A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3)

by Powderly Jr. , K. G.

  The music began to take on a life of its own. It carried her downcast eyes back to the dancers. They resembled black cutouts of contorted stick people on the strings of some epileptic puppet-master.

  “This is going to be a Lit baggage night—I can tell,” she grumbled to herself.

  T

  iva strolled down the hillside trail below the monastery a few days later, Khumi’s lunch inside a covered basket perched on top of her head. The forest seemed abnormally quiet, as though some brooding force hovered overhead to stifle the movement of animals, and even the very air. She reached up to steady the basket, and turned her head. The path back up to Q’Enukki’s Retreat was empty.

  She continued on her way, as always, diverting down the side path toward the Immigrant’s Quarter to avoid the Shrine, and the possibility of bumping into Yargat. The unnerving stillness became a brooding presence.

  A twig snapped behind her.

  Tiva nearly lost the basket as she swung around at the sound.

  Again, the trail was deserted.

  Tiva quickened her pace to get through the last stand of trees.

  When the woods ended, she could see the construction site in the open alluvial plain of the other brook, which flowed down from the Haunted Lands Pass. She circled through the immigrant sector so she could avoid the original Seer Clan settlement, cutting west of it, and across the brook at a shallow ford. That way, she only risked meeting Henumil on one of his frantic runs between his house and the Dragon-slayer lodge on the West End.

  She approached the half-finished system of gigantic culverts, water breaks, and empty, earthen-work diversion channels from the northwest, climbing the gentle slope of the plain to regain the altitude she had lost by circling the Old Village.

  A’Nu-Ahki had brought an entire kapar foundry in from Bab’Tubila, and erected it just south of the main drydock basin. Already it poured out thousands of skels of the self-hardening plastic rock a day to trowel over the earth works, and seal together the cut stones that firmed up the channel sides. Huge piles of gray pumice and yellow sulfur sat by the plant, along with great vats of purified natron for hardening catalyst.

  Nearby, a resin distillery pumped smoke, as it reduced glakka tree and conifer resins to a piney tar—ingredients for the variety of watertight pavement cements used as moldable artificial stone or a shell-like caulk. Hired laborers shoveled earth, operated the distillery, and the plant, or surveyed the landscape for new channel excavations.

  While nobody in Akh’Uzan had really responded to A’Nu-Ahki’s call, any more than they had during his final visit to Sa-utar, years back, few would refuse decent-waged jobs. Say what you like about the Old Man, he at least pays his workers generously, Tiva thought. For a moment, she pitied him that nobody took him seriously. She shook it off. What did he expect?

  She found Khumi with his brother—the one they had once thought dead in the Aztlan War—at the edge of the main drydock basin. Both men pointed and gesticulated, laughed at seemingly regular intervals, and looked utterly wrapped up in their little man-brained construction work talk.

  “Hello, Tiva!” U’Sumi said, who first noticed her approach.

  Lean, taller than Khumi, with the same curly black hair and tan skin, U’Sumi seemed more approachable to Tiva than her husband’s other family.

  She smiled and waved politely.

  “Ah, food!” Her husband grunted, lifting the basket from her head without even a greeting. Only after he had stuffed two of her honey wafers into his mouth did he deign to notice her.

  So it has begun—she brooded with downcast eyes—that life-long spiral where I slowly rot like a dead body from lover, to bed toy, to house slave, to fat-thighed matron. Soon come the maggots—squalling brats that cling like thorns, until finally I’ll scurry through the centuries, a sagging image of my own mother, trapped in the very life I tried to escape!

  U’Sumi said, “Tiva, you’re lucky to have such a handy husband.” His smile was anxious, as if he wanted desperately to impress her somehow. She knew it wasn’t a sexual thing; U’Sumi was utterly devoted to his exotic foreign bride with the Mark of Qayin blazoned across her forehead.

  I make them all nervous, she realized. Good! If they’re off balance, then at least I have that much control!

  “Yes. Lucky,” Tiva replied.

  “I mean, if it wasn’t for him we’d be weeks behind.”

