by A. L. Knorr
Lowe’s expression grew grave.
Another look up the face of the vast monolith I’d almost begun to climb filled my stomach with ice water. I didn’t want to be in the dreams of anyone who populated it with such a strange and sinister landscape.
“So whose dream is it, and how did we get here?” I forced myself to lock onto Lowe’s face before I saw more twisting shapes and burning eyes.
Lowe’s lips tightened into a grim line. “Regardless of the identity of the dreamer, they are a being of singular power. The size of the dreamscape is one thing, but it pulled you, me, and Sark into it while vigorously conscious.”
My body went rigid. “Sark’s here?”
Tightening my hands into fists reminded me that I didn’t have the Rings. They hadn’t followed me into the realm of dreams, and now I felt exposed, vulnerable.
Lowe remained irritably calm in spite of our circumstances. “We were brought here together. If that other poor soul hadn’t collided with you and sent you off course, you might have landed in the same place as Sark. I wouldn’t worry about him, though. He seemed fixated on climbing that immense ziggurat, just like you were. I’m unaffected because I am a ghost.”
“What other poor soul?”
“One of them.” He pointed at the face of the brooding golden pyramid – ziggurat. I squinted up: dozens of people moved up glimmering steps carved into its face with a steady yet unrelenting pace that was hauntingly familiar.
“Who are they?” As I followed their progress I realised there were thousands of them. Various sizes, colours, and genders, but all moving upward, all moving closer to the beam of light at the top. An undercurrent of power tugged at my mind again, its steady pull a siren’s song. Resisting it, I moved my gaze away from the light.
“They are Inconquo,” Lowe said.
The proclamation was shock enough to draw my attention from the dreamscape’s seductive gravity. I pivoted my gaze between Lowe and those climbing.
“So many,” I breathed, the hair on the back of my neck spindling to standing. With a jolt like lightning through my gut, my eyes widened and I swept the assorted figures, looking for the form of a loved one.
“Is my uncle up there?”
Lowe’s lip slid forward in a pensive pout. “I expect so.”
Taking on what I thought of as his professorial stance, arms crossed, he continued. “Remember that the bloodline was founded thousands of years ago, it has had a long time to dilute. I doubt a tenth of them have the slightest idea that they are anything special. Of that tenth, excluding you and Sark, I would be surprised if more than half a dozen know they are Inconquo. Most experts in Near Eastern history consider the Inconquo a minor faction.”
Watching the thousands of figures crawling up the side of the structure, a combination of awe and terror swept through me. Being an Inconquo had been a lonely business, even with Lowe as my mentor. Seeing that I was part of a family of thousands was both incredible and humbling, until I reached the terminus of the logic of why we were all here.
“Ninurta is the dreamer.” It couldn’t be anyone else. “Why has he brought us here?”
“I don’t know,” Lowe said. “But like Kezsarak’s nocturnal attacks on you a year ago, I don’t think Ninurta can do you any lasting harm in a dream. Even if it is his.”
I shuddered as I remembered those terrible nightmares, veritable psychic assaults from the hateful demon. “Sorry, but that’s not encouraging.”
“It gets worse,” Lowe continued. “Ninurta is much more powerful than Kezsarak. If he senses you resisting his call, he could turn his attention to you and hold your mind here for a very long time. I think it would be very bad if Sark was released before you.”
My shoulders sagged. “You are saying I need to climb up there, aren’t you?”
Lowe’s face was grave, his eyes glistened with emotion.
“I’m afraid so, my dear.”
My gaze swept the desolate, spectral city, and gave an angry laugh. “Then why go to the trouble of waking me out of that trance?”
Lowe placed a hand on my shoulder, his face heavy with sorrow. “I wanted you to know that you aren’t alone.”
