Gate of the Gods: Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  “Yoqti, it’s Napu, are you asleep?”

  “I was,” replied a reedy ‘tween-aged voice inside.

  Napalku pushed through the flaps and squatted next to his brother, who had already stripped to his loincloth and reclined on his bedding roll. Yoqtani propped his head up on his elbow. Huge, dark, boyish eyes half-covered by a mop of black hair that always slid down over one side of his hatchet face gazed up at Napu. A bent hawk-like nose still bore the shape acquired during one of many childhood fistfights.

  Napu said, “I need you to do something, Yoqti, no questions asked.”

  Yoqti sat up. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

  Napalku weighed his next words carefully. “I’m leaving for six to seven days. If I don’t return before the Pilgrimage, I need you to pack up Loma and Mahmi, and go with the caravan to Arrata.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “No questions, Yoqti; probably nothing. There is one other thing.”

  “What is it, Napu?”

  “Even if I do return in time to take my wife with me to the Sacred Cities, I need for you and Mahm to depart across the mires in our family boat for the hill country of Elammi, immediately after we leave. Go to Father’s brother, Aref. Do not tell anyone that you are leaving, nor where you go.”

  “What’s wrong? Can’t you tell me? I’m your only brother!”

  “I know, Yoqti. It isn’t that I don’t trust you! You are the only man I trust to protect my wife and our mother; but you must trust me. The less you know; the less danger for you and the women you protect. I promise I’ll explain it all when the time is right. Can you do this for our father’s sake?”

  A large tear ran down Yoqti’s face, glistening in the lamplight. “For his, yours, and for Mahm’s.”

  “O king, storm of majestic splendour, peerless Ninurta, possessing superior strength; who pillages the mountains all alone; deluge, indefatigable serpent hurling yourself at the rebel land, hero striding formidably into battle; lord whose powerful arm is fit to bear the mace, reaping like barley the necks of the insubordinate; Ninurta, king, son in whose strength his father rejoices; hero whose awesomeness covers the mountains like a south storm; Ninurta, who makes the good tiara, the rainbow, flash like lightning; grandly begotten by him who wears the princely beard; dragon who turns on himself, strength of a lion snarling at a snake, roaring hurricane; Ninurta, king, whom Enlil has exalted above himself; hero, great battle-net flung over the foe; Ninurta, with the awesomeness of your shadow extending over the Land; releasing fury on the rebel lands, overwhelming their assemblies! Ninurta, king, son who has forced homage to his father far and wide!”

  —Ninurta’s Exploits: A šir-sud to Ninurta

  Lines 1b-16

  Ancient Sumerian cuneiform tablet

  2

  Foundations

  3

  The baked brick buildings of the Kulaba and the Shrine—the civil and spiritual administrative centers—were the only permanent structures on the low hill overlooking the boatyard. The morning mists consumed Napu and Qe’Nani as they paddled away from the landing of the smoky tent town of Uruk. The haze soon dissolved the hill into a fading silhouette.

  Shapes on the river slipped past the reed boat, each clump of vegetation a lurking leviathan in Napalku’s mind. He was barely old enough to remember when the monsters had hazarded even daylight river travel, requiring large square-hulled spike-studded rams rimmed with spearmen. Nimurta, and his father, Kush, had systematically cleared them out with their usual ruthless efficiency—enough that the settlements from Uruk-Haven on north up the Great Rivers were rarely troubled these days.

  The leviathan spawn of Tiamatu mostly just inhabited the great marshlands of the old Abyssu bed, now. Problem was, ‘Nani’s “Eridu Stone”—as the old tracker had come to call it—was at the threshold of those Abyssu Mires.

  By noon of their third day on the river, they approached the low bluff, where Qe’Nani said the hunting party had put out from after discovering the buried obelisk. They had no trouble finding it, and not just from the dragon carcass stench. Almost a dozen reed barques covered the sandy strip. Napalku suspected he knew why.

  S’Eduku-tal-ebab’s Emissary had been right. As they pulled closer, Napalku noticed the absence of any hunting and tanning rigs. Instead, two bundled-reed surveyor’s boats lay in the long grass surrounded by smaller craft. The tiny fleet must have left Uruk-Haven only hours after Nimurta’s party had returned with Qe’Nani; maybe only a short time earlier than Qe’Nani and Napalku had departed themselves.

