Urugim seemed more emaciated than three days without food could have made him. When Nu tried to brush aside the old man’s hair to get a look at his eyes, several curls came out in his hand like dried wool. Then A’Nu-Ahki noticed the redness of his uncle’s skin, as if he had stood too close to a fire and been burned. Yet it was like no burn he had ever treated, for none of his uncle’s body hair appeared singed—it just fell out in clumps.
He rifled his pack for the water bag, and wet the Elder’s lips. Then he pulled out his chemist kit, and mixed some fine amomun with opiate powders into a paste. This he forced into Urugim’s mouth with his fingers, coating the old man’s tongue. The lotus mixture would speed healing, while the opiate would dull the burn pain. Nu wished he had thought to bring aloe, but burns were hardly what he had expected to find—at least not the kind one could live to tell about.
The old man stirred and opened his eyes long enough to smack his lips and swallow his saliva. Then he passed out again.
Nu wanted to be well away from the Sphinx before nightfall. He checked Urugim for other injuries, particularly broken bones or head trauma, which would make transporting him dangerous. Finding none, he hoisted his uncle onto his onager in front of him. Leading the other animal by tether, they began their long trek back to the Isle of the Dead.
A’Nu-Ahki hoped it would not be Urugim’s final destination.
O
range late afternoon light filtered through the narrow window of the upper west chamber. The softened thunder of the waterfalls on either side almost lulled A’Nu-Ahki to sleep as he hunched over his chemist’s kit, mixing an aloe salve to spread over Urugim’s worsening burns.
Muhet’Usalaq hovered over his brother’s unconscious form and prayed silently.
The marks on the old man’s body made no sense. At first, they had been a mild redness, like a scorch from working too long out in the sun up in higher altitudes. It should have healed easily by now. Instead, it had erupted into blisters and then, by the time they had ridden down to Paru’Ainu, into running lesions. Was this the wound of the Fire-sphinx’s Sword of Light? Nu had always imagined instant flame and ashes from such an encounter, but what did any of them really know for sure?
A barking cough startled A’Nu-Ahki. He turned to see Urugim sitting up in his bed. Muhet’Usalaq almost took his brother’s hand, but stopped himself, probably for fear of the oozing burns.
Urugim stared about the room and then motioned for water.
“Are you in pain?” Nu asked, once his patient drank.
Urugim said, examining the lesions on his hands, “No. Looks like I should be though?”
“That it does.”
Muhet’Usalaq drew himself up to his full height and almost yelled, “Just what in the name of the Holy Watchers did you think you were doing?”
Urugim threw back his head and laughed in a way that made Nu’s skin crawl. “Holy Watchers! Brother, do not speak to me of Holy Watchers, for when I am done, you will have had more of them than you need to last you the rest of your life and beyond!”
Muhet’Usalaq softened. “Sorry, Uru. Tell us, why?”
Nu handed his grand uncle some amomun tea.
Urugim seemed to get a bit stronger as he sipped it. “I suppose a lot of things. But the biggest was the dream I had the night I left here.”
“What kind of dream?”
Urugim finished his amomun, settled back against the bed’s frame, and said, “I left my quarters, and went down to sleep in the Treasure Cave. I had heard the legend that sometimes dreams come to those who are troubled in spirit, and dare to sleep near the Holy Treasures and the bones of our fathers. I figured such dreams would come all the more readily since we had opened the crypts to exhume Atum-Ra.
“I walked into the Chamber of the Three, and with the authority granted us by Iyared, relieved the acolyte vigil there. I told him that I would take his watch. Then I settled down in the doorway to the inner crypts, within sight of Atum-Ra’s disinterred sarcophagus, and went to sleep. At least I think I went to sleep only because of what happened next, though it felt as if I stayed awake the whole time. In fact, I do not remember waking up until now. Perhaps some of it was a vision—I do not know for sure.
“I had hardly settled down, when I heard a creaking noise from inside the crypt. Something ancient and disturbing filled the burial chambers. Though I shook at the thought of looking upon it, my head turned to the inner catacombs. Atum-Ra’s sarcophagus had opened!
