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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  Iyapeti’s eyes flared. “Nimurta is a liar. He can’t do any such thing and hope to remain in control. These Amurru, can they really be trusted?”

  “They’ve dealt truly with me, and respect the Divine Name as best as they understand things. You should tell them about freeing the Khittai.”

  “I will. I also have a job for them. They are too few to muster much of a war band, but they are nomads who can convey messages between us.”

  “They hope to settle down.”

  Iyapeti nodded. “They shall, eventually. But first we need at least some of them to continue wandering.”

  “I think Amur will agree to that.”

  “It would perhaps be better that you return secretly to keep watch by the Abyssu—on some marsh island abreast the main channel into Uruk.”

  Palqui said. “With respect, Exalted Father, I fear greatly that I won’t have that luxury. We should seek wisdom and direction from E’Yahavah. There’s seer’s work ahead.”

  31

  Late afternoon sunshine over Uruk’s growing skyline colored things orange, especially through the smoky haze of the perpetually belching brick kilns. Vast, counter-weighted lever engines hoisted pallets of the fresh-baked building material like feeding behemoths uprooting trees in the mist.

  The light shining across the Kulaba hill into the porticos of the lavish “House of Heaven” seemed unreal somehow, animated by that extra aura of color reserved only for the sight of men and women undergoing the gradual transformation into deity. The Change seemed to embrace some, but skip over others. Those undergoing it experienced life more intensely now. Magnificent ecstasies easily swept them up over the simplest things—as did thunderous rages.

  Inana sighed with boredom as she turned from the west window to watch her least favorite idiot priest begin the new ritual she had taught to her other idiot priests from the last time the visions had come upon her. The other idiot priests gave her far more delight than this dried-up old fig. Ninurta said she must humor him however, to “keep the earth cycles balanced” or some other such incantation-laden gush of words.

  It mattered not. Nothing did. All she knew was that the visions and dreams were getting more intense. That could only mean she was nearer to becoming a goddess—to becoming the Goddess!

  Qe’Nani bowed before her, as if the bone of his skull went solid, all the way through his head. Maybe that’s why he seems so top-heavy. No, she thought, that’s not it at all—his eyes are just lifeless glass beads pressed into a man-sized figurine made out of pig meat. If I cracked his head open like an egg, nothing but smelly water would run out. She giggled at the image, trying to banish how unlike being Ninurta’s goddess-queen this all felt.

  “Sacred Inana, I, uh, I guess I’m your priest today.”

  How had it come to this?

  Her Sacred Marriage ritual suddenly seemed ludicrous. Yet the Holy Energy pulsed through her like quickfire anyway, as the walls of her “House of Heaven” melted around her, echoing her own dripping laughter. Drip, drip, I birth new reality with my fertility, growing my power, I, I, the bottomless I, I become my own mother, my own father, my own creator, I give birth to all life! I fill Under-world, the Abyssu, Ki, and the heavens—the cosmic cycles revolve around me, all exist for me!

  Qe’Nani’s vacant, smelly water-filled head blended into the gold filigree wall decorations in her sacred jipar chamber, which seemed to shift into moving bug faces formed by the patterned shapes scattered across the room. Inana heard them buzzing in her mind—a million wasps, with her as their mighty queen, forever being fertilized, forever laying cosmic eggs that hatched out little Ishtar-Inana-lilu-imps to fill the earth. Uzz, muzz, buzz, cuzz, cuz I can, because I can, I control Ninurta! Ninurta controls the world!

  The bug patterns made by the spaces between the golden lines on the chamber walls approached her, lifting her freeze-locked body onto their jeweled abdomens. They somehow carried her in pieces down their insect holes, down, down, ever down, crawling all over her like hungry slaves, until all she could hear was their endless chatter, which sounded like both clacking sticks and drunken laughter. The laughter faded to a steady drip, drip of cave water as the chamber grew dark from the setting sun—only it was not her jipar chamber anymore; and there was no sun.

