“I got farther than you thought; else you wouldn’t have armed me.”
“The will of E’Yahavah’s Light gave you the sword and bow. I serve the Light in my Above Times. Now the forces balance again. You have your people, and they will not be sacrificed to the Divine Shadow, since they obviously were not meant to be.” Iskui turned to A’Nu-Ahki, “You, Elder, are the Seer our fathers said would someday come. Meet me again at the Shrine above, and tell us what message you have from the heavens.”
A’Nu-Ahki looked down at him in loathing. “You murdered your fathers and murder your sons. How can you hope to survive when you cut off the life of your past and betray your future?”
The Caretaker trembled, losing blood. “But that’s down here! You can’t blame those of the Shrine above for down here! We all have a dark side!”
U’Sumi’s father glared down on the Acolyte with eyes of withering flame. “World-end comes in forty-eight years—utter destruction from E’Yahavah, in whom there is no darkness! There is nothing you can do to stop it, and nothing you would do to be saved from it, were I to give you that option.”
The Caretaker gave a melancholy laugh. “I am the brother of Psydonu’s mother. The Titan listens to my counsel. He is the Monster Slayer! In him, I will hope—as E’Yahavah wills. You have gained freedom from these caverns, but troops from the garrison south of here are on their way. Though we have not the great engines of the North, I do have a small sun-powered oracle. Psydonu joyfully awaits your return.”
U’Sumi gathered the weapons of the fallen and tossed them into the pool, keeping only a sword for his father. He bound Iskui’s wrist tight to slow the bleeding and left him before the jade gryphon. Someone would come for their “below time” soon enough for him.
T’Qinna threw U’Sumi a discreet kiss as she hugged Taanyx, and then came to the aid of Yafutu, who had gotten ill from all the commotion.
A’Nu-Ahki smiled as he passed. “I’m mighty proud of you, Son.”
U’Sumi wanted to tell his father to keep his proud smiles to himself. Instead, he simply rolled his eyes, and said, “Can we save that for later?”
THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY | 367
A population bottleneck is a significant reduction in the size of a population that causes the extinction of many genetic lineages within that population, thus decreasing genetic diversity.
—Genetics Encyclopedia: Population Bottleneck
Answers.com
THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY | 367
13
The Floating Lands
Y
afutu’s family boat looked like something haphazardly bolted together from scavenged ships and machinery that the titans of Aztlan had discarded long ago. Only on closer inspection did the ingenuity of its design reveal itself. U’Sumi was relieved, if only for T’Qinna’s sake, to find that it had a cargo hold large enough to transport a unicorn. He doubted Shell-head was as happy with the cramped accommodations.
A’Nu-Ahki’s party barely made it to the wharf below the Gates of the Setting Sun in time to evade the soldiers. Fortunately, Yafutu’s father had fueled his vessel before going to the Shrine. Shell-head still swung from the hoist like a bellowing horned pendulum over the opened hold when the small ship pulled away from the dock under a hail of hand-cannon shot.
After they escaped harbor, U’Sumi climbed to the ship’s bridge and told Yafutu to keep a westward heading until well over the horizon before turning north. He imagined that within hours every port along the western edge of the world would have watchers waiting for them at the pier for when their glakka oil ran low. He didn’t want to alarm his young friend with this, but there was no one else who understood the vessel’s operations to turn to.
“Food won’t be a problem if we ration wisely. We have desalinizing filtration for water,” answered Yafutu, who had gotten his reddish-brown color back, along with his normal clothes. He seemed quite alert in the ocean breeze of the flying bridge. “Amirdu was still about three quarters stocked when we arrived at the Port of the Setting Sun. In the aft hold is a small shipment of grain that could last the unicorn some time if we don’t let it eat too much. We were to sell it at Everad-port in the South.”
“Amirdu?”
“The ship; it’s named after the fabled Great Whale that will someday slay Tiamatu. We of the Fleet-house of Ursunabi respect the old ways—that’s why we are so few now. I may even now be the last of them—many Outriggers are going over to Aztlan’s Temple these days—it’s the gold to be made, you know.”
U’Sumi understood better than the “Last of the Ursunabis” could imagine. “And the old ways speak of a great whale, you say?”
