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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  The living codes “impacted,” transcribing onto a sub-etheric meta-surface designed for pan-dimensional “non-materials” to rest on. There, Pahn’s codes started slowly rewriting themselves, as its Creator had originally programmed them to do, for reasons of a kindness that the Monster would never appreciate or return.

  In human terms, Pahn would sleep centuries until able to synchronize again with human minds; calling people to its resurfacing point inside a cave with a roaring subterranean spring, in a wooded ravine north of a large lake called Galilee. It always liked the woods and streams, and this wild, shady glen brought back memories of its two favorite places in the World-that-Was: Grove Hollow and the Wisdom Tree Gorge. It also raised fond reminiscences of the lovely girl-toy Pahn had most loved to torment, now forever out of reach.

  For Pahn, this would be the closest thing to pleasure it would ever again experience, before it, too, joined High Psydonu in the inevitable plunge into the Abyssu’s dark fire. In the meantime, people would build for the Monster a temple at the haunted cave spring, where it resurfaced into the world of men. They would offer it sacrifices dropped into the hole of roaring waters. “Rejected offerings” would float back up—as nearly all did—to the terrified offerers, evoking an emotional state that, transliterated through many human languages, came from the Monster’s favorite name for itself:

  Panic.

  174

  Horahkti watched the fiery serpents of chaos arc across the blackened sky as the winds increased. Something had changed, besides the weather, but he did not know what.

  Psydon had been about to speak, but now he stood in the wind with his mouth hanging open, dumb as an ox. Gone were the long shadows from before. Those cast by the continual lightning seemed to quiver with fear.

  The one called the Man of Seti shouted over the storm, “Does anyone wish to contest my authority?”

  Horahkti looked to Asshur. Where a moment ago sat an ancient master of dark lore, infused with all the powers of darkness, sat a drooling old man with missing teeth and liver spots, seized with tremors and senility.

  Asshur jumped at a nearby lightning strike, its thunder so close that it hammered the skin. The old man yammered, “No, no, the Appointed of Seti is correct. It is the M’El-Ki’s right.”

  Isis seemed ready to explode, but Horahkti beat her to it.

  “What has just happened here? Shall the office be given to a distant uncle when the son of the Uniter is here, in the flesh?”

  Isis wheeled her onager about, and faced Asshur, screeching above the nearing storm, her veins popping from her temples, “Why do you not stand with my son as mere moments before! Afraid are you of lightning?”

  Ur’Nungal nudged his mount closer to Horahkti. “Look, Dumuzi, let’s just get out here. Some kind of sorcery is afoot!”

  “No!” shrieked Isis as the clouds finally began to drop their torrents on them, “I do not accept this! Deal now with me, Son of Seti!”

  The Man of Seti yelled over the downpour, “I will not deal with you, Inana, or with any other oath breaker! The only court I will have with you is the one that tries you for the murder of my brother and his wife!” He signaled his men to return to their battle line.

  Isis started to ride after him, drawing her sword, but Horakhti intercepted her, and forced her onager around.

  “Get back to the lines, woman! Ur’Nungal and I lead these armies!”

  Isis’ eyes bulged with the veins in her temples, her face that of a living skull. “You dare speak to me that way!”

  Horakhti raised his own sword. “Don’t tempt me, Mother!”

  The downpour came in sheets, reducing visibility to mere cubits. Lightning struck multiple times somewhere back among the armies of Asshur and Ur’Nungal. Horahkti heard men screaming from that direction, before the roar of falling water drowned out any other sounds.

  175

  U’Sumi almost did not find Iyapeti again in the line because of the disorienting downpour. When he did, he noticed for the first time that P’Tah-Tahut and one of ‘Peti’s horsemen had vanished into the storm.

  “We’re going to have to fight our way through this!” U’Sumi yelled above the roar. “The storm can work for us! Take your horsemen south, and try to circle around! I’ll take mine through, but not at where I saw their main strength! Divide the footmen between Haviri and Malaq; tell them to try to slip through—targets of opportunity only. Pray the storm holds! Make for Yerikho Freehold—it has walls!”

