The landscape had so changed that the only way U’Sumi had to locate Uruk Haven was to take approximate navigational fixes by compass, timepiece, and estimated solar bearings from lighter sections of cloud during daylight hours. He knew for sure that they were home only when he saw washed-out ruins in Amirdu’s forward quickfire lanterns. The shapes of the delta islands had changed, and what remained of Uruk appeared to have been built recently, after their departure.
Rain came down outside the wheelhouse, where the lantern cast long shadows at the hill that had once looked over a boatyard that was now a muddy plain with pieces of buildings and hoist-rigs sticking up out of the silt like the hands of drowning men. The channel had shifted so far away that no wharf would replace the ones from which the Sun Ships had sailed. Only up on the hill were there any lit dwellings, and then only a couple.
U’Sumi did not like the look of it. “Kill the lanterns and back us out behind the last bend in the river.”
Haviri stood with him in the wheelhouse, crowded behind the Helmsman. He said, “I’d like to go ashore and see if my sons, Napalku and Yoqtani, are with their mother.”
U’Sumi nodded. “You can join me in the side-boat.”
The Helmsman said, “Sires, it looks strange out there. Perhaps an armed landing party might be good.”
U’Sumi smiled as he pulled something out from under his uannu slicker—an object rarely seen in the new world since the Deluge. “We’ll be fine, man. You have the con until I return.”
In U’Sumi’s hand was an ancient, but well maintained, hand-cannon made in the World-that-Was.
73
Rain cold on skin and hair not new to Mud Boy. Even before world get dark-and-wet, life be smelly-and-wet in river grass.
Mud Boy scrape for fish and bugs, and river rats for Gueemish. Gueemish nice to Mud Boy for help. Not let big men hurt Mud Boy like a woman since Mud Boy help Gueemish find foods.
The light on river caught Mud Boy’s eye. Not see bright river light before like flared eye of Lotan the Death-bringer. Mud Boy go to muddy places no one else like to go—places Lotan sometimes go. Flaring Eye of Lotan close, leaving shadows on the water.
At Muddy place, Mud Boy first saw Fish-man come up out of the water on a floating thing, first Fish-man, then another Fish-man. They had heads of fish and other heads like men, and legs below their fish tails. Mud Boy almost ran away because he heard Fish-man speak like Gueemish. Only not like Gueemish, because Mud Boy understanding Gueemish sometimes, and he not understanding the Fish-man words, except for one.
Fish-man saw Mud Boy, and said something like, “Uga lala not be afraid gulala.”
Mud Boy understand the “not be afraid” part.
Fish-man and other Fish-man not yell at Mud Boy, and not try to grab him, so Mud Boy take them to Gueemish. Mud Boy not make them know Mud Boy talk—which only Mud Boy knows—but waves Fish-man and other Fish-man along to follow Mud Boy.
They follow.
Gueemish be big-nice to Mud Boy now! Fish-man and other Fish-man have much meat on them to feed hungry others.
The Asag leapt up at the head of the battle. For a club it uprooted the sky, took it in its hand; like a snake it slid its head along the ground. It was a mad dog attacking to kill the helpless, dripping with sweat on its flanks. Like a wall collapsing, the Asag fell on Ninurta, the son of Enlil. Like an accursed storm, it howled in a raucous voice; like a gigantic snake, it roared at the Land. It dried up the waters of the mountains, dragged away the tamarisks, tore the flesh of the Earth and covered her with painful wounds. It set fire to the reed beds, bathed the sky in blood, turned it inside out; it dispersed the people there. At that moment, on that day, the fields became black scum, across the whole extent of the horizon, reddish like purple dye…
—Ninurta’s Exploits
(Sumerian tablet, Lines 168-184)
16
Ruin
74
The Thing calling itself Lugalbanda had wandered the islands of blackened slime for over two months since waking up inside a reed boat, caught in the top of a sycamore tree. It needed to get a handle on the new lay of the land. The men of its tiny war party were either dead or missing.
