The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven)

by Powderly Jr. , K. G.

  U’Sumi said, “Yeah, The Gates of the Setting Sun. I read of it in my history studies. It marks the seasonal settings of the sun, with other astronomical and prophetic signs. Topaz phoenix icons and amethyst chalkydri dragons supposedly guard it; unless it’s been looted—which it probably has.”

  “Quite so. Last time Sa-utar had any contact with that colony, the descendants of the acolytes left to keep it still lived there. Perhaps they hold to Q’Enukki’s teachings, or at least to some form of them. Maybe there’s unrest in that region against Psydonu because of it.”

  “Perhaps. Maybe.” U’Sumi found it impossible to share his father’s optimism, and strained not to translate that into a disrespectful tone. It’s not his fault he took one to the head.

  As much as another day passed before a squad of titan guards summoned them. Mountains of twisted muscle with deranged eyes, they hustled the captives through dark passages to a subterranean warm spring, where they told the prisoners to bathe. Attendants entered the fire-lit cavern with fresh clothing and razors to trim A’Nu-Ahki’s beard and shave off U’Sumi’s patchy black peach fuzz. Then they led the prisoners into an adjoining chamber and fed them a meal fit for princes.

  Once U’Sumi and his father were refreshed, the titans escorted them to a smooth metal door recessed into a natural rock wall. The leading guard pressed a glowing hexagon on a small stone panel next to the lintel. The portal slid open into a slot inside the wall, giving entrance to a small bare room. U’Sumi noticed its flooring did not connect with that outside the door, and figured the alcove must be a lift of some kind. The door closed and his knees buckled as the cab jerked into a fast climb.

  The sliding plate opened again to reveal a lavish circular hall covered by a colossal dome of jade-trimmed granite and translucent colored glass. The lift stood inside a niche along the hall’s outer perimeter. An aisle descended from it into a bowl-like depression at the center of the palatial chamber. There it met three additional aisles that came down at right angles to each other, joining at the center in a fountain pavement that encircled a giant flower-petal-shaped dais with a throne.

  The dais rotated slowly so the giant figure that sat on its throne could pan across the entire three hundred and sixty-degree vista without neck strain. From where U’Sumi first saw him, up on the outer ring, he looked like a jeweled bee pollinating the center of some enormous blossom.

  The guards led U’Sumi and his father into the depression, past row upon row of empty polished stone seats, to the gently turning throne.

  At the fountain court, a choir of amplified singers stationed before the first row of seats broke into a monophonic chant: “It is not the throne that rotates, but the world that revolves around the throne!”

  U’Sumi almost laughed, until he got a closer look at the figure on the dais when it rotated the Giant around again to face him. Wild eyes burned down at him with the zeal of either a pervert or a fanatic, while his massive head and beard swathed in oily black curls locked onto him, turning slowly against the chair’s rotation to stay fixed on U’Sumi and his father. A huge disturbing smile met the Titan’s eyes, which were spaced unnaturally far apart from each other, though the narrow bridge of his nose was otherwise proportional to his face.

  U’Sumi now understood why the ironclad captain had not wanted to attract this creature’s attention by revealing the location of true north in casual conversation. If Psydonu wished to rule his empire from the top of the world—or its center, depending on how one viewed it—few would want to argue the point with him on a mere navigation technicality. Nevertheless, what surprised U’Sumi most was not the Titan’s immense size.

  Psydonu was a red man, his mother obviously a descendant of early Setiim settlers—not those of pale L’Mekku.

  The Giant rose, his height alarming, although artificially extended by the dais. When the platform circled back around, he pressed a lever on his sculpted-serpent chair arm, which ground the throne assembly to a halt right where he could gaze almost straight down upon A’Nu-Ahki.

  Psydonu’s smile widened to reveal perfect rows of white teeth. “Welcome to my humble tower.”

  A’Nu-Ahki nodded graciously, but said nothing.

  The Titan spoke, “You must be wondering why I’ve sent for you.”

  U’Sumi’s father replied, “The question had crossed my mind.”

