by Dakota Banks
Maliha turned on a flashlight from her belly bag. A few feet into the cave, the temperature was easily forty degrees cooler than outside. Small living creatures scattered with the touch of the beam of her flashlight, all of them adapted to the cooler, darker conditions of the cave. They wouldn’t survive in the hostile world ten feet away.
The opening was small enough that when she was ready to move on, she had to crawl on hands and knees. This left her vulnerable from the front and back, and she scrambled down the narrow throat feeling as if icy hands were wrapped around her spine.
She had a disturbing sense that someone had passed this way not long before her, based on a slight scent in the air that didn’t match the pure scent of clear water from the underground stream ahead.
The tunnel widened so that she could get to her feet. Feeling both a little stronger and better about her prospect for defense, she used the flashlight to examine her surroundings in both directions. There was no one present. She expected her anxiety about being the only one in the cave to fade, but it didn’t.
She paused at the underground stream. Stripping away her mud-covered outer clothing, she rinsed it in fresh water and stretched the robe over rocks to dry. In a clean camisole and loose cotton pants, she moved toward the room where she’d found the tablet. The ceiling was at least ten feet high, its surface smooth as though polished by eons of flowing water or a burst of heat that carved the chamber. Once past the constricted entrance at the surface, there were no formations, no moisture on the walls, no dripping from the ceiling, and no bats.
As far as she knew, the tablet room was the end of the line. If there was an enemy in front of her, he had to be in there. She was spoiling for a fight, and hoped Evil might be in the tablet room to face her, without any innocents between them.
The room held a pool that glowed with light. A few inches of water covered a base of sand, and the glow came from the sand. The glow wasn’t bright, just enough to delineate the shape of the pool. On the left side of the entrance to the pool room, she flattened against the rock wall and peeked around the corner quickly.
No one. Damn.
She took a longer look, then stepped into the room. It was clear of life, human or otherwise, except for her. Sighing, she settled in a corner of the room where she could see the door and consciously let her tension drain away through her fingertips, which tingled with the effort. Maliha closed her eyes so that only slits remained beneath her dark lashes and slipped into a warrior’s catlike sleep, from which she could awaken instantly.
Later, she stood at one end of the pool, looking at the depression in the wall fifty feet across the water that had held the Tablet of the Overlord. The torches on the wall still seemed to be in good condition after her last visit, so she lit them. Their clear, golden light spread throughout the chamber and chased the shadows from the corners. She looked closely at the torch nearest her.
I wonder how many times these torches have been used over the years? Does somebody freshen up the place and leave new supplies?
The pool, wisps of steam rising intermittently from its smooth surface, filled the width of the chamber. There was no way across to the wall without going through the pool. In spite of its placid surface, the water was superheated. The layer of sand underneath the water sucked down anything resting on it for more than two seconds. The sand wasn’t a natural, passive thing. She knew from experience that the feel of it against her fingers was like grasping tentacles, a very un-sandlike quality.
Sitting cross-legged at the edge of the pool, Maliha leaned over and plopped in a throwing spike from her belly bag, thinking that maybe the sand didn’t behave the same way all the time. Two seconds later, the sand pulled the spike down so forcefully that it churned the water, sending bubbles up that fizzed and steamed when they reached the surface.
Okay. Consistency is a big thing here.
She took a piece of paper from the pocket of her loose trousers, a paper that had been folded and refolded so many times it was tearing at the creases. On it was a drawing of the inscription on the back of the tablet, the words that had sent her to this place. She studied them again: Go to sand.
I went to sand. I crossed the desert. Now what?
A thought hit her like an unnatural blast of frigid air in the desert. Gooseflesh rose on her arms and her frightened mind pushed away the terrible possibilities unfolding in her imagination.
No, oh no, surely not…
She saw what she had to do. If she wanted to follow the cryptic clue, to find out what awaited her in Anu’s cave, she didn’t have to go to the sand but into the sand.
This sand, in front of her.
Maliha had to step into the boiling water and let the sucking sand in the pool claim her. Her mind rebelled against it. All of her logic told her that it was a trap. She would die in the sand from mortal injury, or be trapped there until her body aged and died. Yet Anu was telling her to do exactly that, if those were Anu’s words on the tablet.
It would have to be a leap of faith.
Chapter Ten
Maliha stood naked at the edge of the pool. Clothes would just restrict her movement. As for weapons, she had a feeling that whatever was under the sand, her weapons weren’t going to be of any use against it. She’d have to manage using her wits and her body. That is, unless the only thing under the sand was more sand, continuing far enough down that she’d never make it back to the surface. In that case, she was doomed.
Nothing I’ve ever dropped in that pool has come back to the surface bearing good news.
She pushed such thoughts from her mind. In taking a leap of faith, doubt had no place.
When Maliha was Ageless, she had been able to heal almost instantly from injuries that would be fatal to humans. Now her healing ability was beyond the human level, but still diminished from her Ageless days. She had no idea if she could survive immersion in boiling water followed by suffocation as the sand closed over her head, but the god Anu had directed her here, and that was enough.
