Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (113 page)

Gita grabbed the rocks, wrapped up in a tiny leather pouch. She pulled out a clump of dried milkweed and placed the tallow lantern next to it so she could light the wick the moment the tinder ignited. Its small, cheerful golden flame shone into the darkness and illuminated strange, clean lines and unnatural shapes.

"You got it?" Dadbeh called. He must have seen the light through the cracked ceiling, especially as it had grown dark outside.

"It's lit," Gita said. "Though I don't know how much fuel it has."

"Could you pass it back out again?" Dadbeh asked. "I found a small pile of firewood all piled up neatly down near the stream. I think I'd like to light a fire."

"The lantern?"

"The fire rocks."

"Oh," Gita said. She passed the fire starter kit back out the hole, and then moved back, eager to explore.

"Do you have everything you need to set up camp?" Gita called out.

"Of course!" Dadbeh's laugh filtered through the hole.

"If you don't mind," Gita said, "I think I'll spend the night in here and explore. There's a big crack in the ceiling. When the sun rises again, I'll be able to see a little better. At least in
this
room."

"You just don't want to crawl back through that hole," Dadbeh laughed, his voice reminding her of a jackal's yip.

"Would you?"

"No," Dadbeh said. "Why do you think I left without crawling inside?"

Gita moved around the sky canoe, equating everything in it to a house since otherwise she had no point of reference. Two luxurious chairs faced a great window that had been buried in stone, but when she went to touch it, her hand stopped at a cold, clear barrier which prevented the rocks from falling in. There was a peculiarly shaped chair built to accommodate Mikhail's wings. She sat down and fiddled with the strange split wheel mounted on a pole that disappeared into the table, a pair of handles, and numerous shiny squares, all covered by the same magical clear barrier as the one holding out the rocks.

She found a small, mummified flower, desiccated from lack of water, but at one point Mikhail must have decorated his sky canoe. She remembered Pareesa and the B-Team scouring the countryside the day before they had left for the regional gathering of chiefs. Mikhail had disappeared with Ninsianna, no doubt here to spend some time alone. Her hand trembled, causing some of the petals to fall off.

"You are not for me," Gita said. She gently placed the flower back exactly where she had found it.

She found more tallow lanterns in the next room and lit them to expose a tiny kitchen. On the table sat an Ubaid pottery crock, protected from hungry squirrels by a lid. She opened it and grabbed a handful of nuts, squeaking with pleasure as she cracked open a few to satiate the ever-present pang of hunger, and then passed the rest through the hole for Dadbeh. She felt a twang of remorse for stealing Mikhail's food, but once he was well enough to fly out here, he could fly home just as easily to get himself some supper.

Curious to explore, she lit a second lantern and wandered into the next room. Two auroch-sized shapes loomed up out of the darkness. Their shadows reared as she moved the flickering, yellow light; ominous creatures, guardians about to charge.

Gita shrieked and backed away.

The shadows of the beasts crouched down as she backed out of the stable.

"Are you okay, Gita?" Dadbeh's voice filtered in from the front.

Her heart pounding, Gita lifted her lantern to examine the two enormous beasts which stood sentry in the middle of the stable. She expected the creatures to run at her, but they stood unmoving, the only hoof beats the pounding of her own, panicked heart. When they did not charge her she grew bold and stepped back into the room to examine them. They were golems, comprised of the same substance which made up Mikhail's sword, only instead of leather straps, there were tubes and reeds which harnessed them to the wall. One of the beasts had been smote and disemboweled, it's hard, cold skin pulled back to reveal its intestines.

Gita marveled at how the strange innards of the beasts differed from the soft, bloody entrails of an earth animal. She reached into its ribcage and touched the juncture where two windpipes came together to feed something which looked to be a stomach. Her hand came away dripping with blood. She sniffed it, but instead of copper, it had a peculiar, bitumen stench. These creatures were dead. The lizard people had slain these poor beasts and left Mikhail with no way to propel his sky canoe home.

"Gita?" Dadbeh called again. "You never answered. Are you okay?"

"It's nothing," Gita called back to Dadbeh. "I was just startled. That's all."

She rummaged through the stable, searching for weapons they could use to help them steal back the Kemet's camels. She recognized the smaller items he'd left lying on the floor were tools, not so very dissimilar to those wielded by the flintknapper. As her hands moved over each item, she could almost picturing Mikhail using them to lay his hands upon the great beasts and attempt to heal them the same way that she had healed
him.

Not one of these artifacts looked like the firestick Mikhail kept forever strapped to his hip. With a sigh, Gita picked up her lantern and stepped deeper into the sky canoe, through another doorway, and paused to light the lantern which had been carefully placed inside. She had spent so long with him in her uncle's house that, after a time, she'd begun to think of that room as
her
room, but as the gentle, golden light flared up from the lantern and illuminated this room…

"Oh, Mikhail, what have I done?"

In the center sat a magnificent bed, large enough for two people to sleep side-by-side, even a man with wings. Dozens of tallow lanterns dotted every flat surface, and here and there were more dried, wilted flowers, the ones Mikhail had used to woo his wife. Their marital bed was even more magnificent than the beds she remembered from the temple as a child, and on the top lay the softest blanket she had ever seen, with two pillows so large and soft they reminded her of clouds sliding across the winter sky.

