The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven)

by Powderly Jr. , K. G.

  “You know nothing! I cannot die!”

  “There are worse things than death! Have you consulted Metatron? He who shouted for joy with you when the Sons of A’Nu rejoiced together at the first dawn has warned you that my words are true.”

  The new name meant nothing to U’Sumi. Yet it raised the weirdest question: Was his father actually trying to win back a fallen Watcher?

  The Beast-hag snarled, “Metatron no longer comes at my call. But there are many who still do!”

  The demonized crone clapped her hands in three echoing strokes.

  From either side of her throne alcove stepped two monstrous titans of a kind U’Sumi had only heard about, but never personally seen. A circle of horny natural spikes crowned each of their heads , and an oily exoskeletal hide encased their chests and arms in crocodilian facets. Despite their enormous size and bizarre appearance, they had a strange symmetrical beauty that made it hard to look away from them.

  Both giants held a woman each, huddled beneath their arms like dark rag dolls some insane little girl had overdressed and badly painted.

  The two women resembled each other so closely that U’Sumi guessed them to be twins. They were not young, though still close to the prime of their beauty—maybe the same age as Pandura—perhaps in their early three-hundreds at most. As they emerged from the silken shadows behind the dais, the two Giants released them.

  A’Nu-Ahki fell backward a step. He seemed about to speak, but his words had been murdered in his throat.

  U’Sumi noticed in the slightly better light that the reason the two women wore so much reddish-tan cosmetics had little to do with vanity. For some reason they avoided looking at his father, though they scrutinized the Seer’s companions.

  “I see you found them,” A’Nu-Ahki whispered when he recovered some of his composure.

  The left Titan spoke as if displaying trophies. “We never lost them.”

  “Why did you deceive me then?”

  The other Giant answered, “They would not have come to you.”

  U’Sumi’s father roared, “Is that why they need so much make-up to hide their bruises? Do they enjoy your battering that much?”

  “It’s not like that!” the woman on the right said, raking a hand through her copper-tinged sienna-ash hair. Her gold-rimmed eyes faced U’Sumi to avoid A’Nu-Ahki’s glare.

  “Then what is it like?”

  This time the other woman spoke. “You can’t possibly understand! But please try to accept.”

  “Accept what? That you’ve willingly married these creatures that intimidate and beat you for sport or lack of self-control? How can you even ask me to accept that?”

  “I told you if he ever came he wouldn’t understand,” the Left Woman said to the Right.

  “Tell me in plain words what you want me to accept!”

  Neither of the women seemed willing to take A’Nu-Ahki’s challenge, but finally the one on the right made an effort.

  “Our espoused ones were dead! ‘Vayi and ‘Yaho took care of us! They kept the soldiers from getting too far out of control! They tried to help others of us too. You judge them by the way they look on the outside, but mostly they are kind and gentle. Sure, they sometimes lose their tempers, but who doesn’t? More often they give pleasure, not pain.”

  “Pleasure?” A’Nu-Ahki spoke in that same terrible voice U’Sumi had heard him use on his mother after Tarbet’s visit. Who are these women?

  The Right-hand Woman had a feeble tremor in her voice. “That didn’t come out right. I meant that they try to do the right thing most of the time—to do the kind thing. They’re trying to change! Trying to improve themselves and those they command!”

  The other sister said, “Put yourself in their place! What if someone you didn’t even know came along with strange foreign arguments and a few remarkably fulfilled prophecies and then demanded because of it that you reject everything you had ever been taught about Q’Enukki, the First Fathers, and E’Yahavah? Not only that, but that you must betray your heritage—your very own father to his face! Could you do that? Would it seem right to you? Yet that is what you ask of them!”

  U’Sumi watched, dumbfounded, as his father merely stood there, shaking his head. Why doesn’t he answer her?

  That silence itself became an inner noise that joined the screeching howl of the consuming Shadow all around them. The shifting warped reflections on the glassy floor that looked like screaming faces and pressing hands—faces with empty black eye-sockets—grew more and more animated. Obsidian flame burned beneath them, as if the tiles were but locked window panes on the roof of some horrible chamber below.

