“I must tell this to Napu!” Qe’Nani whispered to himself. “He’ll know what it means. He’s all rune-learned in the ways of the Khaldini!” Napalku’s boyish ebony face flashed in Qe’Nani’s mind, the young sage’s gold neck amulet sparkling in the sun. Unlike many of the rune-learned, Napu never got so full of himself that he couldn’t share a simple bowl of beer with his old Popo. A shaft of light from behind brought Qe’Nani back to the present.
“Chased into a hole like a rat, Old ‘Nani?” Lugal Nimurta laughed from outside. “Here, let me pull you out.”
Qe’Nani felt bronze-hard hands seize his ankles and drag him outside. He rolled over and spit sand out of his mouth.
Standing over him, by the dead tammabukku, Nimurta seemed like a demigod of old returned to Earth. Dark skin shimmered with the hunt’s sweat, stretched over mounds of vein-streaked muscle, and clothed only in a leather bandolier with a leopard-skin loincloth. A circlet band of pure gold held a small ornamental horn centered on his high forehead. “Now what is this about a mystic stone thing of the Ancients?”
“It’s in the hole, Legal-Lord, under the boulders!”
“Can you bring it out to me?”
“I wish I could, but it is too large and some of it is buried.”
Lugal Nimurta scowled and shook his head as he got onto his hands and knees and crawled into the tiny hole to inspect the find. Like Qe’Nani’s grandson, Nimurta was Academy-trained at ancient runes. Unlike Napalku, he was not of the Khaldini Order, to which the keeping of all writings—especially those of sacred or historic significance—were entrusted. When the Great Hunter backed out again, his eyes darted beneath a furrowed brow.
“What is it, my Lugal? What does it say?”
Nimurta picked himself up and shook himself off. For a long moment he would not answer, but stood squinting at the tiny cave.
Qe’Nani said, “Legal-Lord?”
Nimurta gathered his composure, but the unusual agitation never fully left his eyes. “It’s nothing, ‘Nani—just an obscure relic. Go to, men,” he said to the others, “Let’s leave this one for the scavengers, and get back to Uruk-Haven. We need to meet up with the boats before dark.”
During the hike back to their landing site at the other end of the serpentine marsh island, Qe’Nani heard the men whisper that their Lugal never left so rare a carcass without taking a trophy. Something was not right.
2
The evening winds wailed outside the small baked-brick shrine, where Napalku the Khaldi finished his tribute inventory with a reed stylus on a wet clay palm tablet for the upcoming Khaldini pilgrimage to the Treasure Cities of Arrata.
When his Popo flew through the hangings into the shrine’s small storehouse chamber, the night air almost blew out all the cresset oil lamps. Qe’Nani slid to a halt just in time to keep from knocking over Napalku’s carefully ordered baked clay pots. “Napu! Napu! I’ve found a sacred stone thing of the Ancients!”
“Another ‘beer epic,’ Popo?” Napalku liked Qe’Nani, but his great-grandfather tended to clown around after a bowl or two.
“No! No! By the Great E’Ya, my punt just put in. I came straight to the shrine! No time for beer!”
Napalku laughed. “Better not let Nimurta hear you slang-shorten the Divine Name. He’s a stickler for that kind of stuff.” Napu didn’t much like the slang-shortening either, but he suffered it from his ancestor. Popo was a simple tracker, a creature of the Sumar marshlands. Not that there were too many living-standard differences between a saar and his slave in the swampy tent towns scattered up and down the Great River Delta—except in rare permanent settlements like Uruk and Kush, which sported tiny baked-brick homes for their saars, and Khaldini shrines.
“Aw, he loosens things up on the hunt some, Napu.”
Napalku said, “So, how far is this ‘stone thing of the Ancients?’”
“Hardly three day’s paddle down the West Ufratsi channel—on one of the marsh islands spit up from the Abyssu—very ancient!” Qe’Nani scratched himself under his loincloth and then picked at the sand fly bites under his thinning black hair with filthy fingers stained by the mud of centuries. Wiry and quick, the tracker still showed signs of the premature aging that afflicted so many in the roving tent communities. Nevertheless, his beard had less gray, and his face fewer creases than Napalku’s grandfather—despite Qe’Nani being thirty years older than his son was.