  Iyapeti shouted, “E’Yahavah go with you, ‘Sumi!” He then hand signaled the new orders to the man on the horse behind him, who sent the message to the next man in like manner, down the line.

  U’Sumi did the same with his mounted force, and with Malaq’s footmen, who were closer to him than to Iyapeti.

  Iyapeti’s mounted troop vanished into the storm, southwestward, flanked by Haviri’s Khana’Anhu sling men, spearmen, and scouts. U’Sumi’s regiment moved to the southeast.

  The main strength of the combined enemy forces lay on U’Sumi’s northeast flank. He hoped to gain higher ground by cutting inland, before turning and bisecting the enemy line at what had looked like a thin point during the brief parley. In truth, U’Sumi had not cared a bit what the enemy party had to say. He had just used the opportunity to get a closer look at their force deployment before visibility fell to nothing. He had even antagonized Inana and Dumuzi in hope of getting them angry enough to make foolish errors in judgment.

  The sudden change in Asshur and Psydon at the strange lightning had also encouraged him. Something beyond human moved the enemies against him, but an even larger, more powerful friend fought for him. As grim as things had become, U’Sumi had not forgotten who his friends were, and whom he served.

  Shadows moved in the downpour mere cubits off to the left.

  U’Sumi signaled the onager rider behind him to turn with him and charge. He then reined his mount ninety degrees to the left as he kicked to a gallop. His troop turned as they each got the signal, from line ahead to line abreast formation, and rode down whoever was in their path.

  They were right on top of them. U’Sumi swung his sword down on a mob of soaked and confused mace men, who broke and ran into the engulfing rain. Many stumbled into his mounted men as the riders drove like a sieve right through the enemy line. Lightning banged into the earth somewhere right in front of him, causing his horse to rear up.

  U’Sumi tumbled backwards from his panicked mount into a running stream of mud and blood.

  176

  Horakhti reached his lines just as the rain poured too thickly to see through. Flashes of lightning exploded around him. He barely heard the shrill harpy cries of his mother commanding men to attack this way and that as the flame of her rage took her, and the men who obeyed her, into a mindless rampage. Then his mount stumbled over a pile of badly burned bodies that still steamed, despite the drenching the skies dumped on them.

  Again, lightning and thunder pounded the earth nearby, like T’Baal-Qan’s Hammer, leaving the smell of burnt flesh and ozone in the sheets of rain. Horakhti called to the fighting men that rushed back and forth around him, visible only for split seconds at a time, like fleeting ghosts. After turning to catch several of the running warriors, he soon realized that he had lost all sense of direction. The presence that had hovered overhead, giving an erratic sense of both purpose and panic, had departed. It vanished suddenly at the end of the parley.

  Horakhti halted his horse to reorient himself. Invisible shouts and sporadic clashes sounded over the howling rain. Again, he heard his mother off to his left, badgering some men to fight. He turned away from her shrieking, certain she was an even more unreliable military commander than she was parent or lover. As he completed the turn, two riders came galloping out of the storm right at him with spears raised.

  Both lances skewered Horakhti’s mount, which fell over, tossing him free of its collapse, into the mud. The charging lancers vanished into the storm, making it impossible for hi
m to know if they had been foes or an accidental allied clash. He rose, pausing on all fours, and drew his sword before continuing up to his feet. Thunder shook the earth nearby, with blinding white flashes sparkling in the rain on every side. Then a series of smaller bangs commenced in the distance, only on his right, similar to the thunder, but more regular, and not nearly as loud.

  Horakhti raised his sword and walked toward the bangs, uncertain of the source, but sure that they must be manmade.

  177

  Iyapeti punched through the thinnest leading edge of the enemy coalition, not long after he turned his cavalry eastward. Behind him came Haviri’s Khana’Anhu footmen. Haviri blasted away with his hand-cannon, and the footmen sliced or pummeled the enemy with sword, sling, or mace.

