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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  “I’m sorry, Pyra darling. I do not ask forgiveness; that is too much for me to expect. I give you back the lost memories I stole from you. You were right to go with the Seer. You do me proud. With affection, Mnemosynae.”

  That day, T’Qinna, weeping, had taken the only crystal with recorded images on it, and slipped it into the reader slot on the miniature orb’s base. The glass spheroid had lit up, first with an ethereal blue light, and then with the face of Mnemosynae; a middle-aged woman with piercing violet eyes, who held herself with a decayed poise that still managed to command T’Qinna’s awe despite the terrible evils done to her by this woman. T’Qinna found it hard to believe that she was now older than Mnemosynae had been at the time she had made the orb recording.

  The memory was still so clear.

  Mnemosynae’s dark, gray-streaked hair had flowed around her face, almost melding itself with the wood grain of the box’s lid, around the glass. “Pyra darling,” she had said, “I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused you—that I allowed to be caused in you. I offer no excuses, only that I will say a word at the end of this communing that will release any memories I took from you, or falsely implanted. I can only say how sorry I am again, since most of them pertain to events surrounding the death of your mother.

  “I beg you, learn from these memories, darling, and do not repeat our mistakes…. I’ve come to the realization that our civilization cannot possibly last…—though it will doubtless last just a little longer than I will. For that reason I am remaining where I am. I will quietly try to hamper Pandura and the Titans in as much of their mischief as I can…. I will also mislead Pandura as to your whereabouts, should she ever show a mind to want to find you…. Had Prometu lived, he would have warned you to go with the Seer. He saw much that I was too afraid to act on at the time. That is why he is dead and I soon will be…”

  T’Qinna remembered Mnemosynae’s last words to her so clearly because she had replayed the orb recording often, while still at Arrata. “I now give you the implanted word to release all of your lost memories. It is a nonsensical random set of syllables combined from the words new wine, and sailor. Actually, not totally random. I thought the Seer’s son that you ran off with looked like a dashing sailor. Farewell, Pyra. This communing will end after I say the release word: Deukal’Uinne!”

  Ever since the day she had received the small orb, she called her husband that pet name, T’Qinna’s freedom name, never telling anyone—not even him—what it meant to her. The orb still lay secreted in the vast Treasure Cave of Arrata, under the seat of the broken old flying chariot, Sun Phoenix, where she knew Nimurta would not find it. Over the centuries, she had made her own recordings on it, a couple before the Great Deluge, many others after, whenever she had enough sunlight to charge its power cells, or time to turn the hand-cranked quickfire generator, which wasn’t often. She had used almost all of the blank crystals her old mentor had sent with it.

  A pall of sadness swept her over in its crushing weight. How well could they have learned from the mistakes of Mnemosynae’s generation? Look at what was happening now! The young priestess that T’Qinna used to be, once styled Mnemosynae as “The Mistress of Memory,” yet somehow, somewhere, the lessons of the past must have been forgotten… except…

  An idea struck her that might help in her treatment of Palqui’s condition, and perhaps some of the others.

  Then U’Sumi returned from bathing down at the river, and T’Qinna filed the thought away for later.

  He had not even undressed, when someone jingled the chimes at their chamber’s portico door. He rolled his eyes with an exasperated groan.

  She smiled for him. “I’ll see who it is.”

  T’Qinna wrapped herself in a robe and went to the heavy drape.

  92

  U’Sumi watched his wife admit Haviri, and usher him onto a floor cushion.

  The young Sun Ship Captain said, “Please forgive my disturbing you, my Father…”

  U’Sumi forced himself to smile. “Don’t feel you need to use the formal voice with me just because we’ve returned home, and my wife’s here, Haviri. We’ve seen too much together to revert to that.”

  “Thank you. It’s just that I haven’t heard from the Amirdu in over a month. When I left Malaq in command, I gave standing orders that he dispatch a boat upriver to Surupag every three weeks to report on progress at Uruk, and on those three other ships coming in from the Southern Ocean. I gave it an extra week, figuring the boatmen took a turn into the wrong channel since the Big Wave shifted them around, but now I’m getting concerned.”

