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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  “I remember something you told me when we first looked over the Desolation of Nhod,” his wife had said. It was nothing he hadn’t thought of.

  Qe’Nani had gotten out again, and T’Qinna seemed as exasperated with the old lunatic as U’Sumi was.

  She continued, “It was after your father had spoken of the origin of Short-lifer’s Syndrome.” She referred to a terrible inherited disease of the olden world’s Nhod region, which had increased the rate at which victims aged by a factor of ten. The words had immediately popped back from the darkness of U’Sumi’s memory, and he had thought instantly of En’Tarah-ana, Qe’Nani, Palqui, and so many others.

  I can’t imagine what it must be like for parents to watch their children grow old and die in less than a century, while they themselves stay young and healthy to live on in grief.

  He had not needed to imagine for at least a century and a half now. He knew. He knew, and part of him withered and died inside with each aging generation of his children, as another part of himself lingered on like a ghost, and another cried ever more shakily for E’Yahavah to make this nightmare end. Aram, blind and feeble, had died of a stroke a decade ago, Aram’s son of old age two years later, and his grandson of the same, just months after that. Depending on the clan, anywhere from three to five generations had all started dying of old age at once, while vanishingly few others lived on.

  Those few like him, T’Qinna, Psydon (who had built a city over the southwest mountains), and Iyapeti, aged slowly, relative to everyone else. There must be others, but they had all scattered. U’Sumi expected the number of such people would dwindle, and eventually vanish into the corroding fogs of myth and legend—if this world of brutish children proved capable of even that much to remember the past.

  History, in any real sense, had died on the bloody altar of the Gate of the Gods. So had truth, ethics, law, philosophy, science, and any other benefit of civilization that grew, directly or indirectly, from knowledge of one’s Creator. U’Sumi—if anyone else bothered to remember him at all—would always remember himself as the fool who had tried to rebuild a world on the wisdom of his elders, only to find himself Father of the Endless Dark Age.

  He muttered to himself, “If that were only the extent of it!”

  Despite what he had told Palqui about how busy he was, a part of U’Sumi’s mind noticed everything—to the point where he wished that it did not!

  While Qe’Nani was about four hundred and sixty, and Palqui approached a third of that, their debilitation and rapid aging was all too evident—so real that dying at a hundred years would now seem a greater mercy than living on as they were—at least in Qe’Nani’s case.

  U’Sumi hated it when the Nightmare pushed his mind this direction; he could only imagine what Palqui went through with all of his voices and hallucinations on top of it. He wanted to believe that E’Yahavah somehow really spoke to the little wanderer, but that hope grew harder to maintain each decade. Palqui, for all his desire to be helpful, never reached the point where U’Sumi could really count on him for anything more than the most limited of leadership roles.

  Maybe that’s why I’ve been avoiding him—he reminds me of failure—of the failure of everything. He reminds me of how afraid I am of being the only one left who can competently do anything, who must care for all the others as they die. Now, this King Scorpion devours everything from the south, while Lugalbanda’s cults consume the Riverland as poison travels through a man’s bloodstream. Iyapeti’s tribes fight barbarian giants in the north, while encroaching glaciers drive his few remaining tribes into the Iavanic Sink. I’m old, but the young are feebler.

  He climbed to the wooden hall atop the ziggurat, where Iyapeti waited. His brother had not been south to visit in over forty years.

  U’Sumi pushed through the doors after climbing the long stairs, out of breath. Iyapeti’s bear-like form reclined on floor cushions inside the lodge, at a low stone table by the hearth.

  “What are you all out of breath over, old man?”

  It occurred to U’Sumi for the first time that he was just shy of being the same age as his father the year the Deluge began. “Must be all this easy living,” he answered with a half-smirk, when he really wanted to scream.

  ‘Peti laughed, “Hey, compared to conditions up north…”

  U’Sumi raised his hand as if to block his brother’s words. “I know, I know, but tell me that’s not why you’ve settled with Rhodan’s sons. Those hills looked cozy, last time I came up, with roses everywhere, and what do they call you there when they bring tribute, ‘Iupiter Rhodoni’ or something?”

