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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  Arrafu discarded his normally quiet voice for a flustered outburst, “You certainly had no problem ‘shutting down discussion’ with Kush!”

  “Kush has engineered the systematic silencing of views opposed to his own for a long time, as you know quite well! I’m talking about academic questions and conclusions, not political and prophetic necessities…”

  “I oppose Kush too! It’s just that most of Kush’s followers were Academy trained, or educated by those who were. They’re certainly drawing ‘their own conclusions’ from all their lurid questions now, aren’t they, Grandfather; all the wrong ones!”

  A’Nu-Ahki’s ancient eyes narrowed to precision-honed slits. “In a vacuum that we created by indoctrinating rather than educating them! In such a vacuum, the Eridu Stone cannot seem like anything else except a counter-history—a false ‘truth’ exposing our alleged ‘cover-up’—or did that not occur to you? Your father and I agreed that settlers needed streamlined, easier-reading history texts; not that detailed historical analysis was unhealthy for Academy sages, and teachers of the Khaldini! Imagine my shock when I arrived here from my vineyard to discover the history curricula assembled by your father and I all but discontinued!”

  Arrafu shouted, “I ordered it because the young need to be protected from false ideas! They were showing too much curiosity about the wrong kinds of things! There was no need for them to know about the Watchers any more than the bare minimum!”

  “Those histories deal with more than just Watchers! Hiding things only makes people more curious! Protect small children, yes—but if we are still ‘protecting’ them at Academy age, then we are crippling them! Watcher-bred deceptions consume the very Ensi Council itself because we reduced our history instead of providing perspective! You’ve had a generation. Tell me how that happened in your carefully censored learning environment!”

  Lord Arrafu hung his head. “We needed to keep them pure!”

  “Well, my boy, you’ve done a marvelous job! Our ‘pure’ children are now building a ziggurat to call down the Watchers on us again! Only they have a different concept of ‘purity’ than we do—one they intend to execute against us by any means they deem necessary!”

  23

  Back on the river, many months after Nimurta had carted them off, the Blackness still caressed T’Qinna’s heart with its mocking, moldy fingers, as she gazed up again at her ridiculous grandson—Arrafu’s firstborn.

  Qe’Nani stood on a platform inside the bows, an obsequious little toad, arrayed in his father’s abdicated cloak as First Lord of the Khaldini. He brandished a divining rod with his eyes closed, “searching the spirit world, his mind a chord vibrated by El-N’Lil”—at least according to Nimurta—for “the sites of lost cities from the World-that-Was,” so that “all things could be restored.” Qe’Nani had already “discovered” the locations of “Larak” east of Kush, and “Bad-Tibira” to the south, the same way. Construction had since begun in both places. Hazy smoke from the belching brick kilns of Bad-Tibira shrouded the southern horizon.

  Qe’Nani and Nimurta now hoped to “find” Surupag on a convenient stretch of the main Ufratsi River, southward of Kush, toward Bad-Tibira and Uruk. At least they wanted to put on a grand show of finding it, judging by the musicians and incense blaring and stinking from the ceremonial boats on either side. Everyone seemed festive at the prospect of restoring the Zhui’Sudra, “may his days be prolonged,” to kingship over the buried city of his youth—everyone except the Zhui’Sudra. A’Nu-Ahki had said nothing since Nimurta had hauled him away from Arrata in one of those luxurious “wagons of honor.”

  T’Qinna knew it would be pointless to mention that the real Bab’Tubila had been far to the north of Surupag, in the World-that-Was, not south of it. Nimurta cared nothing for truth, and Qe’Nani would simply find the facts confusing. Besides, Nimurta had made the situation painfully clear when he had told her before leaving Arrata, “The man who controls the present controls the past; and whoever controls the past shapes the future. I intend to carefully guide how young people see the past from here on out.”

  As for Qe’Nani, T’Qinna had only one good thing to say for her eldest grandson. He was her sole reason for believing that Napalku had escaped, rather than been spirited away by Nimurta, and secretly murdered behind some lonely hill. After the Council’s shameful vote to give Kush and Nimurta “emergency powers,” Qe’Nani had sought her out to see if she knew of Napalku’s whereabouts.