  “Gooo oonf!” Khumi said with half-chewed honey wafer ready to erupt from his mouth like the head of a giant pimple.

  “No, I mean it! I’ve got to face facts. ‘Peti and I show more zeal than skill, and right now we need the skill. Just think what we could be doing if Yafutu had lived.” U’Sumi referred to the young companion that had died at the end of his wartime journeys. “Between his nautical experience and Khumi’s building supervision, we’d have this ship up in five years tops—well, all right, maybe ten or twelve.”

  Tiva nodded with feigned interest. She still liked U’Sumi better than Iyapeti. His mysterious bride fascinated her, with those skin markings, and that eerie sphinx cat. What secrets do those two share? How has this mottled stranger from the end of the earth been able to break from the carefree wildness of her own people to the strict life of a Seer Clan wife? Why would she even want to? Or does something twisted go on behind the walls of Q’Enukki’s Retreat after all, as Henumil always said?

  Tiva referred to her father now by his name. It made it less painful, when forced to think about him, not to think of him as Father.

  No, she decided on second thought. If something perverted was going on, they’d all be more like Yargat and Henumil—the tense silences, the sterile, affection-free hugs, and those rare smiles that never reached the eyes. Khumi’s family talks too freely, and laughs too easily. Whatever else might be wrong with them, at least they’re nice to each other most of the time, and to me—even Iyapeti in his own clumsy way. Weird thing is he and Khumi seemed to have patched things up at least enough to work together. That could never have happened in Henumil’s house.

  Khumi finished wolfing down the wafers and cheese, belched, and then set his brother straight.

  “It’s not me, half as much as the economy. Pahp hires workers even from Grove Hollow. The valley people may complain about the shipyard being an eyesore, but we give work to lots of otherwise idle people. We’ve also boosted a sagging local market for construction and wood products at a time when demand for resinous wood has dropped off because of cheaper substitutes in Lumekkor. The saw mill downriver can’t afford to pass up such a business boom no matter how much Henumil kicks and screams. A lot works for us to put us ahead of schedule. I can’t take credit.”

  Tiva’s skin crawled. “A lot works for us!” He’s identifying with this insanity, not just getting a wage from it!

  U’Sumi grinned, and slapped his younger brother on the shoulder. “Take the humble road if you want, ‘Umi, but you make a great foreman. You know how to motivate those Hollowers into putting out good work.”

  Tiva fumed at this. So now our friends are mere laborers to exploit! Making a good wage is one thing, Khumi, but we can’t let ourselves get sucked in by the same mind control the Lit sects all use—the same prison I grew up in—people to be used up and tossed out…

  “You know, we can’t expect to stay ahead of schedule much longer anyway,” Khumi said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Stoning the teak and cedar for the keel and framing’ll take several years. The timber men are only cutting Pahp’s grove now for the deck planking, which will also need to be hardened. I don’t have the nautical experience of your young friend from the West, but I’ve ciphered it out. I even checked my figures by mail with that nautical engineer Mahm used to know in Bab’Tubila—I got his answer yesterday. We need to petrify at least a forty milli-cubit shell into the keel beams—that takes a lot of crystallizer-gel, and about seven years curing underground in the kiln-berms.”

  “Seven years? That gnaws!”

&
nbsp; Tiva smiled. U’Sumi talking Hollow-speak! Now I’ve heard it all!

  “If we don’t petrify the beams at least that much, the keel will sag, and we’ll take on water faster than it can be pumped out. The hull planks won’t need so thick a shell, since they’ll hold their shape by mortises and tenons, not just by the rib framing. The frames and prefabricated sections need to harden at least six years. We’re that far from even laying the keel.”

  U’Sumi’s face drooped. “I had no idea it would take that long.”

  “Don’t worry. There’s still plenty to do. These culverts must divert a savage mountain run-off. The drydock basin needs to fill evenly. We can’t risk getting underway until we know we won’t run aground or be smashed against rocks lower down. I played in the stream a lot, making models—remember when you and ‘Peti thought I was just building mud castles to waste time?”

