The morning sky outside was still dark, heavy with storm clouds, although the rain, thunder, and lightning had ceased sometime in the wee hours before dawn. She rose, and crossed the chamber to where she had laid her looking glass—a remarkable hand-mirror of some unknown metal and crystal made in the World-that-Was, which she had taken from the reliquary of artifacts at Arrata. Fortunately, her face was free of bites. A sleeved robe hung by her sacristy, and the morning appeared chilly enough to warrant wearing it. She did her hair up off her face, and stepped outside.
The normal pre-dawn bustle of priestly activity was conspicuous by its absence. Inana turned into the central courtyard, only to find the fire pit cold, dark, and silent. The House of Heaven seemed still as an ornate tomb.
The shriek of some tormented old woman echoed up the Kulaba hill, as if someone had dipped her in boat tar, and put a flame to her.
Inana left the E’Anna in search of the source of the noise, not certain she really wanted to find it, but quite certain of her desire to shut it up. She did not need to look far.
Halfway down the street toward the boatyard, her wretched, oldest half-brother idiot-priest, Qe’Nani, sat in a mud puddle like a wrinkled baby. He wailed as if some horrendous monster stood ready to devour him.
Inana stooped over and belted him across the mouth. “Shut up, you filthy old imbecile!”
After four or five slaps, the last couple with nails flared, the idiot-priest collapsed into whimpers.
“What happened to everyone?”
Qe’Nani’s squeaky little mutter went, “Bib bibbu igigi mum mum mum igigi…”
Inana slapped his face again, this time raking his cheek with her nails so deeply that she drew running blood. “Quit sniveling, get up, and help me find out what’s happened to everyone!”
His eyes widened as he began to shriek again at the top of his lungs.
Inana finally left him to his noisy mud bath, and continued down the low hill to Uruk’s boatyard. When she reached the fishermen’s’ tent village at the bottom, she noticed a couple families huddled by their shaggy, goatskin hovels. Their eyes watched her as if she were some dreadful supernatural being they hoped would pass. They were out of luck there.
Inana shouted to the nearest family—a man, his wife, and three girls, “You there! What happened during the night? Where is everyone?”
The man cocked his head sideways like a confused housedog.
Inana screeched, “What’s the matter with you people?”
The women and children scurried into their tents, while the two men fell to their knees and began weeping in terror, with just a marginal shred more dignity than Qe’Nani.
Inana approached the nearest hovel, ideas flooding her mind in whispering voices. “Honey traps more flies than vinegar.” She took on a soothing tone, as she reached the nearest man—a dark-skinned mountain of muscle—and began to let her fingers comb through his hair in tender circles. “Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you. I’m your goddess, Inana, the Queen of Heaven, who gives and who takes. Do you have a name, brave boatman?”
The kneeling giant looked up at her with eyes unblinking pools of horror. “M-m-mag’Margidda.”
Inana ran her hand down from his hair to his quaking rock-hard shoulder. “Good Mag’Margidda, can you tell me what has happened since yesterday?”
“Madness is!”
Inana pulled on his upper arm, hoping he would get the idea that she wanted him to stand. He did.
“What madness?”
Mag’Margidda would not look at her. “In storm.”
“Yes, the storm was angry, I suppose. But what happened to most of the people of Uruk? They seem to be missing.”
“Runnings and screamings—madness!”
Inana suddenly realized that having a large man by her side might not be a bad thing. She grabbed his arm, looping hers around his elbow, and gently pulled him into a walk toward the boatyard. Mag’Margidda’s family followed at a discreet distance.
Inana said, “Were the people frightened away?”
The huge boatman scrunched his brows as if he did not understand.
“Scared—were the people scared of the storm?”
He nodded. “Watchers in the storm—everywhere; eyes.”
“What kind of eyes?”
He shuddered. “Me, not wanting to see them again; big, black eyes, watching you from without and from within; Igigi!”
“What does that mean; from without and from within?”
Mag’Margidda crinkled his brows again.
