The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (24 page)

“Shut up!” A’Nu-Ahki
balled his
fists, as if ready to strike the Giant, despite the fact that his best blow could hardly have reached the height of Psydonu’s jaw with any force left.

Psydonu sniffed.
“Oh. Sorry.
I thought maybe a seer of E
l-N’Lil
might appreciate viewing a foretaste of divine judgment on the wicked
; I did hear you say the world is ending soon, did I not?
”

“Judgment belongs to E’Yahavah—not you, nor the Watchers
! H
e doesn’t
enjoy
it
; though, in your case, he might make an exception
! You will not escape what you mock in this parody of a tragedy too deep for your comprehension!”

“Mock?” The Giant sounded genuinely hurt. “This is art at its most sincere and visceral! It’s not mockery for the Divine Seed
to
explore his divine rights! I can’t grow without expressing my creativity! I’m the Artist
here
!”

U’Sumi gazed long and hard at those pain-twisted faces. They were the same faces he had seen in his vision of
W
orld-end. Shadow-mind rose again, full force, amid the acrid smells of that smoking pit.

“He takes no pleasure in judgment? It is upon
the
s
eers
’
visions
of Underworld that Psydonu modeled this place! Do any of the sins these people are guilty of warrant such monstrous cruelty? What if E’Yahavah is the tyrant, and
the Basilisk
a misunderstood liberator?”

“What are you going to do with us?” U’Sumi demanded, trying to control his trembling at the unthinkable words screaming in his head.

The Titan smiled with a shrug. “I know this will sound rather
silly
, but almost nothing at all. You’ll join Pandura at Epymetu’s Temple City, where we’ll obtain our test samples. She may have a few experiments to run, but she is under instruction not to kill you or harm you—if possible. After that, we may even let you go.”

The High Priestess smiled at U’Sumi again, and ran a hand over the smooth curve of her hip. Her green mantis eyes flickered
with
feral hunger. “Believe me, harming you is the last thing I have in mind, young paladin.”

U’Sumi looked away.
S
ince her
arrival
, he had come to fear
Pandura
more than the Titan
or even the
Elyo
, although he could not figure out why
.

Psydonu let out a long hiss that echoed throughout the cavern. “It’s a shame you did not choose to endorse me in your
reality, A’Nu-Ahki—we’d have made a glorious team! But you see I really am the
Seed. I am my own father and thus I have created myself
,
even as the cosmos has created itself to bring forth both gods and men to think its emerging thoughts. Thus, there is no lasting reality unless I speak it into existence.”

“That’s
shear
madness!”

The Titan folded his arms and looked up. “Only in your reality
,
with
only your
long-winded
words to back it up
.
Take some advice; less is more. People don’t like to be dragged through chains of difficult questions and analysis. They want to feel! I give them that!
My words have creative power! They are
easy
words
repeated daily to almost half the world. When I embody High
Psydonu, I also embody E’Yahavah
and all other deities.
It doesn’t matter if that’s logically impossible!
Now what
really
happened just now is that the Seer of Akh’Uzan has confirmed my claim, so I’m now giving you a tour of my secrets.”

U’Sumi said,
“But that’s not what happened at all
.
”

“Oh my dear young friend, you just don’t understand. Reality exists only in the mind. Shared reality is what separates us from the beasts—that ability to exist in a collective consciousness of common social narratives and images. When the collective consciousness of an old
narrative
vanishes
, the substance of
its
reality dies with it. Here, let me show you how this is so.”

Psydonu stepped over to a periscope mechanism that hung down from the vaulted ceiling. He pulled it to face level and peered into the eyepiece with a satisfied sigh. Then he handed the scope
down
to U’Sumi.

“Take a look, young seer.”

U’Sumi pulled the implement down to his own height and almost gagged. He saw thousands of contorted bodies in the sealed audience chamber above, some still twitching. Green mist shrouded the floor in spectral fingers that spider-crawled between twisted limbs down the many seat rows. Blood dribbled from every mouth and nose on waxed-madness faces. They bore the same glazed eyes they had shown in life, but with the added torment of sudden betrayal and
panic
in them.

“What have you done?” A’Nu-Ahki shouted, who pushed his son away from the periscope and then himself came away equally aghast.

Psydonu stepped over to a glowing glass orb near the periscope and began to tap on a panel of small rectangles labeled with ideograph letters. “You see, my friends, I now speak into existence a new reality,” he said.

A color picture formed in the smoky orb.
Adoring crowds again filled t
he great audience chamber above. U’Sumi saw himself, his father, and Pandura up on the dais with the mad titan
,
as happened only minutes before.

The Giant said,
“Now here’s what really happened
…
”

In the orb’s picture
,
a voice sounding like A’Nu-Ahki’s proclaimed the claims of Psydonu true. Then a blinding light filled the circular court, along with the voices of an unearthly chorus. When the brilliance dissolved, the crowds were gone. Only the four people on the dais remained.