  T’Qinna said, “I’m going down to the river to freshen up. That’ll give you two salty mariners time to discuss your ship business.”

  U’Sumi did not want her to go, but he said, “Let the river sentry know you’re on the waterfront. It’s after dark, and there are still beasts about.”

  She shook her head and laughed. “Always my noble Paladin.”

  After she slipped through the drape, U’Sumi said to Haviri, “I’m not comfortable with the situation at Uruk, either. I don’t anticipate trouble from Gilgamesh, but I’m concerned what will happen if his father returns.”

  Haviri said, “Me too. Do you recall how he referred to his father when we first met him?”

  “Yes, Gilgamesh called him, ‘divine Lugalbanda.’”

  “Lugal is how the Sumar and Agadae folk pronounce the title Legal, or Legate—Great Man. Banda is slang for assistant. It’s a title, not a name.”

  U’Sumi pondered this. “Yes, but perhaps not anymore. T’Qinna tells me that many of the people afflicted with the brain fever no longer remember their own identities, much less their names. Who was Nimurta’s ‘Lugal-banda’ when we left, Haviri?”

  “His eldest son, Kengu. But there’s no saying Gilgamesh’s Lugalbanda is he—Nimurta may have pulled his people north to Kush, or ‘Kish,’ as I hear them saying it at the Council.”

  “Either way, it’s imperative we keep control of Uruk with those ships coming in. We’ll need those vessels to deliver colonists. What are their estimated arrival times again?”

  Haviri said, “When I left, two had reported their distance at two months away, and the third, an additional three weeks more. That was over a month ago. I hate to divide our forces from the strike on Kish, but if this Lugalbanda has returned, and somehow caught Amirdu’s men off guard…”

  U’Sumi stopped him before he finished. “That’s why I’m sending you south with a company-sized force in the morning. Approach Uruk by stealth to make sure our landing parties still control it. If they don’t, assess the city’s strengths. If feasible, retake it, and bring this Lugalbanda to me.”

  “If not?”

  “Then circle around Uruk on the channel by night, and try to meet up with the ship. The river’s deep enough that Amirdu can reach Surupag. If Malaq has been forced to take the ship further into the Abyssu mires to wait for the other vessels from beyond Uruk’s reach, then return to Surupag.”

  “Yes sire. I’ll leave you with Mother T’Qinna now.”

  “I’m glad you came by.”

  Haviri left U’Sumi, who expected his wife to come back any second. When more than a quarter of an hour must have passed without T’Qinna’s return, he got up, grabbed his quickfire torch, and strolled down to the river.

  A long sweep of the torch’s cool blue light beam showed that she was not there. U’Sumi whistled for the watch.

  A man scrambled down the low embankment, and ran to him with a salute.

  “Did Mother T’Qinna go back up to the palace?”

  The sentry said, “I didn’t know she came to the water, M’El-Ki.”

  “She wanted to bathe her face. I told her to notify the watch before she went down to the river because of wild beasts.”

  “She never approached me, Lord, and I have been watching the river for more than two hours. She could not have passed without my knowing it.”

  U’Sumi’s heart began to thud in his
chest. “I’m sure it’s nothing; she may have changed her mind, and met Mother Tiva and got to talking.”

  The sentry smiled. “Aye, sire.”

  U’Sumi scrambled up the bank, to the palace, and went to Khumi and Tiva’s room, adjacent to his own. He called inside.

  Tiva met him at the doorway drape. “Hi, U’Sumi, Khumi’s over at Iyapeti’s camp, visiting, if you’re looking for him.”

  “Actually I’m looking for my wife; seen her?”

  “Not since mid-afternoon. She was busy with patients, and I had to supervise the cooking.”

  Something like a taloned claw clenched U’Sumi’s chest. “She said she was going down to the river and coming right back, but the watch never saw her, even though I told her to tell him she was going down to the water.”

  “Maybe she’s with Pahpi Nu, or one of her patients.”

  “I’ll go to Pahp. Could you please check among the sick, Tiva?”