  Iyapeti grimaced. “Sometimes I wonder if they really get what I try to tell them. Aeolis did; you know, El’Issaq; but he’s been dead now, what, over fifty years. His people settled the Valley of Aelys, and his sons still say that when one of them dies in righteousness, he goes to the Aelyssian Fields. It seems to be what they call Heh’Bul’s Rest.” He referred to the afterlife, named for the first man ever to die; a good man murdered by an evil brother.

  “That’s encouraging. At least it shows they understand a relationship between the way we live and the life beyond death.”

  ‘Peti said, “That’s at Aelys. Rhodan’s descendants don’t seem quite as sharp. Best I can tell; Iupiter Rhodoni is just how they pronounce Iyapeti plus the honorific ‘Father of the Rhodesos,’ which is what Rhodan’s sons call themselves. The oni ending seems to be some kind of patriarchal superlative, but I might have that wrong. I don’t let them worship me as some god, but what do I do when most of them have been born, grown old, and died in less than a century, while they watch me and a few others live on, seemingly ever young—and ever more miserable, I might add. I try to keep the tribute simple, without ceremony, but…”

  U’Sumi finished his thought for him, “Each year they keep making it more elaborate with some form of ritualistic attempt to curry your favor.”

  “Ah, I see I’m not the only one! I was getting afraid that it was just me—that I had some character flaw that somehow encouraged that sort of thing. It’s not as if I use the tribute for myself; there’s the Academy—or what passes for it these days. I keep a shrine to E’Yahavah, but the youngerlings seem to fear it, and few go in there, no matter what I try to teach them. I never had the knack for teaching you do, ‘Sumi.”

  U’Sumi gave an acerbic chuckle. “Oh, I’ve got some knack! I teach them, and they seem to listen. Then they usually go out and do the opposite, or at best, some harmfully half-baked parody of what I said. Then I have to set up some kind of harsh civil code—women must wear veils, men must not speak directly to other men’s wives, or some other such nonsense—simply because the nonsense they do if I don’t enforce my nonsense is a hundred times more nonsensical! It gets so ugly—as if they want to live like animals, but cruel old ‘Melchi Shemi’ won’t let them! Palqui helps keep them in line, but I’m not always sure if he’s hearing from E’Yahavah or just tormented by his inner demons.”

  “Demons?”

  U’Sumi sat down. “He rambles over how he thinks that Ea, Enlil, and Anu are not really the Three Aspects of E’Yahavah anymore, but something different—something bad. At first, I was afraid he’d flipped sides on us—not like he’d be the first! Then I questioned him until I had him weeping as he tried to explain that what he meant was that the other afflicted ones did not see them that way, not that he didn’t. I tried to tell him that the others were just as he was—that they couldn’t pronounce the names properly, that he had to keep things simple for them, and not become so focused on his own internal struggles. I’m not sure I’m getting through to him, though. He seems frustrated, even angry sometimes. I can’t have that.”

  Iyapeti’s voice cracked; his eyes distant. “How do we put it all back together again, ‘Sumi? It’s not like we don’t look for E’Yahavah to guide, or are unwilling to obey him, but it’s still way beyond us! How do we recover when it all just unravels faster, year after year? We can’t even pass on what w
e know to the young! Whenever we think they get it, they show us they really don’t!”

  U’Sumi wanted to snap, “Not you too!” Instead, mocking laughter seemed to screech inside his head, as if the voices in Palqui’s shattered mind had somehow broken into his own. Then memories of his youth reminded him how he, too, had suffered in similar ways, during his own odyssey of discovery concerning the nature of truth, humanity, E’Yahavah, and the terrible mechanics of dying worlds.

  He said, “We must keep praying, and trust in E’Yahavah’s strength —especially with this King Scorpion devouring northward up the Styx. At his present rate, he’ll overrun most of the Misori’Rayim before autumn, and take the rest of the Delta-lands and Psydon next year. He’ll be at our borders the year after. Where’d he come from, anyway?”

