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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  The Chieftain smiled. That did not mean it had no use for men. Perhaps Soli, or one of the other gods, had discarded it. Maybe they tossed it to earth to help his clan. That thought gave hope.

  The Chieftain circled the divine boat until he found a place to climb up onto the platform over its curved hull. There he found a hole in the long hut, big enough for him to squeeze though. He reached up to grab the magically straight edges of the hole, to pull himself inside. The moment his hands clasped hold, a thin screech called up out of the earth like the wailing dead. He released the opening, and leaped from the platform into the stony dirt.

  The shriek out of the ground increased, until rocks began tumbling down the slope. Then the earth itself began to jump.

  The Chieftain crawled away from the now creaking boat, wailing for the gods and the Voices of the Dead not to punish him.

  “You are too weak!” came one of the Voices inside him.

  Another of the dead ones said, “You can’t protect your clan, you worthless coward! You’re afraid to kill those who would kill you!”

  A boulder struck one of the Chieftain’s women in the head, crushing her skull, and knocking her body down the slope. The others began to shriek with the earth and the dead it held.

  The Chieftain rolled over and staggered to his feet, glancing around for shelter. Then he saw the ocean itself retreating away from land. He began to howl even louder than the others did as the shaking ground knocked him into the dirt again. Crawling to a solid outcropping that overlooked the bay, he then saw a thing that made him curl up into a terrified ball, knees to chest.

  An enormous chasm opened across the south, swallowing the bay, and sundering the highlands beyond it from the Last Mountain. The roaring ocean returned, funneling through the great crack, seemingly in arm’s reach of the Chieftain’s yowling form. He turned his head, just as the divine boat slid down the slope in an avalanche of rocks, taking half of his people in its rumbling stream of living earth, into the chaos of rushing seas.

  Slowly, the shaking stopped, but the roaring waters continued. The Chieftain scrambled away from where the boat had been, to the few that remained of his kin. He gestured wildly for them to go back up the way they came, but could not shake them from their shock. Then he looked off into the southeast, into what moments before had been a wide gentle valley.

  The ocean blasted into the lowlands, but never climbed toward the slopes on either side. Instead, an endless gush of white water stretched into the east, fanning out to cover the widening landscape as it went.

  The Chieftain had only his remaining fear-frozen people, and the accusing Voices of the Dead to tell him what to do next. The people quivered and made noises in their throats.

  One of the Voices of the Dead said, “You touched the divine boat. You killed half your clan, you stupid roamer! Now you must live in the ice.”

  As usual, the Voices were never any real help. But he would obey them in terror, anyway. What else could he do?

  137

  The afternoon sun broke through the clouds, bathing White Rock in ethereal golds. T’Qinna watched the caravan climb the gentle slope toward the main settlement, and cried out, “’Sumi; it’s Tiva and Khumi! Look!”

  She raced down the ziggurat stairs, not checking to see if her husband followed, and not caring if the people saw her run. She threw off her veil, calling, “Tiva; you’re alive! Thank E’Yahavah!”

  The compact woman on the second onager dismounted, and ran uphill at U’Sumi’s wife, while Khumi handed his tether rope to one of the Kengiru escorts to finish leading the caravan in.

  Tiva actually looked far better than she had almost a hundred and fifty years ago, before Ninurta had taken her and Khumi away with A’Nu-Ahki. Her riotous curls were salt and pepper, but the lines on her dusky face were clearly those from laughter now, and the bags under her eyes had vanished. She had also lost the extra weight, and had a healthy glow about her that T’Qinna had not seen there in many centuries, if ever.

  Both women collided into a hug, tears of joy flowing like the old running water faucets aboard the Boat of a Million Years.

  By the time the women released each other, Khumi, U’Sumi, and Iyapeti also embraced three-way, the enormous height and shoulders of ‘Peti dwarfing the forms of his smaller brothers.

  U’Sumi spoke first. “Pahp?”

  Khumi hung his head, but smiled serenely. “He went to our fathers not long after his nine-hundred and fiftieth birthday, about a year after Ninurta marooned us on Tel’Muhn—an island far south, in the Abyssu Mires. We had a prosperous colony there with several other families. Pahp went peacefully, thinking of you both, and he told me to wish you all farewell, and to reaffirm all that he had said to you.”