Napalku laid down his palm-sized clay tablet and stylus. “Can you take me to it in the morning, and get me back before the end of next week? I have to leave then with the caravan for Arrata. We don’t have time to make a formal Khaldini expedition, but I can do a preliminary survey.”
Qe’Nani’s huge eyes lit up as he nodded almost fast enough to snap his own neck. “We can leave at dawn—like when I took you fishing by the Abyssu mires when you were a boy, after your father left on the Sun Ships!”
Napalku somehow knew that his forced smile did not meet his eyes. His father had never returned. It had been hard on Napu, and especially on his younger brother, Yoqtani, for whom “Haviri the Mariner” was more legend than man. There was still hope for a homecoming, but less each year.
“That’ll be good, Popo. The Order will reimburse you for supplies, and I’ll square it with the Lugal if we return late. My being Nimurta’s grandson by his only daughter must count for something, after all!”
“You should not be so hard on the Lugal. He’s a good man. I’m sure he thinks well of you, Napu. He’s just busy. There are many monsters in the delta mires, and they must be killed if we are to have safe farming lands.”
“Yes, the monsters, how could I forget? You do…ah… have leave, just in case I’m not quite so high on the Lugal’s heavenly stairway?”
Qe’Nani laughed. “Still hedging your bets, eh, Napu? I saved up two week’s worth, and already had it approved at the Kulaba. I can spare half for my favorite grandson. Not like your old cow of a Mooma wants me around anyway! I’ll stock the boat right now!”
Popo scrambled from the storeroom before Napalku thought to tell him to keep the matter quiet. Napu rushed after him through the hanging beads, and out the modest main chamber. By the time he stepped out of the shrine, Qe‘Nani had already vanished amid the smoky evening tents.
Napalku threw his hands up, and went back inside.
“You should have caught him,” said a voice from the shadows.
Napalku nodded to the man who had just emerged from the Shrine’s inner sanctuary. “You heard, then?”
“All of it. Sorry, but that jipar chamber is tiny.”
Napalku picked up the tablet and reed stylus he had been using to tally the tribute consignment. “What should I do?”
“You know the Directive.”
Napalku gave an acerbic chuckle. It was odd that a non-Khaldi emissary—even one sent by S’Eduku-tal-ebab—should remind him of the Directive. “All artifacts of the World-that-Was are committed to the Khaldini—especially any written device—I’m not a novice anymore. Since the dawn of this world, no trace of the previous one has ever been found.”
“Until now, it would seem, and not for lack of searching. People these days seek new connections to the World-that-Was; convenient ones, independent of sacred history, and easier to mold to current political, market, and cultic agendas.”
Napu laughed. “What agendas? It’s just hunt, fish, farm, and wait for the returning Sun Ships down here in the Sumar.”
The Emissary lowered his voice. “It is feared in Arrata that Nimurta and his father no longer want the Sun Ships to return.”
“What makes them think that? Nimurta was the M’El-Ki’s right-hand man; nobody’s got more integrity and zeal for E’Yahavah than him. It drives Kush crazy sometimes. He’s like an honorary Khaldi, even.” Not that I don’t have my own doubts about the ships ever returning, Napalku said, and did not say.
The Man in the Shadows removed his hood and rubbed his eyes. “It didn’t seem quite that way to you when you spok
e to your Popo, just now.”
“Aw, that’s just family sour grapes!”
The Visitor looked up, and nodded. “Admittedly, Kush may be the real problem, not your Lugal. Nimurta’s father has openly suggested that the Earth’s Navel might be in his own land or else here at Uruk. I heard him at the last Ensi Council. Why suggest the Earth’s Naval might be here if he were unsure of Nimurta’s loyalty? M’Es-Ki-aj-Kush-Saar—as he now fancies himself—and even Assur-Saar, have called for building permanent cities on the Agadae Plains, and on the marsh islands of the Sumar. Some in Urartu predict they will soon challenge the grain tribute to the Sacred Cities.”
“They wouldn’t dare! Nimurta would oppose them!”
“Would he? Old Kush has ‘suggested’ that Arrata’s mining fiefs double their transport of quarried stone in exchange for continued compliance. There isn’t manpower for that, and Kush knows it. Nimurta has been conspicuously silent, except to talk of stone quays for Uruk.”