  Qe‘Nani seemed about to aim the skiff into shore next to the other boats, but Napalku stopped him. He also held a finger to his lips and looked at Popo. He then motioned further downstream, around a wide rightward bend in the river, into a Y-shaped junction with a parallel delta channel to the west, and then into a still lagoon. From there, they could approach the low embankment where the stone lay, from the opposite side.

  Popo nodded and paddled on.

  When they came ashore, and tied off their boat, it was well out of sight of the other craft. Napalku motioned Qe’Nani into the undergrowth.

  “We should stay out of sight.”

  Qe’Nani rumpled his brow. “Why, Napu?”

  “I think it strange that Nimurta should return with surveying rigs for a stone thing that he said was insignificant.”

  “Maybe he’s come for the tammabukku trophy.”

  “Not with those kinds of boats and equipment. Please come, Popo.”

  They pushed into the reeds, toward what had suddenly become a considerable noise of digging, just past some rocks and low palm trees. Napalku and his grandfather crept through the foliage, keeping the odd accretion of boulders between themselves and the excavation site. Large rocks were rare in the river plains, much less in the mires. Napalku was sure these had been coughed ashore in the last great disturbance, or dislodged from the highlands by the last giant wave’s outdraw.

  Napalku had heard the tales of his fathers, who had watched the Death Throes of Tiamatu carve up the depths of the Abyssu in her waves, which had swept inland to dredge open the vast springs of fresh waters that fed the rivers. Sometimes, even mountains had proved insufficient barriers to Tiamatu’s dying rage. One such story even told how the Ancients had flown above a battle of sea and earth on the wings of the Sun Phoenix. Lord Arrafu had been one of them.

  Those Ancients still dwelt north, where they had excavated the Treasure Cave inside the common hill between the Three Sacred Cities of Arrata. Napalku had gone to Academy there. Some of the elders had departed on the Sun Ships over troubled seas, to map the reaches of the Four Winds. Napalku’s Seventh Year Pilgrimage would again report that none of the ships had returned, but that the Khaldini of Uruk-Haven still watched. It would be his second such journey—his first as a full acolyte.

  Just before their departure from Uruk, Napalku had tried to pump S’Eduku-tal-ebab’s Emissary for further details on the Oracle message, to no avail. Something new was happening; something held fast and close by the High Khaldini and their allied clan saars. But what if the Emissary’s suspicions were just that—what if simple fear and famine drove the clans?

  Napu and ‘Nani crept closer to the digging, until they could watch from between two reed clumps without being seen.

  Surveyors had already vined off the perimeter of a long trench that began where ‘Nani said the two boulders had been. The great rocks had been levered aside, along with the maggot-ridden dragon carcass, which looked forlorn for the lack of attention paid to its rare hide. The trench ran forty cubits upwind of the dead dragon—a place Napalku now wished he could be. At its end, stood Nimurta, writing on a wet clay palm tablet—one of several like it, piled in his shadow to keep them from hardening too fast.

  He kept glancing into the trench, where Napalku saw part of the uncovered stone prism. Nimurta copied inscriptions that Napu was too far away to read. The dark giant furrowed his brow and pursed his lips, as if disturbed b
y what he read and wrote. Yet his eyes brightened at times, and his lips would curl for brief intervals into something like a knowing smile—until a worker went by; then Nimurta’s face reverted to its solemn frown.

  Napalku wasn’t sure why, but Nimurta’s brief smiles terrified him more than the Hunter’s darkest frown ever could—and Nimurta was not a man one wanted to cross, even if he was family!

  Suddenly, the Lugal of Uruk placed his clay tablet at his feet and called out, as if to his workers, or to the heavens, or to both. The workers gathered around him in the shade of the palm trees.

  The Lugal said, “I am Nimurta, and my name means cat-fish—as in fertilizer for the plough. My father’s sense of humor is always striking where we least suspect.” He smiled, and the others laughed.

  “One big cat-fish!” One of the workers shouted.

  Nimurta pointed to the worker, and laughed. “Just ask Rafu there, he knows his fish—and his fertilizer!”

