A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3)
Page 17
The Chief Priest scowled. “An ugly monstrosity, isn’t it?”
Inguska looked up at the stone giant, and nodded. “To make an idol of such a man is an offense, but at least it makes a statement against the false apocalypse of Q’Enukki’s sons.”
“There is that,” said the Priest, who held his thumb and forefinger up to his eyes to gauge the relative smallness of the Obelisks of Fire and Water when compared to Kunyari’s stone legs.
Still, not the proper statement, Inguska added in his thoughts. He watched a sedan chair that rested on the straining shoulders of six acolytes carry Seti’s bloated Archon up onto the platform. The Archon’s appointed successor followed—by the smiles and waves of the crowd, clearly the more popular of the two.
“It is a shame about Yabulla,” the Priest said.
“Yes. He was right about one thing—the laxity of the most recent archons has aided our cause, though it rots humanity’s oldest civilization.”
“I shall miss him.”
“I wish I could have known him better,” Inguska said, surprised at how much he really meant it.
The acolytes set the Archon on a stone block inside the voice-enhancer field. His successor stood beside him, to his right. The crowds cheered, until Rakhau raised his palm. He never rose from his chair.
“Greetings, Children of Seti, and children of the world.” The Archon’s voice was high and phlegmy, as if he spoke with a gullet full of lentil stew. “Welcome to the dedication of this monument to an architect of a new era of fairness, freedom, and enlightenment!”
Inguska watched the crowds cheer again, but sensed little heart in it. The shouts and claps were expected protocol—nothing more. The people knew where the real power lay, and it was not with the one speaking.
“My father was a kindly man with a grand yet humble vision: To bring the City-States of Seti back into the company of world powers, and to preserve all that is best in the traditions of the Archonic Fathers. While a lover of our holy rite, Kunyari recognized the need for us to become relevant in changing times. He envisioned a united world open to all gods and to all human beliefs. The sons of A’Nu have come down to help restore us to the deity we lost in our spiritual infancy. This icon to his memory is also the monument to a new dawn for our clans, and for all the peoples of the world!”
Inguska yawned while the crowd below clapped.
“We have many apocalyptic traditions in Seti,” Rakhau continued. “Most are models for personal application of our sacred truths. Truly, each of us carries inside us a personal world—an inner reality as real to each of us as the outer one is to us collectively. Since we are moral beings, certainly we all experience crises, living as we do in an exterior world that often seems indifferent to our needs and individual fates. We each brave personal World-ends in life that force us to rebuild our inner worlds anew from the burning or flooding of loss and personal tragedy; like the phoenix from ashes…”
Inguska studied the layout of the monument gardens. The pillars of Seti stood in a sunken patio beneath the legs of the Colossus—dwarfed by Kunyari’s looming belly. The perfect place to send a perfect message…
“…One reason I placed this monument here was to bring perspective to the diverse apocalyptic traditions that have so often been misused to divide and condemn us. Whatever tradition you hold, let it bring you a renewal of private faith, and personal reverence for the old paths. Yet, let it also give you a spirit of tolerance that affirms new ways of thinking and living…”
Inguska saw three hooded figures move toward the platform through the listening throng. Few below seemed to notice them. I wonder what they’re up to? The constables and Dragon-slayers don’t seem to see them.
Rakhau finished his address, and introduced his successor, who also had a speech. As the Appointed One moved into the voice-enhancer field, the hooded strangers began to climb the platform steps toward him.
Only then did the constables notice them.
A
shout rang out from amid the clustering bodyguards at the foot of the platform. “We invoke the Oath of Iyared!”
Tarbet’s eyes shifted down front, to the base of the steps, and saw the unthinkable. His guards lowered their auto-pikes and stood aside.
Three hooded men, one bent with age and leaning on a well-known clan staff, climbed the stairs. The Appointed One’s speech fled from him.
“You stand on one of the Sacred Precincts, and have erected this idol on holy ground!” shouted the Old One, removing his hood to reveal his face.