  Khumi then gestured to a muscular, mid-height man with short-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair, and a moustache. “This is our son, Ursunabi. Pahp took him in when nobody else on the ship or colony would. As far as I know, he’s the only one ever to recover from the Madness Plague with all of his faculties. Pahp prayed over him.”

  U’Sumi and T’Qinna went immediately to the newcomer and embraced him. “We knew Yafutu, of the Fleet-House Ursunabi, in the World-that-Was; a young seer and man of the sea.”

  The man bowed, after embracing them back. “It is for him that Zuisudra named me. I too grew up to be a boatman. It’s as if he knew I would somehow.”

  U’Sumi embraced him again. “Then the name is well given, and well taken. It is a joy to my long years to know that the house of Ursunabi lives again!”

  T’Qinna said, “Do you remember before your recovery, and before your affliction—I’ve devoted my life to treating and helping those with the Bab’Elu Syndrome.”

  Ursunabi answered, “Great Mother, I do not know what is ‘syndrome.’ I have memory of my affliction, but none from before it—I was only a boy. You, Father…” he turned to U’Sumi, “seem familiar to me. My father tells me that you put into Uruk after the Plague. I recall fish men who spoke. There was one who brought thunder, and afterward, healing. I was the boy who first met them. The Uruk people called me ‘Mud Boy’ because no one knew my name, and I spoke mostly in noises…”

  U’Sumi said, “We must speak, you, my wife, and I. I remember you well! I’ve yet to meet even a lightly afflicted person who’s made so complete a recovery as yours. I recall that you were badly off. This is amazing!”

  Ursunabi seemed about to respond, when a commotion started from inside the caravan line. The people of White Rock murmured and chattered, clustering around two figures climbing the gentle slope toward the ziggurat.

  Khumi rolled his eyes. “It’s a long story, but I’m afraid we’re not the only members of this caravan…”

  The gathering crowd parted to reveal two approaching figures. The woman was clothed in a fish-net-like blouse, which revealed everything it covered, and a tight belted loincloth that barely shielded the essentials under a red triangular flap. The man with her was more conventionally dressed in the style of an Uruk En, a belted kilt with a woven vest.

  It took a moment for T’Qinna to recognize the woman as her youngest granddaughter, whom she had not seen since Ninurta and Qe’Nani had “discovered” Surupag. T’Qinna’s rage took her by storm, but she bit her tongue and clenched her jaws.

  Her husband shouted at the men of White Rock, “Stop gawking, and put a drape over that woman!”

  Inana’s male companion tried to fend off Palqui, who came from his hut with a blanket, to obey U’Sumi’s command. They scuffled, until Iyapeti stepped forward and cuffed the younger man off his feet in a single blow.

  Inana reluctantly allowed them to cover her, but made no move to help her companion. Instead, she stepped up to her sires, her chin jutting out. “Anu’s curse be to you! Why cover Ishtar that unveils her beauty? Why manhandle poor Dumuzi?”

  T’Qinna stepped up to her granddaughter and slapped her across the mouth. “Don’t you speak to your grandfather that way, and you will remain modestly attire
d in this community or I will personally take you apart!”

  Inana seemed both shocked and confused. “Anger is why? What is this of my grandfatherings? I am Anu’s daughter. Tiamat swims over Anu, but her lover, Absu, is the below-ings, where is En-Ki. You are not En-Ki!”

  T’Qinna closed her fist.

  U’Sumi stepped between them. “I am U’Sumi, the father of Arrafu’Kzaddi, your father. Don’t you remember, Inana?”

  The mad woman answered, “Ah, Usmu; vizier of En-Ki. He of two faces. Tell your master I have arrived by his command.”

  T’Qinna relaxed her fist when she saw that delusion had so entangled her long-lost granddaughter that reality, fantasy, and madness were all the same to her. Tears of horror came unbidden—her oldest grandson, and youngest granddaughter alike, gibbering lunatics; lost souls in a trackless maze that twisted and turned at the whim of each emotional impulse.

  U’Sumi said to his guard, whom he had kept to the background, hoping not to provoke the Kengiru. “Take this woman and her consort into custody, and confine them, but gently.”

