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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  At least the armies below acted in unison. They marched south along the new coastline, ready to engage the last two sons of the once vaunted “Comforter of A’Nu.” If Iyapeti’s army had outnumbered that of Narnmer by half, the combined forces of Asshur, Ur’Nungal, and Psydon dwarfed those of U’Sumi and Iyapeti three to one.

  The gate-sentinel nudged Pahn. A ship’s mast had just appeared on the new sea’s southwestern horizon. The Watcher projected its attention that direction, and would have smiled were it even in a semi-corporeal form.

  Inana and Dumuzi approached from the sea with important intelligence, just in time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

  169

  King Scorpion had conquered the tiny nome of M’Nopf over ten years ago, among the first of the southernmost Misori’Rayim settlements to fall. Its strategic position had made it a perfect place to establish his main garrison fortress of White Walls. U’Sumi smiled at the irony as he looked out at the river from the crude limestone barricade; the war had come down to a battle between the lords of White Rock versus White Walls. Narnmer, in his zeal to secure the entire delta region that year, had left the place almost deserted to increase his strike forces for his seasonal drive northward.

  U’Sumi found its proximity convenient for the tribunal, just a few hours upstream from the battlefield where Iyapeti had crushed the Scorpion’s army. Convening the proceedings in the tiny west bank fort also gave him control over attendance. He possessed the only boats nearby to cross the Styx. The twenty or so men left to guard White Walls had fled west into the heaths from his approach to their side of the river in force.

  It puzzled U’Sumi that Inana had not escaped to the fort, but fled in the opposite direction. Then he realized that both she and Psydon’s men were brand new to the region. They may not have known of it from the few surviving Scorpion warriors, until it was too late go back. Language barriers may have slowed that communication further, even if—as P’Tah-Tahut maintained—dialect differences between the Misori’Rayim were closer together than among those of more divergent tribes. Likewise, Inana’s time with Narnmer had been brief—the fort might never have come up.

  U’Sumi really wished he had T’Qinna with him to bounce ideas on, particularly in dealing with Tahut. Events moved too quickly now for him to process with complete confidence. He pleaded to E’Yahavah, asking for Divine commands, or at least for wisdom to make good decisions. If U’Sumi must decide matters, however wisely, rather than getting direct heavenly commands, it felt good to have Iyapeti and Haviri nearby again, at least. Even so, only T’Qinna had the subtlety of mind and language to help evaluate the likes of P’Tah-Tahut. There was no time to send for her.

  U’Sumi felt the Vizier’s presence next to him before turning. The armed guard he had assigned to accompany P’Tah-Tahut’s limited liberty within the small fortress stood a couple steps beyond, mace in hand, but not in strike stance.

  Tahut said, “Have you considered my proposal, M’El-Ki?”

  U’Sumi wondered that the Vizier’s use of that title contained no hint of mockery in it. “What happened to my being the Appointed Son of Seti?”

  Tahut leaned on the battlement. “Only your guard is in earshot. I still recommend you use that title during the tribunal.”

  “How do I know you haven’t redefined that for these generations of lost children, as well?”

  “You’ve interrogated Geb and Tefnut, not to mention my wife, Sekhmet, who is young enough not to be mind-scarred by the Plague. What have they told you about yourself?”

  “Their stories match. According to you; nine ‘Great Ones’ rode out the Waters of Nu on the Boat of a Million Years, which landed on a sacred mound, and opened as a cosmic egg. Atum Ra was separate; father of the other eight, who would set him in ‘the Center Place.’ ‘Seth’ stood inside the prow of the Boat of a Million Years to protect Atum Ra and his children from the Serpent of Chaos, A’Pepi, whose head ‘Seth’ was destined to take. It’s true enough as far as it goes, I suppose, but it does not go very far or very deep—and it can be made to fit another narrative of human history as easily as it can be made to fit the true one.”

  Tahut nodded. “I kept my options open. I was the only man left with all of his faculties in a world full of madmen and children. Until a few decades ago, we lived as hunters and gatherers—a beastly existence. If you’ll excuse my saying; you didn’t come up all that much in conversation.”

  “No, I don’t suppose I would have. Be that as it may, you ask much.”

