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

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  Horakhti smiled. “As befits a mother goddess—you made clear to her eunuchs that they are not to indulge her perverse desires in any way? Tell me, how did divine Isis take it?”

  Thoth nodded to the first inquiry, and answered the second, “She was furious, of course; also alarmed and needy, when I again refused her.”

  “There are too few men left after the Big Battle to allow her to destroy them wantonly. Yet I will still put to death any man who touches her.”

  Horakhti recalled how he had found his mother in the aftermath, bathed in blood, crawling among the mounds of dead, searching for a living man—any living man—to complete her ritual compulsion. After he had refused her, and pulled her to her feet to drag her back to his new empire, they had found Thoth roaming the wilderness. Thoth had told her that Sehkmet, his wife, was all he needed, and thus both men had “doomed” Isis to her fate.

  “Of course,” Thoth said, “We shall have to reinvent her for posterity—give her some dignity, I suppose. One cannot erase such a well-known person altogether. There must be limits, however, even for gods.”

  Horahkti nodded. “I suppose you are correct on both counts. I’ll leave that to your capable stylus, whether you write as Thoth or Ptah. Just make her Asiru’s faithful wife, and a fitter mother than she ever was to me.”

  Thoth said, “That, my Lord; shall be my pleasure.”

  Horahkti grinned. “So let it be written.”

  181

  The Pendulum swung, an internal tormentor, pulling her violently back and forth between two places in the uncertainty born of shock and grief. T’Qinna thought she knew which outlook should be right. Yet her inability to feel anything, except clouds of doubt, dove on her like swarms of poisoned wasps, on top of all her loss. The momentum of the inner Pendulum threatened to yank her into broken pieces, and leave both to bleed out; trapped in opposing realities at either end of the arc. One end called itself mercy, the other purity, but the substance of both ran as blood in the storm.

  She rolled over on her blanket in the small domicile nook that Amur’s people had given her for her stay at Yerikho, and listened to the icy rain outside. U’Sumi had triumphed, Ninurta had fallen, but incoherence and ignorance had still conquered the world.

  Iyapeti, Malaq, and Haviri had ridden into Yerikho Freehold the night before. T’Qinna still half-awaited the One whom she now knew would never return to her in this life; and that on top of losing Tiva all over again! Malaq had spoken last to her Deukal’Uinne, and conveyed his final words to her. “Tell her I love her more than life and will see her again.” The two men with him had testified also, not that she had any cause to distrust the word of Malaq. Only two of all her husband’s students had earned such doubt from her—a doubt somewhat akin to that in which she now held her own self.

  No victory had any joy—not hers, over so many horrors for so long, and not her husband’s, over a fragmented world under King Scorpion. How much less did victory over the collapse of the Armies of the East move her? Haviri had captured Ur’Nungal, but had sent him home under guard to Uruk—the only known surviving Kengiru. No Asshurians escaped. Iyapeti found the corpse of her son, Assur, among what he described as “mountains of dead.” Psydon and his men appeared to have escaped north. Doubtless, they would rebuild their city on the new coast. No signs of Dumuzi, P’Tah-Tahut, or Inana remained, and the men figured they also escaped to the Styx lands.

  Not that T’Qinna gave such things much mind. The Pendulum would not allow it, and the Pendulum had become All some time ago—she was unsure exactly when. Reality seemed to slip from her grip more each day—had been slipping at each violent swing—as if anticipating her husband’s death, and that of Tiva and Khumi, since before she had even escaped from White Rock.

  In her youth, T’Qinna had counseled men that the Temple of Aztlan had labeled “schizoid.” These fragmented psyches, tortured by demons muckled to their minds as lobsters to dead fish, or else having brains injured by some head trauma or birth defect; could never be certain of reality—of which causes led to what effects, if ever they even held the idea that causes led to effects. Some had simply eaten too many phantasm-inducing flowers, cacti, or mushrooms, opening themselves up to the Watchers. Others were born of women who had eaten of them during pregnancy.