“I heard a shuffle, then approaching footsteps from out of the tomb’s blackness. When the shadow reached the light from the Chamber of the Three, I saw a man wrapped in the linens of one mummified, yet his face still bore the flesh of life. He asked me to cut away the grave clothes and said he wished to walk with me. I somehow knew that it was Atum-Ra, so I took out my utility knife and did as he requested.”
Nu asked, “What else did he say?”
Urugim stared off into space as he answered. “Much of it I cannot now remember, except he said that one day the way to the Life-tree would be open again to men, and that I should be afraid no longer. We wandered the stairs and halls as he talked. He also spoke of Q’Enukki, and World-end, though he would give no details. He never told me to go to the Orchard, but I noticed as we drew near the upper island stables that I was suddenly alone. It was then that I knew what I must do to find my answers.
“I returned to the Chamber of the Three, and wrote you all a note. Then I climbed back to the stables, chose an onager, and slipped away.
“I remembered the longing of our father to gaze upon the Life-tree, and how E’Yahavah had allowed him to actually dwell near it for three months in holy solitude. I guess I forgot how sick he became afterward. No matter. There really was no big reason for me to fear the Fire Sphinx anymore. Our world is ruined beyond repair! If the Kherubar found my reasoning presumptuous, at least I would die with a vision of unspoiled creation in my eyes—a vision of the way things were meant to be!
“I kept my onager’s pace up the canyon trail unhurried, peaceful that soon my bitter heart would have its answers. It all started in Aeden, and I determined that in Aeden it would finish—at least for me, anyway.
“Only when I fell under the frowning gaze of Seti’s Sphinx did I begin to doubt my wisdom and sanity. I felt as though she watched me approach in the night with sad pleading eyes. If being up there alone in the dark with all those skulls did not terrify me enough, the mad conviction came over me that the thing was actually alive and would speak!
“Unearthly noises echo in those peaks—ghosts of the tormented dead who called to each other for meager comfort, or who perhaps signaled that another foolhardy meal approached. The skulls whisper at the border of the fallen and the holy—at the battle line of life and death—where I was about to march across naked through unseen volleys of flying darts.
“I shook such thoughts from my mind. Then I laughed aloud—a disquiet alien sound on that pinnacle of solitude. I felt I had disturbed something ancient by my outburst, and realized that I was probably the first human to laugh in that place since before the expulsion of our First Parents. I made not a blasphemous laugh, my Brother, rather a cleansing one. I felt better afterward, and went on past the Sphinx. For all her ability to provoke fear, she made no move to stop me.
“In the half light before dawn, I climbed the rise just past Seti’s marker. There I dismounted and allowed my onager to graze free. I did not feel right taking the animal in with me, for it had served its purpose. The creature immediately bolted for the shelter of the Sphinx. I then thought I saw movement in the shadowy rocks around and above me. Whispers called out indistinctly from the darkness. This time it was not just the skulls.
“My legs pushed me forward of their own accord, as I fell into a sinking terror. I did not yet know whether this desire to see the Life-tree came from E’Yahavah to uplift me or from the Basilisk to complete my destruction. War waged all around me! Shadow-voices grew more distinct the high
er I went. In the battle for possession of my will, the whisperers opposed each other. Some called for me to turn back; others to march on.
“I crossed the top of the rise, until two rock pinnacles stood like natural gate posts on either side of the path. Barring my way between the stones, stood the fabled Fire-Sphinx bearing the Sword of Light. He shone like a small sun! How can I describe that which no mortals save Atum-Ra and our father have ever lived to tell? That terrible eye-burning brightness! It stung and penetrated not only my eyes but my deepest inward parts! It permeated my flesh so that when I held up my hand to shield my face, I could see my bones right through it! No part of me escaped his scrutiny.
“That sword laid my spirit bare along with my body. I felt as naked as Atum-Ra and Ish’Hakka had on the day they ate of the cursed fruit. The marrow of my bones burned as molten lead within me. My ears buzzed with the Light-sword’s high-pitched hum—a fiery, crackling resonance. Yet I also heard in it the rush of great waters, like the crashing of ocean waves. As I listened, the noise seemed to shift and blend. It pounded with the cadence of marching armies, and the wails of men and women in torment, until it all swirled together in a violent whirlpool of sound!