---
The top of the ziggurat was immense, a vast plateau that was both solid underfoot but also churned and seeped like molten gold. The expanse was filled with people who seemed somehow aware of my presence yet completely unconcerned with it. Their features remained indistinct with perpetually changing dream-like distortions, refusing to come into focus no matter how I strained my eyes. If they saw me as we saw them, Lowe and I were little more than mobile scenery. They were all gripped in Ninurta’s trance anyway.
Vast concentric rings of people radiated outwards from a central pillar of light. It rose to impale the low, heavy belly of a sky the color of gunmetal. I stood at the edge of the plateau, one of the last to complete the climb, expecting to witness events from the periphery. Quietly, without a word, the crowd parted in a wave as those in the outermost ring shuffled a little to allow me to pass, as did those in the next and the next.
I felt the call to move inward; at first, I resisted, fearing that it would steal away my consciousness again. I wanted a better view of the proceedings, but not at the cost of my mind.
“I think we need to get closer,” Lowe whispered in my ear. “I believe he is waiting for you.”
“Why me?”
“You are the most powerful Inconquo to emerge in generations. I imagine that comes with a stronger connection to our progenitor.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, nor how Lowe referred to this psychotic maniac as our progenitor.
“Stay close,” I muttered as I began to move through the rings of people.
As Lowe and I moved, a low, atonal buzz filled the air. At first, I took it to be a crackling discharge from the light, but it was coming from around us: words muttered under the breath of the multitude. Seriously creepy.
Halfway to the centre, and unexpectedly, the crowd scuttled together, separating Lowe and me. I tried to shove my way past the trance-locked people to get back to him, but my efforts were futile. It was not my will reigning here, that was clear.
“Go on,” Lowe urged, hemmed in on all sides. “Remember, he can’t hurt you. Not really.”
I threw him my best jaunty salute, squared my shoulders and pressed forward. Lowe gave me an encouraging smile, nodding me forward.
As I trudged on, the whispers grew louder, words becoming recognisable as it rose into a droning chant.
“... to...founder...before… men… kings...”
Some spoke in languages I didn’t recognize, yet with the prescient certainty of dreams, I knew what they meant anyway. The words were repeated, a litany looping over and over in a fraying, mind-numbing chant.
Reaching the central rings which basked in the glow of the pillar of light, I slipped between light lined silhouettes, catching glimpses of the heart, the something from which the light rose.
“...hail to him… first founder of… before him all despair… slayer of men… of kings…”
My mouth began to form the words of the chant. I clamped my jaw shut so hard that my molars clicked together. I’d be having none of that. I shook my head to clear the fog creeping at the edges of my consciousness.
Another break in the ring ahead of me, too far to the left to reach, caught my attention. It was hard to get a better look, the entranced people always shuttling me inward, but I managed to twist around one of them to see the reason for the break.
Dillon Sark—in his human form--crouched on the ground, one hand bracing his weight while the other clawed feebly at a dark spidery fist wrapped around his throat. The hand belonged to a body of living shadow, not much bigger than a toddler but with long arms and legs out of proportion to its small body. With one hand, it throttled Sark until his face turned purple, while with the other hand it stroked his cheek in a perversely intimate gesture.
The chanting had grown loud enough that I had to shout, but
I tried to draw the wicked-looking apparition’s attention.
“Leave him alone!”
Sark probably deserved to die, but not like this.
“Get off him!”
The wicked thing’s oddly angular head perked up and with a boneless twist turned to regard me. Eyes like ingots pulled from a blast furnace burned in my direction, and I heard the familiar sound of Kezsarack’s roaring, mechanoid voice.
END THIS
“What are you doing to him?” I yelled back. “You’re killing him.”
GO
With that, Kezsarak returned his attention to Sark, who trembled and gasped on his knees. I couldn’t help him. Feeling sick to my stomach, I turned back to the next open passage leading through to the rings.
Taking a steadying breath, I stepped forward through the final two layers of Inconquo, determined to walk unflinching toward whatever Ninurta had in store for me. A wind whipped up, pulling at my clothes, as thunder rumbled in the churning, brimstone clouds overhead.