  “Sure.”

  U’Sumi raced for the other wing of the house, and found his father’s suite dark, with the Old Man fast asleep inside.

  He rejoined Tiva under the woven reed awning in the courtyard, where the few patients they had left were palleted. She shrugged. All the patients were quiet.

  Panic seized him by the throat as he raced across the north field to Iyapeti and Aram’s encampment, where he discovered that nobody had seen “Mother Pyra” since daylight. U’Sumi ran back to their room, certain that he must have passed her in transit along a different route. He pushed through the drape to find the oil lamp still lit, but the room empty.

  That was when he yelled for the watch-captain to sound the alarm.

  It was dawn before they completed a thorough search of Surupag, and the last riders returned from the outermost perimeters. Several counts showed all of the reed boats present.

  T’Qinna had simply vanished.

  The highly important Sumerian King List was written in Sumerian cuneiform on clay tablets, with the first version probably appearing during the Ur III Period (circa 2150-2000 BC).

  The list presumed to detail the dominant, and “official,” kings from the beginning of history—when kingship was first handed down from Heaven. This was passed from city to city through military conquest.

  In some ways it appears to be a mixture of fact and fantasy, including as it does a list of the antediluvian kings of Sumer and mention of the Flood itself. However, archaeological evidence supports a Flood of sorts at the start of the third millennium BC which would have seemed like a disaster for the farming Sumerians, so the kings themselves could also have a basis in half-forgotten fact.

  Many of the historical kings are confirmed by archaeology, but there are also kings who are confirmed by other sources who are missing from the list, such as the priest kings of Lagash. There was probably some political play at work in its composition. The list also places some contemporaneous dynasties one after the other, as if they followed each other, handing on the kingship in turn.

  —The History Files: The Sumerian King List

  Peter Kessler

  www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesMiddEast/ MesopotamiaSumerList01.htm

  19

  Uruk and Kish

  93

  P’Tah-Tahut knew that the deserted villages north of Kish were a sight far more welcome to him than they ought to have been. Yet he could not help how his heart lifted in direct proportion to the distance he placed between himself and Assur; or Asshur, as the lunatic Saar had insisted on pronouncing his own name.

  Compared to Asshur, Ninurta was the epitome of sanity!

  Watching Kullasina and Asshur’s other chieftains cavort around, painted like Khana’Anhu slave-clowns, was bad enough. Their father’s habit of scampering about on all fours, buck-naked, with dried eagle’s wings strapped to his back, roaring his curly-maned head off like some rutting, demon-crazed lion, had nearly driven the Vizier equally mad. Night after night, the same lunatic camp meeting repeated itself, when “the divine spirit” descended on Asshur and his children. This usually followed a perfunctory ritual where the “Asshurians” bowed and worshipped their patriarch as a “living god.”

  No matter how many daughters the Saar made Kullasina stuff into Tahut’s tent for him to sleep with each night, the Vizier had refused to touch any. He feared they might infect him with their father’s disease. The once-lovely girls all had scary eyes peeping out from beneath unkempt hair, covering bodies that reeked of a filth no amount of perfumed oil could mask. They always squatted together to block his exit, hyena laughing at the Vizier’s impotence, while Tahut cowered in the tent corner, trying not to give terror his howling voice.

  Something else had squatted with them, unseen—a presence Tahut could only feel, which he wanted desperately not to arouse.

  Doubtless, the sun coming out again for the first time in several months also lifted his spirits. Either way, Tahut now understood what En’Tarah-ana had done, and why. The politics of expedience had doubtless left the Asshurian Lugal little choice.

  As the only remaining sane man of any authority, En’Tarah-ana must have carefully sought out those few like him among the junior ranks, and any who could still understand the Old Speech with sense enough to know that something was wrong. He had then led them south, to join up with Ninurta, hoping to find others like themselves. He had not been able to risk speaking to Tahut on the road, because he must have deemed it better for the Vizier to assess the situation at Asshur for himself.