  U’Sumi gave his father what seemed an interminable time to answer, but nothing happened. The longer the silence went, the more deafening the howl of the Blackness. He became sure that the only way to break the madness was to speak. But it was hard now even to breathe.

  “Honored ladies, mighty titans, I’m a bit young to speak here, but there’s something I respectfully think we’re all missing.”

  The women glared at him as to demand, who the Underworld are you? Yet they said nothing. Even the Giants and the Beast-hag on the throne seemed somehow frozen in time.

  U’Sumi’s voice harnessed this pause like some force of nature that went beyond nature—perhaps the same time-bending power as his fighting Gift. When he spoke, the suffocating presence in the chamber parted before him, as El-N’Lil blasted a hole in its oppressive shadow. He addressed the woman who had last spoken.

  “What you say on what seems right would be true if my father could just make up his own truth and his own world inside his own head. Then you, your titans, and their father could do the same. But that’s not reality.

  “What happens to the world impacts everyone—cause-and-effect. World-end is really coming; even your Queen admits it. No matter whose theology is right or wrong, it’s going to pulverize this city and this pyramid into grains of sand. We could forsake Q’Enukki for Samyaza and it would change nothing—Assur’Ayur would still be dissolved; only we’d be dissolved along with it. The same would not be true of the reverse. Your argument would be compassionate only if these were all just games we’ve made up in our heads to try to control people with. But what if they’re not?

  “Samyaza himself has had independent proof from this Metatron, whatever he is. If control over you is what we really wanted, don’t you think a different game would have been much more effective for us—something a little less drastic—a little more pleasing and manipulative? Rather than being cruel and unfair, I think my father is only trying to deal with the information given him in the best way he knows how.

  “We’ve all just heard Queen Isha’Tahar admit that World-end is coming—why doesn’t anybody listen to her? She could hardly be in league with us if Samyaza uses her as his mouthpiece. If E’Yahavah truly speaks through Samyaza and has said World-end is a hoax, then we should be able to settle this, since both my father and the Watcher are here now.”

  The two sisters looked to each other with frightened eyes.

  The Giants strangely remained quiet bronze statues.

  Isha’Tahar stared off into space like some human scorpion trapped inside a giant glass cube.

  U’Sumi had expected his father to take control of things again, but found to his terror that the Old Man was as silent as the others were. The life-affirming fire in his eyes had died.

  “Father?”

  A’Nu-Ahki gazed at his feet and made no response.

  The oppression squeezed like a noose around U’Sumi’s throat again. “Father, who are these women?”

  A’Nu-Ahki looked up wearily and said, “U’Sumi, meet your older sisters, Uranna and Tylurnis. Ladies, my remaining firstborn son.”

  THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY | 367

  To Michael likewise the Lord said, ‘Go and announce to Samyaza, and to the others who are with him, who have been associated with women, that they might be polluted with all their impurity. And when all their son
s shall be slain, when they shall see the perdition of their beloved, bind them for seventy generations underneath the earth, even to the day of judgment, and of consummation, until the judgment, which will last forever, be completed. ’

  —1 Enoch 10:15 (Ethiopic Manuscript)

  THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY | 367

  17

  Invasion

  T

  he command astra held a capacity of thirty-three officers and crew, not counting the two pilots that controlled the vehicle from a crystal bubble in the front section of the giant fuselage. A’Nu-Ahki’s party occupied the lounge with Isha’Tahar, Uranna, and Tylurnis. Even Taanyx joined them aboard—Samyaza was feeling unusually magnanimous—though the sphinx seemed to find it a dubious honor at best. In the adjoining aftward compartment worked the sky-lords with other priestly and military functionaries involved in the tactical execution of the coming assault.

  The titan brothers, Ivvayi and Ayyaho, had mounted their smaller battle astras to lead the air fleet on its northward charge into Aeden. The slower Vimana II class command ship followed, ready to coordinate the attack from a distance via quickfire oracles with other arcane ranging and targeting devices that not even T’Qinna pretended to understand.

