Naramsin: Babylon
The hot night air flowed sweetly through King Sumulael’s huge royal tent on the banks of the Euphrates, and the whistling wind drove grains of sand, pattering like rain, over the width and breadth of the taut, anchored cloth.
The air inside was alive with song, filled with the chatter of a hundred nobles, and fragrant with the scents of the sumptuous feast piled high upon the tables: whole roasted oxen, goats, and sheep, with spits of roasted fish and ducks, and mountains of succulent figs, dates, and cakes stacked high on gold and silver platters.
Then the reed flutes and cymbals fell silent, ending their paean to the nature god Tammuz. The lightly-dressed dancers stopped their whirling and melted away to the sidelines, chattering softly. I clapped my hands in unison with the others, and bowed appreciatively towards my host.
“Your generosity is beyond my capacity to repay, noble king,” I said respectfully. “If I may be of further service to you, speak only the words.”
Sumulael grinned broadly through his thick black beard as he motioned the wine-bearer to refill our cups. She smiled shyly as she did so, glancing at me slyly all the while.
“Naram-Sin,” he boomed, “your service to me has already been beyond all measure! You honor me by your very presence! In all of Babylon, only you among men battle the dead, yet remain among the living!” The crowd of nobles suddenly hushed. Sumulael’s son, Prince Sabium, seated at his right hand, barely moved, and stared at his father impassively.
Sumulael drained his cup and held it out for refilling, which the slave girl did quickly. I laughed slightly at his words, and he fixed my gaze with his piercing black eyes, a wide smile on his lips.
Then the tall king stood and raised his powerful hands high, splashing his wine without care, as he addressed the company. “He cheated the henchmen of Death!” he shouted. “It is true! With my own eyes I saw him, saw him fight and slay not one, not two, but three ekimmu with nothing more than his bare hands!”
The crowd murmured, and in their mingled voices was a blend of awe and fear.
Sumulael lowered his hands, and pointed at me while he again spoke to the assembly. “Yes, ekimmu! Those terrible dead things, possessed of demons, who glut themselves on human flesh and blood, feasting on us as we ourselves feast on the wild beasts! Hear me, my Amorites! This man, this one man alone, saved me from a fate terrible beyond imagining.” He drained his cup again, and again it was filled.
“You all have heard whispers of the tale, but know the true tale now,” he continued solemnly. “Know how I, with the palace temple under repair, worshipped for the first time in the emptied, public temple of Innanna two nights ago, surrounded by fifteen of my guards, and how the ekimmu, pale and grey as the Moon itself, sprang upon us from the shadows. Horrible and gaunt, they struck with a speed and savagery unknown to man.
“Our swords and spears had no effect. One by one my guard fell beneath their rending claws, until I alone was left. The ekimmu circled me, their white, pupil-less eyes staring into mine, their dead mouths opening wide, their pustulent, naked bodies glowing in the redness of the temple lamps as they tensed their muscles for the final blow.”
The gathering was completely silent. The wind, rising again, rained sand against the tent, shifting direction strangely, first blowing from the north, then the south, then the east, then the west. I vaguely sensed something dark, vast, and brooding, stirring along the edges of the night. The king drained his cup and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his white linen tunic as he again pointed to me.
“Then, from nowhere, yet from everywhere, came a rustle as of wings, and suddenly from behind the statue of the goddess leapt Naram-Sin. His cloak flowed around him as he landed next to the ekimmu, and with a speed and strength I have never seen in all my years of war, he ripped off the head of one, and hurled it to the ground!
“The other two ekimmu shrieked, and threw themselves at him, claws slashing, but they caught only air, as Naram-Sin avoided their attack, and pounded them fearfully with his bare hands. For he had no weapons, no weapons at all, other than his bare hands, I tell you, by the goddess!
“Furiously they fought, with the ekimmu screaming in rage as they landed several savage blows upon him, tearing his garments… but for each blow they landed, they received ten fearsome blows in return! Before my eyes, in an instant, Naram-Sin destroyed them utterly, splitting each open in turn with his hands, and tearing them completely asunder, until the floor of the temple was covered in their quivering dead flesh and black blood.
“More of my men finally arrived at that point, and each saw with his own eyes the aftermath of Naram-Sin’s prowess. It is only through his appearance that night that I am alive to tell you this story today.”
The assemblage murmured approvingly, and Sumulael held up his hand for silence.
“We feast tonight on the shores of the Euphrates to honor our guest, Naram-Sin, for his great courage and skill in battle. Treat him as you would my son, and toast his health with me. To Naram-Sin!”
“To Naram-Sin!” shouted all, draining their cups.
The king ended his narrative, and again took his seat on the large cushions by my side. I bowed my head. “My lord,” I said humbly, “I have only poor words with which to repay your kindness. Know that I am happy to have been able to serve you. The revenants who assaulted you will trouble you no more, and that knowledge itself is reward enough for me.”
Had Sumulael known the truth, however, I am sure that he would have been, perhaps, not quite so grateful. For the truth was, I had found my way to Babylon out of urgent need to communicate with one of the Pact, and it was only after months of half-whispers, shadowy conversations, and certain evidences that I had finally picked up the trail of one of my rare brethren. I had followed the Euphrates north from Isin, through Borsippa, coming finally to Babylon only a fortnight ago. The trail had led me to the temple of Innanna that night, and it was only through sheer coincidence that I had had the opportunity to intercede against the ekimmu and rescue the king. Or so I had thought….