After the ambush by the kherub, the Monster that lived inside Lugalbanda’s body had paddled away with his men, south. They had seen the big fireball streak by overhead, but only the Monster had known what that meant. Smaller fireballs struck, all up and down the Sumar and Agadae, some before the big impact, others trailing after.
With no highlands near enough to escape to, the Monster had remained in the boat to attempt riding out the coming wave. It had not told any of Lugalbanda’s men of the speeding death headed their way. Why panic them over something about which they could do nothing? Better to let them relish their sense of escape from the ambush for their few remaining hours.
The water had rushed in faster than expected, over land from the west rather than directly up the channel. It swept away the men, but the Monster had managed to preserve its host somehow. Since climbing down into the mud from the drenched tree, it wandered west, and then south, on a meandering course toward Uruk, under an almost continual downpour. Even when the rain let up for a few days at a time, the heavy clouds remained.
The wave had changed the islands and channels so radically that the residual memory stolen from the Monster’s host became virtually useless. It found large tracts of land badly burned, then drenched, while the wave blanketed other areas in scummy black silt, further soaked by the rains, before intense heat had cooked the surfaces.
Lugalbanda walked through river towns filled with charred bodies, burned, and then drenched. In other places, it found flattened river forests with bark steamed from the trees, and ruins full of people and crops dead by parboiling. In yet other places, deserted settlements remained untouched by anything but the rain. Finally, the Monster had to divert away from the river delta system, onto the western grasslands, to continue unhindered.
After several weeks of travel, it met a band of drenched wanderers, approaching from the other direction across the soggy prairie. As they drew near, Lugalbanda’s memory identified their leader and several of the others.
The Monster knew immediately what to do.
Lugalbanda squatted in the wet long grass, and waited for the waterlogged nomads to reach him. When they came within comfortable shouting distance, he stood and hailed them.
“Lord Enmerkar, son of Enlil, it is your son, Lugalbanda!”
Their leader, a tall dark man, well-muscled and quicker than a leopard-sphinx, raised his fitted bow, and instantly lowered it. His face changed as he dropped the weapon and ran to Lugalbanda.
“My son! My son! En-Ki has rescued you!”
Ninurta Enmerkar embraced Lugalbanda with all his might, so that even the Monster nearly passed out with his host.
“I thought all hope gone, as I watched from the hills, the wave taking away the magic stone writing from Eridu! Only remains now the foundation of its shrine. Utu has burned himself into the sun, and now this too!”
The mouth of Lugalbanda said, “Be not dismayed, Father. We have learned from the stone the truth of our past. The Absu but takes back its old blessing to give us a new one. Tell me, Father, why are you so far south?”
Ninurta held him out at arm’s length. “War in heaven now is, and the gods have sent hatred and confusion to the tongues of men. En-Ki delivered us from the flood sent by Enlil’s war lion!” Then he narrowed his eyes at his son, as if only now registering the import of the Monster’s greeting. “Why call you me a son of Enlil? Enlil sends us evil!”
The Monster reached out to touch Ninurta using the mind-speech of the Watchers. “I am your son, but more than your son. I too have become a divine being. Enlil must still be appeased, and you are his son in spirit, for you too shall cover the earth in your armies like floods of water.”
Ninurta looked as if struck by lightning. “Should I be surprised that my son is also a divine being? Spea
k you to me by spirit?”
Lugalbanda smiled. “Your armies shall cover the earth like floods of water, O mighty son of Enlil, who shall exalt En-Ki, and restore balance.”
Ninurta turned to the others, who had now gathered around them. “My son, too, is a god! Speaking he, as does Utu-Shamash in us, heartwise!”
Inana stepped forward as it began to rain again. “Ah, mighty Lugalbanda has now the goddingness of himself!”
The Monster smiled at the silly little bynt and projected to Ninurta, “Inana is for sex and firing up lesser men for war; not for counsel among the great. She is the Goddess, but her melam-glow swings with her periods.”
Ninurta chuckled and slapped Lugalbanda’s back. “Aye!”
Inana looked puzzled. “What? What laughing is this on me?”
Ninurta clasped her shoulder. “We not be laughing on you, my love, but with you.”
She smiled vacantly. “Ahh, then laughingness be!”
