The Archon said. “I understand your feelings. A’Nu-Ahki also financed it with the sacred treasuries of Paru’Ainu—talk about cheek!”
Avarnon leaned back. “The ship itself is not embarrassing to me. But it sends the wrong message to people, saying, ‘Give up, the world is dying!’ You should have something to say about that, Tarbet, given your mandate.”
“This is ‘Lit valley’—as in World-end Literalism. They’ve been around forever. Nobody outside Akh’Uzan takes them seriously. If anyone should be embarrassed, it’s me—I almost married the silly bynt.”
The matted hair on Avarnon’s neck hunched up. “Na’Amiha; silly? See if you can read the signs: The author of World-end frenzy, their Seer Q’Enukki, worked from this valley nearly a millennium ago. Soon after men knew of the Descent of the Powers on the Ardis Mountains, my father visited him with potent signs, to ask his intercession for them. Q’Enukki refused…”
“Wait a minute,” Tarbet said. “You mean to say that Q’Enukki’s account about Uzaaz’El’s pleading with him is true?”
“Not the spin his sons put on it! My father simply came to Akh’Uzan first.”
“Whatever for?”
“You’re the Archon! Don’t you believe in your own E’Yahavah?”
“What I believe is insignificant,” Tarbet said. “The question I have is; why should Uzaaz’El believe in him? It’s just a religious matter.”
The Beast-man revealed a row of jagged fangs in a lipless grin. “Have you not taught the world lately that all religions are really one?”
“You know what I mean!”
Avarnon-Set sighed. “Q’Enukki was our first choice for the position you now hold. He, in his foolishness, refused it—as did his sons. Hence, my father began to cultivate the next best thing: the line of Q’Enukki’s brother. After all, you still carry the same creation codes that control the seer gift. Did you not experience it the night Tiamatu gave up her life for us?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That is why this ship-builder troubles me.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“After Q’Enukki refused to aid my father, he began to use his gift actively against us. He did this in the spirit realm, by allying himself with hostile forces, and in temporal ways through a propaganda war. The latter centered itself both here and at Sa-utar, then at Regati and Salaam-Surupag, and later back here again, as a last gasp, during the Century War. Q’Enukki’s power passed on to his sons after he disappeared. For a time, they covered the lands with hate campaigns against us. They left us no other choice but to stamp them out in one country after another.”
“What are you saying?”
Avarnon-set explained, “Samyaza—then still allied with my father—took the city-state of Regati down even as we planned to silence Salaam-Surupag. But Samyaza got impatient, and decided that my father moved too slowly—thus his invasion and the start of the Century War.”
Tarbet felt himself turn yellow in the face. “You mean to say that you really were trying to destroy the line of Q’Enukki—one of our seers—that it’s not all just a paranoid delusion of his extremist sons?”
Avarnon laughed. “You see how effective they were? They even have you pleading their case. No! The truth is they left us no choice! There was no reasoning with them—you know how that goes! When my agents were finished, only Muhet’Usalaq remained—the most treacherous of the lot! It was his line that carried the bulk of Q’Enukki’s power.”
The Archon shook his head in disbelief. It sounded like one of the Seer Clan’s worst propaganda scrolls. “Muhet’Usalaq—power? His clan was the most extreme! He’s the old fool who bred all the silliness in this valley!”
“Was his clan really the most extreme?” Avarnon said. “The Powers wanted your people to think so, to protect you from the hostile spiritual forces Q’Enukki used. But if you’ll look back thoughtfully, you will find that it was younger elements in the other houses of the Q’Enukkian Movement that produced the most bizarre excesses—not Muhet’Usalaq’s.”
“You keep mentioning ‘hostile spiritual forces’—just who are these forces? Are you saying the Seer was some kind of dragon worshiper?”
Avarnon-Set stifled another laugh. “How quaint—nothing quite so melodramatic. Why do your people call my father’s order ‘Watchers’?”
Tarbet shrugged. “According to tradition, they watch over us—the good ones to our protection, the evil to our undoing.”
“And to which group do you suppose my father belongs?”
