A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3) (32 page)

humi climbed the dark hillside trail where it wound beneath the rocky face over which the retreat’s battlements hung. Celestial music partially drowned out the raucous noise wafting down from Grove Hollow.

Has the Hollow changed its sound, or have I simply outgrown it?
he wondered sadly.

The singing from his father’s monastery filtered through angry shadows, a chorus of E’Yahavah’s guardians that called him to protection against the specter—
maddened night. Fear crawled up his spine—fear for himself, fear for his wife.

Tiva will be at the Hollow anyway,
he figured with a sullen resignation. He had no desire to join her there, but the noise from that direction made him want to go up and make sure of her safety.
Why has she changed so much? Why can’t she just grow up a little? I suppose I should go up and apologize to her, though…

The Voice in Khumi’s head was suddenly not his own
:
“Go up now, and neither of you shall ever return. Stay, and she has an opportunity to live.”

Khumi had no idea what had just happened, but he suspected that the whisper had come from some place deep—
a place where only his father dared tread. For the first time since before his father and brothers had gone to war, he felt like taking part in a family worship, if only to drive off the chill that had slowly settled over his life.

At the top of the rise, Khumi chose. He turned toward the light of his father’s fortress quietly. The gate, as always,
was unbarred.

arkun chanted, “The moon is full, and Tiamatu rises to kiss its essence! Who sings forth the sacred primal urge?”

“Freedom sings from the heartbeat of Earth, our mother!” answered Moon-chaser, Sariya, and
all of the Witchy Girls.

Tiva saw flickering horned shadows
like little goat demons among the gathering, all behind a firefly light that emanated from Pahn’s sickly body in whirling patterns that somehow made everything seem putrid and degraded. The mushrooms rushed to their full effect, filling her with a helpless dropping sensation. She knew beyond any doubt that no net made by the hand of man could break her fall. All the world tumbled in after her, over the crumbling edge of an ever widening abyss deeper and darker than Under-world’s gaping mouth.

In the fading firelight at the top of the hole, Varkun donned the head-mask of a crested wyverna, and made a bloodcurdling shriek. “The Basilisk sent the wurm to hunt down the weak and ignorant so their feeble seed would not taint our vigorous blood! We applaud the Sacred Dragon, and pledge him brides!”

Tiva felt herself disappearing, as though her very personhood had become food for some all-consuming pack of psychic wurms. What little controlled movement her body had left froze when the Dragon Priest gazed at her as through the long tunnel with eyes that danced in wicked fire from inside the mask. She had seen those eyes before.

Varkun screamed,
“Give yourself to him!”

A stench of defecation and rotting flesh
wafted over the Hollow. The individual named Tiva felt herself sinking inward toward total personality extinction. Something dark and huge injected its way into her heart like a black oily fluid, and began to squeeze out the elements of who she was, bit by bit, bubble by bubble, away into outer darkness. No matter how much of her Tiva-ness oozed out, not one particle of her ability to feel the pain and horror diminished. Her stomach churned as her arms involuntarily reached out to the gray perversion she had once imagined was her friend.

A’

Nu-Ahki met Khumi at the common hall door, and motioned him toward a seat inside, by the firelight.

His father’s first words should have shocked him, but somehow they didn’t. “To say that we’re praying for your wife, Khumi, would be using too mild a word for it. We sense the battle for her
very will is reaching its climax even as we speak.”

Khumi felt clumsy and out of place as he sat down by U’Sumi and T’Qinna. He tried to join in with his father’s prayer, but the words stuck in his throat. Despite his desperation
, and even the danger he sensed Tiva was in, he found it impossible to focus the way the others seemed to. If not for the voice that he had just heard on the trail, he would have accused his father and brothers of cowardice for not rushing up there with him to see if she needed help.
Just what am I supposed to be doing anyway?

A’Nu-Ahki remained standing, and prompted his tiny army like an arch-straticon. “Fight for that girl! Plead for her before E’Yahavah like she’s your very life itself!”

iva’s hand stopped short of touching the clammy gray mockery.

The Dragon Priest held up a tiny crystal vial to the garish light of the hovering blue disk, and cried, “This is the black ambrosia.
It cries to prepare the chosen bride of the Horned One to receive the seed of her master!”

Tiva found that she could now move. She tried to rise, and push herself away from the creature called Pahn. Polypy hands wrestled her back to the ground. Varkun brought the terrible black vial, and thrust it toward her lips. Panic closed her eyes
in an attempt to escape his gaze. The hands that held her fast became constricting snakes entwined around her legs, arms, and neck.

