Dr. Sheffield was livid. “My god!” he roared furiously when he’d recovered enough from his shock to feel his anger. “Do those fools think we’ve uncovered a pre-historic Diz Land? Next they’ll be setting up rides! It’s … it’s obscene!”
Gaby couldn’t have agreed more. Setting aside the value of the find on a scientific level, this city had been the setting for a blood bath. Either they didn’t know that part yet, because they hadn’t been informed, or they thought that the gruesome aspects would make the place all the more popular as a tourist attraction.
And they might be right, she reflected.
The plans threw the entire dig team into an uproar. They were to be allowed only a few more weeks to conclude their studies and then they’d been invited to leave. They’d barely begun to unearth the city itself. Most of their focus had been on the temple.
Dr. Sheffield and Dr. Ramiro made plans to leave the following morning to try to argue their case. The remainder of the team would stay and work like crazy to get what they could done while they could since no one really thought Dr. Sheffield’s efforts would make a difference.
The government’s plans seemed half baked at best, as far as Gaby was concerned. It also seemed stupid and precipitate to return the mummy to the temple when they couldn’t possibly ready the place to open it for months, but they had the military in place already.
And, maybe, they hadn’t really been comfortable keeping the remains from its final resting place?
Who knew what thoughts had run through their minds, but Gaby wasn’t happy knowing it occupied the temple once more.
Not that she had any intention of returning to that particular chamber. The statue was there, and the presence of the effigy of Anka was far more disturbing even than the mummified remains, serving as a painful reminder of her experience there.
She more than half expected to be turned away from the temple when she returned to it that evening, but apparently the guards had been ordered to allow the scientists free reign until they departed. She knew the pictorial history began near the door and wound to the right. She’d studied those depictions fairly thoroughly. But she also knew the chronological order would be critical to understanding what she was seeing, and she really had no idea when the ‘event’ had taken place. She thought it seemed likely that it had been the last act before the temple and maybe even the city had been abandoned, but she couldn’t be sure. And if she was right, there might be nothing about the deaths at all, which made it all the more important to understand the events that had led up to the massacre because that might be the only clues she got.
Bypassing the first segments, she only devoted enough time to the following segments to get the general idea of the story it was meant to convey. They seemed fairly straightforward in any event. Dozens were devoted to the ‘feats’ of their patron god and the rise of their civilization. She’d been cursorily examining one after another for hours when something on one finally caught her attention. It was a ritual of worship, the first depicting priestesses. She’d dismissed it at first, but the design on the garments finally clicked in her mind and she studied the mosaic more closely.
Priestesses, she decided, just as she’d suspected. With the completion of the temple, which housed the god they thought of as both protector and the god of fruitfulness. Their perception of him seemed to have shifted at some point from a more all encompassing god of wealth and prosperity to primarily the god of fertility. She couldn’t really pinpoint what had caused that shift, but it was immaterial to her. The important thing was that the priestesses had appeared on the scene and the count matched the bodies she’d found … if she included the one that seemed to have been murdered before the others.
The next mosaic gave her a jolt. It depicted Anka with one of the priestesses at his side, set apart from the others, obviously favored above the others. It was hard to say what her role was for certain—she was garbed like the others, but her positioning above them seemed significant.
Jealously and resentment instantly washed over her. She did her best to ignore the sick/angry feeling when she finally identified it, but she couldn’t deny that that was exactly what it was when she moved to the next mosaic and saw that the woman had clearly been chosen to mate with the ‘god’. That mosaic showed them entwined like lovers.
She’d expected the possibility that she would see something she might not want to know, but this wasn’t expected at all. She couldn’t decide whether her own feelings had colored her perceptions or if her instincts were to be trusted, but it seemed to her that in each mosaic that followed, resentment was building toward this woman who had been favored by Anka, obviously taken as his concubine—the chosen one to bear his child.
The bastard!
He’d allowed her to think she was his chosen, as if he hadn’t done it god only knew how many times before!
Superior being, my ass! She thought furiously. If that wasn’t just like every other lying, cheating man she’d ever met in her life!
She wasn’t certain how long she stood glaring at the happy couple, feeling resentment boil inside of her before she finally managed to get a grip. She was tempted, though, to simply leave the damned temple and to hell with the mystery! What difference did it make anyway? All of it had happened forever ago, and the damned government was booting them out. They were never going to finish studying the city and get any clear idea of the people and culture in the little bit of time allotted to them.
It was as she stood glaring at the superior attitude of the ‘chosen’ that something finally clicked in her mind.
Jealousy!
Tamping her own with an effort, she studied the figures around the god and his ‘bride’ with as much detachment as she could manage. Either her imagination and her emotions were ruling her logical mind, or she wasn’t the only one jealous! The more she studied the mosaics, the more certain she was, though, that she’d stumbled upon the motive behind the woman’s death.
