Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

THE CITY OF KISH, MESOPOTAMIA (MODERN-DAY IRAQ), 2143 BCE

Bārû Naram-Sin folded his arms in front of him, glowering down at the bustling city below him in simmering resentment. It had taken days to arrive here by boat down the slow Euphrates from Uruk, stopping at every little village shrine and temple on the way to check on his priests and his network of eyes and ears. It was painfully slow, but the effort was worth it. He was so close to his goal now, he could taste it.

The city of Kish stretched out below him looking like a kicked anthill crawling with people and animals. He had already bathed away the dust of his travels and he was in his high ceremonial robes. Attendants had placed a goblet of wine in his hand and he was taking the breeze on the rooftop garden of the Temple of Zebaba. He sipped his wine thoughtfully. In just a few short minutes, the culmination of decades of searching would be standing here and finally, he would know if Tekara’s theories were worth anything. The city below baked in the sun and its sweaty, laboring inhabitants baked with it and he reflected that back home, the wine at least would have been chilled.

Bārû Naram-Sin, or as he was known in another life, August Vasilias, stood with a heavy heart. August had chosen the name Bārû Naram-Sin to blend into the primitive societies of this world, it was a name that echoed power and mystique in the native’s language and any further method to cow them into obedience was useful. He was far from the lands and time where he was born August Vasilias. The necessity of his disguise was a bitter pill to swallow, yet it was essential for the grand design he had been orchestrating meticulously. Under the guise of Bārû Naram-Sin, he had navigated through time and space, weaving his influence discreetly among these people. It was a game of shadows and whispers, where his true identity could never be revealed, for August Vasilias was more than just a name; it was a reminder of a past life, a world of advanced knowledge and power, now lost in the sands of time. The rooftop, with its sprawling view of Kish, served as a stark reminder of how far he had fallen from his once exalted status, forced to play the part of a mere mortal in this primitive age.

How he hated this overcrowded midden heap full of primitives and their livestock. They called this place a city! Kish, the jewel of the Euphrates, origin of kings. Full of people and rats, weevils and flies, dung and waste. They called Kish the city where you could find anything. There was a bitter irony there if only the people could see it. There was nothing here! Not in Kish, not in the whole Land Between the Rivers, not on this entire mud splat of a world! He gritted his teeth as he considered the titanic impossibility of it.

An entire world with not a single source of tensa energy. All the brightest minds back home hadn’t even included the possibility in their calculations. Oh, there had been eventualities prepared in the case that they might have an extended stay in an extremely low-tensa zone. But nothing had prepared them for this. And now, three thousand years later, he was still here, scrabbling at the dregs when he was used to living like a king! When immortality became his birthright, he never thought he’d be living out eternity in abject squalor with people little better than animals for company.

If he hadn’t personally seen it and suffered under its curse, he wouldn’t have believed it. He had been so wasteful of his seemingly endless store of tensa. It had truly been shocking to realize that he could not activate his wings one day because he lacked the tensa energy required to summon them. Now he walked and waited. And searched.

One of the temple eunuchs rang a gong from the little doorway that led to the stairs and Bārû Naram-Sin’s thoughts shattered. He felt his pulse quicken slightly despite himself. He walked through the carefully tended garden, taking his time to enjoy the profusion of colorful flowers and tropical plants arranged so carefully, before finally descending from the roof to the Plaza of the Temple Hall via a series of cunningly crafted stone stairways.

As he walked, he gathered attendants and lower priests around him. They lit incense and bowed their heads as they accompanied him in a slow procession toward the great Temple Plaza. The Plaza was a large open area where a high dais presided over an arena-like circle of stone pillars made of brilliant blue and gold marble.

It had taken the careful tracking of years. These people barely even had written language and fact became rumor became story and legend within months. The ignorant savages accounted everything as magic or supernatural—attributing the harvests and the rising of the sun to their gods and goddesses. But through that strain of ignorance, he had been able to find some special few people who the stories flocked around. Inevitably—when the stories weren’t fake—he would find that they had absorbed enough tensa to be worth tracking down and taking it back. Today, he was harvesting perhaps the biggest yield of all. It almost made him want to smile.

