“If you would have security, then you must put down all you have in Samyaza, and take up what E’Yahavah offers you in me, and follow. I am the prophesied Comforter from E’Yahavah A’Nu—only a shadow of the Seed to come, true. But I am the only shadow given to this world. In the end only one tree will stand. That is the interpretation of your vision.”
The second son of Samyaza trembled, then shot to his feet. His eyes narrowed to blackened slits, as humiliation and contempt exploded with the acid saliva foam from his mouth.
“Do you expect us to dishonor our father, who is great and powerful, to become mewling acolytes of a pompous little self-styled seer from an insignificant land that is squashed like an insect between two empires! If you had only said to put away my past atrocities, and to spend the rest of my days walking the earth to do good I would have done so gladly! Had you even said to make peace with the north, I would have tried in good faith! But you are as arrogant as your fathers at Regati! You want to control us—to bring us under your heel with the sword of mere words!”
A’Nu-Ahki grieved. Something that had been ever so briefly alive in Ayyaho’s eyes was now quite dead.
He turned to their mother. “And what say you, Queen Isha’Tahar? What will you do with E’Yahavah’s only hope?”
The wife of Samyaza seemed to have aged many decades. Her eyes grew dull, as her face paled from its former reddish brown to the color of yellowed bone. Nu even saw wrinkles he was sure had not been there before.
“Take me away from this place of death,” she said to her bearers.
A’Nu-Ahki asked, “Shall I bring the scrolls at the appointed time?”
“What good would it do?” she said, as her chair turned from him. “No one will believe, and it will only cause further division.”
“What about the captives?”
She ignored him.
He turned to face Tubaal-qayin Dumuzi helplessly.
The Emperor said, “Next time I call for your help, leave your little valley cult at home! Lives are at stake here! Or are you blind to the bones you’re standing on?” He turned and trudged off for his command bunker.
A’Nu-Ahki followed him at a discreet distance.
For a moment, his eyes met those of Avarnon-Set. Though the wolf-headed titan had kept silent through the whole exchange, Nu saw a glinting fang peek through tangled hair and crusted drool in a triumphant smirk.
A new artillery barrage erupted from the Assurim cannons that hour.
Behold, I thought then within my heart that conception was (due) to the Watchers and the Holy Ones … and to the Giants… and my heart was troubled within me because of this child. Then I, Lamech, approached Bathenosh [my] wife in haste and said to her, ‘… by the Most High, the Great Lord, the King of all the worlds and Ruler of the Sons of Heaven, until you tell me all things truthfully, if…’
Then Bathenosh my wife spoke to me with much heat [and] … said, ‘O my brother, O my lord, remember my pleasure … lying together and my soul within its body. [And I tell you] all things truthfully.’
My heart was then greatly troubled within me, and when Bathenosh my wife saw that my countenance had changed… Then she mastered her anger and spoke to me saying, ‘O my lord, O my [brother, remember] my pleasure! I swear to you by the Holy Great One, the King of [the heavens] … that this seed is yours and that [this] conception is from you. This fruit was planted by you … and by no stranger or Watcher or Son of Heaven…. [Why] is your countenance thus changed and dismayed, and why is your spirit thus distressed? …’
Then I, Lamech, ran to Methuselah my father, and [I told] him all these things.
— “Lamech Fragment” of the Genesis Apocryphon
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English
Translated by Geza Vermes
11
Intents of the Heart
T
he window light behind Nu’s wife danced off her hair like fire. She said, “I’m sorry things didn’t go so well. I’m sure you did your best.”
Na’Amiha’s sunny disposition somehow seemed overdone. Nu thought he caught a sideways gleam in her eye—one that suggested she was actually happy about the backfire of his diplomacy mission.
They hadn’t spoken much when he slipped into bed late last night, upon his return from the front—only enough for him to convey that the war was still on, and the Dumuzi was not pleased with him.
A’Nu-Ahki turned away from her, and looked out the window at the sunny courtyard of Q’Enukki’s Retreat. His breakfast was getting cold.
He had gotten over any real suspicion of his wife early on—most of it during their protracted conversation on their wedding night, so long on talk and short on lovemaking. No, that’s not fair! We’d both thought that best! His conscience corrected him inside as it so often did these days.
Every so often over the years ‘Miha had said off-beat things that would yank the chain of Nu’s “Dragon Paranoid,” but it had always turned out to be a mere clash of dialect semantics—never a real conflict in her loyalties. They would always laugh about it afterward. And the discords were rare—very rare—hardly more than a handful over seven decades.
Her eyes could barely contain their elation just now.
Nu said, “There was no chance. It was never about the war.”
“What did that woman want, then?” She said the words that woman with an almost over-the-top cattiness.
How did she know about Isha’Tahar being there? I never mentioned it to her and all I knew before I left was that the Samyazas wanted a parley—nothing about Isha’Tahar herself being their delegate.
A’Nu-Ahki jerked his eyes back onto his wife. He thought he caught ‘Miha’s face shifting in mid-stream. Her elbows were on the common hall’s stone table, chin in cupped hands. She immediately sat back, away from him, out of reach.
