The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (7 page)

Muhet’Usalaq glared up at him, blazing coal eyes kept from burning him off the ladder only by the mahogany wrinkles that
clasped the
m safely in their sockets. T
hose fleshly
windows into history,
flaring
so near
to
its end and to
eternity,
had power that
made it unnecessary for the Ancient
to
speak. His iron will
seemed to
seize
the young man’s clumsy body
and collapse it like a rickety
tent
of
dried bones
.

U’Sumi slid down the steps to land on his rump in the puddle of his own vomit. He twisted around, remov
ing
his tunic to wipe the feet of the Prime Zaqen free of the chunky splashes. He wiped and wiped as tears ran down his face
;
but the
stink
would not go away. When panic and confusion expended
themselves
and nothing but ash remained of his world, he cast himself upon the rocks beneath the shadow of an unapproachable colossus. He did what nobody would have dared
;
threw his arms around those archaic pillars with yellowed parchment feet and wept uncontrollably.

A hand rubbed through his hair, not to thrust him away, but to draw him closer. “It seems the house of Kunyari has this affect on every young person they touch,” said
an
ageless, surprisingly sympathetic voice.

U’Sumi dared not look up.
How could he have heard?

The Old Man said,
“They did to my daughter what th
ey did to your mother, you know.
”
H
is voice
cracked with a
frail
exhaustion that aged U’Sumi’s heart with
a
horror
of its own
. “
T
hey did to me as they have done
now
to you.”

U’Sumi squeaked
,
“You?”

The Zaqen
gazed down on him
;
eyes warm
,
inviting coals, not ready to burn him down at all. The distant silence of holy mountain fire had just come to earth in the form of a lamb.

The Old One said, “Let us get you cleaned up.
”
Then he looked down at his own feet and grinned, “and me too.”

U’Sumi had never seen Muhet’Usalaq smile.
Nothing is the same
anymore
!

He
pulled himself to his feet on the edge of the ladder and finished sopping up the puddle with his tunic. Then he stripped down
,
while Muhet’Usalaq went out to fetch him some new clothes. The elder returned
with
not only clothes
,
but also
a basin of water and some towels with which they both scrubbed themselves and the stone floor by the ladder.

“Come with me for a walk down by the forest brook,” the Ancient said, once they had scoured everything as best they could. “I can help you wash these old clothes of yours.”

“Thank you.”

The mountain brook trickled a stone’s throw from the monastery gate, well hidden in the close forest greenery. Everyone had retreated to
some
private corner, as if to hide from what had happened and what was about to. The Old Man and the
b
oy
who had just become a man saw no one
else
as they crossed the courtyard to the outside.

The Ancient muttered,
“
As
the father, so goes the son,” while U’Sumi scrubbed out his clothes on a submerged rock.

“How did it happen? What happened?”

Muhet’Usalaq shrugged. “Carelessness
, a
young woman with a trusting heart
, h
er fa
ther with a blind faith that the
se things never happened in ‘good’ families
; it might have been any of the above or none of them
.
I do not really know anymore.
Her name was S’Rai
. S
he died at the Rout of Salaam-Surupag with
most
of my other children
,
alone
,
and unloved by a husband.
As
far as I knew, she still felt like the used spurning of a worthless man
,
though I tried my best to help her past it.
Nothing I said or did mattered
.
”

The Ancient’s eyes relived a deep and ancient feud. “Rakhau had seduced her during a visit to Sa-utar—that was before he got
to be such a bloated grease bag.
He promised to marry her
,
but when she turned up pregnant, both he and his father denied the child was his. She bore a son, whom she named ‘Uruk
,
’ three years before your father was born.

“Tormented your
father
no end, that boy did—insanely jealous that A’Nu-Ahki would g
et the inheritance, being firstborn of my first
born. I tried to be a good father to Uruk. Nobody ever called him a bastard his
entire
short life. Qayin’s heart beat in him though. He was largely responsible for those crazy st
ories about your father being a seed of the Fallen Ones
.”

“What happened to him?”

Muhet’Usalaq hung his head. “According to your grandfather, he died bravely enough, defending Salaam-Surupag along with his mother.”

“Along with my father’s first wife,” U’Sumi added.

“That is correct.”

