A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3) (28 page)

P’

Tah found the blossoms enchanting, even if the company was a bit subdued. The late afternoon’s fragrance was almost narcotic.

The former Master Sage of Sa-utar’s Sacred Academy was quite sure that his eyes did not reflect the same glazed certainty as the others who sat with him in the country estate’s lush inner gardens. P’Tah’s world had unraveled faster than he would have thought possible.
Funny what our lives turn out to be built on in the end—surprising what rests upon what, when the foundation is kicked out from under you. What’s funnier is whom you turn to when all the old support pillars collapse.

He had never married—never felt the need—not since the Academy had gone co-ed in Iyared’s day.
Nothing like young female students looking for a father figure that loves them like Pahpo never would to break you of your sordid visits to Ayar Adi’In.
Of course, that had only traded one sordid diversion for another in a life that, in the end, really amounted to nothing more than a long string of diversions.

P’Tah sadly smiled as he looked from face to face. Most of the participants were attractive young women with small children.
Too bad really.

They reclined around a fountain inside the open courtyard of a villa owned by “Volkras t
he Seer,” a craggy-faced elder with stern unyielding eyes and thick white hair that shot from his head in explosive tufts. P’Tah had come to Akh’Uzan after his last meeting with Tarbet, not knowing what he would do when he got there. He found that, for a fanatic, this particular World-end demagogue had many things going for him—strong family values, fiscal responsibility, the courage to think the unthinkable…

Volkras led a tiny group of families
, known facetiously to the rest of the valley as the “Earth Mouthers,” from his country house near the tiny hamlet of Brook Farm. After P’Tah had interviewed him, the well-to-do seer had invited him to stay at the villa—apparently to lend an air of academic credibility to a movement that was anything but academic and credible. P’Tah had politely declined, but Volkras had kindly left it an open invitation in case the Master Sage changed his mind.

Alone, and shut out of every academy in Sa-utar, P’Tah had shocked himself at how quickly he too had come to think the unthinkable.
A scholar needs a wealthy sponsor, after all.
Yet here there would be no scholastic inquiry, and only a brief tenure.
Perhaps it is for the best—I suppose it will send an ironic message of sorts.

The sun had just set into brilliant magenta, turning the leaves of the courtyard’s cultivated shade trees to a deep purple—the color of the shrouds that Volkras and his followers, including P’Tah, all wore.

Then again, I suppose the orb pundits that love Tarbet so much will spin the news any way they want.
P’Tah shrugged.
They always do.

The deposed Master Sage watched Volkras speak to his small band of followers from a chair set in front of the fountain. The red light made the water behind the Seer look bloody somehow.

“Oh great E’Yahavah A’Nu,
we thank you for sending your chariot to take us into the heavens, even as you sent it for our father, Q’Enukki, in the days of yore…”

One of the young women passed around a tray of small clay cups while Volkras spoke. P’Tah smiled up at her as he reached for his drink.

“Cursed be the human race, who by giving themselves over to bodily pleasures have offended your holiness and your plan to better them by lifting them to a higher plane of existence…”

P’Tah almost laughed.
Rotten time for the old blow-hard to say something like that!
The girl with the tray did not return the Sage’s smile, but moved on.

Volkras raised his voice to a screech. “They will know tomorrow morning, when the earth opens its many mouths under each and every one of them
, to swallow every last man, woman, and child! They will know that your seer has spoken your truth, which they heeded not! Send now your chariots; for we are ready to shed these earthly mud huts, and go on to a new plane with the Ascended Ones!”

Volkras finished his speech with a silent prayer, his hands raised to the sky. Then he waited silently with the rest of his followers.

P’Tah could see the mountains to the northeast, just over the courtyard wall. At first, the change in the light there was subtle, like heat demons that curled the air above a hot pavement. The reddening hills appeared to writhe in a peculiar agony, while a myriad of strange firefly specks descended over the peaks, and seemed to converge into a single, larger disk of light that hovered for a long while over the heights, against the darkening mountain backdrop. Only then, did a second blue-violet orb streak down to settle directly above the villa, and cast its eerie sheen on the tranquil faces gathered there.

“Our chariot comes!” Volkras announced, raising his cup to the glowing disk. “It is time for us together to shed these material chains!” He then drank it down, and flipped the cup over to show it was empty.

All his followers smiled to each other with eager anticipation, and did likewise. P’Tah was the last to drink, with somewhat less enthusiasm.