  It pleasantly surprised Tiva to watch U’Sumi’s eyes glaze over the way her’s always did whenever Khumi really got going.

  “According to that engineer, we need to anchor heavy-duty capstans deep into the pavement and bedrock. They’ll be needed for the lines to hold the ship steady over the dock basin, until the waters are deep enough to support at least three times our draft—that’s the part of the ship’s hull that’s below the water line. We’ll also need to make a drydock housing, with lanyards and cranes almost as big and complex as the ship…”

  Tiva almost laughed as Khumi’s talk passed what she called “gibber-monkey speed,” and U’Sumi’s eyes reached their shutdown point.

  “The lanyards should be mobile on some kind of steel rail system that arches overhead, and connects to the dock housing on both sides—I’ve already started the drawings. Once the main decks and the ship’s covering are in, we can dismantle the upper lanyards, and use the cranes to remove them, so they don’t come crashing down on us when the waters come…”

  Tiva’s amusement stopped so suddenly that she felt herself hurled forward by the momentum. Khumi said, ‘When the waters come’—not ‘if’ they come! He’s thinking like them! He really thinks it’s coming!

  A terrible little voice rattled up from somewhere dark inside her; “Should that surprise you, when buried deep down, you think so too?”

  Tiva quickly excused herself, explaining that she had cleaning to do.

  Once beyond the culverts, she ran uphill all the way home without stopping. All she could think of was what the “savage mountain run-off” would do to her little piece of Aeden.

  T

  he sparkling greens of the upper forest layers danced across Tiva’s face. She spent her days alone now, with nothing to do after cleaning and baking but wait for the Hollowers to gather. With Khumi working late all the time, she had shed his limit on going to the Hollow only two nights a week.

  What am I supposed to do—sit around until he needs me for food or sex? She cursed the day, now more than seven years ago, that he’d accepted work with his father. Even the other Hollowers that had hired on as labor thought the whole project was a joke. Tiva had even overheard some of their friends laughing at them behind their backs. Worse, certain Zakes worked under Khumi—still a Youngblood—and resented him. There had even been fistfights recently. Khumi had never gotten into fights before the ship job!

  Now he’s talking about carrying one of U’Sumi’s hand-cannons! This gnaws regally! I can’t handle it anymore!

  Tiva lay flat on the upper platform of their tree house and pouted. She wanted to eat a seers’ button to escape the festering silence, but Khumi had told her not to during work days, until he came home—a last bastion of her husband’s authority she had yet to disregard. She knew he had them numbered, and her stomach still hurt from eating a different, poisoned kind she had mistakenly picked on her own in a desperately bored rebellion against Moon-chaser’s old warning. It hadn’t killed her, but the vomiting, diarrhea, and headaches had made her wish it had.

  It was still hours before the Hollowers would show up. Tiva rolled onto her stomach. Khumi’s gonna work late again like a flaming wood-head!

  A rustle came from the base of the platform ladder. Tiva tensed up in her “I’m being watched” panic, then shook it off, and looked down over the side. Her muscles relaxed.

  Sariya the daughter of Zebuli, Tiva’s outcast “elder sister” from “Lit Land,” speedily wiggled up the ladder like a lithe brown lizard.

  “At last, company!” Tiva said. “I’m bored outa my skull without holes!”

  Sariya shot up over the edge, rolling onto the platform in a single fluid motion that tumbled her up, seated cross-legged. “Go to! Wanta eat a button?” She held out two big mushrooms she must have held in her fist while she climbed or somehow pulled from one of her miniscule wrap-around garments during her forward roll.

  Tiva’s spirits lifted. The fact that Sariya had only one button for each of them was not the letdown it would have once been. Since cutting down her intake, Tiva had found that it took less of the psychoactive fungus to bring her to spiritual harmony. Moon-chaser had explained once that it took a few years for the mushroom’s essence to build up in her brain, during which it required larger doses. Eventually her body became saturated. Now, only one button released the combined power of the saturation.

  “So where ya been, S’riya? We hain’t seen you for months—have you lost weight?” Tiva asked, chewing her button.