“Yabo. The Great Whale.”
U’Sumi smiled. “Strangely fitting, considering where we’re going.”
“Where can we go?”
“Under the world, across the Great Outer Ocean—we’re heading for Nhod, at the far eastern edge of Ki.”
“Yawam Gadulu? That’s crazy! Leviathan or Kraken will attack a ship this small! We’d pass through the Floating Lands, where Leviathan spawns. The drifting islands are haunted by Tiamatu’s creatures—the Qingu—demon trolls who eat their own dead and the dead of those who sail their waters, especially those that go ashore! Even if we can avoid the Floating Lands and Leviathan, it would take over two months to cross under Ki to the Sunrise; that’s if we had the fuel range, which we don’t! It’s almost four months crossing if we go to back-up drive!”
“Aren’t the Floating Lands just a legend?”
“My father’s seen them! So have many Outrigger captains! Some have even landed there and lived to tell of it—but most never return.”
U’Sumi almost said something about “sea stories” when something Yafutu had said sunk in. “Wait a minute, what’s ‘back-up drive?’”
Yafutu pointed to the long out-rig pod on the craft’s starboard side, and to the collapsible black sails strapped to a large boom from the main mast and from the secondary mast booms secured over the ship’s center-line.
“What do they do?”
The youngster grinned, pacing the deck like an old ship-master. “The black sail collects sunlight and converts it to quickfire, which drives the water screw. Moving water then turns impellers inside the out-rigged pod, charging other quickfire power-storage ampoules to run the screw during the night. We can even get extra speed if the wind’s right. It’s much slower than the oil-burning engines, but this is just a family-run merchant rigger and glakka oil’s expensive if you’re not one of the Divine Ones.”
“How did you get all this technology?”
“Salvaged it from wrecks, originally, and then learned to make some of it ourselves. My father told me that the titans resent us Outriggers because we’re just common folk who’ve figured out there’s no real magic behind their Temple tricks; just a little mechanical know-how.”
U’Sumi rubbed a hand through Yafutu’s hair the way he used to do to Khumi back home. “Your father was a wise man. You put that ‘know-how’ to better use. It may be crazy to cross the big ocean, but is it possible?”
“I know Outriggers who’ve done it, but rarely from this far south. They had big heavily-armed vessels with ballista-harpoon mounts. Usually our traders make regular runs on shorter, northerly routes between Auroria and Lilutu. The Floating Lands mostly haunt southern waters, near the equator—waters we’d have to cut straight through to cross from here! I’m just a kid and Amirdu is average. We only have a few hand-thrown harpoon lances. Food’d be tight, ‘specially for your beasts.”
“Psydonu’s men’ll take us for sure if we go ashore this side. If we keep parallel to the coast, one of their patrol vessels will intercept us eventually. We can’t go north and start from there.”
Yafutu gritted his teeth and lowered his voice. “I don’t know why I’m doing this. Maybe it’s ‘cause you seem like a Whale-tooth-sage.”
“What’s that?”
“Nautical warrior-poet-soothsayer. They
had Whale-heart. They’re the ones who predicted the coming of the real Amirdu long ago.”
“Whale-heart? Long ago?”
“Yabo. The Temple of Aztlan killed them, but some escaped to sea and vanished. They told us before they left that not all that is big and swims is Leviathan. They spoke of friendly monsters—like the Whale and his little brother, Porpoise. I used to call Teel, my little brother, ‘Porpoise.’” He almost teared-up, but shook it off. “Whales can beat Leviathan because they’re smarter. A Whale-tooth-sage is blessed by the Whale’s protection—t’least more protected than regular folk, anyways—but not indestructible.”
U’Sumi squeezed the youngster’s shoulder. “My father is a Seer—a Whale-tooth-sage—of E’Yahavah; who created both whale and the leviathan alike. The Creator protects us now, whether by whale or anything else.”
Yafutu Ursunabi touched his forehead in what, to U’Sumi, seemed a gesture of reverence. Yet the resignation never left his voice. “Yabo. I’ll rig us for back-up drive then—save the oil for emergency speed. We’ll need it where we’re going. We’d better change course to northwest. I’ll need help at the wheel and to hoist the sun-sails.”
