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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  Only after his hunting bands discovered White Rock, and Psydon reconnected with the M’El-Ki, did he realize what had happened to the rest of humanity. Psydon still had no idea what it all meant. Since then, he had kept in contact, believing his city and White Rock, along with the few far-flung settlements in the north, and the Misori’Rayim in the south, to be all that remained of civilization. For a time, he had even entertained hope that things might grow again in part from his own little trading empire.

  Then the Big Quake came, with the rising water, and the return of the nightmares that were not just nightmares. Psydon’s sleep came to him only in the wee hours before dawn, if it came at all.

  His tent opened into the garden by the rapids, facing down over the sinking city, where the river met the flooding estuary that now covered the buildings of the original waterfront. Volcanic ash clouds from the erupting rim of fire across much of the far northwest covered a blood hued full moon. The Darkness came, as always, up the widening estuary, into the river, then out as a writhing tentacle through the flowerbeds, until it wormed into Psydon’s tent.

  Oozing lips of snail-meat on the quivering end of the Blackness, spoke. When it did, Psydon almost wet himself.

  “We had an agreement, and here you are, trying to rebuild what I have destroyed. No matter; even after the suicide of civilization, life grows in the rot that remains,” said the snake-thing from the deeps, which called itself Rahab, Lotan, and whom Psydon’s forebears had called ‘Leviathan.’”

  “What do you want from me?”

  Lotan squirmed further into the tent, a huge black maggot that curled around the top of Psydon’s head, and under his neck like a steaming wet pillow of rancid meat. “If you would again put off our date with destiny; that day when I shall carry you alive and helpless beneath the waves, to the cracks of liquid fire, you must join with me, and awaken him for whom you are blasphemously named by your father.”

  Psydon thought that he could not hate his father—whining, wheedling Khana’Ani—any more than he already did. At that moment, he discovered how wrong he was.

  That pulsating worm with a mouth kept talking, forcing him to remember, “My poor son of a cursed pahpo, with a cursed name…”

  The memory oozed up from a pit as dark as the quivering blackness that glistened around Lotan in a perverse anti-glow.

  Psydon was a boy again; sent out by his mother to deliver a scrap of bread for his father’s midday meal. Khana’Ani cleaned the public latrine at the old vineyard village near Mount Lubar.

  When the boy Psydon found his father, Khana’Ani looked up out of the uncovered trench at him, covered in filth. That same stench radiated off the pillow of slug meat that throbbed around Psydon’s head.

  Khana’Ani called up to his firstborn son. “Ayy, sonny-boy, you know why I name you Psydon?”

  The boy said. “No.”

  His father laughed, white teeth glowing amid facial grime. “It’s just a fooly-joke. Another Psydon in the olden world was a titan possessed by devils. It’s a cursed name. He grew up and married his own mudder, he did. I want to see if you’ll grow up and marry your own mahm after I grow tired of her. You can tell that lazy bynt I said that to you, sonny-boy! And if you or she tells anyone else, I’ll just say it was a fooly-joke you overheard.”

  The boy did not fully understand; he just felt sick all over, as he stooped at the edge of the trench to hand the morsel down to his father. Khana’Ani slapped the bread away, instead pulling Psydon down into the noisome, fly-clouded muck with him.

  The boy landed face first, his surprised mouth wide opened. An enormous fly plugged one of his nostrils.

  Khana’Ani grabbed the boy’s retching body from behind, lifted him up, and pressed him hard against the trench wall. “And this is so you’ll know how things like that go!”

  Psydon felt again the agony of what followed, exploding his insides, as Khana’Ani’s filthy hand muffled his screams, and the big fly buzzed inside his nose.

  The slug-lipped mouth spoke again in Psydon’s garden tent. “The M’El-Ki’s E’Yahavah could have had Khana’Ani killed, instead of enslaved. Then you would have never been born, and never had to experience that.”

  Psydon heard his friend, Haviri’s voice call to him from far away, “Your life is worth living, your friendship, worth having! The world is still better for you having been in it!”

  The fading voice of Haviri, and his words, just didn’t feel real anymore. They might have a few weeks ago, but not now. Now the only thing that felt real was the oozing pillow, and a life that had been a sick joke, which was about to become a whole lot sicker.