  Inana found herself lying in a vast subterranean vault, on the shores of a sea that stretched like the Abssu into the cave’s outer darkness. Faded distant rock arched over her, beneath which phosphorescent clouds formed nearly as far above her as the sky. The Absu pulsed energy through her arms and legs, part of the dim, illuminating glow. No more bugs, no more drunken laughter; which on reflection had sounded too much like that of her wretched old half-brother idiot-priest’s for Inana’s taste. She had awakened on the dim shore of her dream vision of the Absu’s deep.

  Only this vision felt real.

  A huge rock offshore caught the muted light that seemed to emanate from her, refracting it into a million shards of crystalline color. Qe’Nani had vanished—long ago—she somehow knew.

  Inana stood, and turned all the way around, to take in the view in every direction. The rock formations everywhere had pock-holes resembling millions of mouths filled with crooked teeth. It disturbed her that when she looked back at them, the teeth-filled holes would change shape—sometimes they even seemed to silently mouth lewd suggestions at her in the corners of her eyes. Despite the evil-looking holes, she somehow sensed sympathy here for her plight—especially against Ereshkigal, who still dwelt with their father at Surupag, able to keep on poisoning his mind against Inana.

  This, even after her father, no doubt at Ereshkigal’s nagging, broke his agreement with Ninurta, who had only allowed both of them to live at Inana’s request. Not that she ever expected any thanks for it or anything!

  Something splashed in the water behind her. She spun around and found that she was not alone.

  The mouth-filled rock offshore had just moved closer.

  The more the gods become like men, the easier it is for men to believe the gods. When both have only human appetites, then rogues may worship rogues.

  — C. Miller, The Song, 1977

  10

  Pandemonium

  32

  On the grasslands of the Hiddekhel River’s west bank, many day’s journey north of the mud-brick cities going up on the Agadae Plains, collectively known as Akkad, the lone tent settlement of Assur sat without a single brick dwelling. Stretching across the Plains of Assuria, roving tent towns—each headed by one of Assur’s sons—kept their herds and flocks as they had since the Zhui’Sudra had ordered them south to guard Kush. After their loyalties shifted, they had moved northward again to cover the most direct routes between Bab’Eluhar and Arrata, astride the southern mouths of the Canyons of Weeping Stone.

  The lack of baked brick ziggurats in his own settlement was not lost on Assur Saar, any more than was the constant pulsing of his headache. He waited patiently for the return of his massive labor force lent to Kush and Nimurta—patiently, for now, at least.

  His eldest sons, En’Tarah-ana and Kullasina, sat across from him, escaping the day’s heat in the tent, with the flaps open, to allow in the breeze off the river. A distant storm rumbled on the southern horizon.

  The jabber of his sons only added to Assur’s pounding headache, which all the date liquor in the world could not relax. He had called them to his tent to get word about the strange brain fever that had hit the tribes southward, toward the Agadae Plains. Somehow, the conversation had shifted to the unknown fate of the mysterious Khaldi novice that Kush wanted tracked down and eliminated. All Assur had learned about the sickness, up until now, was that several cases had hit his own encampment.

  Kullasina stuck his finger in his brother’s face, black braids around his squat head jerking with his wagging arm like angry snakes. “You mean to tell me that after two years of searching, your sons still have no idea where this Napalku has gotten to?”

  En’Tarah-ana did not flinc
h from his brother’s invasion of his personal space. “Perhaps he’s dead. Perhaps he does not trust me so much.”

  “See?” Kullasina barked at Assur, “I told you he was in league with the Khaldini! He probably found the runt, and whisked him off to Iyapeti!”

  En’Tarah-ana laughed. “Last I heard, the rebel Khaldini are all safely contained at Surupag; few that there are. You really should relax more, brother. There’s a lot of country to cover in Assuria, and in the Mountains of Weeping Stone. All our tribes together number less than ten thousand; mine among the smallest. I’d be surprised if this Napalku hadn’t lined the stomachs of some wolf pack or perhaps the last of the asag…”

  Assur rubbed his eyes as his bickering sons began to sound like a couple of Kush’s Khana’Anhu court clowns, painted with white mud and berry stain. Something about En’Tarah-ana’s game of befriending the young Khaldi still troubled him, but it had made sense enough at the time…

  Time…

  —enough that Assur had agreed to his son’s plan for discovering how strong a force the younger Khaldini might prove in opposing the new…

  The New Order…

  —triad of Kush, Assur, and Nimurta.