She’d been trying to enter a deep meditative state using a mantra from her martial arts training, but couldn’t quite achieve it. She’d succeeded in relaxing a little, but didn’t have the depth of control she needed to block input from her senses. That state was something she thought of as floating inside her skin, oblivious to the outer world.
This was something she didn’t want Yanmeng watching, if he was. She held out her left hand parallel to the floor, made a fist, and then extended her thumb and index finger. It was an “L” in sign language, except that she made the sign horizontally, so he could see it from above, rather than the usual vertical position of the hand. She waited a few minutes, not knowing how long it took him to withdraw, or if he was even watching at this time.
She lifted her right foot and held it poised over the water.
One foot in. Two.
It was hard to keep from leaping out of the pool when her muscles were screaming Move! Move!
One second. Two.
A powerful drag began, as though her feet were weighed down with the Titanic’s anchor. Boiling water rose rapidly on her legs. The water sizzled and spat against her skin, the watery equivalent of being burned alive. She must have been screaming, although she couldn’t hear it.
Separate from the pain, there was a frightening sensation that the abrasive sand below the water was removing her skin, scraping it off one cellular layer at a time.
How much skin will I lose?
She clamped her lips and eyelids closed in the instant before her head went under the water.
Stunned by the boiling water covering her face, Maliha was unable to do anything but spread her arms out and hope to slow her passage through the sand.
Seconds passed, and the fiery nature of the pain eased the further she sank from the surface of the pool. She reached a layer where the sand felt cool, her skin tingly. Flakes of burned skin were being gently scrubbed away. Her skin was being abraded—ground against the sand, polished like a ro
ck in a gemstone tumbler.
Through her closed eyelids, or what was left of them, she could see a white glow coming up fast beneath her. This was the source of light at the surface at the pool, so much brighter now that she was close to it. Maliha was still holding her breath. Before she had to worry about whether to try breathing in the sand, she fell into the luminous layer and then into the open. Her reflexes took over and she managed a rolling landing that broke the fall. She ended up on her feet, ready for anything. As she examined her surroundings, she was startled to see a couple of human skeletons near her feet.
Others got this far but didn’t survive the sand.
It made sense to her. The dead at her feet hadn’t shared her healing ability, which must have kept her from losing too many layers of skin. When these people dropped out of the cloud above, there was nothing holding them together. It was a gruesome image and she didn’t linger on it.
Checking her nude body for burn injuries, she saw what looked and felt like fresh skin—pale and soft. She twisted her head to look at the back of her shoulder and was relieved to find her hawk tattoo was intact. The colors of the hawk with spread wings were more vivid than ever.
The glowing white cloud was about ten feet over her head and it stretched for as far as she could see in every direction. With its clarity of view, fresh air, clean feel, and the seemingly one-piece marble floor beneath her bare feet, the space she was in was the opposite of the one where she used to meet her demon master Rabishu. Since she lived in the Great Above, where humanity dwelled, and Rabishu was restricted in most cases to the Underworld, the demon had interacted with her in a foul-smelling, fog-ridden landscape named Midworld—an ugly protrusion of the Underworld that they could both enter. That’s why Rabishu needed human slaves in the first place: to do his bidding in the Great Above.
If that miserable place was a demon’s creation, then this place must belong to Anu or one of the other Sumerian gods. It’s a…temple.
As soon as the word took shape in her mind, her surroundings changed to match. Columns took shape, easing up from the marble floor. Statues formed the same way, sheltered in beautiful niches, with flowers tossed at their feet. Fountains sprouted into being and began tossing water in intricate dances. In moments, the space had transformed itself into her idea of what a temple should look like. Its form was malleable and shifted to whatever made the visitor comfortable. She wondered what it looked like when Anu last visited here.
Master Liu is a priest of Anu. Perhaps this space looks different to him if he has been here with Anu. Of course! He must be the one who takes care of the cave by putting in fresh torches.
Master Liu had told her that he remained a demon’s slave in order to keep his immortality. It was his one goal, as Anu’s last priest, to be alive to welcome his god back to Earth when the time came. It was awe-inspiring to realize that this place could be four hundred thousand years old if it dated from the last time Anu was on Earth, yet looked as though it was created yesterday.
Her anxiety faded. Master Liu was somehow connected to this place. She had been his student and was now his proclaimed granddaughter. She didn’t think he would set any deadly traps for her.
She explored some of the nearer columns and found them carved exquisitely with scenes of daily life. One segment included columns for each of the primary gods of Sumeria, known as the Seven Who Decreed Fate. She pictured groups of children sitting around the columns, learning from Master Liu.
Anu, the Sky god, and his wife, Ninmah, the Earth goddess, each had their columns. Their son Enlil, the Air god, was next in power and influence, but his column detailed his troubled life.
Enlil had an intended bride, but he chose not to wait for their wedding day and raped her before marriage. Sex was continually tripping up both gods and goddesses, and many of their convoluted stories, relationships, jealousies, accomplishments, and failures came back to who was sleeping with whom.