  The Giant seated himself again and motioned A’Nu-Ahki up onto the dais with him. A’Nu-Ahki in turn signaled U’Sumi to join them also.

  Once everybody had mounted, Psydonu re-engaged the rotation gears. The platform began to move again. “A little added privacy,” he said. “The movement makes enough noise to mask our voices if we talk softly. As you can see, I’m not of Lumekkorim descent.”

  “I noticed. Why have you kept this a secret from the world?”

  Psydonu shrugged. “Political expediency; most of the military had belonged to the Lumekkorim colonies during the Revolution. My half-brother At’Lahazh—who is pale—makes most of the public appearances in my name to the Easterners. I, on the other hand, am their spiritual leader.”

  A’Nu-Ahki said, “I see. In what direction do you lead them?”

  Psydonu glanced up at the dome. “Pilgrims come from all over the western subcontinent to pay homage to their Promised Seed. I am uniquely qualified for this, since I descend through my mother, from Fasturi son of Seti, first father of the acolytes who keep the Gates of the Setting Sun. As a true seer of Q’Enukki’s Line, you’ll be happy to know that his great shrine is not only intact, but reinforced and in excellent repair due to my oversight.”

  “That warms my heart,” A’Nu-Ahki said blandly. “But it still does not answer the question of why you brought us here.”

  “I was coming to that. You see, since Lumekkor cut the Far West Colonies off from Sa-utar four centuries ago, we’ve had no seer of El-N’Lil, other than the illumination I can provide in my own humble capacities…”

  “If you’re really the Seed, then your capacities are no small thing.”

  “True, but therein lies the problem. How can I establish my claim beyond reasonable doubt without confirmation from a seer of the Line?”

  “You have an additional problem.”

  “Really? What?”

  “The Line of the Promised Seed has already been established and reinforced by many tested prophecies.”

  Psydonu’s face fell briefly—almost too quickly to notice. “Explain.”

  “It went from Seti to Aenusi, on down through the Archons to Q’Enukki, who built the Gates of the Setting Sun. From Q’Enukki it passed to Muhet’Usalaq, who still lives for another forty-eight years in the East. He passed it to my father, who has passed it on to me. It has not yet been shown to me which of my two remaining sons shall continue the Line, or if it shall go through a son not yet born to me. That is not for us to decide.”

  “Why not?”

  “The prophecies are explicit that when Muhet’Usalaq dies in about another forty-eight years, it will be the end of the world.”

  “The end of the world; isn’t that a bit extreme? This all sounds more serpentine than sacred to me. Why should E’Yahavah want to do this when things are improving so nicely?”

  “Not as nicely as many of us would like to think, I’m afraid.”

  U’Sumi disliked the shift in Psydonu’s too-far-apart eyes. “Oh, you mean the war. No, I suppose war is never an improvement. But it’s necessary sometimes, as regrettable as that is.”

  A’Nu-Ahki said, “Sometimes unavoidable, always regrettable, and with tenacious roots deeper inside the fallen human condition than any of us like to think. But I don’t mean the war; not by itself, at least.”

  Psydonu gently slapped his own forehead. “People ‘like to think’ many things, good Seer, but you have me mystified. Why do A’Nu and El-N’Lil pursue this extreme course, if not for the evils of the war?”

  “It’s simple. Corruption engulfs Earth since the Watchers took our daughters as wives�
��at least what they call ‘wives’—to reinforce the idea that gods can father children who are a new breed of humanity. Not sure that’s really happening at all, the longer I look at it though…”

  “Don’t be absurd! I’m standing right before you as living proof!”

  A’Nu-Ahki smiled. “Perhaps you’re not the ‘living proof’ you think you are. Maybe humanity amplified is just humanity exaggerated. Certainly you are a son of a marriage contrived to be legal in these parts, but has anything been added to you beyond the wide range of body types, sizes, and skin colorings that E’Yahavah gave to the human creation code in the beginning? Are you ethically and intellectually a better man?”

  Psydonu thrust up his hand. “Count them! I have six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot! A well-documented variety of sacred stigmata set most of my kind apart!”

