"Mother? Have I done something to lose your favor?"
Tears slid down her cheeks as she realized she'd been Un-Chosen. The goddess had warned her that one day the Evil One would come to her village, she had failed to prepare, and now she was being punished.
At last a woman vacated one of the little rooms. Ninsianna pushed forward before somebody else did and slammed shut the door, ignoring the screech of indignation that she'd cut in line in front of another. She gagged as the stench of unflushed excrement slammed into her nostrils.
"Why hasn't anybody emptied this?"
She started to open the door to search for a bucket to haul water from the faucet, but spotted the little silver handle Mikhail had explained would carry water to the chalice had his sky canoe not been broken. If the waterfalls in the sink worked, perhaps this would as well? She held her nose and pressed the handle. Water flowed into the bowl. It made a terrible, sucking noise, but it worked exactly the way Mikhail had promised it would.
Outside her stall she heard shrieks of terror and the sound of running feet. She realized the women were afraid of the sound of a flushing toilet?
With a malicious smile, Ninsianna pressed the handle three more times. It left the bowl as clean and white as it had always looked on Mikhail's sky canoe. With a contented sigh, she sat down and took care of business. This, at least, felt familiar thanks to her time spent helping Mikhail heal. She sat praying for direction from She-who-is until her backside went numb. Wiggling her rump to shake away the pins and needles, she pressed the magic handle and watched, fascinated, as the water spirits purified it. Unlike desert water, which always carried a stain of ochre, this water was clear.
Perhaps it was a sacred well?
Yes! That was it! She would make an offering to the water spirits and beg them to plead for intercession! She eagerly ripped off tiny squares from the long, rolled strip of cloth Mikhail called 'toilet paper' and used it to fashion a makeshift flower. She would create her own nature symbols to receive omens from She-who-is.
"Thank you for not letting the Evil One take my baby," Ninsianna prayed. "You must have a purpose for sending me into the bosom of your enemy. Please, Mother. Tell me what to do?"
She dropped the offering into the magic well. It floated the same as if she offered a real flower into a stream, but after a moment it began to sink. That gnawing feeling of being abandoned gripped her belly.
It shouldn't matter. All streams eventually flowed to the sacred Hiddekel River. She pushed the magic handle and watched the flower swirl around in a vortex until finally the water spirits accepted it with a gulping swallow. She waited for that familiar tingle, but none came.
Tears welled into her eyes.
"Are you angry with me, Mother?"
She repeated the ritual, only this time she closed her eyes and raised the paper flowers above her head before dropping them into the bowl. Like the first flower the second one disappeared, but that familiar sensation of being cradled by the goddess never materialized.
An urgent flutter beat inside her chest. She had been abandoned. She had been abandoned by She-who-is! Frantically ripping square after square off the roll, she formed them into flowers and filled the entire bowl with offerings until she could no longer see the water. There. That should demonstrate her devotion! She shut her eyes and prayed with every ounce of her being as she pushed down upon the handle and prayed for an omen, any omen, from She-who-is.
"Please, Mother! Anything! Even a cockroach!"
The flowers swirled around and around.
The water rose higher.
The water spirits pushed her offering right up and out of the well and rejected it, spilling paper flowers all over the floor.
Ninsianna burst into tears as she crawled upon the floor and picked up the soggy flowers which disintegrated into mush in her hand.
"Mother! Why have you forsaken me?"
A pounding on the door startled her out of her prayer. Ninsianna peeked out. A dark-haired Uruk woman snarled at her like an angry hyena. Here, as was true everywhere, the women had a pecking order, but unlike in Assur, here Ninsianna was the lowest caste member.
The woman clawed at her and dragged her away from the sacred well.
"Get your hands off of me!"
Ninsianna stared at the circle of unfriendly faces, but even with her diminished gift she could tell these women were insane. Whatever had happened to them, only enough of their spirit light still remained to keep their bodies functioning to incubate their pregnancies.