Enlil was banished to the Underworld for jumping the gun. His bride, Ninlil, followed him into exile, probably because she was already pregnant. Their first child, conceived of the rape, was Nanna, the Moon god.
Their next son was Nergal, who remained permanently in the Underworld as a trade-off so that his father, Enlil, could leave. Maliha knew way too much about Nergal, Lord of the Underworld, ruler over Rabishu and the other demons, and his queen, Ereshkigal. The demons, offspring of Anu and his wife, were deliberately created as lesser beings to be given away as servants to the gods.
The Moon god fathered two more of the top gods, Utu, god of Justice, and Inanna, goddess of Love and War.
That accounted for six out of the Seven Who Decreed Fate.
The last one was Enki, god of the Primeval Sea and Fertility, well known for his rampant lifestyle. He was the twin brother to the Queen of the Underworld. Enki created humans from clay. He did this by mixing the clay with the “life essence” of the primeval sea—his semen or his DNA, depending on the interpretation of essence. There was some trial-and-error involved, because there were several flawed versions of humans before Enki got it right with the help of some constructive criticism from Anu’s wife. Enki’s emblem was serpents intertwined on a staff, the basis for the caduceus, the medical symbol still in use today.
The gods created humans to be slaves and take over all the work of running Earth. It was not until many thousands of years later that the gods freed humans.
After studying the columns, Maliha sat on the floor to wait, then stretched out to look at the cloud above her. The white swirls were hypnotic and relaxing. The floor beneath her seemed to soften and conform to her body, which she knew was not typical of marble. That didn’t seem to matter.
Feeling safe and secure, she felt the marble deepen its embrace and cradle her in a womblike space, with the soothing sound of her heartbeat reflected back to her. She fell into a natural and comforting sleep.
One second Maliha was asleep, the next she was fully alert. It seemed like no time had passed since she had watched the patterns in the cloud overhead. She was lying on marble that was now behaving like a floor, not a bed. She felt refreshed and fully charged mentally, physically, and emotionally.
She heard water splashing gaily, close by, and got up to investigate. A large fountain had a central column topped with a ball that had several spigots. As the ball slowly turned, streams of water spiraled down, filling a bowl shaped like a shell. Just looking at it made her realize how thirsty she was.
I need water, a fountain appears. This is all crazy. I’m expecting the Mad Hatter to drop by for tea soon.
She cupped her hands in the water and drank. The water was colder than she expected, and refreshing. There was something at the bottom of the bowl, something barely visible because it was clear and hidden in clear water. She reached for it, and the instant she touched it, she gave a whoop of joy.
A diamond shard!
It was one of the seven shards of the diamond lens needed to read the Tablet of the Overlord. When she collected them all, Maliha would be able to decipher the moving script on the tablet and gain power over the seven demons—power to banish or destroy them. She had one shard and the tablet already hidden in her haven.
She looked up at the cloud and wondered how she was going to get back into the cave with her prize. She’d been so lulled by the time she’d spent in the temple that leaving hadn’t seemed important until now.
Eyeing the fountain, she figured that if she stood on top of it, she’d be less than three feet below the cloud layer. She could jump three feet. After clambering to the top of the fountain—not easy with wet, bare feet—she stood on the ball. On impulse, she lifted her arm. She could just reach the cloud, and she waggled her fingers in it experimentally.
Maliha prepared for the leap.
Most likely I’ll just end up on my ass on the marble floor, and it’s going to hurt.
Her fingers wouldn’t budge. She couldn’t pull them back out of the cloud. Instead, the cloud began to twirl
and lower toward her, looking like a miniature tornado. Swirls of the cottony stuff curled around her body and lifted her into the cloud.
This time the sand parted for her—or for the shard—forming a smooth tunnel just wide enough for her shoulders and hips to pass through. The tunnel didn’t extend up through the water, but when she passed through the boiling water, she found it only pleasantly warm. She stepped out of the pool with the shard in her hand.
Maliha felt renewed, very alive, living in the moment. Her body had no reminders of the burns received on the way into the pool. It wouldn’t surprise her if she’d lost years on her appearance, too. She felt as though she’d slept for a week. It was a triumphant moment. She’d suspected the first time she came here thirty years ago that this cave wasn’t finished with her, and she was right. Naked and dripping, she twirled around.
Number two is secure! Five left and Rabishu will be groveling before me. Take that, you damned demon!
She stabbed the air with the shard.
Something ripped through her right shoulder, threw her back against the rock wall with the force of its blow, and buried itself in the rock. She was fastened to the wall. Pain surged outward from her shoulder. Through the haze of her suffering, she realized she no longer held the shard. It was a few feet away from her, on the floor of the cave.
There was someone in the cave with her, and he stooped to pick up the shard. She followed the motion upward and saw a man clothed in silver: chest plate, helmet, chain mail, a sword sheathed on his belt, legs that looked as though they’d been dipped in liquid silver. Her eyes fixed on the weapon he held, a crossbow. She’d been shot at close range with a bolt from his crossbow.
