Nu shouted, slamming his cup on the table, “Nevertheless, I make this demand! You don’t impress me, Straticon, because I have one thing going that not you, the Archon, nor the Dumuzi can match!”
Zendros narrowed his eyes. “What might that be?”
Nu leaned into the man’s face and grinned; he somehow sensed that his own eyes had become dead smoky glass. “I don’t care.” He said the words softly as an arid breeze from the wastelands of Nhod. “Never forget that, Straticon. I don’t care if the World-end of flame consumes you and everyone in Sa-utar now. I don’t care if it blasts us as we sit here this second. So you will hear my demand or I will laugh while Lumekkor strips you naked and the bloody Archon with you. Are we clear on that?”
The Straticon’s face had turned to ash.
Nu smiled as he cracked his knuckles. “Now then, I will marry this Na’Amiha only if she renounces whatever gods she serves, and swears fealty to E’Yahavah in the heavens alone—not to the Archon, as in the old days—just to E’Yahavah A’Nu.”
The two officers exchanged distressed glances.
“It holds no political implications. It is a spiritual matter only—the technocrats of Bab’Tubila will see it as a trifle we are using to save face. They trust to their machines. I hear that even their traffic with Uzaaz’El isn’t so much a religious thing. It will be a meaningless word game to them.”
“What of the woman?” Muhet’Usalaq said. “Will she also see it as a meaningless word game?”
“She will see what E’Yahavah has given her to see. This thing, like the gryndel, is of the A’Nu Eluhar—a sign of our times.”
“And each sign gets darker than the last!” Lumekki growled, as he got up and left the chamber.
Urugim’s son followed him. However, Tarkuni turned at the door, and said, “Tell us, O Seer of A’Nu’s Comfort, what is the next sign? Shall we be called upon to marry our sons and daughters off to the beasts of the field and then watch them rut in the meadows?”
P
avilions filled the upper valley floor, watched over by the rebuilt monastery-fortress of Akh’Uzan, which sat like an ornament of princely rank on the shoulder of Mount N’Zar—Q’Enukki’s ancient place of sacrifice.
Parading infantry and armored cavalry—both the old-fashioned “ceremonial” tricorn quasi-dragons and the sluggish new self-propelled monstrosities being used in the war against Assuri—dazzled the spectators and wedding guests with colored ensigns and mock demonstrations of military might designed for more than mere entertainment. They made a statement: Sa-utar is autonomous, but only as far as its chain, forged in Bab’Tubila, the City of Metal-smiths, will stretch.
Three of the principle men in the day’s festivities stood by one of the great war machines currently not in use on the parade field.
Tubaal-qayin Dumuzi “The Shepherd” hardly seemed the demigod A’Nu-Ahki had expected. Thin and slightly shorter than most men, with pale skin, light red hair, and a sparse beard that gave him an almost satyr-like quality, he had a squawky voice that grated the nerves if it went on too long. Unfortunately, the young Emperor seemed to love to hear himself talk, especially once Lumekki and A’Nu-Ahki had shown grudging interest in the new military hardware.
“Armor plating an eighth of a standard cubit thick around the belt and a tenth overhead,” the Metalsmith-king said, rattling off the dimensions of the strange contraption. It resembled a house-sized, self-propelled ziggurat of steel with a rotating wedge on top. The wedge housed what Nu recognized as a cannon barrel. In front and back and along the center of the rolling band treads Tubaal-qayin called “millipedes,” bristled smaller gun barrels.
“What’s that thing on top?” Lumekki said, pointing to the wedge-shaped chunk of metal.
The Emperor answered, “The main cannon.”
“I know that! I mean the wedge it’s sitting in?”
“Oh. That’s a rotating turret. The cannon swivels any direction, and elevates to a seventy degree angle. The Behemoth commander need waste no time maneuvering into firing position if he comes under attack. The main gun fires a cylindrical exploding shell with a conical head—smoothed out for less air resistance. We call them ‘thunder-darts,’ after the thermal air rumbles of the high mountains. The secondary cannons below still fire the old rounded shot—that’ll change on the new model though.”
“But what makes it run on its own?”
