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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  His son interrupted, “Not them! I mean stars.”

  Lugalbanda relaxed. “The Ancients used to know, but I fear that knowledge is now lost.” A terrifying thought hit him: What if the stars had Eyes? What if the stars were Eyes—Igigi Eyes; watching?

  He realized now that he had led Gilgamesh into a trap, out in the open, with nothing to cover them but grass! Lugalbanda began to howl and weep uncontrollably like a terrorized child.

  Gilgamesh threw himself over his father’s chest. “Tell me what’s wrong, Father! Why have we left home like this?”

  Lugalbanda saw the fiery Eyes in the sky open—each star hid one. Worse yet, their spike-toothed mouths descended; a million holes in the very heavens themselves. He said to the boy, “Go to Uruk, Son. Go to Uruk, and rule in my place!”

  Gilgamesh started to answer, but his father never heard him.

  The Mouths that Devoured ripped Lugalbanda away in unseen pieces, and dragged him downward through what seemed to be layers of fiery earth, leaving something else in his place.

  The boy noticed nothing, except the sudden calm in his father, who would no longer be his father. Nor did the boy realize that not all calm was good calm, not all peace good peace. The Presence in what had been Kengu, and briefly Lugalbanda, knew how to take advantage of the youngster’s trust and need. It had done such things before.

  Gilgamesh would still be well looked after, just not quite as his father had intended. Nevertheless, Lugalbanda might have found consolation in one thing, had he known it:

  Gilgamesh would eventually grow up to rule Uruk.

  46

  Tiva could not recall doing so much work since she had helped to outfit the Boat of a Million Years, during the final days of the World-that-Was. The tiny palace at Surupag, with its courtyard, soon filled with the sick. More came in from the surrounding farmlands each day. She imagined that soon, reed barges full of prostrate bodies and gibbering lunatics would float in from other settlements. Ten people had died that day alone, all of them builders.

  She and T’Qinna worked under the portico canopy, where they laid out the hottest fever victims, to keep them out of the sun. T’Qinna’s eldest son, Arrafu, with his daughter Ereshkigal, though both mildly stricken, helped run cold water up from the river, and to lay out the incoming sick. Yoqtani and his mother wove palm leaves into more shade canopies. Lomina still had too high of a fever to work, and her speech, though not as difficult to follow as El’Issaq’s, was still heavily slurred.

  El’Issaq, or Aeolis as he now called himself, had recovered from his fever, but not his confusion. Pahpi Nu insisted that the Emissary from Clan Iavanni was not actually as confused as he seemed, but that his mind merely pieced thoughts together in a different order than before.

  Tiva was not so sure there was any real difference between “confusion,” and “piecing thoughts together in a different order,” but she did not want to gainsay her father-in-law. She found it odd that Aeolis would not answer to El’Issaq when called, only to his new name. It seemed to her that if he really understood things, he would answer to his given name, even if he could not pronounce it himself.

  Aeolis spent most of his time now following Pahpi Nu like a puppy. Of course, T’Qinna encouraged this sort of thing, and had spent hours last night comparing her observations with A’Nu-Ahki’s, despite a grueling day caring for more fever-stricken people than anyone possibly could care for.

  T’Qinna’s bleary eyes told Tiva she was paying for it too, as she bathed the head of a young man in a delirium.

  He gibbered softly, “Okh ĝā̆b. Okh ĝā̆b…”

  Tiva said, “Do you really think they’re trying to tell us something?”

  “Yes,” T’Qinna answered. “At least most of them are. Many of the Khaldini sent here with us by Nimurta, and afterward with Arrafu, seem the least affected. They tend to have a day or two of fever, some slurring of speech, or disrupted syntax…”

  “Hold the reins, girl, I’m not Academy material. What’s a sin-tax?”