  “Don’t tell Moon-chaser—he thinks I was visiting my sister in Sa-utar—but I was pregged, and went to sacrifice it at the Khavilak Temple. My luck to draw fertile on my first mega-cycle! I’m not ready for baboes yet!”

  Tiva tried not to show her revulsion, but it must have reached her eyes.

  Sariya laughed. “I know that look! I was afraid at first too, and felt real guilty about it. The priestesses said I should tell a friend when I got back. I figured you wouldn’t mind. You don’t, do you?”

  The fleeting fright in Sariya’s eyes melted Tiva’s heart.

  She reached out and clasped Sariya’s hand. “No, I don’t mind at all—thanks for thinking of me that way. Look, I’m sorry, it was just a shock—you said it so quickly is all.”

  Sariya averted her eyes. “S’okay. I understand. But it’s not like we were told as little girls. The baboes don’t suffer because they can’t feel anything yet. It’s not like a bloody dragon-worshiper offering with fire, and all that. The Temple makes it a beautiful and meaningful experience.”

  Tiva really didn’t want any more detail than necessary, but her mouth asked, “How?” before she could stop it.

  Sariya reached into a pouch inside her bottom sash and pulled out a violet crystal that seemed to give off a light of its own. The dancing facets flickered in her eyes. “It’s a Life Crystal,” she explained. “The priestesses gave it to me to remind me that my sacrifice was done out of love for my babo. I’m not ready to raise children, and Moon-chaser definitely ain’t about to settle down. Can you think of anything sadder than for a child to come into the world unwanted?”

  Tiva asked, “Did it hurt you?”

  A fleeting hollowness touched Sariya’s eyes, and then vanished like a vapor. “A little, but they’re not evil people at the Temple, like our fathers told us. The priestesses were nice enough. They listened to my problems, and even took care of me until I gave birth, and was ready to leave. They gave me this Life Crystal, and told me that my babo will help make the world a better place—as much as if she had lived to grow up—more even! They said her creation codes and stuff would help them cure diseases, and make it so we can get closer to immortality.”

  “It was a girl?” Tiva instantly regretted asking.

  Sariya looked up from her crystal and giggled. “Yeah. I can feel her life force smiling out at me through this sacred stone any time. Wanta see?”

  Tiva reluctantly took the stone from her friend. The seers’ button had not yet affected her perceptions—it still just felt like a shiny rock.

  “Look into the facets.”

  T
iva stared into the crystal. The light inside seemed to grow and recede, probably with the muted sunshine that sprinkled down on them through the trees. She tried to feel if there was any life in the cold radiance, but couldn’t find any. She handed the gem back to her friend.

  Sariya said, “I found out something else while I was down there.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Temple has found a cure for red-sore.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I took it.”

  “Go to! You mean you had red-sore and didn’t tell Moon-chaser!”

  Sariya laughed. “Of course not! The priestesses said it would prevent the disease too. Face it kid, with a guy like Moon-chaser, a girl needs all the security she can get. If you’re smart, you’ll go take it too. I know Khumi’s sees himself as a one-woman guy, but he’s only human.”

  Tiva didn’t entirely know why she resented Sariya for saying that; just that she did. “I’ll think about it,” she said diplomatically.

  “You’d better. My sprites tell me that your relationship with Khumi isn’t as secure as you think.”

  “Your what?”

  “My sprites.”

  “I’ve heard the word ‘sprite’ used in poems and fables, as in a mythical little specter that watches over trees and streams—but what do you mean?” Tiva hoped for an entertaining answer to help her forget about infant sacrifices before the seers’ button fully kicked in.

  “How long have you been eating buttons?”

  “About seven years, why?”

  “It’s been fun, but hain’t it all been fragmented, like a half-done house, or too few hints to a really hard riddle? Or maybe it’s like a place you really want to get to, but just when you turn the next corner and think you’ve arrived, a sign says that there’s still another week’s journey ahead?”

  Aeden. I want to get to Aeden with Khumi! But just when I think I’m there, all the rules change, and I have to start all over again.