The black sorvalis-laced wine in each cup soon paralyzed the hearts and lungs of over fifty remarkably diverse people—common farm maids
, wealthy merchants, even a magistrate’s daughter. Last to take a breath, was a former Sacred Academy sage from Sa-utar who wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but found his lungs unable to pull it off in the end.

hen the last person in the house of Volkras had stopped breathing, the disk slowly circled the villa a few times, widening its arc to include the nearby village of Brook Farm. Eventually its spiral reached all the way to the more densely populated town of Farguti Crossroads to the west. Once there, it began to streak back and forth across the sky, turning at sharp angles.

Hundreds of people came out of their homes to watch the spectacle. Many cried from the streets, “Look up! Look up! A divine chariot, look up!”

Others scowled, “It’s just a new kind of astra!”

To which the more observant would respond, “No astra can turn like that—anyone inside would be crushed!”

One blacksmith ran from his shop at the commotion in the street, with his apprentice right behind.

The Apprentice cried, pointing upward, “
Go to! Look at that!”

The Blacksmith gazed into the sky only to see the evening stars. “Look at what?”

“Can’t you see it?” said the youngster. “It’s hovering right over us—big, round, and purple! It’s amazing!”

“I don’t see anything, you little muck viper!”

“How can you not see it? It’s right on top of us!”

“Get back to work! It’s getting late.”

Clashes far more violent occurred in the Lower Akh’Uzan region that night, between those who could and those who could not see Volkras’ “chariot.” In Farguti, over a hundred murders were committed—three times more than in the entire previous year. Town elders called up auxiliary constables both there, and at Brook Farm, to quell brawls well past midnight.

Most who saw the disks gathered in the meadows, and simply stared up at them in wonder. Others cowered in their homes because of the fights, the objects, or both. The disk from Volkras’ villa flitted from one side of the sky to the other, seemingly at random, for some hours. Sometimes it would dip low over certain fields, hover a moment, then move on.
Meanwhile, its partner brooded over the northeast foothills, as though engaged in some important interaction with something or someone on the ground.

The following morning
, a farmer went out to harvest his wheat only to find strange spiral-shaped symbols pressed into his field. The stalks fell into patterns so intricate that it would have taken many men hours to accomplish, and then only with much planning and coordination.

At a nearby farm in Lower Akh’Uzan, a dairyman went out to check on his herd, only to find that
someone or something had carved out several of his cattles’ genitals with surgical precision, by a blade so thin and hot that it had cauterized the surrounding flesh in a way that capped off any blood flow. Tongues, eyes, and hearts were also missing. As neighbors gathered to see the mutilations, they began to jabber about the strange lights that some people could see and others could not.

They looked up only when a man ran toward them from the direction of Volkras’ villa, shouting at the top of his lungs.

Someone had found the purple-shrouded bodies.

he Archon watched the crowds gather around the stone legs of the Colossus from his platform between the Guild orb-sender towers. It was his ancestral monument’s seventh anniversary—the number of Divine completion and promise. Avarnon-Set had also promised to fill the astral planes with images of Sa-utar’s sacred festival. Tarbet didn’t like that the mobile orb towers required a large level pavement, and thus needed to be stationed two hundred cubits out from the Colossus. He smiled at the annoyance’s one advantage, however. He was far enough from actual “holy ground” to prevent “legal disruptions.”

A large-eyed ‘tween-aged girl with a small child in her arms caught Tarbet’s gaze from the nearest row of the audience. She smiled up at him from the pavement, and he gladly returned the gesture. At a distance
, she resembled Luwinna, the daughter of Urugim, which made his heart ache briefly. Perhaps the girl was her descendant—a few sub-clans from Urugim’s house had moved back to Sa-utar after the Century War. He glanced away.

The mob packed itself around the feet and supporting “robe train” of Kunyari’s statue, and surged down into the sunken pavement around the Obelisks of Fire and Water. It occurred to the Archon that
, although he was safe from being interrupted in front of the orb-senders, some self-appointed seer could still subvert proceedings from down on the Obelisk Pavement.

Tarbet scowled, and barked to his bodyguard, “Who was the dung-head that opened up the Obelisk Pavement to the crowds? How can they see anything from down there anyway?”

“I don’t know, Revered Father. Nobody ordered it cordoned off. I could ask the Grounds Administrator—he should be here soon.”

“Never mind that
. Send a squad of constables to clear the people out of there. The Obelisks are old—we don’t want them damaged.”

“By your order, Sire.”

Tarbet saw his subordinate relay the command to the constabulary booth below the platform. Satisfied, he returned to watching the pretty girl with the baby while he waited for the sender towers to signal that he could begin his speech.