Tarbet’s heart froze. “We…”
Avarnon-Set cut him off, “Q’Enukki convinced Archon Aenusi that my father’s order—all the Powers that descended upon the Kharir Ardisu—were in league with the Basilisk. Yet even by Q’Enukki’s own account, all of the Watchers uniformly denied this, taking oaths to each other. They came to lift men up, not cast them down! Yet look at the wars that arose against them!”
Tarbet corrected the Titan with a mouse’s voice, terrified by the implications that now unfolded in his mind. “If you wish to be more precise, my Lord, Q’Enukki did not claim that your father’s order had aligned with the Basilisk. He said that they had deluded themselves into thinking they could set up a neutral order that could mediate in ways the Great God had supposedly rejected already. Q’Enukki classified Uzaaz’El’s Watchers as being in the same situation as the Basilisk, having fallen under his power because they had discarded their first estate in the heavens.”
The Beast-man’s white-less eyes flared. For a moment, Tarbet feared Avarnon-Set would tear open his throat. Instead, the Giant said, “So the question comes down in the end to, whose account do you believe? Do my father and his brothers have a place in the affairs of the world, or are they—and by extension, we—mere dupes and meddlers?”
Blood swished audibly in Tarbet’s ears. He remembered the question he had asked himself on the night he became Archon, concerning how the Watchers made use of whatever they found convenient to their cause. If I tell him what I now suspect, I shall become most inconvenient indeed!
“Well?” demanded the Beast.
“You’ve just placed a lot of new information on my shoulders…”
“Well then, Tarbet; let me place a little more—so you know where you stand, and how much your shoulders can bear. I made it my personal goal to destroy the line of Muhet’Usalaq. Do you know where it got me? That witch, Na’Amiha, actually convinced me that she would marry right into the center of their counsels, and deliver them to me, if I could pressure the Emperor to arrange it! So blinded by ambition was I, that I totally ignored the fact that she had spurned my own father! It’s not as though that skinny little slut wasn’t as transparent as glass! I must have been under a peculiar spell of the Enemy. So I waited.”
“For what?”
“The right circumstances to correct things—during the Aztlan War, I convinced Uggu to coerce your father into conscripting sons from the Seer Clan against Iyared’s Oath…”
Tarbet bristled. “We didn’t break the Oath; we simply found new meaning in it that was not evident to its framers!”
“Who cares what you call it! I laid the last remnant of Muhet’Usalaq in a trench outside the main line, and then ordered my forces to withdraw in a move that should have served up the Seer Clan Regiment as gryphon food! But did it? No! Some young paladin actually became the first man to slay an Elyo chimera without heavy artillery—with his bare hands, no less!”
“I’d heard about that,” Tarbet said, hoping to sidetrack Avarnon.
“What followed next is known only to a few—those in Psydonu’s ranks that saw it, and our intelligence operatives that pieced together the truth. Psydonu took this A’Nu-Ahki—grandson of Muhet’Usalaq, who would later build the ship—with the young Elyo-killer—as captives to Thulae. He tried to cut a deal with them, similar to the one my father had offered to Q’Enukki. A’Nu-Ahki told Psydonu to go to Under-world, just as his ancestor did to my father!”<
br />
Tarbet demanded, “What is this deal?”
Avarnon’s eyes flared like black holes. “Not yet, my Archon!”
Tarbet trembled at the way the Beast said my Archon. “Sorry. So how did A’Nu-Ahki escape Thulae?”
“The two prisoners were then whisked off to Epymetu’s Temple City, where Pandura tried, and failed, to extract usable genetic samples—as if it were that easy! Remember Tarbet—remember how long we have worked with you! We didn’t simply steal your creation codes. We groomed you, carefully guarded, and placed you. We gave you power and dignity!”
“For which I am grateful…”
Avarnon spoke over him. “While in Pandura’s custody, this A’Nu-Ahki somehow bewitched a young priestess. The little girl then helped them escape into the drainage system. The report ended there with the Seer, the Elyo-Killer, and the Priestess eaten alive by sewer dragons. The problem was, no body parts were found.”
“What happened to them?”
