Farsa did not know why she still thought of Tiva so often—tiny, smooth dark skin, buxom, with deep eyes, and riotous black curls—it was even weirder that her memories of their friendship were so intense right now. Tiva had left the Hollow twenty years ago, and never returned—no, that’s not true. She came back once to talk to me—to tell me she wasn’t mad at me.
Farsa still felt badly about the prank the Hollowers had pulled on her friend—which had scared Tiva back into being a Lit fervent waiting for World-end. She lived now with Khumi and his father, and worked with them on that dopey ship in the valley. Tiva had once depended on Farsa as a mentor, and Farsa had loved that feeling. The prank had ruined that. Farsa’s nose was still crooked from when Tiva, in a potion-mad panic, had slammed her face into a tree to escape the Hollow. Farsa knew that Tiva could take a joke, but Varkun and Moon-chaser had gone too far that night.
The epiphany escaped with a groan from Farsa’s chest. If not for Khumi, Tiva and I might have eventually become lovers! I would have never treated her as Sariya treats me! Farsa laughed bitterly. Yeah, right! Tiva had loved Khumi right from the start, and I practically set them up!
She sometimes still saw Tiva and Khumi together from a distance in town. They did not look nearly as happy as in the old days, but they were still together, and Farsa could not imagine them ever splitting up. The realization spilled a raging sea of emotions that swept her up so powerfully she had to sit down for several minutes by the trailside and fold her arms around herself. I was in love with you, Tiva! Back then, I couldn’t see that for what it was. Maybe I’m still in love with you…
She wept convulsively for several minutes, clutching her own arms to embrace the vacuum that no one now could ever fill. When she finally settled down, Farsa got up again and continued her walk into the night.
The hilly woodland trail to the Wisdom Tree seemed to wind on forever with new realizations. Farsa only knew she was getting close by the ghost-fire that hovered over a closed gulch ahead. She came to the bubbling pool in its boxed canyon, the island in the midst of which lay under the shelter of a single giant oak. Contrary to Sariya’s claim, the pulsing light of the disk floating overhead seemed gray and faded compared to the flickering of broken Tiamatu. Farsa waded across to where her brother, his wife, and a few others sat beneath the tree. Scat! Tsulia’s with them!
Varkun stood as a giant next to the pale slender form of one of the Helpers—probably the one called Pahn, a name that meant all in the Old Khavilak dialect.
The Helpers all seem alike to me. Farsa grinned.
She could never quite get used to the appearance of the beings her brother had contacted through the sacred mushrooms—first as inner voices, then gradually as apparitions that eventually somehow became group-visible. These days, the mushrooms were unnecessary to summon them. It still troubled Farsa that the Helpers never seemed quite as solid as real things ought to.
Then again, who am I to say what’s real? Being near the Tree felt good, and it got her mind off Sariya, and any regrets over Tiva.
“Welcome back, Farsa,” Varkun called across the water to her in his coarse Kushtahar brogue. His dark hair and eyes gleamed in the disk’s light, as the teeth in his enormous mouth all showed in a huge shark-like smile.
Farsa climbed onto the mossy bank and approached him. Something about Varkun still vaguely attracted her, even after she’d discovered he was a dragon worshiper—even in spite of the years in which she’d embraced her desire for women. She used to think it was only his power over the others, but now she wasn’t so sure. Lately she had wondered if she could still respond emotionally to a man. Guess I’ll find out. He’s a consolation prize, but he’s still a prize in these parts. The Helpers aren’t dragons anyway, so I guess Vark’s not really a dragon worshiper any more…
A’Nu-Ahki and ‘Miha opened the door of the library suite the following morning to discover the final phase of Q’Enukki’s Work. Two gold-fire phoenixes waited, perched on the banister of the spiral ramp, right within reach.
Nu watched his wife step outside. The birds did not fly when she stretched out her hand to them. One of the falcon-sized toothed fowl hopped onto her arm, and perched on the woolen sleeve of her morning robe. The other flapped up to her shoulder and preened ‘Miha’s red-gold-silver hair.
A’Nu-Ahki’s wife descended the stairs, laughing, as the two winged dragon fighters serenely bobbed their brilliantly plumed heads with hers.