“Then the Fire-Sphinx spoke like quiet thunder; ‘Do you transgress the Sanctuary?’
“The voice did not seem angry. Nevertheless, my legs wilted and fell out from beneath me at the realization of what I was doing. I trembled in the dirt, face down, and answered that I did not wish to trespass, but merely to look from a distance upon the Life-tree.
“A pause followed in which I imagined that white-hot blade poised above my head to strike. When this did not happen, I risked lifting my eyes.
“To my joy and surprise, the Guardian had moved off behind one of the stone pinnacles. I had an unobstructed view of Aeden’s Orchard!
“The Fire-Sphinx spoke to me again; ‘To see the tree from a distance, travel half a day’s march more down this path to an overlook from which the Orchard is visible. The Life-tree lies on a small island out on the lake where the River of Aeden begins. Be warned, Son of Man. This place emanates power as all substances once did before the pollution of the Deathing-Curse. Your body will not long stand these forces, for mortal things cannot endure the immortal.
“‘Look, and be assured that your Life is real, but do not stray from the path. It is only because your father was granted special immunity that you are able to proceed this far. Now go, for you have until dusk to reach the overlook and return. Any longer, and I cannot tell your fate.’
“I scrambled to the gate posts on all fours and pulled myself up against the rock for a better look at the Orchard in the rising sun. I had expected to see mist and bright lights, a spiritual ether of trees and flowerbeds, perfect but insubstantial. It was not like that at all!
“They were real! More real than anything you could imagine! The trees were greener, the flowers more colorful, the life more vibrant than I could have imagined! Indeed, all that we have known outside or come to consider solid and binding is but a shadow of what lies beyond those stones! How can I even begin to tell you? How can I make you understand the beauty? The beauty and the loss—the terrible loss!
“I took the trail as the Fire-Sphinx had told me, until I reached the overlook. In the distance, I saw the lake and the island, where E’Yahavah’s Bright Ones tended the inner orchard as Father Atum-Ra had done before his rebellion. In their midst, standing as a living pillar to hold up the very heavens, was the Life-tree. It reached seemingly even to the height of the mountains I saw in the distance behind it.
“Once I beheld it, I understood the depth of E’Yahavah’s wisdom in sending us away. For from it the Orchard drew its vibrancy, and all that ate of its fruit would find everlasting life. Yet to live eternally in our present condition would mean to live forever growing more corrupt, even as the Basilisk and the fell Watchers. The doom of our mortality is the very instrument that allows us still to be redeemable. The fallen Watchers have no such limit! Human evil has an end on Earth. Theirs does not—until the A’Nu Eluhar brings World-end and chains them in the deeps of fire and water!
“My question as to E’Yahavah’s distance found its answer in his mercy—he subjected us to this futility for a time so that we need not be forever lost to him, as are the fell Watchers. Though the world ends in violence, provision is made for us. The Life-tree is reserved for that day.
“Yet even as I considered these things, I saw something that caused me great distress, greater than any I have told you until now. I saw a man in the distance stand next to the Life-tree, with his arms raised to heaven. He uttered a command that broke the skies like mountain thunder.
“The ground shook, and the newly risen sun was blotted out! The sky itself opened to reveal a great chariot of fire, greater even than what took our father! It descended over the Life-tree, and lifted it up into itself.
“The Life-tree’s Island lay shorn—a bare rock, burnt, and barren in the lake. Only the withered claw of a second tree remained—the skeleton of the one our parents ate from, dead and diseased.
“The great vessel carried away our father’s joy into the sun, and I was left alone on that peak, half-ready to throw myself off. I fell to the ground and wailed uncontrollably in utter abandonment. It was one thing to be driven from the Orchard and forbidden access to the source of what little life we still had, but at least I had always believed that there it remained, and would continue until the end of days.
“The end of days! Now A’Nu has taken the Life-tree from the earth, and I knew this to be the last sign! World-end is upon us!