  “The order people use words in to express thoughts as sentences. In milder cases—like Arrafu and Ereshkigal—the speech disruption comes in two main forms, at least two that I’ve observed so far, anyway. The first is that vowels and soft consonant sounds are displaced or slurred, and the second is that the order of words used to express thoughts are somewhat jumbled. Sometimes both symptoms come together, along with occasional reversals of syllables. We don’t have too much trouble understanding these people; though I suspect some of their cognitive functions are impaired…”

  Tiva stopped her again. “Cogs and what?”

  T’Qinna laughed. “Sorry. Their ability to reason, sequence simple tasks, and to connect cause with effect—also their concept of time, sensory perceptions, attention span, and even in many cases their sense of identity. Many have powerful hallucinations. El’Issaq fits this, at the severe end, except for the hallucinations. He seems to suffer only from mild ones, if I follow what he’s saying correctly, plus he stays out of trouble and helps more than hinders Pahpi Nu. The next category is different.”

  “Which is?”

  T’Qinna moved to another patient, checking for fever with the back of her hand. “I’m only beginning to diagnose the categories, so my observations may not prove true on a large scale…”

  Tiva rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the sky’s not really blue since the Deluge; just tell me how bad it is.”

  “Their cognitive, that is, reasoning skills and sense perceptions, are more impaired—though I’m not sure ‘impaired’ is exactly the right word for it. Patients in this symptom category are completely incomprehensible, and more prone to sudden panic. They alternate between dazed spells and moderate to severe panic, with an association between words and objects completely alien to us.”

  “Are they even speaking words or just making noises?”

  “Definitely words in most cases—I’ve tested this already on six different people who seem to fit the ‘completely incomprehensible’ profile. I hold flowers from the garden, and then say the word flower to them. They then point to the flower, and say the word they associate with it. I’ve tested this using a number of common objects with the same six people. They seem to understand what I’m doing, though they each have different words for the same objects. Each individual’s words are consistent within their own speech system at associating the same objects with the same sounds. This is what I find confusing.”

  Tiva said, “Why?”

  “Because it’s not the same thing as the first category of speech confusion at all.”

  “You’re over-thinking things, T’Qinna. Seems to me that some of the Moon-struck are just harder to understand than others.”

  “No. You’re missing it. The first group still has an idea of meaning based on the Language we’ve always spoken; they just slur words or rearrange syntax or syllables. The second group uses sounds that are completely unrelated to the way any of us have ever spoken before. They don’t just slur or rearrange the old speech; they have altogether new words with no connection to our Language at all. That, and they speak differently from one another, too; one lady’s word for flower—any flower—has a single syllable, with only one soft consonant sound in it, while this man’s word has four syllables, each with a different hard consonant. It’s not the same pattern at all.”

  Tiva reached for the fresh pot of water, brought out to them by dark, frightened Ereshkigal. “Weird speech is weird speech—either way, it’s a Divine judgment.”

  T’Qinna looked up at her. “It is a Divine judgment, true, but that doesn’t mean the differing patterns don’t matter. While meaning is a thing of the spirit, the way our brains process speech has a physical mechanics to it—that’s something I studied as a novice in Epymetu’s Temple City, where they had accurately mapped the human brain…”

  “Is it really wise to dredge up such knowledge? That stuff is just plain evil! I remember how terrified you were when that witch, M
nemosynae, sent you that orb device…”

  T’Qinna smiled. “Mnemosynae only manipulated minds; she didn’t invent them. What she did was evil, but this is different…”

  “I don’t see how!”

  “Tiva, please, let me explain. This could be important.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just so tired.”

  T’Qinna squeezed her shoulder. “I am, too. Try to understand, not everything done in Aztlan was invented there. They took many useful things and turned them to evil. The physical mapping of the brain only became possible by building from the experimental analysis methods pioneered by Q’Enukki the Seer.”

  “A brain map?”

  “Why not? A brain fever might have bad effects on the mechanics of how speech happens, like when a person means to say one word, but instead says another—only on a bigger scale. A fever can damage the speech areas of the brain so it diverts the mind to the wrong words in a person’s memory, but it can’t create systematic new words for all the patterns of meaning already in place. Fevers don’t create language. Nor is this plague isolated to the wicked. El’Issaq and many of the loyal Khaldini also suffer from it. It’s important we notice that.”