“Well said!” he thundered appreciatively. “Your family did well to name you after the grandson of Sargon the Great, after that first Naram-Sin who ruled so well and fought so nobly many centuries ago.”
“And who, my lord, also brought down the curse of the gods upon his people,” came a voice from his entourage. A gasp rose up from the gathering, and the priest stepped forward from the host behind us, eyeing me intently.
“What say you, Adarak?” said Sumulael hotly. “How dare you insult my guest, without whose valor I would be in the bellies of the dead today!” He rose to his feet and stared at the thin, bald priest. “By Innanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth,” he growled, “explain yourself!”
Adarak, the king’s personal sorcerer, bowed deeply, his small conical hat remaining firmly in place. “My lord, I meant no insult to either you or our honored guest. I sought only to remind you of the curse of Akkad, wherein the original Narim-Sin, grandson of Sargon, committed a grave sacrilege against Enlil’s temple in Nippur.”
Sumulael glanced at me, then returned his stare to Adarak, who continued.
“It is said that the goddess Innanna left Akkad because of Naram-Sin’s sacrilege, the profaning of Enlil’s temple, which resulted in the cursing of Akkad, and the destruction of the Akkadians by the Gutians. Perhaps it is only coincidence that a man named Naram-Sin should once again find himself connected to the goddess again, this time here in her temple in Babylon.” A nervous, loud murmur rose from the assemblage.
I stared long and hard at the priest, who returned my stare coldly. I rose, and said,smiling at Adarak, “Perhaps I found myself in the temple of Innanna due to another part of the legend. Certainly you know that King Naram-Sin once called himself ‘Spouse of Innanna’? Well then, know that those of us who bear his name also know the story of the curse, and it is our hope that through our piety to Innanna the sins of the past may be forgiven, and hope for the future secured.
“And it would seem,” I continued, “that my appearance in Innanna’s temple did, indeed, help to secure the future, for my worship of the goddess gave me the privilege to successfully serve our King, who continues to lead all Babylon in her glory, first among nations.” I bowed, and as the applause crackled throughout the tent, I saw Adarak smile grimly as he folded his hands within his cloak and returned my bow.
“Let us drink, then, to the future!” roared Sumulael, dropping down again to his cushions, and as the cups were filled again, he shouted for music and dance and feasting, to which the company cheered and quickly engaged. Adarak quietly slipped away without another word, but not before I noticed a furtive glance exchanged between him and the still-silent Prince Sabium. The winds dropped, and the breeze fell still, yet my unease remained.
I conversed with the king long into the night, and after all revelry had ceased, after all save the guards had fallen asleep, the fingers of dawn found me walking alone along the marshy shore of the Euphrates, not far from the encampment, alert to every sound, aware of every movement around me. My own guard had been raised.
I pondered the events of the past days. Winning an ally in the king was an unexpected boon, and I was pleased to allow him to entertain me, for I knew that his power and influence might prove valuable to me as I continued my quest. But I also knew that unexpected danger had come to Babylon, a threat to both men and kin, a dark terror of which the ekimmu were just the vanguard….
It takes a powerful necromancy to raise the dead, and to fill their lifeless husks with demonic spirits. And to destroy revenants barehanded was only possible through an equally powerful necromancy, the kind that I possessed, the kind that suffused the souls and bodies of all my kin, of all those of the Pact. Men needed proper weapons and talismans in order to have even the faintest hope of success against such creatures; but, almost invariably, such encounters proved ruinous, ending with their bloody destruction. As was the case with the king’s guard, and almost, with the king himself.
I thought of the small, silent exchange between the priest and the prince, and smiled bitterly to myself. I realized in that red Euphratian dawn that the appearance of the ekimmu in the public temple was, perhaps, no coincidence after all.
I cannot help but reflect upon how one of the great ironies of the world is that the motivations of men change very little, if at all, over the passage of time. Years, decades, centuries, millennia, eons may pass, yet man’s driving passions never seem to ebb. The fact that every vice was once a virtue, and every virtue once a vice makes no difference to him.
Man’s enormous capacity for duplicity exists in all ages, and a thousand Adaraks, a thousand Sabiums, a thousand Machiavellis come and go; yet I also knew that paradoxically, concurrent with his duplicity, existed within man an enormous capacity for honor, which may yet ultimately prove to be his salvation. How else to explain his ability to continue his species in the face of almost constant war and tribulation? His death instinct has battled his life instinct since his rise from the mud unfathomable eons ago, his lust for death equalled only by his lust for life.
As the hot sun began to rise slowly in the east, I sat down on the marshy grass, contemplating my next actions. An awareness that these recent events were not isolated from, but instead somehow connected with, my quest brought a stirring uneasiness to my mind. I knew, however, that I must continue my search, and I stared into the short distance at the palaces and dwellings of infant Babylon clustered together, its three-stepped temple ziggurats foreshadowing the seven-stepped ziggurats of Hammurapi and Nebuchadnezzar, its fortification walls centuries away from being built.
Then the wind blew from the south behind me, and upon it the familiar scent played upon my nostrils. I heard the soft bending of the grass behind me, and sprang to my feet as I whirled around.
“Greetings, Naram-Sin,” smiled Vashtar of the Pact….