“Rumors soon had them on a journey around the globe—first a military alert all along Aztlan’s western shores, from the Arctic to Everad-port, then a mention from my catamite vendor that A’Nu-Ahki had been spotted in Nhod, headed for Assuri. This last was just weeks before Samyaza’s ill-fated assault on Aeden. Could it be that my father’s former captain met his match in a half-witted Lit, as you call them? Could it also be that whatever power rests behind the Kharir Aedenu serves this A’Nu-Ahki, just as it served Q’Enukki before him?”
Tarbet shuddered at what that implied about whom and what the “hostile powers” were.
Avarnon-Set said, “So there you have it. A year later, this shipwright started building, again in Akh’Uzan! You get interrupted at the dedication of your father’s colossus—again by this same A’Nu-Ahki, miraculously restored to his homeland! Now you tell me how silly I am!”
Tarbet could not leave it alone. He had to know what Avarnon-Set hinted at when he tied A’Nu-Ahki, and the “hostile powers” to Aeden. If Uzaaz’El arrayed himself against Aeden, and Aeden hid the Sacred Orchard of old, then which side of the war between good and evil was the Archon of Seti really on?
“You still haven’t answered my question about who these ‘hostile spiritual powers’ are?” Tarbet said. “Could they be so powerful as to actually bring about a real World-end?”
“No!” said the Titan. “My father won’t allow that! But they could still do much damage—if only to the political and spiritual order of things. As to their true identity; that rather depends on whose word you believe concerning my father’s order—which brings us back to my question to you.”
Tarbet swallowed, his throat parched. “So many facts have come to light in recent centuries, that it’s not possible to tell with any certainty who are the ‘good’ and who are ‘fallen’ Watchers. Such terms depend on a person’s perspective, don’t they?” He waited for Avarnon-Set to agree.
When the Beast-man simply stared off into space, the Archon continued, his voice climbing to a near screech, “It’s enough for me that your father has dealt prosperously with me, and my people. I may not agree in detail with every method he’s used, but I think his ultimate purpose has been for our good.”
Avarnon spoke with a distant voice to match the cold metallic gleam in his eyes. “You have no idea how it warms my heart to hear you say so.”
Q’Enukki’s Retreat lay empty of furniture, its chambers haunted by the hollow echo common to vacant houses and deserted castles. Only a back cubicle, attached through a dim corridor behind the library to the common hall, had any sign of habitation left in it. That too would soon change.
Muhet’Usalaq lay on his bed, life ebbing from his body in shallow breaths punctuated by intervals where he stopped breathing altogether for as much as ten or twelve seconds at a time. A’Nu-Ahki stood by him, clutching a withered hand, while he silently waited. Na’Amiha and the youngsters hovered, farther back.
The vigil had lasted days. Every ear waited for the dying man’s final words. More than reverence demanded this. A wise man so close to eternity’s edge saw things that lent great insight to those left behind. Nu saw in his grandfather’s eyes that a final lucid moment would be E’Yahavah’s gift to them, if they could just wait it out. Everything else completed, the last cartload of belongings sat out front.
“My time is now,” the Ancient said at last.
Nu squeezed his hand. “We’re all here, Pahpi.”
“Nu,” Muhet’Usalaq whispered, clasping his grandson’s hand with all his fading strength, “leave me to lie in this bed when I pass. My father’s house will be my tomb. Leave the doors and gates unlocked. For a brief time, those fools in the villages may climb to escape. I want to be here to remind them when they come for shelter that they come too late. Call it vindictive,” he smiled, “but I do not want them to waste their last hours in false hope for a future they will never have. Perhaps E’Yahavah, in his kindness, may allow them a chance to turn their hearts to Him in the end; that they might find the Seed’s hope and the Comfort Fields before death locks them into their rebellion forever.”
A’Nu-Ahki said, “I will do as you say.”
The Ancient pressed him harder. “The world is unaware. I have been the true Archon since Kunyari and his seed broke Iyared’s Oath. It was only by the Oath that Adiyuri gained the archonate to begin with. The primacy of his line was conditional, as any authority is, except E’Yahavah’s direct rule. Their claim was forfeit when they broke trust with E’Yahavah by unjustly excommunicating us, and when they conscripted you against the Oath! The Oath-breaker’s blood is upon them—but not upon Adiyuri, who kept his trust after a form. I have only one command to mark my archonate before I pass all authority on to you, Nu.”