Even tightly-shut eyes could not relieve her from the vision. In the red darkness behind her eye
lids, Tiva saw Pahn melt from his guise as Kernui into a form even more horrifying than the gray creature that overshadowed her. A gruesome reptilian face with a unicorn horn, and a greasy beard like that of a dirty old man, leered out at her from the terror-haunted depths of her earliest childhood nightmares. Coarse hair covered his bottom half, above feet that were cloven goat hooves.

The consuming B
east spoke to her now completely in that awful voice Tiva had always found so strangely familiar, but which she could never quite place. She had no trouble recognizing it now, however. It was the voice of Yargat, “You shall now be my wife. I shall have you body and soul. There was never any other Aeden for you than this!”

A’

Nu-Ahki huddled together with the others, and shouted, “Strength, E’Yahavah; give her your power to escape the Dragon’s teeth!”

iva screamed, and somehow bolted to her feet. People flew from her body as though they were tiny children. Panic seized her arms and legs, and hurled the startled dragon priest into the surrounding mob. His bottle of “black ambrosia” flew from his hand to shatter in the fire pit, sputtering to an oily green flame.

Tiva stood inside a ring of entranced people with gray-glow Watchers evenly distributed among them. She turned about
to avoid being taken from behind, and held out her arms to fend off any attackers.

The people of Grove Hollow seemed puzzled and afraid
—distant, as though Tiva only saw them only through a long misty tunnel. The gray ones appeared to urge them on, pitiless, black, insect eyes visiting silent threats. They closed in on her again.

The Farsa-thing, now awake and on her feet, tried to coax Tiva with promises that it wasn’t what it seemed, while the sallow whine of the walking-corpse-woman named Sariya cried how Tiva had misunderstood—that it would make sense if she only gave it a chance. Varkun stood by Farsa, his arm around her putrefying hips. At their feet lay Tsulia—Tiva’s childhood friend had not come out of her trance.

Tiva flew in the opposite direction. She bowled through the throng, tossing aside Watcher and human alike like straw effigies, to reach the concealing forest. All around her, the horned shadows flickered and writhed. She heard the creature that called himself ‘Moon-chaser’ call after her, and promise that it was all just a big joke—that it wasn’t real.

She refused to listen, and increased her speed.

Tangled roots and undergrowth grabbed at her bare legs, wurm claws that answered the summons of Pahn, their forest master. Tiva jerked her wrap free from a clutching bush. Above the trees, the brilliant blue disk followed, flickering down into the woods to create a disorienting miasma of light and shadow that threatened to rob her of any sense of direction. It also seemed to serve as a beacon for the hunters.

An impenetrable thorn thicket forced her to pause.
Which way is the path? Oh E’Yahavah, Which way is the vulping path?

She chose left, since the other direction sloped down to the brook.

The shifting light overhead shone brighter, while the calling voices grew nearer. A crescent of pursuit threatened to reach around and engulf her on all sides. Off to the right, she caught sight of a gray one between the trees. The creature seemed much larger than it had been before. Labored breath like swamp gas death, it saw her also, and pointed a skeletal finger her way. Tiva froze again when its mouth fell open in a howl like that of her own screeching inner void. The thing approached, while she plugged her ears in a useless attempt to ward off the paralyzing noise. This was the first time Tiva had seen them use their mouths to communicate. Now she knew why.

The Gray O
ne approached through the trees, pointing and shrieking. Its mouth opened wider and wider as it drew closer, jaws detached like some huge albino snake with a lipless maw that stretched outward to devour her whole. Tiva could smell the Watcher’s foul breath. Its gaping lower jaw now stretched below its chest to reveal rows of poisoned needle teeth. Flaps of skin on either side of the mouth undulated in rubbery waves, driven by the bloated wind of a thousand opened tombs.

Strength from somewhere else helped her find her will again. Tiva turned and ducked around the thorns, just as the creature nearly grabbed her.

The gray ones and Hollow people still circled through the forest in almost every direction. Twisted shimmers above the trees, and curling hydra shadows confused her, causing her to zigzag like a wild beast driven to a trap by bush beaters on all sides.

After
them herding her that way for some time, Tiva realized that as long as her pursuers controlled the direction of her flight, she must ultimately fall back into their hands. She looked around to pick out various individuals through the trees. The changing contrasts of light and shadow made this almost impossible. She searched for a point in the enclosing crescent covered only by a human and not a Watcher—better yet, a woman.

Farsa caught her eye, to her left, up the slope.

Tiva crouched, and tore off at a right angle behind a thick swath of underbrush. She finally lost the screaming gray thing that had almost grabbed her in the shadows. It took her eternal seconds at an uphill run to close the distance to her target.

Farsa never knew what hit her when
Tiva grabbed her around the neck from behind. With the force of her momentum, she slammed her old friend’s face into a tree. Moon-chaser’s sister dropped to the ferns.

