A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3)

by Powderly Jr. , K. G.

  Strength from somewhere else helped her find her will again. Tiva turned and ducked around the thorns, just as the creature nearly grabbed her.

  The gray ones and Hollow people still circled through the forest in almost every direction. Twisted shimmers above the trees, and curling hydra shadows confused her, causing her to zigzag like a wild beast driven to a trap by bush beaters on all sides.

  After them herding her that way for some time, Tiva realized that as long as her pursuers controlled the direction of her flight, she must ultimately fall back into their hands. She looked around to pick out various individuals through the trees. The changing contrasts of light and shadow made this almost impossible. She searched for a point in the enclosing crescent covered only by a human and not a Watcher—better yet, a woman.

  Farsa caught her eye, to her left, up the slope.

  Tiva crouched, and tore off at a right angle behind a thick swath of underbrush. She finally lost the screaming gray thing that had almost grabbed her in the shadows. It took her eternal seconds at an uphill run to close the distance to her target.

  Farsa never knew what hit her when Tiva grabbed her around the neck from behind. With the force of her momentum, she slammed her old friend’s face into a tree. Moon-chaser’s sister dropped to the ferns.

  “I guess being a little overfed has advantages!” Tiva whispered savagely to herself, as she scrambled uphill outside the enclosing crescent.

  A minute later, she stumbled onto the trail, and paused to catch her breath. She had done it! She had broken free!

  Tiva turned to make a run for Q’Enukki’s Retreat, but then stopped in her tracks. Her elation plummeted back into panic.

  The Watcher’s shining blue disk floated over the path, between her and her intended refuge. Beneath it, Varkun and two of the gray ones stood waiting—Kernui-Pahn and his Wisdom Tree ally. Thick trees and boulders clumped on either side of the trail. Tiva knew that the musician-priest would surely have the path covered from Grove Hollow to her rear. The only way out again was through—though she could never hope to match Varkun’s strength or the sorcery of the gray nightmares.

  “Don’t be scared, my little vulp,” Varkun croaked. “You won’t be hurt. Your children shall worship you as a goddess!”

  “I don’t want to be a goddess!” Tiva said. “I want to be left alone!”

  “But Pahn wants you. And Pahn gets what Pahn wants. He is All.”

  Trail-side shrubbery rustled from somewhere beyond the disk light.

  A voice spoke from the shadows behind Varkun; “I don’t think Pahn is going to get what he wants tonight, young man.”

  The Dragon Priest wheeled about.

  The hooded figure of a bent ancient that leaned on a wooden staff approached from out of the darkness along the path. The old fellow hobbled out into the blue glow as though oppressed by some great weight that seemed to emanate from the shining disk.

  “Who do you think you are; old man? Don’t you see the power in the light above you?” Varkun shouted.

  “Who I am is of no importance,” mumbled the Ancient, almost as if to remind himself more than to inform the Priest. “Whom I serve—now that’s another matter,” he added in a languid, almost slurred voice, as if he struggled with some form of speech impediment to get the words out. The cold light of the floating object above the trail seemed to beat down on him in turbulent waves, though no wind stirred.

  The Old One shuffled forward like one who fought some crippling disease that sapped strength and control from his limbs. His labored breath somehow grew stronger the closer he got to Varkun and the two Watchers, until it seemed to Tiva almost like the droughts of some triumphant warrior-king of old. Then, about twenty paces from Varkun, the fellow stopped.

  “Rrrrun!” Tiva called to the elderly gentleman, “in E’Yahavah’s name, run; before they take you too! I’m not worth dying for!”

  The Ancient lifted his voice, which now rang free and clear. “I stand in the shadow of my Master! His shadow far outshines that ghost-light up there!”

  Varkun laughed. “You really should listen to her, old man!”

  Tears ran down Tiva’s face. “Please, whoever you are, don’t let them get you! I’m just not worth it!”

  “Why should I flee them, little one?” the hooded stranger said. “They can’t harm me, and those shriveled gray ones know it. My Master has already declared you to be worth losing a life over—a supremely important life. So don’t be afraid.”