  “I’m really worried for him,” Qe’Nani had told her in the Academy Library with eyes that, on this matter it seemed, did not lie. “I know Nimurta din’t take him because he’s got search parties out looking for him. He’s concerned for Napu too, you know.”

  T’Qinna had said, “I’m sure he is. Can’t have word getting out to Lord Iyapeti of the Ensi Council’s subversion, and of the spiriting away of our governing documents. He can still muster an army and march south before Kush, Nimurta, and Assur can meet him on their own terms. Can’t have that now, can we?”

  Qe’Nani had looked down, “But it’s not like that. Nimurta promised he’d never hurt his own grandson…”

  “And you believe him? Is that stupid robe he makes you wear that important to you?”

  “Aw now, don’t be like that, Gran-Mahmi…”

  T’Qinna had lost it. She had grabbed his spindly body by the offending garment, and shoved him against the scroll rack with a force that startled them both. “Don’t you ever call me that again!”

  Qe’Nani’s bewildered eyes had flooded with tears. “But, Gra…”

  T’Qinna had released him and stepped back, raising her finger to his face to distract him from seeing that her other hand slipped beneath her wrap for the dagger she had kept strapped to her thigh since the days of her youth. “Just don’t, Qe’Nani!”

  Fortunately, Qe’Nani had scurried away after that.

  The river lapped against the boat, and T’Qinna wondered for the first time why she had kept that knife—left for her by her unknown father so long ago—secreted there even after the end of the world of her youth. It somehow disturbed her now that she had done so, even after her husband had become the instrument to shape the new world. U’Sumi had always smiled at the thing, which she would take off only when they made love—but he had never questioned her about it, nor told her to get rid of it. Perhaps he knew somehow that I would have need of it again.

  At least T’Qinna could use the information Qe’Nani had unwittingly volunteered to comfort poor Lomina convincingly that her husband would return for her someday. That made her glad she had not killed the little toad. That, and the carnival Kush and Nimurta would have had putting her to death under the terms of the stolen Tablets of Destiny.

  She felt a gentle elbow to her side.

  Tiva had elected to accept the “honor” of captivity in a false Surupag rather than remain at Arrata with her children, in a city named after what she had called “her dismal failure of a marriage.” T’Qinna noted that her sister-in-law now slept better at least, and that her eyes had brightened.

  Tiva said, “Look, our ‘spiritual shepherd’ is having a vision.”

  T’Qinna glared up again at Qe’Nani, who had started swaying back and forth and humming like an out-of-tune lyre. His divining stick jerked this way, then that, until he swung it around, and leveled it at a stand of trees on the right-hand bank.

  Nimurta stood in the lead boat and shouted, “Make for shore!” He swept his arm imperiously in the general direction of Qe’Nani’s rod. “The breath of El-N’Lil has moved his sacred Khaldi weathervane!”

  Tiva gave a dismissive wave at Nimurta. “I shouldn’t have sat in the middle. Now I can’t vomit over the side.”

  Lomina, on Tiva’s far side, stifled a laugh that she quickly disguised as a cough. T’Qinna didn’t bother. She giggled loudly enough for all three of them, and even pointed at Qe’Nani just so nobody would misunderstand her sarcasm as the “joyous homecoming” that existed in Nimurta’s im
agination.

  The message was not lost either—Nimurta scowled at her with his arms folded defiantly as his boat passed.

  Tiva said, “How could we have spawned such grandsons?”

  T’Qinna sighed. “How could we not have, given where we came from? Pahpi Nu was right to be despondent that one time. I could use a stiff belt of date liquor myself right about now.”

  Pahpi Nu did not budge on the next bench, if he heard her.

  “Don’t talk like that, T’Qinna. The middle has to hold together, and right now, like it or not, you are holding the center firm—at least until U’Sumi returns or Iyapeti marches south with an army. I’m not sure I can do it if you fold. So don’t talk like that, please.”

  “You’re right, Tiva, I’m sorry.” She looked beyond Tiva to Lomina. “Don’t listen to me, Lomina, I’m speaking foolishly.”