“Did my father love his first wife more than he loves my mother?”

The Ancient gazed down on him with eyes
sadder
than U’Sumi had ever seen them before. “Is there anything that has ever happened before today to make it seem so?”

“No. Not really.”

“Your mother is an extraordinary woman who has had a difficult life. Neither you nor I have faced the temptation
s
she has had to endure. Your father will not think any the less of her in the end
;
nor should you.”

U’Sumi met the Elder’s eyes full on for the first time. “Why have you never spoken to me before?”

Muhet’Usalaq laughed—an odd sound, resonant with the woods and the bubbling brook that raced between their toes. U’Sumi had never heard the Ancient laugh before
either
.

“What do you mean, I have never talked to you, lad? Of course I have spoken to you.”

“Not like this. You go for months—even
years,
it seems—without saying a word and not just to me. The whole valley knows that you are the Prime Zaqen of Akh’Uzan. Yet all they do is belittle and slander you. Why don’t you assert your power over them? Why do you sit still for it?”

The Old One smiled,
his
eyes faraway
. “I did
,
as you say, ‘assert my power over them’ once—not long before you were born
,
actually. My boy, you can lead a unicorn to grass, but you cannot make him eat of it if he does not wish. For decades, I tried reason
ing
with them, plead
ing
with
them to
put aside
their prejudice against your mother.
I even shut down
slanderous
rogue printers
.
The offenders merely outsourced their propaganda to printers in Erdu. S
ince I no longer see the benefit of enforcing the kind of authority I have through bloodshed, I guess there is not much left for me to say.”

“To me there is. You’ve lived over nine-hundred years! You’ve seen over a third of all history first hand!”

The Ancient nodded. “Ah, I see what has happened between us. It is my centuries, you know. Time flows for me so rapidly—it seems to me this morning that you nursed at your mother’s breast. Yet your fifty years is the sum total of your life—a long time for you—all your experience, all you remember, bound up in a finite number. But for me your fifty years is less than one eighteenth part of my whole time—a breath, a vapor.

“So much I want to share with you and meant to share. Yet I sigh to myself and say, ‘tomorrow.’ Then it seems to me that I have spoken with you recently, when it has actually been almost twenty years. Forgive me and try to understand that the rate at
which we both experience time is proportional to the number of years we have each seen under the sun.”

“I understand,” said U’Sumi, who really didn’t. “But soon I go off to war. Can I come to speak with you each day until then?”

“War? So near the end of all things and they want you to fight in one of their stupid wars? Of course you can come. Bring your brother too. I will have time to spend with the young one after you two older ones leave. Do not worry. E’Yahavah is merciful. Your father lost all his sons to the last big war. It will not happen that way again. Not with things this close to the end. You can count on it. But be careful all the same.”

U’Sumi had not thought of how all his long dead
half
-
brothers and sisters had met their end at Salaam-Surupag. Suddenly being the “botch of Akh’Uzan” did
no
t seem so bad.

THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY
|
367

More lovely than Pandora, whom the gods

Endowed with all their gifts; and O, too like

In sad event, when to the unwiser son

Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnared

Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged

On him who had stole Jove’s authentic fire.

—Milton

Book IV of
Paradise Lost

THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY
|
367

Pyra

T

he airy golds of the vaulted chapel interior worked with carefully angled
quickfire
lighting pearls to create a blazing halo around the speaker’s giant mother-of-pearl podium. High Priestess Pandura’s firm breasts, youthful chic and perfectly painted skin concealed the fact that she was pushing two
hundred and fifty years old.

None of it fooled Pyra.
From the fifth row,
she
listened to her grandmother eulogize the great
titan-priest
Epymetu and heard things she had never known before
. Pyra figured that
either her grandmother had just made them up
for the occasion
,
or
she was just being her secretive self
,
or both. There was no way to know
.

There never was
with Pandura.

Pyra almost laughed
, but that would
have
be
en
bad form for a funeral—even this one.
Still in your prime, sure, but not without some fine crow’s feet near the eyes, Grandmother! How you hate it when I call you that! You could otherwise pass as one of my friends, if only the novices didn’t know you
so well
!
She
almost added,
and fear you
,
but stopped herself even within the privacy of her own thoughts. Sometimes even thinking was a dangerous game to play in the Temple of Aztlan.

