The other two glared at Salaam-Surupag’s Prime Zaqen; A’Nu-Ahki shocked that his grandfather understood his position so well.
Muhet’Usalaq—His death shall bring it.
“It was a mistake for Iyared to send Adiyuri to that foreign council,” Muhet’Usalaq said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
“I wondered about that,” Urugim replied, who no longer seemed to have a problem with criticizing elders. “Did the priests badger him?”
“Could be. He certainly asked no counsel of me. Maybe he thought ‘Old Grease Slick’ would be less offensive to the titans.”
A’Nu-Ahki smirked. “Is ‘Old Grease Slick’ a name the Great Seer would have approved for his own brother?”
Muhet’Usalaq said, “Who do you think first called him that?”
Nu smiled. “So what of the foreign council?”
“Oh, is that not obvious?” Urugim answered. “They condoned Gununi’s black alchemy with Uzaaz’El’s fertility rites, as, get this…” He pantomimed flatulence, and even flipped his kilt up a little in the back with his hand for emphasis, “…‘a progressive step toward achieving the Promised Seed!’ Even Adiyuri was a bit repulsed by it all, though considering the rest of his report that is not saying much…”
A’Nu-Ahki knew things had gotten bad, but this sounded like the crumbling of the last bastion of the Archon’s moral authority.
Urugim went on, “Erdu’s scholars have redefined the Seers’ tablets into smarmy platitudes to sell back to the Archonic Orthodox for decades. How is it that our own leaders forget that the reason they named their city ‘Erdu’ in the first place was to identify it in their own dialect with Qayin’s ‘Y’Raddu,’ where ‘kingship’ supposedly first ‘descended from the heavens’—all to repudiate E’Yahavah’s authority! Joining the Alliance is just honey on the bread. ‘Mass amnesia,’ I call it. Now they want to offer the wormy package to Iyared, who is supposed to bless it like a doddering old fool and pretend it is just a harmless dialogue of reconciliation…”
Muhet’Usalaq interrupted, pointing down at the giant sundial in what used to be the garden. “It is time.”
Below the wall, the caravan pushed past the mob, into the portcullis.
The three observers turned from the parapet and made for the nearest turret. Azure domes and granite ziggurats in the lower tiers of the Archon’s palace glimmered beneath the pale gold mid-afternoon sky. A monstrous architectural maze, the House of the Holy Cave dominated the City-States of Seti, a piece-meal culmination of over fifteen centuries of building and adding, rebuilding and improving. It nestled on seven walled tiers in the hollow face of a gigantic cliff that overlooked the city of Sa-utar.
Even at his age, Nu still enchanted himself with the idea that somewhere underneath all those halls, fountain pools, gardens, chambers, and courtyards lay a humble cave where the first parents of the human race had started the archetype of all families to come. His enchantment died when he considered how that family had turned out.
Nearby, a bronze statue of Seti the Great in battle with a crested dragon reminded Nu that Sa-utar’s caves had originally sheltered his early ancestors against pack-hunting wurms like cockatrice and the enormous gryndel. The name Sa-utar itself meant concealment. Emzara’s warning now put everything into perspective. The connotation of the Holy City’s name had shifted over the centuries. It was still a place of concealment, but only in the sense that nobody there was really what they seemed to be.
Muhet’Usalaq, Urugim, and A’Nu-Ahki passed into the reddish-gold orichalcum metal-domed auditorium where the Archon heard foreign envoys. The outer chamber of the rotunda, its walls overhung with shields, banners, and other marks of heraldry, captivated the senses with a decayed grandeur of glory days long past, when the Archons of Seti had ruled more than half the world either directly or through their vassals. A long cobweb stretched from a dusty display alcove to a nearby stone column wrapped in spiraling reliefs that depicted winged sphinxes in red-gold fire.
The current Archon governed a serpentine swath of territory dotted by an atrophied handful of city-states bound only by common religious tradition, the Brotherhood of Dragon-slayers, a regular army, and a small coastal navy of long-obsolete triremes on the innermost of the inland seas.
Incense-thickened air squeezed A’Nu-Ahki’s breath like a mood-constricting snake when they entered the Archon’s central audience hall. He noticed the icy formality with which the legates and patriarchs of the High Council and priesthood greeted his grandfather. The sons of Q’Enukki had never been popular with the priests, but Archon Iyared—the Seer’s father—still held them in high regard. Then it all became clear.
