A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3) (33 page)

All beings who were scorched by the Brahmastras, and saw the terrible fire of their missiles, felt that it was the fire of the cataclysm that burns down the world.

—
The Bhagavata Purana

(an ancient Indian Epic)

15

Offerings

Inguska had somehow lost his way in the woods at night when he tried to circle around the cave community of Belkrini, Akh’Uzan’s comical World-end Seer of Divine Fire. He had spent the better part of a week wandering the trackless forests of the north foothills, until he found another trail again at dusk on the fourth day. It was slow enough going even on the paths.

Fortunately
, there were many streams to drink from, and plentiful ripe berries and fruit trees. The pouches and robes of his sacred vestments weighed him down, and snagged on clumps of underbrush. By dawn of the fifth day, he threw himself onto a mossy pile between two gigantic redwood roots, and decided to sleep as long as he needed.
There’s no sense fighting the delay any longer. It’s more important I be alert when the time comes.

Late afternoon sun sprinkled through the leaves overhead in rosy fish scales when Inguska awakened
to a noise in the woods. Men with harsh voices walked along the trail. He crawled into a stand of ferns where he could watch the narrow path, unseen.
Could the soldiers have found the secret armory? How would they know to search for me up here?

He heard a woman’s muffled cry.

“Shut up, bynt-meat! We can do this two ways, you know!”

Inguska saw four men along the trail herding a bound woman between them with a gag over her mouth. At any other time
, he would have tried to rescue her, but he could risk no more bad luck for his mission. She looked familiar… her hair, and the way she walked…

Strange lights flew down amid the trees, and made the air swirl with heat ripples and firefly specks. Inguska’s head began to swim, a
s his breath grew short. A hazy darkness settled in all around him, while his ears rang like a swarm of seven-year locusts. A heavy perfume filled the woods, so thick that it almost choked him. He heard voices in his head—the same as when he had heard the Daughters of Heaven, but different—wild voices, brooding with a madness that demanded to be appeased.

The world seemed to flip over into a tumbling roar. Inguska saw the men tie the girl to a tree, and rip her clothes. Green darkness engulfed him, and for a moment
, he thought that he was back at his home in lower Akh’Uzan, at one of Satori’s friendship feasts. Only the men were all chanting some unknown song, one with the face of a hungry wurm.

Inguska laughed quietly to himself. Odd to see Satori’s concubine crying and begging—just like he wanted to make her do someday himself. Galkuna’s face had the terror of her wildest nightmare, but Inguska was not the one fulfilling his own fantasy on her.
Where’s the satisfaction in that?

A bloody sunset swirled alive with firefly lights again, as the men at Satori’s friendship feast brandished steely knives around a hungry tree. Inguska lost consciousness to the unlikely music of Galkuna’s screams.

humi and Tiva’s tree house towered, dark
, and empty, a faceted black garment entwined around the maple’s trunk and branches like a huge segmented snake. It was past midnight.

Moon-chaser said to the others,
“I thought for sure she’d come here, where she could pull up the stairs.”

“You and your big pranks!” Farsa screeched
, with an open-handed slap to his face. Her own nose and lips still bled from where Tiva had jumped her. “Go to! When are you gonna grow up? Can you imagine how terrified she must have been to do this to me?”

Moon-chaser tried to grab at Tsulia for support, but she pulled away. “I’d have never agreed to get Tiva if I’d have known it was gonna
go like this! Whatever you did up there—I don’t know, ‘cause I passed out—but whatever it was must have been bad! I thought you cared about her, Moon!”

“I do, Tsuli! Really I do! But there’
re some special things you two aren’t completely up to date on…”

“Such as?” interrupted a hoarse voice from out of the shadows.

Everybody jumped.

Varkun loped toward
the tree from out of the gloom. He seemed agitated in the diffused moonlight, glancing about with the furtive eyes of a hunted animal. Farsa found it most unlike him.

As with Moon-chaser, she and Varkun went back a number of years. Even so, it occurred to her now that she knew less about him than she could wish. She was certain of one thing, however; his eyes had always cast the glare of the hunter, never before the nervous twitch of the prey.

Moon-chaser said,
“I think we owe them an explanation.”