  The Vizier straightened. “As do you, Lord M’El-Ki.”

  “I did not conspire to overthrow the God of Creation. Nor did I replace him with a pantheon of state-controlled puppet deities that mouthed the words you, Nimurta, Kush, and Suinne pressed into the clay in their name.”

  “Is that all you think has happened?”

  U’Sumi had to bridle his temper. “No. That is only what began to happen. Then E’Yahavah did something very different from what he did the last time. I lived through that one, too.”

  P’Tah-Tahut sighed. “How is this destruction any less complete than the last one? Sure, fewer people died directly, I suppose, if you can call the survival of those who lived, ‘living.’ If Nimurta and I reinterpreted and reapplied some of the old religion, we are not the ones who took apart the minds of a new world in fragments, and scattered them to the wind! That came from somewhere beyond any of us! You know as well as I do that the result has banished the memory of E’Yahavah as much as the memory of anything else—more so! We had no intention of going that far!”

  U’Sumi’s eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t matter what you intended.”

  “You still don’t get it, do you? The only reasonable explanation for what happened, given the results, is that new divine forces with new divine rules have overthrown the old! If this had been the work of E’Yahavah, he would have wiped out all the memories and designs of his competition, and left himself central in human speech and memory. Instead, he is the main thing that has vanished from them! Others in the heavens have moved in to fill the void he left behind. Either that, or men must fill it themselves!”

  U’Sumi forced himself to fight down his mounting panic and rage. Then a tiny sparkle of Divine wisdom penetrated from somewhere beyond his own mind, along with just enough peace to save the moment. “You are assuming much, P’Tah-Tahut. What if the most terrifying Divine judgment of all is when the Creator and Judge finally gives a world of people what they really want?”

  The Vizier’s half-shut eyes stared out across the river. “Who would want any of this?”

  “This is the natural result of what was wanted, not the want itself. It is time to try your master for the murder of an infant world. You should stand trial with him, but I will trade my allowing E’Yahavah to be your judge in the afterlife for what you have agreed to do from here on out.”

  P’Tah-Tahut said, “So I have proposed; so I will do.”

  U’Sumi turned to see that Iyapeti and the others had gathered in the small courtyard of White Walls. A jailer led Nimurta out from inside the modest blockhouse. Haviri sat with Geb, Tefnut, Sekhmet, Malaq, and the other captains from the Rhodesos, and the Khana’Anhu. P’Tah-Tahut joined them, while U’Sumi waited by the wall a short while longer to pray silently.

  When he could afford no more time, U’Sumi descended to the courtyard, and sat on the squared lump of limestone set for him.

  Iyapeti blew a great blast on an ancient ram’s horn. He then shouted, “We come today to try Nimurta, son of Clan Kush, for his crimes according to the writ of the Divine M’Ae given to the Father of Us All—may his days be prolonged…”

  U’Sumi gazed at the bound man whom he had once trusted as one of his own sons. Nimurta—Ninurta—En’Mer-Kar—Nuddimud—Narnmer—Asiru, seemed to have aged little, except around the eyes, since the day they had parted as mentor and disciple on the quay at Uruk Haven, when the Sun Ships left on their holy mission to fulfill an oath made before the
current world existed. Nimurta’s eyes were old, dead, and cold; those of a different man, from another world than the one U’Sumi had departed almost eighteen decades ago. He wondered what his own eyes looked like, which had seen two worlds die, and the crippling in infancy of a third.

  Much of what followed seemed to happen in a haze, as if U’Sumi watched himself and the others act and speak from some other place, through a smoky glass. He thanked E’Yahavah that Iyapeti did most of the talking, being the M’Ae-Accuser, who represented the violated holiness of A’Nu, El-N’Lil, and the Divine Wordspeaker. Although far less sanguine over P’Tah-Tahut playing Advocate for Defense, it seemed the only way to give Nimurta the closest thing to an unbiased hearing possible, under the circumstances. U’Sumi sat as El—the Judge—not that the coming verdict, or its sentence, was ever in any doubt. He could permit only one outcome to this formality.