  Lomina smiled, the white of her teeth shining against her dark face like a purifying light against the gray air. “Don’t feel bad Mother T’Qinna,” Napalku’s wife cocked her head at Qe’Nani, then Nimurta, “Foolishness has set in like the swamp fog. Even the wise can’t help breathing.”

  T’Qinna tightened her jaw to quash tears. “You’re a kind daughter.”

  The boats put to shore on a sandy strand below a line of palm trees. Qe’Nani, apparently unused to comporting himself with the dignity of a Khaldi lord, leaped into the mud and scrambled up the low bluff like some old lizard frightened from its sunning rock. He seemed to remember what he was about just before he reached the foliage, and brought his divining rod up to lead him into the trees. The women laughed when he tripped after trying to “divine” with his eyes closed, as he had on the boat.

  It struck T’Qinna how the dividing line between laughter and tears was often so thin.

  Nimurta held up his arms to keep the disembarking retinue from following Qe’Nani into the foliage. Inana sidled up to his right-hand side, so that when his arms fell, his right one fell into place around her shoulders.

  Tiva cocked her head at them. “They don’t even bother to hide their adultery anymore. He doesn’t care if his wife finds out!”

  T’Qinna withered at the sight—pendulum swing from laughter to tears again. “Inana was my brightest and best student, just as Nimurta was my husband’s. How have I gone so suddenly blind? I used to be able to sense even the slightest nuance of deception! E’Yahavah always guided me. I ask for his wisdom every day. Did I grow complacent somehow?”

  “No. Not you.” Tiva gently rubbed T’Qinna’s arm.

  “Then what happened? How did I not notice it! Look at her! She’s painted up worse than any Temple priestess ever was!”

  “Don’t let them do this to you. Anyone can be deceived.”

  T’Qinna shook it off. “Guess my pride’s hurt, is all.”

  Tiva snorted. “Nah. What I don’t understand is how Inana gets her hair to stand up in those ridiculous tiers, like a ziggurat.”

  Lomina added, “Or how she’s managed to keep it that way for so many days in the boats. It’s unnatural.”

  T’Qinna grinned. “Dried ox dung—has to be—it’s why she also smells pickled in a perfumer’s pot, to cover the stench.”

  Lomina and Tiva shrieked with laughter.

  Nimurta tore himself away from Inana, his dark face a glowering furnace as he approached. “Mother T’Qinna, you disgrace yourself…”

  The mighty En’Mer-Kar clearly did not expect the loud slap T’Qinna laid across his face.

  “You don’t use my given name, ever! Don’t you dare lecture me about disgrace! Not in the middle of this farce!”

  The onlookers murmured—a sound like the buzzing of a vacillating fly swarm around the alleged dried dung cakes setting Inana’s towering hair.

  Nimurta rubbed his cheek. “I’m sorry you feel that restoring the Zhui’Sudra to his ancient throne is a farce, however…”

  T’Qinna swung to slap his other cheek, but this time Nimurta grabbed her wrist, wrenched her off her feet, and threw her to the ground.

  Craaack!

  A’Nu-Ahki’s staff broke across the back of Nimurta’s head.

  The Lugal’s honor guard took several seconds to shake themselves free of their shock before they grabbed the father of them all, and held his arms behind him like a common criminal.

  Nimurta fell to his knees, eyes wide, but recovered his balance before he went down all the way to his face. The staff was nearly as ancient as the man who carried it. Neither could boast their former strength.

  Inana ran to her fallen hero, and helped him back to his feet.

  Tiva and Loma helped T’Qinna back to hers.

  Nimurta shook Inana’s fawning hands away, and growled for his guards to mark the place with scarlet pennants, and to get the prisoners—and he used the word prisoners—back into the boats.

  When T’Qinna would return to that bank a year later, a tiny, newly built palace of baked brick would greet her, complete with a modest shrine to El-N’Lil, and space for a tent community.

  They too would be a farce.

  For the time being, however, the boat ride back to Kush was blissfully quiet for the prisoners.

  24

  Back in Kush, in a hidden chamber under his father’s modest palace, Saeba gloated over his prisoner.

  The fearsome new giant onager-like mounts that Magog had tamed on the steppes around the great northern inland Sea of Me’At had run down the riders of El’Issaq long before he could reach his clan among the tribes of Iavanni. Magog, or as Saeba called him, “The White Stag of the North,” had taken El’Issaq south, to Kush, thereby delivering him to Saeba’s loving care.