“In my despair, I disregarded the Fire-Sphinx’s warning, and continued down the trail. I tried to find solace in a garden valley that still out-shone any outside. Only as the sky faded pink did I realize my danger. I found the trail, and began climbing at sunset. I dared not even stop for rest.
“There I met one of the lesser Kherubim—a strange creature of spirit who appeared to me with the head of a venerable man, the wings of an eagle, and the body of a battle-cat. He told me that one of my own awaited my return at Seti’s Sphinx, but that I had over-stayed in the Orchard more than what my body could endure. He walked with me, until I met the Fire-Sphinx again, late morning the following day.
“The Bearer of the Light-sword moved out from behind one of the pillar stones after I passed, to block any further view of Aeden’s Orchard. The warmth at my back seemed to be that of his sadness, rather than the heat of anger. He spoke no word of rebuke that I did not heed his warning.
“‘Go now and fulfill your errand in the little time left to you,’ he said, ‘for we must remove the Life-tree until the Promised Seed. Then new heavens and a new earth shall be created for it to be transplanted into.’
“I wanted to ask when that would be, but I did not dare—I had already presumed enough on this magnificent being.
“The last thing I recall was the Fire-Sphinx behind me, urging me up the last hill. Then I fell into A’Nu-Ahki’s arms and woke up here.”
Nu and his grandfather sat in silence for a long time after Urugim’s account. The delivery had taken much out of the old adventurer, and he passed into an uneasy sleep.
In the following days, Urugim awoke only a few times more, but it seemed a dementia had overtaken him. His hair and beard continued to fall out in great clumps, and what parts of his skin did not crack with the burn-like lesions grew sallow and pale. The man seemed to age three centuries in a couple days—doubtless, the effect of having overstayed in a place not subject to the same laws of death and decay imposed on the rest of creation.
In one last moment of clarity, five days after his return from Aeden, Urugim awoke and scribbled out his story on a vellum skin, along with instructions to his children that they should follow Muhet’Usalaq as their own patriarch, and receive legal adoption into his clan. He then called for his brother and A’Nu-Ahki.
Urugim croaked, now little more than a living skeleton, “I leave now. I ask
you, Muheti, to be a patriarch for my children, and guide them to whatever strange land you go. Bury me here, and make haste, for by now my sons wait on the lake’s western shore. Nu, thank you for the risk you took to come for me. What I saw is important for you to remember. May you be blessed above men, and prove a second father to all when the time comes.”
Urugim spoke no more after that. A few minutes later, he went on to join his fathers who rested beneath the Treasure Cave.
A’Nu-Ahki and Muhet’Usalaq entombed him in Atum-Ra’s place—another man who had been to Aeden, and understood its wonders too late.
The last monster to be destroyed by Beowulf (and from which encounter Beowulf also died in the year AD 583) was a flying reptile which lived on a promontory overlooking the sea at Hronesness on the southern coast of Sweden. Now, the Saxons (and presumably the Danes) knew flying reptiles in general as lyftfloga (air-fliers), but this particular species of flying reptile, the specimen from Hronesness, was known to them as a widfloga, lit, a wide (or far-ranging) flyer, and the description that they have left us fits that of a giant Pteranodon. Interestingly, the Saxons also described this creature as a ligdraca, or fire-dragon, and he is described as fifty feet in length (or perhaps wing-span?) and about 300 years of age. (Great age is a common feature even among today’s non-giant reptiles.)
—Bill Cooper
After the Flood
7
Gorge
T
he long boats glided south across the lake in misty pre-dawn half light. A’Nu-Ahki’s paddle gouged the water in furious strokes while he ground his teeth to keep from cursing. The mental solitude and physical exercise only magnified his reflections on Urugim’s last struggles.
Perhaps it was best that the Elder had not lived to find out how superficial and apathetic his children had become. Maybe he had known. Nu recalled how Urugim had held himself aloof from his sons during Iyared’s funeral march. Few of his descendants had respected him enough to heed his call to leave Sa-utar. That remnant had reported of Adiyuri’s promise to restore order. Most of Urugim’s clan had elected to stay where they were.
Dawn Apocalypse Rising (The Windows of Heaven Book 1) Page 9