  “Who is this ‘other Psydon’ I’m named for in jest?”

  The oily tentacle began to stretch its mouth over Psydon’s head, snake-style, as Psydon listen to it speak, wondering how the thing could still talk while swallowing someone as fat as he was.

  “Sleep, Psydon, and when you awake, Isis shall tell you all…”

  145

  Haviri arrived toward evening back at White Rock to see that war bands had already gathered. He had cut east over the mountains, and then north, down the river valley, rather than taking the route along the edge of the Sink-lands.

  Warrior sentries led him immediately to the torch-lit hall atop the ziggurat, which had managed to survive the Big Quake. There, the coalition commanders gathered in strategic council.

  The M’El-ki paused in his speech, when he saw Haviri enter.

  “Hail Haviri! What news of Psydon?”

  Haviri took a gulp from a water flagon thrust into his hands, and answered his ancestor as he approached the stone table, “Psydon, with two shiploads of fighting men, will put ashore up the Styx River, among the Misori’Rayim, though he will be delayed by the clean-up from the Big Quake. Ocean waters are filling the Sink-lands, consuming his city…”

  U’Sumi interrupted, “We’ve had word of the rising waters. Let me bring you up to date on the battle plan we just laid out.”

  Haviri nodded, and took a seat on an available floor cushion.

  The M’El-Ki re-capped, “In the morning, I will take a third of our forces, plus a small scouting company commanded by Khumi and Ursunabi, south through to the west bank of the Yordaen River. My force will continue down into the Great Estuary…”

  Haviri noticed for the first time that the third Arch-Saar had somehow returned from the ashes, and grew encouraged for the first time in a long while.

  U’Sumi continued, “Mother Tiva will go with her husband, since they intend to break off from my troop before Yerikho Freehold, and cut west to organize defenses where they to plan settle, among the Delta Tribes. They hope to arrive before the rising waters drive the Misori’Rayim into King Scorpion’s claws. My troop, meanwhile, will continue south, crossing the highlands between the Yordaen Estuary and the Styx River, to cut off the Scorpion’s supply line and retreat. Iyapeti shall depart two weeks after my group, with the main force, south along the Sink-land rims, in a feint to meet the Scorpion head on. Both forces, enhanced by Misori-Rayim garrisons, will close the trap by autumn, crushing the big bug!”

  Haviri raised his hand. “Where do you want me?”

  U’Sumi smiled. “You shall command the United Khana’Anhu Foot Regiment that marches with Iyapeti. It’ll give you time to rest from your journey. Palqui shall remain in command of a small force here to defend White Rock, with Mother Pyra. Also, Haviri, see me after this muster at my tent. There are a few things more.”

  The rest of the “muster” consisted of a large meal of roasted beef and lamb, a ration of wine, and the usual bluster fighting men indulged in to whip up bravado for war.

  Afterward, Haviri descended the ziggurat to his ancestor’s tent. He found the M’El-Ki had summoned others to this more intimate meeting. Mother Pyra, Iyapeti, Father Khumi and Mother Tiva, and white-haired Palqui (who looked more like Haviri’s grandfather than like his son), with Lomina, and Haviri’s wife, Hazurada, crowded together in the dim cresse
t lamplight.

  U’Sumi handed him a clay bowl of water as Haviri entered the flaps. He removed his sandals, feeling more than a bit self-conscious that he had not yet washed the dust of the road off his feet, much less bathed.

  U’Sumi spoke. “Please forgive the lack of the normal amenities my hospitality would bestow. The hour is late in so many more ways than one. Please sit, Haviri.”

  He folded his legs next to his son and Iyapeti.

  “I’ve called you here to pray with me in a way that I will not be able to when I invoke E’Yahavah’s blessing on my departing troops in the morning, lest some misunderstand me and loose heart. I trust you all to take my meaning, and to pray with me without confusing my pain and frankness for despair. I do it this way because experience has taught me that it is the least of three evils. The greatest evil would be for me not to pray at all, and the next greater, that I should pray as my conscience dictates before those who cannot understand, and who would lose heart because of it.”

