The stubbly-faced guard glanced at A’Nu-Ahki and nodded. “I get the officer, he get the captain.”
U’Sumi squatted down and wiped his father’s forehead with the edge of his filthy tunic. Shadow-mind retreated into the depths the moment he touched him. His childhood perspectives on E’Yahavah and World-end seemed to find an almost euphoric instant restoration. Yet it was also unreal somehow; none of the old answers seemed to satisfy completely if he tried to meditate on them for any length of time.
Like some black wraith-world thorn-wasp of the Great Dragonwood, Shadow-mind had left its poisoned stinger buried deep in U’Sumi’s mind.
T
he Consortium ironclad was one of the largest ships afloat—three hundred and thirty cubits from stem to stern and a hundred cubits wide at its beam. U’Sumi peered forward through the conning shack window, where far ahead calm seas broke against the broad, bullet-shaped bows underneath a great bronze tricorn head over the serrated ramming prow.
Behind the glowering sculpture sat the gigantic flattened steel ziggurat of the forward triple-cannon turret—mount on a huge semi-circular barbette. It fired massive cubit-and-a-half diameter missiles farther than a unicorn could gallop in a day—if U’Sumi could believe its captain. Each muzzle had a stylized sea serpent’s mouth with heads of light tin sculpted around it, disproportionately small to keep the barrels from warping.
The great vessel did not seem built for speed, but gun stability. Its towering citadel, which U’Sumi and his guard had climbed to reach the bridge, gave the bulky metal leviathan a top heaviness accentuated by the ship’s being nearly a third as wide as it was long. The Captain had bragged about his “lady” being a leap ahead of the Century War Era ironclads, with their clunky wood fire boilers. His ship burned glakka tree oil, a commodity Aztlan now had in abundance since it had conquered the lumber producing western settlements around Dragonwood the Great.
U’Sumi presented his case to the Shipmaster, appealing to the man’s self-interest. Under different circumstances, he might have liked the Captain, who reminded him a little of his grandfather. The fellow agreed to grant medical supplies and even to give U’Sumi limited freedom aboard, barring only engine spaces, weaponry areas, and the armory. He gave the impression of having recently received special orders concerning the nature of U’Sumi and A’Nu-Ahki’s captivity. U’Sumi was sure that a vessel this size must carry a quickfire oracle capable of communicating with land.
The Captain’s eyes darkened just as he seemed about to finish speaking. He pointed out at the starboard bridge wing, which hung out over the foaming waters far below. “I want you to listen to something before I release you on this ship. Come over here,” he said.
He led U’Sumi out onto the triangular wing deck. Outside, pinkish-gold late afternoon sky met the endless expanse of water in all directions. Swishing armor-shrouded water screws churned aft. Still, an ululating wail sounded over them. Never having been at sea, U’Sumi had assumed this was some strange effect of the breeze over endless flat waters.
“Hear that music?” The Captain spoke slowly, in an almost spellbound whisper that sent a chill up U’Sumi’s spine.
“I’ve heard it often since we went to sea, what is it?”
The Shipmaster paused to let the alien specter-song haunt U’Sumi’s ears before he answered. “It’s the Song of Tiamatu—the call of Leviathan. In these waters, it means certain death to any sailor who falls overboard.”
“They sound far off.”
“Don’t fool yourself. They sing while submerged. They can stay down for over an hour. You can see their serpent necks carve a trail through the seas when they ain’t a-sounding. Sometimes they’ll swim close enough to pluck a careless man off the main deck, between the secondary cannon barricades. Some get to be almost a sixth the length of this ship, but even a whelp’ll thrash ya to raw meat. Them’n even bigger offspring of Tiamatu can smell yer blood from a long ways off, the moment you hit the water. So don’t get any ideas about jumpin’ ship when we come in closer to shore.”
U’Sumi had no more such ideas.
He left the conning shack no longer under guard, and returned below to his father. A’Nu-Ahki lay on the bare metal deck, still trembling in his fevered delirium. U’Sumi knelt over him and dabbed his sweaty forehead again. Soon, the old sailor who had been their jail keeper brought in clean bandages, medicinal herbs, and a pot of boiling water. U’Sumi started meticulously cleaning his father’s festering wound.
