by Hal Duncan
Thomas huddled his arms around his knees, naked and shivering.
“Why?”
“No more gods,” the creature said “he, she or it—no more alliances and vendettas, no more royal houses, dynasties…no more pantheons.”
The creature crouched down for a second to test the shackles around Thomas’s hands, gathering the chains like reins in two hands, testing their strength. It shoved his head to the side, inspecting the collar round his neck, and nodded to itself, satisfied.
It ran its gauntleted fingers across his chest, tracing the graving branded upon his skin, the mark of the unkin, his name, his story, written in the language of the gods. There almost seemed to be desire in the tenderness of its touch.
The creature reached up to take its helmet off, and look at him with crystal blue eyes from beneath a shock of ruffled blond hair.
“Dumuzi…Tammuz…Thomas,” he said.
“You can’t escape your nature,” he said. “You’re like me, like all of us. You might think you’re a human being, you might dream that you are, but you’re really just a tool…a weapon.”
He whispered a word and with a shiver, Thomas felt reality shift around them, saw the angel crouching before him in a black suit instead of gray armor, in a gray military uniform with golden epaulets, in a checked shirt.
“That’s what it is to be unkin,” said the angel. “Do you really think we could leave you running loose?”
Thomas turned away from him, looking to the west where, across the fields, a river ran and, on the other side, the grass was green and gold, in an Elysian haze of sunlight so close it hurt. He’d run through all of time, trying to escape into eternity, only to be captured at the end of history, at the end of his story.
He turned to gaze up past the unkin, over his shoulder and up, at the blue sky beyond. In the distance, dark clouds glowered on the horizon—clouds of storm or clouds of battle, he wasn’t sure. In this place, in this world beyond the world, out here in the fields of illusion, on the road of all dust, sometimes, there wasn’t any difference. If there was a storm gathering, then there was a war gathering as well. The beating wings of shining metal thunderbirds would soon be heard across the land, drowning all song, all laughter in their rain of fire and blood and hail and light and water and clods of mud and stone thrown up from blasts, and Thomas knew, he knew, that it would be as if the heavens themselves were falling on them. There was a storm coming. There was a war coming. And the river of souls would be thick with the bodies of the dead, shepherds and kings alike, and the crows that flew over the fields would feast among them. They had made the whole of history a sieve to separate the wheat from the chaff, a mill to grind the coarsest grain into soft, white flour.
“One last great war, and then we’ll have eternal peace,” the angel said.
“Great war,” echoed Thomas, bitterly.
THE LOST DEUS OF SUMER
The ugallu leaped the reed fence. The first ugallu scratched Dumuzi on the cheek with a sharp nail. The second ugallu smacked Dumuzi on the other cheek with his own shepherd’s crook. The third ugallu smashed the bottom of the churn. The fourth ugallu threw the drinking cup down from its peg. The fifth ugallu shattered the churn. The sixth ugallu shattered the cup. The seventh ugallu cried:
“Rise, Dumuzi! Sirtur’s son, Inanna’s husband, Geshtinanna’s brother! Wake up from your dream! Your ewes are taken and your lambs are grabbed! Your goats are captured and your kids are in our trap! Now take the sacred crown off of your head! Strip those me-garments from your body! Drop your royal scepter to the ground! Remove the holy sandals from your feet! You come with us naked!”
The ugallu grabbed Dumuzi. They surrounded him, all round him, and they bound his hands, they bound his neck.
And they lead him out, Dumuzi, Tammuz, Thomas, and the slave collar cuts into his neck, except it’s not a slave collar, it’s a rough rope noose that they gonna hang this fucking nigger by, yeah, boy, and they’re pulling it over the tree as they strip the epaulets off his jacket and the sergeant brushes dust off his wide-brimmed hat and turns away, not looking at him there on the tips of his toes and straining upward against the ropes tying him to the wooden fence in a crucifix in the cold snow, hands behind his back, the wooden post hurting the whipscars on his back but one of them, it’s Carter, is putting a cigarette in his mouth and asking him if he wants the blindfold and they’ll make it quick, like, sure they will and he’s sorry, God he’s sorry, and Tommy cries out to Seamus but Seamus is looking away, he is, sure, ’cause he’s sickened by the whole thing, sure he is, and he swears to himself, he does, that this is the end of it all, this is the end of Seamus Finnan’s service in a fookin war he has no fookin business in and Thomas—
And Thomas feels the ropes around his wrist as they drag him out of reality, this runaway god, back to the eternity where he belongs, to the eternal moment of his death.