“Pahpi, why is Adiyuri sitting in the Chair of Appointment?” Nu asked, as he watched the fat elder that had just arrived with Bab’Tubila’s envoy wiggle into a raised chair below the Archon’s platform.
The new quickfire lighting pearls overhead made an oily reflection on the offender’s bald, reddish-brown forehead. Although a generation older than Muhet’Usalaq, Adiyuri’s cosmetic surgeries, face paint, and beardless triple chin gave him the appearance of an over-fed youth. He must have felt A’Nu-Ahki’s gaze, for he glared back at him.
Muhet’Usalaq said, “Let not his sitting there trouble you. He rallied the priests and legates, and got a Declaration of Precedence.”
“Based on what?”
“A strained reach—they insist that because Atum-Ra appointed Seti heir after Qayin murdered Heh’Bul, and not Heh’Bul’s eldest son, that Iyared should appoint Adiyuri, his surviving eldest, and not me, the firstborn of vanished Q’Enukki. They ignore the fact that Seti was not the next eldest in line-of-succession after Heh’Bul. The choice came by prophecy, not tradition. It is meaningless unless the Archon ratifies it, and that is unlikely.”
“You’ve been named in private?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not? The Archon’s older than any of his fathers reached.”
“Iyared waits. We cannot afford another split in the Upper Family, especially now—not until the last possible minute, anyway.”
A hush fell over the hall. A’Nu-Ahki, Urugim, and Muhet’Usalaq quickly found their seats.
A curtain at the back of the Archon’s dais opened to admit two acolytes, who helped an ancient man in simple tan linen robes shuffle into a large golden chair at the center. The throne dwarfed its occupant, whose sparsely bearded head bobbed to the rhythmic tremor of advanced age.
Below the chair a herald cried, “All rise for Iyared, Archon Salaamis, son of Archronos Atum-Ra, born when the world was young to be Patriarch of the Children of Man, and Shepherd of the Holy Precincts!”
The entire hall—some thousand or more elders—rose briefly until the enfeebled figure on the dais had fully settled into his seat.
The Herald then announced the envoys. “Presenting the Emissaries from the Council at Ayar Adi’In: the notable Zegus, assistant to the First Zaqen of the Enlightened Fathers at the shrine city of Erdu; and the noble Avarnon-Set, son of the Watcher, Uzaaz’El, Ambassador from the Empire of Lumekkor, and personal minister to its mighty Shepherd, Dumuzi Tubaal-qayin the Fifth, Son of the Dynasty of Steel. Greetings and all hail!”
Nu said, “Shepherd? I thought he was a metalsmith?”
Muhet’Usalaq winced slightly. “The Archon gave him the archaic honorific as a ‘thank you’ for the quickfire lighting pearls.”
“But that term’s reserved for priests and acolytes!”
“And sometimes scholars—now shush!”
The envoys stepped forward, where A’Nu-Ahki could get a better look at them. The first dressed as a traditional Khavilak of the affluent merchant-priest class, in a finely spun gold cloak with elaborate onyx and lapis-lazuli ornamentation, and a wedge-shaped nemes headdress.
Bab’Tubila’s envoy, Avarnon-Set, stood half a man taller than the tallest man in Iyared’s court. The Titan’s massive head stretched like contorted havoc against the insides of his long gray
hood—part of a robe that flowed around his body like a shadow. Claw-nailed hairy hands protruded from sleeves large enough to conceal twin arsenals.
Nu recoiled when the Giant answered the Herald in a scratchy hiss. The sound itself somehow pricked the mind and made Nu’s eyes and ears hurt. The vision of a thorn covered with gnawing insects flashed in his eyes.
As if from far away, the voice of Nu’s grandfather whispered, “Plead the A’Nu that an irresistible evil may be resisted today!”
A’Nu-Ahki reached out in his thoughts to the Great God, but the tiny insects on the mind-thorn that was the Titan’s voice became an itchy noise inside his head that made it impossible to focus. It only got worse when Nu closed his eyes—he actually saw them in the dark like a writhing mass of ants. He could barely mouth the words, “Be kind to me. Be kind to us… to Iyared. Give us will and sight, power to face… them!”