F
or the first month, the long voyage across the Yawam Gadulu proved remarkably uneventful, despite Yafutu’s dire predictions. The waves were much higher than in the land-sheltered seas U’Sumi had seen, but when he felt seasick—which was rare now—he only needed to go topside to see the ocean’s motion relative to the deck to make the nausea stop.
While rations were tight, T’Qinna—dressed now in efficient loose-legged pantaloons that had belonged to Yafutu’s mother—augmented their consumables by teaching everybody to fish with a line and baited hook. At first Yafutu objected strenuously to this, fearing the smell of the small bits of cheese used for bait, with her shiny metal jewelry lures, would draw in sea monsters bigger than Amirdu’s forecastle, beam, and stern barricades could hold back. However, when they began to haul smaller prizes aboard to feed an increasingly cranky Taanyx—who had tired of crushed grain soaked in commercial-grade fish oil—Yafutu relented.
A’Nu-Ahki and U’Sumi had never eaten fish—nor any form of meat—before, but soon acquired a taste for the way T’Qinna prepared it; rolled in milled grain and dried herbs, then fried in olive oil. The ultra-Orthodox of Sa-utar and many Seer Clan elders would have been aghast.
Despite the constant maintenance of keeping the Amirdu seaworthy and the shoveling and hoisting of Shell-head’s manure overboard—which also raised Yafutu’s leviathan fears—U’Sumi found it to be the most restful time he had experienced since leaving home, what seemed ages ago.
During their eighth week out, all of that changed.
U’
Sumi came on deck at dawn to find the ship enveloped in a dense fog. The waves he had finally acclimated himself to had all but vanished. He found Yafutu in the wheelhouse, checking a bank of needle gauges on the console next to the helm. The young mariner seemed worried.
“What’s the matter, Yafutu?”
The boy looked up and flipped his straight gold-streaked black hair from his face. “Quickfire ampoules are low. No sun today. We might need to start the oil-burning engines.”
“We haven’t used them in about seven weeks. We should still have plenty of fuel, don’t you think?”
“That speed run we did out of the Port of the Setting Sun until we were a day over the horizon? That used almost a fifth of the tank.”
“That much?”
Yafutu nodded. “Yabo. We could run the engines at dead slow. It would not use fuel nearly so fast—but only for about five hours—just enough to charge the quickfire ampoules.”
“So why are you worried?”
“Out here, it’s better for more than just fuel if the sun shines.”
A mournful wail penetrated the fog—a directionless ghost-song U’Sumi had heard before, and come to dread. “Love that sun!”
“We need to wake the others for fog watch. I be thinking we be getting near the Floating Lands.”
“I’ll see to it.”
U’Sumi went below and awakened his father and T’Qinna.
“You can barely see a few cubits in front of your face!” A’Nu-Ahki said when he came topside.
The oil engines chugged to life, as everyone entered the wheelhouse.
Yafutu said, “U’Sumi, I need for you please to take the helm; you know it better than the others. Keep the screw revolutions needle at the third mark—no higher, no lower—higher will use more fuel. Lower is too slow to turn the out-rig impellers that renew the quickfire ampoules. Keep our heading at the three-double-null glyph on the lodestone compass.”
The youngster turned to T’Qinna. “If my Lady will please, I need you to stand in the bowsprit cage to look ahead of us. You needn’t fear. It’s a very strong cage. There’s an oracle panel to call the wheelhouse if you see or need anything.”
A’Nu-Ahki said, “What should I be doing?”
Yafutu bowed to him. “Please forgive that I presume to direct the eyes of a Seer-King, but if you would sit in the Captain’s con chair on the flying bridge. Look to starboard for a few seconds, then to port, alternating back. The chair will turn so you needn’t crane your neck.”
“What am I looking for?”
“That the Floating Lands not hem us in and crush us.”
U’Sumi said, “I know you’ve left the hardest task for yourself, Yafutu. Where will you be?”
“First I must go below to check the oil pump gauges—we’ven’t run the glakka engines for many weeks. Then I must climb the main mast to the phoenix nest, to see if the fog’s thinner up there and watch from higher up. We be in equatorial waters now. Sometimes the sun burns the fog off by midday in weather like this, other times it only thins it, and at other times, it never gets through. Then the fog can surround us for days on end.”