It didn’t even come as much of a shock to her when she came at last to the one that told the sordid tale. The other priestesses, enraged by her superior attitude, jealous and resentful that she’d been favored above them, had slain her.
The god, Anka, was inconsolable at the loss, and then enraged.
His worshippers, either fearful of his wrath, or furious because the women had ruined everything with their jealousy, slew the women. But that didn’t appease their god. He withdrew from them, turned his face from them. And when he did, the civilization that he had helped to build began to crumble.
The great Anka had departed the body and left them to fend for themselves. Three entire mosaics were devoted to their efforts to preserve the body and summon him back, but despite their efforts, he’d ignored them.
A great plague descended upon the land, brought about, they believed, from the god’s wrath or his desertion. Crops failed, their animals died—drought, famine, and pestilence completed the fall of their civilization and the people who survived fled.
Gaby felt—empty when she’d deciphered the last of the tale. Even the jealousy had abandoned her.
High drama aside, it seemed inescapable that Anka had been completely devastated when his woman and child were murdered. He’d withdrawn from the world of man, from man himself, into the temple that had been built in his honor and stayed there until she’d stumbled upon his sanctuary.
His contempt for ‘primitive’ minds, even the superiority that had annoyed her so often and his callous disregard for the feelings of humans were far more understandable now. That didn’t make it right, but then people that were hurt could do terrible things in their pain and Anka’s experiences were enough to leave a bad taste. Maybe he hadn’t been devastated so much as he’d been thoroughly disgusted? Maybe he’d just reached the point where he thought humankind was just unworthy of his attention?
But then why had he stayed here? Even if it had been abandoned by humans, it had been built by them. It would have been a constant reminder.
Maybe he’d thought he needed that to keep him from making the same mistake again?
Or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to go far from the woman and child?
And if any of that was true, where did she figure in?
Was it something in particular about her that had drawn him out at last?
Or was it just that she was the first human he’d had contact with in so long that he hadn’t been able to resist?
He’d lived as a human for many years, certainly long enough to have begun to think and behave as a human.
He’d shunned the form he’d ‘worn’ for so many years, the warrior/king/god Anka.
Because it was too painful to be the person he’d once been?
But he’d appeared to her in that form—Because that was the way he still thought of himself? Or maybe it was only because that was the only form familiar to him?
She felt empty, she realized, because she’d sent him away and it was the last thing she’d really wanted to do. It didn’t matter how unreasonable it was, she loved him and she was afraid he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, love her back. It was just easier to turn her back on him before he could leave her.
It was cold comfort. She should have taken what she could get while she could have it! How stupid was it to turn away happiness, even bittersweet happiness, for loneliness? It wasn’t as if she’d had so much that it was meaningless to her. It wasn’t as if she had much chance of ever having a taste of it again!
So it was crazy to love a being that was practically a god compared to her own kind! Unlikely that he was even capable of feeling any of the same things she did! She could’ve loved him if she hadn’t been so stupid! That would have made her happy, however briefly, damn it!
The almost frantic urge rose inside her to get home, to look for him, to try to call him back. She had to fight the impulse to get up at once and rush back to her tent to pack, to wake Dr. Sheffield up and beg a ride to the airstrip with him.
He’d think she’d lost it. He was so furious with the government and their interference with his project he wasn’t likely to listen, or to spare the time to make arrangements to get her home.
Her shoulders sagged at that realization. No matter how desperately she wanted to go home to look for him, it was very unlikely she’d get the chance before the entire team was packed up and shipped off.
It probably wouldn’t do any good anyway, she thought morosely. He hadn’t made any attempt to contact her since she’d told him to go away.
Damn him anyway! She’d told him to go away over and over. He’d picked a hell of a time to decide to honor her wishes!
Deeply distressed and wrapped up in her own jumbled thoughts, the room around her had already begun to glow brightly with blue light before she noticed the change. Her heart seemed to stammer to a halt when she noticed it at last.
Anka was standing behind her when she turned, his arms crossed over his chest, his feet planted slightly apart.
His expression was unreadable, however, and Gaby felt no sense of welcome.
She swallowed with an effort as he moved toward her and finally halted less than an arm’s length away. His gaze moved over her face fleetingly before he lifted his head to glance around the room.
“You are far more clever than I gave your credit for,” he said finally, thoughtfully. He brought his gaze back to her. “I thought I had appreciated you as you deserved, but you were right about me. I was worshipped until I have an over inflated opinion of my worth … and too little appreciation for your kind.”
The praise warmed her, but she felt a distance between them that held her where she was, that killed the impulse she’d felt to throw herself into his arms. She swallowed with an effort. “I was right about the story?”
He tilted his head slightly. “Partially.”
Gaby frowned, turning to look at the mosaics. “About which part?” she asked uncertainly.
