The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (33 page)

She nodded.

“Are you just following us because of how you feel about me?”

T’Qinna seemed to ponder his question then answered slowly, “At first, I got into that conversation with your father only in the hope that you’d join in. But I really learned a big lesson when I had no reason to think I could ever make you like me.
Many
bad things were happening to me long before you and your father came to Aztlan. I’m still not sure about all of them even now. But I made my decision regardless of you.”

“That sets us free,” he whispered, “really free.”

They stood in the cargo bay and held each other for a long time, as Taanyx and Shell-head watched on and the fe
rry built up steam to depart.

T

he whole world swayed while the woman’s voice called to her through murky clouds.

“Where are you
,
Pyra?”

Violet eyes filled the sky like two searching moons.

“Where are you
,
Pyra darling?”

“My name is T’Qinna!” she screeched as she woke up.

The rosy light of a clouded moon shone in through the porthole of her tiny stateroom. T’Qinna got up and put on her
wrap to step out onto the deck for some air. The haze of sleep fled from her as she dressed—and not only the haze of sleep
…

It came to her in a moment of exquisite anguish. The violet eyes like small moons—
Mnemosynae!

Her head spun when the realization fell. T’Qinna collapsed against the bulkhead as a gut-twisting sob escaped her throat.
It came back to her in all its horror; t
he cramped room hidden deep in the Temple laboratories
,
with the frozen helplessness she had felt while strapped for hours to its table.

She recalled now how Mnemosynae and Lethae had worked over her, one to block the memories of that night she had penetrated the secret birthing chamber where she had found her mother’s body, the other to fill her mind with false recollections. Even at this, she knew there was more—much more—still hidden.
I expected this from Pandura, but how could you have done it too, my mentor, my teacher
?
I loved and trusted you!

A quiet knock came to her cabin door, but T’Qinna did not have the will to answer. The blackness around those violet eyes swallowed her. She heard Mnemosynae’s soft musical voice fill her mind and heart again with poison to cover the hastily buried truth.

How Pyra wanted desperately to believe those lies—they were so much easier to live with—so much less painful. She wept convulsively as she slid down the bulkhead onto the deck in a flaccid heap. Her mind exploded again with the vision of her mother’s body, bloodless, and ripped open like a discarded husk, eyes frozen wide in the final terror that had destroyed her from within.
Is every nice thing just a deceptive shell
inside of which incubates some hidden horror
? Even the
kindly
Seer holds
the
world’s destruction
within his healing words
!

The cabin door pushed in from the outside. T’Qinna thought she had locked it, but she couldn’t be sure of anything
anymore
.
Probably some drunken ferry hand has broken in with only one thing on his mind.

She didn’t care. It wouldn’t be the first time.

T’Qinna felt herself lifted from the cold deck and placed back onto her cot.
At least he seems gentle.

Then she saw the intruder’s face.

A’Nu-Ahki knelt over her by the side of the bunk, his hands clasped together. Through her own sobs, she heard his low voice intercede for her, calling out to E’Yahavah for mercy and comfort.

He must have heard me cry out when I woke up.

The purple haze of Mnemosynae’s eyes cleared before the onslaught of a bright golden light. Maybe it was just a cloud that moved out to unveil a full moon over the placid inland sea
. T
o T’Qinna
,
it was when things began to make perfect sense
and
her heart experience
d
real
peace for the first time.

Pyra the priestess had dedicated her life to love without ever underst
anding
what that really meant. Now T’Qinna would spend the rest of her days discovering the love that had rescued her from a world that love’s wisdom could not possibly allow to
continue
.

T

he ferry trip provided two weeks of reflection and conversation for U’Sumi and T’Qinna. They concluded that the only course ahead for them would be to marry. Still, U’Sumi wanted to wait a while before he asked his father to betroth them. He feared their sudden pronouncement of love might
seem to
a more mature mind
the
sort of adventure-induced infatuation young people in their situation would be prone to
indulge
. He also wanted to make sure that the hypothetical mature mind would
no
t be right
about that
.

