A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3) (10 page)

varnon-Set seemed troubled. His whiteless, black eyes gazed at the construction work outside his suite window overlooking Sa-utar’s twin World-end Obelisks, which had Atum-Ra’s prophecies inscribed on them.

“I would have preferred confirmation,” he said, a yellowed fang
glinting in the afternoon sunlight that shone in through the open drapes.

Tarbet explained
, “The final prisoner of war lists came in last week. His name was not on any of them.”

The massive head of the Giant turned. “You expect neat casualty counts from an enemy that fed most of its war prisoners to its champion fighters? This wasn’t one of your prissy-neat archonic colonial wars!”

“The Seer Clan doesn’t even expect his return. My intelligence sources in Akh’Uzan say that they’re all marching off in different directions with at least four mutually exclusive World-end rescue schemes over which they refuse to agree. It’s a recipe for the further marginalization of their theology and way of life. We’ve won! What else is there?”

“Don’t be so quick to declare victory, Tarbet. It’s not confirmed.”

“What more can be done? We’ve closed down all their schools, and placed public information and entertainment orbs in every neighborhood of every village, each with a variety of programming. If the Guild had allowed me to place an orb in every home, I would have done that too! Even if A’Nu-Ahki returns, the best he can do is become a fifth sect in a squabbling valley of self-styled mystics. The old prophetic line is dead!”

“Really?”

Tarbet stepped into the window’s light. “Really. Why are you so concerned with him anyway? It’s not like you to obsess on the insignificant.”

The wolfish Titan nodded. “True. I’m being silly.” He pointed out at the construction. “That Colossus is coming along.”

Tarbet looked down at his father’s great monument, which would soon overshadow the Obelisks of Fire and Water. “It makes a statement of confidence about the future. The people need that now more than ever.”

Avarnon-Set said,
“Your father should have made the image of Adiyuri instead of Kunyari. Adiyuri was more temperate, more broad-minded, and much less arrogant—a more believable architect for a new era.”

“I’ve often thought the same
,” Tarbet agreed with more passion than he allowed into his voice. “I’m just glad that Rakhau didn’t make it into a likeness of Rakhau. There’s not enough stone in all the
Kharir Aedenu
.”

The Titan made a hacksaw laugh, which Tarbet joined. “Putting it over the obelisks was a stroke of genius.”

“That was my idea.”

“Really?” Avarnon-Set arched his heavy
, wildly-tufted brow.

“A colossus is mindless egotism unless it sends a message history identifies
as a fundamental shift in the way people think.”

“Yes. The silliness in Akh’Uzan only illustrates your point.”

“Has for some time. Kunyari’s image towering over the obelisks will place the theological concept of World-end into proper perspective, and help the moderate Orthodox to adapt to an enlightened way of thinking that will eventually spill over into other areas of life.”

Avarnon-Set stepped away from the window and poured himself some wine from a beverage table. “The Old-liners are still a problem—and not just at Akh’Uzan. I hear some of your scholars are having fits over the doxology changes even in more progressive city-states.”

Tarbet made a dismissive wave of his hand. “Toothless gryndels, all of them. I convinced my father to allow an optional worship litany to accommodate some of the newer theories about E’Yahavah’s natural limitations. They act as though I’ve arbitrarily demoted the Great God to just another Watcher or something.”

The Titan bared both fangs. “They just can’t handle a level playing field where all gods, powers, and guardians are respected equally. I suppose we shall have to humor them again.”

Tarbet helped himself to some wine also. “Not for too much longer. I’m suggesting to my father that our domestic agenda shift its tone to a ‘revived traditional orthodoxy’—at least for a while, and subject to a few quiet revisions in the background, of course. Every year we appoint more magistrates that interpret Seti’s Code our way…”

“An interminably tiresome process.”

“Ah, but the important changes have already been accepted by the public. We can afford to be magnanimous long enough for some of the older, stodgier members of the Magistracy to die off. Obscure as they are, some of them are sages who could still potentially sway the young. If we outrage them too much, a genuine backlash of Old-line Orthodoxy—with all its reactionary quirks—could break out in the younger generations in new, more virulent forms. That would be disastrous this late in the game.”