He made sure to school his face to stony impassivity. He was every inch the high priest of the warrior-god Zebaba now. He straightened his shoulders, arranging his dark green embroidered high priest robes just so. The midday sun beat down on the Plaza and Bārû Naram-Sin had temple servants bring a portable shade for him while two more servants rushed to wave large fans over the dais, providing cooling breezes.

Bārû Naram-Sin settled into the throne on the dais, nodding to Anatu and Semiramis, the high priests of the Temple here in Kish. “Etana the Invincible is being prepared in the ready chamber below, your Holiness,” Semiramis said, straightening from his bow.

“As you predicted,” Anatu interrupted, “he is truly the Son of Battle! I saw him once, you know. When he was a young man, before he gained the fame he has now, I saw him paraded in the streets of Rapiqum on the backs of five white bullocks! He had the heads of eight Umma axe wardens on his belt—” Bārû Naram-Sin stopped listening almost as soon as Anatu started talking.

The tide of words washed over him while Bārû Naram-Sin waited. He had learned patience, even while his whole being seethed with the need to just finish what he had come here to do and leave. His underpriests needed the time to lay their intrigues. This whole area was merely a series of city-states, each ruled by a despot more barbaric than the last. Bārû Naram-Sin had labored for years to grow his network of priests—loyal eyes and ears that would report only to him—as he searched for legends and heroes. He listened to the conversations all around him, able to focus on everything being said at once with ease.

His underpriests did love to plot. He had picked up several sly references to assassination plans; a few veiled threats; pathetic fawning also seemed to be very popular. He didn’t hear anything new though. Nothing that truly interested him. If his priests had anything new—anyone more promising than Etana—they would have told him by now. He heard the conversations winding down, could feel the expectation in the air as the underpriests quieted.

He raised one hand and said, “Let us begin the Test. Semiramis, lead us in the Hymn of the Hours.” Semiramis led the droning hum of the Hymn of Hours. It was the signal to begin the ceremony, though it was a long and tedious one. All important rituals started with the Hymn of Hours, though. He didn’t mind it though—it gave him time to compose himself and ready himself for this last meeting. Not twenty feet below him, the object of the last thirty-seven years of searching was being anointed in oils and dressed in ceremonial armor, believing that he would be blessed by the great priest of Zebaba. Well, the god of battle would bless him.

The hymn of the Hours wound down and Bārû Naram-Sin inclined his head slightly. The temple guards came flooding in from doors behind him, taking up their stations in a wide circle around the Plaza. The temple guards wore thick cloaks sewn with plates of bronze along with the imposing temple helms which only showed an impassive mask of Zebaba’s face with eyeholes for the guards to see through and wielded heavy spears with curved daggers and axes at their belts. They moved with deadly grace and precision.

The guards also brought with them several large cauldrons, arranging them between the pillars. The cauldrons were filled with wood and pitch, prepared to be lit at a signal, and packed with secret herbs and powders stored in tightly woven baskets to make the flames dance in rainbow hues and give forth sweet-smelling smoke. Once they set the cauldrons down, the guards fell silent, waiting for the high priest’s command.

At the center of the Temple Plaza, in the floor, was a massive decorative brass grille that showed the great god Zebaba cavorting over the city of Kish. There were cunning grooves cut into the stone of the altar and into the stone plaza which all led to the grille. Bārû Naram-Sin closed his eyes and put on his priestly mask, the impassive face carved atop looking no less judgmental or inhuman than his own face. It was almost time. Soon, the fat little wriggler would stride through the great double doors, full of pride and swagger. Full of stolen heroism and power. Bārû Naram-Sin ground his teeth and even though the priests around him could no longer see his face, they heard his teeth, and they shrank away from him.

He called out “Light the holy fires!” and the guards lit the specially prepared fuel, causing rainbow flames to dance into the sky and releasing a sweet-smelling smoke out over the Plaza. The smoke was much heavier than the air and clung to the ground too close to the knees.

