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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  “She speaks too freely, sometimes.”

  “Perhaps; but only for love of her husband.”

  Napalku groaned. Why fight it? “In the dream I saw a great shadow from Agadae to the Sumar, stretching north, east, then west, falling like a hunter’s net. The people scattered, and the earth shook. Mountains shot up toward heaven, while gulfs of angry waters cut across the lands to divide brother from brother. It was terrifying and felt real, as if I were awake!

  “Then I saw a man shaped like a fish rise from the Southern Ocean, and pass through the Abyssu mires, into the Sumar. He swam the channels and walked the river plains, but they had all become a desolation of ruined mud brick cities, many more than we’ve yet built.

  “Men scurried amid the crumbling walls like frightened beasts. Naked in the muddy rain, feral children mumbled and shrieked like demon-crazed lunatics, as they ran from the Fish-man’s approach. Then the Fish-man stood before a large mound encased in oven-baked brick—like one of the ziggurat towers that men built in the Olden World. He threw up his hands at the mound, and shouted a single word, ‘Palqui!’

  “Thunder struck, the sky darkened, and a falling star streaked across the sky, north to south, to strike in the Great Southern Ocean. The unfinished ziggurat partly crumbled before a breaking wave of Tiamatu, which carved up the rivers again. Mud, and then the wind-blown sands of a consuming desert, covered its ruin as the rivers shifted, to leave its tomb forgotten and alone. The naked children fled from the memory of the Ziggurat to the remote places of the earth. But they could not escape its shadow, hidden in the tormented darkness of their dreams. For wherever they went, the Tower followed, and multiplied itself by the works of their own minds and hands.

  “At first, each new Tower promised prosperity and wisdom. But in the end, directly or indirectly, literally or spiritually, the Spirit of the Ziggurat demanded the people sacrifice their children as payment for their present prosperity. Then came more ruins.”

  El’Issaq inclined his head, as if he had just remembered something. “Palqui is an ancient word. It means division, but not in the usual sense.”

  “How then?”

  El’Issaq stared off past the trail ahead, as if looking back through time, past the chaotic veil of waters that had shaped their whole world, and destroyed nearly all traces of another.

  “It means to violently cut gulfs that make fragments of what was once a whole, as river floods divide and reshape the delta islands—as in your dream—or when the waters divided the World-that-Was from the World-that-Is. It was used in early versions of the Sacred Histories to describe how our first parents were divided from E’Yahavah, and then from each other, after they had sinned by the Sacred Trees. It is said that the Isle of the Dead in the Olden World was divided by carving waters on either side. Palqui is a form of division that can rarely be reunited—at least not without leaving deep scars in the earth without, and on the heart within.”

  “That’s a deep shadow for one old word.”

  El’Issaq nodded. “It came to be used only for extremes—yet not always without hope. Either way, it may be what confronts us all.” He looked up, and pointed ahead of them.

  The caravan had just rounded a bend in the River Road, which freed their line-of-sight from the dense riverside foliage. Across the Ufratsi River northeastward, stretching along its entire opposite bank, sat a great earthen ramp. A gigantic line of brick kilns on the waterfront smoked so thickly as to blot out the morning sun. The song of several thousand workers echoed across the water in a chant:

  Go to! Build up! Stairwell to connect the worlds

  From Abyssu Deep at Earth’s Navel—up we go! Up we go!

  City and Temple to call the sky!

  Heaven’s Gate so that men may fly!

  On phoenix wings to make us a name!

  That we be no more scattered in shame!

  By wasteful quests to earth’s far ends!

  Go to! Dance the clay thick!

  Go to! Add in the straw!

  Go to! Burn the bricks!

  Go to! No more wasted magical ships!

  Napalku saw a square-hulled ferry launch out from the other side, with a lone figure standing on its prow, above the oarsmen.

  “How could he have gotten here ahead of us? We left Uruk before he even returned from his precious Eridu!”

  El’Issaq shrugged. “Nimurta must have ridden hard across the western grasslands night and day.”

  Napalku said, “But how is that possible? His mount, at least, would have needed rest!”

  “In the olden world, when they used to fight vast wars, it was common for armies to have prearranged outposts with fresh beasts and fodder to support a system of rapid riders.”