  It therefore did not surprise the Vizier when he found En’Tarah-ana’s bowmen patrolling the low wall, marking what should have been the north march of the Akkad urban complex surrounding Kish and the Bab’Elu. He only hoped his theory about En’Tarah-ana’s intentions was correct—something he would soon know in any event—because the only alternative scenario that made any sense was too terrible to contemplate.

  “Hail, sentries!” P’Tah-Tahut called as soon as he rode his onager within earshot of the bowmen.

  “State your business,” returned the Sentry.

  “P’Tah-Tahut, Vizier of Ninurta, returning from Asshur!”

  Tahut allowed himself to breathe again when he saw the bowmen lower their weapons.

  The Sentry called, “Approach and enter, my Lord.”

  When Tahut and his escorts passed under the gate, he paused to address En’Tarah-ana’s sentry. “What news from the south?”

  The lead bowman scuttled down the short ladder above the gate, and bowed before the Vizier’s onager. “Etana Ninurta has made the returning of victory, and my Lord, En’Tarah-ana, has joined him in Kish’s defense.”

  Tahut had heard the Asshurians refer to Ninurta as “Etana,” which meant House of the Root of Names—another in his master’s growing list of divine titles. He said, “Defense against what?”

  “Ninurta as Etana passed north from Eridu, like a spirit on the wind, like a phoenix in flight, taking in the breadth of the land. He arrived here but days before my master, with news that a large army on giant horses has descended from the north. They passed him as he hid himself in the long grass. The horsemen circled south, as if making for Shurrupak.”

  “Iyapeti!”

  “Aye,” said the bowman, “in forces that outnumber ours! Ride on like the wind to Kish, Lord! We prepare for siege!”

  P’Tah-Tahut felt the blood drain from his face as he clicked his onager to full gallop.

  He needed to consult Suinne before it was too late. He muttered to himself, “Are they out of their minds? Our only hope is to go mobile, and retreat to higher, easily fortified ground! The walls of the Akkad are low and unfinished. Kish’s inner walls are not much better. If Iyapeti has brought his army south, that stupid astronomer is feeding our ‘god’ bad tactics!”

  94

  Malaq the oracle mage had no idea how the disaster had happened so quickly.

  The men of the Amirdu II began falling ill the day Lugalbanda arrived, about a month ago. At first, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh had kept
friendly faces. Each night, however, when the side boats returned to the ship after a day’s work rebuilding Uruk, or teaching its people, more of its men had the plague. Once aboard, the fever quickly spread among the crew, disabling all but Malaq and two others.

  Had that been the extent of it, he would have moved the ship further south, tended his sick, and then returned—which he had intended to do once a few more men recovered sufficiently, who still understood simple orders.

  Malaq never saw the boat that carried Kush, approaching by night. He heard the noise only once they came aboard.

  The Old Saar’s men, led by Lugalbanda, had already taken the wheelhouse, when Malaq got off his final warning to the approaching ships. After bashing the crystal oracle set with a belaying pin, he went below decks inside the aft superstructure, then forward, underneath the command deck, into the officer’s quarters, where he and the two remaining healthy sailors had sequestered themselves. He ordered them, with a few others only lightly afflicted, to abandon ship. They dove off the bows, and swam toward Uruk under cover of the night fog, Malaq being last to hit the water.

  He kept close to the hull at first, sending the others on ahead. There, he overheard Lugalbanda speaking with Kush in the same odd jabber the Old Saar had used since they had shown up at Uruk together. The water seemed to go cold as Lugalbanda leaned out on the rail, unable to see Malaq only because of the mist and the great reed hull’s curvature.

  Lugalbanda suddenly ceased from Kush’s babble, and shouted, “I know there are some of you who can still speak the Old Language. Show yourselves, and you will not be harmed.”

  Malaq’s skin crawled at the revelation that, somehow, Lugalbanda could communicate in the alien speech used by Kush, and by a growing number of the folk who straggled into Uruk each day. Then the oracle mage heard other voices on deck—those of men he had recently sailed the world with—speaking that same rapid jabber. How can a mere brain fever give a new mind, and the same new tongue, to many men?