the summit. The light had vanished, with the whispering voices.