  The Temple had encouraged such things in “divine rites,” imagining they controlled both process and outcome. Actually, they just tossed away those disabled by the process. Those not so disabled attained what Aztlan had called “divinity.” Ninurta and Inana would have felt right at home in the land of T’Qinna’s youth. That was what she found so deeply disturbing about Bab’Elu.

  T’Qinna had seen many Aztlan-like things among those afflicted by the Madness. Many were certain that they lived under divine favor in the morning, based on one subjective experience or another. By evening, based on those very same sensations, those same people were just as sure that they lived under a divine curse. It had shaken her deeply when she found these symptoms even among the faithful—like Palqui. She never thought she could experience such feelings associated with E’Yahavah, or if she did, that she could ever allow them to become so debilitating.

  She could not recall allowing any such thing. Now she saw the flaw in the assumption that, “since people were responsible beings, it must mean that spells of mental and emotional confusion happened only because people allowed them to on some level.” Part of it perhaps was a ghost of her Temple conditioning that the mind was all-powerful. Yet it also seemed that another part of it came from her own understanding of A’Nu-Ahki’s teachings; a correctly believed, but perhaps not always correctly applied, conviction that people were ultimately responsible for their own behavior and outlook.

  T’Qinna had always allowed that people might be overwhelmed for a season, but that given time, effort, and good methods, they would regain control. She had assumed that of Palqui, and had been secretly disappointed, when just as he seemed to be doing better, a new wave of crippling confusion would hit. It both amazed and disturbed her that he could be so strong in some ways, while so feeble in others. T’Qinna now knew that the control she had taken for granted all her life was a mirage at worst and a Divine gift at best. It seemed now that even the Divine gift came only in part. She hoped this was just the season of life called widowhood, but sensed that would not be entirely realistic.

  The idea of a deranged god was, to her, the ultimate blasphemy. She refused to believe that E’Yahavah had become “schizoid,” that his intentions for her shifted according to capricious divine whims; no matter how much it felt that way. Though Palqui disturbed her, he now also gave her hope. He had never given in to that idea, horrifying as his hallucinations and confusion sometimes became to him. No matter how deep his sorrow, or how slow his brain’s ability to function; he really did have a sound mind.

  T’Qinna, likewise, reminded herself moment-by-moment of the truth about E’Yahavah’s goodness, especially when she felt like the plaything of a schizoid god. Were such feelings normal for the freshly widowed, or only for those with her peculiar analytical makeup? She wondered how long her sanity, convictions, and trust could stay anchored against the swells of such relentless black tides. Despite rigorous training—first in Aztlan to identify the pathology, and then as a disciple of A’Nu-Ahki to live out the relational cure—the answer to that question eluded her; all the more because she had never pretended she could face such things in her own strength. At least she had never done so knowingly.

  She had begun her life as a malignant toy in the hands of schizoid gods. Now, centuries of transformation—her liberation from Aztlan, and rescue from global annihilation—seemed to unravel like a vast delusion. Prayers died on her lips, smothered by a sense that she had somehow repaid U’Sumi and A’Nu-Ahki for rescuing her by corrupting their hopes.

  This hideous anti-epiphany burrowed like worms through the fondest memories of her married life. As a cascading sequence of dark implosions, it transformed every tender
embrace into a mere tradeoff of sex for love. Each act of intimacy became nothing more than a lurid recapture of the cheap sex-for-power thrills from her old life as a priestess. The deeper the imploding memory chain went, the closer it came to detonating her most haunting inner terror about herself; that her whole life merely revolved around an exchange cycle of pleasure for the power she secretly craved like rancid scraps tossed to some crazed vulpine beast living inside her, as her truest self.

  If not for her, U’Sumi might have married better. How much of their life together had been her just pulling him down to the level of her old Temple life? She remembered watching with wild satisfaction for his hungry smile, whenever she unstrapped her unknown father’s dagger from around her thigh. How much of their mutual love for E’Yahavah had been a pretense through which they had merely kept their black little flame alive?