  “No riddles, bent one!” roared Varkun. “Go, and I give you your life!”

  The Old Man laughed, and shuffled toward the Dragon Priest again, this time with greater ease. His face remained hidden by his cowl.

  “My life is not yours to give or take.”

  With each step, the Elder grew less stooped, and seemed to lean on his staff with diminishing need. At about half the distance, he walked upright, until by the time he stood before Varkun’s face, he actually seemed to dwarf the dragon-priest by as much as a tenth of a cubit.

  At a signal from Varkun, the gray ones dropped open their jaws to emit their banshee howls at the stranger.

  “Oh, shut up, both of you!” snapped the Ancient.

  The grays’ mouths snapped shut, and the creatures peered at each other with what must have been their odd version of fright.

  Varkun began to tremble visibly.

  Tiva slowly walked forward underneath the blue disk, and past the Dragon Priest, to stand behind her protector.

  Varkun said, “What do you want?”

  “First,” answered the Ancient One, glaring down at the two Watchers, and then up to their floating disk, “Get out of here!”

  He raised his staff, and pointed it at the great light. The disk dissolved with a loud noise into a million firefly shards. For a moment, Tiva heard the sounds of shrieking multitudes from some kind of swirling torment. A night sky then re-made itself with a refreshingly normal, smooth, unspotted moon to illuminate the trail. Her eyes followed the wooden pole up, then back down again to find that the gray ones had also vanished.

  “As for you,” the Elder growled at Varkun, “within three weeks of the day you see my face again, you shall be a dead man. And just so you know who to look for in the crowd…”

  The Ancient threw back his cowl, and unleashed his war lion gaze direct into the Dragon Priest’s empty soul. Varkun lost all mental and bodily control with a humiliated yelp, and scrambled away into the forest shadows.

  Tiva made a noise in her throat.

  The face of the Ancient belonged to Khumi’s father.

  All beings who were scorched by the Brahmastras, and saw the terrible fire of their missiles, felt that it was the fire of the cataclysm that burns down the world.

  —The Bhagavata Purana

  (an ancient Indian Epic)

  15

  Offerings

  Inguska had somehow lost his way in the woods at night when he tried to circle around the cave community of Belkrini, Akh’Uzan’s comical World-end Seer of Divine Fire. He had spent the better part of a week wandering the trackless forests of the north foothills, until he found another trail again at dusk on the fourth day. It was slow enough going even on the paths.

  Fortunately, there were many streams to drink from, and plentiful ripe berries and fruit trees. The pouches and robes of his sacred vestments weighed him down, and snagged on clumps of underbrush. By dawn of the fifth day, he threw himself onto a mossy pile between two gigantic redwood roots, and decided to sleep as long as he needed. There’s no sense fighting the delay any longer. It’s more important I be alert when the time comes.

  Late afternoon sun sprinkled through the leaves overhead in rosy fish scales when Inguska awakened to a noise in the woods. Men with harsh voices walked along the trail. He crawled into a stand of ferns where he could watch the narrow path, unseen. Could the soldiers have found the secret armory? How would they know to search for me up here?

  He heard a woman’s muffled cry.<
br />
  “Shut up, bynt-meat! We can do this two ways, you know!”

  Inguska saw four men along the trail herding a bound woman between them with a gag over her mouth. At any other time, he would have tried to rescue her, but he could risk no more bad luck for his mission. She looked familiar… her hair, and the way she walked…

  Strange lights flew down amid the trees, and made the air swirl with heat ripples and firefly specks. Inguska’s head began to swim, as his breath grew short. A hazy darkness settled in all around him, while his ears rang like a swarm of seven-year locusts. A heavy perfume filled the woods, so thick that it almost choked him. He heard voices in his head—the same as when he had heard the Daughters of Heaven, but different—wild voices, brooding with a madness that demanded to be appeased.

