Relics

by K. T. Tomb

  He is filled with false hope and he knows it, but says anyway, “Look up! Someone is above us. We are saved!”

  The men look up. At first, following his lead, some stand and shout with joy, but one of them points a finger past Donatte and shouts a sharp warning as he points at their weapons being drawn. Donatte immediately reaches for his scimitar.

  Weapon in hand, Donatte frowns and turns.

  One last fight.

  Suddenly, he welcomes the battle. Anything is better than this slow roast toward a death from mad thirst.

  Descending rapidly down the mountain are many impossibly tall, black-robed figures wearing hoods. They brandish unusual-looking spears, with the ends curving away like their own swords.

  Thieves, thinks Donatte. He can hardly believe it. They have no food, no water. Only weapons. Ah, but bandits had killed for less than the fine weapons they carried.

  “Let us fight with honor!” he cries to his men.

  He knows it is their last battle. They all know it.

  He brandishes his own scimitar with as much might as he can muster, just as the first of the black-clad figures drops down from above. The figure moves fast and lands amid Donatte’s men. Donatte is amazed at the skill with which the figure uses the weapon. He is also surprised by the single warrior’s brazenness in taking on so many warriors at once.

  More thieves appear from above as a flash of metal barely misses the general’s head. He ducks and falls backward onto the hot boulder. A figure joins him on the rock, moving as if he had been born on this mountain. The figure swings his weapon. Donatte blocks the attack with his own scimitar. Metal rings against metal as he and his men make their last stand and fight with warrior hearts that would rather die than beg to be taken prisoner for a drink of water.

  Through his own combat sounds, he hears his men’s cries of aggression that become cries of suffering and then, death cries.

  Donatte stumbles and falls in the loose gravel. He loses his scimitar, which falls to the ground. He looks shocked as he sees that all of his men are now dead and that he is on their level, sprawled in the dirt among their bodies.

  The last man alive.

  The thieves have made quick work of his soldiers and now, it will be his turn.

  He thinks he can likely ransom himself out of here, but no. Never. He is not a coward.

  The general looks back as the leader’s figure approaches him. A strong wind is now rising for the first time in many days, not since the haboob. Though it is a hot wind, the welcome breeze chills his dehydrated body. As he unexpectedly shivers, the wind blows back the hood of his attacker.

  Donatte’s heart freezes.

  It is a beautiful black-haired woman with a burning hatred in her eyes. She has a streak of silver in her hair.

  “No, this cannot be,” says Donatte. “Not a mere woman.”

  To his surprise, the woman answers in Arabic. “I’m afraid so. Though I would argue the word, ‘mere.’”

  Her single movement is swift and merciful. Donatte’s head is severed from his neck in one clean swipe.

  “That’s the last of them,” says another female warrior.

  “More will come,” answers the raven-haired woman.

  Chapter One

  Jessima IL Eve slipped in through the rear door of the crowded lecture hall and found the first available seat in the back row. She was late, but then again, she had traveled halfway across the world to be here tonight.

  The guest lecturer was already talking. “Whether you agree with the Bible or not, there is indeed historical truth to be found within its pages. The Bible does indeed exist as an unusual road map to history, one that has intrigued scholars for centuries.”

  The lecturer was a tall man with a slender build, dressed casually in jeans, a pale blue T-shirt, loafers and a battered brown suit jacket that was at least six years out of style. He spoke calmly and confidently before the packed assembly hall, which was full of students, faculty, and even a couple of local reporters. Even from here, Jess could see how attractive the man was. It was a face she had committed to memory, which hadn’t been an entirely unpleasant experience. He was, after all, the man she had come halfway around the world to see.

  She corrected herself. She had not just come to see him. She needed to bring him back with her, whether he wanted to come or not.

  After pausing for a drink of water from behind his podium, the lecturer continued, “Whether or not the Bible contains spiritual truths is a matter of personal opinion and theology. We’re not here today to discuss theology. We’re here to try to answer one question: ‘Did the Garden of Eden truly exist?’”

  His name was Dr. Evan Knight and Jess watched his every movement. She was curious about the man who was prophesied to save the world, but cared little for what he had to say on the subject of the Garden of Eden’s existence. After all, she already knew the answer to that question. She decided that she liked the way he casually strolled before the audience. His movements spoke of confidence. He appeared to be in excellent physical condition. Jess was not sure if she had ever met a man who appeared to be so in control of himself. She found herself intrigued with Dr. Evan Knight, the maverick historian. It was perhaps the first time in her very long life that she could recall being intrigued with any male.

  Perhaps the Mother Daughter was correct, thought Jess. Perhaps he is the one.

  Still, he was a common male, with only his limited life experiences—unlike her own that spanned centuries. She still could not see how a common man could prove to be so valuable.

  She was not here to doubt. She was here to bring him home. For now, she settled in her chair and listened to what the good Dr. Knight had to say.

  ***

  Dr. Evan Knight paused for a moment to take a sip of water.

  He had not missed the unusually tall woman who had appeared late. He had watched her move quickly from the door to the back row. As he spoke, he found himself drawn to that section of the crowd. Her slender build and raven-black hair had immediately intrigued him. Even from where he stood, he thought he could detect a streak of white in her hair.