  ‘Peti seemed to accept the change of subject with relief. “You said that the people of Uruk believed Kush had vanished into the sea, and that Nimurta took Pahp, Tiva, and Khumi—if he survived the arrow Haviri saw him take—to this place called Dilmun, where they supposedly became gods. You don’t think that Khumi could have survived, only to…”

  “No. That’s just the myth Lugalbanda wove around it. He likely took them off to some secluded place and murdered them. Khumi had his eyes opened at Bab’Elu; of that much, I’m certain. Let’s not darken our gloom.”

  Iyapeti nodded. “I guess you’re right. What about Usalaq; is he still alive, watching Arrata?”

  “He was, last I heard, but that was back when En’Tarah-ana still ruled Kish. Usalaq was not taken south to Surupag by Nimurta with the others, so that raises questions in my mind of who exactly is he watching Arrata for? Ice fields now cover the northern paths, and the Asshurian, Akkadian, or Kengiru block the southern approaches. No one’s been up the northern springs.”

  Iyapeti shrugged. “Maybe we’ll find out something from this caravan coming up from the Ufratsi. Are you sure that sending Palqui to meet it was the best thing? As you said, he seems a bit off sometimes.”

  U’Sumi put his head down on the stone table into his arms. “No, I’m not much sure of anything, these days; except that this is all a bunch of Lugalbanda’s crap, flung at us like Qe’Nani flings his! Sorry about your tunic, by the way—didn’t know he’d gotten out again.

  Iyapeti laughed. “It was an interesting greeting ritual, at least!”

  135

  Inana saw Huwawah; divine flame glaring around the hairy little man as a mockery of Utu’s holy rays! Gilgamesh and Enkidu must have lied about killing him—men lied about everything! She supposed maybe he’d lied about the bull guts being those of Heaven’s Bull too, but she could not be certain. Gilgamesh was not her equal, but he was still more than half god, according to En-Ki. That made him dangerous. Why Enlil would use the contemptible little troll descending the trail before the caravan mystified her. If not for his fierce melam-glow, she would not have paid him any mind.

  The dark little Creature at the center of the blaze spoke something Inana could not make out.

  Utana’Pishti dismounted, and approached Enlil’s Monster. They exchanged greetings, and then Utana’Pishti grew animated and called his wife to meet the troll, too, as if they were old friends.

  Inana and Dumuzi were of greater divinity than those two. She could not afford to allow Enlil’s Monster to think that Ishtar was anything less than the emissary of En-Ki, and that Dumuzi, as her consort, did not warrant recognition, too. She dismounted her onager, and motioned for Dumuzi to follow. She tried to keep her anger at their slight out of her voice.

  “Now seeing here is Huwawah, Enlil’s Monster; that should not Ishtar and Dumuzi be making greetings from peerless En-Ki?” She smiled as she drew near to them, and extended her hand.

  Dumuzi stood off, behind her, as she had trained him to do since he was a small boy.

  Huwawah glared at her, and made no move to take her offered hand.

  She slowly withdrew it. He was a monster, after all, and monsters lacked the social graces bestowed by the civilizing M’Ae.

  Utana’Pishti continued speaking as if Inana was not even there, “Is my brother among you?”

  Huwawah bowed to the boat-maker. “Both your brothers await you at White Rock, my lord. Your returning to them will lift their hearts higher than they have had liftings in many a long decade! Feastings shall be!”

  Inana could contain her indignation no longer. “And what of the blessing that Ishtar brings to her far-flung people?”

  The melam-glow around Huwawah burst into wild flame as the wretched little man-thing at its center said, “You are not to be trusted. So says El. What businesses have you here?”

  Inana shrieked, “I will not be talked to…” but got no further.

  The living flame that surrounded the abominable little man leaped out at her and burned her eyes. For a moment, she thought she saw her own bones through the flesh of her hands that covered her face. She called out to En-Ki, but felt only a great void inside, where usually his voice chattered to her. Distantly, she heard Dumuzi shout frantically to the others not to be alarmed, that she was just having a vision. She had vision; she saw herself clawing her consort’s eyes out!