Napalku turned to face the Man in the Shadows. “Nimurta is Uruk’s appointed Lugal. More than that, he’s my mother’s father! He may treat me as if I don’t exist, but he’s still family! If I had seen or heard anything to make me think he would betray the M’El-Ki, I would say so! But he’s said nothing of it here—at least not to Khaldini ears. The M’El-Ki himself mentored and sponsored him! He charged him with keeping Uruk-Haven before he left on the first Sun Ship. I watched them embrace at the wharf!”
The Man in the Shadows stepped forward, and put a pale hand on Napalku’s shoulder. “As did I. The balance of powers in the Divine M’Ae protects us from ourselves, but it is not foolproof. Clans find ways around it. Nimurta is still the youngest son of a man who now calls himself M’Es-Ki-aj—One Who Brings Divine Civilization to Earth. Nimurta is also an Academy-trained Legal—or Lugal, as you river folk say it—‘Great Man.’ The Kush Clans command a Council majority greater than any coalition thus far, and Nimurta votes with them in lockstep. The tribes of Assur have now joined them. Even Usalaq and the other High Khaldini pause before them now. People whisper of a coming revolt.”
Napalku hesitated to voice his own greatest fear. “But what if the Sun Ships really don’t return? It’s been over twenty-five years. Maybe Kush is right.”
“They will return! At least some will. S’Eduku-tal-ebab heard one through the Oracle the week I left Arrata.”
Napalku’s heart raced as the fading image of his father flooded his senses again. “Which vessel? Was it Ursunabi?”
The Messenger from Arrata shook his head and looked down. “The Zhui’Sudra—may the days of his life be prolonged—called it home, but the air spirits roared over the Sun Ship caller’s voice, so we did not hear their response. We weren’t even sure which vessel it was, it all happened so fast.”
Napu’s heart sank. “Is that why the Khaldini sent you secretly, and have not waited with the others for my pilgrimage report?”
“Not the Khaldini alone. This concerns us all—perhaps all the more with your Popo’s little discovery. The Oracle has not been able to call the ship since, nor any other—as of my leaving. Add to that the multiplying tribal skirmishes here, and all along the highland passes. S’Eduku-tal-ebab is concerned over how—or even if—Uruk-Haven will receive the ships when they do return. My fathers share that concern.”
Napalku wondered if his own father, who commanded the Sun Ship Ursunabi in some far off ocean, still lived.
The Emissary continued, “We have more immediate concerns, too. The written rolls of the Old Knowledge in the Treasure Cities grow brittle, and much of the mastery of their secrets is only theoretical, because we have found little usable iron and tin. Usalaq says that copper is too soft for many of the old applications, but it’s still the only common metal we have in any abundance. There has also been famine in the highlands. Too many clans still resist moving on to fill the empty places.”
“Why? It’s been safe for a century and a half!”
“Many still fear old stories of giant waves and cracking mountains. You of the Agadae and Sumar at least have courage to cultivate the alluvial plains and marshlands, and it pays you well. We think that, in keeping with his self-appointed title, Kush will soon flex his muscles as the breadbasket for most of our lands. The question is, will Nimurta obey his father’s power lust, or his mentor’s teaching, when pressed?”
Napalku lowered his head. “What would you have me do?”
The Emissary retreated again to the shadows at the noise of some talking men outside. After they passed, he said, “Go with your Popo, and see this ‘stone thing.’ But don’t trust him, and avoid others on the way.”
“Why not? He’s harmless.”
The Messenger stepped back out into the lamplight. “Have you never wondered why Qe’Nani is not a member of the High Khaldini, despite him being Lord Arrafu’s firstborn son?”
Napalku began to fidget with his stylus and palm tablet again. “Many of my kinsmen never join the Order. He’s just not a scribe. Not everyone has an academic temperament.”
The Emissary crossed the chamber, and casually inspected the clay pots. “It’s more than that. He was banished.”
“What for?”
“He was a foolish youth who magnified the sins of his father, to his father’s bitter disappointment.”
“Lord Arrafu?”
The Messenger turned from the pots and shrugged. “I know. It seems odd to me too.”