He closed the distance between them, pulling her against his length. “I did not love Sho-etnue,” he said quietly as he cupped her face with one hand and bade her look at him. “I have never felt love for any human before. I enjoyed their adulation. I gloried in the pleasures only flesh could provide me with—the taste, and smell, and sounds, and feel of the world and everything in it. Without the body, I cannot sense any of those things. I can draw them from my memory, ‘feel’ them in a sense because I knew all of that long, long ago, but not as you do.” Releasing her, he moved toward the mosaics he spoke of, studying the depictions. Gaby stared at him for a long moment and finally followed him.
“I did not retreat from the world because I was devastated by Sho-etnue’s death. She was weak and shallow, vain and stupid.” He hesitated, as if weighing her reaction to what he’d told her, or maybe considering the wisdom of telling her more. “I desired her because she was beautiful and I enjoyed the pleasure I felt when I was with her as a man. And, for a little while, I fancied the concept of human love and allowed myself to believe I felt more than passion.
“I came to realize long before her death, though, that I was in love with the concept of love, not Sho-etnue and that she, assuredly, felt no love for me. How could she when she was her entire world? She was the only love of her life,” he said with wry humor.
His expression hardened as he studied the depiction of the murders of the priestesses in the temple. “I withdrew from mankind because I had grown to despise them, because I was sickened by their greed, their brutality … but mostly because I wanted to destroy them all for the death of my son and I knew if I stayed that I would.”
Jealousy mushroomed inside of Gaby in spite of every effort to tamp it, in spite of his claim that he’d felt nothing for the woman he’d given his child to—beyond passion, as if she would have no reason to be jealous of that!
Rationally, she shouldn’t have. It had all happened long, long before her time and she could no more condemn him for the life he’d had before he knew her than she expected to be judged on the one she’d had before she knew him.
Irrational or not, though, she was still jealous, and she still felt cheated because that woman had carried his child. She couldn’t help it.
Above that, though, she felt pain for Anka’s suffering. How could she care about him and not? Taking his hand, she turned it palm up and lifted it to her cheek for a moment before she turned her face into it and kissed the center of his palm. “I’m so sorry.”
He looked down at her with a touch of surprise.
“For all that happened. For the son you lost.”
He frowned curiously. “You had nothing to do with that. Why would you feel guilt?”
Gaby swallowed with an effort. “Because I’m human, too. But …,” she hesitated, “also because it hurts me that you were hurt.”
She released his hand. “I’ve … in all the time we were together, all I could think was that you were using humans, but they used you. How could you have learned anything differently from being among humans?”
He looked torn between relief and disbelief that she’d forgiven him, and amused, and vaguely irritated, probably because of her judgment of his behavior. “You should not be so swift to forgive me,” he muttered, “perhaps would not if ….” He stopped and shook his head. “I believe you would, at that, though I am as certain as I can be that I am not worthy of your forgiveness. I can never forgive myself that my arrogance nearly cost me the most precious thing this world has to offer.
“Nevertheless, contrary to what you think, it is not inherently ‘wrong’ to use … or to be used. So long as it benefits both, it is right. Giving and taking is not only natural, it is fulfilling. The only thing that is wrong is to take without giving, without being given permission to take.
“What I did was wrong, and nothing that was done to me before made it right—I compensated them, yes, but I did not give them the choice.”
He fell silent then and Gaby felt a terrible sense of loss begin to engulf her. She was glad that he’d learned, that he underst
ood now why it had been so hard for her to accept, but that also meant it was well and truly over between them and that was something she was going to have a hard time accepting. “What will you do now?” she asked forlornly.
He turned to study her. After a moment, he pulled her into his embrace, holding her tightly for a moment. “What I know that I need to do.” He swallowed audibly. “I want you to leave this place, Moonflower. It is dangerous for you here.”
Gaby nodded. “I know. We’ve been told to leave. We only have a few weeks.”
He pulled away, grasping her shoulders. “Do not wait,” he said in a low, rumbling growl of anger. “You have learned what you came to learn. Go home! In time, if it is possible, I will come to you.”
Gaby looked up at him with surprise. Fear and hopefulness warred within her. “What do you mean, if it is possible?” she asked fearfully.
He shook his head. “Just … promise me that you will go as soon as arrangements can be made to leave. You have no reason to linger here and every reason to get as far from this place as possible. There will be trouble here, and soon. I want … I need to know that you will be safe even if I cannot be nearby to protect you. Promise me.”
She stared at him miserably. She wanted to give him her word, but at the same time a nameless fear tore at her. Finally, because she couldn’t hold out against his silent demand, she nodded.
He lifted a hand to caress her cheek and then simply vanished.
An avalanche of grief crashed over Gaby the moment she realized she was alone. She didn’t even know why she felt it. He’d all but promised that he would come back to her.
Why would he have to, though? Why couldn’t he go with her? What did he plan to do that made him feel as if it was something that might keep him from her? Because she sensed that. He hadn’t wanted to tell her he had doubts, but he’d said ‘if it was possible’.
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