  Mother Pyra placed her arm on her husband’s, as if to communicate that everyone understood. Even Palqui nodded his white tuft in agreement.

  U’Sumi pulled his hood up and bowed his head. “E’Yahavah, El Elyon, Great Legal of the Ten Heavens and the One Earth, please forgive us for somehow squandering your treasures. We sought your strength to build on your foundation, as I performed the oath of my fathers. Yet, many times, we also lapsed into pride, quarrelling, and bitterness, where we fell far short of your perfection, and assumed the worst about each other.

  “There are also many times when I’ve grown despondent, even after you’ve told us to take heart. Please remember that we are flesh. Have mercy on us, for we crumple under great pressures…” Tears broke from his eyes. “I’m fighting to keep my perspective—not to ask you in anger; how have you made fulfilling Iyared’s Charge even remotely possible for us? We planned as best we knew how, praying, worshipping, and asking your guidance! We all fell short when the obstacles hit—especially me. Nimurta seems to have been correct about the undue risks of Sun Ship mapping expeditions, yet he was dead wrong in his betrayal and rebellion!”

  U’Sumi’s voice shook. “I was blind to his treachery because he knew and exploited my prides and prejudices! None of us saw evil in him, and we heard no warning at the time, if you gave us one. Why have you made us into fools, if you wanted godly people to thrive? We struggle to preserve the truth you gave us, and to live by it! I’m fighting to keep it from crumbling inside my own heart!

  “Please, don’t cast us off as you’ve cast off this world! I never had answers of myself, and I never looked for any beyond you! Show me my disobedience, or where I misread you, so I can learn! But you stay silent, leaving me to wonder over a thousand faults, both possible and real, too late for me to correct anything.

  “I don’t really know what you want me to do with the little left to us. My own sons are a raging sea of foes to the east, and those of my brothers, waves of savages, north, and south, while the outer oceans wash in from the west, and we few on this quaking White Rock are ready to sink! Help us! Guide our armies, which I lead out now only because our time is up, and you haven’t spoken clearly to me as you did in times past. Yet I trust that you’ve given us wisdom in the plan we must now execute. Please, don’t give us over to futility! Don’t let our suffering be meaningless! We love you and want to obey your voice, yet even here our hearts are weary and desperately flawed!”

  U’Sumi collapsed into a broken heap of convulsive wailing on his wife’s lap as Iyapeti’s bear-like arm reached over to cradle them both, and Khumi and Tiva stretched into the circle to stroke his hair. Palqui contented himself with touching Father Khumi’s shoulder, as if to transmit his prayers through the elder-who-looked-younger’s body to reach that of his ancestor.

  Haviri sat back, in shock at the centuries of accumulated agony pouring from his ancestor’s mouth. In it, he heard all of his own darkest fears—things he had never voiced for terror of crossing over the line into blasphemy. Yet, instead of causing him to lose heart, the tears of his father refreshed his spirit by their honesty.

  Words came to Haviri as a gentle, cooling breeze through his lips. They were both the first, and last, words of prophecy he would ever speak:

  “No matter how bad it appears or how bad it really gets, I have not cast you adrift with this world. So says E’Yahavah El Elyon.”

  146

  Khumi, Tiva, and Ursunabi, with their tiny scout force, had no trouble since splitting off from U’Sumi’s army near Yerikho Freehold, over two weeks ago. Rare encounters with friendly nomad clans, resulted in, at best, a single warrior donated to Khumi’s war band from each, only after garbled negotiations. Good weather and unimpeded travel came to a sudden end at the Styx River, however.

  Dark clouds with violent rains fell suddenly as an exodus of delta tribesmen appeared out of the storm mists, from the north, along the river’s eastern bank. Descended from sons of Misori’Ra (who died over twenty years ago from premature old age), the mob slogged through the muddy fens, upstream. Panic hung over them as dark and palpable as the storm clouds, thunder, and lightning that seemed to drive them, stumbling, southward.

  Khumi discovered that he and his brothers had underestimated the language barrier between himself and his descendants. When he tried to hail the mob’s leader—a wild-eyed gray-haired fellow in animal skins, who resembled a soaked marmoset—the man seemed not to understand. Khumi and Ursunabi called out to him repeatedly as their mounted scouts pulled alongside the mob, but not too close, for fear of driving them into the rapidly flowing river.

