The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven)

by Powderly Jr. , K. G.

  He stood with her on the forward promenade deck, as the vessel wrestled the gentle waves along the last bit of a coastal strand to the west, toward the Aztlan Sea Ferry’s home port. The fabulous skyline of Psydonis lay south on the hazy horizon before them, glinting orichalcum fire-golds from its great pyramids and Temple complex, which T’Qinna had said was twice the size of Epymetu’s. Howling astras landed and took flight from somewhere behind the pyramids.

  U’Sumi whispered to her, “Only I shall call you ‘Pyra’ from now on and only when we’re alone. When we are joined, your fire will dance true.”

  She smiled for him, giving him a small taste of that dancing flame in her jade eyes. “Then we agree our espousal has begun. We will remain apart from each other according to the traditions of your people.”

  “An eternity, but wise.”

  “One thing still troubles me, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  Her face darkened as a small red leviathan breached the waves in the distance behind her. “What if I have red-sore from my old life? I always used to feel good about what I did as a priestess, as though I were helping people who had no other place to turn. Now I feel like it was all a huge sick prank! I’d die if I passed something horrible on to you as your wife…”

  He pressed her head softly onto his shoulder. “You can’t help where you were born or who raised you. As for diseases, I thought you said Temple is strict about examinations and quarantines?”

  “It is. But priestesses still get the sore sometimes—though much less than careless women and men who work the streets. It incubates with no symptoms for a couple years and even the screening tests at the physician’s gates are not perfectly reliable.”

  U’Sumi said, “Then I’ll care for you and you for me, until the end. I’m not afraid of it. As my father says, E’Yahavah has cleansed us. We’ll be several years under a supervised betrothal—plenty long enough for it to incubate. If you have it, then I will care for you as your husband.”

  “But we’d never be able to… I would become repulsive for you to look at! There would be open running ulcers and the smell! By the Goddess, you’ve never smelled the smell of its final stage, U’Sumi!”

  “I know. That’s what ‘I love you’ means; scary, huh?” He smiled at her. “Don’t worry. You can’t go through life afraid of what might happen—you’ve been cleansed, Emerald-eyes! My grandfather always said, ‘Plan for the worst scenario, because even under the shadow of World-end, it almost never happens. Then life’s mercies are easier to see and you grow more grateful by habit.’ Technically, we shouldn’t even be talking about—um—such personal stuff yet. But I guess our situation is kind of odd.”

  Lumekki’s proverb jabbed deep within U’Sumi at something he could not yet put into words even in his own mind. He only knew that it foreboded something infinitely more vast and far-reaching than even their future marriage. Shadow-mind sloshed around restlessly in the dark abyss just below the region where U’Sumi could consciously go.

  “I’ll change the subject.” T’Qinna smiled, blushing—a sight that brought U’Sumi back from his dark inner regions to the brightly lit surface, and convinced him for all time that her cleansing was, in fact, real.

  He gently nudged her away as the steam whistle announced the ferry’s approach to the great city. She squeezed his hand discreetly, and then dropped it when they saw A’Nu-Ahki approach from the ladder well.

  The Elder said, “We’d better get below to the animals. I’d like to be first to unload once we put in.”

  T

  he city of Psydonis lay due south of the ferry’s other port on the Aztlan Sea’s northern coast. T’Qinna explained that Psydonu had built the vast port metropolis, with its central Temple acropolis, only sixty years ago for his mother, Klyeto, the High Priestess of Southern Aztlan.

  T’Qinna said, “Klyeto gave herself to the Watcher men call ‘High Psydonu.’ Even I got queasy when she took her son as a ‘husband’ for Psydonu to dwell in, and at Temple, I’ve seen almost everything. Farmers and miners aren’t so jaded. Klyeto marrying her son led to a scandal even here in Aztlan. A priestly council named the boy Psydonu the ‘bodily receptacle’ of his father’s spirit to legitimize things before the commoners, who often still cling to the ‘antiquated notions’ of marriage and family.” She mimicked Pandura to say the last part.

  U’Sumi smiled at her impersonation and shook his head. “So let me get this straight, Watcher and Titan are, in this case, one and the same?”