The muted howling from deep underground briefly returned, and the earth shuddered. A’Nu-Ahki somehow knew by this that the promised Gathering of Beasts had begun.
There is a very fundamental reason why the created kind must, at minimum, be at the generic and not the specific level. The genus is the smallest division of plants and animals that can usually be identified without scientific study… For instance, there is a wealth of evidence that, at minimum, the created kind is broader than the species of conventional taxonomy… If, as the preponderance of evidence shows, the created kind was equivalent to the family (at least in the case of mammals and birds), then there were only about 2,000 animals on the Ark. In such a case it is obvious that there was no problem in housing all the animals on the commodious Ark.
…I have deliberately made the problem of animal housing on the Ark much more difficult by adopting the genus as the taxonomic rank of the created kind. This necessitates… nearly 16,000 animals on the Ark. This number is based on land animals of whose existence we know (either as live animals or fossils). Because I have made the Ark-crowding problem so much more difficult than it actually was, all other sources of error, individually and collectively, are rendered trivial by comparison.
—John Woodmorappe
Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study
2
Migrations
Q’Enukki and Samuille seemed to race ahead of the expanding field of planetary rubble toward the solid inner worlds. Within the safety of their transparent gate-creature’s sealed relocation node, it was easy to forget that the creature actually moved the space-time universe around itself and them.
Q’Enukki shouted with the energy of a boy riding a soldier’s tricorn for the first time, “I see something happening inside the Earth! It is heating up somehow deep beneath its crust. Some sort of halo shines out through it. It was not there a few minutes ago—is that normal?”
“The mantle,” Samuille answered. “The halo is a radiant energy you could not normally see. For some time now, the Earth’s mantle has been growing more active with this radiation. It is causing water to out-gas from the mantle’s primary mineral substance.”
“Is it caused by the break-up of Tiamatu?”
“No. This is something different. The Earth itself groans under the burden of evil that man and the fallen Watchers have put on it. It begins to shake. Soon it will awaken to throw off its chains.”
Q’Enukki fastened his eyes on the hairline cracks he had seen formed in the Earth’s crust by the test of Lumekkor’s super-weapon—well before the comet had struck Tiamatu. The faults slowly began to lengthen again from the mounting pressure of water and gases beneath them.
“The Earth’s crust is going to shatter, isn’t it?”
“Not yet,” Samuille said. “Everything must work together so that a remnant can survive, and so the land can someday be habitable again.”
Belkrini, World-end Seer of E’Yahavah’s Fiery Breath, smarted on his long walk back from Akh’Uzan Village. He applied hastily-purchased facial pigment to his blackened eye as he turned off the road, northward, onto a trail through the luxuriant forest-layered foothills of the timber-lords.
“The sons of A’Nu-Ahki should have more respect for their elders!” he mumbled to himself. His thoughts festered all during the long, gentle climb up to the entrance of his cavern city under the hills northwest of town.
Even with the blows to his pride and his face, Belkrini could not get his mind off the attractive mottled girl with her musical accent, who h
ad turned out to be the wife of A’Nu-Ahki’s hot-headed son. “T’Qinna,” I think he called her. She moves and speaks so differently from the daughters of Q’Enukki—and the exquisite Nhoddic skin patterns of her face would place any man under a hypnotic trance! I was only anxious for her survival! He distantly knew that he rationalized, but since his attempt to show his burden for her in the market square had ended so badly, he no longer cared.
“I would have thrashed that young ruffian, too!” Belkrini reminded himself. Except that after the sucker punch, A’Nu-Ahki’s son had deliberately stood over him, with his long coat pulled back just far enough for Belkrini to see the hand-cannon strapped underneath it.
The Seer of Fiery World-end strode past his sentry at the mouth of the cave, and rang the gong to summon his followers. Then he descended the shelf-trail into a glittering cavern of multi-colored quartz, to his accustomed speaking place—a bend in the path jutting out like a gigantic crystal-studded lectern over the big chamber. “We need to reinforce our position!” He growled, as he waited for the throng to gather on the soil-coated floor below.