Tubaal-qayin slapped his knee and laughed—a hacking bray from a nasally impaired donkey. “As an old soldier, you’re gonna love this! It runs on the same thing armies have always run on—grain spirits!”
“Liquor?”
Tubaal-qayin grinned. “Burns it in a special engine—but any more detail than that is a family trade secret.”
A’Nu-Ahki only half listened to the little satyr’s explanations. Normally, he would have been almost as fascinated by all the machinery as his father, but today he would meet Na’Amiha for the first time. This consumed him with all sorts of nasty possibilities. Great E’Yahavah, please don’t let her look like a little Tubaal-qayin! I don’t think I could deal with losing Emzara only to be forced to marry the Goat Princess!
Nu said, “Hadn’t we better be getting to the banquet tent?”
“Quite right,” said the Emperor. “Mustn’t keep the bride waiting.”
A’Nu-Ahki reluctantly appreciated how Dumuzi the Shepherd had conducted himself thus far; not as an overlord but an equal, when he clearly had it in his power to do otherwise. Lumekki trailed the other two, still thrilled to envy by the military hardware.
A’Nu-Ahki took the opportunity to speak with the Metalsmith-king candidly. “I’m a bit surprised you didn’t bring Avarnon-Set. He and Uggu are so big in your court. I’d have thought them high on the invitation list.”
Tubaal-qayin shrugged. “The High Aunt—your bride, that is—forbade it. She seemed sure that their presence would offend your clan.”
“She was right.”
“Why do you dislike titans? I mean, there are some nasty ones, but there are many helpful ones too. We’ve learned much from their fathers.”
The question seemed honest enough. A’Nu-Ahki felt it deserved a straightforward answer. “You’re the one who wants a seer of E’Yahavah in your family. Are you prepared to hear what such a seer has to say on that?”
“Well, actually, this was not my idea. Na’Amiha herself brought it up on her own and suggested it to Avarnon-Set, which is strange if you ask me, since she and Avarnon-Set hate each other. Then the two of them together sold me. I can see the benefit of a seer’s insight here and there, plus I think the people of Seti will fight on my team more readily if they get to keep their own political leaders and military infrastructure in place.”
Nu raised one eyebrow.
Dumuzi continued, “Frankly, though, I think your bride played our good titan for the fool. She convinced him that having you as husband would bring the Seer Clan under his power, for whatever that’s worth. But if you knew her like I do, A’Nu-Ahki, you’d realize that’s the last thing she’d want. If anything, I bet she’s counting on you to influence me into clearing my court of the titans altogether and to stop communing with the Powers—though I have to be fair and tell you, that’s not likely.”
How does this little blabbermouth trust himself with his own state secrets? Nu wondered. Or is he just playing me to see how I’ll respond? “Tell me,” he said, “why would Na’Amiha want you to reject the titans?”
“Can’t figure.” The little Goat Emperor shrugged.
Nu began to see this as his defining gesture, a noncommittal twitch of his shoulders, which was either a convincing subterfuge or evidence that Tubaal-qayin Dumuzi really meandered through life clueless.
“Granted, we came up with the engines that drive things like that Behemoth back there on our own, but there are other things—things in the Temple laboratories—that it would have taken us centuries to discover without Uzaaz’El’ guidance. He never seems to give us anyth
ing more than what he thinks we have the social maturity to handle. I wish he would be more forthright with his knowledge—especially now.”
Nu said, “Yet, you don’t worship his kind as gods like most tribes?”
“Why should we, when he’s told us plainly that he isn’t? The only reason we still use words like ‘priest’ and ‘the Temple’ in connection with him is that they are leftover terms from a more primitive time—before we realized that we were simply dealing with intelligences that have been around a little longer than we have. Someday we’ll encounter lesser minds than ourselves—perhaps like the wild men of the East who have Short-lifer’s Syndrome—and we’ll be to them what Uzaaz’El is to us: Gods at first, and later, as they grow out of social infancy, benevolent elder intellects.”
“And where does your ‘elder intellect’ claim he comes from?”