“I thought you were in firm control of your Sacred Academy.”

“I am.” Tarbet sipped his wine. “The Old-liners are not a viable threat. They just have long memories. They won’t have the political will to make trouble, as long as we don’t rouse them by moving in New Pantheon social liberation agendas too fast. They’re too convinced of their own spiritual purity to be too much of a headache.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Tarbet chuckled. “They’ve not only segregated themselves from the academic centers to stay ‘safe’ from new ideas, they’ve actually abandoned most of the artistic and intellectual disciplines altogether, without creating any compelling alternatives. They’ve grown self-righteous, shortsighted, and mentally lazy—which is exactly how I want them. Their few tenured sages are an aging minority, isolated even from the middle class, where they might find a following. Their own retreat has made it easy for us to institute unwritten screening procedures to weed out up-and-coming scholars who make serious traditionalist arguments.”

Avarnon-Set rested a claw-like hand on Tarbet’s shoulder. “I chose wisely by taking you into my confidence. Just don’t take things too far in wooing your conservatives—we don’t need a throw-back to Iyared’s time.”

Tarbet couldn’t help but laugh. “Like that’s going to happen! Our ‘Orthodox Revival’ centers only on the economy and ritual—as if they are separate worlds unto themselves. We quietly continue to advance Kunyari’s moderate spiritual and social policies. Guild economic control will feel reasonable and right to my people by the time your manufactured debt crisis is scheduled to hit—please, Lord! I know how to work my own people.”

“Of course, Tarbet. I did not mean to imply otherwise.”

A horrendous bang startled them both. Tarbet thought at first that the workers had crashed something into the monuments outside, but the sound’s direction was all wrong. A glance out the window confirmed nothing amiss.

Avarnon-Set’s private secretary had burst through the huge oaken doors at a run. He carried a sealed dispatch scroll and handed it to the Titan. “Forgive my intrusion, Lords. This came to us top-priority from the Archon. He’s ordered his army to alert status and requests that we do the same!”

“What?” Tarbet nearly wet himself as his world dropped out from under him. Another war was not the political crisis of choice just now.

Avarnon opened the wax seal on the scroll and read it. “It says here that a runner just came in from your Sacred Precincts. The Archon wishes to confer with us both before he calls together the full Court advisory staff.”

Tarbet’s blood drained from his face. “I don’t understand!”

The Titan
placed the scroll on the table. “It seems that some power has just attacked the land of your sacred relics by air.”

diyuri had built his summer retreat right next to the old boathouse on the western shore of Paru’Ainu’s Great Riverhead Lake. Tarbet had ridden with Avarnon-Set in the latter’s sun-powered self-propelled chariot, reducing a three-day onager-back ride to a little over seven hours. He would have thoroughly enjoyed the cruise along the steep winding Sacred Highway up into the Pisunu River Gorge if not for the crisis.

Rakhau had told them that the Samyazas had made a surprise winged assault on the Sacred Orchard a little over four days ago. The Archon had requested Avarnon-Set’s aid in investigating the attack
, and sent Tarbet along to smooth out any anti-titanist intolerance from the acolytic order. The ruckus that met them at Adiyuri’s opulent summerhouse was expected.

A crashed Samyaza astra blackened the front lawn, while pieces of several others littered the grounds all the way down to the lakefront. Smoke from distant fires still climbed along the grassy sides of the
Kharir Urkanu
, where dozens of sky chariot wrecks burned after something had blasted them out of the sky.

“How was Samyaza able to field such an advanced air fleet without your knowledge?” Tarbet asked, as the vehicle stopped
in front of the small palace’s colonnade. He tried to keep any accusation from his voice.

Avarnon’s under-turned lips tightened, as he let his driver open the coach door. Somehow
, his face seemed to morph into a shape just a little more human. “They must have been utterly ruthless in their secrecy. We knew they were slowly increasing their sky chariot production, but our spy drones detected no large-scale build-up of mechanized ground-attack machines or armies. Except for the embassy garrison at Dumuzida, we phased out our last occupation troops in Assuri some forty years ago—too expensive to maintain.”