Ninsianna backed into the room with her bunk bed. The lizard demon had still not moved, but while she'd been praying somebody had placed two large trays of food on the table, food which had already been devoured. Ninsianna stared at the empty tray with dismay. There was nothing left except a piece of fruit somebody had dropped on the floor and some half-eaten bread.
She stared at the smeared crumbs left on the tray. Why, she'd rather starve than lower herself to eat cast-off offal! She sat back on her bunk and shut her eyes to distract herself from her hunger.
Why did her chest hurt?
She focused on her solar plexus, the place Papa had taught her to trace the 'threads' which bound all living organisms together, and attempted to trace it so she could contact her Papa. She only got so far before she bumped up against some sort of barrier. Her heart sped up as she remembered that other part of her vision.
The Evil One had claimed he intended to kill her husband…
Closing her eyes, she mentally traced the thread which connected her to Mikhail. That disembodied pain she'd woken up with in her chest grew so painful it felt nearly overwhelming. A putrid sickness infected the thread which bound them. She could feel him reach out to her, cry out for her, call her name. She could sense him drag her, kicking and screaming into that dark realm of the dead she had always feared.
"No!" Ninsianna squealed in terror.
The ebony-skinned woman grew louder, more insistent in her chanting. "Ibilisi, ibilisi, ibilisi."
Ninsianna pictured shutting off the flow of light which hemorrhaged out of her body into whatever evil fed upon her spirit. It must be a trick! An illusion sent to her so the Evil One could feed upon her life's energy the way he had these women.
No! She would not let him trick her again!
She blocked the vile thread, tore it out, pictured undoing it, cut it, destroyed it, severed it and made it go away. That could not be Mikhail! Her husband would never draw upon her energy thus!
Immediately the pain disappeared. Did the Evil One really think she was that stupid? First he had manipulated her with a vision of carving her child out of her womb, and now this? Mikhail was too powerful to be hurt the way the Evil One had just depicted and, if he really was hurt, wouldn’t she have felt something? Grief? Loss? A heaviness in her heart, as though some part of her had just died? No. She felt nothing. Only relief that the darkness was no longer there.
Why, then, did she feel as though she had just betrayed her husband?
Ninsianna began to cry. It was all just a trick to break her spirit the way the Evil One had done to these other women. Mikhail would save her. She knew he would. Sobs wracked her body until the sounds of the infighting women faded.
She must have fallen asleep, for when she awoke the lights in the room had dimmed and the other women had all turned in to bed. The bruised fruit taunted her from beneath the table, red with a large, brown spot on one side, reminiscent of an overripe pomegranate. She remembered all the times she had scorned her cousin Gita for scrounging moldy scraps of bread. This food, at least, hadn't been thrown onto the ground with goat excrement. If nobody saw her pick it up, would it still be groveling?
A rumble from her stomach made the choice for her. She was, as Mikhail liked to put it, eating for two. She quietly slid down off of her bunk, looked furtively from one side to the other, then grabbed the fruit as well as some half-eaten bread off the floor and scurried back to her bunk to eat it. Sweet juices dribbled
down her chin as she used the half-eaten crusts of soft, delicious bread to catch every drop.
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 17
November 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Gita
The pounding on the door startled Gita out of a fitful sleep. Beneath her, she heard her father curse, and then a crash as the clay urn which held last night's mead shattered upon the floor of the hovel which was her home. She grabbed at the ropes which kept her hammock suspended above the living quarters. Once upon a time their house had a second floor, but it had long ago collapsed due to termites and lack of maintenance, leaving Gita with nothing more than a few floor struts from which to suspend her belongings.
"Go away!" her father Merariy shouted.
"Open the door, you lousy drunk!" a familiar voice shouted from outside the door. "Or I'll bash it down!"
Gita's eyes shot open. Her heart pounded in her throat as the awful truth brought tears into her eyes. Mikhail was dead. He was dead and now Immanu was coming to extract his revenge. Immanu pounded on the door so hard it caused dust to shake out of the rotted reeds woven into the roof above. Gita coughed as dust got into her eyes.