He stood with her
on the
forward
promenade
deck
, as the vessel wrestled the gentle waves along the last bit of a coastal strand to the west, toward the Aztlan Sea Ferry’s home port. The fabulous skyline of Psydonis lay south on the hazy horizon before them, glinting orichalcum fire-golds from its great pyramids and Temple complex, which T’Qinna had said was twice the size of Epymetu’s. Howling
a
stras
land
ed
and
took flight
from somewhere behind the pyramids.

U’Sumi whispered to her, “Only I shall call you ‘Pyra’ from now on and only when we’re alone. When we are joined, your fire will dance true.”

She smiled for him, giving him a small taste of that dancing flame in her jade eyes. “Then we agree our espousal has begun. We will remain apart from each other according to the traditions of your people.”

“An eternity
,
b
ut wise.”

“One thing still troubles me, though.”

“What’s that?”

Her face darkened as a small red leviathan breached the waves in the distance behind her. “What if I have red-sore from my old life? I always used to feel good about what I did as a priestess
,
as though
I w
ere
helping people who had no other place to turn. Now I feel like it was all a huge sick prank! I’d die if I passed something horrible on to you as your wife
…
”

He pressed her head softly onto his shoulder. “You can’t help where you were born or who raised you. As for diseases, I thought you said Temple is strict about examinations and quarantines?”

“It is. But priestesses still get the sore sometimes—though much less than careless women and men who work the streets. It incubates with no symptoms for a couple years and even the screening tests at the physician’s gates are not perfectly reliable.”

U’Sumi said, “Then I’ll care for you and you for me, until the end. I’m not afraid of it.
As
my father says
,
E’Yahavah has cleansed
us
. We’ll be several years under a supervised betrothal—plenty long enough for it to incubate. If you have it, then I will care for you as your husband.”

“But we’d never be able to
…
I would become repulsive for you to look at! There would be open running ulcers and the smell! By the Goddess, you’ve never smelled the smell of its final stage, U’Sumi!”

“I know. That’s what ‘I love you’ means
; s
cary, huh?” He smiled at her. “Don’t worry. You can’t go through life afraid of what might happen—you’ve been cleansed, Emerald-eyes! My grandfather always said, ‘Plan for the worst scenario, because even under the shadow of
W
orld-end
,
it almost never happens. Then life’s mercies are easier to see and you grow more grateful by habit.’ Technically, we shouldn’t even be talking about—um—such personal stuff yet. But I guess our
situation is kind of odd
.”

Lumekki’s proverb
jabbed
deep within
U’Sumi
at
something
he could not yet put into words even in his own mind. He only knew that it
foreboded
something infinitely more vast and far-reaching than even their future marriage.
Shadow-mind
sloshed around restlessly in the dark abyss just below the region where U’Sumi could consciously go.

“I’ll change the subject.” T’Qinna smiled, blushing—a sight that brought U’Sumi back
from his dark inner regions
to the brightly lit surface
,
and convinced him for all time that her cleansing was, in fact, real.

He gently nudged her away as the steam whistle announced the ferry’s approach to the great city. She squeezed his hand discreetly
,
and
then dropped it when they saw A’Nu-Ahki
approach from the ladder well.

The Elder said,
“We’d better get below to the animals. I’d like to be
first to unload once we put in.
”

T

he city of Psydonis lay due south of the ferry’s other port on the Aztlan Sea’s northern coast. T’Qinna explained that Psydonu had built the vast port metropolis, with its central Temple acropolis, only sixty years ago for his mother, Klyeto, the High Priestess of Southern Aztlan.

T’Qinna said, “
Klyeto
gave
herself
to the Watcher men call ‘
High Psydonu.
’
Even I got queasy
when she
took
her son as
a
‘
husband
’
for Psydonu to dwell in
,
and
at
Temple
,
I
’ve
see
n
almost everything
.
Farmers and miners aren
’
t so jaded.
Klyeto marrying her son
led to a scandal
even
here
in Aztlan. A
priestly council
named the boy Psydonu
the ‘
bodily receptacle
’
of his father’s spirit to legitimize things before the commoners
, who often still cli
ng to the ‘
antiquated notion
s
’
of marriage
and family
.
”
She mimicked Pandura to say the last part.