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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  “What does he do?”

  Ur’Nungal hesitated, and then took a long pull on his drink. “He no longer invokes the blessings of En-Ki, but of Enlil. He has banished Inana and Dumuzi into the west, sending them with Utana’Pishti, who built the Boat of a Million Years that survived the Great Deluge. He claims to have found eternal life, but that he is only a man, and not two-thirds god!”

  Suinne gave his best fatherly sigh—something he knew people found not nearly as disturbing as his smile. “We can’t have that.”

  Ur’Nungal looked down into his drink. “Must he die?”

  “You know he must, but it need not be shameful or painful to him. Nor must we view him as a traitor to his people—his grief for Enkidu has just blinded him. Only we two need know. I have a potion, which when mixed into his drink, will put him into a gentle sleep like a man who rests after many noble labors.”

  “There will be no pain?”

  “None. You and I shall preserve his memory together, as it ought to be—Gilgamesh, the great hero of Uruk, who went on his long quest, and spoke to the man-turned-god that survived the Great Deluge. But, in the end, Gilgamesh could not find the magic life-tree at the bottom of the sea. Or maybe we shall have him find it, and have him be tricked into losing it by a serpent.”

  Ur’Nungal began to weep. “It is an ending the old Gilgamesh would have liked. And does he get to see Enkidu again?”

  Suinne smiled—he could not help himself—and it did not matter; Uruk’s War-Captain could not see through his tears. “It can be however you want it. Nothing is too good for the Hero of Uruk. You shall rule in his place, and immortalize him in gold.”

  132

  Gilgamesh felt sleepy after his dinner. The wine had tasted a little funny, but it went down fine. His eyelids grew heavy, but instead of fuzzy darkness, a golden light seemed to fill the chamber—only it was no longer his chamber, but somewhere else.

  A kindly voice spoke to him. “You should have listened more closely to Mother Tiva and Father Khumi, but you listened well enough to avoid the worst fate. Our Master will greet you soon.”

  Gilgamesh said, “I don’t understand.”

  He was in a garden with many fountains. Overhead, a fiery sky lit the scenery in swirling orange-golds. Seated across from him was a red-skinned, blue-eyed man he thought he had seen once, when he was little more than boy, but he could not place where.

  The man spoke again. “You will be remembered, but not as you or I would wish. Still, it could have been much worse for you.”

  “Worse?”

  The man across from him smiled. “Let’s not go into that just now. You need to be prepared yet. It’s nice to have space for that.”

  The old Gilgamesh would have gotten angry. Instead, the new one agreed, and asked, “Do I know you?”

  The man nodded. “We met once, briefly, when you were a boy. You knew me as Zuisudra, but my name is A’Nu-Ahki.”

  Lord of heaven and earth:

  The earth was not, you created it

  The light of day was not, you created it

  The morning light you had not [yet] made exist.

  —A Hymn found among the Ebla Tablets

  (circa 2500 to 2300 BC)

  24

  White Rock

  133

  Palqui felt the Shadow approaching the settlement of White Rock for many days, before the sentinel runner actually arrived. The Glow had brightened again after more than a century of dormancy—not enough that anyone else besides Palqui could see it; but enough to tell him trouble was coming. Even without the Glow, he had known for quite some time. Disjointed stories had traveled up the Eufratys River faster than those who babbled them. Yet babblers still carried information, even if they did not get the implications.

  To Palqui, those implications would have seemed the least of his miseries, if not for the warning from the Glow’s increasing brightness; for Palqui was half-babbler himself, and still could not always trust his own senses to tell him what was real. It mystified him that El Elyon would even speak through him at all. If Palqui so often struggled to see past his own senses, how could anyone else take him seriously? So Melchi Shemi and Mother Pyrrha often seemed to not-quite-imply. Maybe that was as much a figment of his tortured imagination as the voices he sometimes heard.

  Then, there was his family.

