People of Babel (Ark Chronicles 3) Read online

  “What kind of tower?” Zidon asked, his sarcasm forgotten.

  Nimrod whipped the linen cloth aside. On the handcart, there stood a model of the Tower. It wasn’t a mere cylinder, but a “stepped” pyramid. In ways it resembled a giant, squared-off wedding cake, with long ramp-like stairs leading to various levels.

  “An oblique pyramid built in seven receding stages,” Nimrod explained.

  Ham sat up. It reminded him of the pyramids of Antediluvian Chemosh.

  “Can such a thing be built by us?” Canaan asked.

  “I say it can,” Nimrod said. “What do you think, Father?”

  Kush looked in wonder at the model, and it dawned on him that while he had a vague notion of what to construct, the angel had given Nimrod precise details.

  “Seems like it would take an awful lot of work building such a thing,” Ham said.

  “Which is why we must all unite in this grand task,” Nimrod said. “By it, we will lift ourselves out of primitivism and into a glorious civilization.”

  “I’m impressed,” Zidon said. “I don’t want to be, but I’m impressed.” He looked around, seeming to recover himself as he did. “I’m impressed if for no other reason than it has stirred the savage hunter into aspirations for civilization.”

  “Is this why you first came to Babel?” Canaan asked Kush. “Is this why you risked tribal division?”

  Kush nodded solemnly.

  “What wisdom will we gain upon the Tower’s completion?” Canaan asked.

  “If we knew,” Nimrod said, “we wouldn’t have to build it.”

  Laughter rang out, and Canaan rubbed his smooth chin, his eyes alight as he studied this fabulous possibility. “Yes,” he said. “Let us build this Tower as Noah once built the Ark. Let our names ring throughout the ages as civilization’s architects. Let us no longer scatter across the Earth for the animals to devour, but let us be as one in our endeavor as we labor for heaven’s wisdom.”

  “Let it be so!” Nimrod cried.

  Festival

  1.

  A season passed. Canaan and his clan moved to Babel, although some hardworking sons remained in the Zagros settlement, with the task of collecting ores and various rare timbers to caravan later to Babel. The city on the plain grew. Kush, Nimrod and Anom the Architect, a son of Menes, worked out a blueprint for the Tower, and that winter they measured off the foundations.

  “So vast as that?” Canaan asked.

  “A monument to the ages cannot be meager,” Nimrod said. “It must stagger the imagination. It must awe and terrify. And it must draw the others to us, as honey draws a bear.”

  “It will take ages to build,” Canaan said.

  Nimrod shook his head. “Not so long as that, eh, Father?”

  Kush brooded. He slept less these days. He pondered an imponderable, wondering on the treasures of heavenly wisdom. On the Tower’s completion, what would the angel impart to humanity? He lusted to know. Impatiently, he wished to begin construction today if possible, baking the bricks himself and smearing them with slime.

  “Clay, wood and bitumen,” rumbled Kush, “in immense quantities.”

  Canaan agreed. “Reed bundles won’t fire a quarter of the brick-baking kilns before we denude Shinar. You must send teams north and hew a forest of wood, stockpiling for the future. We must gather materials like Noah once did when building the Ark.”

  Kush turned to Nimrod. “Will the Hunters go north?”

  Nimrod grinned. “Before the next floodtide, look for a deluge of logs.”

  2.

  Opis worked apart from the other girls. They laughed as they waded barefoot into the Euphrates, soaking clothes on a sandy shore and pounding them on boards. Alone, by a flat rock, Opis beat her woolens clean, reeds behind her swaying in the wintry breeze.

  Her father Lud had made it harder again for Gilgamesh to see her. Visitations were permitted only at certain times, and always with an escort. “What if someone else ends up marrying her?” Lud had told Gilgamesh. “My daughter must be above any slanderous charge. Now, now, I know you are an honorable man. But as Opis’s parents, we must take the proper precautions.”

  Gilgamesh had been furious. She knew from the fire in his eyes. Yet he was a Hunter. He knew how to bide his time. Then Ramses said that Father had spoken again with Uruk’s father, thus making everything doubly difficult and uncertain.