  Tiva scrunched her face. “I hadn’t thought of that. Why would this affect good and bad alike if it was a Divine judgment?”

  T’Qinna stood up and stretched. “I don’t know. Maybe because it’s not just a mere punishment; maybe there’s more to it.”

  “It’s always a mystery within a mystery with you, isn’t it?”

  T’Qinna laughed. Then her eyes clouded over, and the levity drained from her face. “Tiva, turn around.”

  Tiva turned slowly, afraid of what she would see.

  The late afternoon sun shone in her face, making details difficult to discern for a moment. A group of men had just entered the courtyard, approaching from the west. A cool breeze blew off the river, from the east, so she could not hear if the men were speaking, but they seemed healthy, and sure of where they were going. The one in the front had a familiar gait.

  Tiva’s eyes adjusted. “Khumi?”

  Her husband ran the last several cubits to her, and fell down before her onto one knee. His face seemed to lose centuries of hardness as he spoke to her. “Tiva, my Wife—that is, if you would still have it so—please forgive me for how I’ve treated you for so long. I’m a fool, who’s seen the fountain of madness I’ve created by my own disrespect for you, and for my father!”

  Tiva froze.

  Khumi put his dark, sparsely bearded face to the soil at her feet, and whispered, “It’s okay; I don’t deserve for you to consider me. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry, and that I have never taken another. I have sunk low, but not to where Qayin did with his own daughters, even though I am guilty of murdering our marriage.”

  He moved out of her path.

  The words were out before Tiva knew it; she could no more have stopped them than she could an avalanche near the glaciers. “Wait! I forgive! I, I, I don’t understand what’s happening—the plague; the end of the world!” Tears ran like the Deluge down her face. She hated herself for being so weak, for ignoring how many times he had flipped back and forth over the centuries, building her hopes up then dashing them each time by his hurtful words. Still, he had never hit her. You silly wench; why should any man ever hit a woman? What if it’s just the plague? What if he just needs a mahmi? I can’t do this again!

  Tiva didn’t care if it was just the plague; she needed to be held by the man who had fathered her children. She allowed Khumi to pull her into his embrace. She said, “I missed you, Fire-sprite.”

  He wept for the first time she could remember.

  47

  A’Nu-Ahki listened to his son’s account, heart warmed by what he hoped would prove the healing between them that he had given up hope of ever seeing. Grief upon grief, sorrow upon sorrow, he had feared since Arrata’s fall that one of the others might hear him weeping in the night, begging E’Yahavah for a quiet death before morning. Seeing Khumi and Tiva hold each other again was a tiny island of restored sanity that kept an old man of nearly a thousand years from giving up on hope for the future entirely.

  They sat by the evening fire in the hearth hall, leaving the sick to tend themselves awhile, after a day where the final death toll numbered at fifteen—all adults. There were too many to care for adequately as it was. A’Nu-Ahki needed to hear his son’s account to know how things really stood in the world beyond Surupag.

  Khumi’s eyes flickered in the firelight; his thin beard that of a much younger man, without even a line of silver. “I’ll give the survey report of the river that empties into the torrid lands another time; with your permission, Father. I named the river Styx, because of its fearsome dragons, and its mouth in the Dead Lands. Events closer to home seem more important, now.”

  A’Nu-Ahki nodded.

  “We departed the colony established by Misori’Ra at the mouths of the Styx, south of where they enter the salt estuaries of the desert sink, where the land is still fertile. Ra returned with me, leaving one of his sons to govern the settlement in his absence. We followed the eastern bank of the Styx Estuary northward, down into the salt flats, along the nearest of the dead seas. There we turned east, over the dunes, while we still had water to make it out of the badlands. As we emerged from the valley that cuts east-to-west through the last mountains before the salt desert, we ran into a band of Khana’Anhu, led by a chieftain named Amur.”

  T’Qinna asked, “Did they wear the Imdugud dragon scrawl?”