“Who watched you from the storm?”
“Faces!”
Inana asked, “What kind of faces?”
“Cold, angry faces, with mostly eyes, and long hungry teeth.”
Inana rubbed at the bite marks underneath her sleeved robe, and began to taste the big man’s terror like acid in her throat.
40
Ninurta had trouble recalling how he had gotten back to his quarters, after his grandson had vanished. In fact, he wondered if he had not simply dreamed the whole encounter in a nightmare, it seemed so unreal.
Wandering plague victims choked the narrow streets of Bab’Ilu; each either dazed and silent, or jabbering in mindless terror like shrieking monkeys. The shrieking monkeys were the worst. They had hollow eyes and sharky teeth.
He lay on his down mattress, huddled in a blanket, sweating out his fever. Slowly, disjointed memories returned—never completely—just enough to approximate minimal coherence. His brother, Saba, had been a big monkey with sharky teeth, who screeched like a girl. Kish, his father, had spoken only a single unknown word before falling silent. Ninurta had left them both on the Mountain of his Great Shining M’Ae, with the Seeing Lights.
The crowd at the base of the ziggurat stairs had dispersed almost before he reached the bottom step—but not all. A few had tried to follow him home, crying out what sounded like cheers, pleas, or worship for him in words he did not understand any more than his father’s single shout of, “Kawākəbt!” Others ran from him in terror the moment their eyes met. Most of the city wanderers along the way just ignored him. Ninurta hated the ignoring ones. The others at least knew their place.
After the rain started, Ninurta must have rushed to his private hostel, and huddled in the blanket. The fever took him completely after that.
He yawned, and took in a deep breath. The place still reeked of fresh kapar cement. At least it was dry.
Something moved beyond the curtains to the outer chamber.
“Who’s out there?”
The curtain parted.
Ninurta did not expect the terror at his door.
41
Magpie awoke inside Deeper Cave. The noise of the broken, fallen sky had ceased, but outside it was still dark. She heard other birds chattering in the Shallow Cave, beyond the narrow place. Perhaps they have a plan to raise the sky so we can fly and walk, she thought.
Magpie had dreamed of a wide empty land, and a long reddish-tan mountain. The world lacked such color now, but somehow she knew it would someday be better, now that the Snake would not have his way forever. She did not know when, how, or why, but she knew the Color of Life would come at the crushing of the Snake’s power.
She rose from beside her Man, and squeezed through the narrow place, to where she heard the other birds speaking. Shallow Cave still held a small part of the sky up with its stone sticks; enough that the gray had lightened into a heavy mist. Two other birds held part of the sky beyond Shallow Cave up with several other, wooden sticks. Magpie knew instantly what they intended; they would push the sky higher, until it stayed up on its own, and provided space for all the animals to fly and walk in. One of the birds was the Gray Lady who had helped Magpie’s family.
Magpie joined the bird-ladies, helping them to hold up the sky, while they placed sticks underneath, between the ground and the sky, to keep it up permanently. Gray Lady stepped onto a large rock with one last stick, while Magpie and another ladybird held the sk
y up with their sticks.
A blaze of light and color broke through, as bright as in Magpie’s dreaming of the distant land, where she now knew that she and her children would someday live. Gray Lady’s cloak of cloud fell back to reveal her face, as golden sunshine bathed Magpie for the first time.
The Sun Woman smiled down on Magpie, her painted face filled with warmth. Lavish circular markings flowed from the lady’s forehead and cheeks, her hair aglow with every color of the earth—including the rich reddish-tan of the mountain in the land far away, where Magpie and her children would one day find a home, free from the terror of angular caves.
Sun Woman spoke gentle words, but Magpie could not follow the language of celestial beings. Still, she understood that it was a blessing of some sort for the long journey awaiting her family.
The sky stayed up on its own now. Soon, when her Man was well, Magpie would lead her family far away, to the land of the Winter Sun’s Rising.