Tubaal-qayin shrugged again. “He makes no claims at all. It’s not as if I see him all that often or get to converse with him the way you and I are speaking right now. Frankly, the more Uzaaz’El keeps to the Temple, the better I like it. The Powers are unsettling to see and even worse to hear. It’s much better to let the titans deal with them.”
“What then do the titans claim for them?”
“They say that there were intelligences abroad in the universe before the Powers, and before those intelligences, other beings, and so on.”
“You mean then that the cosmos had no real beginning?”
Dumuzi twitched his narrow shoulders. “None worth pondering.”
“How can a nation of engineers believe that when the mathematics of Q’Enukki—who taught the physics your technology is based on to the first Tubaal-qayin—demonstrates that the spatial heavens and time itself had to have had a beginning point, and thus an ultimate Creator?”
“I didn’t say the cosmos had no beginning, only that we don’t think it’s important, especially since this alleged creator of yours has made himself unknowable. What’s of consequence to us is where the world is going.”
“I don’t think you’re going to like a seer’s answer to that one either,” Nu said half to himself, as they entered the banquet tent.
A’
Nu-Ahki’s first impression of Na’Amiha was a bittersweet spring of mixed emotions. Thankfully, she was not the goat-lady. Yet even in her royal wedding garb, she came across as comfortably plain at best—thin, her feminine endowments given only in the most meager quantities, with strawberry blond hair, green eyes, and a slightly large, hawkish nose.
Tubaal-qayin’s description of her hatred for Avarnon-Set and the Watchers tended to color her favorably in Nu’s sight, if believable. He decided that, in time, he could learn to find her physically attractive enough—though a generous imagination would help. Right now, he was concerned with much more important matters—issues that would have been the same whether she had been as rare a beauty as Emzara or had galloped in like the goat princess of his worst fears.
When he reclined across from her at the table, he noticed how her eyes tended to dart about nervously at almost every sudden sound. He suddenly pitied her and was not completely sure why.
Tubaal-qayin Dumuzi, Adiyuri, and Muhet’Usalaq stood at the head of the table with joined hands lifted over their heads.
The Emperor of the Dynasty of Steel chanted loudly enough to be heard throughout the large tent, “A’Nu-Ahki, son of Lumekki, son of Muhet’Usalaq, First of the Seer, I give you your bride! Claim her as your own, for she is Na’Amiha, daughter of L’Mekku, the First Emperor, and sister of my father, Tubaal-qayin the Great. Na’Amiha of Lumekkor, I give you to your husband, A’Nu-Ahki of the Seers!”
The entire pavilion cheered. To Nu their faces seemed strained, their noisy laughter like wails, as the merriment in their eyes poorly hid a terror beneath. People he had known all his life suddenly looked like strangers.
Nu turned to his new wife. When his face met Na’Amiha’s fully for the first time, he did not see a temptress or a political manipulator; rather, a plain woman who searched his own face for something to hang her hopes on. But what were those hopes? Would they coincide at all with his?
Nu tried to give what those large emerald eyes—her most endearing feature—seemed to want. He smiled at her, hoping to quell her anxiety—whatever it was. She returned his smile then quickly glanced away, as if frightened by something he could not see. He looked around the tent, but noticed nothing threatening.
A’Nu-Ahki began to consider the possibility that Tubaal-qayin’s comment about her might be true.
They did not get to talk together until after the banquet. Even then, Tubaal-qayin’s chaperons hovered nearby, so they could not speak openly.
Nu felt like a ‘tween-ager again. “Awkward, isn’t it, talking for the first time like this?”
They stood outside the main tent, watching the sun sink into its magenta glory.
“I feel like a ‘tween-ager all over again,” she said, her accented voice huskier than he would have imagined or hoped.
“I was just thinking that.”
That seemed to relieve some of her tension, but not all. Her eyes still darted furtively about.
“Is something the matter?”
Na’Amiha lowered her voice to a panicked whisper, “We’ll talk later—the chaperons!” Then she added in an overly-loud voice for the sake of the listeners, “No, just having wedding jitters, I guess.” She made the loudest, most obnoxious laugh Nu had ever heard from a woman.
A woman of Lumekkor unskilled at intrigue?