The Musician shrugged. “You may owe them one. I don’t.”

“Fine!”

Farsa pulled Moon-chaser by his tunic right up to her bloody face. “What are you talking about?”

“There’s something about Varkun and his troupe you don’t know,” he mumbled, looking in vain to the latter for some help.

The red-cloaked minstrel waved his hand indifferently, and sighed. “Fortunately
, my people and I made sacrifice earlier this evening—in case the marriage didn’t work.”

“What in Under-world is he babbling about?” Farsa demanded of her brother.

Moon-chaser stood with bulging eyes, as if he were too outraged to speak. When he finally found his tongue, he shouted in Varkun’s face, “I asked you not to do that kind of stuff around here! It’s not where the Helpers are leading us!”

Varkun pulled him by his clothing, and then shoved him back hard against a tree.
“You idiot! Just who do you think your Helpers are, anyway?”

“No!” Moon-chaser
said, “You’re wrong! Someday you’ll see that you’re wrong!”

Tsuli melted into the shadow under the tree house and started to cry.

Farsa simply got more enraged than she had ever been in her life. “What are you two mindless wurms shouting about?”

Moon-chaser threw up his hands. “Vark’s a real
dragon worshiper. But he promised this would just be in good fun.”

“Good fun? With a bloody dragon worshiper!”

Varkun said, “It was in good fun. Things just got out of control. The Helpers had something else planned that they didn’t commune with either one of us about. They do that sometimes.”

“All I remember is a bunch of strange lights, and seeing our friend from the Wisdom Tree with another like him. But it was only for a few seconds,” Farsa said, calming down some. She sat down on the stair leading up to the tree house’s first platform.

Tsuli sniffed from her hidden nook. “I don’t even remember that. And what’s this about helpers and dragon worshipers? I’m scared, Moon.”

“I’m sorry, girls, really I am,” Moon-chaser said. “I’m sure Tiva will turn up
, just fine, tomorrow in the light of day. Hey, in a week or so we’ll all be laid back by the waterfall pool laughing about this over a bowl of ale—Tiva right along with us! You’ll see!”

Farsa didn’t share her brother’s optimism. She just glared at Varkun.

He looked down at her feet, and said, “I guess you don’t want to see me anymore?”

“Should I?”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t; I’m used to it,” answered the Minstrel, as he sat down beside her. A foul smell hung about him, as if he’d stepped in some animal’s spoor during his walk through the woods. “But think about this: I’m still the same man you’ve always known.”

Farsa wished he would at least look her in the eye. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

“What did you mean by a ‘sacrifice’ just a minute ago? Why’s Moon so upset?”

“Just a small animal,” replied the Musician. “You know how fond Moon is of little animals. The Lits and Orthies do it all the time.”

“But they do it to appease what they think is a good that’s been violated. You worship the arch symbol of the violator!”

“Do I? Think of how much blood’s been shed in the name of E’Yahavah over the centuries in so-called ‘Colonial Holy Wars!’ Is the Dragon any worse than its supposed master? Who do you think allowed the Basilisk into Aeden? Am I to be persecuted because I choose not to pretend with the rest of Seti’s children that Order and Chaos are not in some kind of secret agreement with each other?” He finally gazed up into her face with his dark, sensitive eyes. “Will you
persecute me for my beliefs like the old Archons did, who impaled those found with amulets carved in the form of Leviathan and the snake?”

Farsa could never resist those eyes. “No, I don’t want to persecute you! But I don’t want to be a bloody dragon worshiper either!”

“Nobody says you have to be.” He smiled for her. “We’re just good friends and part-time lovers—free to be who we are.”

She
sighed, just a little relieved. “I still hate what you did to Tiva, Varkun. I can’t forgive that easily.”

“I know,” he said, clasping her hand and caressing it. “I’m sorry—I’ll make it up to you, and explain the whole thing in an apology to her if I see her again.”

Farsa scrunched her face in a halfway serious scowl. “Yeah, well, just be sure you do it some time around high noon, okay?”

“I will,” said Varkun, as he laid his arm across her shoulder.

arly morning sunlight sparkled off the trees, and bathed Tiva in a sense of irony that she never in her wildest imagination hoped to enjoy.
The forbidding fortress is now my refuge.
She laughed mirthlessly.