The best intelligence operative is the one that nobody notices. The best way to hide something you don’t want people to notice is right out in the open. His Dragon Paranoid was in rare form this morning.
Just stop it! His accustomed view of his wife, thankfully, would not go down without a fight. She’s proven her character more than enough over seventy years! Any problems she’s had were over things she couldn’t help—things that are getting better now! You’re thinking like Tarkuni or Henumil!
Usually this was the point when he would begin to feel good about himself for his rising above all the callow suspicions. You know, like the ones your father used to have about your mother…
Not this time. It still didn’t explain how she knew about Isha’Tahar.
Nu stopped short of yelling out for his own thoughts to shut up.
“You looked like you were about to say something, dear. What was it? Can I get you more tea?” ‘Miha was already half out of her cushion.
“No. No. I’m good. Relax, enjoy your food.”
“You haven’t eaten hardly a thing, Nu. I’d have guessed you’d be hungry after your long journey. The cakes aren’t overdone are they? I can never seem to get them right…”
He hated it when she berated herself. He’d always assumed it was a nervous habit, but now she almost seemed to be fishing for a compliment. That or it’s just a method she’s used to manipulate me over the years…
“’Miha, the cakes are fine. I just have a lot on my mind.”
She relaxed back into her seat. “Why don’t you tell me about it? I always find that if I can just tell someone what’s bothering me, that it makes me feel better. I’m glad I can always talk to you.”
“It has nothing to do with how I feel, ‘Miha…” which wasn’t entirely true, “it has to do with a complex situation and how it will unfold.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” She said it almost as if he was getting ready to walk out the door on her, slam it, and never look back.
“I’m not upset with you, Green-eyed Lady.” He smiled for her.
That was how things so often seemed to never-quite-en
d with her—her green eyes screaming their panic lest she make one simple misstep—like the eyes of their wedding guests seventy years ago, whose laughter and good cheer had masked some brooding terror underneath.
It’s not like I’ve paved the road of our life together with eggshells!
“You know, you could always tell me if you were upset,” she said.
Which actually meant that he couldn’t.
At least things are better in the bedchamber these days, Nu thought, feeling guilty that he even had to go there just to find a positive feeling for his wife. He gazed into her eyes in a way that she would certainly, and quite mechanically, misread if he didn’t stop it. The bedchamber had been such a nightmare for so long! But it’s better now—isn’t it?
He’d been sure for a long time that most of it had stemmed from all she’d gone through in Lumekkor. Who wouldn’t have such problems after that?
‘Miha had allowed him to mourn for many years before trying to claim from him the full duties of a husband. Yet her claim was valid, and Nu had never refused her awkward advances—even those early ones that had always ended so badly.
He recalled a particular time—some ten years into their marriage—not long after he had first told her that he’d put the worst of his grieving for Emza behind him. If only that could even have a chance at being true!
‘Miha had called him up to their bedchamber in the middle of the afternoon—fortunately while Lumekki, Muhet’Usalaq, and Mamu had been away on an inspection tour of Paru’Ainu.
He had entered the room expecting her to ask him for some silver for market, or something. Instead, she was stretched out on top of the divan, stiff as a dagger (her feet being the pointy end), dressed in this ridiculous red silk and gold-laced bag that bunched-out over her near-non-existent breasts and clenched thighs in matted fabric knots. It turned out this had been her idea of what a Far Kush harem girl outfit might look like. What made it so hard was that she had apparently put so much work into the monstrosity.
If that had not been weird enough, she had spent hours painting her face up so thickly that she resembled a depressed Khavilak theater clown. How a woman, raised in the hub of a society where harem girls and theater clowns were so common, could have had such a poor handle on the basic cosmetic differences between the two was beyond him. But there she was.
Nu had successfully kept himself from laughing at their chamber door, only to realize that she also looked like a frightened, affection-starved little girl playing some truly horrible game of dress-up. The very fact that he even made this connection appalled him further, putting up yet another iron barrier against his libido—a barrier he then feared for a few seconds might actually break for all of the wrongest of reasons. This had sent him into absolute, exponentially intensifying horror.
“I’m ready,” she had said in what she must have imagined was a sultry voice. It was several octaves too low and came out all man-husky.
Nu had wanted to run screaming from the room. “I’m not!”
Instead, he had gotten onto the couch with her and tried his best.
Both fortunately and unfortunately for him, it was ‘Miha who had made the whole thing impossible in the end. She simply could not make the “dagger blade” be scissors, much less soft pliable ones. Which was fortunate for Nu only because of his inability to muster even a trace of desire; thus, she could not blame him for slacking off on the job. It was unfortunate in that it meant ‘Miha would torment both herself and him with what she would call her “failure as a wife” for many decades to come.
Either way, much shrieking and bawling had followed, which he had managed to console only on the most superficial level by the time the others returned home. Can you say, “Hidden dragons in the endless green?”