  She lifted a tunic out of the cold waters, beating it against the rock. If only Gilgamesh wasn’t so glory-mad, so keen about valor and deeds of honor. He could take up a trade then, a craft, and gain cattle or fields and pay her purchase price. Sometimes his ideas about glory, his Nimrod-fueled delusions, drove her to despair. Why had she fallen in love with such a dreamer?

  Behind her, the reeds rustled. Two black birds exploded from cover, startling her. Then from the reeds a face emerged, one with lean cheeks and a flashing smile.

  “Gilgamesh.”

  “Shhh,” he said. “Or the others will hear you.”

  She glanced right and left and then threw herself upon him, showering his face with kisses.

  He returned her ardor, holding her tight, saying, “I can no longer meet on the sly, wondering if this is the last time we embrace. The thought of losing you to another drives me into a frenzy.”

  “You’ll never lose me, my love.”

  “Listen,” he said. “I’m to leave next week to go logging up north.”

  “I heard,” she said, standing on her toes to kiss him again.

  “Opis, please, you must listen.”

  She blinked. He seemed grimmer than usual.

  “In a week, I leave. But on the third night, I’ll return, here, to this very spot. You must meet me here as the moon rises.”

  She hesitated. He was always filled with thoughts of daring, never considering what might happen if they failed. “I want to do as you say. But think of the risk. If my parents catch me slipping out of the house, they’ll know I mean to see you. Father already suspects such ploys and talks about going to Kush, to the elders, to have Nimrod restrain you.”

  Anger flared in his eyes. “Nimrod once told me I must choose whom I serve. I adore being a Hunter, being a captain. But I refuse to let it stand in our way.”

  She couldn’t believe that at last he saw reason.

  “You’re trembling,” he said, lifting her chin. “Oh, Opis, this only reaffirms my decision. We’ll trek to Mount Ararat. There, Noah will marry us.”

  Her gladness sank. Instead of reason, he planned new madness. “You mean marry against my father’s wishes?”

  “I have my stone of jet, and I’ve traded many skins for copper bracelets and a gold ring, but that isn’t even half of what I need. Besides, Uruk will always outbid me no matter what I lay at your father’s feet, and your father will take from the highest bidder. You’re priceless, my love. What can I truly give you but my life for yours? So I’ll leave the Hunters and we’ll live—”

  “Where will we live? We’ll be outlaws, castaways.”

  “Don’t you want to marry me?” He sounded crestfallen.

  “Oh, yes, yes, you know I do. But I also want to live here among my family. Must we take this awful step? I know how much it means to you to be a Hunter. I can’t ask you to give that up for me.”

  “I want to give it up.”

  “Now you say that, but what about three years from now, ten years? I don’t want you to learn to hate me.”

  “I’ll always love you.”

  “Oh, Gilgamesh, is there truly no other way?”

  He brooded. She knew he hated altering his plans, his flights of fancy.

  “It’s still a week before I leave,” he said. “If a miracle happens before then…”

  She bowed her head. She had learned that, at times, if she disapproved but didn’t argue too hard, he might drop a plan. “I’ll do as you think wisest, Gilgamesh.”

  Seriousness enveloped him. He nodded, and he looked up sharply.

  The other girls no
longer laughed.

  “Opis?” shouted one. “Are you all right?”

  “Call out,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” Opis said, parting reeds, waving to the others as Gilgamesh ducked out of sight. He was uncanny when it came to sneaking around. Without moving any of the reeds, he disappeared into them while she returned to her laundry.

  3.

  Several days later, Semiramis strode out of the Barracks, glancing about. Clouds hid the morning sun and a chill breeze whistled through the practice yard, swirling dirt and making chickens run clucking to the hen house. She cocked her head, hearing harp strings.

  Bundled in a bear-fur cloak, Semiramis hurried across the yard and to a stable. On its wind-sheltered side sat her brother, Minos, leaning against the mud-brick building. He shivered in his finery, his woolen tunic and long cape. Stray gusts tossed his dark curls and his ringed fingers plucked strings.

  “Why aren’t you inside where it’s warm?” she asked.