  “Not necessarily; just when Klyeto wants some.”

  “I had read the history in one of the library scrolls in the suite where Psydonu kept me at Thulae. Cobweb-thin legitimacy! No wonder the suicidal sailor on the ironclad griped about the changes in the religion of his people!”

  She rolled her eyes. “You would not believe the things I’ve seen.”

  “Yeah, but the revolution and the war has had Psydonu’s attention focused north and east for some time. His son—or brother—At’Lahazh, with Psydonu’s other eight ‘son-siblings’ are also engaged in the war. Doesn’t that leave Klyeto the effective queen over Southern Aztlan?”

  “I guess so.”

  The ferry chugged into the mouth of a main channel toward the massive pyramids of the Temple acropolis on the city’s central hill. Psydonu had built his mother’s metropolis on a peninsula sliced up by concentric circular canals around that mound. Markets, shops, and mansions lined ring-shaped avenues connected by four sets of draw-bridges that quartered the city at the cardinal compass points.

  The channel bisected the waterfront land-belts from the north, until the innermost canal circled off on either side at Temple Wharf. Orichalcum spires around the inner perimeter shone with metallic wetness, like great needles coated by a gleaming poisoned resin. The architecture mimicked Pandura’s city, which was about a century older, except that here the pyramids were smooth-faced rather than stepped.

  The boat slowed to no-wake speed as it approached Temple Wharf.

  A great procession gathered between the pier and the opened acropolis gateway that gave access to a zigzagging road up to the base of the nearest pyramid. Before the ferry even tied up, its ramps extended outward to the docking platform. The wharf came alive with welcome.

  It took U’Sumi a second to realize that the commotion had nothing to do with the arriving ferry. He noticed it when the crowds parted on either side of the acropolis gate. A gold and black self-propelled carriage crawled along the waterfront, until it turned into the archway. It carried, standing in its open coach, a dark goddess-like woman dressed in golden breast cups and jewel-embossed lace. The streets thundered with shouts of her name: “Klyeto! Klyeto! Mother of the God! Mother of the Seed! Pray for your children! Pray for Aztlan…”

  The woman’s vehicle halted on the ramp beneath the Temple gate’s apex. She turned and loomed over the crowds with her hands in the air. “Watch the orb of the gods!” she cried, bringing the multitude to silence. “Hear over the spiritual ether my son, your king’s voice from afar!”

  U’Sumi first noticed the gigantic pearl housed inside the Temple archway’s stone apex when it began to glow with blue flame. He had never seen such a large oracle orb, big enough to encase several men standing on top of each other. It came alive with moving pictures and a blast of sound, while A’Nu-Ahki’s party stepped off the plank onto the wharf.

  War raged within the great crystal’s looking-glass world, complete with Elyo, astras, and foot soldiers. A voice boomed across the gathering throng to explain the battle scenes in the moving pictures.

  A’Nu-Ahki mounted Shell-head and took the driving position on the unicorn’s three-seat saddle. U’Sumi helped T’Qinna into the second seat, and then took the third perch himself, high on the crest of the quasi-dragon’s pelvis. Taanyx padded alongside, careful not to get lost in the mob.

  A’Nu-Ahki steered toward the acropolis gate with the flow of the crowd. When they drew as near as the crowds wou
ld allow, he halted the unicorn, and listened to the orb.

  Battle scenes faded, replaced by a single, fair-skinned titan face that filled the pearl’s phosphorescent interior. From a quarter of a world away, he smiled down at them with searching eyes that seemed to pan across the crowds as though looking for someone in particular.

  U’Sumi whispered to T’Qinna, “Can he see us, too?”

  She giggled. “No, my sweet silly man; it’s all a projection done with quickfire and invisible spiritual vibrations. There’s a lens machine where At’Lahazh is that captures his picture and voice, changing them to…”

  “Shhh!” A’Nu-Ahki hissed. “We need to hear what it says.”

  T’Qinna hushed as the image of Psydonu’s half-brother/son spoke.