Everyone in the wandering band began to laugh uncontrollably, without having the least idea what they all were laughing about—all except for the Monster. It decided then that, whenever time permitted, it would have Inana and then spurn her afterward just for the fun of it. It wished it could do more than just spurn her, because killing her slowly and feeding on her terror would be so much more delightful. Unfortunately, its orders were explicit on that point; Inana was crucial to the Plan.
The laughter diminished as the rain increased. That was when the Monster noticed the Pale One. It searched deeper into Lugalbanda’s stolen memories—a prize only accessible by total possession of its host’s body—down to layers when the host had still known that his name was Kengu, deeper, to Kengu’s early childhood. Here it found hidden labyrinths of shame and horror—memories of how his grandfather’s astronomer had secretively raped and threatened the boy. Emotions in that layer were so long buried, under such intense pressure, that they exploded upward once uncovered, and almost overwhelmed the Monster into hating the Pale One as Kengu had.
Suinne—also marked as “essential to the Plan” by the Monster’s masters—fidgeted at the edge of the group, one of the first to stop laughing in the rain. The Monster locked eyes with him and smiled. The terror this caused on the old pervert’s face was only enjoyable because something of Kengu had briefly almost enveloped the Monster. That soon passed, as the Monster began to suspect that, unlike the others, Suinne still had mastery of all his faculties. This made the Pale One even more interesting.
The mouth of Lugalbanda spoke. “Since there is war in the heavens, should we not all take counsel together and form a plan?” It then projected thoughts that only Suinne could hear. “You do well to be frightened, O god of the moon. But I will forgive all that is past, if you will serve me now. We will speak together afterward, you and I; in private.”
Suinne began to tremble visibly.
Lugalbanda mouthed the word, “Later,” to him, and winked.
Ninurta, who had taken a moment during the dying laughter to lock lips with Inana, came up for air and said, “You speak wisely, my son. Let us in the rain take counsel, like beasts of the field!”
Inana giggled and unwound herself like a snake from Ninurta’s arm. “Then take other things of much beasting fieldliness?”
The Monster rolled Lugalbanda’s eyes and said to Ninurta, “I was making my way south to Uruk, where I left Gilgamesh in charge of a small band of fever survivors. The flood has changed the channels of the Sumar beyond recognition, so I came west to skirt the delta lands. The big wave snaked its way up the rivers, leaving a couple cities I passed only slightly harmed. Few people dwell in them, though. Most of the survivors wander the countryside, hunting and gathering for a living. Many are more like beasts than men, but even those who are not seem to fear the empty towns for some reason.”
Ninurta apparently heard only the first sentence. His eyes danced with an unusual sentimentality. “Gilgamesh nears manhood! Old I now feel.”
Lugalbanda shrugged, “Manhood is forced on him. Were you at Eridu when the wave struck?”
“Yes. The great god En-Ki rescued us by warning our faithful moon god, Suinne, that we should cross the West Channel, and climb the grassland hills. The wave took all our boats.”
The Monster widened Lugalbanda’s eyes. “Ah, the wise, faithful moon god should also join our counsel, do you not think, Father?”
Suinne’s blood red eyes sank. He seemed barely able to contain his trembling as he approached at Ninurta’s hand signal.
Ninurta said, “One other gladness is there in all this; I rescued the Divine M’Ae from the Imdugud Dragon, before the Asag of Heaven struck.”
The Monster instinctively knew that Ninurta was mentally putting recent events together into a political epic designed to revitalize his greatly diminished power base. The “Asag of Heaven” was the meteor. The Being that controlled Lugalbanda already knew that the “Imdugud Dragon” was a fictional enemy that had supposedly stolen the gold plates, actually stolen by Ninurta, Inana, and Utu, in order to facilitate a leadership crisis. That was before the Plan had needed so many major revisions due to the Enemy’s sudden intervention, which had forced the Monster and so many others of its kind to improvise with their current roles.
Lugalbanda’s mouth said, “What do you think should be done now with the restored Tablets of Destiny, O god of the moon?”
Suinne stammered. “M-maybe—if it pleases my lord and his son—the tablets should be recast to read as En-Ki dictates.”