Her
entire world had inverted itself suddenly once again, yet strangely, the new condition was more to her liking. As if by magic, the restrictions she had found so intolerable now seemed trivial, even beneficial. The darkness might rant and rave outside the gates, but it would never have her again. Somehow, everything and everyone had changed. Even Sutara had lost all her irritating mannerisms, and become someone Tiva could trust and talk to—as she had late last night, after arriving home with A’Nu-Ahki.

Tiva, Khumi, Iyapeti, and Sutara walked down the forest trail together to the
drydock. The others would be along shortly.

This would be Tiva’s first day of work as actual “ship’s company.” Incredibly, for the first time since leaving her father’s house, she did not fear going past the Shrine.
Imagine what Yargat and Henumil will think when they find out I’m helping to build that thing!
The mental image gave her far more satisfaction than last night’s picture of them rooting in the slop.

“I’ll help you move your things out from the tree house this afternoon,” Iyapeti offered to Khumi. “Pahp told me this morning that he’s giving you and Tiva the Tacticon’s old tower suite—you lucky weasel!”

Khumi smacked his brother playfully, and then jumped out of range.

“It’s good to be back, ‘Peti, even if you are still a
clumsy oaf!”

Both men laughed, and poked fun at each other all down the trail.

Tiva felt like she had suddenly been transported into a dream, where everybody she had always known still existed, but all the anger and malice had been removed somehow—almost as though Atum-Ra and Ish’Hakka had never brought down the Curse. She couldn’t stop replaying last night’s conversation with Khumi’s father in her mind, as they had walked back to Q’Enukki’s Retreat after chasing off the Dragon Priest…

“I don’t understand. Why do you care so much what happens to me?” Tiva had asked A’Nu-Ahki. “I took your son away, and turned him toward the Hollow. I acted like a whore! Yet all you’ve ever done is wish blessings on me—and now this!”

“Is that really how you see yourself—as a whore?”

She had let that turn around in her head for a moment. “I don’t really know anymore. That’s what Henumil thinks of me. He cursed me, and banished me from the presence of E’Yahavah, and all.”

“Henumil?”

“You know, my father.” The word had stuck in her throat.

“And he speaks for E’Yahavah?”

“Well
, he’s a priest and a Dragon-slayer, isn’t he?”

“I suppose. But does that give him the ultimate authority to banish you from E’Yahavah’s
presence? Wouldn’t E’Yahavah have something to say about that?”

She remembered that the old bitterness had briefly taken hold. “If he does, he didn’t say anything to me!”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Look, what do you want from me, anyway? I’m a living
, breathing, walking mistake! How can you even want me in your family?”

He had paused on the trail, and turned to face her. “What do you want for yourself, Tiva?”

She had wept. “Aeden! I wanted to go back to Aeden—to find happiness with your son! He used to really care about me, you know. He’s the only one who ever did—except for Farsa maybe—and now, you!”

He had wiped her unkempt hair from where it had fallen over her face and gotten stuck in her tears. He said, “I think he still does—even if he’s not very good at showing it. As for Aeden, isn’t that what we all want?”

“I s’pose.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, what did you think would bring you to Aeden?”

Tiva really had not wanted to go into all the morbid details, but she felt he deserved an honest answer. “I wanted to run free with your son—to be like Ish’Hakka before the Lie and the Curse. I didn’t want to have to hide myself anymore. I wanted happiness and laughter instead of frustration and tears. I wanted beauty to be beautiful and celebration to be joyous.”

“Is that what you found at Grove Hollow?”

“At first, yes! It was so real, so different from my father’s house.”

“What went wrong?”

“Everything! Just when I thought I’d found happiness, it would always slip away somehow like water through my hands.”

“I’ve been to Aeden, you know—the real Aeden. I carried your ancestor back from its very gates.”

“I didn’t know.”

“It’s well documented—even written in the
Testament of Urugim
. I’m surprised your parents never mentioned it.”

“I’m not! Leave it to Henumil not to mention the important stuff.”

“Oh, he’s not all bad.”