  The E’Yahavah she thought she knew in the morning reassured her that such things were not so. Yet, somehow, long before evening, the very things that the morning’s “E’Yahavah” revealed to her to prove it was not so became the very evidences that somehow seemed to prove it was. By bedtime, it seemed certain the Basilisk had just piggybacked his corruption through the Deluge on her. Had she not been Inana’s tutor and mentor, teaching her history and philosophy? Had she not answered Inana’s curiosity about the World-that-Was, even if only in vague generalities? Now, U’Sumi was gone and she would never know.

  Palqui once said that E’Yahavah’s Wordspeaker had warned him about Inana, before Arrata had even fallen! Young Palqui had seen through that girl to the corruption that “Mother T’Qinna” had not seen—had missed because it radiated from her own eyes, blurring her vision! It was all so horribly clear now how evil had bloomed again into a world-killing weed so quickly—Aztlan to T’Qinna to Inana to Nimurta to the world!

  Thunder clapped outside, as if to punctuate the realization, but T’Qinna was too numb and wept-out even to be startled.

  A muddy shuffle came from the opening of the coffin-like little room. T’Qinna looked up from her blanket, a wretched little creature in her wretched little hole, craving her rancid scraps.

  Lomina crouched in the entryway. “Mother Pyrrha, Yapheth the Elder has called a meeting in the round-hall. He sends his regrets for disturbing your grief, but asks if you will please attend.”

  The words whispered from T’Qinna’s naval; “There’s Iyapeti…”

  She slid out of the blanket, and crawled toward the opening without saying a word, wondering if Palqui’s wife saw the little scrap-hungry beast in her eyes. “All the women will see it…”

  Lomina helped her up, and they both dashed through the rain across the short space to Yerikho’s round-hall.

  All who remained of her world sat on the stone floor inside, either huddled around a central fire pit to warm themselves from the cold rain or aloof in the flickering shadows. Iyapeti’s bearlike form eclipsed the fire, with Malaq on one side, and Haviri and his wife on the other. Palqui sat off alone in the dimness. Lomina went to join her husband, while T’Qinna took a place by the fire, away from the others, opposite Iyapeti.

  The remaining son of A’Nu-Ahki said to her, “Thank you for coming, T’Qinna. I’m so sorry for all that’s happened, and for what you must be going through. I’ve called us together because of information I got while interrogating Ur’Nungal son of Gilgamesh. It concerns all of us who are left. I know it looks as if our world is over; that despite our bitter victory, we few who remain cannot hope to reestablish civilization as we knew it. Yet a peril has come to light that we can still prevent, even if we can no longer fulfill Iyared’s Oath, and give this world a solid foundation.”

  T’Qinna muttered, “What great quest is that?”

  Iyapeti hung his head. “Forgive me, T’Qinna, I don’t want to lay any burdens on you in your grief…”

  She broke into tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s not your fault…”

  He rose, circled the fire pit, and wrapped his arms around her, from the side. “We can do this another time, if you prefer.”

  She slid from his embrace, and said, “No; you should tell us what you know. U’Sumi would want you to, and he would want me to listen.”

  He took a seat again, cross-legged, but this time closer by. “Ur’Nungal told me that Gilgamesh is dead, and that Suinne still lives. What’s more, I suspect that, like P’Tah-Tahut, Suinne still has all of his faculties—I got that from what Ur’Nungal told me of his designs.”

  Haviri said, “Wasn’t Suinne an advisor of some kind to Kush?”

  Iyapeti answered, “Yes. According to the son of Gilgamesh, Suinne is very interested in reclaiming the contents of the Treasure Cave. He may already be at Arrata. Ur’Nungal was clear that Suinne can still, ‘read and scrawl as one of the gods in the days of yore’—that’s exactly how he said it. We cannot allow a civilization designed by Uruk’s ‘moon god’ to gain such knowledge. They would destroy themselves with it, and likely everyone else, if mages trained by Suinne developed the ancient technologies.”

  Malaq said, “What do you propose we do?”

  A voice came out of the shadows. “Destroy the Treasure Cave.”

  Everyone turned to face the speaker; T’Qinna as horrified by the idea as she was by the waves of despair that gravel-blasted her insides like those of the Deluge had once done to the world.

  The speaker was Palqui.