The eulogy continued
.
“A hundred years ago, I was sent to this Temple with a gift from the gods of the Sacred East—a crystal
ampoule
that held the sum knowledge of human architecture
discovered at Ayar Adi’In and by the Temple of Ardis before it.
The Sons of A’Nu entrusted
Epymetu and his brother Prometu with fashioning a new and better form of
human
. My crystal contained
a map of the very codes of creation to guide them. It is
thus
fitting that my name,
Pandura
,
means ‘All Gifts’
…
”

Isn’t this supposed to be a tribute to Epymetu?
Pyra complained to herself, not at all pleased
with
fifth row
seating
among
the children.
I’m
almost thirty-two, after all!

Pandura was just warming up. Waves of gold and red hair wreathed her perfectly formed head like a dancing flame. “Prometu had the
foresight
to warn us of the dangers in manipulating the foundational mysteries of our existence—for his name meant ‘foresight
.
’ Did he not in his youth steal the secret of quickfire and bring it to the men of the West? He gave us the beginning of wisdom and angered his former masters greatly by doing so, though they eventually overlooked this early
supposed
transgression.

“With his knowledge, we
eventually
built a differential calculating engine more powerful than any before it—powerful enough to handle the complexities of our sacred research more quickly than even the engines of our former masters.
His
tragic
capture
by those unworthy masters,
and
then his
execution
,
was a
difficult
blow to our sacred revolution…”

You big phony! You hated Prometu! You laughed when you heard how enemy agents had captured him and returned him to the East, where they tormented him many years in the fortress of Kaukir Ardis until he died.
Pyra had overheard Pandura’s reception of that little communiqué as a child.

Prometu had wavered in trust
ing
the new gods. Grandmother had often complained about him.
She had even
called
it a “nice touch” that the enemy used Prometu as a live test subject for medical experiments in regenerative tissue. They had removed parts of his liver and somehow
used fetal stem cells to make
it grow back
each time
, until his new liver tissue
metastasized
and consume
d
him
with cancers
.

Pandura sniffed. “Worse yet, we now endure sorrow on top of sorrow with the demise
of my beloved consort, Epymetu—whose name meant ‘hindsight
.
’ Fortunately both
he and his brother were
excellent teachers
…
”
She took a moment to dab away a frugal tear, lest it ruin her eye-liner.

“Many will say that
hindsight
is the lesser of the two gifts, but it is by hindsight that we learn from history. My Epymetu was in no way his brother’s inferior
…
”

The silent outrage crept unbidden into Pyra’s mind, hidden behind a properly worshipful face.
You used Epymetu
as
you’re using my mother! It’s all just a big power game for you, isn’t it, Grandmother?
Her thoughts added,
As
you will soon begin to use me,
just before that line of reasoning became so terrifying that she automatically shut it down too.

I’ll soon be a priestess
—
some
one
who will help people,
Pyra reminded herself.
That’s what this is really all about anyway, isn’t it? Maybe a bigger ideal justifies your actions, Grandmother? After all, even the scary stuff eventually helps people, doesn’t it?

“It was by careful
hindsight
that my beloved Epymetu saw how the Great War of the East had turned the minds of the older titans away from the gold and silver aspirations of their youth. Their thoughts and hearts have fallen in value to bronze and now even harsh iron, as their Dynasty of Steel seeks to renew its lordship over us by T‘Vul-qayin’s armored weapons
…
”

Now we have weapons of our own
,
though
,
don’t we
,
Grandmother
?
Pyra smirked.
H
er mother
’s face came to mind,
with a vague uneasiness.

Pandura raised her arms to the vaulted ceiling. “Our chosen Powers, Tsey’Us and his brother, High Psydonu, have shown us a new way! Tsey’Us fashioned my path and led me forth from the old gods of the East to bring the Gift to Epymetu, who built upon it. This brought forth our present power and prosperity
, the culmination of which happened when
High Psydonu married
my sister
priestess Klyeto and produced in her child his own material form—our New Titan, Psydonu, who
rules
at Thulae in the sides of the North
…
”

After
he married his own mother
—
eew!
Pyra couldn’t help but think, even if she regarded the thought as a venial blasphemy.
Psydonu is special,
she reminded herself.
If he’s his own father, then I guess it’s okay for him to marry his own mother, isn’t it?
Pyra mind
could never quite be
free of
the
confusion
—or revulsion—produced by the idea. She thought it best to
refocus
her
grandmother’s eulogy.

