The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (17 page)

The great vessel did not
seem
built for speed, but gun stability. Its towering citadel, which U’Sumi and his guard had climbed to reach the bridge, gave the bulky metal leviathan a top heaviness accentuated by the ship’s being nearly a third as wide as it was long. The Captain had bragged about his “lady” being a leap ahead of the Century War Era ironclads, with their clunky wood fire boilers. His ship burned glakka tree oil, a commodity Aztlan now had in abundance since it had conquered the lumber producing western settlements around Dragonwood the Great.

U’Sumi presented his case to the Shipmaster, appealing to the man’s self-interest. Under different circumstances, he might have liked the Captain, who reminded him a little of his grandfather. The fellow agreed to grant medical supplies and even to give U’Sumi limited freedom aboard, barring only engine spaces, weaponry areas, and the armory. He gave the impression of having recently received special orders concerning the nature of U’Sumi and A’Nu-Ahki’s captivity. U’Sumi was sure that a
vessel this size must carry a quickfire oracle capable of communicating with land.

The Captain’s eyes darkened just as he seemed about
to finish
speaking. He pointed out at the starboard bridge wing, which hung out over the foaming waters far below. “I want you to listen to something before I release you on this ship. Come over here,” he said.

He led U’Sumi out onto the triangular wing deck. Outside, pinkish-gold late afternoon sky met the endless expanse of water in all directions. Swishing armor-shrouded water screws churned aft. Still, an
ululating
wail
sounded
over them. Never having been at sea, U’Sumi had assumed this
was
some strange effect of the breeze over
endless
flat waters.

“Hear that music?” The Captain spoke slowly, in an almost spellbound whisper that sent a chill up U’Sumi’s spine.

“I’ve heard it often since we went to sea, what is it?”

The Shipmaster paused to let the alien specter-song haunt U’Sumi’s ears
before he answered. “It’s the S
ong of Tiamatu—the call of
Leviathan
. In these waters, it means certain death to any sailor who falls overboard.”

“They sound far off.”

“Don’t fool yourself. They sing while submerged. They can stay down for over an hour. You can see their serpent necks carve a trail through the seas when they ain’t a-sounding. Sometimes
they’ll swim close enough to pluck a careless man off the main deck, between the secondary cannon barricades. Some get to be almost a sixth the length of this ship, but even a whelp’ll thrash ya to raw meat. Them’n even bigger offspring of Tiamatu can smell yer blood from a long ways off
,
the moment you hit the water. So don’t get any ideas about jumpin’ ship when we come in closer to shore.”

U’Sumi had no more such ideas.

He left the conning shack no longer under guard
,
and returned below to his father. A’Nu-Ahki lay on the bare metal deck, still trembling in his fevered delirium. U’Sumi knelt over him and dabbed his sweaty forehead again. Soon, the old sailor who had been their jail keeper brought in clean bandages, medicinal herbs, and a pot of boiling water. U’Sumi started meticulously clean
ing
his father’s festering wound.

E

erie music filtered into the unlocked brig cabin from above deck.

U’Sumi finished his nightly re-binding of A’Nu-Ahki’s forehead. He had overheard the sailors’ banter enough to
note
their superstition that Tiamatu sang out for those about to die at sea. He wondered sometimes if
Leviathan
wasn’t calling through the armored hull for his father.
Time, and a
more attentive ear
,
revealed a more human tune however
,
played gently on some kind of Iyu’Buuli
wood-wind pipes.

His father rested quietly now, so U’Sumi decided to investigate the haunting melody. He left the brig, climbed the ladder up to the starboard main deck, and gazed thoughtfully out over the cranberry ocean twilight that shined around the metal ramparts.

The P
iper sat in the shadows against
a secondary cannon
barbette, in the space between the gun mount and the deck barricade
;
a
most
careless sailor by the Captain’s reckoning. The
sailor
stared at the emerging stars with large soft eyes
, like windows into the great deeps
. He stopped playing when he saw U’Sumi approach.

“Please go on,” U’Sumi said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. It’s an interesting tune. I thought at first you were
Leviathan
.”

The Piper said, “Now that’s a compliment, to be sure.”

U’Sumi asked,
“Have you played long?”

“All my life
.
B
egan as a lad, younger’n you, sea-wenching my first voyage.
It be r
utting
-good that someone
‘
ears me last song.”

“Why are you giving it up? You play quite well.”

The Sailor laughed mirthlessly. “Got the red-sore
; d
on’t feel up to waiting ‘till me face rots off. If not, I’d be askin’ a randee lad like you
…
Well, on second thought, I don’t mean to offend if it’s not yer inclinings.”

U’Sumi controlled his revulsion. “It’s not. But I’m sorry you’re ill.”

“I’m not complaining,
wattee
. As the song goes,
‘women and boys that are only toys, but never a wife for a sailor.’
At sea, I guess I got used to the boys mostly. You believe in the gods?”

U’Sumi shrugged, unsure if he wanted to answer. For perhaps the first time in his life
,
he felt more like listening than talking.