  182

  Suinne had expected the return of an army at least, not that of the stumbling vestige of Ur’Nungal. Gilgamesh’s son came to Uruk a few weeks after the vernal equinox, a year after he had left with the Kengiru’s best warriors to campaign in the West. The old moon god had not known such panic since the phantom had walked into Lugalbanda’s body, and established the reign of the Anunnaki and Igigi over the Sumar.

  The implications hounded him like the hunting dogs of Ninurta. Suinne had to pull the construction workers from building his new temple city of Ur, and refit them into an armed expedition to Arrata. He must move before the Asshurians recovered from their loss of Asshur, and before the last son of the Zhui’Sudra could reach the Treasure Cave to reestablish possession. It did not occur to him to doubt Ur’Nungal’s account of the battle in the West—Suinne had used his enchantments to interrogate him. The young Lugal’s vision of mounds of burnt corpses, felled by the fires of heaven more than by the sword, were memory—not exaggeration.

  The former astronomer of Kush still did not know what to make of that; only that it made him think in terms of omens and shadows of the World-end of Fire that the old fathers used to warn would one day destroy the world. Thus, Suinne himself led this new expedition, seated in his sedan chair atop the shoulders of six young eunuchs. His small army of builder-warriors had quickly beaten their mattocks and trowels into maces and spears, and marched with him, all before the summer solstice.

  According to the intelligence from Ur’Nungal, Iyapeti’s war losses had been almost as bad as those from Uruk, Akkad, and Asshur. The moon god rode with reasonable confidence that, facing such losses without reserves, the son of the Zhui’Sudra would not be able to reach Arrata. Certainly, the latter could not muster a fighting force able to overcome even Suinne’s untrained rabble, assuming he had enough men left to attempt it.

  Suinne had not wanted a war of attrition, but since that was the war that had developed; all it required of him was that he have more men left standing in the end—they did not necessarily need to be his best or brightest. The aging moon god figured he had enough life left in him to train another generation, and if not, what did it matter? He would at least live out his old age in comfort. After that, the world could fall apart for all he cared.

  Suinne also had another advantage over Iyapeti. His scouts had already told him the fate of the tiny outpost left with Usalaq at Arrata, when the Madness Plague fell.

  Such knowledge was power.

  183

  Iyapeti and the Remnant—as they now called themselves—wintered at Yeri
kho Freehold. They set off for Arrata with a mounted guard of Amurru, under Malaq, on the vernal equinox.

  The few Rhodesos to survive last year’s war rode with them as far as their common trail went, before turning west for a home they would likely need boats now to reach. Iyapeti sent them off with his blessing, unsure if he would ever return to them, unsure why he would want to. He could not escape the overpowering conviction that his real place now was near T’Qinna—if only because they were the only two left from the Boat of a Million Years. His own direct children had all aged and died long ago.

  They cut up through the northern Yordaen Valley, past the greater and lesser lakes, over the pass, into the Cedar Vale of the south flowing River of Lions. There, Gilgamesh’s son had said that Huwawah dwelt, before his father and Enkidu had supposedly killed him. They went through the second pass, and followed the northward flowing River of Dragons, until two months after riding out of Yerikho; the riders bypassed White Rock, well to their east. After the Rhodesos went west, Iyapeti led his expedition east, for the tiny Ufratsi River timber settlement of Karqemish. In all that time, they had seen no other people in the endless wild.

  With the approach of summer, the rains let up. Blossoming forestland scents permeated the mild air, lifting spirits badly in need of it. Iyapeti had watched T’Qinna from a distance, leaving her mostly to the consolation of her descendants marching with them. For the first time, late in a sunny afternoon, U’Sumi’s widow removed her widow’s shawl. Iyapeti thought he saw her smile briefly as he rode up alongside her onager.

  The woodland trail sang with birds as the hint of light in T’Qinna’s eyes, and the lilting sound of her voice, made ‘Peti almost weep for her sheer beauty. For the first time since U’Sumi died, the green of her eyes seemed to reflect their usual springtime luster, instead of the lichenous pallor of some wasteland. Her voice also carried something other than the cracking of dried out leaves trampled underfoot. It was a fleeting impression, but the first hopeful one he had seen from her, and he wanted to encourage it.