E
erie music filtered into the unlocked brig cabin from above deck.
U’Sumi finished his nightly re-binding of A’Nu-Ahki’s forehead. He had overheard the sailors’ banter enough to note their superstition that Tiamatu sang out for those about to die at sea. He wondered sometimes if Leviathan wasn’t calling through the armored hull for his father. Time, and a more attentive ear, revealed a more human tune however, played gently on some kind of Iyu’Buuli wood-wind pipes.
His father rested quietly now, so U’Sumi decided to investigate the haunting melody. He left the brig, climbed the ladder up to the starboard main deck, and gazed thoughtfully out over the cranberry ocean twilight that shined around the metal ramparts.
The Piper sat in the shadows against a secondary cannon barbette, in the space between the gun mount and the deck barricade; a most careless sailor by the Captain’s reckoning. The sailor stared at the emerging stars with large soft eyes, like windows into the great deeps. He stopped playing when he saw U’Sumi approach.
“Please go on,” U’Sumi said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. It’s an interesting tune. I thought at first you were Leviathan.”
The Piper said, “Now that’s a compliment, to be sure.”
U’Sumi asked, “Have you played long?”
“All my life. Began as a lad, younger’n you, sea-wenching my first voyage. It be rutting-good that someone ‘ears me last song.”
“Why are you giving it up? You play quite well.”
The Sailor laughed mirthlessly. “Got the red-sore; don’t feel up to waiting ‘till me face rots off. If not, I’d be askin’ a randee lad like you… Well, on second thought, I don’t mean to offend if it’s not yer inclinings.”
U’Sumi controlled his revulsion. “It’s not. But I’m sorry you’re ill.”
“I’m not complaining, wattee. As the song goes, ‘women and boys that are only toys, but never a wife for a sailor.’ At sea, I guess I got used to the boys mostly. You believe in the gods?”
U’Sumi shrugged, unsure if he wanted to answer. For perhaps the first time in his life, he felt more like listening than talking.
“Not those dumb Temple ones! I mean gods as they used to be.”
“I believe in one, I guess. At least I used to think I did.”
“Ahh, the Big One!” The Sailor cackled knowingly. “He plays no games, that one.”
U’Sumi wasn’t so sure any more, but he nodded anyway.
“Where I’m from, folk would’ve called my life ‘strange,’ to put it nicely. I never gave it much thought. Maybe they was right, maybe not. That one big god up there must sure think they was, else I wouldn’t be pickin’ at these rot spots all about my middle. The Temple, they tries to discourage that kind of talk; say it’s harmful!” He exploded with caustic laughter. “Not half as harmful as getting the sore though, or getting born with an extra head, I’ll wager. You think it’s true what folk say, that once the ‘sore’ breaks around yer middle, and starts hittin’ yer face, that you start going mad?”
“You don’t scare me. The One—his name is E’Yahavah.”
The Piper paused as if to think on that. “E’Yahavah. Now there’s an interesting name for a master god. Means ‘self-existent’ in the Old Dialect don’t it? As if he was on some distant island, shouting across the ocean to passing ships, ‘Hey, look at me! I am! I’m here! Come and get me!’ But the ships, they just keep passing by. Is that the picture?”
“The part about the ships passing b
y is—sort of. And the part about his being self-existent. He sure seems far away nowadays, too. But he’s not stuck out there, like he needs us to come to him in our ships.”
“Or in our temples, I’d wager.”
“A winning bet.”
The Piper nodded. “My folk in New L’Mekku believe in a king god who rules the others. They call him High Psydonu. He fathered the titan Psydonu and then At’Lahazh and his brothers. He was once different from what they say now, though. Ours was more of an ocean god, master of the seas. He rides Leviathan and carries drowning mariners to their final place in the deeps.” He lifted the pipes again, and resumed his haunted tune.