“Read?” The Monster caused Lugalbanda to smile. “Which among you can still read?”
Panic seized Suinne’s face like an invisible hand, squeezing his head until his bloody eyes seemed ready to pop out like great swollen boils.
“I read some, but not as before,” said Ninurta. “A battle injury.”
“Of course, Father.”
Suinne said, “The uses of the lowly moon god are few, b-but, but I can still read well—and write!”
The Monster said, “Well now, that makes you rather indispensable, doesn’t it? Either that or it makes you the most expendable in a world of illiterates. I wonder which?”
Ninurta cocked his head like a confused dog.
Lugalbanda’s mouth said, “Forgive me, father. I only mean that perhaps the moon god should recast the Tablets of Destiny—according to your words, of course.”
Suinne nodded eagerly, “Of course! I shall scrawl only the words of mighty Ninurta, the hero god who rescues us from the passage of the Asag!”
Ninurta nodded. “Good it is that we take counsel so rainingly now. Ninurta’s word makes it all real.”
The Monster made Lugalbanda to say, “If I may suggest one other thing; perhaps I should take Meshkiajkushar and Saba with me to Uruk.” He gestured at Kush and Saeba, who looked like empty shells that could do little more than walk when nudged. “It would relieve you, Father, to focus on En-Ki’s work in the North. Wouldn’t you agree, O moon god?”
Suinne’s jagged teeth bared themselves in a smile every bit as terrified as it was terrifying. “Yes, mighty Enmerkar! Your son is the very soul of wisdom in the midst of storms.”
The dark giant huddled his shoulders against the rain. “Let it be so.”
75
The sky had been dark with either high volcanic smoke or heavy, low storm clouds for over two months. A cold wind ripped out of the north.
Psydon’s ship lay high and dry, broken against the rocks near a stony mountain, which gave some shelter beneath its southern slopes from the frigid air. After many weeks traveling northward, past several large islands, the Paru’Ainu had again caught sight of the Great Continent, which had thrust itself out considerably westward into a massive headland. The tiny ship had skirted this landmass to starboard for many weeks; tracing its coast, first north, and then into a gradual turn northeastward. The wave caught them by surprise, as had the sudden shallows that enabled it to lift the ship high, onto the lap of the approaching mountain.
> The big captain of the Paru’Ainu looked west, across a wide plain, to the ocean in the distance, visible only because of their elevation. The tsunami had carried them half a day’s walk inland, before stranding their hole-ridden ship on the mountainside.
Tyr approached him, trudging through the mud, gravel, and flotsam. “The search parties are back, Father. We have a final count. Only forty-three of us remain. Of those, the worst injuries are two men with broken arms. The rest are dead or missing.”
Psydon kicked a rock down the incline. “That’s less than half our company! I guess we walk home from here.”
“It’s going to be a long walk. Our last latitude fix placed us near the same parallel as the Ufratsi River’s big bend eastward from its southward flow out of Urartu. Our longitude is some forty-five degrees west of there.”
Psydon pursed his lips as he exhaled. “That means we have the entire length of the Great Sink-lands, and its desert of dead seas, between us and home! If we had women with us, I’d settle here and let the rest hang!”
Tyr said, “But we have no women, and there are too few men in the world as it is. Should we detour south or north?”
“Ahh! What little we know about the North is that it’s mountainous. See the clouds? The smoke erupting in the west tells of a line of volcanoes nearly as active as in the Deluge. That means another great cold will soon set in. If the M’El-Ki knows anything, and I think he does, that means glaciers—my father told me all about glaciers, and from what he said, I don’t like them. If we go south, there are grasslands overrun with dragons—at least that was what survey parties reported as far west as they ever got, before we launched. The last western expedition turned back at eighteen degrees longitude west of Uruk Mean. We’re almost three times that far away!”
“Maybe the dead lands don’t stretch that far.”
Psydon started walking back to the crushed hull of his ship. “Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it. I suppose we can head east and circle south, once we reach the basin. Have the men finished inventorying our stores?
Gate of the Gods: Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven Page 25