  “No. The opposite, I’d say. We camped with them many days by the large lake, below the springs of the Yordaen River, near the cedar forests. This Amur told me of how he had brokered a meeting between Iyapeti and a powerful seer from Arrata by the name of Palqui—anybody you know?”

  T’Qinna’s green eyes widened. “It must be Napalku!”

  Khumi nodded. “Amur said that the seer had been given his name by El Elyon, and spoke of how Arrata had fallen, and that Iyapeti had led border skirmishes against Kush and Assur. At first, I thought the man was a lunatic, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to approach the Agadae with caution. Once I crossed the Ufratsi, it didn’t take long for me to see how much had changed.

  “I had my escorts stay back as I entered this newly-built city— Akkad-Bab’Eluhar I think they called it—Gate of the Gods. There I found Nimurta, making a speech to the city folk from the second platform of a ziggurat still under construction. It was almost as big as that small one at old Farguti Crossroads, though I guess it’s nothing short of huge, by today’s standards. This was about a week before we began to notice the plague.”

  A’Nu-Ahki said, “Did you approach Nimurta?”

  Khumi inclined his head and smiled. “I thought about it, until I heard more of his speech. Then I realized that without my clan tokens, I looked younger than many of my own grandsons. He could have me killed, and few would have even known I was their patriarch. I felt like boxing his ears.”

  “What did he tell the crowd?”

  Khumi both laughed and scowled. “He’s concocted some dung-beer epic about how the Watchers are angry with how we’ve mismanaged things. He’s somehow scared everyone into following him. It’s like they all came down with a bad case of stupid before this plague even broke out—or maybe the fever dumbed them all first; I don’t know! I thought it best to find out what had become of you all. The young windbag was pleased with himself for moving you all down here, so his boasting told me where to find you.”

  A’Nu-Ahki said, “You did wisely, son.”

  “Thanks. I rejoined my company south of the city, and we tried to avoid most settlements. I didn’t want Nimurta and Kush to know of our return. We took the scenic route getting here because of it. When we entered a small village on the Ufratsi to buy bread, we found half its people sick with this brain fever. We asked directions to ‘Surupag,’ but again took the long way to avoid the sickness. The next time we entered a village, we foun
d it deserted, except for a madman who tore off his clothes and ran at the sight of us. That was two days ago.”

  “We’re all very glad to have you back.”

  Khumi hugged Tiva at the shoulders. “There’s one thing I forgot.”

  “What’s that, Son?”

  “When we bought bread at the village where half the folk had the fever, the other half still seemed quite sure that Nimurta would soon set everything right. They all spoke as if Kush’s baby boy could cure death itself. I don’t think they realize what’s happening to them.”

  Once upon a time there was no snake, there was no scorpion,

  There was no hyena, there was no lion, there was no wild dog, no wolf,

  There was no fear, no terror. Man had no rival...

  The whole universe, the people in unison to Enlil in one tongue [spoke].

  (Then) Enki, the lord of abundance (whose) commands are trustworthy,

  The lord of wisdom, who understands the land, the leader of the gods, endowed with wisdom,

  The lord of Eridu changed the speech in their mouths, [brought] contention into it,

  Into the speech of man that (until then)had been one.

  —Enmerkar and the Lord of Arrata

  (An ancient Sumero-Akkadian epic)

  13

  En-Ki

  48

  The stolid eyes of Mag’Margidda watched the river, his mountain of muscle working the pole that pushed the barge northward. A hazy sun flickered off the water like an army of fire-ghosts, worshipping the sacred boat of Inana as it passed over them and crushed them in a trailing smear of golden-blooded sacrifices, dying by the millions just to ease her passage upstream. That thought made her feel all warm and special.

  The giant boatman’s wife and children sat forward with gibbering Qe’Nani, cowed by how easily Inana had taken their husband and father under her power by the mere soothing of her divine voice. It still gave her a power-thrill to remember the broken quiver of his wife’s weeping as her husband had dutifully given himself to Inana before the woman’s horrified eyes, all at Inana’s mere suggestion that it would bless his marriage.