The Sacred Road to Paru’Ainu curved tightly around a spire of granite on the left, winding out over the rapids along an out-thrust precipice. A’Nu-Ahki breathed a sigh of relief when he reached the bend. The rest of the way descended gently into a widening valley of flowery meads and patches of woodland to the western shores of the great River-head Lake that swallowed up most of the vale’s lower reaches. Gold and silver waters sparkled in late afternoon sunshine, a narrow sea with mountains hemming in on either side, its opposite shore lost in the mist over the horizon.
Leftward, the sun-baked peaks of the Mountains of Aeden continued off into the haze, impassable along the lake’s rocky north shore. On the right, less sheer but just as high, frowned the Kharir Urkanu—the Mountains of Terror—that northern march of the dragon-infested highlands, swamps, and jungle called “The Haunted Lands.” There, some claimed, lay the stronghold of Dragon-prince, one of the Basilisk’s chief vassals. Nu suspected the fortress to be apocryphal, but no one had ever fully explored the region. It festered, a vast wound of feral wasteland, between ancient civilizations.
Cutting through this range, in the Canyons of Terror, the remaining three of the four Rivers of the northern world, besides Pisunu flowed. The latter river tumbled back safely westward toward Sa-utar. Due south, the lake narrowed into the Gihunu, to which Nu gazed, wishing he could pass its gorge of horrors, and all the Haunted Lands between Paru’Ainu and Salaam-Surupag, to see Emzara.
Southeast, beyond a grassland plateau, split off the Hiddekhel River toward Assuri. At the other end of the long lake, just south of where the River of Aeden made its own entrance over a gigantic cataract, the Ufratsi bent away to water the far eastern plains of Ufratsia and Zhri’Nikkor.
Awaiting the funeral party at a small dock-house near the Pisunu’s entrance sat a tiny fleet of longboats manned by acolytes entrusted with the upkeep of the Holy Precincts. The last leg of their journey would be across the long lake to the giant waterfall. There the river from the Forbidden Orchard thundered into the mortal world, dividing itself on the Isle of the Dead—a pinnacle of tunneled rock like a natural ziggurat with the First Altar on its peak, and the Treasure Cave with its crypts at its lake level base.
They reached the boathouse at dusk. The cottage-sized shelter had few indoor accommodations, except for the Archon. Instead, the acolytes had erected tents and prepared frugal meals of bitter herbs and unleavened way-bread for the others.
Nu lost no time bathing in the lake to rid himself of the smothering ash grime. As darkness fell, he, Muhet’Usalaq, and Urugim sat by one of the beast fires, sipping bowls of warm amomun lotus tea.
They sat apart from the other clans, except Urugim’s household.
Nu watched as his grand-uncle refused all food or comfort from his children, and their children, sending one after another away. Urugim had accepted the amomun from Muhet’Usalaq before settling down with his back against a tree, but that was all. A’Nu-Ahki hoped the medicinal properties in the tea would revive him some.
They sat for a long time, until Urugim rose to relieve himself in one of the outhouses down the hill. Once he moved out of earshot, Nu slid closer to his grandfather.
“I’m worried about him. He looks anemic, and I can’t say he’s doing himself any good fasting like he is.”
Muhet’Usalaq nodded. “He is not himself. I think he is taking the naming of Adiyuri pretty hard, particularly because of what Old Grease Slick said the night Iyared sent off the envoys.”
“Which thing was that?”
“It was about Guidad’s martyrdom at Regati—that has always been a touchy subject with Uru. He missed dying in the massacre by only a week. His wife’s illness required him to return to Sa-utar. I think he holds on to a peculiar guilt because he is still alive. Probably has something to do with him and Guidad being identical twins and all.”
Muhet’Usalaq gazed into the fire and sipped his tea. “They say twins of that kind can tell what the other is thinking. It is odd, because when they were children it happened often that one would start a sentence, and the other would finish it, as if the thought had come from one mind using two different mouths to speak. I got rather used to it, but it always made me wonder just how connected those two must have been.
“Even as adults, they worked together like one mind—Urugim behind the scenes, and Guidad out in the forefront, drawing crowds. Urugim is a thinker, while Guidad was a doer. One was never quite at his best without the other. Guidad never would have thought to make the first printing press if Uru had not complained at the inefficiency of copying our father’s books by hand. They actually made the thing together.”