Muhet’Usalaq—when he dies it shall come!
The second stranger threw back his hood also, and Tarbet’s heart froze. This newcomer’s salt-and-pepper hair and beard were cropped short, but there was no mistaking that face: A’Nu-Ahki—returned like a phoenix from the ashes! How?
A’Nu-Ahki spoke into the voice-enhancer field, which caused his words to thunder across the pavement to the tens of thousands gathered before the Colossus. “We invoke Iyared’s Oath, and the Right of Seerdom according to Archonic Law for holy sites—which is irrevocable!”
The Archon bellowed, “This is an outrage!”
The Chief Magistrate motioned to Rakhau. “Unfortunately, O Father of Men, they are quite correct about the law—this is holy ground, and Iyared’s Oath still holds. Muhet’Usalaq and his deputies may invoke the Sacred Rostrum here at any time as recognized Seers of the Line.”
Tarbet wheeled about on the Magistrate. “This is your doing! Iyared appointed you Chief Magistrate before he died!”
“I would remind the most excellent Appointed One, that his own succession to the Chair is built upon the same legal foundation. If you deny Archonic Law here and now, in such a public setting, then you abrogate your right to become its primary defender and shaper. Say whatever you like after these men are finished, but they do have a right to speak now in this place.”
Rakhau shrieked, “Kunyari excommunicated the line of Q’Enukki!”
The Chief Magistrate said, “Only individual people may be excommunicated, not entire lines of descent, sire. In addition, these men were recognized Seers of the Line by Iyared’s own word. You cannot overrule that without calling the basis of your own authority into question. You cannot have things both ways. The Supreme Magistracy ruled this morning that Kunyari’s order was arbitrary, and without valid precedent. That is, until you produce a formal list of individual names with individual charges for excommunication. Then there must be an inquiry for each.”
Tarbet turned back toward the three men from Akh’Uzan and the crowds. “Very well, Chief Magistrate, as we are the defenders of Seti’s Code, we will abide by its rulings. The Archon’s house is not above the Law.” He thought; you are over nine-hundred years old, Magistrate! Either I, or my father, shall choose your successor soon! Then we shall see!
Tarbet sullenly stepped back out of the voice-enhancer field.
I
nguska watched as the second of the three cloaked strangers mounted the platform. There was something disturbingly familiar about the man’s face, but he could not place exactly what.
After gazing out over the crowds for several seconds, the new speaker said, “I am A’Nu-Ahki, son of Lumekki, son of Muhet’Usalaq, son of Q’Enukki the Seer, Firstborn of Iyared, Archon Salaamis…”
That voice! I know that voice! Inguska leaned over the parapet to try to squeeze from his eyes more detail on the man’s face. He muttered to himself, “I wonder if this is the same A’Nu-Ahki that Satori spoke of?”
The Speaker went on, “I come to you now in the final hour, formally in the office of my ancestor for the last time. After today, you will no longer be troubled by omens from Akh’Uzan—or if one comes from there unprovoked, and claims to speak for Q’Enukki, you may disregard him…”
The way he moves when he talks! By the Ten Heavens, it is he! Inguska’s memory took him back to the Century War—how he had lost his first command in the sky-lords. It was this A’Nu-Ahki who had protected
him from his other captors when they had crippled Inguska’s commanding titan. He was younger then, with longer black hair, but he is definitely the same man who shamed me in my captivity. He made me doubt the power and purpose of Samyaza for over a century! So many wasted years…
“You have heard today of a new era, and of respect for the old ways,” A’Nu-Ahki said. “Unless the word respect has come to mean desecration, I have trouble following the Archon’s reasoning…”
The crowds began to rumble.