  The blood drained from Napalku’s face. “Are Kush and Nimurta preparing for war?”

  El’Issaq turned his onager down toward the ferry landing. “It seems we are about to find out.”

  6

  Much had changed on the Agadae Plains since Napalku had last made the Seventh-Year Pilgrimage north. After the ferry took the caravan across the Great River, Nimurta and his guards escorted them past the foundations of a vast ziggurat mound, which already neared the completion of its first level. Around it, a half-built city centre of kilned brick, mortared with kapar cement made from the bituminous slime so plentiful in the pits up and down the region, stood as unformed future sentinels of change.

  Nimurta explained to El’Issaq and Napalku as they rode past the embankment, “My Father and I call it Bab’Eluhar—The Gate of God. The outer metropolis combines with that of Kish, to make up Greater Akkad. I plan to build an even larger version of it in the south. We feel that the peoples of the Agadae and Sumar require heavenly stairways closer to home—a sense that the Bearers of the Divine Name can ascend and descend between the heavens and Earth as easily here as in the Mountains of Arrata.”

  El’Issaq said, “You intend then to forsake the Ancients?”

  Nimurta chuckled as he led them onto a road roughly eastward. “Not at all; it’s just that soon our numbers will be too great to trample down the mountains with pilgrimages. Arrata cannot contain us. The sacred center must shift south if we are to sustain cities with industries capable of mastering the cosmic powers known to the Ancients. Today, that knowledge wastes away uselessly on crumbling scrolls inside the Treasure Cave.”

  El’Issaq said, “What are you suggesting?”

  “That the Divine delegation of sacred authority to Man, the M’Ae, was not intended to cause stagnation, division, or to waste our most precious resource—knowledge from the Elder World! Nor is the written instrument of the M’Ae—the ‘Tablets of Destiny,’ as some quaintly call them—a sufficient foundation for civilization in a rapidly changing world if it does not change with the times. The Bab’Eluhar initiative has the support of many—even in the High Khaldini—because it is necessary.”

  A vague horror rose in Napalku’s chest. He agreed well enough with Nimurta’s urgency that specialized ancient knowledge not become lost—that was just common sense. It was also a growing concern among the Khaldini that they had found insufficient papyrus sedge reed since the Deluge, and that the seeds carried from the Elder Age on the Boat of a Million Years had gone to mold during the Wandering Years of the Great Cold.

  The Sacred Library was too big to copy entirely onto costly animal skins, much less could bulky clay or stone tablets contain it—not even ones using the most compact rune impressions. Although pounded copper sheets served for high legal documents, even copper was not so plentiful. Yet something darker squirmed below the surface of Nimurta’s words.

  Napalku recalled all too well the Great Hunter’s speech to the workers at Eridu. Surely, the Khaldini wouldn’t risk schism in the Order by hiding the truth! What of the Sun Ship oracle contact?

  The words were out before Napalku could consider them. “If the High Khaldini supports it, Father, why have I heard nothing of it until now?”

  Nimurta looked ahead at t
he road. “Ahh, my smooth-faced grandson speaks among men for the first time. It is heady day indeed! I was not aware that you were of sufficient rank in your order that we required your consent.”

  “Consent, no, but I am still the Appointed of Arrafu and Usalaq to Uruk-Haven. Should I not have at least been notified—since you mention an even larger project like this to go up in the south?”

  “This is not Arrata or Uruk-Haven. If you’ve had your little spiritual saardom stepped on, boy, take it up with your sacred elders, not with me.”

  El’Issaq said, “I’m not of the Khaldini, and I sit on the Council—a peer of your father, Nimurta. This has not been debated nor sanctioned!”

  Nimurta smiled. “The lakes beyond Urartu are distant. The tents of your father, Iavanni, are there, not here. Perhaps you should see to your own affairs—El’Issaq, is it? You can also reassure S’Eduku-tal-ebab that the Sun Ships will still be welcomed with all due courtesy—should any of them ever return. I’ve not forgotten my charge or my loyalty to the M’El-Ki.”

  Napalku and the Emissary of Arrata exchanged troubled glances.