Nu’s grandfather turned from the fire, and faced him. “A big part of Uru died at Regati. When Adiyuri suggested that all our work there had been misguided, I think it wounded my brother deeply.”
“I can understand that,” Nu said. “But we can’t let Grease Slick get to us—especially now!”
“Do you really understand? At your age, I wonder?”
“What do you mean?”
“A man has to feel as though he is fighting a winnable war. It becomes all the more urgent the closer he gets to the end of life. I think Urugim is questioning his very core beliefs, and wondering if anything we do can really make a difference in this generation.”
“Can’t say I’m not doing that myself.”
Muhet’Usalaq pulled his knees up to his chest. “We must not forget our objectives. Our charge is to explain the Prophecies in a clear, reasonable way that offers people a choice. Clear and reasonable…” he snorted. “I wish I had understood that when I was your age!”
Nu felt a dam inside him break. “But even we don’t really know what’s coming—fire or water, or maybe both—according to the Obelisks. Meanwhile you have this ‘Leviathan’ thing! I don’t know when I’m going to see Emzara again, or even if I’ll have a house to go home to…”
“You talk too much. If it settles your heart any, Leviathan is a defensive tactic your father and I worked out against an invasion from the west. With Khavilakki and Lumekkor formally aligned, it seemed likely they would strike to divide Seti at the narrow point over against Akh’Uzan to cut off and then take the southern city-states if I was named as Archon.”
“So, it’s that bad?”
“My operatives have been watching a military build-up along the Khavilakki border for months now, while an even larger force masses on the north shores of Lake Bauda’Al, to strike at the Isthmus of Hadumar. The pressure is off some with Adiyuri in the chair, but not much. Once word of the new Archon’s oath reaches Uggu, Avarnon-Set, and Tubaal-qayin Dumuzi, they may decide to invade anyway—Uzaaz’El is not about to underestimate me, even if only as an ideological threat.”
Nu wondered if his grandfather gave himself far too much credit. “Just what does this plan call for?”
Muhet’Usalaq leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes. “Leviathan is designed to speedily evacuate Salaam-Surupag, and get our families into the mountains and defensible ground. From there we can break into groups and filter across the river valley to the east, through to Assuri. Then we can take shipping to the Younger-lands away south—Ae’Ri is still practically uninhabited, and they say the soil there is rich and well watered.”
Nu’s heart deflated into hardened wineskin. “Assuri is dominated by the giants of Samyaza! What stops them from doing to us what they did to Guidad at Regati? They’re even worse than the titans in Lumekkor!”
“You forget that the Samyaza Cult at least arose from a culture defined by Setiim Orthodoxy. Lumekkor’s conversion was never more than a convenient political ruse at best. We will be traveling merchants as far as Assuri is concerned—hardly worth a second look, and perhaps even welcomed the way the economy is down there. We have stockpiled your medicinal herbs. Intelligence reports say some of their giants have inherited Short-lifer’s Syndrome from their mothers. They probably won’t bother us.”
A’Nu-Ahki almost laughed
. “Salaam-Surupag is a city of over fifty thousand men, women, and children! That’s a lot of traveling merchants, don’t you think? And there’s no herbal formula for Short-lifer’s!”
“Must I spell it all out for you and risk being overheard? We have the equipment. We have worked out the timing, and established several routes! We only need the good will of Assuri long enough to pass through. Now that is all you need to know!”
“When will I see Emzara again?”
“Is the poor gangly ‘tween having the flutters? Soon, if all goes to plan! Now drop the subject, Urugim is coming back.”
Muhet’Usalaq’s brother moved at a brisk pace toward the beast fire.
“There is a commotion up on the road!” he called out.
Nu and his grandfather got up, and moved toward where the road emptied out of some tamarisk trees into a meadow before the boathouse. Up in the lower foothills a single phosphorus torch wound its way down the highway from Sa-utar. It signaled with alternating crisscross and circular motions that it was a military courier. Nu, Muhet’Usalaq, and Urugim arrived just as Adiyuri bustled out of the boathouse in his sleeping robe. All four hailed the unicorn rider as he galloped to a halt into camp.