Soon, Belkrini surveyed his six-hundred-odd followers from his gemstone balcony. Beyond them, multiple caverns branched from the central gallery to dimmer regions. Gigantic high-energy quickfire pearls, ensconced in gold atop sturdy rose-quartz pillars, drew power from water wheels stretched across an underground river in one of the lower chambers.
The Fire Seer took pride in his subterranean village; one of the true engineering marvels dreamed up by Akh’Uzan’s diverse World-end sects. Only Floodhaven came close to rivaling it, with A’Nu-Ahki’s ship rating maybe a distant third place—after all, the jagged surrounding mountains would likely smash the thing to splinters. The rest of the Seer Clan indulged a limp-minded hope that their little valley would magically be immune to the end of the world. The fate of the lazy and unprepared awaited such fools.
He folded his arms with a satisfied grin, and checked his make-up job in the reflection of the polished, podium-sized, quartz hexagon before him. His gaunt face and bulging eyes looked almost normal, except for some swelling around the injured socket. He touched up the pigment again.
Whoever thought I would get this far? Not A’Nu-Ahki or his wurm-whelp spawn—may the rocks prove extra sharp on their ship! It took a few seconds for Belkrini to realize that his little curse made no sense unless A’Nu-Ahki and Nestrigati proved correct about a World-end of water rather than fire. He scowled.
Although superior to Nestrigati’s mountaintop refuge in ingenuity, the cave-city was second to Floodhaven in population. Built with Belkrini’s fortune from the Century War’s Akh’Uzan timber boom—not to mention the signed-over assets of his followers—the caverns of “New Sa-utar” also had an aesthetic charm its competition lacked. Sculptors had terraced the grottos in fountains and pools that reflection-danced off shining walls of amethyst, quartz, and the granite carvings of the seven archons and seers up to Q’Enukki.
New Sa-utar had one other thing that Floodhaven lacked—the most important thing in Belkrini’s mind: My followers have undivided loyalties—something Nestrigati can’t boast, being so beholden to all his backers. Who reads the stars rightly now, Water-Boy?
An additional quality also set the leader of New Sa-utar apart from the seers of any other World-end sect, at least in his own mind: Belkrini had a powerful conversion experience. He did not grow up in the Seer Clan, despite being a direct descendant of Urugim son of Q’Enukki. His father, Tarkuni, the firstborn of Urugim, had divorced Belkrini’s mother when Belkrini was a small boy, back when the clan lived near Sa-Utar. His mother had remarried a Khavilak merchant-priest, ensuring that Clan Urugim would shun her and her son. Belkrini had not even believed in World-end at first.
His conversion had come with the Century War—upon hearing of the military service exemption offered to those of Urugim’s sub-clan who claimed the fosterage of Muhet’Usalaq in Akh’Uzan. Archon Iyared had bequeathed to the sons of Muhet’Usalaq—Q’Enukki’s firstborn—the exemption so they could continue Q’Enukki’s prophetic Work. Urugim had given his sons over to the fosterage of his older brother on his deathbed. All that had remained was for Urugim’s individual descendants to claim it.
Belkrini had not hesitated, even though he thought back then that World-end stood about as much chance of happening as “dragon-pie diving” did at becoming the favored pastime of wealthy fat women from Archonic Orthodox priestly families. Once he had settled in Akh’Uzan though, he took some time to actually read the prophecies for himself, and consider if they might actually be true. For a long time, he thought not. Then the Firefall Raids from Samyaza’s flying ships came.
Belkrini had narrowly escaped when his house took a direct hit from an incendiary pod dropped by one of the airships. His wife had not been so fortunate. Afterward, dreams came in which he saw the entire world burning down. Then voices started speaking inside his head, so clear and firm in their messages of fire that he feared for his own sanity at first. They told him that the Firefall Raids were only a foretaste of the fiery World-end described on Seti’s Obelisks at old Sa-utar. The crackling voices had also reassured him that another, strictly internal, flame might be overlooked if he but obeyed the words of A’Nu’s fiery serafs. After Lumekkor’s aerodrones drove away the airships, Belkrini rebuilt his fortune—only this time with a purpose.