  Once well behind the enemy lines, ‘Peti turned his horsemen leftward, to his closest approximation of north. He then circled behind the bulk of the enemy formations, to strike from the rear. The land rose slightly, and the rain began to thin just enough to increase visibility to almost fifty cubits. Only when he heard the shouts of men fighting and dying in the torrent, did Iyapeti turn his forces leftward, and order them to charge down the slope into the melee.

  178

  U’Sumi had lost his sword in the fall from his horse. He rose from a pile of bodies, each burned and par-boiled by lightning, and drew his hand-cannon.

  His onager and horse riders had swept far beyond him by now. Shadows passing him in the rain on foot might just as well be Malaq’s sword and mace men as enemy combatants, so he did not fire on them. U’Sumi began to move slowly in what he believed to be the same direction he had been going on his horse, before the lightning strike. He could not be sure the fall had not turned him around, however. The sounds of combat penetrated the downpour up ahead, just a bit to his right. Another round of lightning and thunder struck nearby, shaking earth and pounding his very skin.

  A squad of Kengiru mace men came at him out of the torrent, hollering with all their lungs, and swinging pear-shaped cudgels.

  U’Sumi fired his hand-cannon, felling one after the other, until his finger-clip ring was empty. The last mace man fell at his feet, succeeding only in dropping his weapon hard on U’Sumi’s big toe. Ejecting and pocketing the spent ring, U’Sumi inserted his second of three, and crouched, doing a full turn as he did so to make sure no other attackers approached.

  More lightning struck close by, the thunder-shock nearly knocking him from his feet. Several Kengiru with bronze swords appeared out of the falling sheets of water, swinging their blades at him overhead to avoid cutting each other. U’Sumi fired again, dropping each in turn, nearest to farthest away. A Psydonim spearman thrusting at some other target took the last of the second ring. U’Sumi instantly ejected the empty, and slapped in his last clip ring.

  Now he crouched, veering right, seeking to move away from any sounds of battle. Without his sword, and after this final finger-clip, all he had left was a dagger. U’Sumi was not young or foolish enough to entertain delusions of glory that he might again slay an enemy as he had Typhunu. The same was not true of the Kengiru warriors, led by the young Lugal of Uruk, who crossed his path.

  The Lugal passed U’Sumi without seeing him, charging off at whatever enemy he either saw or imagined. More lightning flashed, blasting into the swarm of drenched running men. It locked their charred and twitching bodies in place, so that those behind piled into them before they could avoid the dividing of the enormous bolt. Arcing quickfire danced from man to man like some enraged specter of living light. Black and purple spots clouded U’Sumi’s sight. When these began to fade, he saw the remaining warriors had split around the pile of the steaming bodies of their comrades.

  The Kengiru on U’Sumi’s side had spotted him. He emptied the last of his hand-cannon, dropping the attacking warriors from Uruk in front of him; but he knew it would not be enough.

  It still surprised him when he felt something slide through him almost painlessly, from behind.

  U’Sumi looked down, and saw the bloodied point of a bronze sword protruding from his stomach, rain already washing the blade clean. The pain did not hit until the sword went back in through its exit slit, and his mid-section twisted as he crumpled to land face-up in the running mud.

  The smiling face crouching over him, sheltering his eyes from the pounding rain was that of Dumuzi. An odd screech surrounded them both as the rain thinned out just a little. U’Sumi knew he must be bleeding out, for he thought he saw a falcon flap down out of the storm, and land on the young man’s shoulder.

  Dumuzi took U’Sumi’s hand-cannon from his twitching hand, and said, “Now that I have the thunder-weapon of the monster who murdered my father, my divinity is complete.”

  U’Sumi wanted to tell the young fool that the weapon would never fire for him, but his lips were too heavy, and sight was fading. The last thing he saw, before everything went black, was Dumuzi standing up, and walking away into the softening rain.

  179

  Golden-rose light filled everything.

  He opened his eyes and saw the most glorious sunset of his life, and knew with total peace it would be his last. He only wished he could say goodbye to T’Qinna, and tell her again how much he loved her.