  The others laughed louder.

  “Hereafter the name of Nimurta shall mean Lord who Completes the Foundation! For by the breath of El-N’Lil—the Divine Wind—I tell you that this is what we begin here today, men. This stone shall be raised, and have its shrine—someday even a ziggurat of baked brick—here at the mouth of the Abyssu. You all may ask me, ‘Nimurta, why?’ The answer is in the writing of the stone! It reveals that, here at this spot, in the days before the Deluge, stood the First City, where the glory of kingship first descended from the heavens: Eridu—Place of Origins. The Abyssu has lifted this stone up to guide us; for clearly, the Sun Ships do not return…”

  The Emissary from Arrata’s words became ice in Napalku’s chest.

  Nimurta continued. “The M’El-Ki entrusted me with the Haven before he departed on his quest to discover the dimensions of Ki—the width and breadth of the Earth. His purpose was to calculate for Umphalos—the place of the Earth’s Navel. I believe he did this in good faith. Yet the bitter throes of Tiamatu have likely crushed him. Better that he should have trusted the Divine Wind—El-N’Lil—to place us near the Earth’s Navel, than to squander decades on a fruitless quest, and waste the life of the Sun Ships, whose like we cannot replace. Yet we shall not reproach him…”

  Napalku muttered, “Except you just did!”

  Nimurta spread his hands out to heaven, as if to entreat some wiser, saner god who thought as he did. “Better to have looked first to building cities here and now, that we may regain the lost knowledge of old! Still, I say this not to criticize him—he did as his heart thought best, as must we all…”

  Napalku propped his elbow on a stone and groaned softly.

  “Yet, the sacred breath of El-N’Lil reveals to me now that the Abyssu has pushed up this stone to give us indisputable proof that the Earth’s Navel has been here all along! We can now build cities of industry, and rediscover our sacred birthright! We can now harness the rivers not only for farming, but to capture the very powers of heaven’s quickfire on earth!”

  The men cheered, while Napalku’s breath nearly left him.

  ‘Nani and Napu waited out the rest of the afternoon in the shrubs for the Lugal’s men to finish their day’s work. Finally, less than an hour before sunset, Nimurta and his surveyors packed up and returned to their boats.

  Napu watched him stow the clay tablets with extra care and cursed himself for not bringing his own.

  What scrawled abomination lay on the face of that obelisk?

  4

  The sun was half down before the last of the workers left their spades. There was no one nearby to steal them; thus no need to set a watch—or so the men must have thought.

  Napalku stood up, and worked the kinks out of his muscles. “Popo, can you please find if the workers have left any oil lamps, or perhaps make me a torch? I need to read what I can before all the light is gone.”

  “But we must leave too! They won’t be camped far!”

  “It can’t be helped. Besides, I’ll bet they’ve camped well out of that thing’s stench range.” Napalku jerked his head toward the rotting dragon.

  “It’s not just that!” Qe’Nani said. “That smell’ll bring in death-stalkers from the river come night!”

  “It’s been a week. Bigger carrion eaters have already had at it.”

  “There’s still plenty left!”

  “You keep watch for me, Popo. I need to work.”

  The Old Tracker grumbled under his breath, and started rummaging.

  Napu walked the length of the obelisk’s trench. Only the writing on one of its four faces was exposed. He had to pause before reading it because the irregular directional-flow of the elaborate hieroglyphs took a little time to master. It was still readable, however. A smaller section of the slab, near its base, had an odd syllabic-phonetic script; both types of writing being archaic dialect versions of forms he had learned as a Khaldi. He began with the hieroglyphs, to take in the broad connotations of the composition, working inward toward further detail.

  The language was richer and far more complex than Napalku’s, with strange terms for things no doubt lost to the simplified world after the Great Deluge. Both writings gave related accounts, the stylized ideographs evoking a narrative of universal primal archetypes and symbols that touched the intuitive and emotive part of his mind, while the semi-phonetic runes gave the same basic message in a more propositional form, designed to engage the intellect. The more he read; the more Napalku’s dread grew like a swell on the belly of Tiamatu’s brooding deep.