  The bickering clowns gibbered back and forth, though the En’Tarah-ana clown seemed the more self-contained of the two—which briefly struck Assur as funny, that a clown should be self-contained—but no matter. In fact, nothing mattered at all, because Assur was most of the way toward achieving personal deity—that was what mattered!

  The clan Saar edged his hand onto the haft of his bronze cudgel, and slowly tightened his grip.

  The Kullasina Clown jumped up and shook his fist at En’Tarah-ana, screaming some bit of clowny nonsense or another. En’Tarah-ana—the sad-faced clown—gazed at his brother with unreadable eyes, while his legs folded slowly from a reclined position, to where they could either push away quickly or unleash a kick against Kullasina’s knee caps. Assur thought this a remarkably good defensive posture for a clown.

  The wind changed direction from off of the river, to out of the south. At the sudden gust, Assur sprang to a squat, and swung his mace down onto the table-board between his two sons, splitting the plank.

  “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up, you neighing clowns! Take your prattle elsewhere, and let my deified person rest!”

  Both clown-sons stood and bowed, eyes wide, while they backed away from Assur as if he were an enraged serpent.

  “Good. Maybe now I can think,” Assur mumbled, and tossed back his goblet of date liquor.

  He felt hot and feverish as he stared off into space, until the sun lowered in the west. A fine halo of enhanced color rested on everything he saw—no product of the drink, which tended to relax him when it worked properly. This extra dose of color actually stimulated Assur to a greater alertness. Nor was it the sun—not unless it shone green when it went down.

  The headache melted away as he noticed his wife’s tapestry hangings in his tent, seemingly for the first time. The colors pulsed with power; intricate patterns of their weave shifted and reversed to form angular laughing faces that grimaced and jeered against the sunset shadows.

  A flock of sea birds flew up from the south, their cackle lending sound to the illusion that now took on just a little too much life for comfort. The Power seized Assur like a winged lion, racing like fire through his body, while voices in the wind, and faces amid the tapestry patterns, grew clearer and darker. The Purple Eye from his worst nightmares leered at him from out of the shadows, while the gibbering of clowns became a murderous rant of commanding voices that the raggedy corpse of Assur’s self-control could no longer restrain in its rotting hand.

  The gods had arrived to welcome Assur among their number, only it was not quite how he had envisioned it. Instead of joining the Igigi Watchers and the Anunnaki in triumph, it only hastened the unraveling of Assur that Asshur himself had long ago begun without them. A screech of full-blown madness broke through his lips, finally released from the last remaining wall of that crumbling prison of his sanity.

  33

  Saeba had regained much of his composure over the last few weeks—again. He stood next to his father, behind Nimurta, atop the second level of the Gate of the Gods, which would soon mystically connect the Ten Heavens with the Earth and Under-world. He even smiled up at his baby brother, who had taken his spot—the firstborn’s spot—in his father’s affections and plans for the future. The smile threatened to crack Saeba’s bloated face, but he smiled it anyway because Nimurta had the gift, and Nimurta had the charm, and Nimurta could make people do what he said without threatening to crush their heads with a mace.

  Or so Kush had told Saeba three weeks ago, which was partly, if not wholly, why Saeba’s composure had returned—well, mostly returned.

  Nimurta stepped toward the stairway, the blue-glazed brick upper walls of which would magnify his voice. People gathered below, where the steps extended outward into the court pavement. It was already almost evening, and heavy clouds suggested the weather might not hold.

  Kush leaned over to Saeba and said, “The crowd is small. It’s that brain fever. Kengu has nearly a third of his work force down with it now.”

  Saeba didn’t know whether to be gratified or frightened by his father confiding that to him. “It will depart, leaving the strong. Sickness always does, does it not?”

  Kush glared at him. “They say the symptoms are visions of madness with garbled speech. Sounds familiar, does it not?”