  The world seemed to flip over into a tumbling roar. Inguska saw the men tie the girl to a tree, and rip her clothes. Green darkness engulfed him, and for a moment, he thought that he was back at his home in lower Akh’Uzan, at one of Satori’s friendship feasts. Only the men were all chanting some unknown song, one with the face of a hungry wurm.

  Inguska laughed quietly to himself. Odd to see Satori’s concubine crying and begging—just like he wanted to make her do someday himself. Galkuna’s face had the terror of her wildest nightmare, but Inguska was not the one fulfilling his own fantasy on her. Where’s the satisfaction in that?

  A bloody sunset swirled alive with firefly lights again, as the men at Satori’s friendship feast brandished steely knives around a hungry tree. Inguska lost consciousness to the unlikely music of Galkuna’s screams.

  K

  humi and Tiva’s tree house towered, dark, and empty, a faceted black garment entwined around the maple’s trunk and branches like a huge segmented snake. It was past midnight.

  Moon-chaser said to the others, “I thought for sure she’d come here, where she could pull up the stairs.”

  “You and your big pranks!” Farsa screeched, with an open-handed slap to his face. Her own nose and lips still bled from where Tiva had jumped her. “Go to! When are you gonna grow up? Can you imagine how terrified she must have been to do this to me?”

  Moon-chaser tried to grab at Tsulia for support, but she pulled away. “I’d have never agreed to get Tiva if I’d have known it was gonna go like this! Whatever you did up there—I don’t know, ‘cause I passed out—but whatever it was must have been bad! I thought you cared about her, Moon!”

  “I do, Tsuli! Really I do! But there’re some special things you two aren’t completely up to date on…”

  “Such as?” interrupted a hoarse voice from out of the shadows.

  Everybody jumped.

  Varkun loped toward the tree from out of the gloom. He seemed agitated in the diffused moonlight, glancing about with the furtive eyes of a hunted animal. Farsa found it most unlike him.

  As with Moon-chaser, she and Varkun went back a number of years. Even so, it occurred to her now that she knew less about him than she could wish. She was certain of one thing, however; his eyes had always cast the glare of the hunter, never before the nervous twitch of the prey.

  Moon-chaser said, “I think we owe them an explanation.”

  The Musician shrugged. “You may owe them one. I don’t.”

  “Fine!”

  Farsa pulled Moon-chaser by his tunic right up to her bloody face. “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s something about Varkun and his troupe you don’t know,” he mumbled, looking in vain to the latter for some help.

  The red-cloaked minstrel waved his hand indifferently, and sighed. “Fortunately, my people and I made sacrifice earlier this evening—in case the marriage didn’t work.”

  “What in Under-world is he babbling about?” Farsa demanded of her brother.

  Moon-chaser stood with bulging eyes, as if he were too outraged to speak. When he finally found his tongue, he shouted in Varkun’s face, “I asked you not to do that kind of stuff around here! It’s not where the Helpers are leading us!”

  Varkun pulled him by his clothing, and then shoved him back hard against a tree. “You idiot! Just who do you think your Helpers are, anyway?”

  “No!” Moon-chaser said, “You’re wrong! Someday you’ll see that you’re wrong!”

  Tsuli melted into the shadow under the tree house and started to cry.

  Farsa simply got more enraged than she had ever been in her life. “What are you two mindless wurms shouting about?”

  Moon-chaser threw up his hands. “Vark’s a real dragon worshiper. But he promised this would just be in good fun.”

  “Good fun? With a bloody dragon worshiper!”

  Varkun said, “It was in good fun. Things just got out of control. The Helpers had something else planned that they didn’t commune with either one of us about. They do that sometimes.”

  “All I remember is a bunch of strange lights, and seeing our friend from the Wisdom Tree with another like him. But it was only for a few seconds,” Farsa said, calming down some. She sat down on the stair leading up to the tree house’s first platform.

  Tsuli sniffed from her hidden nook. “I don’t even remember that. And what’s this about helpers and dragon worshipers? I’m scared, Moon.”