  Minos kicked his footrest, an overturned bucket, to her. She hesitated before sitting across from him. He played. She closed her eyes, the tension draining out of her. As he hummed, a smile crept on her face. She felt…free, like a gull soaring on his tunes.

  He quit playing.

  She opened her eyes, finding him studying her.

  “You’re not happy,” he said. “You haven’t been for a long time.”

  “Perhaps. But it’s better now that you’re here.”

  He dipped his head as if that’s how it should be.

  She laughed. “You’re so full of yourself when really you’re nothing but a handsome fool, a buffoon aping manliness.”

  It was his turn to laugh. He had perfect teeth and a strong chin, and only a hint of shiftiness in his eyes, a touch of guile that warned the wise that something might be rotten in his core.

  “Let’s go inside,” Semiramis said.

  “I cannot.”

  “Oh?”

  “You called me a fool, and perhaps I am. Yet I’ve seen those wives in there watching me as I play. All their husbands are rough men with callused hands and harsh voices, used to ordering hounds or bellowing as they slay lions or wild dogs. Those pretties inside the Barracks all sigh at me when I play, batting their eyelashes. Soon, in sheer sympathy for their plight, I’ll sing to them and, as it surely must happen, I’ll lie with them afterward. Then those rough men will chase me with their hounds. That, Semiramis, is why I play out here.”

  “You should be out hunting with the men,” she said. “You’re a Hunter now.”

  “Thanks to you, my sister. Not even Nimrod, it seems, can resist your nagging tongue.” Minos plucked strings, concentrating, before he looked up and said, “I’d hunt, but today my leg aches.”

  “You say that everyday.”

  His eyes seemed to darken. “Oh, yes, that’s what I say. The reason is that every dawn before I wake, a nightmare in the guise of Beor haunts me. He roars foul threats, shaking his javelin as I run. Just as I’m about to dive behind a tree, he throws his dream dart, driving it through the meaty part of my thigh. Then I’m dragged aboard his chariot, where he pummels me until I awaken bathed in sweat.”

  “Did he truly beat you?”

  “‘A judicial beating,’ he called it, telling me that his fists were more merciful than a dagger.” Minos shuddered. “Is it any wonder that my leg aches each morning, prohibiting me from joining your illustrious husband?” Minos strummed the harp. “Although I must say that this is better than Japheth Land. There I had to sit on a rock in the wilds, prey to wolves and lions and the basest elements.”

  “As you watched your flock, you sluggard?”

  “A dirty task, I assure you, far beneath my abilities. Here it is more to my liking, for here I play for the most beautiful and exciting woman alive, my unhappy sister.”

  “Despite the agony of your dreams, Minos, you cannot keep doing nothing. Nimrod demands that you learn a modicum of skills even if you’re only pretending to be a Hunter.”

  “But I’m not a Hunter. I’m a poet in a barbaric age, caught between the two most savage warriors of this era, both of them wretched sons of Ham. One wounds me for life and the other wields a whip to lash me to tasks I deplore.”

  “Perhaps you bear a scar, but you don’t limp.”

  “A poet composes phrases for impact, dear sister, if not always for dreary reality.”

  “You’re a poet, you say?”

  He strummed the harp.

  “Maybe a foolish poet’s heart can help me solve a riddle that none other has been able too.”

  “Semiramis, not even I can give you Gilgamesh.”

  She stared at her foppish but sometimes-clever brother. Several of his cousins, Thebes and Olympus among them, had also joined the Hunters. She had seen to it, as well, that her grandfather Javan had been well received in Babel. Although the truth was that Kush and the others were greedy for warm bodies, for anybody willing to work.

  She said, “Reckless tongues have ways of being rooted out.”

  “I thought that was for wagging tongues.”

  “I’m giving you fair warning, Minos. Do not bait me in affairs of the heart.”

  He set aside the harp. “Trapped as I am in this barbaric age, I’ve been thinking about your quandary.”

  “Oh?”

  “There might yet be a way for you to ensnare Gilgamesh.”

  Her gaze bored into his.

  “You’ve seen the amber necklace, I presume?”

  “You know that I have,” she said.