  Nimurta shook his head as if gently scolding erring children. “The people want change. They hope for a settled and secure life. They tire of costly extended mapping expeditions to lands whose coastlines shift and reshape with each passing decade. Surely the Zaqenar do not expect to govern the world through a loose council of tribes indefinitely?”

  El’Issaq said, “They expect us to await the return of the M’El-Ki, who will distribute the lands—both near and far—by due process of the sacred M’Ae entrusted to him.”

  Nimurta tightened his grip on the reins of his onager. “Due process of the sacred M’Ae is what this is all about. Before we gallivant off to the four winds of heaven, we must be established here!” He galloped off ahead of the caravan before El’Issaq or Napalku could answer.

  After Nimurta was out of ear shot, El’Issaq said, “They want to steal the M’Ae—control the terms of the Pact by which Divine governance was delegated to men by E’Yahavah—and not for practicality’s sake, either.”

  “But how?” Napalku asked, “The Tablets of Destiny are etched on gold plates, secure in the Treasure Cave beneath Arrata’s Mound! Surely they don’t intend to take it by force.”

  “They don’t need to take it by force. All they need do is convince a little over half of the Khaldini and Ensi Council that its meaning is fluid and shifting, rather than foundational and fixed. Then they can make it say whatever they want. Palqui—the waters that divide!”

  Napalku shook his head. “How? The Tablets of Destiny are clear in what they say!”

  “Yes,” El’Issaq said. “But clarity alone does not prevent usurpers from dishonestly using what the Tablets do not say to make what they say seem like the opposite of what they have always meant.”

  7

  As the caravan descended to the bank of the Hiddekhel River, Napalku saw more changes. The vast tent city of Kush now sported a large administrative centre of baked brick shrines and houses for its elite, built on top of the modest structures of seven years ago. The largest of these new dwellings belonged to the High Saar of all the Agadae.

  M’Es-Ki-aj-Kush-Saar, father of Nimurta, met his son’s entourage and Napalku’s caravan, at the open end of his palace garden courtyard. With him stood Assur, who had defected from his father to align his sizable tribal bloc with that of Kush. Three of Assur’s prominent chieftains, Kullassina, Mazhda, and En’Tarah-ana, walked as curly-bearded guardian sphinxes to his right, left, and rear. They all followed Kush, joined by Kush’s eldest son, Saeba, into the compound.

  Compared to the size of palaces that had existed before the Deluge, which Napalku had only heard about, Kush’s was only a U-shaped collection of small, connected rooms. Nevertheless, it rivaled any of the Three Castles of Arrata—which was doubtless its builder’s intent. A central courtyard, with a covered open-air palisade at the head of the U, could seat a couple hundred men. Paid servants led Napalku and his fellow pilgrims onto cushions near Kush, Assur, and Saeba, while grubby Khana’Anhu slaves in tattered loincloths foddered their onagers.

  Kush had aged much since Napalku had last seen him—but not so much that his enormous frame stooped forward, as was the case with some men of his years. The High Saar’s white hair and bloated face shocked the senses, though his glassy eyes revealed a mind well able to calculate the fates of tribes, and that of one sacred tribute caravan.

  The old Saar sat in his over-sized seat at the head of the open-air veranda, where only the boat traffic on the second great river drifted past behind him. Rectangular house columns held up a costly timber awning to provide a luxuriant degree of shade.

  Assur sat to Kush’s right, on a seat almost as large. Although about the same age as Kush, Assur passed for a man much younger. Napalku found his dark, placid eyes disturbing—as if a dreamy, half-divine, half-demonic indifference had taken a human form capable of abiding inhuman slaughter and cruelty with total serenity of purpose.

  Nimurta reclined at Kush’s left hand, in a smaller, still spacious, ivory chair covered with leopard skins. Next to him, on a large floor cushion, which no one would confuse for a throne, sat his brother Saeba; Kush’s strongman and eldest son—a mountain of flab covering another mountain of muscle beneath skin darker than burnt umber. Napalku had heard once that Saeba had crushed a man to death under his own body for sleeping with one of his wives, and then bashed the wife’s head in with a pear-shaped mace—all after the pretense of a tribunal, of course.