  What other realistic option remained, when events had spiraled past any potential for a purely lawful conclusion long ago? What did that leave in the end but choices between different evils, as to which did the least damage, and satisfied the nearest thing left to some raggedy memory of order? It was not as if Nimurta’s crimes happened in secret, and reasonable doubt existed as to his motives or guilt. Ideal solutions were now a faded fable, while good ones had become rarified hopes. U’Sumi had received no command from the heavens, and had to trust now that E’Yahavah gave him the ability to make the best decisions possible—dismally imperfect as those were.

  Iyapeti covered everything; high treason, perjury, subversion of the Ensi Council, the faked theft of the Tablets of Destiny, human sacrifice to devils, power abuse, usurping the Khaldini, unlawful imprisonment of the Zhui’Sudra at Surupag and Tel’Muhn, and the resulting wars. P’Tah-Tahut objected a reasonable number of times—as he had agreed to do, but not over-do—and U’Sumi let a few minor objections stand, overruling the others. No more choreographed a legal proceeding had occurred since the Ensi Council had vested Kush and Nimurta with “emergency powers.”

  Despite all that, to claim that the two legal farces were morally equivalent would be an even greater travesty of justice still. That did not make U’Sumi feel any better as he asked the small jury of war band captains, led by Haviri and Malaq, for their verdict.

  Haviri stood and announced, “We find the accused guilty of high treason against E’Yahavah, and the Divine M’Ae he swore to uphold. We find him guilty of conspiracy, murder, and theft of the Tablets of Destiny, and of human sacrifice in the worship of demons to desecrate the Divine M’Ae. We find him guilty of provoking wars and tumult, kidnapping, and unlawful imprisonment. In view of the sacred oath he took, Nimurta is guilty of destroying what he promised to defend, and defending what it was his duty to destroy. The list of his lesser crimes would be too long to recite.”

  U’Sumi said, “Thank you. Does the convicted wish to make any remarks before he is sentenced?”

  P’Tah-Tahut made no effort to dissuade Nimurta from speaking.

  Nimurta strained against his ropes. “You think to pass judgment on me, ‘Appointed of Set?’ You accuse me of conspiracy, when—when you, in the conspiracy of the Firstborn—they say you fought the monster Typhon in the misty First Times of your youthings—I remember the campfire stories! I say you are the monster Typhon! You used your powers of chaos to destroy a whole world to cover up your lies! But wily En-Ki is the true Lord of Earth, and of the Absu! He sent up the sacred stone of Eridu to show the truth that you could not hide in the mud of your stormy Deluge, O Typhon!

  “How can your one god be the cause of so many conflicting forces in the world? He sends Deluge, yet changes his mind to save us from the very same Deluge; why not just stop Deluging? No sense it makes! You leave to do the oathings of old men, long dead, and return with more storms on your wing! En-Ki helps us rebuild! En-Ki caused us also to escape the cutting waters of Huwawah; that we might rebuild here, by the River of Light. But even here, you kill and destroy us! Yet, no matter what you do, my truth won’t be buried, Typhon, because my words make it all real!

  “En-Ki made you his steward, his Melki, Usmu, but you are a two-faced steward—a bringer of chaos from the beginning, who would then impose your law in the end; who claims to serve a God of love that wiped out all that once lived! Remember this; O people, that I’m not the monster here! No matter what this Usmu or Typhon or Set says; I will return—even from death! I’ve stamped my work, my gate-tower, forever on the memory of Man! I’m the saver! I’m the Slayer of Monsters, not him! I’ve proved it for hundreds of years! I bring spring, each year; not him—I am lord!”

  U’Sumi felt his face hang like a soaked rag. “I sentence you now, Nimurta, for what you did willfully, and what you still have a clear enough mind that you could renounce. I trusted you with something more precious than my own life. If I am the spirit of Typhunu, the monster I destroyed in my youth, then of what is Nimurta’s spirit?

  “If you must be lord, then you shall be lord in the hot side of Under-world, if you imagine that you can rule there. As for me, perhaps I too am a monster, for all the blood that you have spilled is on my hands too.” U’Sumi paused, to gather himself. “I am guilty of entrusting Uruk to your care, and of giving you early promotion. I acted in hope that you would be the conscience to reign in the ambition of your father. For my blindness, I share in the guilt. You were a fine actor, and have used your flair for melodrama fully.” He paused, eyes down, fighting to control tears.