  It was then that he needed another drink of water. His mouth had instantly gone bone-dry. He told himself that he was acting ridiculous.

  She looked remarkably like the woman who had haunted his dreams since his youth, the woman who made all other women in his life seem unimportant.

  Focus, Evan, he told himself. They’re all waiting eagerly to hear what you have to say.

  Focusing was now difficult. He had to fight a strong desire to run up the stairs of the lecture hall and meet this woman.

  He used all of his concentration to force himself to stop thinking about her, while still keeping an eye on her. The University of Long Beach had paid good money to bring him out here tonight, so he concentrated on his lecture.

  He used a remote to activate an overhead projector. On the screen behind him appeared the names of four rivers.

  “Let me read from the New King James version of the Bible. I trust you all brought your Bibles tonight.” There was a slight murmuring from the crowd. “If you would, please turn to Genesis 2:10.” He cleared his throat and slipped on a narrow pair of reading glasses. He opened his own Bible to the aforementioned scripture. “‘Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four river-heads. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Hiddekel; it is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.’”

  Knight removed his glasses and used his remote to go to the next slide. There, the name of the first river appeared: Pishon. “There have been many theories associated with the location of the Garden of Eden. A common one is called the Northern Theory, which places th
e Garden of Eden in the eastern mountains of Turkey, a location, I might add, that some claim is the final resting place of another Biblical enigma, a certain ark built by Noah. Those who favor the Northern Theory point to the fact that the Bible states the river that flowed from Eden separated into four rivers. These researchers have traced the Tigris and Euphrates back to its present-day source: the mountains of Eastern Turkey. It’s a commendable theory, but other than some vague, extremely hard-to-decipher satellite imagery of what might be ancient river systems, there is precious little other evidence pointing to this area as the location of the Garden of Eden.”

  Knight paused in his narrative and found himself again standing in the section of the assembly hall directly facing the raven-haired woman. He seemed to have her entire attention. He squinted through the dim lights, but it was pointless. For now, the woman remained a mystery.

  “Another popular theory, called the Southern Theory holds that the Garden of Eden has, in fact, been located under the present-day Persian Gulf; in particular, a place that forms marshes along a one-hundred-and-twenty-mile stretch of land in southern Iraq, where both the Tigris and Euphrates come together. The river Hiddekel, as mentioned in the Bible is, if you don’t already know, the ancient name for the river, Tigris. That being said, the other two rivers—the Pishon and Gihon—cannot be located in this region. The Bible is clear: four rivers.

  “Folks, massive riverbeds don’t just disappear. Even the great riverbeds on Mars have have survived for hundreds of thousands of years.” Knight stopped and focused his attention on a handful of students seated in the front row. “I’ve been to these marshes in the region called Shatt al-Arab in southern Iraq. This is no paradise, unless your idea of heaven on earth is sweltering heat and unbearable humidity and mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds.

  “Most importantly, both the Northern and Southern Theories, along with more radical ones, fail to bring together, in one geographical region, all the clues from the Bible.” Knight paused for a sip of water. “They fail, but I will not. Tonight, I will show you that such a region exists. Tonight, you will discover with me the true Garden of Eden. But first, are there any questions?”

  Dozens of hands shot up. Knight smiled and picked a young man a few rows back. He was wearing a red baseball cap, backward.

  “Yes, you,” said Knight, meeting his eyes.

  “You assume, Dr. Knight, that the clues in the Bible are correct. I think most historians will agree that the Bible is a collection of myths and should be looked upon as allegorical. You seemed to have based your entire career on proving the validity of mythological stories. Maybe some stories are best left as the myths they truly are.”

  Knight had heard the arguments hundreds of times before. “Most historians assumed the legend of Troy was a myth, just a wild flight of fancy from Homer; that is, until it was found by Robert Carter, over a hundred years ago. Just this year, my colleague at Quests Unlimited, Chyna Stone and her team at Found History, reintroduced to modernity a priceless Egyptian text thought to be lost for millennia. Their findings were also pivotal in confirming decades-old theories about the 18th dynasty of Ancient Egypt, as well as the existence and importance of the Aten princess, Ankhesenamun.

  “My friend, history was expressed in a mythological medium, which was common for the times. Such expression does not mean it does not contain real facts. Truth be told, I consider the Bible a deeply historical document, just like the writings of Herodotus or a text of Ramses II. The Bible should not be dismissed by historians because it is first a religious text. Thank you for the question.” Knight smiled at the young man, then let his smile linger on the audience. “I think we can all agree that, until we have done our research, we cannot know fact from fiction. Well, ladies and gentleman, I have done my research, as have others before me. Let me present to you the facts.”

  Chapter Two

  Jessima IL Eve smiled inwardly. She didn’t care whether or not anyone in the room agreed with his arguments. What pleased her was Evan Knight’s deft and relaxed handling of a potential quandary. This was a good asset to have. The more she watched, the more she liked him, although she still had her doubts.