  Even after the flame died down, Inana could not speak. As if from far away, she heard Utana’Pishti’s wife say to Dumuzi, “Maybe you should take her back to her mount. I’ll check on her before we start to move again.”

  The world seemed dim and gray, while bright flashes exploded in Inana’s eyes. The little hairy man’s melam-glow faded into a swirling light that hovered over him like his own personal windstorm of blue flame. None of the others seemed to notice, or if they did, they ignored it. The humiliation of her deity, and the condescending way that both Dumuzi and the Boat-maker’s wife had spoken of her, made her blood boil.

  En-Ki, where are you? She screamed out in her mind.

  Enlil’s dark-skinned little troll had won their first clash. She would not allow him another chance. Eventually, En-Ki would return to her. When he did, Ishtar would do that which Gilgamesh had only lied about.

  136

  The foam-speckled shore of the Great Western Ocean appeared, far below the tiny clan of animal skin-clad hunter-gatherers descending from the highlands. They had wandered far, skirting the lakes and rivers that drained from the southern ends of the giant glaciers that marked the Sides of the North. In each green valley, others who had come before them drove the little tribe away, further and further west. Today the west of the world ended. All floated on water.

  The Chieftain lifted his hand to halt his band, and gazed down on the ocean for the first time. The Voices driving them westward had started during the days of his father’s father’s father, who had died before the Chieftain was born. The Voices did not like the clan-people to remember too many names of those who went before—except for that of Wodin, who had been the fourth father back, from whose greater tribe the Chieftain’s ancestor had separated. The Voices allowed them to lay flowers and totems on fresh graves, but the life of the Tribe was in the Now.

  The Chieftain suspected that remembering too much would only add a mountain of hurt to a life that was already too many mountains of pain.

  Now that he and his people stood on the shoulders of the Last Mountain, the Chieftain wished it were one of those rare days when Soli let his divine light pierce the gray clouds. Then they might see if the fabled giant snake, Yormung’Ander swam the outer ocean that surrounded the world, its tail clasped between its teeth. The Voices permitted few stories from the Before Times, none of which had any certainty. In some versions of the World-Snake story, Yormung’Ander had two legs, and ran around a fire mountain at the world’s navel, where a great hunter had killed it. The Chieftain did not think any hunter could really kill a snake that big, so he went with the ocean version.

  Not that it mattered. The Voices of the Dead didn’t care, so neither did him. Telling stories around the campfire only wasted time better spent gathering firewood, or sleeping, anyway.

 
The Chieftain gazed up at the great face of rock that was the world’s last mountain, then down into the lowlands before the ocean. Away in the distance, southward, a large bay jutted inland, with gentler highlands just beyond. The Chieftain also noticed something shining against the lower foothill he and his clan had just begun to descend.

  The strange object was like nothing he had ever seen before. Two tall, bare trees grew from it, but not like any trees he knew. These trees were perfectly straight, each with only four branches that went out from the trunks on exact opposite sides, equally straight, at perfect L-shaped angles. The Chieftain led his people down the slope to see this new thing. As they rounded a rock outcropping, the object became more visible, and frightening.

  Some of the river and lake peoples who had always driven his clan westward, chasing them with clubs and sticks, had boats made of skins and wood. Such people had killed some of the clan, which made this new object something of dread—a giant boat with shiny black skins draped over a broken curved hull, upon which were many rooms, like a floating village.

  As the Chieftain approached, his fear lessened somewhat. The divine boat—for only gods could make so large a craft—had jagged holes in it, and looked as if its makers had abandoned it long ago, perhaps in the Before Times, or even earlier. Weeds grew all around it and from cracks in its dark hull, which seemed to be a hard shell over layers of woven reeds. Bushes covered parts of it with the falling leaves of many seasons, long gone.

  The Chieftain reached out his hand and touched the ancient ship, staring up at it in awe. The only reason he did not fear that it was Soli’s boat, carrying the sun, was that this boat had been here since long before the last time Soli had shone through the cloud-shadow, which was only one moon ago. Perhaps Soli changed sky-boats whenever they wore out, as men discarded old water skins for new. This vessel, magnificent as it was, looked worn out—at least for the use of a god.