“Lord Archon!” called the courier. “The alarm is sounded! Three armies from Lumekkor and the Seventh Balimar Corps have marched into Seti from the north. They mass with overwhelming force, but have not shed blood, except to defend their own persons. Nor have they left garrisons at any of our cities. Another report comes from the south: A corps of Assurim regulars and Samyaza giants have invaded Salaam-Surupag over the Gihunu River. The few who escaped last saw the city in flames, and its streets covered with thousands of dead—men, women, and children!”
Adiyuri’s jowls tightened. “Have you a threat assessment?”
“Intelligence believes the forces out of Lumekkor are moving to engage the Assurim armies before they can invade Khavilakki. Lumekkor somehow knew the Samyazas were coming…”
“Survivors!” Nu shouted. “Were there any survivors at Salaam from the houses of Lumekki or A’Nu-Ahki?”
“I don’t know, sir. There were only a handful making their way north by the Akh’Uzan Road. It’s now been eight days since the assault.”
Adiyuri pulled himself up to his full height, and suddenly seemed less corpulent as he turned to Muhet’Usalaq. “I have to return to Sa-utar. Since you are master over the Holy Precincts, I charge you to continue and bury our father. I promise you, I will do my best to protect you and this place.” Then he looked at A’Nu-Ahki. “If I hear any information on survivors from Salaam-Surupag, young man, I will dispatch a rider to you immediately—you have my word!”
A’Nu-Ahki would not normally have put much stock in the new Archon’s word, but he now saw qualities in Adiyuri’s eyes that he had never expected—concern, compassion, and a genuine intent to keep faith.
“But I have to go with you, my Father!” A’Nu-Ahki pleaded. “I have to see if they’re all right!”
Muhet’Usalaq placed an iron grip on Nu’s shoulder. “No!” he said, “You have a duty to perform here—a holy charge! I cannot do without you.”
A’Nu-Ahki tore himself free, swung around at his grandfather, and nearly punched him. Trembling, he said, “What have you ever really needed me for, Old Man? And what charge is there that cannot wait until I’ve seen to my family? They came from the south and east! Not the west! The cult of Samyaza! Not Lumekkor! Did Leviathan make provisions for this?”
Muhet’Usalaq spoke softly, “You are bound by your charge to Iyared, and I have always needed you. You are my bridge to the young, and my eyes into the future. Need I remind you that my own wife is also at Salaam-Surupag? I know by the whisper of El-N’Lil that if you leave me now, you will not return. Then all will truly be lost! I beg you, stay with me and pray—you can do no better for Salaam-Surupag or Emzara than this.”
A’Nu-Ahki stood before his elders, every muscle a twitching battlefield of personal kherubim and demons fighting for control. The image filled his eyes of Emzara’s warm corpse hewed to pieces in the street after having been the object of gang rapes by drunken Assurim soldiers. He also saw Oronis and Arrakan with Lumekki, making a valiant last stand with swords drawn, outnumbered ten to one.
As if somehow present, Nu witnessed his unmarried daughters carted off to Assur’Ayur to serve as prostitute “wives” for Samyaza, his Watcher hordes, and their giants. Lastly, he saw Illysia’s unborn child ripped from her womb by the sword; her straining body cleaned like a gasping fish that still struggled for life.
He crumpled to the ground, indifferent to who witnessed him sob in the dust. He knew he must not go with Adiyuri, perhaps by the same breath of El-N’Lil that had spoken through his grandfather. But it was just a feeling—an impression that violated everything his mind and heart screamed for him to do. Yet to his disgust at his own weakness of will, he knew he could not go. He could not risk violating E’Yahavah’s trust as revealed to him in the dying words of gnarled-hand, song-voiced, living-skull Iyared.
“Enough!” Nu barked at his grandfather. “I go to the Isle of the Dead as you go! But do not speak to me!”
Before the Zaqen could answer, A’Nu-Ahki stood up, ran, and grabbed his pack, stuffing it with rations of the leftover way-bread and water. Then he raced down the incline to the shore, and yanked a small three-man skiff from its mounts on the side of the boathouse. Once on the beach, he took a set of paddles and launched out into the lake. His strokes dug into the water, sped by the engine of his own fury. The vermilion light of a giant rising half-moon climbed over the horizon in front of him.