  That had been after the departure of the M’El-Ki, who in older times had reviewed all capital crimes before sentencing. There had been many more executions since the Sun Ships departed; often carried out, ironically, by those who, before the M’El-Ki’s send-off, had called for abolishing the death penalty altogether. The same increase was true of tribal skirmishes—some barely kept from spiraling into full-scale multi-clan wars by the Ensi Council. Napalku had never fully made those connections until now. He had always avoided politics in favor of more spiritual pursuits.

  Kush spoke in a phlegm-rattled baritone, “Welcome, my children from the South…” he eyed El’Issaq, “and brother from the North. Do not be concerned that we shall delay you much on your pilgrimage. I thought it best to send with you an honor guard, since escaped Amurru and Huri slave gangs have been raiding caravans lately. Assur-Saar, Saeba, Nimurta, and I also wish to call a summit of the Ensi Council at the Treasure Cities. We too will escort your train—all for additional protection along dangerous roads.”

  Nimurta said, “I have another party from Uruk that shall arrive here some time tomorrow. They too can benefit from the safety of numbers.”

  Kush raised his arms in a gesture of hospitality that never quite met his huge watery eyes. “Then rest, feast, drink! We shall all depart together for Arrata on the day after tomorrow.”

  8

  Napalku left Lomina in the tent by Kush’s palace, and strolled down to the bank of Great Hiddekhel. Sunlight flashed, dancing fish of golden flame on the river’s surface, as lazy trading boats poled downstream to the Sumar marshlands. A pair of phoenix-birds circled overhead, distant omens of divine protection that felt just a little too distant for Napu’s preference.

  He heard a shuffle on the bank behind him and turned. The flickering sun glare off the water made dark spots in his eyes.

  Napalku said, “Who’s there?”

  A heavy hand rested on his shoulder, gently guiding his body until his eyes came free of the blinding shimmer. The tall silhouette of a cloaked man slowly took shape. At first, Napu thought it was El’Issaq—until he could see that the man’s beard and hair were curly and black.

  The figure spoke, “I am En’Tarah-ana, son of Assur by my father and of Kush by my mother. Are you the Khaldi, Napalku of Uruk, son of Haviri the Sun Ship Mariner?”

  “I am. How may I be of service?”

  En’Tarah-ana’s face came into focus, medium brown wi
th solemn dark eyes and severe hawkish nose. “It is I that wish to be of service to you.”

  Napalku’s mouth dropped. “Thank you, but how so?”

  “Your life is in danger.”

  Napu tried not to let the shock show on his face, and was certain he failed. “Why would anyone want to kill me?”

  “I think you know, but I will understand if you do not wish to be forthcoming with more information than is needed. I alone among the clan rulers of Assuri remain loyal to the Divine Name, E’Yahavah—at least as the M’El-Ki understood that Name and taught us in our youth. Madness overtakes our tribes—among our leaders—men consumed by vivid dreams and angry shadows. The shadows speak from horrors of the past.”

  Napalku shivered. “What do you mean?”

  En’Tarah-ana’s intense dark eyes narrowed. “Beware of Kush, Assur, and Saeba—possibly Nimurta too. Kush is a dark slick of jest and laughter, who would murder you as if it were merely a joke between friends. Assur dreams he is on the path to divinity—he doesn’t even bother to hide his blasphemy any more. Saeba—he is Kush, without the brains or the sense of humor. You know Nimurta better than I do. He, at least, was once close to the M’El-Ki, and as loyal to him as a son. Is that still so?”

  Napalku hesitated. Was En’Tarah-ana trying to draw him out into the open, so that Kush and Assur would have a pretext to arrest him? On the other hand, he and El’Issaq desperately needed allies. He wished El’Issaq were present. How do I read this man?

  “Thank you for your concern. We hear rumors at Uruk, little more. I try not to act on rumors. But I appreciate the advice.”

  “I speak only what I have seen with my own eyes. Be careful. Not all the Khaldini are to be trusted. Those of the Assurim have prostituted to Kush’s ‘New Vision,’ that the Deity should serve human interests, and not the other way around. I’m unsure how high up this corruption runs. We will talk again later—perhaps when the Emissary of S’Eduku-tal-ebab is with us. We hope you have the ear of your fathers, Napalku.”