  “Greetings to our devoted multitudes! I speak through the spirit realm from the land of Western Kush, in the city of Bab’Kusha, which has just fallen before my glorious armies! Today we arrived at the coast of the Straits of Kush, where we have massed to invade the Sacred Heartlands of the East across the sea. By the time you see this holy annunciation, we shall already have taken the islands in the seaway.”

  The crowds cheered on cue, while U’Sumi shuddered. “He’s got Seti, Near Kush, and Khavilakki set up in a pincer. Now all he’s got to do is close the vice!”

  “Hush!” whispered A’Nu-Ahki.

  “On a less joyous note,” continued At’Lahazh’s image, “there has been a slow-down in the progress of our armies in the North and in our naval campaign for the Yawam Tsafuni and North Central Sea. An enemy fleet is massing off shore even as I speak. Nothing we shall not overcome, simply a few additional obstacles in our quest for New-world…”

  U’Sumi mulled this new information over—this time to himself—lest he elicit another hush from his father. Aztlan must be facing major military setbacks in Balimar and in the polar seas to admit this much to the public. Maybe that’s why the big dandies invaded Far Kush—for a second attack column away from the stall in the North. Maybe things are not going so gloriously for them after all. Perhaps their naval problems might still prevent a southern amphibious assault on Seti’s side of the Straits.

  At’Lahazh closed his address with a flurry of praises to his brother, after which the great picture orb went black. The crowds murmured as they dispersed or went inside the Temple for worship.

  Klyeto signaled the worshipers to follow her carriage up the hairpin turns to the acropolis. An army of prostitute priests and priestesses stood in the gate to welcome them. U’Sumi felt something akin to the revulsion of watching a pack of wurms prepare for a feeding frenzy.

  A’Nu-Ahki turned to face the youngsters. “The Consortium has over-extended itself. At’Lahazh only got so deep into Far Kush because he took a neutral country by surprise. If Aztlan losses the naval war, Tubaal-qayin Dumuzi will be able to send troop ships and ironclads over the North Pole to invade from the north and west. If Q’Unukku joins, Y’Raddu’s king will also send units. If they break Psydonu’s Polar Fleet, it will be stalemate, with each side poised to strike deeply into the other’s heartland.”

  “As long as Samyaza stays quiet,” U’Sumi said, realizing now that his father’s earlier mention of Assuri’s Watcher had not been a displaced memory from the Century War after all. With the warring powers effectively stalemated, even a diminished player like Samyaza could tip the scales.

  A’Nu-Ahki seemed to gaze at something in the distance. “Though he’s recovered from the heavy reparations levied by the Century War Armistice, I think the Watcher of Assuri still has problems of his own. At any rate, we need to get moving. I want to reach the Gates of the Setting Sun within another two months. We don’t have much time.”

  T

  he narrow coastal plain between the Mountains of Dragonwood and Earth’s expansive Outer Ocean proved sparsely populated, once the hilly rift settlements of the Psydonis-Klyetoron Mining Consortium were behind them. The frequent ruins and ghost towns they passed on the long march south suggested to U’Sumi that this had not always been so.

  Since arriving at Psydonis, the people they had encountered in greatest numbers were red-skinned descendants of early Setiim settlers. Now, all of the few passersby they met on the long coastal road, or found in its rare inhabited villages, fell into that lot. One would have never suspected otherwise that these were descendants of Seti or Q’Enukki. Night sounds in the squalid towns gibbered with drunken laughter, screeching women, and fights amid the ever-present rings of abandoned buildings surrounding each city with imploding collars of haunted ruins.

  Children wandered the streets unsupervised; dirty waifs who fended for themselves scavenging through garbage heaps, picking pockets, or selling their bodies. These faces too U’Sumi had seen in his World-end vision.

  In one village, he gave his food ration to a naked little girl, who had offered herself to them from one of the ruins. The food had hardly seemed enough. She took it and wolfed it down, once she realized he was giving it to her freely. A band of older boys, who hid amid the rubble to watch her, prevented her from leaving with A’Nu-Ahki’s expedition, however. When they saw that U’Sumi’s group was not interested in sex, they jumped out, snatched her, and vanished back into the maze of crumbling walls. U’Sumi tried to give chase, but a hidden army of rock-throwers forced him to retreat. It became clear from the boys’ jabber that the girl was their little sister.

