Abraham Allegiant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 4) (17 page)

Terah had stationed the golemim stone soldiers lining the Processional Way as a kind of rock fence of protection. It worked as he expected. The Stone Ones cast both a presence of strength and power over the entire parade that Nimrod gloried in.

It also encouraged Ophir and Uzal to regroup and strategize about their target. They had only two days left of the actual festival. The twelfth day was a day of departures.

• • • • •

The banquet of the gods was a gluttonous affair that lasted the entire tenth day. They ate from the finest of the flocks and the cream of the crops of produce in the kingdom. Then they vomited it all up in order to eat more. They saved the vomit to offer the pigs, goats, and slaves as their gruel. Wine flowed like a river. It took a lot of alcohol to make a Watcher god become inebriated.

Abram was getting impatient. He was entirely repulsed with the idolatry and wanted El Shaddai to hurry up and destroy this place. But Mikael calmed him down.

“In El Shaddai’s good time. All things in El Shaddai’s good time.”

Ophir and Uzal surveyed the Processional Way. They knew that the pageant of gods would be coming back tomorrow with Nimrod in his own chariot. They would be ready. They had struck upon a plan that was very risky, but if they were lucky, they would finally get their revenge on the monster that had slaughtered their families.

On the eleventh day of Akitu, Abram and Mikael had crossed the river to observe from a distant ridge what would happen that day. Mikael said they did not want to be near the epicenter. They found a large flat parcel of land without any structures around.

As Abram was straining to get a look at the activities down in the city, he heard the words beside him, “Behold, they are one people, with one language and religion.”

Abram snapped his head to see El Shaddai standing beside him and Mikael as the Angel of Yahweh.

Abram dropped to his knees in worship. He was trembling.

But El Shaddai kept looking at Babylon’s magnificent architecture and achievements. He mused out loud, “Th
is is only the beginning of what they will do. They will stop at nothing to achieve the impossible.”

Abram blurted out, “My Lord.”

El Shaddai looked down at Abram. He put his hand on his head with loving care and smiled.

Abram melted inside. It was the Lord. He could not describe the look of the face that on the surface was rather common looking.

But in his eyes, he saw the heavens and the earth.

And then El Shaddai turned his face back to Babylon and continued walking.

Abram got up to follow him, but Mikael held him back. He looked at him with a mere shaking of his head “no” and Abram stood still.

They both watched the angelic figure travel down onto the plain and cross the bridge into the city, its anonymous herald of judgment.

The cloaked figure dissolved into the masses at the gate.

At the north end of the city, the gods reversed their Processional march back to the temple complex to mount the mighty Etemenanki ziggurat. They would congregate in the temple shrine at the top and temple priestesses would engage in
hieros gamos
, the ritual act of sexual copulation with the gods.

The eleventh day was the day that Nimrod and Marduk had planned for over a generation. All seven planets were aligned in a heavenly convergence. The cusp of the Age of Aries had arrived. All the high gods of the pantheon were present as well as a dozen others. Anu, the father god of heaven, Enlil the Lord of the Air, Enki, god of water, Ninhursag, goddess of the earth, Sin the moon god, and Shamash the sun god.

The only one of the Seven Who Decree the Fates that was absent was Ishtar
. Thank the gods
, thought Nimrod. She would have made a catastrophe out of it with her lime lighting for attention and tendency to hijack such ceremonies for her own exaltation. And she might have ruined their carnival of bacchanalia with her violent extremes.

It was these thoughts that occupied Nimrod’s mind when the first arrow penetrated his throat.

His head jerked back. Blood spurted from his wound as he grasped his throat.

Then the second one hit in his upper shoulder, jutting out from under his collarbone.

Everyone’s heads turned back to see where the arrow came from. There was a library just over the Processional Way, but there were many windows, and no one could see any more projectiles.

It went exactly as planned. Ophir had become skilled with a bow and especially in rapid firing. He was able to notch, aim, and release two arrows in a blink. He was firing from the sixth floor.

They had planned to target Nimrod from behind because everyone would be focused forward in the parade, and would quite literally not see it coming. But by holding back, Ophir drew the straining attention of most people whose complete focus would be on trying to see where the arrows came from.