U’Sumi immediately noticed that something else had changed as well. His own form wore the dark red cloak
t
he
titan guards
issued
him
on the day
Psydonu had separated
h
im from
his father, not the purple one he wore now. Pandura’s image also seemed out of synchronization with the lighting in the chamber, which angled differently
from the glass parts of the dome
than just before the engulfing flash had snatched away the crowds.

U’Sumi said,
“You somehow changed the codes of this picture-record with your differential calculating engine
.
Your details are off. Three weeks ago the sun was angled differently than just now.”

Psydonu’s congenial smile fell from his face. “You are too smart for your own good, Little Brother.”

A’Nu-Ahki said,
“It doesn’t take much wit to see through such a wild lie
.
Your own people will see through it even if they can’t figure out how you changed the orb picture.”

The Giant shook his head. “
Not at all; o
nce you leave here, you will only be a pudgy little self-anointed prophet with a crazy story about the doings at Thulae. If you try to tell it in Aztlan, my devoted children will never believe you, even if they don’t try to re-educate your apostasy. Indeed, no one in this world will take you seriously because the reality my words create is solid and believable, reduced to simple, easily remembered slogans that are reinforced by endless repetition from many independent sources.

“Once my pet leviathans are fed on the bodies above
,
and those of the clean-up workers, no trace will remain of the old false reality of your mad seer’s dream. News of my confirmation and the taking into heaven of an entire crowd so blessed to witness that sacred moment will spread by orb long before you even make it out of these caverns with Pandura. It will be like the Ascension of Q’Enukki all over again, only a thousand times more glorious! The
rocketry
is even now going off over the dome. So, dear friends, I thank you for your confirmation.”

“Your days are
counted
,” A’Nu-Ahki said, “forty-eight years.”

Psydonu’s chin lifted, while he waved off the notion with a sweep of his hand. “I don’t receive that negative thought at all. In fact, I have only positive images of complete victory. Now, if you will excuse me, I will leave you in the capable hands of our dear Pandura. I have a gryndel to slay and I think I’d like a few minutes alone to practice my head crushing technique.”

U’Sumi turned to the High Priestess, who leveled
an automatic
hand-cannon at them with what U’Sumi recognized as one of those new slot-load mechanisms that allowed the weapon to spray a stream of over forty pellets in two seconds. At that range, she did not need to be a good aim.

“As the good Giant has said, we do not want to hurt either of you. But if I have to, I can still hurt one of you and keep my tissue samples good for several days on ice. Psydonu will understand.”

A

smooth stone road ran from Thulae at the Top of the World, south-southeast, along the mountains of Psydonu’s Shield, to the Rahabim Straits, which connected the seas of
Yawam Rahabim
and
Yawam Tsafuni
.

Pandura, A’Nu-Ahki, and U’Sumi rode in a large self-propelled sedan coach at high speed, which covered what would have been a three week journey on foot in just over a couple days. The High Priestess had two coachmen, who traded off driving, so that few stops
were
needed
except to take on the coach’s grain spirit fuel. They had the road virtually to themselves since, as in Lumekkor, only divinity, royalty, elite military units, and Temple authorities used such vehicles.

The coach contained its own toilet facilities and galley. A neophyte priestess slightly younger than
U’Sumi
prepared al
l their meals. She attracted U’S
umi’s attention immediately
because
her milky skin bore the natural bilateral dark pigmentation spot patterns of the Far Eastern tribes in Nhod. He had never seen a spotted person before.

Most people in Akh’Uzan spoke derisively of the “savage spotted people” because they were early descendants of Qayin the Murderer. Many lore-masters claimed that the “the Mark of Qayin,” spoken of in early history texts, was their skin patterns
—
although
none of the Archons, nor Q’Enukki, had ever taught
such a thing
.

A’Nu-Ahki had always rejected such fables, pointing out that most of Qayin’s descendants were mono-toned in their skin pigmentation. Still, U’Sumi had somehow expected them to
appear
monstrous and ape-like. The young Nhoddic priestess was none of these things. Her skin markings spiraled in elegant
patterns
,
and though her head seemed a
little
larger than average, she carried it attractively with poise and grace.
However, it
struck him as odd that she should live so far west.

The awkward part of the journey was the sleeping arrangements—the cabin had only one divan across its back end, large enough for two or three people. The drivers had a shelf in front and the neophyte her cubby beneath the foodstuffs. U’Sumi and his father slept sitting up at the galley table with their heads down. The High Priestess expressed an odd mixture of amusement and insult at this. U’Sumi didn’t sleep much.

When they reached the Rahabi Straits, a boat waited to take them across to Epymetu’s Temple City. There, terraced layers of white rectangular buildings rose from stone wharfs, up a seaside bluff capped in rich greenery that surrounded an acropolis of minarets with a huge ziggurat complex.