Gate of the Gods: Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  “I am Pyra.”

  Ninurta squatted down by her. “Prya; a music name, that. What knowings have you, Prya, of the Ancient Enemy?”

  “I only know of one Ancient Enemy; the Basilisk and his servants, who rebelled against E’Yahavah in the beginning.”

  He cocked his head, as would a perplexed dog. “Bazeeleesk is like a serpent, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled, and spoke condescendingly, as to an erring child; “Of misunderstandings you are, Prya—no offensings to you, be—for the Serpent is a wisdom sign, renewing the cycles, as the asag that devours its own tail.”

  T’Qinna did not think arguing would be productive. “To whom do you refer, then, when you speak of the Ancient Enemy?”

  “Ah! En-Ki warns of his comings. He comes clothed as a man.”

  She said, “Might I be loosed from these straps? They are tight.”

  He slapped his head as if he had forgotten something. “Sorryings are. We had no knowings of your side in the war.”

  Ninurta bent, and undid the bands around her limbs.

  “Thank you,” T’Qinna said when he finished.

  He squatted back on his haunches. “So, of war sidings, you?”

  “How can I declare my allegiance, if I don’t understand why your war is being fought?”

  He crinkled his brow. “Not know of the stakes then, you?”

  “Can you explain them to me?”

  He smiled. “Ah then, explaining is. Having been favored by En-Ki and the becoming-goddess, Inana, I, the hero Ninurta, have vanquished the Lord of Arrata. I have also defeated the Asag, and the Imdugud dragon-bird, who stole the Tablets of Destiny. I exiled the rebels of Arrata to Shurrupak, which is the place where I found you near. This is why I took you back with me, according to En-ki’s whisper from the watery Absu. The gods are at war. Wily En-Ki has confused the speech of men to thwart the Ancient Enemy—though it has also slowed his own plans. ‘Such is war,’ En-ki says, for even the winner suffers loss, and no plan has perfect unfoldings.”

  T’Qinna grinned. “And what are En-Ki’s plans?”

  Ninurta stood up, and chuckled. “That, dear leopard-goddess, is topic forbidden.”

  “I did not know. Is it permitted for me to leave this dungeon?”

  “Wordings of you are strange. Dunjun is?”

  “This cold, dark chamber.”

  “Soon, but not yet. I will send you blankets. Many sorryings for coldnesses. Will help first with blankets, then with better places.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ninurta bowed, which made T’Qinna want to scratch his eyes out. Then he climbed the stairs, slid open whatever door lay at its top, and closed it again behind him.

  T’Qinna rubbed her limbs, and settled in to pray and wait. The beginnings of an idea came to her—one based on observations she had made of those afflicted with the Madness at the Surupag hospice. There, she had hesitated at experimenting on people the way Mnemosynae had once experimented upon her.

  Here, she had no such reluctance.

  100

  Haviri’s tiny formation of three square-rigged sailing boats bypassed Uruk, eastward. They took a new branch channel carved by the Great Wave, not far south of Surupag, where the main channel’s course had changed. According to his guide, the ruined settlement they encountered on the east bank, their third day out, was the foundry city of Bad-Tibira, named after a far more impressive archetype in the World-that-Was.

  Haviri recalled Mother T’Qinna mentioning that Nimurta had duped Haviri’s fool of a grandfather into thinking that his Khaldini blood gave him power to use a divining rod to “rediscover” locations of pre-Deluge cities.

  Bad-Tibira was now as dead as its namesake, a smattering of deserted, half-built homes, and a near-complete shrine, that now housed only ghosts, small dragons, and owls. Once-functional brick kilns still appeared salvageable, but the main foundry, at the southernmost end of town, seemed to have taken the brunt of the winding wave, and collapsed into the channel, which now bent eastward through part of its rubble.

  It took another week of travel from Bad-Tibira, to enter the first of the Abyssu Lakes—what the stricken of Haviri’s men now called “the Absu.” The marshlands gave way to open water filled with sandbars and tiny, reed-choked islands. After the passage of one week more, the boats approached a small islet astride the strait that U’Sumi had named “The Narrows,” while on their way in from the open ocean, aboard the Amirdu. Haviri was just thanking E’Yahavah for the surprising lack of marsh leviathans along the way, when the lookout in the last boat called the alarm.