He looks to his side, toward the river so close now.
The churn lies quiet, and no milk is poured into a shattered cup. Dumuzi is no more; the shepherd’s fold, like dust, is given to the winds.
The Sebitti
When Heaven, king of the gods, made the Earth pregnant, a myth from Sumer tells us, she bore for him the seven gods he named the Sebitti. When they stood before him, he decreed their destiny. He summoned the first and gave him orders: “Wherever you march out together as a pack, there will be none to rival you”; spoke to the second, “Burn like the god of fire himself, blaze like a flame”; said to the third, “You, walk among them, stalk them with the fierce face of a lion, and all who see you will fall to the ground in terror”; spoke to the fourth, “Mountains will flee before the one who bears your furious weapons”; ordered the fifth, “Blow like the wind, out to the ends of the earth”; commanded the sixth, “Go through above and below, spare nothing in your path.” The seventh he filled with dragon’s venom, saying only this: “Lay low the living things.”
Metatron looks around him at the seven marble pillars of his Hall of Records—just an empty blank plateau stretching out to the horizon on all sides. Each of the pillars has its own individual graving, a sigil etched into the stone.
There were seven of the Sebitti and there were seven of the ugallu, just as there were seven planets, seven days. There were seven sages who came out of the river into Sumer, bringing knowledge and civilization from some distant world of strange divinities, from the mountains where Enlil, lord of the winds, dwelt, or from the abyss—the abzu—the great watery deep where Enki, lord of the earth, dwelt, at the source of all the rivers of the world, so it was said. There were seven Anunnaki, seven judges in the underworld, and there were the seven weapons of the deity Nergal, known as Irra in later myths, and known as Ares to the Greeks, the god of war himself, weapons that walked and spoke like men. Their very name meant simply the Seven. The Sebitti.
Seven Against Thebes, thinks Metatron. Seven Samurai. Magnificent Seven.
In Egyptian mythology, human beings don’t have one soul; they have seven, seven facets, seven archetypes, that only make one individual in combination.
It had been seven of them, then, who came together in Ur of the Chaldeas to sign themselves into the Covenant: Rapiu was a healer in Akkad while Mika came from Syria; Adad was up near Haran at the time, among the Hittites. Raphael, Michael, Azazel. The rest were from all over the Middle East. Uriel, Gabriel, and Sammael, before he had to be…replaced. And Metatron, of course. Metatron who used to be a god called Enki, who used to be a man called Enoch before he cut out that part of him that was still human.
Seven archangels. Seven guns for hire. A good team. They were always good to have on your side in a war.
He had always believed that they could work behind the scenes, set up treaties and law codes, pacts and contracts, create a sort of hidden empire, building…justice. Justice, mercy and wisdom. And one by one, their masters began to realize who was really in control, where things were going, and either took the long walk out into the Vellum, o
ut into an existence made of only dreams and memories, or they took the oath themselves. They kneeled before the throne and let him remake their gravings, binding them to an archetype, a me, a new identity with a new destiny. And Metatron carefully adjusted them, pushing their personality this way or that, sculpting their souls so they were no longer gods of personal glory, individual power, but servants of a greater authority, angels of the heavenly host.
And when they walked out into the world, they walked out as one of seven.
The seven standing before him now, in their bloodied, muddy armor, all have the panting look of guilty dogs that have had more fun with some innocent creature than they’re sure they are allowed. Two of them stand at the front, the bloodiest and the muddiest by far, just a little more arrogant than the others, standing out with just that little bit more individuality. But then any team has its star players, and this one is no exception. It has its Gabriel and its Michael, the ones you send in if you want to lay waste to a city.