"You?" her father recognized his brother's voice. "Why the hell would I open the door for you?"
Gita glanced frantically up at the skylight which had been blocked off ever since the Halifians had used their house for ingress during the last raid. Oh, no! She'd forgotten about that. That would make her appear doubly guilty. The men who had gotten into the village to attack Ninsianna had come in through their house. It had caused tongues to wag, but everyone knew her father had never bothered to maintain the wall. Would they still believe that now?
No…
She grabbed her spear, the one Jamin had given to her, the person she was fairly certain had set up the ambush on Mikhail. Jamin … her friend. Sort of friend. As much of a friend as the highest-ranking male in the village could be to the lowest-ranking female he'd taken pity upon and given his cast-off spear. It was yet another symbol of her guilt…
"Papa!" Gita squeaked in terror. "Please don't let him take me."
Merariy was a bear of a man, with wild, grey hair, a bulbous nose, and the same black eyes he had passed along to his daughter. A lifetime of bitterness and hard drinking had shaped him into a squat mass of jaundiced, wrinkled skin. Only two years older than his brother, he might as well have been twenty.
Outside the door there were other voices, all of them raised, all of them angry. Merariy saw the terror in his daughter's face and, whether it was out of some long-forgotten paternal instinct, or simply to spite his brother, he grabbed a chair and shoved it against the door latch.
"Go to hell!" Merariy snarled. "You want her, you'll have to bash the door down!"
The shouting grew louder. Gita grabbed her tattered brown cloak, a gift cast-off from Shahla, her bow, her arrows, and yes, damantia! Jamin's spear! If she was to make a run for it, she needed a way to defend herself.
'I'm invisible … I'm invisible … I'm invisible…' she chanted the childhood mantra which had always deflected unwanted attention, but it was never adequate when people looked specifically for her.
The voices outside suddenly quieted down. A new tap came on the door. Polite. Respectful.
"Merariy … please? The winged one has taken a turn for the worse. We think your daughter may be able to help us calm him down."
"Chief Kiyan?" Gita cried out with joy. He was still alive? Chief Kiyan was a practical man, but not a cruel one. She would explain to him why she hadn't believed Shahla's crazy story about Jamin flying down from the heavens in a silver sky canoe and giving her away in marriage to a beautiful, white-winged Angelic..
And more importantly, Mikhail was still alive…
Gita climbed down the rope, her heart buoyant that she had not lost her chance to make things right. Her father shot out an arm and prevented her from opening the door.
"How do I know yer' telling to me the truth?" Merariy drawled, his speech still slurred from last night's drinking. "Twice before my brother lied to pull one over on me. Why should I believe him now?"
"Because you have my word," Chief Kiyan said wearily. "And my word has always been good."
Gita's father hesitated, and then he shoved her back.
"Not good enough," Merariy said. "If Immanu wants her, let him speak the truth which has been festering between us all these years."
"Go to hell!" It was Immanu this time who uttered the curse, muffled by the door.
"Then fine," Merariy muttered. "Gita and I were having a grand old time talking about the way you and that snotty daughter of yours been looking down your noses at us all these years, talking bad about us while your own relations been starving."
"Papa," Gita whispered. "Please. Mikhail needs my help."
"You think I give a goat's behind about a winged demon and all those other fantastic creatures demanding to be worshipped?" Merariy poked a filthy fingernail into Gita's chest. "Weren't nothing but a bunch of old pictures on the wall of a cave, but your mother chose them over me. And now you want to run off with one of them?"
"No," Gita swallowed, horrified her father could see so easily through her dark emotions. "He's just … injured."
"Oh?" Merariy sneered. "And you're going to heal him?"
He began to laugh then, a cruel, mocking sound, as if she had just suggested the moon was made of goat's cheese. He whirled towards the door, wafting the scent of vomit and stale mead into the room as he moved towards the chair he had shoved there to block it.