“I guess being a little overfed has advantages!” Tiva whispered savagely to herself, as she scrambled uphill outside the enclosing crescent.

A minute later, she stumbled onto the trail, and paused to catch her breath. She had done it! She had broken free!

Tiva turned to make a run for Q’Enukki’s Retreat, but then stopped in her tracks. Her elation plummeted back into panic.

The Watcher’s shining blue disk floated over the path, between her and her intended refuge. Beneath it, Varkun and two of the gray ones stood waiting—Kernui-Pahn and his Wisdom Tree ally. Thick trees and boulders clumped on either side of the trail. Tiva knew that the musician-priest would surely have the path covered from Grove Hollow to her rear. The only way out again was through—though she could never hope to match Varkun’s strength or the sorcery of the gray nightmares.

“Don’t be scared, my
little vulp,” Varkun croaked. “You won’t be hurt. Your children shall worship you as a goddess!”

“I don’t want to be a goddess!” Tiva said. “I want to be left alone!”

“But Pahn wants you. And Pahn gets what Pahn wants. He is
All
.”

Trail-side shrubbery rustled from somewhere beyond the disk light.

A voice spoke from the shadows behind Varkun; “I don’t think Pahn is going to get what he wants tonight, young man.”

The Dragon Priest wheeled about.

The hooded figure of a bent ancient that leaned on a wooden staff approached from out of the darkness along the path. The old fellow hobbled out into the blue glow as though oppressed by some great weight that seemed to emanate from the shining disk.

“Who do you think you are
; old man? Don’t you see the power in the light above you?” Varkun shouted.

“Who I am is of no importance,” mumbled the Ancient, almost as if to remind himself more than to inform the Priest. “Whom I serve—now that’s another matter,” he added in a languid, almost slurred voice, as if he struggled with some form of speech impediment to get the words out.
The cold light of the floating object above the trail seemed to beat down on him in turbulent waves, though no wind stirred.

The Old One shuffled forward like one who fought some crippling disease that sapped strength and control from his limbs. His labored breath somehow grew stronger the closer he got to Varkun and the two Watchers, until it seemed to Tiva almost like the droughts of some t
riumphant warrior-king of old. Then, about twenty paces from Varkun, the fellow stopped.

“Rrrrun!” Tiva called to the elderly gentleman
, “in E’Yahavah’s name, run; before they take you too! I’m not worth dying for!”

The Ancient lifted his voice, which now rang free and clear. “I stand in the shadow of my Master! His shadow far outshines that
ghost-light up there!”

Varkun laughed. “You really should listen to her, old man!”

Tears ran down Tiva’s face. “Please, whoever you are, don’t let them get you! I’m just not worth it!”

“Why should I flee them, little one?” the hooded stranger said. “They can’t harm me, and those shriveled gray ones know it. My Master has already declared you to be worth losing a life over—a supremely important life. So don’t be afraid.”

“No riddles, bent one!” roared Varkun. “Go, and I give you your life!”

The Old Man laughed, and shuffled toward the Dragon Priest again, this time with greater ease. His face remained hidden by his cowl.

“My life is not yours to give or take.”

With each step, the Elder grew less stooped, and seemed to lean on his staff with diminishing need. At about half the distance, he walked upright
, until by the time he stood before Varkun’s face, he actually seemed to dwarf the dragon-priest by as much as a tenth of a cubit.

At a signal from Varkun, the gray ones dropped open their jaws to emit their banshee howls at the stranger.

“Oh, shut up, both of you!” snapped the Ancient.

The grays
’ mouths snapped shut, and the creatures peered at each other with what must have been their odd version of fright.

Varkun began to
tremble visibly.

Tiva slowly walked forward underneath the blue disk, and past the Dragon Priest, to stand behind her protector.

Varkun said, “What do you want?”

“First,” answered the Ancient One, glaring down at the two Watchers, and then up to their floating disk, “Get out of here!”

He raised his staff, and pointed it at the great light. The disk dissolved with a loud noise into a million firefly shards. For a moment, Tiva heard the sounds of shrieking multitudes from some kind of swirling torment. A night sky then re-made itself with a refreshingly normal, smooth, unspotted moon to illuminate the trail. Her eyes followed the wooden pole up, then back down again to find that the gray ones had also vanished.

“As for you,” the Elder growled at Varkun, “within three weeks of the day you see my face again, you shall be a dead man. And just so you know who to look for in the crowd…”

The Ancient threw back his cowl, and unleashed his war lion gaze direct into the Dragon Priest’s empty soul. Varkun lost all mental and bodily control with a humiliated yelp, and scrambled away into the forest shadows.

Tiva made a noise in her throat.

The face of the Ancient belonged to Khumi’s father.