The Descent Read online

helmet disappeared, the gates groaned and, amidst a shower of small stones and dust, creaked outwards.

  “Your offering has been accepted. You may pass,” Nedu said, stepping back.

  My guide walked through the opening in the gate. I hesitated. I knew the window had gone but hoped it had returned, that somehow my memory had conjured both it and Gilgamesh once more.

  Looking behind, all I saw was the endless road.

  I stepped through the gate. It closed against my back with a soft thud.

  Although we should have been within the mountain, nothing but barren plains surrounded us. I turned. The gate was not there. I turned again. Ahead was the mountain once more. My guide walked toward it, untroubled by the strangeness of it all.

  We reached the mountain and the gate it held. A scorpion-man stood guard.

  My guide introduced him as Enkishar.

  “Before you can pass through my gate you must relieve yourself of a weight you brought from the living world,” Enkishar said.

  Aware this time, I felt about myself for something to offer. My hands came to my belt and the knives tucked within it. I drew the blades, clean and deadly keen. The last time I had drawn them in the world of the living had been against the Bull of Heaven.

  The Bull had been led down from the skies by Ishtar in revenge for Gilgamesh’s refusal of her marriage proposal and now stamped at the gates of Uruk. Its devastation was evident in the drying rivers, the dying crops. Hundreds of men of Uruk had rushed forth to battle it, and failed.

  Trusted blades in my hands, I leapt from our raft upon the waters of the Euphrates and said to Gilgamesh, “Humbaba was a true challenge. This will be as nothing.”

  Eyes glinting, lips twitching into a smile, he said, “Then you should put aside your blades, my brother. Such a trifling thing as this Bull will not require them.”

  His mirth sparked, as it always did, a fire inside me. Sometimes it was a fire of amusement; at other times, such as this, it was a fire of desire, a need to prove his smile worthless, to show him I was as courageous as he, as strong.

  I flung the knives down, blades biting deep into the earth. My axe I took from my back and secured it too in the ground. Gilgamesh’s smile only widened. Between us and the walls of Uruk, the Bull stamped and snorted, tossing its great head from side to side, sunlight glinting off its nose-ring and sliding across its black horns.

  Its horns.

  With a wild roar learned in the hills of my childhood, I charged the bull. It slapped the ground, bellowed a deafening response and lowered its head. We met in a magnificent clash. I seized its horns, skipped to the side and twisted. The Bull’s head came around, its neck crackling. We looked into each other’s eyes. Those red orbs seared with a heat I had never felt before, but I would not let go. Its head turned uncomfortably, the Bull had no choice but to follow where I led. It stamped its giant hooves and swished its thick tail but in this moment, we were equals.

  Then the Bull stopped. It planted his hooves and refused to move. The red eyes glowed brighter. I knew in that instant it had fooled me.

  Before I could let go, the beast snorted a blast of hot air and flung its head back. I was lifted off the ground and thrown. Hitting the ground, I rolled and rolled until I was certain I was beyond the Bull’s immediate reach. I came up against Gilgamesh’s feet.

  He looked down at me, his smile now grim and determined. In his hands he held my blades.

  I answered his smile. This Bull would not best me with Gilgamesh by my side. “My friend, let us be bold.”

  Our plan was simple. I stalked the Bull this time, playing the hunter, empty handed once more. Gilgamesh held my blades but remained at a distance. Though I was cautious I was eager for the end. At the first chance, I dashed in and caught the Bull by its tail. It bellowed in anger and turned to lunge at me. I kept my hold on its tail, moving with it. Forever out of reach, forever infuriating. It roared and stamped, froth gathering in his mouth, eyes rolling. The tail lashed and writhed in my grip.

  Thus maddened, the Bull failed to notice Gilgamesh. Calmly, my friend approached the creature. There was no hesitation in him, no worry my hold might slip. He trusted me beyond all else. Gilgamesh raised my blades. Sunlight caught on their polished surface, flashed impossibly bright. The Bull forgot me, spun on Gilgamesh, who, sure as any butcher, carved the air with my blades. In a dizzying dance, Gilgamesh cut the beast here and there, enraging it further, until at last, the opening came that he needed.