A long spell passed, in which U’Sumi found himself carried away by the seaman’s music to where he could almost see the realm of dark Psydonu in the depths below; blue and cold, filled with gray, hopeless faces calling upward to a world unable to hear them. Leviathan gloated over her catch, her mournful song whining up from the clammy blackness.
The Piper stopped playing. They both listened.
Echoing across the ocean in sirenesque wails, Leviathan’s strange music drew closer.
The Piper almost chanted in a burst of manic excitement, “They’ve heard me! Psydonu has heard my call, and his stallions answer me from the beyond! They’re coming for me now…”
U’Sumi suddenly understood. “No!” he shouted, “you don’t want that! Psydonu and E’Yahavah are not the same!”
The Piper gazed up at him, watery remorse filling his large eyes with a distant echo of empathy. “No, of course they ain’t. But it’s faster.”
“But what if you don’t escape? What if it all just goes on in Underworld with no hope and no end?” U’Sumi said, his chest sucked empty of fervor like some lone soldier on a battlefield about to be overrun by a massive unstoppable enemy—a feeling he understood only too well.
The Sailor merely shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
U’Sumi’s heart raced, his mind searching frantically for something to say that would stop him. “I like you, even if the red-sore gets on your face, I still like you!” he said, unafraid it would give the wrong impression. What did any of that matter now?
The Mariner gave a flicker of a smile with the ghost of what once, long ago, would have been warmth. “You’re a kindly lad. But it’s too late for me. If your E’Yahavah were real, I’d only curse him to his face, so it’s too late.” No fire of resentment or rage; just a damp, bleak, limp indifference.
U’Sumi went numb all over, as his head started spinning. He wanted to tell him somehow that it wasn’t too late, but what could he say to what he had just heard? Shadow-mind advanced in waves of helpless hesitation.
Leviathan dirges filled the darkening night. Over the side, beneath the barricade’s gap, slippery snake-shadows swam hungrily in the foam. Nightmare sounds of fins and blow-holes broke the surface, pressing U’Sumi against the citadel bulkhead. Farther out, the silhouette of a long-necked serpentine head rose against the moon. Its eyes glinted with bloody phosphorescence before it dove again to its endless hunt.
U’Sumi found his tongue. “Mister, please don’t go! My father’s a Seer of E’Yahavah, and he’s also a healer—a really good healer!”
The Piper got up and moved to the rail. He turned to U’Sumi, and handed him his pipes. “Your father’s done himself, lad—everybody knows it. What has E’Yahavah done for him? I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s done for me. I don’t have no one, so I’d like it if you took these pipes and learn to play’em. Carved’em myself outa leviathan’s bone. I’ll wager your songs’ll be a lot brighter than mine. Remember me when you play’em, but don’t be like me, kid.”
U’Sumi clasped the pipes and watched, paralyzed, as the sailor climbed onto the low gap rail. He sat for an eternal moment, straddled between worlds.
“Don’t!” U’Sumi rushed out to grab the jumper before he could fall.
The Sailor held up his hand. “Don’t try it, lad. I don’t want you plucked over by accident.”
A mountainous hump rose from the water and fell back into the sea.
U’Sumi jumped backward. He had never seen a living thing so huge.
Voracious shadows thrashed below, as the Sailor held his arms up and waved them over the side.
A gigantic serpent’s neck whipped up from the foam. U’Sumi fell back again against the citadel. Moonlight silhouetted the bird-snake head while Leviathan’s red phosphor eyes glinted in cold fire. The creature’s gaze fell upon U’Sumi, as if the sailor on the guardrail was not even there.
The Piper screamed, “Me, not him!”
The Beast ignored the seaman and glared at U’Sumi. Its spike-like teeth shimmered from jaws snapping with rapacious hunger. Shadow-mind rose from inner depths as cold as those from which the serpent had come. U’Sumi felt the bizarre urge to step out from behind the gun turret and move nearer the rail, as if summoned by both Shadow-mind and Leviathan. The creature’s eyes beckoned while its breath flashed puffs of the chemical luminescence it used to attract fish to its waiting jaws. The suicidal sailor shook his fists at it shrieking and cursing.