Meanwhile, Uzal, secreted in the crowd with a pig butchering blade leapt out into the street and headed for Nimrod to cut off his head. His arms were strong, and his legs were built from slave labor to carry him fleet footed to Nimrod before any of the slow Stone Ones could catch him.

But while everyone including Nimrod was looking backward, Terah was not. He saw Uzal coming and he drew his sword.

As Uzal launched himself from the chariot wheel at Nimrod, Terah exploded and hit the flying Uzal midair with his blade, stopping the momentum and bringing the two of them to the floor.

Uzal was dead, the sword buried in his chest.

The crowd that swarmed the library to find him would catch Ophir in minutes. But he would not be caught alive, for he slit his own throat rather than face the hideous torture that would surely follow his capture.

It had all happened so fast.

Semiramis was in the chariot next to Nimrod. She had to play dumb so she pretended to lose her mind and she started to climb out of the four-wheeled boxy chariot, screaming. She was pulled back in by the ever-cool Mardon who held her with comfort — another theatrical pretention as there was not a sliver of compassion or comfort in Mardon’s soul.

Terah grabbed the reins and raced Nimrod’s chariot ahead to the Esagila where healing priests might save his life.

The other gods had drawn their weapons and scanned the horizon for enemies. But none were forthcoming. It was a conspiracy against the king alone. It was common in this world, and to be
expected. There were always rebels with revolutionary intentions. The goal was to smoke them out and kill them before they could organize. These two evidently worked alone.

The Stone Ones were able to hold back the excitable crowds from becoming a rampaging mob of fear. The crowd of flesh and blood was no match for their weighty unmoving rock.

Marduk took a position to speak after a herald blew his trumpet.

The crowd finally calmed down.

Marduk bellowed to the masses, “Your king is alive and well! He will be healed by the magi and shamans of my temple! He is in good hands! Let us string up the bodies of these traitors. BUT the ceremony must go on!”

The masses roared in approval.

There was no way in Sheol that Marduk would let anything interrupt the opening of the portal to the heavens. There was already a funnel cloud forming over the ziggurat Etemenanki. He could see the Convergence was almost upon them. The four winds had kicked up and the sky was getting dark. The time was at hand.

Marduk was not sure that Nimrod was actually alive. He did not care. Nimrod was dispensable. The pantheon was not.

Ophir’s and Uzal’s bodies were tied to the chariots of Marduk and dragged down the street to the entrance of Etemenanki.

The gods made it inside the temple complex and shut the gates on the public.

They made their way up the stairway to heaven to engage in their hieros gamos orgy with the hierodules of the temple.

The people outside hung what was left of the bodies of the conspirators on poles. They had lost some arms and legs, and their flesh had been peeled off from being dragged down the street. They were bloody masses of flesh and bone that the festivalgoers celebrated in a frenzy. Some even ate chunks of their flesh as a means of communion with the gods.

Deep in the temple of Esagila, the healing priests cared for Nimrod. He would have permanent scars. But he would not die. It was not even close. He bore countless scars from countless battles. These would merely be two more. The shoulder wound was minor. The archer assassin must have been aiming for the head and missed. The throat wound was a bit more complicated. The arrow missed his carotid artery, but nicked his vocal chord on its way out. For now, he could not talk, but when he did; he would have a raspy edge to his voice that he would carry with him to the grave.

Terah entered. He had stayed outside after he dropped them off at the temple. But he returned now with two severed heads of the conspirators. Showing them to Nimrod.

He said, “They are slaves. I saw the brand marks on their bodies before I took their heads.”

Semiramis blurted out, “Get eyewitnesses to identify them. Find out their motives and who they are connected to.”

“Yes, my queen.”

Nimrod reached out and grabbed Terah’s arm.

“Thank you,” he said, “for saving my life.”

Terah said, “I guess even Naphil kings are mortal,” and left them.

That phrase stung Nimrod. His memory flooded with his past journeys to Mount Hermon, the forest of Humbaba the Terrible, through the underworld, and to the mystical island of Dilmun — all in search of the ever-elusive immortality — only to conclude that he would die. All the bitterness and anger raged up in him.