  That night, Shadow-mind visited more nightmares on him—images of shrieking naked children hurled down into great flaming cracks in the earth by U’Sumi’s madly laughing father—until he woke up crying and disoriented. His father and T’Qinna both hugged him and prayed over him until he remembered where he was and stopped shaking. Humiliation kept him from any further sleep that night.

  As they neared their destination, the surrounding ruins became larger and more ominous; lonely spires with endless labyrinths of crumbling walls that stretched from the foothills to the beach. It surprised U’Sumi when they reached a rise that enabled him to see their objective for the first time. He had expected an inhabited city larger than the run-down harbor town at the base of the flat-lapped mountain straddled by the Gates of the Setting Sun.

  Unlike the vast ruins, or even the port, the gigantic monument complex sparkled with refracted light from the polished crystal phoenixes and dragon-like chalkydries in the waning sun. The obelisks and titanic sun pillars looked square-cut and new. Evidently, Psydonu had rebuilt and kept the place up as he had said.

  Deepening purple twilight crowned the choppy surf of the Outer Ocean to their right. Far in the distance, leftward through the steamy ruins, the Mountains of Dragonwood still caught the fading sunset’s magenta. The distant megalith of Q’Enukki bathed in the bloody glow, its central pyramid and six westward-facing sun pillar “gates” stood in profile like a row of gigantic priests before an altar stained by sacrifices made to prolong their dying age.

  A’Nu-Ahki decided not to climb to the monument that evening, but lodge in town until day. They met a shepherd on the outskirts of the harbor town, and asked him if anybody would mind if they took shelter amid the ruins for the night.

  “Shelter’n the ruins?” He laughed. “Ya want shelter in de ruins?”

  “Yes,” replied A’Nu-Ahki, “is that a problem?”

  The Shepherd said, “Nooo. Not a problem at all.”

  “Then what’s so funny?”

  “Most folk around here want shelter from de ruins.”

  U’Sumi asked, “Is there danger?”

  “Depends on what ya call danger.”

  A’Nu-Ahki said, “No offense, sir, but you’re not making sense.”

  “If ya goin’ to be dat way!” The Shepherd turned to follow his flock.

  “Wait! Should we camp in the ruins or find lodging in town?”

  The Shepherd kept walking, but answered, “Might as well stay in de ruins; ain’t none in de living parts a town at’ll put you up an’ dere’s no inn.”

  U’Sumi looked firs
t to T’Qinna, then his father. Their eyes did not reflect encouragement.

  T’Qinna said, “Odd for a place with a shrine like the Gates of the Setting Sun. You’d think lodging pilgrims would be a good business.”

  “Well,” said A’Nu-Ahki, dismounting, “we’ve got a unicorn with a gore, and your sphinx is no pushover if it comes down to a fight against something or someone.” He led Shell-head by tether into the darkened labyrinth of crumbled walls.

  U’Sumi watched the moping bag of horned bones lumber after his father, and found it hard to be so optimistic.

  A’Nu-Ahki stationed the campsite between two large bastions that looked as if they might once have been a battlement for the oldest part of the city. Overgrown steps led up one of the stone embankments to a corner platform that might have been a guard tower. Its gigantic irregularly-shaped stones fit so neatly together that not even a hair could slip between them. The sheerness of the walls made it accessible only by the stairs.

  “This is a good lookout perch,” A’Nu-Ahki said, pointing to the platform. “U’Sumi, you take first watch. I’ll do second, then T’Qinna.”

  They lit no fire, and the others fell asleep after taking a small meal. U’Sumi and Taanyx, who tended to be nocturnal, watched the balmy evening from the old rampart.

  The sphinx had taken to U’Sumi once it become clear how much he meant to T’Qinna. The cat sat tall and alert, her sleek short fur glistening in the rising moonlight. She seemed to understand somehow that they were on watch together and that her own night senses far surpassed those of the human. U’Sumi reached out and stroked behind her ears, eliciting a loud purr of contentment that did nothing to diminish feline vigilance. For a long time they sat thus, the only other sounds those of the gentle sea breeze and the crickets and frogs in the ruins.