  “I’m sorry, girls, really I am,” Moon-chaser said. “I’m sure Tiva will turn up, just fine, tomorrow in the light of day. Hey, in a week or so we’ll all be laid back by the waterfall pool laughing about this over a bowl of ale—Tiva right along with us! You’ll see!”

  Farsa didn’t share her brother’s optimism. She just glared at Varkun.

  He looked down at her feet, and said, “I guess you don’t want to see me anymore?”

  “Should I?”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t; I’m used to it,” answered the Minstrel, as he sat down beside her. A foul smell hung about him, as if he’d stepped in some animal’s spoor during his walk through the woods. “But think about this: I’m still the same man you’ve always known.”

  Farsa wished he would at least look her in the eye. “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you mean by a ‘sacrifice’ just a minute ago? Why’s Moon so upset?”

  “Just a small animal,” replied the Musician. “You know how fond Moon is of little animals. The Lits and Orthies do it all the time.”

  “But they do it to appease what they think is a good that’s been violated. You worship the arch symbol of the violator!”

  “Do I? Think of how much blood’s been shed in the name of E’Yahavah over the centuries in so-called ‘Colonial Holy Wars!’ Is the Dragon any worse than its supposed master? Who do you think allowed the Basilisk into Aeden? Am I to be persecuted because I choose not to pretend with the rest of Seti’s children that Order and Chaos are not in some kind of secret agreement with each other?” He finally gazed up into her face with his dark, sensitive eyes. “Will you persecute me for my beliefs like the old Archons did, who impaled those found with amulets carved in the form of Leviathan and the snake?”

  Farsa could never resist those eyes. “No, I don’t want to persecute you! But I don’t want to be a bloody dragon worshiper either!”

  “Nobody says you have to be.” He smiled for her. “We’re just good friends and part-time lovers—free to be who we are.”

  She sighed, just a little relieved. “I still hate what you did to Tiva, Varkun. I can’t forgive that easily.”

  “I know,” he said, clasping her hand and caressing it. “I’m sorry—I’ll make it up to you, and explain the whole thing in an apology to her if I see her again.”

  Farsa scrunched her face in a halfway serious scowl. “Yeah, well, just be sure you do it some time around high noon, okay?”

  “I will,” said Varkun, as he laid his arm across her shoulder.

  E

  arly morning sunlight sparkled off the trees, and bathed Tiva in a sense of irony that she never in her wildest imagination hoped to enjoy. The forbidding fortress is now my r
efuge. She laughed mirthlessly.

  Her entire world had inverted itself suddenly once again, yet strangely, the new condition was more to her liking. As if by magic, the restrictions she had found so intolerable now seemed trivial, even beneficial. The darkness might rant and rave outside the gates, but it would never have her again. Somehow, everything and everyone had changed. Even Sutara had lost all her irritating mannerisms, and become someone Tiva could trust and talk to—as she had late last night, after arriving home with A’Nu-Ahki.

  Tiva, Khumi, Iyapeti, and Sutara walked down the forest trail together to the drydock. The others would be along shortly.

  This would be Tiva’s first day of work as actual “ship’s company.” Incredibly, for the first time since leaving her father’s house, she did not fear going past the Shrine. Imagine what Yargat and Henumil will think when they find out I’m helping to build that thing! The mental image gave her far more satisfaction than last night’s picture of them rooting in the slop.

  “I’ll help you move your things out from the tree house this afternoon,” Iyapeti offered to Khumi. “Pahp told me this morning that he’s giving you and Tiva the Tacticon’s old tower suite—you lucky weasel!”

  Khumi smacked his brother playfully, and then jumped out of range.

  “It’s good to be back, ‘Peti, even if you are still a clumsy oaf!”

  Both men laughed, and poked fun at each other all down the trail.

  Tiva felt like she had suddenly been transported into a dream, where everybody she had always known still existed, but all the anger and malice had been removed somehow—almost as though Atum-Ra and Ish’Hakka had never brought down the Curse. She couldn’t stop replaying last night’s conversation with Khumi’s father in her mind, as they had walked back to Q’Enukki’s Retreat after chasing off the Dragon Priest…