  Haviri turned aft, expecting to see a giant snakelike neck carving the waters toward them. Instead, the early morning sun glowed against tan sails from a large ship that poked just above the western horizon, far across the big lake. A fresh breeze off the grasslands filled the vessel’s sheets. Patches of mist drifted across the water, and Haviri thanked E’Yahavah that the sun would be in the faces of the approaching ship’s lookouts.

  Haviri signaled his boats into the nearest reed patch, which reached out from the southern headlands on the wooded western peninsula that ended at the channel. Another cape from the east likewise formed the opposite shore of the waterway that connected to the second of the great Abyssu Lakes. Heaps of silt covered this second peninsula, where the winding giant wave of the meteor impact had rushed overland. It had left the channel and western peninsula almost untouched.

  Once amid the reeds, he ordered the boats to detach their sails from their yardarms, and to lever the yards vertical, and lash them flush to the masts. They could only hope that the ship had missed them, and would not see the mast poles sticking above the reeds as anything more than dead trees.

  As his own boat entered cover, Haviri identified the ship’s hull lines bow-on, its sun-sails replaced by enlarged fishing boat sheets. “It’s Amirdu! What’s Lugalbanda doing, and why is she outfitted with wind-sails?

  Malaq the oracle mage was at his side. “It might not be Lugalbanda. Remember, I reported that Kush and he showed up together at Uruk, and waited until our men all had the Plague, before they took the ship. The people of Uruk called this Lugalbanda a ‘Divine One.’ Kush could speak nothing but jabber, but Lugalbanda could converse with him in the same jabber, and call out to me in the Language. I heard that with my own ears.”

  Haviri had honestly thought that part of Malaq’s report to be a mistake, since the mage had said that he could not see the speakers, only hear them from in the water. Water sometimes played tricks with sound—they had both heard it often enough while at sea. Now he was not so sure.

  “Do you recall hearing them speak of their plans for the ship?”

  Malaq shrugged. “I don’t know what they might have discussed in Kush’s gibber-talk. Maybe they’ve armed Amirdu somehow. They might be going out to engage the three incoming Sun Ships. If so, they may have a nasty surprise waiting for them. As I reported to you, I got my last message off after I already knew we’d been boarded. The incoming captains know Amirdu is in enemy hands. They’ll give her wide berth; ready to fight off any boarders.”

  Haviri took out his telescope. “Too bad the reeds block our view, too. I’m getting into the water to swim to the edge of the long grass. I want to see who’s aboard that ship, and how she’s rigged.”

  Malaq grabbed his arm. “Captain, there could be leviathans in the reeds! It’s too risky!”

  Haviri smiled. “We haven’t seen so much as one leviathan this whole voyage, even at a distance. They may be hidden in the sedge, but I think it’s worth the risk. Something so far beyond strange is going on here that any information we gain is worth it.”

  “Then let me do it, brother. The men need their captain. We have no working oracle sets for me to tend anymore.”

  Haviri embraced his younger sibling. “Thanks, Malaq, but I want to do this myself. You’re in command until I return.”

  Before the oracle mage could object again, Haviri vaulted
over the side. The water turned out to be a little more than waist deep; so he waded past the last boat, straightening up the reeds that they had bent over during their entrance. By the time he reached the edge of the sedge patch, the water was almost up to his neck. He raised his antique bronze telescope from the World-that-Was at the approaching ship, and waited.

  Amirdu advanced almost directly at Haviri; making him near certain that they had seen his boats enter the reeds. A helmsman and two others steered her from the flying bridge, no doubt to see above the spotty mists. A lookout stood far up on the mainmast, inside a crow’s nest platform, high enough to see Haviri’s boats over the reeds if the ship came too near.