“Not those dumb Temple ones! I mean gods as they used to be.”

“I believe in one, I guess. At least I used to think I did.”

“Ahh, the Big One!” The Sailor cackled knowingly. “He plays no games, that one.”

U’Sumi wasn’t so sure any more, but he nodded anyway.

“Where I’m from
,
folk would’ve called my life ‘strange,’ to put it nicely. I never gave it much thought.
M
aybe they was right
,
maybe not.
That one big god up there must sure think they was, else I wouldn’t be pickin’ at these rot spots all about my middle.
The
Temple
,
they tries to discourage that kind of talk
;
say it’s harmful!” He exploded with caustic laughter. “Not half as harmful as getting the sore though
,
or getting born with an extra head, I’ll wager. You think it’s true what folk say, that once the ‘sore’ breaks around yer middle, and starts hittin’ yer face, that you
start
go
ing
mad?”

“
You don’t scare me. T
he One—his name is E’Yahavah.”

The Piper paused as if to think on that. “E’Yahavah. Now there’s an interesting name for a master god. Means ‘self-existent’ in the Old Dialect don’t it? As if he was on some distant island, shouting across the ocean to passing ships, ‘Hey, look at me!
I am!
I’m here! Come and get me!’ But the ships, they just keep passing by. Is that the picture?”

“The part about the ships passing by is—sort of. And the part about
hi
s
being self-existent. He sure seems far away nowadays,
too. But he’s not stuck out there,
like
he needs us to come to him in our ships.”

“Or in our temples, I’d wager.
”

“A winning bet.”

The Piper nodded.
“
My folk in New L’Mekku believe in a king god who rules the others. They call him High Psydonu. He fathered the titan Psydonu
and
then At’Lahazh and his brothers. He was once different from what they say now, though. Ours was more of an ocean god, master of the seas. He rides
Leviathan
and carries drowning mariners to their final place in the deeps.” He lifted the pipes again, and resumed his haunted tune.

A long spell passed, in which U’Sumi found himself carried away by the seaman’s music to where he could almost see the realm of dark Psydonu in the depths below; blue and cold, filled with gray, hopeless faces calling upward to a world unable to hear them.
Leviathan
gloat
ed over her catch,
h
er
mournful song
whining
up from the clammy blackness.

The Piper stopped playing. They both listened.

Echoing across the ocean in
siren
esque
wails
,
Leviathan’s
strange music drew closer.

The Piper almost chanted in a burst of manic excitement,
“They’ve heard me!
Psydonu has heard my call, and his stallions answer me from
the
beyond! They
’re
com
ing
for me
now
…
”

U’Sumi
suddenly understood
. “No!” he shouted, “you don’t want that! Psydonu and E’Yahavah are not the same!”

The Piper gazed up at him, watery remorse filling his large eyes with a distant echo of empathy. “No, of course they ain’t. But it’s faster.”

“But what if you don’t escape? What if it all just goes on in Underworld with no hope and no end?” U’Sumi said, his chest sucked empty of fervor like some lone soldier on a battlefield about to be overrun by a massive
unstoppable
enemy—a feeling he understood only too well.

The Sailor merely shrugged as if it didn’t matter.

U’Sumi’s heart raced, his mind searching frantically for something to say that would stop
him
. “I like you, even if the red-sore gets on your face, I still like you!” he said, unafraid it would give the wrong impression.
What did
any of
that
matter now?

The Mariner
gave a flicker of a
smile with
the
ghost of what once, long ago, would have been warmth. “You’re a kind
ly
lad. But it’s too late for me.
If your E’Yahavah were real, I’d only curse
him to his face, so it’s too late.
”
No
fire of resentment or
rage; just a damp
,
bleak
, limp
indifference.

U’Sumi
went
numb all over, as his head started spinning
. He
wanted to tell him somehow that it wasn’t
too late
,
but what could he say
to what he had just heard?
Shadow-mind advanced in waves of helpless hesitation.

Leviathan
dirges filled the darkening night. Over the side, beneath the barricade’s gap, slippery snake-shadows swam hungrily in the foam. Nightmare sounds of fins and blow-holes broke the surface
, pressing
U’Sumi against the citadel bulkhead. Farther out, the silhouette of a long-necked serpentine head rose against the moon. Its eyes glinted
with
bloody phosphorescence before it dove again to its endless hunt.

U’Sumi found his tongue. “Mister, please don’t go! My father’s a Seer of E’Yahavah
,
and he’s also a healer—a really good healer!”

The Piper got up and moved to the rail. He turned to U’Sumi, and handed him his pipes. “Your father’s done himself, lad—everybody knows it.
What has E’Yahavah done for him?
I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s done for me. I don’t have
no one
, so I’d
like it
if you
t
ook
these pipes and learn to play’em
. C
arved’em myself outa leviathan’s bone
.
I’ll wager your songs’ll be a lot brighter than mine. Remember me when you play’em
, but d
on’t be like me, kid.
”