“It’s done,” says the one called Carter. “He’s dead.”
“You’re sure? And the girl?”
“She’s out of the game,” says Pechorin. “Little birdy got her wings broke. End of story.”
He nods and dismisses them, the Hall of Records shimmering out of his vision. It is only a sim after all, this conference room he uses to keep these latter-day sebitti (they’re not the originals so they don’t get a capital) dutifully impressed. Sometimes he uses it as a retreat when he wants peace to study the gravings of his book, look for the next newblood reckoning that’s due, but on the whole it’s a little too showy for his liking. He looks out the window of his lounge, over the rooftops to the distant, delicate, black iron of the Eiffel Tower, just visible behind a chimney stack; he prefers reality and always has.
So the boy is dead and the girl broken, he thinks. But somehow Metatron isn’t so sure. He’s thinking maybe he should check this out himself, pay a little visit to his North Carolina sebitti. The boy’s would be the first unkin execution in…a long time. There should have been ripples in the Vellum, an aftershock. These foot soldiers are too young to know it but Metatron was there when Tiamat was cut into pieces and he knows. The Covenant is more than a simple pact, the graving of an unkin more than just a graving, because these things are written in the Vellum itself, and one little scratching in the Vellum can stain the whole of history with blood and ink.
It’s not like time is just a straight line from the past to the future.
In the Silvery Steel of a Cigarette Lighter
Carter holds the Zippo open and lit, his other hand spread out, palm down, above it, lowering it to touch the flame, then pulling it up again as he feels the burning. He does this repeatedly. He does it for a while. And eventually he’s just holding his hand over the flame, smelling the burning flesh. It reminds him of some other time and place, some other identity, already slipping from his mind. He used to be glad of the debriefings. He used to feel cleansed afterward, his binding to the Covenant reinforced by the anointment, by being washed clean in the blood of the lamb, surrendering his memory to his superiors, in absolute submission to the glory. After each mission he felt fresh, remade, walking away from whatever hotel room or empty office space their superior was using as his base of operations, purged of the burden of his sins and in a state of grace, knowing only that whatever he had done had been successful and that it was for the greatest good, for the Covenant. He used to feel that way, and he doesn’t know why he doesn’t now.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Pechorin slaps his hand away from the flame.
“Jesus Fucking Christ. What do you think you’re doing?”
Carter clicks the lighter closed.
“Where did I get this?” he says. “I can’t remember where I got this.”
Pechorin shrugs.
“What does it matter? Fucking get a grip. Get in the car.”
Pechorin walks round to the driver’s side, beeps the central-lock open and climbs in. Carter slides down off the hood and pulls his own door open. He stops to look at the burnt palm of his hand, the skin red raw and sore, but healing already; it’s not quite visible, not quite that fast, but even now the pain is subsiding. That’s what it is, to be unkin, after all. They’re healers, at the heart of it, whether it’s their own flesh being healed or the torn skin of reality, of the Vellum. It’s one of the ancient names the humans gave them, so he’s told—rephaim…healers.
As he climbs into the passenger seat, though, the black, padded leather of it hot from the sun, something at the back of his brain is almost—but not quite—conscious of the underlying source of his discomfort. He’s not aware of the fact that the burning was only an attempt to make concrete this vague sense of hurt, of wounding or sickness, that still lingers even after the whispered word of Metatron cleared his head of all remembrance of his own atrocities. He doesn’t remember staring down in horror at the girl lying in the puddle of black ichor, his hands shaking at the thought of what they’d done. He doesn’t remember that even as his fist punched time and time again into the coward’s face, he couldn’t help but see his own blue eyes and fair hair in the man’s, like he was trying to smash his own reflection. He doesn’t remember picking up the Zippo in the faint hope that the boy would recognize it through the shimmering glamour placed on them by Metatron, recognize it and know whose it was and how he had to run. No. However deep the wound is in his soul, Metatron has cleaned it thoroughly. And the Cant is still echoing in his head, the cleaning still going on, slowly, methodically. But not perfectly.