  The “White Stag” stood inside the secret entrance to the dark little chamber, serene hashish-clouded eyes reflecting the dancing torchlight. “I grow restless. Why is your father so concerned with information about this young Khaldi? I could have dispatched this one with the others, and made it look like the wolves had at them.”

  The prisoner remained silent.

  Saeba’s head suddenly hurt. “I’m with you, ‘Gog. But my father wants to find the ‘Littlest Khaldi,’ and he thinks this one has information.”

  Magog replied, “But what fakes these Khaldis, odd—angers us.”

  It sounded briefly like a swarm of bugs had landed in Saeba’s ears and started to munch on his eardrum. Then the noise passed. “They anger me too, and odd is too nice a word for them!”

  Magog cocked his huge gold-bearded head to one side and crinkled his pale brows. “Yes, most odd, and maddening, too. But what I wanted to know is what makes this little Khaldi so dangerous?”

  “My father don’t say. He just says to soften the prisoner before he comes to question him.”

  Saeba swung full onto El’Issaq’s face, which already had two black eyes, a bleeding nose, and a swollen lip.

  “Enough!” The hatch over the stairs behind them closed.

  Kush squeezed past Magog into the small interrogation chamber and stood before the prisoner. He said to Saeba, “His jaw better not be broken.”

  The nibbling noise filled Saeba’s ears again, and then seemed to burrow deeper, into some yawning inner space within his head, where it faded, but never quite went away. He rubbed inside both ears vigorously with his fingers until the munching diminished to a manageable level.

  Kush smacked his son on the back of the head. “Wake up!”

  Saeba and humiliation were old friends, but only that form of humiliation that came at the hands of his father. “I think a bug flew in my ear. Sorry. No, I din’t break his jaws.”

  Kush asked the prisoner, “Can you speak?”

  El’Issaq nodded.

  “Good. Now tell me about your relationship with the Khaldi, Napalku son of Haviri.”

  The prisoner spat out some blood. “Not much to tell. I gave him a message from his grandfather, Usalaq, and we became friends during the pilgrimage. He’s more fixated on his pretty new wife than anything else.”

  Saeba watched
as his father seemed to accept this with a congenial nod. He’s lying, he thought. My father is a fool if he doesn’t see it!

  Kush said, “His young wife is a nice piece of lovely. Don’t know what she sees in a pudgy little turd like Napalku. Then, it’s doubtless a parentally arranged marriage—the Khaldini are meticulous about such things. Of course, the boy’s father is lost on one of the Sun Ships, so this may be an exception. Did the boy ever talk about his wife?”

  What’s that got to do with anything? Saeba clenched his teeth as the nibbling bugs in his head screeched louder.

  El’Issaq seemed to relax just a bit. “They’re happy together. But I never became familiar enough with either of them to know more than that.”

  The cricket-munching in Saeba’s mind shifted to something more like the sound of Magog’s army of giant onagers—horses, I think he called them. Saeba’s hand went up to rub his forehead, terror growing that his father would begin to notice his discomfort.

  Kush scratched his woolly hair. “What did you talk about?”

  The prisoner glared at him. “The Ensi Council unwisely gave you and Nimurta emergency powers without defining them, Kush. Even without such definition, it is clear that the Council’s intent was that those powers apply only to the emergency at hand. How does any of this help find the marauders who stole the Divine M’Ae? By what right has your henchman, Magog, murdered my escorts and falsely imprisoned me?”

  Kush gave a friendly chuckle. “I define the powers and the level of emergency—since the Council has clearly trusted my judgment. I have reason to believe that the Khaldi in question conspired with the Imdugud.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  Kush belly laughed. “That it may well be, but I feel it needs to be explored anyway—emergency powers and all that.”

  Saeba felt as though the Nibblers were eating their way into his brain now; that soon he would drop to the stone floor and crack his skull open. Then a swarm of fattened, white-wooly-haired termite-things would squeeze out of his broken head like chattering bug-devils—belching, maniacal little Kushes, as they began to devour the mountain of his corpse.