  The vessel bore down on them dead on, until it reached a distance of at least six-hundred cubits. Then it veered off, as if to avoid the reeds, and began a wide turn into the Narrows, just to the east. When the ship turned, Haviri got a clear look at the men standing on the flying bridge overlooking the pitched bundled-reed prow. One was Kush. The other was his oldest son, Saeba. Kush gazed ahead at the Narrows. But Saeba’s head continued to track the reeds, as if he saw something.

  The blood drained from Haviri’s head, as Saeba began to point directly at him and shriek.

  101

  Kush found the morning air on the flying bridge refreshing as the sun began to carve away the patches of Absu mist—that was, until the Fat One started into another of his shrieking fits. Kush knew that the Fat One was his son from another life, and that his name was Shiba, but the enormous idiot could not speak so much as a single intelligible word. That did not stop him from following Kush around the ship like an affection-starved dog.

  Kush turned to Shiba, and slapped the back of his head. “Shut up, you moron!”

  The riggers made ready to swing the boom over the ship’s centerline, at Kush’s order. When he judged the turning radius that would put the vessel into the channel between the two headlands, Kush raised his arm and whistled. The boom swung, sheets filled with air, and the helm wheel spun on its course change, making a wide arc out into the open water to avoid the reeds that Shiba kept pointing at like a wildman.

  Kush felt every nuance of wind and current through the deck slats under his feet. The vessel he had renamed Kush-ah, after his plump young wife, swung onto her new heading, southward, into the strait.

  Shiba began to point at the western headland and to shriek again like a frightened girl. Kush glanced into the reeds, but saw nothing worth his attention. It was not the first time the Fat One had become frightened of his own enormous shadow.

  Kush turned to the Quartermaster, whose job directing the rigging changes for their new heading was complete. “Go get that girl who can barely talk, but sleeps with anything that moves, and bring her for the Fat One. She’s quieted him down before. Just get him out of my sight!”

  102

  Haviri breathed again only when the ship had vanished behind the headlands. Once the top of its masts disappeared behind the low trees beyond the reeds, he waded back to his boat and hoisted himself inside.

  Instead of the tiny islet, Haviri chose to make his camp in some young woodland at the southern tip of the western headland, facing the second Abyssu Lake, which he named Lake Vigilance. He set a beach watch at both ends of the channel, just in case Lugalbanda sent smaller fishing boats out to follow Amirdu. Haviri and Malaq both agreed that the former Sun Ship now served as a colonizing vessel, destined for parts unknown—which was exactly what the M’El-Ki had intended it to be, except that now whatever colonists it carried would know nothing of their own past, and nothing of E’Yahavah. The thought made Haviri want to weep, but he was too tired for emotion.

  The rest of the men spent the whole day chopping and gathering wood for the signal fire. Haviri and Malaq also agreed that they should wait until well after sunset to light it, lest the new masters of the Amirdu see its smoke, and come about to investigate. Toward late afternoon, several of the men caught some fish, while a couple others skewered a young boar with a spear. Everyone seemed to be settling in for a long wait.

  Two hours after sunset, Haviri ordered the signal fire lit. He and Malaq sat together, resting in its warmth, while the men put on a clay pot for water to boil for some tea, and the fish and pig began to roast.

  Malaq asked, “How long do you suppose we will need to wait for the ships? My calculation, based on the last positional coordinates given by the captains during my next-to-last communication with them, is about two weeks. That’s if the two ships that are together do not wait for the third vessel; and four if they do.”

  Haviri grunted. “Sounds reasonable. We should establish a permanent settlement here that we can return to later. It makes sense, since we will be sending out colonizing ships of our own.”

  The other nodded.

  After dinner, they both quickly fell asleep.

  Life settled into a pleasant tedium over the following weeks, as the headlands provided rich hunting and fishing, and all they had to do beside that was to keep up the signal fire. No leviathans or other forms of dragon appeared in all that time. Haviri wondered if the cooler, damper climate had not driven them away southward.

  Malaq’s second prediction on when the Sun Ships would arrive proved closer to true. Near the end of their fifth week on the point, three sparkling black sails appeared on the southern horizon.