  “Isn’t Gilgamesh called the Ghost Stalker?”

  Her gaze hardened, becoming more searching.

  That seemed to turn his feature bland and indifferent. “Why not encourage Nimrod to send a team of Hunters into Japheth Land? Or more precisely, to Magog Village, where presently Beor Peg-Leg resides.”

  She regarded him. They had always seemed to understand each other too well, as if they could read each other’s thoughts. “Send a band to Japheth Land with Thebes, Olympus and you to guide them, eh? And ambush Beor for his treachery. Murder him, in other words.”

  “Self-defense isn’t murder. For you must understand that Beor plans to kill Nimrod and take you again for his own. As incredible as it seems, Beor still loves you. In fact, his unrequited love probably saved me from death.”

  “And while you’re there to kill Beor,” she said, thinking aloud, “Gilgamesh slips into their home and spirits away the amber necklace for me, is that it?”

  “More or less.”

  She seemed to look inward. “I understand your motives and mine, but why would Gilgamesh do this?”

  “That’s the easiest part of all. Because you’d pay him in silver and gold so he could buy Opis.”

  Her look became serpentine.

  “Dearest sister, you can’t believe that you’ll ever divorce Nimrod. He would throttle you even if he learned to hate your sight. No man but him may touch you, for otherwise his glory would be tarnished.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That you must think long term. You must weave a web around Gilgamesh until he pants for you. Then you’ll have your life and your lover, and too, you’ll have the amber necklace.”

  “What about you, brother, what will you have?”

  “The tender satisfaction of seeing you happy.”

  What her dear silly brother meant was that he’d dance on Beor’s warm corpse, no doubt, kicking and spitting on it.

  “Is it not a clever scheme?” he asked.

  Poor Minos lusted for vengeance that he dared not attempt by himself. “For a poet, it isn’t bad. I must think it through and find the flaws. Yet perhaps you’ve stumbled onto a workable plan. I applaud you.”

  Minos bowed. “I accept your applause, for, as a poet, that is indeed what I most crave.”

  4.

  Gilgamesh stood in Semiramis’s bedroom, his face stony and his insides whirling. Semiramis sat with her back to him as she brushed her hair.
It was shiny, long and lovely, and she studied herself in a round, bronze mirror. She spoke so easily of theft, of an exchange of gold and silver for the amber necklace. Theft. By him.

  She set the mirror down and shifted on her stool, regarding him. “Don’t look so glum, Gilgamesh. I don’t want the necklace for myself or because Minos was wounded because of Hilda.”

  The turmoil in his gut increased. Wisdom told him to back out now and never enter this lair of seduction again. He loved Opis, even if strange stirrings moved him whenever he stepped inside this room. Hadn’t Nimrod long ago told him to keep Semiramis company? “You’re the only one I trust alone with my wife,” Nimrod had told him years ago. Yet she had Minos now. He hated to admit that he thought of that time in the wilds when she had slipped a love draught into his drink, when her arms had wrapped around him and she had told him—He shook his head. That was the other reason why he wanted to flee to Noah: to escape this awful temptation before he succumbed to it.

  “You don’t believe me, Gilgamesh?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “You shook your head when I said I don’t want the necklace for myself.”

  He ran a hand across his brow. “I can’t help you gain vengeance on Beor.”

  “Is that what you think this is?”

  “Beor wounded your brother,” he said.

  “Yes, and you wounded Beor once, firing an arrow into him. Does Beor have a right to hunt you?”

  His forehead furrowed. Perhaps he owed Beor bloodguilt for that shot. Yet where would he get the means to pay for bloodguilt and also pay Lud?

  Semiramis said, “Look what the necklace did to Hilda. It embroiled her in a terrible plight. It corrupted her into luring my brother and his friends into an ambush set by her father. I’m glad that Minos is here, of course. But I was once Hilda’s stepmother. I want to see her grow up into a good woman. That will never happen as long as the necklace is in her possession. It will continue to fire her vanity and lead her down a dark path. That is why you must remove the temptation. For that deadly risk, I’m willing to help you gain your true love. You do love Opis, don’t you?”