Eventually ‘Miha had waited for Nu to become more ready to move on her. That had gone a little better. Since none of the villagers would befriend her and Mamu never seemed able to fully relate to Na’Amiha all that well, Nu had taken upon himself the bizarre functions of both husband and best girl friend—or whatever women these days called those female chums they did up their hair and faces with. He found it mildly disturbing when he actually began to enjoy experimenting with her red-tinged gold hair and cosmetics. The up-side was that touching her in this manner had slowly gotten her used to his touch in other, more husband-wife-like ways.
Nu had also gotten to make her up in ways that he at least found somewhat attractive. It had been a difficult field to plow, but things had improved to where the bedchamber was no longer a chamber of horrors—most of the time. He was thankful, but also profoundly sad. He had hoped for more. He had wanted something supernatural to happen between them, in view of what E’Yahavah intended for ‘Miha. But no elevating power from heaven ever came—just raw endurance, incrementally less disturbing mental images from both in and outside the bedchamber, and emotional weariness.
At best these days, ‘Miha was able to relax somewhat. She insisted she wanted him, but it was almost like being with a dead woman. For Nu, whatever seemingly one-sided passion they shared happened by him closing his eyes and pretending she was Emzara. He always felt beaten-up guilty for it afterward, but it marshaled his enthusiasm for the work at hand. The problem was, ‘Miha didn’t talk like Emza, didn’t move like Emza—didn’t move at all—she felt nothing like Emza in his embrace.
Of course she doesn’t, old boy! That’s because she’s not Emza. She’s Na’Amiha.
Nu wanted to believe that he cherished their growing friendship, even if the natural attraction of man for woman was forced. He performed his duties to her with a smile and would never quit. But they were mere duties all too often, no matter how much he tried to put her first.
He gazed across the breakfast table at her and was relieved when Muhet’Usalaq bellowed for him to “get his under-kilt” into the library.
“S
hut the doors and sit down!” The Prime Zaqen of Akh’Uzan sat at an oversized reading table, pounding a small rolled-up scroll like a dagger into the surface.
A’Nu-Ahki slid the library doors shut and sat down on one of the other reading consoles. “I guess you want my report.”
Muhet’Usalaq glared at him. “Considering it is already past mid-morning, that would be nice!”
“I was going to write it up for you.”
The end of the little scroll crumpled and split. “How thoughtful of you. You can still write it up—in fact, I insist! But first I want you to recap the high points—that is, if you really think there are any.”
Nu told him everything that had happened once he had arrived at the front—even his conversation with the army lieutenant who had tried to give him a remedial explanation of thunder-pike tactics.
Muhet’Usalaq softened considerably after hearing about the dreams of Samyaza’s sons. “Tough corner, that. Are you absolutely certain El-N’Lil breathed your interpretations?”
“I wasn’t just making it up off the top of my head—of course I was sure! What would you have had me say?”
The Old Man looked down at his crushed scroll. “I suppose that diplomacy and prophecy rarely mix well. The Dumuzi sent a letter for me along with your escort. It basically says that the next time he asks for our help, I should send Lumekki.”
“If E’Yahavah breathed the words, would my father’s answer to the Samyazas have been significantly different?”
“No, I suppose not. Go on get out of here. Take your wife for a walk up to Grove Hollow or something. You can write up your report tomorrow.”
N
u stepped out to the courtyard after handing in his report to Muhet’Usalaq the following afternoon.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Na’Amiha slip through the small castle’s outer gate without opening it more than a crack. She had a tiny cloth-wrapped package tucked under her arm.
Nu rushed to the gate after it closed.
Usually ‘Miha made a big production whenever she left Q’Enukki’s Retreat—especially if
she was headed for the village. She always wanted Nu, Lumekki, or at least one of the household servants to know where she would be. In the early years, the Tacticon had even sent a soldier or two with her from his rotating platoon of the reserve Seer Clan Regiment that he kept at the fortress. Things rarely went well for her down in the village.
Tarkuni and Henumil had seen to that long ago.
Nu poked his head outside the gate and saw her trot down the cliff base section of trail toward town. Waiting for her to vanish into the foliage farther down, he stepped outside to follow.
‘Miha kept up a brisk pace on the winding forest path, as if she didn’t want to be gone from Q’Enukki’s Retreat long enough to be missed. Nu had to run in several places to keep up.
Once, at a bend in the trail around a rocky cave-filled outcropping, he slid to a halt just in time to avoid running into her.
‘Miha turned at the sound. “Who’s there?”
Nu pressed himself against a large rock on his left. He watched her through a crack between the narrow bolder and the cliff-face, as she back-tracked several steps. A cloud passed in front of the sun. He glanced up, certain that a vultch-gryphon had meandered over the mountains from the Haunted Lands somehow to snatch him up. Heart pounding, Nu froze his diaphragm and aching lungs, lest his wife hear him panting from his run.
“Is anybody there?” ‘Miha stopped back-tracking and looked around.
Nu saw tiny pin-lights swirl around his face, as everything else started to go black from lack of air. Still he held his breath.
‘Miha turned again and continued down toward the village.
Nu waited for her to vanish into the green before he exhaled, and loudly caught his breath. Why is she afraid of being seen?
He didn’t want to know; now he had to.
Dawn Apocalypse Rising (The Windows of Heaven Book 1) Page 16