  “Not without help from a wide range of mutagenic potions, techno-sorcery, and other forms of manipulation—again, distortion, not new creation. It seems to me that the idea of divinely bred super-men is convenient for the seizing and holding of power, but good for precious little else.”

  The Titan seemed ready to explode, but then suddenly laughed it off, pointing at A’Nu-Ahki as though responding to a good-natured tease. “What then is the Promised Seed if not a new humanity?”

  A’Nu-Ahki nodded, “That is only meaningful for the actual Promised Seed. Whether you titans are real blood offspring of the Watchers, or frauds who weave a superficial illusion based on legal redefinitions of marriage with the contortion of human creation codes added for show, it’s all still a vast lie. It’s like glakka oil tossed onto the fire of the very evil embraced by man in the beginning. That being the case, I don’t think I can help you.”

  Psydonu grinned. “Oh, don’t sell yourself short, my good Seer. There is still much you can do! And, to get back on subject, I think you know very well which of your sons is to carry on the family torch, so to speak. You see, this one here,” he clasped U’Sumi by the wrist with amazing speed, “has had visions, and dreamed dreams, haven’t you my sweet boy?”

  U’Sumi’s eyes must have told the Titan all he needed to know.

  “Nooo, don’t try to deny it,” Psydonu crooned. “Who else could have slain one of my Agents of Judgment? Typhunu was among the best of my relatives—a child of Earth Mother herself, or at least a being engineered from the broadest combination of creation codes that Mother Earth brought forth in the beginning. Did you know he had a wife?”

  U’Sumi could not fathom any woman wanting to be near such a monstrosity. “No, I didn’t,” he said.

  “Her name is Ekhid-naa; a woman blessed by birth with more sacred stigmata than any other alive; poor dear, a truly hideous sight. She lives in a cave not far from here, on the mainland. She’ll be vexed when she hears the news. Too bad, you didn’t realize at the time that we’re really on the same side, you and I. I doubt she will be so forgiving, however.”

  U’Sumi narrowed his eyes. “Give her my condolences.”

  Psydonu squeezed U’Sumi’s wrist tighter. “The well—wishing of a seer should be heartfelt and sincere. Tell me about your dreams, lad.”

  U’Sumi tried not to look into the Giant’s eyes. “They’re nothing special—just battlefield nightmares!”

  “Leave him be!” A’Nu-Ahki said. “Your business is with me!”

  The Titan grinned. “Now, as a father, you must agree that it’s a sin for seers to lie. Besides, I have a witness that the dreams are more than that.”

  A familiar voice spoke from behind U’Sumi’s back. “I’m sorry, lad. But I was worried about you, what gettin’ all screamy and such.”

  The dais rotated until U’Sumi could see the stubbly-faced guard he had befriended on the ironclad.

  The Sailor said, “They pulls me aside and asks me all pointed-like. They says, ‘does the lad make dreams when he’s awake?’ What was I to answer? I hopes no harm comes to you from it.”

  Psydonu dismissed the Sailor with a wave. “Thank you. Don’t worry, he’s a good lad. We likes him. Go back to your ship now.”

  “Yes, m’Lord.”

  U’Sumi looked into his father’s questioning eyes and went cold.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Son?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t like I thought it would be. It was horrible!”

  “All the more reason you should have come to me.” The hurt in his father’s voice was more than U’Sumi could handle.

  “I’m sorry, Pahpo. Maybe I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be a seer anymore.” He stared down at the platform and tried to push back his tears.

  “This is so touching!” Psydonu leaped upright. “I think I’m going to weep too! But then, why weep when I have the answer to our problems?”

  The Titan waited for a response. Getting none, he sat down again and said, “You, young man, do not wish to be a seer, which you would need to be in order to carry on the Promised Line. You, A’Nu-Ahki—may I call you A’Nu-Ahki?—need a son willing to be a seer. I have visions, dream dreams, and work many wonders. I slay dragons and crush their heads in the prescribed way of the Holy Seed in sacred arenas all the time! I only need confirmation from a genuine scion of Q’Enukki to set my claim in steel!”