  Malaq’s face hovered above. “Stay with us, my Father!”

  U’Sumi smiled, and whispered, “Not this time, Malaq. Listen to me. I give you the title of M’El-Ki’Tzedek—Steward-king of Justice. Your priesthood shall last forever, and its Order will be a foundation of hope for all generations, no matter how bad the Dark Age gets or how long it lasts.”

  “My brother, Haviri, should be your heir, Lord.”

  U’Sumi coughed up blood. “He will be, too—in another way, both by blood and by promise. But you are to show the spirit of it. I want you to stay among the Khana’Anhu, and be their priest-king. They have shown themselves better than their father was. Give them every chance to keep on doing so, even though the land goes to another tribe. Where’s Iyapeti?”

  “I don’t know, Captain. I just now found you, and we all became separated in the storm. I do not know yet who is still alive, except for two men with me. It seems most of the enemy are dead. The rest have scattered.”

  “Tell Iyapeti and Haviri to watch over T’Qinna, and tell her I love her more than life and will see her again. Tell Palqui I’m very proud of him and his work.”

  Malaq wept. “I will, my Captain.”

  U’Sumi sighed. “Such a beautiful sunset, and yet it is not the End—just the End of the Beginning.”

  He closed his eyes for just a second, but when he opened them again, everything had changed. The flaming gold of the sunset still flickered, except now it did so overhead. A gentle fountain bubbled nearby, but the face looking down on him was not that of Malaq.

  “I have someone who wants to meet you,” said a familiar voice.

  U’Sumi’s head cleared, and he found he could sit up. The sword wound had vanished somehow, with all its shock and pain.

  Two men squatted by him, with a larger group standing farther back. The man whose voice seemed so familiar also looked as if U’Sumi should have known his face, but a name would not come.

  The familiar man spoke again, gesturing toward the other. “This is Iyared. He has something he wishes to say to you.”

  Iyared had rich reddish-brown skin, blue eyes, black hair and flowing beard. “I ask your forgiveness for the charge I laid on you. Please understand; I had no idea at the time that the task would be so impossible. I assumed the restored world would be much like mine. I did not know the land would break up as it did, or that you would face betrayal and insurrection so soon. I only meant to give you all a good place to start, not to lay on you such a burden. It seems now that neither of us shall be remembered well.”

  U’Sumi’s heart melted. “I know you meant it all for good, as did E’Yahavah, and that is how I received it.”

  The other man—the strangely familiar one—laughed, and clapped Iyared on the back.
“See, I told you he would understand. He’s always been good that way. Picked up my slack more than a few times, I can tell you.”

  Two others approached from the nearby onlookers, a man, and a woman. Suddenly, U’Sumi knew it would all be well.

  Khumi and Tiva embraced him with the first speaker—his father had only seemed so strange to him because in all his previous experience A’Nu-Ahki had always been five hundred years his senior, whereas the man before him now appeared to be only half of U’Sumi’s roughly six-hundred years.

  Then U’Sumi noticed his mother, with Sutara, and all the others. He remembered what had happened to Khumi and Tiva.

  It came to him, now, that what he had told Malaq was right.

  Neither the fathers nor mother of this Melchizedek were written down in the genealogies; not that he had no natural parents, but that they were not written down. The greater number of the doctors say that he was of the seed of Canaan, whom Noah cursed. In the book of Chronography, however, (the author) affirms and says that he was of the seed of Shem the son of Noah.

  —Book of the Bee

  (an ancient Syriac text)

  29

  Cuttings

  180

  The River of Light glistened before the rough-cut ramparts of M’Nopf’s low limestone wall. Horahkti stood with his Vizier, gazing out on the waters. The Falcon sat on his shoulder, serenely fluffing its feathers.

  The new Head of the P’Harao-Aha spoke. “Have you done to Isis as I instructed you?”

  Thoth nodded. “She is cloistered on the boat, headed for Gebtos. Only eunuchs shall see her face for the rest of her life.”