  In all the decades since they had fled Shurrupak to escape the advancing armies of Uruk, Lomina had not aged a day. After over a half-century-long initial dormancy in her fertility mega-cycle, she had born to him a son, and then seven daughters, during which time he had rapidly withered into an old man far too early. Not that Palqui was ungrateful for the youthful appearance of his wife, and for his family; he just could not escape the sense that he had let them all down somehow—and not only them.

  Palqui saw the eyes of younger men leering after Lomina, when she went with the other women to draw water—the only time when the women of White Rock were not required to wear veils and ankle-length smocks outside of their own tent compounds. Twenty years ago, Palqui had punched a set of those eyes black and blue for trying to do more than just leer—a man younger than his own son! Eya had given him the good fortune to get the drop on the man, just barely. He no longer had any certainty that if it happened again, he could repeat his performance.

  Loma had never dressed immodestly even in the misty Before Times, when her face and smile could shine freely for all to see. It angered him that White Rock’s new social taboos exiled all of her beauty to such uncomfortably extreme attire, as if her very womanhood were at fault, when the naked ugliness of increasing male vulgarity and infidelity had created her prison. Lomina never invited such attentions; yet her womanhood remained as young in mind as it did in body, in terms of basic needs and desires. Palqui could no longer keep up with those, either.

  Performance. No part of his life kept up with its demands.

  His only son, Raqu, resented him because Palqui had been absent too often, wandering the wilds to bring truth to the scattered nomads and distant settlements of babblers. His grandson, Syruq, barely understood a word he said. In both cases, Palqui had failed to measure up as a father.

  In the ice fields of the north, he had tired too easily, and slept into the days like a sluggard, seized by spells of extreme weakness and terrible dreams. If not for the kindness of the sons of Aeolys, he would have died in the snow. They had to return him to White Rock, finally, sacrificing men for an entire growing season to almost carry him most of the way home.

  Then, after years of convalescence, Palqui had tried to reach the nomads of the south, in the high grasslands east of the Great Yordaen Estuaries. He had done better in these sunnier lands, health and energy-wise; seeking those few who would follow, while braving wild beasts, and even wilder packs of tribal hunter-gatherers. Nobody ever understood a word the other said, except those rare few who tried to listen, and took the time to teach Palqui their tongue—even then, they only half-communicated with each other at best. In the end, those few nomads who listened to him had often gotten themselves killed by their own people, by enemy tribesmen, or by Kengiru adventurers looking for glory.

  Eventually, stiff opposition instigated by expansionist Kengiru warriors had forced Palqui and his handful of learners to limp home to White Rock, where none of them quite fit in. It was as if nobody had any common origin to connect them. Palqui more than half-remembered when humanity had been a single people with a common history, but most of the tribes he had encountered, or even that wandered through White Rock, could not remember their lives before the Division. The few who did, like him, found those memories dreamlike and distant, like tales of another age.

  Good and evil changed not, but the symbols and stories each tribe used to represent them became as fluid as water, dissolving truth as eroded soil, and redepositing it in ribbons or confused combinations. Palqui often smiled at how he actually resembled the little clay figurines of the hairy, flood-sending troll the Riverland peopl
e called “Huwawah”—except that he had the dignity to wear clothes. He smiled only because Eya had shown him secret honor because the wicked ridiculed him for the truth.

  It saddened him that these days “the wicked” seemed to encompass almost everyone—even many who sat like lambs to listen to the Melchi teach—perhaps even Palqui’s own son and grandson. At first, he had chided himself for being so harsh and critical. After all, they worked their work, wore clothes, and most of them endured White Rock’s civil codes—at least in public. Yet babblers came up the big river regularly, speaking not only of Anu, Enlil, and Ea, but also of Ishtar, Suenne, Ninurta, and Shamash.

  At first, this had not struck anyone as a problem—Anu, Enlil, and Ea seemed to be just simplified pronunciations of Eya’s Three-nesses, even as Eya was the simplified pronunciation of the Divine Name Palqui himself could no longer say. Yet he also knew that Ishtar was Inana, the girl the Divine Wordspeaker had warned him never to trust. He always kept his ear out whenever she came up. He knew that Suenne was just a bad man, and Shamash, a fallen Watcher—a false god. And who could forget Ninurta?