  One thing was apparent to U’Sumi: Samyaza’s military technology had not lagged so far behind the West’s as they had all supposed. The Watcher had simply been more ruthless in keeping the layers of ignorance intact between his upper and lower social castes, thereby aiding the illusion of backwardness to outsiders by ensuring that dangerous knowledge remained in the hands of a precious trusted few.

  Yafutu sat huddled by A’Nu-Ahki. Flight had clearly lost its wonder for the boy, whose eyes fought a pitched battle against tears of terror.

  For U’Sumi, the idea of aerial warfare—where speed and distance ensured that one could never really face the enemy eye to eye—drained battle of its few remaining illusions of glory. Of course, the machines were fascinating, giving a sense of self-deification to those that drove them; but in the end, they still made war an impersonal affair.

  It was hard to muster battle fury against an enemy whose eyes one could not see. U’Sumi could not get over the impression that, were such enemies to meet on the ground, they would forget their antagonism to share a bowl of wine while basking in their mutual fondness for flight and in the worship of endless streams of nameless women. He thought of the young officer who had captured him after his battle inside the Elyo.

  It only cranked up the terror when he considered whom the Samyazas would now fight. In what form would they find the armories of heaven? Would the Guardians of Aeden even make use of such things? U’Sumi knew only what his dark and cryptic family traditions told.

  “It is still not too late to halt this madness!” A’Nu-Ahki said, not for the first time since they had launched from Assur’Ayur. “I have stood at Aeden’s gates! I tell you, E’Yahavah holds the Hidden Orchard! Attack there and you rouse the ban of eternity!”

  His father had never spoken to U’Sumi of Aeden in detail or with such fear. What had he seen there?

  The Man-thing croaked through Isha’Tahar’s tight lips, “We can prevail! Beat the Basilisk and we defeat the need for your World-end!”

  U’Sumi folded his hands to stop them from trembling—how would it go inside the command chariot of an assault against the very Orchard of E’Yahavah? Would the Kherubar and Fire-Sphinx consider their status as unwilling participants? Something deep inside him, like cool water, rushed in to displace the dark—fluid horror that had soaked through everything since they had entered Assuri’s hegemony—a peace deeper than the terrifying depths of Shadow-mind, Leviathan, or Samyaza.

  He risked revealing his shakes to reach out and take T’Qinna’s hand. Her bunched muscles relaxed instantly. It even seemed to rub off on Taanyx, who for all her former agitation, now stretched out into a catnap.

  U’Sumi gazed over at Isha’Tahar. The old queen sat frozen again with her scorpion-in-glass eyes, which did not bode well if the unsure faces of his half-sisters meant anything.

  Uranna and Tylurnis whispered intermittently amongst themselves, careful not to let either their father or motherin-law hear them. U’Sumi, because of his own personal crucible, could imagine the pressures they must have experienced to sell out on their father so completely. Yet he also knew their confusion and darkness to be at least partially self-imposed.

  He could pity them being forced to submit their bodies to the sons of Samyaza, and even understand the weakness of their emotions. But with the Seer now before them and the choice becoming theirs again? U’Sumi hoped they were simply biding their time as a show for the demoniac dowager until they might get alone with A’Nu-Ahki—though somehow he doubted it.

  Several hours ago, he had overheard the final in-flight command briefing, via oracle, in the aft compartment. Samyaza’s assault on Aeden would come in three prongs: one led by Ayyaho up the Ufratsi Canyon, one by Ivvayi flying low through the upper Hiddekhel gorge, and a third force, followed by the command ship, up the Gihunu ravine. Each would pull up at the craggy wall of the Kharir Aedenu, lobbing their missiles over the mountains into the Holy Orchard without actually crossing into its air space.

  Afterward, reconnaissance wings would go in to assess the damage. Only then would skylord hover-ships drop in a ground force to occupy the land. Yeah, like that’s gonna happen. Kiss it all goodbye, boys!

  Isha’Tahar, possessed by her devil-husband, had also spoken of another aspect of the battle in “the Watcher’s theater.” U’Sumi could not fathom what that might be, unless it meant that Samyaza’s Watchers would also be active in the invasion.