  An uncertain murmur began among the others.

  The M’El-Ki looked back up at the Tribunal with renewed fire in his eyes, and then to the Prisoner. “You, Nimurta—whom the Misori’Rayim call ‘Narnmer,’ ‘King Scorpion,’ and ‘Asiru’—are sentenced under the Divine M’Ae to the death you joyfully inflicted on others—your head shall be crushed by the same pear-shaped mace you used to slaughter the innocent! Your corpse is to be cut up and sent in pieces to every nome of the Styx Delta, and Upper River as a warning to future tyrants. This Tribunal ends.”

  U’Sumi signaled his warriors, and rose from his seat to make space.

  Four additional war captains converged on Nimurta, who began to twist and struggle against his leather cords. His eyes instantly lost the former light of their grand posturing, and he started to shriek like a terrified girl. The captains kicked the backs of his knees out from under him, and forced the giant down, his head on U’Sumi’s judgment seat.

  “I am Ninurta! My words make things real!” His shrillness sounded as if he still needed convincing himself.

  U’Sumi took Nimurta’s own mace from Iyapeti. Then he removed his sandals, and gave them to Haviri, before approaching the four men who pressed the Giant’s head to the big stone.

  U’Sumi raised the mace to strike position, and paused. “Nimurta, son of Kush, I taught you that E’Yahavah will forgive all sins. He will forgive you of yours even now, if you turn from your evil and ask him to, though you must meet him today, either way.”

  Nimurta shrieked, “I make it real! I make it real! I make it real!”

  U’Sumi swung the mace down hard, silencing Nimurta’s screams in a bloody skull-burst.

  The M’El-Ki stepped back, dropped the dripping red mace into the sand, and said in a voice as cold as the outer void, “This is as real as it gets.”

  170

  Horahkti moored the ship, and came ashore alone to meet the leaders of the combined army camped along the new shoreline. The dark clouds overhead seemed ready to drop their rain, but somehow never did.

  “Hail Dumuzi!” called the familiar voice of the son of Gilgamesh.

  Horahkti turned. “You are far from home, Ur’Nungal. Do you think to take another land from me? Your father is not here to give it to you.”

  “Not at all; divine Suinne seeks to unite all lands under En-Ki, and offers aid to he that is called the Osiru—the Uniter.”

  Horahkti pointed to the command tents at the center of the large encampment. “Other lords march with you. They,
too, must hear me.”

  “Why?” Ur’Nungal pulled his muscle-bound frame to full height.

  Horahkti smiled. “The Asiru is Ninurta, my father; he that is called ‘Narnmer’ and ‘King Scorpion’ in this land.”

  Ur’Nungal slumped a little. “Come; Asshur and Psydon wait.”

  The Lugal of Uruk led Horahkti into the largest of the goat hair command tents—that of Asshur. The two elders within seemed larger than life. Flickering cresset lamplight provoked wild shadows that energized both men like seething specters. Something writhed beneath the surface of their persons like maggots pressing against the inside of fermentation-bloated skins ready to burst. Horakhti paused, lest he stand too close to either, when the fabric containing whatever horror animated them finally ripped. He feared, lest some roiling mass spray him, or worse, that some worm-coated claw reach out and snatch him back inside to seal him forever in its eternally rotting paradise.

  Psydon seemed to have grown much since their last encounter, if not in actual size, than in something that somehow projected longer shadows in Horakhti’s mind. Only his mother could feel at home near such people. Even the falcon crowded closer on his shoulder to his head, as if to find shelter from whatever emanated from the two older men.

  Of the two, the aura of Asshur seemed darkest, most ancient, and most disturbing. If Psydon somehow seemed larger than before, old Asshur’s half-shut eyes glistened with the black fire of dying stars that crushed worlds inside their collapsing voids. A putrescence; smelled more with the mind than by the nose, seemed to curl away as noxious vapors from the body of Ninurta’s old ally. Whenever Horahkti gazed at Asshur too long, he heard voices like scratching insects, forming terrible, scraping words in his head, the meanings of which he hoped never to know.