In the large room below the Temple Plaza, directly below the grille was a huge marble statue of great Zebaba, holding his mace above his head and his stern face staring down at those who entered the room. Etana of Ur was being attended to by a score of temple eunuchs. They oiled his hair and beard, anointing his head and shoulders with holy spices and ash. He lay on his stomach as the attendants rubbed him, feeling impatience boiling in him. He was not accustomed to being still for so long.

He was a huge man, accounted a giant by all who saw him. He stood almost eight feet tall and had an impressively muscular physique. By all he was accounted Etana the Invincible, the Hero Warrior from the great city-state of Ur. He had dark curly hair that had been shaved on the sides like all warriors and his beard was kept trimmed close to his strong jaw. He had a sun-dark hazel complexion and quick, dark eyes under a heavy brow. Scars covered his body, many of them seeming to be too big, too grievous to have been survived. It was said that Etana had fought in a hundred battles and had slain ten thousand men with his war axe and another ten thousand with his spear. Looking at him, it was easy to believe.

Bārû Naram-Sin did not know it, but Etana the Invincible had reason to hate him personally. He had a reason to want him dead. It had been Bārû Naram-Sin who had ordered his village burned when he was a boy when they were unable to give tribute to the priest-kings of Kish when the Temple Guard came to collect their due. His mother had stuffed him into a hidden cubby while the village and his own hut burned around him. He had stumbled through the wreckage, alone and terrified, and would have died from hunger had he not felt what he now called the Song of Zebaba stirring in his veins.

In the Land Between the Rivers, the priests were like kings and they commanded armies. It had put Bārû Naram-Sin out of reach for many years. But used the Song of Zebaba to conquer his enemies. With the Song, he was unstoppable; truly invincible. His strength was unmatched, his endurance superhuman. It would be fitting to kill the high priest of Zebaba with his god’s holy gift. After all, it made sense that the god of battle would put his greatest enemy at the pinnacle of his priesthood. It made for the ultimate challenge. Bārû Naram-Sin had made an enemy for life that fateful day and now, fate and Zebaba had conspired to bring Etana the Invincible to mete out true justice.

Accepting the blessings of Zebaba was not a passive prospect and Etana’s path to vengeance would not be realized without a pile of bodies along the way. Zebaba was the god of battle. He demanded blood and death for his favor. All who sought the blessings of Zebaba had to undergo a Test of Battle. Each day, he had fought and killed Temple Guards in arena battles in the great Temple Plaza, allowing their blood to bathe the statue of Zebaba that stood underneath the bronze grille. Each day, he had waited for the priests to finally announce that their precious high priest had arrived and that he would finally be able to get his vengeance.

The eunuchs finished their ministrations of him and stepped back, allowing Etana space to stand. They always rushed him into their care after his battles, expecting him to take some grievous injury, but he had survived the Tests so far unharmed. He had not even added a single scar to his collection. Etana rolled his head on his shoulders, enjoying the feeling of looseness from the massage. He set his feet on the floor, eyeing the great statue of Zebaba with his mace held high, his stern face caught in the bloodlust of battle. Staring at the statue, he felt the Song of Zebaba rise in him, but he quieted it. Now was not the proper time.

As he stood, more eunuchs rushed forward with cloths to towel him down and start dressing him. He bore the “honor” with thinning patience. They were girding him for battle, encasing him in his now-famous eagle armor. Grimly, Etana tightened the fastenings on his greaves and the overlapping feather-like bronze scales on his breastplate. How many Temple Guards would the priests throw at him today? Twenty? Thirty? A hundred? It did not matter. Like every day before, the large statue of Zebaba would be drenched in blood. Etana had not lost once. The Temple Guard began drumming their spears on the stone Plaza above. It would be time to leave soon and get down to the business of killing again. He smiled in anticipation.

Etana closed his eyes then, letting his childhood memories flood him once more, letting the fear and pain fill him. He would use it. Use it to stoke the fires of battle that raged within him. He felt his heart begin to throb in time with the thumping of the spears, the Song of Zebaba pulsed in his veins, still held in check, but barely. The intricate drumming of spears grew more and more complicated, more and more impressive.