Planting one foot in front of the other, but making certain that I did of my own free will, I reached the darkened throne of Ninurta, the First Inconquo. To my horror, I raised my head and proclaimed, louder than any of those I’d passed, the chant that had been worming its way into my mind.
“Ninurta, king of kings, all hail him the first founder of cities, before him all despair of their mighty works, for he is builder and slayer of men, gardener and hunter before the face of god is he, Ninurta, king of kings.”
11
With my unwilling proclamation the brilliant beacon that had drawn all the Inconquo to this place retreated. Like a waterfall of starlight, it flowed down into a throne, awakening a fire within. The jagged assortment of cold, black slag began to flow and roil, becoming a throne of liquid metal held together by the will of the one who sat upon it.
I averted my eyes from the glow of the throne, fearing what new spell I would be under if I looked at him.
“Come now, my child.” The voice was rich and deep, and as terrible as time itself. “Look upon your father and be made new.”
My eyes betrayed me.
Ninurta was both less and more than I imagined. Reclining upon his throne was a huge but emaciated figure of bygone majesty and power. The rich fabrics that flowed around him were threadbare, and the jewellery that seemed to drip from every part of him was dull and tarnished. Thick ropes of muscle still corded his frame, but they moved beneath weathered, wrinkled skin, and his broad back was bent. His hair and beard were white and in places worn so thin that liver-spotted skin could be seen beneath. His chestnut eyes were bright with watchful intelligence, but even they seemed to sag with the incredible weight of long, long years.
He was an old king, a man nearing the end of his reign.
Seeing him like that filled me with an odd combination of sorrow and joy. An old and mighty creature nearing its end was always sad, but his apparent infirmity led me to believe that perhaps there was yet hope he could be defeated. I had been raised to respect my elders, but in the case of my maniacal demigod progenitor, I would make an exception.
“You are smiling,” he observed, his voice filled with interest. “What do you see?”
I hadn’t realised I was smiling, but I wasn’t about to back down. I was pretty sure that if I did, I would crumble. He might be an ageing king, but his presence and will were still incredibly potent.
“I see an old man.” I forced my voice to be steady in a way that my knees were not. “Powerful and dangerous, but still old.”
Ninurta nodded, the motion all the more sagacious for his swaying grey hair.
Grey? Hadn’t his hair been white? Why couldn’t I see through to his spotted scalp anymore?
A sick feeling crept into my stomach. Was he changing before my eyes?
“Oh, but I am old.” His heavy brows slid low, turning his look crafty. “But it is one of the great follies of the young to think age makes one impotent.”
I stared up into his face, refusing to be cowed. “And it is the folly of the old to think the young are incapable.”
“Such would be true if you faced anyone else,” he said tenderly. A patronising smile spread across the aged face, as though he was explaining something to a child. “Your spirit does you credit. In my new world, I wish to foster exactly that kind of daring.”
His dark eyes glittered in wizened sockets, but the folds about them weren’t as heavy now.
“You got that from me, you know.” His hands hung from the armrests of his seething throne. Two fingers on his left hand were made of gold – digits of living metal.
“We may be separated by epochs but it is true,” he continued. “More than anything, these long years have given me perspective, and with that perspective, I see you. Can you see me?”
The last word rippled through the air like the distortions rolling off a furnace; for an instant I felt his will and I couldn’t suppress a shudder. Monstrous in size and scope, he was a psychic leviathan in whose wake I could barely keep from being dragged along. Lowe had promised he couldn’t hurt me, but I wasn’t so certain.
“You begin to understand.” He grinned, shark-like, and his potent aura swept by me again. A small, weak sound escaped my lips as I fell to my knees, shaking.
Kezsarak’s power, both bound within Sark and unfettered, had been ferocious and relentless. This was something else, something I couldn’t have imagined until I’d experienced it. Now that I had, I felt diminished and cold.