  When Marmoset Man continued to ignore them, Khumi kicked his onager into a gallop to pull ahead of the crowd, and halt them in their flight from the rising delta waters. Unfortunately, the river took a sudden turn to the left, and he had to break off lest he drive the people into the swirling currents. In the end, he pulled his riders off to look for a place to camp for the evening. The crowd would not be able to pass them on foot.

  As daylight waned, the rain stopped. Khumi ordered his scouts to camp on the riverbank in full sight of the approaching refugees.

  Marmoset Man halted his people short of Khumi’s, where they simply milled about in the increasing cold.

  Then Khumi found out that language was not the real problem.

  Although the Madness Plague had spread throughout the delta region with westward radiating P’Huti and Khana’Anhu clans, the leaders at White Rock had found that many of these spoke languages similar to that of Psydon’s people. This enabled modest communication and trade.

  Misori’Ra and the sons with him at Surupag had evaded capture and retreated into the west with U’Sumi, to rejoin the Styx Delta Colonies that Khumi and Ra had founded during their initial survey of the region. For the remainder of his life, Ra had tried to unite his sons, with only marginal success. Most of Khumi’s scouts came from territories, or “nomes,” where Ra’s uniting efforts had been somewhat successful. Many other nomes existed (mostly hypothetical ones) where Ra’s efforts had borne less fruit.

  The hundred or so shivering Misori’Rayim refugees did not mind joining Khumi’s smaller band around the campfires. This likely had more to do with Khumi’s men having carried coals and pine sap-infused firewood from highlands they had crossed earlier, than with any sense of kinship. The Styx River flowed, dark and brooding, on their right, and no other lights appeared across the wide water or upstream, from any tent village.

  Khumi was almost sure that King Scorpion was still too far south to see the fires, as it was not yet summer and the last season’s conquests were still at least a week’s journey off. Khumi therefore took the calculated risk of lighting fires to gain the trust and warmth of the fleeing delta folk.

  Marmoset Man cautiously approached the flames, which had just overcome the wetness of the deadwood gathered along the bank, to burn. Khumi hand-signaled his men to make way for the newcomer, while Tiva brought forth some roasted meat from a boar that on
e of the scouts had speared earlier in the day. Soon, the other delta people also came forward.

  Once warmth, food, and even some smiles exchanged, Khumi tried to get down to business through an interpreter.

  “Danger south,” Khumi said, pointing upriver. “King Scorpion!”

  After the interpreter finished, Marmoset Man signaled for one of the women to bring something from their baggage. A hefty wench, a wife or daughter, brought forth a flattened object wrapped in animal skins. She laid it reverently across the seated Elder’s folded legs. Marmoset Man carefully peeled away the skins to uncover a carefully designed baked clay relief, like a shield-shaped platter almost a couple cubits long and a cubit wide, which he held up to the firelight for Khumi to examine.

  The plaque carried a pictograph message, etched with considerable craft onto a cut stone master copy, which the sender had imprinted onto a clay slab that he then sun-dried, and baked. The central image of a titan warlord, with cropped chin beard, wielded a Kengiru-styled pear-shaped mace in strike pose, ready to swing down onto the head of some vanquished foe wearing a full beard. Standing behind the Warlord, his sandal-bearer held his master’s footwear clear of the anticipated blood spatter.

  Above the victim, a severed, full-bearded head lay on a platter, the blood from its neck watering some upright papyrus flowers—such as Khumi and Misori’Ra had finally found in abundance along the Styx—suggesting the idea of written law, or at least a memory of it. A falcon sat above the flowers, pulling a strand of brain tissue from the head’s nose with a talon. Below the execution scene, two other bearded figures, identical to the victim, ran free, but with faces showing proper fear of the Warlord. Two Bulls of Heaven overlooked the top of the relief.

  The pictographic message was simple: Resist the Warlord, and end up as the Victim, and the Head with the carrion bird. Appease the Warlord with proper fear, and be released to live under tribute. The papyrus flowers and the dual Bulls of Heaven spoke of the Warlord’s divine right to rule.