  The six Kengiru soldiers did nothing to stop U’Sumi’s men, who approached Inana and her consort.

  The voices of protest came from behind.

  T’Qinna turned to find a group of farmers from White Rock shouting at her husband.

  “Not disprepectings of Aestarte! Why do you so hatefully?”

  Another man, an artisan who had lived at the settlement his whole life, yelled, “The beauty of Aestarte, divineness is! No to hatefulnesses! All gods must live in peace! No war of gods to us!”

  The group of dissenters grew, along with T’Qinna’s horror.

  A noise like thunder shook White Rock. Everyone turned to its source, which somehow was not skyward, but in their midst.

  Inana fell to the ground, and pulled the blanket over her head.

  Palqui stood alone under a whirlwind of blue flame. Most of the people of White Rock bolted at the sight of him as lightning cracked through the fiery cyclone in deadly veins. Others stood, hiding their eyes and shaking violently, unable to move otherwise.

  “I am Palqui, and in my day is the Earth divided. The word of El Elyon is against Aestarte forever. She promises life, but has none! She promises rebirth, but gives death to those who love her.”

  T’Qinna watched as the younger man with Inana rose from where Iyapeti had planted him. He seemed unafraid of Palqui, or his powerful light, as he approached where Inana lay.

  He spoke; “I am Dumuzi, consort of Ishtar! You speak lies, Monster! My mother went into Under-world and took me back from the goddess of death, from her sister, Ereshkigal! She sent me there, but she came in after me! I am alive because of her!”

  Palqui cocked his head. “That so? You mean she traded your twin sister for you, Dumuzi, sacrificing her like a beast. Ereshkigal is your mother’s sister, but death power she has no. Your mother left you in the dump at Kuara, where Ereshkigal lived, when ill you became to near death. Inana feared to catch your plague. Ereshkigal nursed you to health, and Inana came after you only when she saw you recovered. She then had Ereshkigal murdered for her kindness, as she murdered your sister! Do not believe her!”

  Dumuzi paused, as if remembering. Then he shook his head and shrieked, “Inana is my consort! She came back for me! How do you know what happened when you weren’t there, Monster?”

  Palqui’s eyes softened. “El Elyon knows. His sorrows have I for your pain, but Inana lied to you and everyone. In her madness, she saw Kuara’s dump as Under-world, and stories wove in her mind over years, as she told them and retold them to you. Seen this in her, you have. I regret your pain. Free, you can be, now.”

  Dumuzi’s face twisted. “I want no sympathy of you, Monster! My consort is the Queen of Heaven! The girl was just a child!”

  T’Qinna stepped toward him. “What kind of mother sexually abuses her own son, and murders her own daughter?”

  “I am Ninurta reborn! When I and Ishtar are through, she shall break open Under-world, and the dead will outnumber the living!”

  Palqui raised his hands to the living flame above him, as a horrendous screech came up from out of the earth. “So she has threatened before. But it is not she who breaks open Under-world, but El Elyon. He it is that divides the Earth!”

  The ground moved beneath their feet, as the screech from below became a rumble, and then a roar. Huts began to cave in around them.

  T’Qinna almost lost her footing as the shaking intensified.

  The settlers of White Rock began to wail, stumbling this way and that, as a dust storm descended over them all. Thunder burst from the ground, as a vast crack opened farther down the gentle hill, away from the gathered people, and then closed again as quickly as it appeared. The dust thickened, as Dumuzi helped his mother to her feet. Both vanished into the panicking crowd, while the ground rose and fell as waves on a storm-tossed ocean.

  U’Sumi scrambled to his wife’s side, and held onto her, until Palqui lowered his arms, and the quake and windstorm began to subside.

  Only much later would they discover that the quake had shaken everywhere that men walked upon the face of the ground.

  It would only take a few hours, however, for them to realize that Inana and Dumuzi had fled the rubble of White Rock.

  Like Ishtar, the Greek Aphrodite and Northwestern Semitic Astarte were love goddesses who were “as cruel as they were wayward.” Donald A. Mackenzie, an early popularizer of mythology, draws a parallel between the love goddess Aphrodite and her “dying god” lover Adonis on one hand, and the love goddess Ishtar and her “dying god” lover Tammuz on the other. Some scholars have suggested that Joseph Campbell, a more recent popularizer of mythology, equates Ishtar, Inanna, and Aphrodite, and he draws a parallel between the violent yet loving Hindu goddess Kali, the Egyptian goddess Isis who nurses Horus, and the Babylonian goddess Ishtar who nurses the god Tammuz.