He glanced back over his shoulder to see Muhet’Usalaq, who watched him from shore. Tears streamed until the campfire-lit silhouette diminished to a black dot that lost itself in the lake’s swirling mists.
The Sphinx is a figure with the head of a woman and the body of a lion! What is this but a never ceasing monitor, telling us to begin with Virgo and to end with Leo! In the Zodiac in the Temple of Esneh, in Egypt, a Sphinx is actually placed between the Signs of Virgo and Leo…
—The Witness of the Stars
E.W. Bullinger
5
Sphinx
T
he Isle of the Dead loomed above A’Nu-Ahki to misty heights, a natural fortress of stone-ghost sentries on outcroppings that guarded balconies, carved-out halls, and stairwells which honeycombed from the lake-level Treasure Cave up to the First Altar that topped the flattened summit of the island’s highest pinnacle like a natural ziggurat. This unique rock formation had architecturally suggested the stepped pyramid ziggurat to begin with. That and it was easier to build over older mounds.
The peak overlooked the upper falls of the river from immortal Aeden, which thundered from its canyon on either side, splitting on the island with clutching fingers of white water called the Palqui. The cataract roared in ageless torment, etching a place for the fathers of men to make expiation for the living, and to lay the mummified end of each chapter in the human story since their banishment from Aeden. Stone and water seemed to echo those identical last words on each sacred genealogy: and he died.
A’Nu-Ahki’s solitary vigil during his five-day crossing of the long lake had given him space to reflect. The timeless grandeur of the island made it impossible to revive his rage while beneath its shadow, even if he wanted to. Or perhaps it was the canticles of the acolytes echoing in endless cycles from the lake-level chapel. All must pass through their antechamber to gain the inner caverns, and none could escape their sonorous harmonies.
“E’Yahavah is One, yet Three,” chanted one group of acolytes. A second chorus answered, “The Only Creator, Head of the Divine Council—Father of, yet not like, the created lesser gods who serve at His pleasure…”
Nu had arrived the previous evening, and expected that the funeral flotilla would appear soon through the lake mists that had just swallowed the setting sun—which was why he had descended to the wharf.
&nb
sp; The Acolytes continued: “E’Yahavah A’Nu—who resides in the heavens, the unknowable infinite, beyond the stars of time, beyond the watery abyss that is above the First Heaven…”
A hazy lantern light appeared out on the foggy lake.
“E’Yahavah El-N’Lil—the Divine Wind who brooded over and stirred the Abyssu that was beneath the heavens, and who breathed life into Man; who makes known the ways of E’Yahavah A’Nu to the Seers, and who thunders over the heat of the mountain-tops to remind us that His wrath against our rebellion will not wait forever…”
Other dots of light began to flicker into existence on the lake, along with the profiles of the nearer boats.
“And the Messenger of E’Yahavah who appears as a man to make known to us the Divine Love and the Divine M’Ae; who placed the Fire-Sphinx at the Pass of Aeden to protect us, and who guided our first parents to the Treasure Cave, and to The Place of Concealment—Holy Sa-utar…”
A’Nu-Ahki’s anger had cooled. It would not revive—even at the approach of his grandfather’s boat—for now, at least.
A silent wounded man who could summon no words, good or ill, met Muhet’Usalaq at the dock. Both quietly decided to let things rest at that, and to proceed with the entombment of Iyared in peace.
The shortened ceremonies allowed as many of the acolytes as possible to go home to their families in the beleaguered City-States of Seti. Nu had already told the Keepers of the Holy Precincts what had happened, but gave no instructions—only suggestions for those who might want to return to Sa-utar, or to some other home city.
Muhet’Usalaq commanded a skeleton crew to remain, and prepare to defend their natural fortress if need be; though he said he doubted it would come to that.
Urugim also ordered a few of his grandsons to accompany the acolytes, and to bring word to the rest of his household. He urged them to withdraw from Sa-utar, and march eastward to meet him at the boathouse.
Dawn Apocalypse Rising (The Windows of Heaven Book 1) Page 7