She hadn’t wanted to get off into a discussion about her father. “What was it like?”

“Pardon?”

“Aeden. What’s it like?”

Tiva remembered they had started to walk again.

The Old Man had smiled. “I can tell you it’s not a magic land where only fun things happen, and everything exists just to bring peace and pleasure. It’s beautiful, but lethal to those who approach it with the wrong kind of heart. It can be frightening even for those who come with the right kind. It’s not what any of us expect
. There’s a wildness and goodness about the place quite beyond anything we know out here.”

“What else?”

“To be honest, I didn’t get to see all that much of it. But I can tell you a little about what it means to see it restored.”

“Will it really be restored—for us, I mean?”

“Yes. But it won’t be easy, and it won’t be quite the same.”

“Nothing ever is, is it?”

A’Nu-Ahki had sighed. “No, I suppose not. I can assure you that restoration isn’t some kind of double-talk for another tired Lit religion that rubs your face endlessly in past mistakes. Celebration can be joyful and even imperfect beauty, beautiful. Peace and pleasure can exist now for us only in part because of the price E’Yahavah will pay. Later, full restoration shall come; but it has only progressed a small ways yet. The gift you and I share is a miracle, but it’s not magic. Our suffering is real, but it has an end.”

A light had somehow entered her heart, though she was still trying to put it into words…

Tiva returned to the present, while Sutara pulled alongside her on the trail, and the men continued their mock argument.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, I can’t wait to tell my mother how you got rescued after all that. Now I really know there’s still hope for my father,” said Iyapeti’s wife.

“I don’t mind,” Tiva told her. “If you’ll let me, I’ll go with you.”

“I’d like that.”

The trail bent slightly around a rocky bluff and passed by the Shrine.

Yargat stood outside, waiting for patrons. A flicker of surprise touched his eyes when he saw Tiva walking among the sons of A’Nu-Ahki. Her first impulse was to look down. Then a power rushed through her that she somehow knew was glowing out from her eyes in a way her brother could see. She peered straight into his emptiness as she passed him, though she could not tell if the emotion she felt for him was pity or loathing. A clean thrill shot through her like quickfire when he averted his face from her gaze, and stepped inside the cave.

The path wound down through another patch of thick woods before it emptied into the meadow at the base of the foothills. They strolled in among the trees, Tiva and Sutara chatting while the men walked in front.

“We’ll probably see her at the
drydock,” Sutara said, speaking of her mother. “You’ll like her, Tiva. She’s designing the upholstery for the ship’s living quarters.”

“Have you all decided on a name for it yet? I’m no expert, but I thought all large ocean-going ships had names.”

“They do. But according to A’Nu-Ahki and U’Sumi, who’ve been to sea before, they don’t usually name a ship until it’s ready for launch.”

Tiva laughed. “I hope they dream one up that’s wild and chunky.”

The two men, who had been clowning around just a little ways ahead, suddenly fell silent, and came to a halt. Iyapeti pointed to something on the right side of the trail, and said a few words quietly to Khumi.

Tiva and Sutara started to rush forward to see what was wrong.

Iyapeti held up his hand, and ordered them to stop. “Please!” he added, “don’t come any closer.”

Tiva thought she could make out something that stuck out from beneath some vine entangled blueberry bushes.

“What’s the matter?” Sutara asked when her husband again waved her back.

Tiva’s eyes could now focus on the thing that projected ever so slightly from the undergrowth. She grabbed on to Sutara and held her from going forward.

A human hand, stiff but delicate, clutched the soil.

Iyapeti and Khumi moved the bushes aside, and choked back
half-spoken curses. Khumi turned, stumbled, and vomited his breakfast.

Tiva saw the fresh corpse of a woman, mostly unclothed, and dumped there like a pile of used-up human garbage.
Something like a cockatrice claw had ripped her throat open. Yet only human instruments could have devised the bloody symbols carved into her exposed midriff.

Sutara trembled, building up to unleash her wail.

Tiva held onto her, and let her shriek repeatedly into her shoulder, while Iyapeti finished clearing the foliage, and Khumi raced back up to the monastery for help.

She knew by this that the body belonged to Sutara’s mother.