U’Sumi stood up. He no longer let the bulkhead support his back. What was the point anyway? The prophecies were past any possibility of fulfillment. All he had to look forward to was a life of imprisonment. Even if he escaped, returning to Akh’Uzan meant living down not only his lineage, but also a foolish trust in an outmoded way of life that was now proven defunct beyond any reasonable salvage!
Then he remembered his own words to the sailor. He didn’t know what E’Yahavah had for him; maybe if he just waited it out a little longer something would happen. Had E’Yahavah not already given him power to do the impossible? Had not U’Sumi, the “scrawny ‘tween-ager” of Akh’Uzan, defeated one of their mighty Elyo?
U’Sumi roared at the sea serpent, “Get out of here! Get out of here and leave us all alone!”
The glow in Leviathan’s eyes darkened. It released U’Sumi from its gaze and unleashed a puff of cold glow-gas from its blow-hole to show its displeasure. For second, it seemed about to dive away from the ship. Then the marine reptile plucked the screaming sailor from the rail with a thunderous snap of its jaws. It sounded with an enormous splash, dragging its consolation prize below to devour in the silence of the deep.
U’Sumi shouted at E’Yahavah, “Why’d you let that happen? I said, ‘all of us!’ The sailor might have listened to more!”
The answering Voice was almost audible, whether of Shadow-mind or of E’Yahavah, U’Sumi could not tell. “What do you know of ‘all?’”
Nausea swept over U’Sumi as he collapsed and wretched all over the deck. He scrambled below to the silent comfort of his father’s sleeping form. As he slipped into the brig, he heard the ship’s harpoon-ballista men race onto the main deck to engage the monsters, too late to save their comrade.
For the rest of that night, the leviathans kept close to the ship, thumping angrily against the hull and whining their horrible song. U’Sumi was sure the madness of Underworld had marked him, never to give up until he caved in and answered Tiamatu’s menacing call.
Nevertheless, A’Nu-Ahki slept peacefully for the first time since the battle. That alone proved just enough to keep Shadow-mind at bay from taking over U’Sumi’s thoughts entirely.
THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY | 367
For thou hast said in thine heart, ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north,’
—Isaiah 14:13 (KJV)
THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY | 367
7
True North
H
e awoke to a crack of thunder a hundred times louder than the Elyo’s main cannon. A ram’s horn sounded, followed by rushing feet that scrambled through the athwart ship companionway outside the unlocked brig.
U’Sumi rose to see what the commotion was, only to be knocke
d aside by a stream of burly sailors flooding the companionway. Soon the passage emptied out , and U’Sumi could step beyond the brig bay.
More thunder echoed topside. The deck reeled sideways in a hard rocking motion from the recoil, tossing U’Sumi into the hatch coaming. He scrambled over to the ladder to the starboard main deck access and climbed, but found the hatch closed with its pressure seals activated.
“You can’t go out there,” said a voice behind him. “The concussion would knock you out!”
U’Sumi turned to see the scruffy sailor who had been his jailer.
“I be Master Guard today. My duty is you and the old man’s safety. We should go back below.”
“What’s happening?”
The Sailor explained as they descended the ladder. “Lookout spots a Lumekkorim monitor off the starboard bow at dawn. We’re passing closest to the enemy anchorage of Monitor Point—little sea vipers! The monitor type ship—it has more speed but less cannon than our lady. But what cannon she has can reload four times as fast—see the problem?”
U’Sumi pondered a moment, then said, “The smaller ship has less cannon power but is faster and able to fire its weapons at a more rapid rate. You can’t escape it, yet while it may not be able to sink an ironclad, it can pepper one with enough light cannonry to disrupt your ability to fight back long enough for other enemy ships to arrive.”
The man nodded. “Only hope is to take her under with a few good hits from our main cannons before she gets close enough to make her fire good, and launch sea-vipers. You understand well.”
“My grandfather was a high ranking military man. He trained me. I’d love to be able to watch this if we can.”
“Not good idea.”
They entered the brig compartment, where the Sailor sealed the watertight hatch behind them.
The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) Page 11