  Snorting, the Bull lowered its head to charge, unheedful of the pest at its back. My blades flew from Gilgamesh’s hands in bloody arcs. From his own belt he drew his sword. Swinging it two handed, Gilgamesh ran to meet the Bull’s charge. I released the tail before I could be dragged to the ground.

  Gilgamesh stepped to the side of the Bull’s mindless fury. In a series of blinding moves, the king brought his sword down once—between the eyes—twice—between the horns—and lastly—at the nape of the beast’s neck.

  Mortally wounded, the Bull of Heaven charged on, still snorting and bellowing, until its front legs collapsed and brought it crashing nose first into the dirt.

  Gilgamesh, his back to the painful cries of the beast, retrieved my blades and offered them to me.

  In the grey place beyond life, I looked at the blades and remembered the blood on them. So much blood spilled in the name of man and gods. So much of my life spent fighting at the behest of one or the other. It seemed all I did once I had been caught and tamed was fight. In the hills, before the trapper, before Shamhat, there was no fighting for the sake of fighting. There had been the simple ebb and flow of life and death without man’s complications and desires.

  My blades. They may not have killed the Bull of Heaven but they had been part of the battle, wielded by a man. Weapons. Man’s weapons.

  “Take them,” I snapped, thrusting the belt and blades at Enkishar.

  As Nedu had done, Enkishar took my offerings and threw them at the gate. They were absorbed and the gate opened.

  My guide led me through again. The gates closed and I waited several heartbeats before looking behind. No gates, only the road. No window, only grey light. Ahead, the mountain and next gate.

  Endashurimma was the name of this guard. He spoke as the others had and this time I did not hesitate in choosing my offering.

  I unslung the axe from my back, all too willing to rid myself of its weight. It was not a weapon, but it was a tool of destruction.

  The broad head had bitten deep into the wood of the Cedar Forest, casting aside chips with manic abandon. Heady with our victory over Humbaba, we had felled a great many of the now unprotected trees. The largest of the fallen trunks caught my eye. I paced out its length and breadth, an idea growing in my mind.

  “A truly majestic prize,” Gilgamesh said, joining me.

  “A god among trees, surely,” I agreed. “A tree fit to serve in tribute for the gods. I will make it into a door for the temple of Enlil, all of a piece. Seventy-two cubits high, twenty-four cubits wide and one cubit thick.” My excitement carried me away. “The fixture and the lower and upper pivots will also be of one piece, carved around it so that the splendour of it is not diminished.”

  With a laugh, Gilgamesh clapped me on the shoulder. “My friend, while Enlil is certain to be pleased with your door and shower you with his blessing, we must first get this mammoth door you imagine back to Nippur. Perhaps you should not be so bold and think smaller.”

  I returned his gesture with added enthusiasm so that he lurched forward. “And you do not think bold enough, my friend. It is boldness the gods reward. Were we not so bold as to come here, we would never have had this glory.”

  “Yes, but are we bold enough to carry your monster door home?”

  I turned him around and pointed. In the distance, sunlight glinted off the twisting snake of the Euphrates. “Think bold,” I said. “We shall float it home.”

  And so we had, steering my door to the shore as the Bull of Heaven b
egan its terrorising. My gift to the gods had been sullied by Ishtar’s revenge. Raised into place in the temple of Enlil, it had seemed a worthless effort after the challenge of the Bull. Pushed and pulled in differing directions by the very gods we were supposed to trust and entreat for help. Playthings we were to these beings of ultimate conceit and power. I had carved an offering beyond compare and yet here I am, condemned by Enlil, whom I strived to serve and worship.

  Dull light ran along the edge of my axe, which flared at the tip, and then faded in the persistent grey of this place.

  “My offering,” I said to Endashurimma. “Not fit for the gods, though I wonder if they are fit for my offering.”

  The scorpion-man took my axe and, head bowed, gave it to the gate. It was accepted and through we went.

  Once more on the road that stretched impossibly behind, empty of golden light shining through an impossible window, ending impossibly at the mountain we had entered three times already. Another game of the gods, I decided bitterly. Forever playing and teasing. But no more. I would face these last challenges and I would surpass them as I had surpassed everything else they had forced on me.

  Enuralla met us at the fourth gate. “You are greatly lightened,” he said, nodding in approval. “But still you must relieve yourself of a weight carried from the land of the living.”

  At my neck was the clasp holding my cloak around my shoulders. I touched the cool lapis