Pechorin has a hold of his hand, looking at it to see the damage done, but Carter just stares at his own reflection in the silvery steel of a cigarette lighter, trying to figure out what it is he feels, why the fuck he doesn’t feel the way he should. Pechorin starts the engine, pulls out from the curb and into traffic. Behind them, in an unmarked van, the other five follow at a distance, visible in the rearview mirror. He can see them laughing, one of them cracking open a beer, sliding gently back into the blank and malleable personas that they live their daily lives in, until next time the call comes. Carter leans back into the seat and closes his eyes, the sun shining through his eyelids, a red and orange blur of spots and veins, an abstract canvas of blood and fire.
He remembers the boy’s eyes, deep hazelnut brown with flecks of green, of emerald and jade; he remembers them cruising him in the bar and the lick of a lip, the snub of a nose, and shoulder-length auburn hair, and lighting a cigarette for him. He should have asked him to the party.
“You look fucked, man,” says Joey.
Jack looks at him, sitting there in his black leather jacket. For some reason—God knows why—he has an image of him in a suit. Shit, Joey wouldn’t wear a suit if you paid him.
“I feel fucked,” says Jack.
THE RIVER OF CROWS AND KINGS
Down the river thick with the mire of war, thicker—with all the blood and the bodies of the storm—than the tar that it resembled, floated the torn clothes and the broken furniture, the opened suitcases and scattered, sodden papers, oil-soaked rags wound round and plastic bags tied tight to make small bundles for some unknown artifact; oil paintings in their frames, and dolls and teddy bears, and black-and-white photographs of wives and sweethearts, and father’s watches and grandfather clocks, and grand pianos and children’s tricycles and decks of cards with nudie women on them, and clay pots from Hacilar, Hassuna or Samarra, with all their patterning of birds and fishes, animals and humans, all the bull’s heads, double axes and Maltese crosses of Tell Halaf; and the clay-covered skulls of the dead, enshrined once with seashells for eyes, that were the source of all that ancient pottery in protoneolithic Jericho; and all the accumulated artifacts of history came, turning over and over in the rolling, roiling muck of it all, and amongst these things and carried on them, rolling over them and under them, limp and lolling, came the dead, pouring along the river that once ran clear and sweet through all eternity
toward a distant city on the edge of everything. And the river of voices and visions that once rushed sparkling, roaring, babbling down into the deep—the river of life, and the river of the dead crossed by all those who sought to enter into eternity out of the time and place of their existence—was now a slow snake of filth where crows fed on the corpses of kings.
And Thomas stumbles as he tries to leap a twisted tree root, falls to his knees, hands out in front of him, splatting into the mud and falling forward, twisting his wrist and yowling, cursing himself for the noise. Not far behind—not far enough behind—the shouts are wild, drunken with vicious delight, and they come crashing through the trees and bushes and grass toward him. Slupping and staggering up out of the ditch of trickling marsh, he runs. He runs out of the woods, running from Jerry, from the rednecks, from the hellhounds, from the angels, from the lion, and from the doom of thunder and lightning that crackrashes into a tree beside him—tall tree illuminated, eerie, eldritch in the sick light. He runs out of the woods and over a field, grass whipping his face, and into more woods, slipping, skiting, down a slope and falling, splashing into the raging river, black, brown, red with all the earth washed down into it by the storm, and turning, churning it drags him down into its grip to drown.
It is a dry, hot and sun-bleached day in the savannah, and a lion slouches slowly through the tall grass. A slender buck, a young Thomson’s gazelle, twitches nostrils at the scent of predator in the air, and looks at us, and blinks long lashes over deep dark eyes. Angels wheel lazily overhead. Turning to look around us, we see a herd of aurochs grazing on the open skies and, superimposed like ghost forms over this vision of a veldt, young men in olive and khaki smoke cigarettes, play cards and drink. A dog lies curled up beside (beyond? behind?) a strange figure wearing animal skins, a beaked mask and what might be perhaps a feathered cloak or wings. Everything is still, poised in the moment.