  —Encyclopaedia Britannica Online

  On Ishtar

  25

  Isis

  138

  Haviri and Psydon dined on the latter’s patio when the quake struck. The palace’s great limestone pillars began to dance, their segments swaying, bulging, until the first one snapped outward in cylindrical pieces.

  The two former sun ship commanders escaped the collapse of Psydon’s cut-stone house; Haviri pulling his host out from under the portico before it caved in. The servant waiting on them halted in the archway into the main structure, and likewise escaped burial under the huge fit stones. The women and servants inside were not so lucky.

  Haviri coughed in the settling dust as the quake subsided. Psydon’s enormous figure retched on his hands and knees, just a few paces away. Both men had rolled down the slope on which the house had stood, Haviri having pushed his host diagonally, away from the collapsing rubble. He looked off into the river valley winding away southwestward, down to the salty dunes of the dead Sink-lands. Most of Psydon City lay on the river’s southern bank. The home of the former captain had overlooked the settlement, nestled by a run of rapids through a flower-gardened gulch.

  At the small city’s opposite end, the river became navigable. Several boats moored on the West Landing, which Psydon’s mariners used to transit the lifeless Sea of Psydon as a small trading fleet for commerce with the Rhodesos in the Far North, and the Styx Delta Colonies to the south. No clan civilized enough to understand the concept of trade existed any farther west than that, although nomadic savages harried the western frontiers both north and south of the dead chain of Sink-land seas.

  Haviri noticed that the ships had survived the quake undamaged, as had much of the waterfront.

  He got up, and helped Psydon to his feet.

  The latter turned to look uphill at his house, now reduced to a pile of rubble amid the flower gardens, with the exception of one standing arch, where the quivering servant still stood.

  Psydon shouted, “My wives!” and scrambled up the slope, skirting the collapsed patio, over the
stones for the archway.

  Haviri followed, able to move more speedily because of his small, but muscular build. The servant, once he got his wits about him, also began to dig.

  Hours of work into the night unearthed only broken bodies.

  Haviri and Psydon sat together on one of the fallen blocks, the latter with his head in his hands. That was when a messenger came up to them from the lower city with more disturbing news.

  The water at the navigable end of the river had risen almost a cubit in the last hour.

  139

  Quakes had continued into the night at sporadic intervals, as Inana fled the settlement of White Rock at the urging of her son, with the help of several local farmers. These had worshipped her from afar in the years since they had migrated west. One of them had left his wife and family to guide her and Dumuzi on their quest. Another, at a tiny outlier hamlet west of White Rock, had met them with onagers and hastily packed provisions.

  The Farmer had said, “We must go west to river, then follow river more westly through valley to edge of Under-world Desert, then make south for Psydon. Many wild lands, many wild beasts, many weeks, people few. Men of Psydon not like big men at White Rock; love Heaven’s Queen.”

  “Do they now?”

  “Yes, Divine Lady; ‘cept they have different speaks. Call you Isis. Silly-mouths can’t say Aestarte. Love you same though.”

  She smiled. “Names not important; worship and loyalty is.”

  Inana had then rewarded the Farmer for leaving his wife, and for quickly arranging the bread and dried meat on the fly, in the way she best knew how. Dumuzi did not mind, or if he did, he never showed it. She had trained him as well as any dog, which was what she found that most men actually were underneath, even at their loyal best. The Farmer proved to be more loyal than Dumuzi ever was. So far, he was at least resourceful.

  They lit no fires at night, lest Usmu’s men followed. Why En-Ki kept a two-faced vizier was beyond her, but perhaps the times called for it somehow. Usmu’s city housed a people of two faces—one turned toward their Ea, the other toward Inana. This confirmed for her that Ea had to be just another name for En-ki. The chaos at White Rock had lasted well into the night after the first quake, while the settlement’s attentions focused on the dead and injured—enough that Inana’s faithful had no trouble spiriting her and Dumuzi away. The face toward Ishtar had won this time.