"It's a high price you'll have to pay to get what she's got," Merariy laughed. "If she's got it, though I ain't never seen no sign of her mother's gift in her. Ungifted! Same as me, isn't that right, Immanu? Isn't that what you told everyone in the village? That our father should take you as his apprentice, and not me, because I was as ungifted as a rock?"
Silence.
Whispers from the other side of the door.
The air inside the house stifled with her father's labored breathing. Out. In. Out. In. If there was one thing she knew about her father, he was every bit as stubborn as Immanu, especially when he believed he was right.
"I should have never said those things," Immanu's voice filtered through the door. "Your gift scared our father. It was as if you had inherited only the dark side of him, but none of the light."
Gift? What gift? Never had she seen her father exhibit any gifts, except, perhaps, the gift to scrounge up his next vat of mead.
The hand which held Gita back trembled.
"I want you to tell them the truth, Immanu," Merariy's voice warbled. "All of them. And then I'll let you take her."
Why did it sound as though her father offered her up as a sacrifice?
"I lied," Immanu said. "I lied when I told everyone the reason my father rejected you was because you had no talent as a shaman."
Gita gasped. So did the other villagers who'd gathered outside the door, gawking for a bit of juicy scandal.
Her father pulled away the chair and opened the door. Gita blinked at the sunset streaming horizontally down from the western horizon. Had she really slept that long?
"Then why did he send me away," her father faced his brother. "He sent me away to the furthest end of the earth, to accomplish an impossible mission, and he never told me why."
Immanu sighed. His voice warbled as he answered Merariy's question.
"Because our father was unable to control the darkness within himself," Immanu said softly. " The dark power corrupted him. He only realized he'd lost the balance after it cost him the life of our mother."
Merariy clamped his hand over his mouth and turned his back as if he feared his brother might see. Tears welled in his eyes.
"Go," Merariy gasped at Gita. "But don't go wasting your gift on that winged one, because he don't see you. Mark my words, he ain't never going to see you!"
She shoved past him, outside where the dying sun reflected off o
f unsettled clouds, giving them the appearance of black smoke billowing out of a fire. Immanu's gaze burned with resentment. He wheeled without a word and headed back towards the upper ring, leaving her standing beside Siamek and Firouz.
Her father slammed the door against her back.
"Disarm her," Siamek said.
Her heart beat faster as she stared up at Siamek for understanding and he refused to meet her gaze. Firouz took away Jamin's spear and handed it to Chief Kiyan. The Chief took it, his expression cloaked. Gita stared mournfully at the lost symbol of self-reliance.
Gita swallowed apprehensively.
"What happened?"
"We don't know," Chief Kiyan said. "One moment he was sleeping peacefully. The next he started shouting that he couldn't feel his wife."
The Chief leaned on Varshab, his chief enforcer, and wore his arm up in a sling. As they walked, the villagers pointed at her and whispered there is the traitor, and at all times Siamek and Firouz kept her firmly between them. That small, dark voice which kept her alive warned her that these lofty people would betray her in a heartbeat.
She heard the shouting even before Immanu's house came into view. Homa scurried out, her cheeks flush with worry. In her hands she held Ninsianna's red cape, sodden wet with water. From inside the house came Mikhail's voice shouting, a thud, the sound of wings whooshing, and a ringing sound like he pounded upon the mud-brick wall with his sword. .
"Here is Ninsianna's cape." Homa shoved it into her hands. "We washed the blood out of it. It's still wet, but at least it's clean."
More shouting came out of the house, including words which Pareesa had told her were Angelic curses.
"You'd better get up there," Chief Kiyan said.
The Chief placed the scarlet cape around her shoulders. Moisture seeped through her own thin, brown cape. Gita gave him an apprehensive look and pulled the hood up to cover her head. As she climbed up the stair, she did her best to appear to be her cousin.
Voluptuous figure. Remember the way Ninsianna swings her hips when she walks? Her smile, as though she is always mulling over a secret. Full lips, jut them out. And let him see my hair. Ninsianna let it grow longer after she met him while mine is darker and thin, but she wears it loose because it pleases him, I am certain of it, because before she met him she always wore it in a braid.
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 18