That will all be behind me shortly,
he thought.
The gods have promised me immortality and full godhood when this day is done.

Semiramis approached Nimrod and touched him with affection. “Leave the inquisition to me, my love. I will track down and
personally disembowel anyone who has a connection to the assassins — after I have tortured out their information.”

Nimrod noted her eagerness, not a characteristic he would connect to her affections for him. He glanced at Mardon, who was soulless as always, probably daydreaming triggered by Semiramis’ mention of torture.

Mardon was actually thinking how he might get away to Haran to find that voluptuous little flesh pot Sarai.

A healer shaman finished bandaging the neck. Nimrod commanded with a scratchy voice through painful words, “When Terah returns, have him assemble the entire golem army of Stone Ones around the ziggurat base. I will meet them there.”

Nimrod left for the ziggurat.

Since the gods were going to be glorified in a transformational shift of worldwide proportions, they decided to conclude their sexual orgy in the Etemenanki shrine with a sacrifice of the human participants.

At a certain moment in the carousing, Marduk announced, “Let us join the feast!”

In preplanned response, all the gods took the throats or femur arteries of their sexual partner and sunk their fangs into them with abandon.

They had received plenty of animal blood from the daily sacrifices of the festival, but there was something more delectable about human plasma. They drank their fill and bathed in the blood until the corpses were pale skeletal versions of their former selves. The naked scaled bodies of the Watcher gods were shining with the glittering of full-orbed emotional release. It was what happened when their passions flared. They were the Shining Ones, and the pupils of their unblinking reptilian eyes widened to take it all in with relish.

Then they turned on one another, and poured out their lust in debauched indulgence. It was an orgy of the gods. It was heights of pain and pleasure only divine beings could achieve.

The sound of a large gong and the feeling of rumbling earth brought Marduk out of his delirium of excess.

He pulled his arm out of Enki’s anus and stumbled to the edge of the shrine to see what was going on below.

A crack of thunder resounded overhead. The funnel cloud was swirling above the shrine.

Below in the huge courtyard of Etemenanki, the entire army of ten thousand Stone Ones assembled and stood to attention at the command of Terah. Beside him stood Nimrod with bandaged throat, who oversaw the complete entourage of every magician, every sorcerer, every astrologer and omen diviner in Babylon surrounding the ziggurat with ritual incantations.

The temple towered over them. It was three hundred feet high, a small mountain, a cosmic mountain. Soon to be the new home of the gods, and an occultic portal from which they might storm heaven.

It was time.

The other gods joined Marduk in sympathetic magic with the sorcery below and began their own incantations and spells.

Across the river, Abram and Mikael could see the spout of the funnel cloud reaching down to touch the shrine. A flurry of winds surrounded the entire complex. Loose animals around them were braying, barking, and bleating as if to warn everyone of something.

The spout kept coming closer and closer to the congregation of the gods. The transformation of the ages was about to begin.

The spout touched down on the shrine. Contact was made between heaven and earth.

But then what happened was not anticipated.

Instead of the portal opening up for more Watchers to come down, Abram saw all the gods in the shrine sucked up into the whirlwind.

He looked at Mikael, who laughed heartily.

It was the opposite of what they had expected.

But before Abram could process what he saw, they felt the earth rumble beneath their feet. They saw the land before them rise up like a rug being shaken.

The outer walls got hit first. They disintegrated under the impact. Abram could hear the screams of terror from the multitude of people across the river inside the city gates.

Then the earthquake hit the ziggurat Etemenanki and split it almost in two. The top half of the structure crumbled and fell down upon the Stone Ones below, burying them in an avalanche of rubble. But the bulk of the temple remained in tact with a huge crack through its core.

Abram could not see it, but the golemim who were not pulverized by the falling brickwork became victims of the concussive shock wave and collapsed into piles of rubble as well.

A pathway of destruction and carnage made its way up the city and devastated the palace and Ishtar Gate. They were reduced to mounds of painted bricks and broken bodies.