The adoring crowd gathered in the cavern below him was the fruit.
Belkrini stepped forward, and howled like one of the flaming serafs in his head, “The fires in the sky approach Earth! But don’t be frightened, my children. Ours is the vault of safety! Yet there are those who still deny the True Order of Seti’s Monoliths: Fire, and then Water! We must soon send them a message of fire against the false hope of a false Comforter! But first, let us partake of the Inner Cleansing.”
Six hundred men, women, and children stripped themselves to their ceremonial red silk loincloths, and began to jump and scream in a massive tantrum. Their reflections on the crystalline outcroppings magnified them into a madly distorted army of shrieking banshees—all ready to act at Belkrini’s command. Some fell, still hollering, and rolled in the fertile bat guano they had been seeding when their Seer had summoned them.
While he watched, Belkrini fondled the lost manuscript sewn into his mantle. The seraf voices had led him directly to the vellum fragment in a sacred reliquary shop in Erdu, which a Khavilak merchant-priest had later authenticated as written in Q’Enukki’s very own hand. Imagine that old fool Muhet’Usalaq being unable to recognize his own father’s ideograms!
Despite the unbridled fervor of especially the young women, Q’Enukki’s spiritual successor-by-default could only stand the noise of the “Cleansing” for so long. When he felt his people had reached the proper state of frenzy, Belkrini shouted, “Empty!”
Their echoes bounced through the grotto like a responsorial chant of entombed wraiths. The followers now held out their hands, eyes closed, with blank smiles, swaying on a sea of mass-contentment.
Belkrini descended on quartz stairs into the gallery, chose some of the cleanest, most attractive girls, and led them off to his cavern suite. They followed with serene smiles; minds empty of all worry, and thought. Their only desire was for the communal good—as defined for them by Belkrini.
The Seer of Fire mused to himself sadly, as they walked. The problem with women in Akh’Uzan is that they need so much preparation to break down the walls of their upbringing. Walls built by the mindless legalism of Muhet’Usalaq, and his bastard descendant, A’Nu-Ahki! We’ll send them a message that’ll curl the flesh right off their bones!
The family sat at dinner by the hearth, the day after Lumekki’s burial.
“You’ve got to give the little weasel credit for inventiveness,” A’Nu-Ahki said, tapping a copy of the Archonic Proclamation, “No one else would have been oily enough to think this up.”
Na’Amiha said, “If E’Yahavah lets Tarbet live long enough, he’ll redefine
every word in the language until there’s no meaning left!”
“Get this,” Nu continued, reading from the Archon’s scroll, “‘the meaning for those descended from Seti is clear: The Sword of the Breaker and Tiamatu have annihilated one another. There is no longer any spiritual division between the tribes of humanity. For Lumekkor, and other peoples that looked to Tiamatu for wisdom, their star, in its wisdom, has sacrificed itself to save our world, which would have been destroyed by the comet.’ What is this? The sacred astronomers agreed that the comet would have only passed slightly nearer to Earth than last time, with little effect!”
U’Sumi gave an ironic laugh. “No Pahp, where’ve you been? That’s the old history. The orbs and message scrolls will repeat the new history as a drum beat, ‘til six months from now, no one’ll remember the old history. If anyone does, the weight of repetition makes the new story feel true—after all, the whole world can’t be wrong, can it? Except that it can, and often is.”
Iyapeti pushed his plate away. “And anyone who keeps remembering will be labeled ‘Iyaredist Regressive bigots’ or some other nasty name.”
Their father tapped the newfangled papyrex sheet. “It goes on, ‘…As for Seti—who saw Leviathan’s world as a symbol for evil—that evil has been destroyed. The forces of Light and Shadow are now balanced’—now, where have we heard that kind of talk before? It finishes; ‘This takes away the arrogance, and thus the wall, between all people. Far from an omen of doom, this is a token of hope for Lumekkor and of dignity for Seti.’”
U’Sumi grimaced. “Sounds like the pits beneath the Gate of the Setting Sun have tunneled all the way to Sa-utar.”
The Tides of Nemesis (The Windows of Heaven Book 4) Page 5