  It had not taken long for Palqui to realize that Ishtar, Shamash, and Suenne had formal cults worshipping them as deities. Yet the newcomers seemed to speak as if they had escaped them. It took decades for him to realize that Akkadians from Kish now used the word that once meant escape simply to mean relocate. Surely, En’Tarah-ana’s people had often fled the expansion of the Kengiru of Uruk, just as the Shurrupak folk. Some of Shurrupak’s people went east with Yoktan’s clan, following Arrafu’Xad. Most came west with Melchi Shemi, Heberi, and Palqui.

  This realization about the cults compounded Palqui’s fear and remorse over his children. He had never meant to be gone so long on his journeys, and had not anticipated how much they would take out of him or his family. He wished now he had done things differently—he would have attempted the same things, just differently. Raqu had spent much of his childhood with only a part-time father, and Syruq’s new wife came from among the younger farmers, who spoke of Ishtar just a little too wistfully for Palqui’s tastes.

  Lomina thought her husband too suspicious—that the problem was mostly just speech differences. Not even Mother Pyrrha and Melchi Shemi seemed fully aware of the implications that Palqui thought he saw, though that might have been because he could not communicate with them as often or as freely as he wished. Either way, it frustrated him. He often felt no closer to making himself understood than when he was at the Shurrupak hospice.

  For the longest time after they had migrated west, and settled White Rock, Palqui felt almost directionless, his mind healing from the Bab’Elu Plague. Between his northward journey, and the southward one, which had kept him away far too long, he and Loma had started their family. Now, he showed signs of premature aging, and struggled even with organizing his own thoughts. Without Loma’s help, he would be fully a babbler. Putting his whole life in one heap, Palqui felt like a messenger who had failed both the one sending him, and those to whom he went.

  Performance.

  Now Raqu shouted for his inheritance. The young man had already declared his intention to move his clan back to the “glamour” of Uruk or Akkad. Nor was he alone. White Rock was losing the majority of its younger generation, and it seemed that those who stayed remained only half-heartedly at best. Palqui’s efforts to adjust his vision to focus on them seemed as fruitless as all that came before.

  He shook off his ruminations, and regarded the panting runner who had just arrived from the watch posts near the big river. The sentinel had just told him about a line of donkeys and onagers moving their way, escorted by a squad of Kengiru warriors.

  The morning sun bathed the white limestone buildings of White Rock as a golden patina, glistening off the sweat of the man’s brown skin. He stopped to brief Palqui as a courtesy, being one of his last grassland disciples, before reporting to the Great Ones.

  Palqui regretted gleaning information before Melchi Shemi, but sometimes he was not sure his ancestor still trusted him entirely.

  He said to the runner, “Made you speaks with caravan yet?”

  “Still far off too muchly.”

  “Report to Melchi, then.”

  The runner trotted up the stairs to the modest administrative ziggurat that sat near the limestone bluff of White Rock’s gentle hill. The hinterland behind was a patchwork of farmland and pasture. There, free Khana’Anhu nomads seasonally leased property to plant on or graze their flocks, selling their profit each harvest, before they moved south to winter at Amur’s freehold city of Yerikho. Some of the Yerikho shepherds took part in the tiny remnant that followed Palqui by roaming the lands to gather wanderers into Melchi Shemi’s work of re-education into the skills of civilization.

  Palqui hated to think that a strain had entered his and Melchi Shemi’s relationship, but if so, it had begun slowly, and imperceptibly. The rapidly aging “Seer of the Division” now sported an unruly white beard, with windswept hair like snowy wool wreathing the dark-brown wrinkles of his face.

  Palqui’s suspicion that many of the newcomers actually still belonged to the Riverland cults had many sources. Loma was partly right—communications often broke down because speeches had changed so much; and many of the Kengiru, Akkadians, and Asshurians spoke much more rapidly than Palqui could. Subtle things disturbed him, which Shemi often seemed to think unimportant.