“
…
Epymetu’s holy work shall continue
!
We shall go forward, now that I have completely opened the crystal
ampoule’s
secret
language. We have seen many wonders
and
many unexpected setbacks
…
”

Pyra wanted to ask,
Like
two
-
headed frogs and red-sore plagues? Why couldn’t you have waited until you had fully cracked the codes?
Then she remembered her mother’s admonition;
without mistakes
,
there is no progress.
The wonders only came wrapped in pain after many errors. Even the gods were imperfect. Unfortunately
,
those who made the errors often did not seem to suffer the pain.
Yet the marvels were still worth it, weren’t they?
They’ve cured p
lagues, haven’t they? Yes, with
several
new ones created
—
no, that’s not fair! Pandura has problems, but she did the best she could.

Pyra’s grandmother seemed to echo that sentiment. “I have trapped the greatest of holy secrets that flew from the
ampoule
—hope for the future. Together we shall create a new and better person for a new and better world. The Sacred East shall one day turn from its apostasy to the true way again.”

Pandura lifted the alabaster urn that contained the ashes of her mentor and consort. She carried it down the long aisle past the mourners. Her eyes met Pyra’s as she passed.
Was there a smile in them for a change?

After the procession of priests and priestesses trailed out of the sacristy behind their mistress, Pyra departed for the Temple children’s dorm. Her mother had promised to meet her there with a surprise after she finished with her worship obligations at the Court of Meeting. Next month Pyra would graduate as a novice and st
art to work in the Court also.

The sacristy lay just inside the Temple Zone wall from the outer metropolis.
G
olden crystal pyrite stairs segmented t
he circular avenues around the rising mound of U’Lympe, upon which Epymetu
built
Temple City, like spokes on a huge convex wheel converg
ing
at the flattened summit. In the raised center, the sacred complex hummed day and night with its jeweled lights and mysterious hidden engines. Pyra climbed onto a stepped causeway that overlooked the harbor and slowly made her way up to the children’s dorms on the innermost ring.

The sundial in the outer courtyard showed about three hours after noon. If her mother engaged a worshiper first thing, she could be done in less than twenty minutes. It might be a slow day in the Court of Meeting after such a high funeral, however.

Pyra went in and found a mirror to adjust her hair and face paint—her mother had been getting on her about paying more
attention to her appearance lately. Like Pandura, Pyra’s hair had streaks of natural red-gold
,
highlight
ing
her face in wispy quickfire arcs. Unlike Grandmother,
dark burnt umber was
the background color
, like
veins of fire that smoldered deep beneath the earth’s surface.

Pyra also had another, culturally more significant distinction
;
her unknown father had been a Far East tribesman of mottled skin, probably a seaman. A symmetrical constellation of dark leopard-like spots swirled down either side of her milky face and body in elegant cyclical patterns that she anticipated would greatly enhance her career as a priestess. A single mark
resembling
the paw print of a
tiny
sphinx graced the center of her forehead.

They all think I’m untamed somehow.
She grinned into the leafy green eyes of the young woman in the glass.
I suppose I won’t disappoint them when my time comes, will I?

Still
,
the thought
frightened her
—the power she would have over people’s hearts and ultimately their very lives. She put it aside while she brushed out her long strands. S
he became so lost
in the regular strokes that her mother’s entrance into their dorm chamber went unheard.

“Pyra darling, it’s so good to see that you really do pay attention to me sometimes.”

Pyra put down the brush, smiled, and turned. “Hello Mauma. How was worship?”

“Oh
,
the same old thing. Sometimes I think the whole experience is really wasted on men.”

Maybe that’s why you took up with Harachne,
Pyra didn’t say. Her mother’s choice of consorts was a touchy subject.

“So where’s my surprise?”

“She’s outside by the sundial.”

“She?”

The Priestess smiled
at her daughter
—a younger,
more amiable version of golden—
haired Pandura.

Pyra raced past her mother out into the courtyard.