  As she watched him stroll comfortably across the stage, she was more than aware that he looked too often in her direction. She figured it was her imagination, until she actually started watching him more carefully. More often than not, he made a full stop and lingered longer directly in front of her wedge of the lecture hall. There were many such wedges that branched off from the central stage. And it wasn’t that he stopped in her general direction; it was that he seemed to be looking directly at her.

  She shifted in her seat. For the first time in a long time, she actually felt uncomfortable under a man’s gaze. She thought it was impossible that he knew her. No one knew her. At least, no one outside of the sisterhood. She was uncomfortably aware of the way her chair seemed too close to the row in front of it. She wanted to slide down a little lower, but it was useless. She towered above the girl in front of her.

  Calm down, sister, she told herself. He is only a man.

  She had often been forced to go out into the real world and she had attracted the attention of many men. However, Guardians were destined for lives of solitude. No one took mates. She was surprised that she was thinking about it now.

  Dr. Evan Knight gave her one last lingering stare and then stepped away again. Jess listened intently to his lecture. “The Pishon and Gihon rivers are the biggest mystery when it comes to the location of the Garden of Eden. Okay, so let’s get into it. Did these two rivers exist?”

  He paused for effect.

  “The answer is... yes! They did exist. The British scholar, Reginald Walker, was the first to find the missing Pishon and Gihon rivers. Turns out that in northern Iran, there is a river called the Kezel Uzun. The word ‘kezel’ translates to golden. So, in effect, it is the Golden Uzun. How can Uzun be the same as Pishon? The answer lies in the transcribing of the Iranian language into Hebrew. The Iranian letter ‘U’ becomes a ‘P,’ so the river named Uzon is transcribed as Pzon. I do not think it is much of a leap to see the similarities to Pishon.”

  He paused, and Jess saw that many in the crowd were busily taking notes, while others regarded the historian lecturer with either open amusement or skepticism.

  Knight continued, “The next puzzle is the Gihon River. At the time of the Islamic invasion of Persia in the seventh century, Arabic geographers referred to the Aras River as the River Gaihun. I believe that the Arabic Gaihun and the Biblical Gihon are one in the same. The Euphrates mentioned in the Bible is the same Euphrates today. From its sources near Lake Van in Turkey, it flows for over sixteen hundred miles into the Persian Gulf. The ancient Hiddekel River, as mentioned earlier, is the Hebrew name for the River Tigris. It descends from the Zagros Mountains in Iran, and journeys over twelve hundred miles to the Persian Gulf.”

  There, thought Jess. He’s looking up in my direction. He’s not looking anywhere else and he has not stopped at any other location, other than behind the podium.

  To her amazement, she found her heart beating a little faster, as if she were about to engage in battle.

  “I believe, then, that we have found the four rivers mentioned in the Bible. So, where do these rivers flow from? When you find that, you find Eden. ‘Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four river-heads.’ Intriguing huh?” He paused and collected his notes from behind the podium. “Now, our story continues with British archaeologist, David Rohl, who happened upon an ancient Sumerian cuneiform clay tablet held by the Museum of the Orient in Istanbul. The tablet describes a five-thousand-year-old route to the Garden of Eden. An actual route. In 1997, David Rohl did something fantastic. He set out from the Iranian town of Ahwaz, near the northern tip of the Persian Gulf, with only his Jeep and a companion... and followed that route.”

  Knight stopped behind his podium. “This is taken from the Jerusalem Report: ‘They tr
aveled north toward Kurdistan through what Rohl calls “lawless” terrain, trusting luck to avoid the various guerrilla factions active in the region. Rohl followed a route documented in the Sumerian cuneiform epic, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, which had supposedly been taken five thousand years earlier by an emissary of the Sumerian priest-king of Uruk. The emissary had been dispatched to Aratta, on the plain of Edin (a land known to the Sumerians as a land of happiness and plenty) to obtain gold and lapis lazuli to decorate a temple that Enmerkar was building in Uruk. The cuneiform epic describes the dutiful emissary’s three-month trek on foot via seven passes through the Zagros Mountains, to the foothills of Mount Sahand and his successful procurement of the required valuables. Rohl believes that the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians all knew of an earthly paradise that had once lain beyond what they called the Seven Heavens. For them, Eden was still very much an earthly place.’”

  Knight stopped reading and looked up. “I can say from first-hand experience that ten miles from the sprawling Iranian industrial city of Tabriz, as you descend a narrow mountain path, you see a beautiful alpine valley, with terraced orchards on its slopes, crowded with every kind of fruit-laden tree. This is a land not found on modern maps. In fact, each map places it in a different location. The Biblical word gan—as in Gan Eden—means ‘walled garden.’ The valley is walled in by towering mountains. The highest of these is Mount Sahand, a snow-capped extinct volcano that the Prophet Ezekiel called the Mountain of God; that is, where the Lord resides. Cascading down the mountain is a small river, the Adji Chay, the name of which translates from local dialects to also mean ‘walled garden.’ The locals still hold the mountain sacred, and attribute magical powers to the river’s water. That is, if you dare venture upon it.”

  Jess sat up straighter.