  High matters of far-off lands preoccupied the Melchi, and Palqui understood that. He wished he could speak faster, so his words came out correctly, and his ancestor did not get flustered trying to understand him. Bitterness squirmed like a multi-headed snake inside him, and Palqui knew that he must not give in to it, no matter what. Yet the sense of being only half-understood only added to the weight, and he feared that one day the multi-headed serpent would break forth from him to corrupt everything he had ever stood for, and alongside Melchi Shemi against.

  Mother Pyrrha tried to learn all the new speaks of the afflicted—she used to be more available. Since the people were always such trouble, though, men fighting, killing, and taking other men’s wives, and wives (except for Loma) wanting to be “taken,” it forced Melchi Shemi to make many hard new rules. Men must not initiate speech with women who were not their own wives or mothers, unless the women’s husbands or parents were present. Likewise, women could only speak to men not their own husbands or fathers under strictly controlled conditions. The rules were supposed to simplify life, but somehow they only made Palqui’s work more complicated.

  Mother Pyrrha was like Palqui’s own mother to him, but Shemi had told him they must be examples, so no longer could he consult Mother Pyrrha as before. Sometimes he spoke to her through his mother or Lomina, but they often mixed things up. Palqui also never forgot that things still went wrong with his own speech. He was no closer to understanding why than when he had first discovered it, except that Melchi Shemi had once called him a “bridge.” He felt like a bridge to nowhere; that he had failed Shemi even in this once hopeful role—just as he failed in all the others.

  Palqui faced the direction the runner had come from, straining to see the oncoming caravan that was doubtless still too far off. He did not see the man approach from the ziggurat until a hand rested on his shoulder. He turned to find Melchi Shemi. Behind him old Qe’Nani stooped, dressed in a soiled loincloth.

  Shemi’s miraculously youthful face did not look pleased—only the fire in his deep blue eyes, and a few wisps of silver in his beard, gave slight clue of his true age. “Palqui, I need you to take this man down to the well and see that he bathes. After that, I would like you to go out and greet the caravan that’s coming in from the east—since you’re so diligent about garnering information from my runners before I can.”

  Palqui hung his head. “Yes, Melchi Shemi.”

  Shemi’s voice softened. “When you get back, I want you to come visit me and Mother Pyra, and eat with us. You’re clearly troubled by something. I’m sorry I’ve been too busy to see
you for so long. That warlord from away south is attacking Misori’Ra’s settlements up the River Styx. They call him King Scorpion. I’m trying to raise war bands from a league of settlements—time consuming stuff.”

  “I not mean to bother…”

  Shemi smiled. “You’re not a bother, Palqui, I’m just old, cranky, and way too busy. You see important things. I want to give you time to order your thoughts. Plus, you’re the only one I’d trust to greet a Kengiru caravan escorted by warriors, with your father away visiting Psydon, and Malaq at Yerikho. Be careful out there.”

  “Thankings be. I will.”

  134

  U’Sumi watched Palqui lead old Qe’Nani off to the watering place, to splash him down. They had found Ninurta’s former “High Khaldi” wandering like a beast, naked in the delta bush, during their retreat from Surupag, long ago. In all the time since, Qe’Nani had not uttered a single coherent word. Even T’Qinna had concluded, after long examinations that, unlike the others, Qe’Nani really did just make ape-like noises.

  U’Sumi sighed, remembering as if yesterday the birth of his first grandson. That firstborn son of his own firstborn son had become the wretch that Palqui would now scrub down like a filthy animal, and then chain to a post inside the barn. Qe’Nani had the unfortunate habit of using his incontinence as a weapon, lethal only to community patience and hygiene.

  Something T’Qinna had said last night had dredged up a memory so painful that they both had cried each other to sleep. It was not so much the memory, but how it placed their lives into such horrifying perspective. That it had done so in an offhand comment, despite centuries of effort not to indulge self-pity, made U’Sumi’s looming sense of defeat all the more inescapable. He could find no honest way to shake it, and even with their refusal to speak ill of E’Yahavah over it, his faith still buckled under its weight. A festering rage often lurked just below the surface of his heart, threatening to erupt, no matter how constantly he submitted it to his Maker.