U’Sumi didn’t like the sound of that. He could barely see T’Qinna’s silhouette inside the bowsprit’s armored watch cage. Sometimes the murk thickened for minutes at a time, and he couldn’t see her at all. He feared that the fog might thin, only to reveal that some creature as large as the ship itself had bitten off the watch cage.
He wished now that Yafutu had assigned the helm to her. But for some reason, the boy was uncomfortable with her at the wheel, despite the fact that T’Qinna was more used to such technology than U’Sumi and his father were. He got the sense that in Outrigger society, the wheelhouse was a distinctly masculine place.
After an interminable time of tunnel-vision on the compass’ “three-double-null” glyph and a particularly thick fog patch, U’Sumi could not help himself. “Bow-watch, con” he said into the oracle panel, using the strange nautical terminology Yafutu had taken great pains to teach them and had insisted was necessary for precise communication in dangerous seas.
“I’m still here, U’Sumi; the monsters didn’t eat me,” T’Qinna’s voice said back through the panel, her tease not a bit dampened by the fog.
“That’s not funny!”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. That was mean—wait—I saw something move in the water; something big!”
“T’Qinna, I mean it; that really isn’t funny!”
“I’m serious, U’Sumi, and I’m sorry! I just saw a giant fin! It swept just beneath me, under the bows!”
“Get out of there, T’Qinna! Come to the wheelhouse!”
U’Sumi turned the oracle dial to ship-wide call. “All hands, con; T’Qinna just saw something big swim under the bows.”
The oracle panel crackled. “Con, mast-watch,” Yafutu’s voice replied; “I can’t see anything up here. I’m coming down.”
“Con, bridge-watch,” A’Nu-Ahki’s voice said. “I heard a splash off the… what’s it called? Off the wide part of the ship—off the starboard beam! There’s a trail of white water. It’s…”
The entire vessel lurched to starboard, almost knocking U’Sumi to the deck. He raced to the starboard hatch and
looked outside.
The ship swung in a foamy arc, further to starboard. The mist thinned just enough for U’Sumi to see that the forward end of the out-rig nacelle was being pulled under water. The hull creaked angrily. Straining bolts popped along the rigging struts, as something huge that had clamped onto the impeller housing yanked the vessel from its course. The deck recoiled, almost knocking him back into the wheelhouse.
Then he saw it: a glowing eye on a massive head with a cavernous mouth that crushed the nacelle between teeth as long as U’Sumi’s arms. That head was larger than the entire body of the sea dracan beneath the Gate of the Setting Sun. It thrashed and released the impeller intake, then sounded into the deeps, leaving a swirl of greenish-white spray.
Yafutu burst into the wheelhouse from its aft hatch and took the helm. U’Sumi was barely aware of him or of the frantic calls over the oracle from his father up on the flying bridge. All he could do was clutch the edge of the hatch and stare out into the roiling foam where the leviathan had been. He didn’t know he was shaking until he felt T’Qinna’s gentle arms wrap around him from behind and guide him back inside.
“Con! U’Sumi! Is anyone in the wheelhouse?” A’Nu-Ahki’s voice shouted through the oracle. “Did anyone see that thing?”
U’Sumi pulled himself together and hit the reply pad. “I’m here, Pahp. We’re all okay.”
“No,” Yafutu said, “we’re not.”
U’Sumi and T’Qinna turned to him. “What do you mean?”
“I almost fell overboard from the mast when that thing pulled on the out-rig. It crushed the impeller housing and prob’ly the impeller too. That means we can’t give new life to the quickfire ampoules!”
U’Sumi said, “That’s bad. But it could still be worse. The sun-sails work during sunlight and we still have the oil-driven engines.”
Yafutu shook his head. “No. You don’t get it! The desalinization plant is in the nacelle. It’s destroyed; the whole out-rig needs haven-side repair! With no reverse osmosis intake, we’ll run out of drinking water inside two weeks! That and our oil fuel range can’t get us back to either side of the world, no matter how slow we go—not without plenty of sunshine. No amount of sunshine and fair wind can get us to any fixed shore in two weeks! It’ll take six weeks at best. We’ll die of thirst long before that!”
The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) Page 24