  Saeba’s sweat broke from his bald head like a million seething worms through his pores. “But I got better, Pahpo, see? I’m better now.”

  Kush slapped the back of his son’s head and then wiped a handful of sweat off onto Saeba’s coat of sleeves with a disgusted sneer. “I haven’t decided yet if you’re better.”

  “But maybe?”

  Kush smiled that smile that never met his huge watery eyes.

  “So that means maybe, right?”

  “Shut up, you enormous embarrassment, and listen to your baby brother’s speech.”

  Saeba was more relieved that the conversation had ended than humiliated or angry—though he was plenty enough of both.

  Nimurta had waited long enough for more people to gather around the lower stairs. It now seemed that would not happen. He stepped out onto the top landing and shouted, “I am Ninurta!”

  As the diminished crowd below applauded, Saeba wondered why Nimurta had just said his own name wrong—in fact, for some time, Saeba had noticed many people saying things wrong. At first, he thought that he had just heard things wrong, then that the people were mocking him, but when it kept on happening for no reason—not even mockery—he began to wonder. Then a terrible thought began to slowly peel his brain like an over-ripe mes-fruit; what if I’m getting bad again—what if the Nibblers are coming back again with that sound, and those horrible waking dreams?

  Nimurta began his speech once the undersized crowd died down to a murmur: “This stairway-gate of the gods is the Mountain of the great Divine M’Ae! On the mountain of this M’Ae will the stolen M’Ae restored be!”

  The small crowd cheered with a disproportionately loud clamor.

  Saeba’s sweat began to run down his face as his huge stomach churned. He wiped his forehead. The moisture came off his hand in a wet sheet, which he shook onto the platform’s brick pavement. When he looked up, he saw a lone figure approaching the small crowd from its rear, across the wide court between the ziggurat and the Ufratsi River quay. It seemed as if the clouds had broken, sending a shaft of light onto the man, when he reached the back of the audience. But when Saeba looked up, he saw no break in the darkening overcast. The man wove a path amid the listeners.

  Nimurta continued his speech until the light-infused man reached the base of the stairway ramp. Kush’s eldest son wondered why Nimurta’s bodyguards did not stop the fellow. A creeping dread began to unfold his mind, when even Nimurta’s speech faltered.

  The man in light climbed the steps. Whe
n he reached the landing just below Nimurta, he spoke something loud and terrible. Saeba never heard the words, because his fever burst in on him as hot, pressurized fluid from Under-world’s bottomless sea.

  The Nibblers raced up from inner darkness, swarming over him like lightning ants; hungrier than ever; eating, eating, then excreting his mind; chewing fatty gobs of his personality, and what passed for intellect in his cruel, peeled-nerve psyche, like sweet-meats of the soul. They digested Saeba’s inner man, morsel by morsel, in a garbled, head-exploding roar, squeezing out bits and pieces of a new self, who did not grasp the disjointed memories of the man who would no longer know himself as Saeba.

  Nevertheless, he was Saeba; hardened into the dismal character he had mixed for himself like lumpy kapar cement, chopped-up, absorbed, and then regurgitated into a foreign field of reshuffled memory associations and thought-forms—his old life rendered into disjointed, dreamlike bits of half-digested images, suspended in the vast dung trail of the seething Nibblers.

  34

  The Treasure Cave of Arrata reeked with a new smell. No animal spoor or dead cave rat, this stench had a sickly sweet, nauseating quality that none of the cowering acolytes in that inner chamber would ever forget, though each would try to for the remainder of their days.

  P’Tah-Tahut cut the skinless body of the youngest initiate into the Ancient Mysteries down from the manacles his men had embedded in the rock wall. It flopped to the floor in a wet heap. Doubtless, the stains would remain for some time.

  “Who shall be my next volunteer? Are any of you now willing to tell me the whereabouts of Usalaq?”

  One of them whimpered like a baby.

  The senior-most acolyte bawled, “Please, We’ve already told you that Usalaq left us a week before you arrived. He sometimes visits friends among a small sub-clan of the Ghimmuraya, who live on the eastern shore of the Sea of Me’At. He told us he would return to us before next summer! That’s all we know!”