“Command me,” said A’Nu-Ahki.
“Let the lineage of that traitorous dupe, Kunyari be stricken from all genealogies until the end of days! Let him and his offspring, Rakhau and Tarbet; be cursed below even the Watchers who treacherously left their charge in the heavens! For even the Watchers shall be an object lesson to future generations. But let Kunyari, Rakhau, and Tarbet be less than Qayin, even as you shall be more than Seti. It is my only command.”
“It shall be done.”
The Old Man’s dried-apple face looked up at his grandson. “You turned out better than I credited you, Nu. For my slack encouragement, I am truly sorry. Let the authority of Atum-Ra’s Chair pass onto the mantle of A’Nu-Ahki son of Lumekki, to re-join the Line of Promise. May New-world be full of heaven’s dew and fertile soil. Let the Curse dwindle, and your children multiply. May the Barque of Aeons protect you through the watery chaos, and carry you safely through to new heavens and a new earth.”
“Pahpi, greet Heh’bul for me, with my parents, Yafutu, and Mamu.”
Muhet’Usalaq smirked. “I will, Nu. You and ‘Miha steer yourselves well in your rudderless ship. I hear Mamu calling me. I must go. If I am late, the stars will flicker out before that woman will let me hear the end of it.”
Nu felt the Ancient’s hand fall limp. Muhet’Usalaq wore a smile of peace and fullness etched forever into his grandson’s memory.
Q’Enukki watched from inside the inter-heavenly gate-creature’s transit node, as Tiamatu’s core fragments approached Planet Earth. With them, came fields of smaller debris—smaller compared to the core shards. Many asteroids dwarfed Earth’s largest cities, some almost a quarter the size of the moon itself. Too many seemed destined to collide with either the planet or its satellite.
The core shards’ gravity affected ocean tides and the atmosphere first. Massive high and low-pressure systems formed over the Great Outer Ocean, producing storms unlike any ever seen. Next, the attraction tugged at Earth’s super-heated mantle, and liquid outer core. The radiant energy that Q’Enukki had seen earlier now reached critical levels. Super-pressurized water out-gassed from the mantle, bubbling angrily just beneath the crust.
Below the shallow north sea of Yawam Tsafuni, the first core fragment’s gravi
ty began to pull up a tide in the pliant mantle material. The viscous matter under Earth’s crust grew more unstable with each daily rotational exposure. Still some distance away, the super-dense irradiated magnets could not yet unleash all the forces building in the depths.
Nevertheless, the first fragment’s attraction—working with growing steam pressure out-gassed by chemical changes in the mantle—expanded against the crust enough to accelerate the growth of hairline cracks in the mega-continent along paths of least resistance. Had the fractures from the testing of Lumekkor’s super-weapon, and the recent war of “divine fire,” not already been there, it would have made only a few days’ worth of a difference in the end.
Samuille reminded Q’Enukki that timing was everything.
The main fault rapidly crawled beneath the Central Channel, through the Hydra Gulf, to Far Kush, off the port of Goloth. From there, it cut southwestward, under the shallow eastern shorelines of the Aztlan Sea, before it curled, due south.
Far to the west, at the edge of the super-continent, gaps between the tectonic plates along Aztlan and Dragonwood expanded in a roughly north-south line with each mantle tide. Perpendicular continental margins along the abyssal plain beginning at the Central Sea, and extending eastward, parallel to the northern shores of the Assuri Ocean, started to strain also. Bonds that held the thicker landmass cratons to the heavier deep-ocean plates stretched and weakened.
Q’Enukki watched as large-scale breaks unleashed a chain reaction deep beneath the surface.
Tiva didn’t know why U’Sumi was so irritable all of a sudden. It wasn’t like him. Khumi was right, and he should have known it.
“With livestock, it’s not just about creation codes; it’s numbers! You need more than a pair to start a good herd,” Tiva’s husband said, his wiry dark arms flailing wildly in the still air.
The Tides of Nemesis (The Windows of Heaven Book 4) Page 11