  “What’s wrong, Napu? You look like Under-world calls for you,” Popo ‘Nani said as he returned with a small oil lamp.

  “I need to memorize the exposed side of this obelisk—tonight!”

  “Why?”

  Napalku hesitated before answering, recalling the Emissary’s warning not to trust Popo. “If this prism says what I think it does, and Nimurta gets his etchings to the Ensi Council before I can get my recitation of it to the High Khaldini…” He stopped again.

  “Why Napu; what does it mean?”

  Napalku looked up at his Popo, and the words were out of his mouth before he could silence them: “The collapse of everything!”

  The name of Cush (originally rendered Chus in Josephus) is preserved in Egypt’s hieroglyphic inscriptions as Kush, these records referring to the country that lay between the second and third cataracts of the Nile. This same land was later known as Nubia… Some have claimed also that the name of Cush was likewise perpetuated in that of the Babylonian city of Kish, one of the earliest cities to be built after the Flood.

  — Bill Cooper, After the Flood

  citing Flavius Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews

  3

  M’Es-Ki-aj-Kush-Saar

  5

  Napalku’s sleep grew more troubled each night the pilgrimage caravan drew nearer the tents of Kush. He prayed that Yoqti and Mahm had gotten out of Uruk as planned, but that was not the worst of it.

  The tribes of Nimurta’s father spread in an arc across the Agadae Plains, between the western lakes, east, to where the two great rivers merged into a wide channel that fanned out southeastward toward the great mires and lakes of the Abyssu. The caravan had to cut through that arc to reach the sacred stronghold of Arrata, beyond the Mountains of Weeping Stone, in the Far North.

  Each sunrise rescued Napalku from the same nightmare as they skirted the delta region. The worst dream yet, since leaving Uruk, lingered in his eyes long after they had broken camp and mounted up. Not even the red-gold of the rising sun could burn it away. He only distantly noticed the Emissary’s spotted onager pull alongside his own with a snort. Strange faces and muttering voices still filled his head.

  S’Eduku-tal-ebab’s Envoy said, “Your face is gloomy, Napalku.”

  “I’ve had the same dream, Father El’Issaq.” Napalku turned to his companion, who had dispensed with the secretive cloak he had worn back at Uruk. A soft breeze rustled the Emissary’s silver-tinged gold hair.

  “An omen?” />
  “It takes on more detail each night—as dawn’s twilight gives way to light, revealing definition. Erev-boqaer, ‘evening and morning is day…’ four, I suppose. We’ve been on the road four days now, right?”

  “Five,” El’Issaq said. “Today will be a test of sorts. We pass through the tents of Kush. I came to Uruk by way of Elammi, over the Mountains of the Rising Sun, and across the marshes, so I have not passed this way since the Sun Ships departed. I don’t think Kush feels his power has consolidated enough yet to dare hinder us—his Ensi Council majority has soft spots. Assur has his own imperial ambitions on the Northern Plains. Still, much may have happened in the months I’ve been traveling.”

  Napalku brushed thick, tightly curled hair from his sweaty forehead with a dark brown hand, and said, “Like what?”

  “Many chieftains are calling for ‘change’ without really considering what that could mean. Perhaps you’d better tell me this dream of yours.”

  Napalku hesitated. “No offense, but you are not Khaldini. Few even among us these days can do much more than offer cryptic interpretations that could mean almost anything. Safer that way, I suppose.”

  El’Issaq laughed. “And useless too! I may not be Khaldini, young pup, but I trained at the feet of the M’El-Ki just as Nimurta and your father did. The M’El-Ki told me once that interpretations do not belong to the Khaldini, but to El-N’Lil—the Divine Wind of E’Yahavah. The Khaldini are appointed caretakers—or so he said.”

  “Forgive me. In Uruk, I am not often around those with such respect for the Order. The people there have a way of turning even the highest hymn into a drinking song—often without even meaning to.”

  “Your young wife—Lomina, isn’t it? Beautiful girl. It’s good you brought her along, and that you made other arrangements for your brother and mother—they might have drawn too much attention. Lady Lomina spoke to me this morning, before we mounted up. She’s worried for you, Napalku. She told me she heard you weeping and tossing in your sleep.”