“I also heard that we must not only tolerate, but affirm, ‘new ways of thinking and living.’ I’m all for new ideas that genuinely make our lives better, and which serve a form of justice based on mercy and truth. Yet the ‘tolerance’ we have practiced now for generations has become the wholesale acceptance of folly and perversion. It makes no sense! I might tolerate a fool prone to folly, so long as he only hurts himself in the process. But to affirm that folly itself? Everyone has a right to their own viewpoint, but that doesn’t make all viewpoints equally educated or equally honest…”
Inguska noticed the Archon’s successor nervously begin to stroke his chin as the crowd’s rumbling subsided.
A’Nu-Ahki went on, “We’ve stopped making morally sane choices because we have been told in different ways by our sages, leaders, and theater, through mindless repetition, that we are not really responsible for our own behavior. They tell us there can be no basis for ethics except our own clannish dictates or the orientation of our affections. Serious examination of such claims meet with ridicule designed to silence genuine discussion by arbitrarily labeling those who object as ‘Iyaredist bigots’ or ‘world-end fanatics.’ This is empty name-calling, not reason…”
Inguska said to Assurim Priest, “He’s trying to reason with them. How naïve! It’s all they ever do in Seti. Reasoning is weak in the face of such grossly corrupt people. It has never gotten them anywhere.”
“He speaks well for an apostate though,” said the Priest.
Inguska had to admit this was true. Not again! Not this time! “Do not forget that he speaks for Q’Enukki, who defied our master, and whose sons roused the city of Regati to reject Samyaza’s Law.”
A’Nu-Ahki continued, “When a father tolerates robbery of the bodies, minds, and hearts of his children by powerful institutions that no longer truly have their best interests at heart, his family withers, and his offspring become slaves to those institutions. We have been tolerant! We have been all too tolerant! Today we tolerate absolutely anything, no matter how absurd or how self-destructive, no matter how evil.
“As long as our prosperity and our facade of tranquility seem to hold, we will accept any depravity because the risk of division—we are repeatedly told—is too high to do otherwise. We are assured that good is evil, and evil is good, that light is darkness, and darkness, light—even that we have a moral imperative to accept this. Infants are murdered at the temples of this new ‘enlightenment,’ where men are married to other men, women to women, and mixed groups to mixed groups, so that the meaning of marriage, family, and tribe crumbles into chaos and self-indulgence.
“New generations have been raised without even the most basic concepts of love and sacrifice—unless they see gain in it for themselves. Now, they are even losing the very ability to associate cause with effect. Our once sacred academics proclaim the tolerance of these evils to be the highest of all virtues! However, we are now discovering that what we thought was fair has produced a tyranny of iron sheathed in velvet. We dare not speak of it—it makes us uncomfortable. It is religious, political, and academic suicide to even suggest it, yet I declare to you that this is the ugly truth of our times…”
Inguska watched the crowd. He expected anger there, but that was not what he saw. The murmur among the people below was not of mounting rage, but of confusion, boredom, and shrugging shoulders. They don’t know what he’s talking about! It’s as if he’s speaking an obscure dialect to them!
A strange voice inside Inguska’s mind spoke unthinkable words: “They don’t understand him—but you still do.”
The man from Akh’Uzan looked up over the crowd, directly at Inguska, and their eyes met. Only Inguska’s military training allowed him to keep his face firm under the compression of horror that collapsed his chest.
Still A’Nu-Ahki’s words rang across the worn pavement; “Sages assure us that objective truth no longer exists—that we are the real gods of our own destiny. Children are told this is the only absolutely true idea. Yet the ones who’ve suggested this lie to us are worshipped as gods everywhere else. Everything—philosophy, religion, the arts, and sciences—is filtered through their arbitrary grid; a blindly-accepted logical fallacy imposed as the intellectual, moral, and spiritual foundation of All! The only way to suppress absolute truth from E’Yahavah is to dictate an ‘absolute’ of no absolutes!”