He tried to smile. “Don’t worry on my account. I think you look stunning in your gown.” It somehow felt like the worst lie he had ever told.
“Thank you.” Na’Amiha smiled, and looked into his eyes. She seemed at that moment to find there something she liked. “I understand you recently lost a wife who was very dear to you, and that this wedding is more or less being forced on you. I’m truly sorry about that. I want you to know that I will try to be as good a wife to you as she was, and that I mean to learn your ways and keep to them as I have sworn.”
Nu turned away and bit his tongue. She thinks to replace Emza! Then he realized that she had intended no offense, and forced his voice to soften before he opened his mouth. “No woman … could ever replace Emzara, and I don’t want you under the … ah … burden of feeling that you must try. But I … ah … appreciate the sentiment.”
Stilted. Devoid of the passion that he had once known with the woman he now realized he would dream of for whatever remaining centuries he had. Nu suddenly understood that he would have to calculate expressions of kindness for this new wife rather than have them spring spontaneous from his heart—would need to manufacture military hardware gestures of tenderness as metal hammered into shape in the city of Na’Amiha’s birth. He wondered how he would ever sleep with her on the following night without feeling that he slept with a strange woman—a political whore.
Great E’Yahavah, must you really preserve the line of Qayin?
T
he wedding ended at last. Its pavilion packed up; the caravans now made their way like a glutted snake down the valley to more populated lands.
The new couple was alone and unguarded for the first time.
A’Nu-Ahki had erected a tent further up the trail that climbed Mount N’Zar from the fortress, near the base of a small waterfall in a clearing that Q’Enukki had once called “Grove Hollow.” The divan smelled of roses, wild flowers, and cinnamon. Hangings spoke of nuptial blessings. Yet he did not feel married to this woman. Neither of them seemed anxious to get on with the consummation. The last of the groom’s men and bride’s maids, who had helped set up and furnish the tent, had left only minutes before. Again, there seemed to be a layer of ice to break.
A’Nu-Ahki’s curiosity would wait no longer. “Can you speak now of what troubles you?”
Moonlight bathed her face in pale golds. In the dimness, he found her almost appealing. The fear that still held her eyes captive brought out
his instinct to protect her, and to eroticize that protection. He resisted the urge.
She said, “I need you to understand that I never meant to take advantage of you. When I plotted to escape the Powers, I knew there was only one place I could go. What I did not realize was how my plans would affect you personally.”
“Any woman who seeks refuge from the Watchers has my sympathy. But you speak in riddles. How would you know to come here? And how could you convince Avarnon-Set, who suspects the spiritual protection we are under, that it would be to his benefit to allow you to come—especially since you two hate each other?”
“Oh, you know about that.” Her eyes lost their luster.
“I really need to understand,” he said, trying not to allow his tone to grow sharp. “I have no wish to mention any of this to my elders, but I need to understand it.”
She glanced away from him. “I promised Avarnon-Set I would work to keep you all from making trouble in the Empire. I’ve kept my true feelings to myself for a long time in Lumekkor.” She turned back to him with a wild intensity. “Don’t worry, that’s one promise I have no intention of keeping, so don’t think ill of me. I was desperate! I had to get out of there!”
“Why?”
Na’Amiha laughed bitterly. “I’m two-hundred and fifty-two years old! Do you suppose they’ve never tried to marry me off before? I’m lucky I’m not as well endowed as most women—oh, you can stop pretending you haven’t noticed! It’s because of them—what you call the ‘Watchers,’ and what we call ‘Powers’—they make you insane if they don’t get what they want, and even more so when they do! Most don’t find me that attractive, but because of my position, they never stop! They visit you in your dreams! They make things move without touching them! They touch you in the night!”
Nu said, “That must have been terrifying.”
“They crowd you in your private chambers, invisible, when you’re supposed to be alone, until you feel like you’re naked in front of leering sailors all the time! They send Temple messengers asking your compliance! It never stops! I tried to arrange a wedding once, when I was young, to a man of your Archon’s clan. I thought I could escape—Sa-utar was much more powerful back then—no offense.”
Dawn Apocalypse Rising (The Windows of Heaven Book 1) Page 13