  Something screamed inside his head—that cicada noise—as if a large swarm had shot past him somehow on the other side of the astra. U’Sumi peered out the windows on the opposite side of the cabin and saw the Gihunu River snake below through the dark green Haunted Lands. Funny, he thought, as the western mountains drifted by, this is the nearest I’ve been to home in two years and I’m farther away now than ever.

  He soothed himself with thoughts of the old fortress as he turned back to his own window. That was when the rushing cicadas returned, this time on his side. Only now, he could see them.

  A row of glowing objects fell rapidly outside from above and took station just off the wing in front of his window. They zipped in so fast that U’Sumi jumped in his seat. Their noise is in my head!

  Not astras, the phantom lights were large disks and balls that wove back and forth, near, then farther away from the command ship. They moved unnaturally, changing directions, often even at right angles, then zipping back again. Their sudden motions and speed shifts would splatter any living thing inside them against the hull, or else any safety harness would cut passengers to ribbons. It took U’Sumi several seconds to realize that, although their mind-noise was inside his head, they themselves were not.

  After a few more seconds of darting about the sky, the locust ghost-lanterns shot off ahead of the command ship and disappeared.

  “Did you see that?”

  T’Qinna said, “See what?” She had bent over to scratch Taanyx behind the ears.

  His father and Yafutu both shrugged, while his half sisters said nothing. Isha’Tahar remained a frozen scorpion hag.

  “Never mind. Maybe it was just a trick of the sunlight.”

  Less than an hour later, the alluvial plain below U’Sumi’s window narrowed into a gorge. The attack astras descended into it, presumably to avoid detection. The Vimana II stayed above, and circled over a grassy plateau south of the long lake where the four rivers of the northern world divided.

  The outcome of Samyaza’s folly began to unfold.

  T

  he mist of the roaring Cataracts of Palqui rose on either side of the Isle of the Dead, capturing the sunlight in a bracketed set of multicolored arcing vapor prisms that surrounded the First Altar like a model of A’Nu’s throne in the Tenth Heaven. The brassy skies above and dark waters
below spoke a mixed blessing to the priests, as did the bloodstained stone that connected them all; but not all of them appreciated it.

  Dedurusi, Paru’Ainu’s Chief Priest, stood on the pinnacle of the Isle of the Dead by the platform steps, just below the First Altar. He read again with amazement the official scroll just delivered to his assistant by the Archon’s courier. It answered his prayers, but at a steep price.

  His master, the cantankerous Muhet’Usalaq of Akh’Uzan, had just relinquished authority over the Isle—but only the Isle—back to the Archonate and priesthood, on the solemn condition that the remains of his brother Urugim not be removed from Atum-Ra’s old burial chamber.

  Such cheek!

  Dedurusi had supported Q’Enukki’s sons back in the early years when they had kept so many Orthodox causes alive. But no schooled acolyte could accept the nonsense coming from them since they had returned to Akh’Uzan! He wondered how much of it really had Muhet’Usalaq’s sanction, and murmured, “The Old Man’s probably lost control of things.”

  Dedurusi tapped the scroll. “Despite his condition, this is still as it should be. Old Iyared never should have divided the heritage like that. What was he thinking? It has led to nothing but strife and factions in the upper family, and especially in the acolytes’ order, ever since. The state of Akh’Uzan is proof! Without the steady guidance of archonic authority, they have descended into endless schism.”

  “There are several ways to interpret that, Eminence,” replied the Assistant Lead Acolyte.

  “Of course,” Dedurusi said. “The Archonate lost much of the life it would have otherwise benefited from, had it harnessed the enthusiasm of the Seer Clan and allowed it to remain in the fold. Kunyari didn’t help matters any by denouncing all World-end Literalists as heretics. If you ask me, that’s too big a stretch. He was getting old and cranky when he did that. Maybe this gesture from Muhet’Usalaq will help heal the breach once Tarbet inherits the chair. Say what you like of Tarbet, but he’s a good politician.”