42
T’Qinna smiled at the brick mason’s wife; a broad-faced, black-skinned woman with golden hair, who had just helped her and Tiva put up the portico canopy to shelter the incoming sick. Knots of them started arriving in the wee hours before dawn. The silent woman seemed captivated by a sense of wonder at the sun breaking through the clouds behind T’Qinna’s head.
“Can you understand me?” T’Qinna asked her.
The woman who had saved her from the snake last night smiled back, but said nothing. T’Qinna brushed her hand over the woman’s forehead to discover that the fever had broken. She doubted her husband’s would do so quite as quickly.
Already the training of a former priestess of Aztlan had T’Qinna observing and categorizing symptoms and pathologies. She had heard talk for weeks of the brain fever from up north, but was shocked at the speed with which it hit Surupag. Already, mere hours after the first local case, families brought sick members to Pahpi Nu’s palace because of both his reputation and hers as healers with Divine knowledge from the World-that-Was.
Despite the great plagues at the end of the last world, T’Qinna had never seen anything quite like this. The other plagues had involved gross genetic deformity, cancers, mutated parasites, and often madness. Nevertheless, the suddenness of this epidemic frightened her far more. The physical symptoms seemed far less drastic in most cases, but a sickness that decimated the mind’s very ability to process the meaning of language had long-term implications nothing less than catastrophic, if permanent.
T’Qinna also knew it was about to get much worse.
In E’Anna (House of Heaven), Meš-ki’ag-gašer, son of Utu, became lord and king; he ruled for 324 years. Meš-ki’ag-gašer entered the sea and disappeared. Enmerkar, son of Meš-ki’ag-gašer, the king of Uruk, who built Uruk, became king; he ruled for 420 years. The divine Lugal-banda, the shepherd, ruled for 1200 years. The divine Dumuzi, the fisherman, whose city was Ku’ara, ruled for 100. Gilgameš, whose father was an invisible being, the lord of Kulaba, ruled for 126 years.
— Sumerian King List
from Assurbanipal’s Library
12
Hospice
43
The Terror had a name, but Ninurta did not know it.
The Creature entered his sleeping chamber, carrying a clay bowl of some kind of steaming liquid. It said, “I made you some broth, Lord.”
Ninurta’s horror leaped to elation. The Monster had just called him Lord. If monsters knew Ninurta as their lord, then what could mere men do to him—or even most gods? “Thanking of you is.”
The Terror’s pale, mottled hand set the bowl on the floor, next to Ninurta’s mattress. Its narrow blood-red eyes regarded him with what seemed to be uncertainty—one could never know with monsters, however. Ninurta had hunted and killed many monsters, and the one thing he knew was that you could not easily predict their motivations and actions. Sure, they had animal hungers—most of them did, anyway—but even these could surprise the most wary hunter. Take the asag, for example…
The Monster said, “I came when I saw what was happening. It seems the stars were correct, but not as we’d hoped.”
Ninurta sipped the broth, not sure what the Monster meant.
It continued in an almost plaintive whine, “I’m not confident that we have adequately planned for this contingency. Most of our workers have run off. Those that remain, speak only in noises with no meaning. A couple can talk as small children, but like children, they understand only the most simple of commands.”
Ninurta spoke. “Does the Monster-Who-Makes-Broth have a name?”
The Terror fell back off its haunches onto the floor and folded its long legs underneath itself like a spider. “I’m your father’s servant, Suinne, Lord—the astronomer. It seems you too are moon-struck, but only slightly.”
That was what the creature’s skin reminded Ninurta of—the mottled gray-white of the moon! “Are you a creature of the moon?”
The narrow red eyes blinked. “Some would say so, yes.”
“Then, Suenne, God of the Moon shall be you, henceforth. Ninurta’s word makes it so!”
The Monster said, “If you insist, Lord.”
Ninurta sat up. “I do insist! More, what is, rule you shall the night!”
“The night, Lord.”
“And… and… priests and priestesses shall be to you; young ones!”