“What are you?” I gasped, tears springing to my eyes.
In answer, Ninurta rose, his back straightening as the guise of infirmity sloughed off him. Muscles swelled to fill glistening skin, while his hair and beard shone jet black and lustrous. He stepped down from the throne with a dancer’s lithe movements. He was a warrior king in his prime, a sorcerous monarch at the height of his power.
“I am the first, and I am the only,” he intoned as he advanced. “I am the culmination of the grand design. I was a child among grunting brutes when I first understood that I was destined for more.”
He stared out at the dream horizon as though he might see those bygone days there, playing out on the sky. I remained on my knees, watching him, gathering the courage I felt I might be losing at being so near him.
“By the will of nature or god, I rose from that savage beginning with not just dreams and ambitions, but the power to achieve them. Whatever I laid my hand to was mine, mastery was my birth right. While my tribe cowered in caves and scratched out their living amongst stones, I learned the mysteries which lay beneath the earth.”
His gaze returned to me, and I marvelled to see tears glittering at the corners of his eyes.
“I returned to them,” he said softly. “The simple creatures from which I emerged. I strove to teach them, but they were too simple, too crude. They turned on me, fearing what I’d become.”
He closed his eyes, drawing in a heavy breath. When he continued, his voice was flat and cold.
“I killed them all. It broke my heart, but in my agony, as I throttled the last of the misbegotten children, I had a revelation: some are incapable of ascendancy, and their very existence holds back those who would climb up to pluck the stars.”
He swept around in a slow circle viewing his children arrayed about him. The rings of dreaming Inconquo began their chant again, low and urgent.
My voice surged to join them, but I forced my jaws together until I thought they would break, refusing to submit. Disgust at the display of vacancy and submission rose like bile in my throat.
“I determined to build an empire, a dynasty where the exceptional might ascend. I founded Kalhu and set about uniting man under my name. But again they disappointed me. They sought to worship gods and such smallness disgusted me. Had I not slain enough of their demons for them to see what they could become if they only willed it? I watched factions spread through my house and came to hate my children; I grew weary of waiting for mankind to evolve enough to suit
my purpose. So I decided to sleep, to dream away the ages. I just needed someone to ensure I was not disturbed until the time was right.”
Thunder crashed and lightning crackled above us. The dream wind was rising as though to dramatize his story.
“I found a creature as eternal as I: the edimmu that Lamashtu sent to kill me. With her phylactery held in the balance, I enlisted her to seal my tomb and hold the key for a time. Until the world could be shaped to my will. She despised her corrupted condition, so I knew eventually she would awaken me hoping to end her own cursed existence. But lo, I am awakened, and the fallen priestess has done well. This world is ready at last.”
The chant rose, beating against me like waves, making every thought a struggle, but I knew who he meant: Daria. Her part in this distressing story fit so many pieces together, but it was little comfort. It seemed like we were all doomed, Inconquo and edimmu alike.
“Ready for what?” I was not sure I wanted to hear the answer.
“Rebirth. To be broken open and reformed. I shall reach to the very heart of the world using the resonance of my descendants – now as many as the sands across the world. It will then be a simple matter to build a new world order.”
With growing horror, I began to understand: the earth’s heart, its core, is hypothesised to be metal. His plan seemed insane – changing the movements of the earth’s core could bring about untold destruction – but the sanity of the plan didn’t matter if he could actually accomplish it.
“That will kill millions of people,” I cried.
Ninurta corrected me blithely. “I am told that the teeming masses count in the billions now, and by my calculations the initial casualties will be forty percent.”
I stared at him, unsure how to even speak to someone who could say this with such calm.
“Come now, child, you’ve surely learned of the way of nature. It is only natural that unsuitable creatures perish and those worthy of life rise to prominence. I will merely accelerate the process. Evolution is imprecise, but the truth will out eventually; and when it does, I will be there to usher the worthy into a golden age that will never end.”