She crawled up onto the bed and pressed her face into the pillow. It had been some time since
he'd
been here, but she could still detect his scent blended with Ninsianna's, the woman Mikhail had
thought
she was when he'd lain at the threshold of death.

Self-loathing tore through her gut and crushed her chest and made it hard for her to breathe. Wrong! What she had done was wrong! She had stolen something while he'd been too weak and sick to not understand she was not his wife, and even if she
had
known beforehand her act would heal him, he would have refused rather than betray his wife. She was everything her father had always called her. A whore! She was nothing but a temple whore! Her only option was to flee into the west so that Mikhail would never find out what she had done.

She sobbed until at last she fell asleep.

A strange, tall man stood before her, four-armed and with features that were alien and stern. From the brilliant blue light which radiated out of his robe, she knew this must be the God of War, but he did not seem to be angry with her; in fact, Gita thought she could detect compassion.

"To keep Mikhail safe, you must disappear," Bishamonten said.

"If I do," Gita said, "then how shall I ever prove my innocence?"

"As long as you remain within reach of his enemies," Bishamonten said, "they will use you, the same way they tried to use Ninsianna to kill him."

"Mikhail does not know that I exist," Gita said.

The old god's ant-like mandibles drooped in an expression the appeared to be regret … and guilt.

"Sometimes, you must look to the greater good," Bishamonten said.

Tears welled in Gita's eyes, the tears she had shed every single moment since he had fallen.

"How can I leave him," Gita's voice warbled, "when every fiber of my being cries out to keep him near?"

The old god twisted the edge of his robe, thoughtful, guilty, and pensive. For a moment, it appeared as though he listened to a distant voice, and when he looked back at her, his antennae tilted forward.

"Amongst the Uruk is a man who has information which can help resolve some of the issues which have divided your village," Bishamonten said. "If you capture this man alive, you can force him to bear witness on your behalf."

"We came here to find weapons," Gita said.

"The weapons you seek are gone," Bishamonten said. "But there are other items a clever person might use to help them gain an advantage."

The old god led her through the sky canoe, pointing out implements which could be adapted to help her get back the Kemet's camels.

She woke up disoriented, her chest wound humming with the Song and the lingering impression she had slept ensconced within Mikhail's magnificent, dark wings. The tallow lanterns flickered gently, not a bastion against the dark, but a safe place where darkness and light could meet. In her hand lay a small, dark feather about the size of her palm. She ran it against her cheek and touched the tiny grey speckles. After six weeks of tending to him, she knew exactly where on his wing this feather had been molted, a tender spot only a lover would know.

"Thank you," she whispered to the old God of War. He had been with her, she realized, since the Kemet had pulled her body from the river.

The elderly Kemet woman had given her a small, leather pouch; a medicine bag to wear over her heart to help her transmute the venom she had absorbed from Mikhail's body and drawn into her own. She kissed the feather and tucked it into the bag, swearing she would carry it there until the day she died.

Focusing on the source of strength she now recognized surrounded her like the red cloak she had donned to deceive Mikhail, she went into the room that contained the great, dark bulls. It was not these creatures she needed to smite the Uruk, but the small, cold box he'd left beneath one which contained the implements like Mikhail's sword.

"Once we have recaptured the Kemet's camels," Gita whispered to the long, slender pointy object the old god had told her was a
screwdriver
, "I shall make sure you find your way back into his hands."

Gathering up the other items she had been shown, she passed them out the hole to Dadbeh, who had set a watch outside the entrance, and then went back through the sky canoe, setting everything else back exactly the way she had found it. This cold, sharp world was the one from whence Mikhail had arrived, but deep in her gut, she hoped the reason he protected them was that once upon a time, he had come from a world not too different from hers?

"So?" Dadbeh asked the moment she emerged from the hole. "What was it like?" His jackal-thin face sparkled with curiosity.

"It was like a house," Gita gave him a cryptic smile. "Only shinier."

She hoped it wasn't too obvious to Dadbeh she'd been crying.

"Help me fill this back in," Dadbeh pointed at the hole.

Together they shoved the smaller rocks back in between the boulders, and then filled that in with rubble and sand until it looked exactly the way Mikhail had left it.

"Look," Gita pointed. "The morning star has risen, just ahead of the dawn."

They stared east towards the inky blackness which had settled over the horizon where lay Assur. Gita made her decision. She would go back there. She would clear her name. She would go back to exist in Mikhail's shadow, to watch over him, to be near her husband of a single night, because each step she took away from him felt as though she tore out a piece of her own heart and fed it to some evil god.

The morning star beckoned, laying a slender path of light across the desert floor. They headed east, back into the direction where she knew, eventually, the sun would rise once more.

~ * ~ * ~

Late-January: 3,389 BC

Earth: Sata'an Forward Operating Base

Jamin

Jamin pressed his hand against the cold, square stone of Shahla's tomb, polished to a sheen no Ubaid mason could ever hope to achieve, and adjusted the bouquet of early spring Hellebore he'd brought back from his latest hunting trip. It was ironic how, when Shahla had been alive, never once had he thought to bring a woman a flower or a gift. It had always been
them
trying to catch
his
eye, at least not until he'd met Ninsianna; but now that she was dead, he brought Shahla something every day, just for an excuse to talk to someone from his childhood. The clomping of boots marching in formation towards the sky canoes intruded into his introspective moment.