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the image of the thorn and its bugs dissolved. Confidence seeped in from unseen cracks. Nu wrenched his eyes away from the towering figure in gray, and focused on the ancient man on the dais. Iyared seemed less feeble than before. A lively gleam sparkled from wizened eyes that offset Avarnon-Set’s chill.
The Khavilak priest, Zegus, chanted a reedy monophonic greeting song that praised the Archon with insipid flatteries that gradually segued into his formal address. “…Excellent Archon, Father, and Shepherd of men, despite the disagreements that have divided our rites, we want you to know that we respect your wisdom and authority. Doubtless, our union with Uzaaz’El’s Temple Alliance raises many questions. We come today, with the help of your loyal son, Adiyuri the Magnanimous, to explain in Orthodox terms better understood by your court…”
A’Nu-Ahki had expected the Khavilak Envoy to feign sincerity. What stunned him was the amateurish condescension sabotaging the attempt.
Zegus said, “Contrary to rumor, we at Erdu still read Atum-Ra and watch the Star-signs by Seti’s interpretive tablets. These codes are as key to us as to you—integral to the governing pact of the Divine M’Ae. I speak of the runes that say: I will put hatred between the Basilisk and the Woman; and between the Basilisk’s seed and the Woman’s…”
Nu’s heart raced. Nausea sucked him into a ringing inner void where the seething bugs had eyes. Panic seized his diaphragm just as when the Cockatrice Matriarch had pressed her talons down on him. He gazed over at Avarnon-Set. The Titan also turned and glared straight at him, eyes aglow from the recess of his cowl—from the darkness filled with its army of gnawing bugs. They were identical to the insect eyes.
“You are spared because you are Basilisk’s seed. I will collect from you my blood price!”
The words were almost audible. A’Nu-Ahki wanted to bolt from the auditorium, but his limbs went limp. Avarnon-Set’s eyes held him fixed, as if ready to lunge from their hole to swallow him in a bug-coated wurm’s bite.
Zegus bubbled madly in the background. “…The speaker, of course, is E’Yahavah A’Nu. The key word is seed, used ambiguously here as to its plurality or singleness. Everyone knows it is a term for lineage. You, Elder Archon, are the seed of Seti, as I am of Buraki. Yet we would never call ourselves the seed of our mothers!”
The court chuckled. Sounds of humor—something natural and human—somehow enabled A’Nu-Ahki to pull his eyes from Avarnon-Set.
Zegus paused to let them drink in his little quip, and continued, “Our key word leaves room for not only one holy child, but many…”
Here the elders murmured—though not as many as Nu would have guessed or hoped.
The Merchant-priest said, “…For humanity to share the divine restoration of this bloodline, the Seed needs to spread to every family, does it not?” Before the prophetic scholars could object, however, Zegus went on. “It follows then that A’Nu should, through his sons—the Watchers of the stars and planets—let us redeem ourselves by giving our daughters to bear special children with them—children that will advance us into the heavens!”
From among the Archon’s own sons, a voice spoke. It seemed to be clumsily reciting a script; “Is this not the promise of restoration that the Seed of a Woman shall crush the Basilisk’s headship?”
Zegus flinched, but continued—what else could he do? “Er, yes. That was our conclusion too—only after long consideration—of course. I mean, after all, the Watchers are not male or female in any earthly sense. They artificially write creation codes into the specially prepared host-mothers’ eggs to make them conceive. It is not even necessary for them to lie with their wives to do this. They do so only out of kindness—that the daughters of men may know pleasure before the pains of childbirth.”
Suspicious murmurs rumbled from tiny pockets throughout the hall. A rising chatter of lurid curiosity over this new information on the dynamics of unnatural conception quickly drowned them out, however.
A’Nu-Ahki marveled, especially on the heels of the obviously staged outburst from the planted voice in the crowd. Such sparse outcry told him that many elders actually wanted the Khavilak to succeed, no matter how pretentious and radical his claims were. That was not all.
Erdu’s sages had long read messages into the Star-signs that were abusive to the obvious intent of the Seers’ interpretative tables. Now Zegus spoke of how, “Today’s readers and listeners—not the tablets of the Seers—created divine truth anew when the Star-sign Tables spoke to individual hearts.” Yet to believe this, Nu must uncritically accept the intent of Zegus, and Erdu’s “enlightened sages,” that “readers created divine truth” when they read the Seers’ tablets, not the text’s authors or E’Yahavah El-N’Lil.