  Psydonu’s voice leaped to a shrill falsetto. “Why don’t you simply adopt me as your foster son, A’Nu-Ahki, and name me as the Promised Line? I would make a grand big brother to this lad here! Cheer him up good and proper, I think. What do you say?”

  A’Nu-Ahki grimaced, whether to keep from laughing, or out of disgust, or out of an odd mixture of both, U’Sumi could not tell.

  “I think you’re missing the point,” A’Nu-Ahki said. “It’s common for seers not to want their gift when they first discover it; to even be afraid of it—especially if it happens when they’re young, or under stress. I discovered my gift at a much older age. It terrified me at first! I didn’t like what it revealed to me about myself; much less about where the world was headed.”

  The Titan leaned forward, “My Seer, I think you miss the point. How can you not like your gift? Mine is euphoric! Either way, I’ve seen it in a vision. I swam Underworld’s vortex, unscathed, to the golden shore…”

  The minstrels sang, “He swam unscathed to the golden shore!”

  “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up; you bleating toadies!” Psydonu shrieked at them. Then, turning back to A’Nu-Ahki, all smiles; “As I was saying; I’ve spoken words of power over it and believe it with no doubt in my heart. So it has to be from E’Yahavah, you see.”

  The Titan flicked the lever that disengaged the rotation gears and brought his throne again to a grinding halt. “Guards, take the lad back below to the Compartment of Comforts. Treat him kindly, since he is my little brother, but guard his door carefully. Also, have the attendants prepare a suite for the good Seer high up in the tower. Both must attend my confirmation ceremony.”

  U’Sumi heard one more exchange between Psydonu and his father that made his skin crawl, as the guards led him away: “A’Nu-Ahki, please keep in mind that people have been known to disappear down below. The natives say that there is a direct passage to Underworld beneath Thulae. We also will also need to take some flesh samples from both you and your son; you understand. We need your creation codes to engineer more seers from the proper line.”

  A’Nu-Ahki laughed. “Do you seriously think that the gift of E’Yahavah can be robbed from our creation codes?”

  “Don’t be naive! Everything a man is lies inside his creation code. Possess that and you possess the man with all he can ever hope to be.”

  U’

  Sumi gazed at the lizard that kept watch over the door to his new chamber. The little creature represented the perversion of not only Aztlan, but also the world; it had two heads and three forward legs. If not for the easy pickings of food scraps and blind crickets in the cavern’s sheltered environment, the twisted thing could have never survived.

  His lodgings were a big step up from the dung
eon he had shared with his father on their arrival. Quickfire pearls lit the spacious three-room subterranean suite. Hot and cold running water fed into a pool-sized jade bath. The furnishings could satisfy a prince.

  He even found a scroll and codex library filled with unfamiliar titles. In this alcove, a glass orb with slots in its base sat next to the reading table, similar to a larger device recently installed in the Immigrant Quarter of Akh’Uzan Village, where recent settlers sat about the square, watching moving pictures for hours on end. The orb’s slots fit the shape of milky crystals stored inside wall racks on either side of the machine. Titles like those of the scroll and codex library etched below each crystal slot caused U’Sumi to wonder if this smaller orb might not be a reader of some sort.

  He pulled one of the milky crystals from its wall niche and slid it into one of the slots in the orb’s base. The spheroid lit up with a dark blue light followed by words and moving pictures.

  A smile creased his face.

  U’Sumi doubted that Psydonu would have left him alone with these writings and this device on purpose—unless the Giant had believed a rustic youth from the East incapable understanding such literature and machinery. If so, that assumption would have only been partly true—U’Sumi understood chemistry and advanced mathematics rather well. Many of the scrolls had handy glossaries, as if originally written for student adepts. The orb required only that the user know how to place the crystals into its slots. Orb images were often spectacular, but they served mostly to help him understand the more complex written material quickly through moving illustrations.

  Whether scroll, bound codex, or orb recording, most of the literature had to do with the study of living creation codes under the mystical guidance of the Watchers, while others dealt with the complex differential calculating engines required for that research. Perusing them, U’Sumi found the texts and images framed in an odd mixture of Leviathan cultism, alchemy, and experimental information code applications for high-level Temple initiates.