  Haviri and a boat crew boarded one of the fishing boats, and hoisted the M’El-Ki’s standard to the top of its mast, as they rowed out into Lake Vigilance to station themselves before the channel.

  Sun Ships Iyared, Q’Enukki, and Sa-utar dropped anchor in tight formation around Haviri’s boat, after answering his signal. The captains of all three vessels lowered their launches and followed Haviri’s boat to shore by the signal fire, where a feast of fish and wild game awaited.

  Haviri called the captains to a formal council only after their landing parties and they had eaten to full. He had instructed his people to wait until formal council before discussing any details, except to answer personal questions asked about immediate families, if such knowledge was available. It did not take long for such inquiries to avalanche into others.

  Haviri stood by the fire, and said, “Captains, I know you must have many questions about what has happened in our absence. I would first know if you encountered the Amirdu heading south under wind sail power, as you came north through the Abyssu?”

  The three captains all shook their heads, or said, “No,” with puzzled expressions.

  This did not surprise Haviri too much—the Abyssu lakes were large, and the estuaries full of reed islands, true islands, and headlands, such that it would be easy for the captured ship to slip by undetected at night, and possible for it to do so even by day with only a mild haze.

  Haviri nodded. “I thought as much. Let me try to explain things, Captains, as best I can. It seems that, while we were all away mapping the world, our fledgling civilization fell to a plague that is partly a Divine judgment, and partly something that we do not yet understand.”

  Captain Tarsys of the Iyared said, “How can something be ‘partly a Divine judgment’ and partly not? It either is or it isn’t!”

  Haviri answered, “Normally, I would agree. I’m only reporting to you the impressions of the M’El-Ki, the Zhui’Sudra, and Mother T’Qinna, as they were given to me at the time of my departure from them. Much has happened even since then, so please be patient. We are still trying to understand all this, and how E’Yahavah wants us to respond. Perhaps it would be good for you captains to tell me what you already know, since you had contact with the Amirdu up until the time it was taken.”

  Europatha, son of Ghimmuraya, the dark haired, pale skinned Captain of the Sa-utar, said, “We know of a plague fever, and that Uruk was at first friendly to your ship, but then dealt treacherously with you. Your oracle mage warned us that Kush had boarded and taken the Amirdu, forcing the mage to destroy his set and abandon ship. Did he get off safely?”

  Malaq answered, “Y
es, I’m here.”

  Haviri spoke to the others, “You all know this much, then?”

  All three men nodded.

  Haviri continued, “Good. The Firstborn believe the fever is a Divine judgment against Nimurta, Kush, and Assur, who have subverted the Ensi Council, and overthrown lawful government under the Divine M’Ae. The Elders are not certain that judgment is the plague’s only purpose however, because we have also seen it strike malefactors and those loyal to E’Yahavah alike. Although its effects are usually worse among those most guilty, there have been important exceptions. For example, reliable witnesses say Nimurta is only slightly affected, and still capable of commanding an army. Before she vanished, Mother T’Qinna also said she saw things while tending the sick that no brain fever can cause…”

  Captain Ludth, of Q’Enukki, stood up, “My mother has vanished? What does that mean?”

  Haviri immediately regretted mentioning it. “Please, Uncle Ludth, I know that this is upsetting, and we will deal with that terrible event soon, but first you all must understand what has happened in sequence.”

  Ludth, a towering bear of a man, glared down at Haviri, who was considerably younger and smaller. “Speak,” he finally growled.

  Haviri said, “I ask you all to forgive me that I must be the bearer of any further bad news to you. I’m only trying to equip you for what you will find when you return to your families. My own son, a faithful seer among the Khaldini, is plague-struck. He sometimes cannot even recognize me, and his speech is often difficult to follow. Yet he withstood Nimurta to his face, and prophesied against him by the Divine Breath of El-N’Lil—a prophecy which the M’El-Ki and the Zhui-Sudra have both confirmed. Nimurta has betrayed us all, and with a conspiracy of treasonous and duped saars, overthrown the M’El-Ki’s lawful government to establish himself as a tyrant.”