Nu had insufficient formal rank as either zaqen or sage to challenge the Khavilak and protocol forbade his elders to do so. It made no difference. Those inside the rotunda would ignore Zegus’ logical fallacy anyway, simply because a natural literary understanding of the Seers’ tablets was currently unpopular in the priesthood. As a result, many now felt the Star-signs and tablets could mean nearly anything to anybody. This meant that, in the real world, they could no longer mean anything of any substance at all.
Zegus raised his hands, as if to smooth away near-nonexistent waves of discontent. “I sympathize with your misgivings. They are understandable in view of how the titans behave at times. The Holy Children have shown less-than-perfect obedience to Seti’s Code. Yet we must understand; they are different, a step up, but not yet an ultimate fulfillment. If it makes you feel better, they haven’t heeded the laws of the Qayinim tribes so well either.”
Several legates looked at each other, smiled, and then shrugged as if to say, “Well now, I guess we’re not the only ones. All the rapes, massacres, and burnings of our sacred scrolls are just one big misunderstanding then.”
Zegus stretched out his arms as if to include all of Seti in a big hug. “Since they are from above—some might even say ‘semi-divine’—some prerogatives must be given them. How can we judge their motivations? Certainly, we’ve seen the Great God, E’Yahavah A’Nu, bring tragedy to those who least deserve it, and wealth to men whose foolishness merited poverty—dare we question his divine justice? The questionable acts of the Watchers, and their titans, whom we have hastily called, ‘Nae-fillim’—Fallen Ones—are but mysteries of the same quality, just of lesser degree…”
Over half the court nodded. Nu wanted to smack their empty heads.
The Merchant-priest clasped his hands to his chest in what A’Nu-Ahki hoped was a signal that he would finish. “We appeal to you in the name of E’Yahavah A’Nu, join in healing our divided families! Don’t be left in the dust while progress rushes on to restore us our place among the stars! We ask you in love; accept us as sons, as we now look to you as fathers.”
Zegus sat down, though his soft eyes still gazed up at Iyared.
A’Nu-Ahki saw too many perplexed faces. Yet one face still had purpose. His was the only one that really mattered.
Iyared stood without help from his acolytes. His voice boomed through the
rotunda with no quickfire amplification. “I hath watched the world change since the Watchers first descended upon the Mountains of Ardis and mine own son, Q’Enukki, prophesied against them. I am neither surprised nor confused by thy position. Indeed, I long anticipated this, since we predicted that the Watchers would make such claims for their sons.”
The Archon’s watery eyes gazed down upon Zegus. “Nor didst we hide this, even as far back as five hundred years ago—thou shouldest be old enough to remember, Zegus—and if thou art not, most everybody else in this chamber is. Consequently, I do not think this idea of thine is well thought. Thou sayest the titans are children. I suppose this is so, since few are older than five centuries. Yet my ages of fatherhood hath shown me that violent children often grow to be violent adults. I hath also seen that sons bear the image of their fathers. This holdeth especially so for the Woman’s Seed.
“Need I recite the deeds of these titans, who promise peace, yet war not only against men but each other over petty baubles of land and women? Shall I let the sons of Seti judge whether these be works of a holy seed, or of a dragon’s brood? Shall I mention the lands stained by innocent blood; taken in what the titan Uggu hath called ‘sports of conquest and diplomacy?’ What of the vast harem of wives and concubines he had put to the sword when it was discovered that they could bear him no children because he himself, that ‘perfect specimen of manhood,’ was as sterile as a mule?”
Avarnon-Set clawed the sides of his seat. Zegus whispered something to the Giant that caused him to relax again. Nu wondered what.
The Archon cackled and shook his head. “Childe Zegus, how can I take thee seriously when thou sayest thy sundered clans still respect mine authority? I hath condemned the perverse fertility rites of Uzaaz’El, and the alchemy of Gununi, which thou supportest. Whilst I vieweth the engineering marvels of Tubaal-qayin as gifts, using them to abuse women and infants in thy Temple is an abomination worthy of my deepest scorn.
Dawn Apocalypse Rising (The Windows of Heaven Book 1) Page 4