“These are
astras! Lumekkor helped Assuri to rebuild! Why?”

The Giant glared at him side-long. “Control yourself, Tarbet. Assuri has many resources of its own. We only helped retool their primitive civilian industrial centers—not up to Guild levels and nowhere near what we’ve given your manufacturing and port facilities at Hadumar—just enough to secure trade concessions that paid Century War reparations to both you and us. They promised never to attack the Alliance again.”

“Broken! They’ve flattened our Sacred Orchard!”

“Not according to what I see here,” said Avarnon-Set. He paused on the front stairs of the summer retreat
after exiting the chariot to look over the wreckage more carefully. “We need to discuss what lies inside your Sacred Orchard, after I question these priests; don’t you think, Tarbet?”

That conversation promised to be the stuff of
political nightmares.

Inside the small palace’s antechamber, a mob of priests and acolytes surrounded Tarbet and Avarnon-Set. Rakhau had mentioned that the Chief Priest of the First Altar had dropped dead during the attack, so Tarbet searched the crowd for the Assistant Head Acolyte.
Old Dedurusi had been Muhet’Usalaq’s appointee, anyway.
This crisis may be just what I need to clean house in the acolytic order. His deputy has Alliance leanings, if I recall correctly.
He spotted the man’s face amid the murmuring clerics, and pushed his way through the assembly with Avarnon-Set in tow.

“Blessed greetings, my Lords,” said the Acting Head Acolyte with a bow. “Forgive the uproar. We are still in shock over what happened.”

Avarnon-Set asked, “What did happen?”

The Acolyte motioned them into a private sitting room before answering
, and had a junior fetch wine. “The assault came suddenly, up the three Canyons of Terror. The astras fired some kind of rockets over the
Kharir Aedenu
, but did not cross over the mountains themselves. Then the flaming sword of the Fire-sphinx reached out from the Sacred Orchard and smote Samyaza’s sky-lords twice. Most of the attackers were burned down, though a few witnesses say that a small number escaped toward Assuri.”

Avarnon-Set said, “What is this Fire-sphinx you speak of?”

Tarbet replied, trying to stifle the tremor in his voice, “The fabled guardian of the Forbidden Orchard.”

Avarnon narrowed his whiteless eyes. “Not so fabled, I would say.”

“We don’t really know what lies over the mountains to the north,” Tarbet rubbed his smooth chin, “Unless our Leading Acolyte can elaborate?”

The Acolyte seemed to wither under the gaze of Avarnon-Set. “I’m not sure I know anything that a titan of Lumekkor would find useful.”

“Try me,” said the Giant.

“In recent times, only A’Nu-Ahki of Salaam-Surupag and Urugim the son of Q’Enukki have seen the radiance of the Guardian. Urugim died almost three hundred years ago and A’Nu-Ahki
was killed at the Battle of Balimar Straits—though I heard a rumor that his body was never found. Of course, many pretenders to seerdom try the pass, but these never return.”

“What about not-so-recently?”

“Q’Enukki the Seer dwelt in holy seclusion in the Orchard for a number of months. Before that, only Atum-Ra and Mother Khuva had witnessed the Fire-sphinx, and lived to tell of it.”

The Giant nodded. “That mirrors our experiences in this region.”

Tarbet said, “What do you mean?”

“Uzaaz’El kept urging Tubaal-qayin Dumuzi to send aerodrones over your
Kharir Aedenu
from the north. None ever returned. Later, we tried to map the area from higher up with astras. They didn’t return either. We’ve concluded that a renegade Power must be hiding there. Your Q’Enukki lived around the time my father’s order first descended to Earth. If he visited your Orchard, his hostility to my father’s kind may have been more than just the disgruntled reaction of a man whose traditions were being challenged.”

The Acolyte scowled.

Tarbet caught himself stroking his own chin again. “Explain.”

Avarnon-Set gazed out a large picture window at the mountainous wall toward the north. “I’m not sure. Whatever lies beyond those cliffs does not wish to be disturbed. Samyaza was always an impetuous fool. We shall not make
his mistake.”