At this, the Monster’s eyes widened. “As you say, Lord,” it intoned with somewhat more enthusiasm.
“And… and… they shall drink broth; moon broth!”
The Monster smiled—something so ugly that Ninurta decided that supernatural monsters should not do it.
“And ruling the day, shall I, and the night, shall you—if faithfully you serve me. I, Ninurta, speak it!”
Suenne removed his master’s empty bowl from the floor. “Who better to rule the mad than a madman? Your word, Lord, is law.”
Ninurta could not make out the Monster’s question, but its second statement suited him just fine.
44
Ared sunrise over Eridu found Utu once again standing in his modest jipar room, trying to say the nonsense words that the faces on the wall spoke over him as dark incantations. Sometimes, he did little else for days on end, until his parched throat hurt, and not even the wide Ufratsi supplied enough water to quench his thirst.
Today, things changed.
The Faces in the Spaces between the gold filigree wall-designs began to make sense. What they said, however, was not what Utu had expected.
The red sunlight hit the gold tree patterns as flame, making the blue voids into shades of angry heads in a crowd that surrounded Utu on all sides. The Faces in the Spaces said, “Eli baltuti ima’ ‘idu. Eli baltuti ima’ ‘idu…”
Utu mouthed along with them, “Eli baltuti ima’ ‘idu. Eli baltuti ima’ ‘idu… The dead will outnumber the living. The dead will outnumber the living…” He said the incantation several times before he realized that he now understood its meaning. Then he stopped speaking it.
The Faces in the Spaces asked in unison, with voices that sounded like rushing waters, and howling flame, “What is the matter, Utu? Is the incantation of Shamash…
—Samyaza is bound and he needs your vessel—
…not to your liking?”
Utu began to tremble and weep as he felt a stream of warm liquid run down his legs to puddle at his feet.
The Faces in the Spaces opened detachable jaws like the stretching maws of giant snakes that shot forward—mouths lined with long needle-like teeth—and devoured his soul in massive chunks, and then vomited the half-digested bits and pieces of corrupted memory-stream back into his body, along with a dark, expanding ooze that was someone or something else.
Collapsing into a pool of his own urine, Utu dissolved in the withering inner flame that was Shamash—but not completely. For deep in the heart of the crackling heat, all that had made the youngest son of Arrafu uniquely “Utu” curled like a slug, shriveling in an endless torment from the salty,
corrosive burning of his own unrestrained passions, now forever unable to find any satiation. Nobody on Earth would ever see that Utu again.
His boyish smile returned however, bright as the sun his name would soon represent.
Yet Utu’s smile would never again meet the void of his eyes.
45
Lugalbanda son of Ninurta once had another name, now forgotten. No matter, Lugalbanda would do. The other name was no longer important. His son, Gilgamesh, was all that mattered. He had to protect Gilgamesh from the Shades that Hunted. The Shades were everywhere, in everything; watching.
The harping wives of his harem tent were no help there. Most of them spoke only in shrill chirping noises that hurt his ears. Those that could still talk were nothing but empty-headed bynts. Only Gilgamesh mattered. Gilgamesh could still say more than nonsense-words—not much more, but enough. That must be why the Shades that Hunted wanted him so badly.
Their Eyes were everywhere, in everything. Lugalbanda never knew when some white-less Eye would magically open up and locate him, and the boy. Trees might have eyes, just as they had angry faces in the patterns of their leaves, or in the lumps of their bark. Fortunately, the trees grew only by the rivers. Sometimes an Eye would open in a stone, but not often—unless it was a cut stone or a brick. Then, each had at least one Eye. That was what had caused him to take the boy away from the cities, into the grasslands. Grass had no Eyes—too narrow.
The father and son camped in the grazing lands, west of the Great River, but without a fire lest the Eyes should spy them at a distance.
Gilgamesh lay on the grass, looking up at the stars. “Father, how many do you think there are?”
Lugalbanda said, “The Shades are many…”
Gate of the Gods: Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven Page 17