“The inevitable end is slavery; normalized violence, erosion of law, the loss of respect for human life, and the toleration of infant sacrifices to feed the abominable Temple of Ardis, Ayar Adi’In, and Aztlan—the naked worship of pleasure and power! We see this outcome in the decline of literacy, the political prostitution of the academic disciplines at the expense of meaning, in rising insanity, and the breakdown of families…”
Inguska leaned on the parapet, and willed his face into aloof stone.
“…Sa-utar can have no false gods, so the fallen sons of A’Nu are not called ‘gods,’ but ‘powers’ or ‘guides’ or ‘elder cosmic intellects!’ Yet they are given the same devotion as gods in that nobody questions the underlying assumptions of their self-serving ideologies…”
Inguska called on the vision of Heaven’s Daughters, and for the first time could not see them with his eyes closed. Who is this man?
“If my words could at least rouse your anger, there would be hope for you—at least you would respond with emotional force equal to the horror of your real state. They say the opposite of love is hate—but that is not true. Love hates anything that destroys the persons loved. Really, the opposite of love is indifference—what you now falsely call tolerance. The indifference in your eyes shouts louder than I that our civilization cannot last.”
Inguska recovered his composure. There your words speak truth!
“In forty-six years, E’Yahavah A’Nu will send a World-end of water to destroy all life on dry land. The Word-Speaker of E’Yahavah has instructed me to build a great ship for the rescue of those who wish to live. All are freely invited, but E’Yahavah will grant success to no other attempt at survival except this one. According to Iyared’s prophecy, my house is the last tree in the forest of humanity; all others shall fall by the scouring waves. Thus ends the Apocalypse of A’Nu-Ahki, and the prophecy of Q’Enukki to this world. There is no higher ground.”
Inguska smiled. The opening offensive of Samyaza’s new holy war now had its second big target.
The degree of sophistication of different groups of animists varies widely from place to place and time to time. In most all cases, however, the dominant motivation of animistic religions is that of fear.
—Henry M. Morris
The Long War Against God
10
Guides
The pipers blasted the clearing with raging melodies hung across wild percussion like flayed carcasses twitching over a sacrificial blaze of sound. Dancers leaped around the bonfire, twirling heat demons in the red satin night that landed with shrieks of laughter.
Tiva sat on a log with Khumi, Moon-chaser, and Farsa, watching the dance. They passed a skin of dragonfire, and waited for the mushrooms they had just eaten to lift them into another realm.
“Why don’t you ever dance anymore?” Tiva asked her husband. She hadn’t meant it to, but the disappointment came through in her voice.
Khumi seemed distracted—even bored. The change in him had been gradual—but not so gradual that nobody noticed.
“Yeah,” Farsa said, “you hardly ever stomp the moss like before.”
Moon-chaser laughed. “All I see down there’s a bunch’a holes.”
“Gotta start somewhere.”
Farsa’s brother smirked. “Yeah, but you’ve been starting for years.”
“Do you really want to know about the holes?”
“No.”
“Then why bring them up?”
Moon-chaser held up his hands as if to ward off an attack. “Touchy! I’m just making small talk.”
“Yeah, small talk,” Khumi muttered under his breath.
Tiva was sorry she had brought up his dancing. She just missed it. He used to dance for her specially. Now he was too tired to bother.
Not that she was ungrateful for his job; good pay and the project’s nearness to home had made life a lot easier on them. She had her house in the maple tree—now almost finished—enough for them to live in, and entertain guests in, anyway. Besides, in the years since the drydock construction began, her husband had never once broached the subject of moving back to Q’Enukki’s Retreat, and deserting their friends at the Hollow.
Still, Khumi would not dance any more, and Tiva was sure that much of the time he just tolerated their nights with the Hollowers. In the long run, the trade-off defeated the whole purpose of living up there.
The dancers began to take on that extra dose of color that told Tiva her seers’ buttons had kicked in. She turned to Khumi, and hoped to see her forest sprite come to life again. Instead, he looked yellow and drawn, with sunken eyes that didn’t even reflect the firelight naturally. For a moment, he seemed to shrivel into a skull. She shuddered, and averted her face.