Napalku had heard nasty rumors, none of which added up. “Foolish in what way, and what sins? Qe’Nani’s just a simple old man who drinks a beer bowl too many now and then. Life’s hard out in the Dragon Fens.”
The Emissary reached out a hand gently to the young Khaldi’s shoulder. “Doubtless so. It began when Qe’Nani conceived your grandfather Usalaq out of wedlock. Arrafu had conceived Qe’Nani the same way, some thirty years prior in a tryst with Rhea, the twin sister of Khana’Ani the Cursed.”
Napalku pulled away from his visitor, and jammed the reed stylus into the palm tablet, crushing it. “Such stories are a slander to the Khaldini! How dare you speak them in this shrine to me? Qe’Nani’s mother was Rasu’Eya, of Elammi’s clan! It is so recorded by Lord Arrafu!”
“A formal adoption to shield your order from potential scandal; Arrafu’s leadership was challenged during the Great Dispute. The Firstborn settled much when they built the three treasure cities of Arrata, so each of the prime clans could have access to the Treasure Cave—much, but not everything. That was long after Qe’Nani was banished, and your Popo didn’t seem to care either way. But it still came up.”
Napu felt his face darken like a storm. “If you were not the emissary of S’Eduku-tal-ebab…”
“Forgive me that I must tell you in this way, Napalku. It must be disturbing to discover that your family past is not what your elders told you. But I mean no dishonor to the Khaldini I so respect, or to Lord Arrafu.”
“Did Rhea bewitch Arrafu?”
The Emissary went to a small table in the corner. “No, of course not; you are right that most of those stories are lies and rumors. Despite that, Arrafu did conceive Qe’Nani with the Cursed One’s twin sister.” He poured himself and Napalku some date liquor from an alabaster flask. “It happened on a stormy night’s indiscretion, while both had huddled together inside a cave for body heat during the Great Cold of the Wandering Years. Arrafu had rescued Rhea from wolves by a frozen lake.”
He gave Napalku a cup, and continued, “The kindest version of the story says they got lost accidentally in a blinding snow, and afterward were married. Rhea died giving birth to your Popo.”
Napalku scowled. “That seems unfair—to banish a man because of how he was conceived. How could Arrafu do it, and then lie about it?”
The Messenger nodded. “It wasn’t always fair, but it wasn’t about how Qe’Nani was conceived, either. The adoption was not meant as a lie to cover up the truth—simply as an attempt to make things right. Qe’Nani’s banishment happened because of
his habitual drunkenness, rabble rousing, and his impregnating an under-aged girl with your grandfather—please forgive my bluntness. Arrafu had a one-time youthful lapse, which he corrected honorably by marriage. Qe’Nani refused to take any responsibility…”
Napalku saw his “old cow of a Mooma” in a sad new light. “Still…”
“Arrafu wanted your grandfather raised properly. The M’El-Ki agreed, and had the child, Usalaq, fostered over to Arrafu and his second wife, who raised and educated him in the ways of the Khaldini. Qe’Nani and his wife, he banished to the clans of Rhea’s parents, which is how they eventually came to dwell here. Usalaq later sent your father to live among the Sumar as a Khaldi mission-sage, hoping to heal his own clan.”
The meaning behind Napalku’s entire childhood shifted like sand in the waves of Tiamatu’s last Death Throe. “Why was I never told this?”
The Messenger touched the young Khaldi’s shoulder. “You’ll need to ask your grandfather at Arrata. He told me I could tell you, if it became necessary. Qe’Nani’s ‘stone thing’ made it so. I hope you understand.”
“I’ll try. Thank you for being honest with me, at least. How long can you give me if Popo—Qe’Nani—and I are delayed?”
“If you are not back for the pilgrimage, I will hold the caravan as long as I can. But try to make it back. It’s better this be kept quiet.”
“If I don’t make it back, take my mother, my brother Yoqtani, and Lomina my wife with the caravan. Will you watch over them?”
The Messenger bowed his head. “Of course.”
Napalku left the Emissary of S’Eduku-tal-ebab at the Shrine to go home to his tents, up the low Kulaba hill. He saw the oil lamp in his younger brother’s tent still flickering when he arrived, and paused at the flaps.
Gate of the Gods: Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven Page 3