"No!" Anunitu says to a priest
who pours her an infusion of black mushroom. She waves a
dismissive hand, her eyes flare, "take it away. Get back, get
away from me."
She's tense. She glances
sideways at her husband the king beside her. Suleimon is three
times her age. Addicted to black magic, shriveled and burned out
by it, he's slumped in his gilded throne like a caged old crow
with broken wings. Anunitu is
troubled by
the king's
lethargy. A ruin, Suleimon is barely still a demigod, Anunitu is
thinking, But what's left of him here tonight will do.
“Are you ready to bring the god
through, my king,” she says. He doesn’t answer.
She’s disquieted
by his silence, but isn't surprised. He's grown more
detached, drained by his inhuman appetites. She has given him the magic to
say tonight, because only a demigod and true bloodline king of the House of Daoud can say the magic.
Only he technically controls this ground and its demonic sway.
She's thinking that he's necessary to the ritual, but only incidentally
to her need.
Since before the
great flood, Anunitu’s race has worshipped in this cavern,
prayed to the Demon Queen Auriani--keeper of stone, fire, blood,
and death. They prayed to Auriani for relief from life’s wheel, freedom from fear,
what they desired most of all--immortality. They
found a way. Anunitu was chosen before birth for this ritual.
She would be consecrated as a sorceress, reared as a queen, and
then, in her 20th year of life, she would unite with the demon
king Asmodeus, die, and be reborn as Great Auriani.
With the demon's magic, Anunitu, Auriani reborn, would burn
impurity from the planet, bestow immortality upon the faithful
of her subjects, and rule forever. Tonight is her night, here,
in the cavern of Kthon.
She
glances at the faithful, who await the ritual, the coming
of Asmodeus. She slants a nervous glance to where the sacrifices
are chained on iron grates over a volcanic crevasse, the Divine
Hole Of Damgal Earth Mother. Asmodeus will be born there. He
will enter this universe out of Damgal, from uncreation to
creation, from non-existence to existence. He will be delivered
here, from out of Death into Life.
Soon,
Anunitu thinks, soon...
A fragrance rises from the
excited throng, Anunitu wrings her hands, the smell of fear, and desire.
She thinks, I
swear by Asmodeus! By by every she-god and he-god between
here and the Void. That my destiny will be fulfilled tonight, even need I rip it from the burning air with my bare
fucking hands.
Her eyes are wild,
she quietly rhymes a spell, "The ritual must not plod. Do it
now, in this room. From his birth uncontrolled, hold back the god.
And me—protect from doom."
A clatter of
weapons--leather, the scrape of boots on stone, and Anunitu is
surrounded by her guard. Bach-cha-mut leans in, the coldly
handsome face close to hers.
“Queen,” he says, quietly,
“what is it? What perturbs you?”
“Nothing,” she waves him off,
doesn’t look at him, “Move back.”
She grimaces, “You're too close
to me.”
Bach-cha-mut freezes. He’s been
a lot closer than this. He steps back, face like iron.
He straightens slowly, body like oiled granite, a dark, empty
space around him.
Anunitu glares at him. "I said,
get away from me. You’re too close.”
His eyes say, You never
minded it all those times we fucked. He makes a small obeisance,
"Yes, Queen," turns to go.
Her shout is a knife-edge,
“Stop!"
He turns to her.
"Bow down, Priest."
Bach-cha-mut doesn't move. He
gestures around, says, "This is my house."
"I am your queen."
"With respect, queen, I rule
this temple."
"This temple is the State. I am
governance."
"The State is Hebrew; our own
great religion, this house, is Kthon." His brows lift, expose
the black glitter of his eyes.
"All are melded in me, priest."
Her eyes slide to the
slow-roasting sacrifices stretched over Damgal. Her own
handmaiden, Umayma-Het thrashes and groans there, chained flat
to a grate over the fire.
Anunitu says, “Do you defy me,
warlock? If you do, you're braver than your lover Umayma-Het. How do you like
her now? She’s pregnant with your spawn. Is she therefore even more
beautiful to you now? Do you love her now?”
Bach-cha-mut looks at the
Queen, his eyes like holes in black ice. He glances at
Umayma-Het, who is charred, peeled of skin, and
unrecognizable. He shrugs, “She was a mistake.”
Anunitu lifts her chin. She
stares at him. She pitches her voice so only he can hear her,
and says, “Am I also one of your mistakes?”
Bach-cha-mut glances at
Suleimon, but the king seems in another place, detached. “No, of course not, queen.”
She tightens a spell around
him, like the squeeze of a serpent, and says, "Would you like to join
Umayma-Het over the fire?"
He tries a counter spell, but
hers is more powerful. Shaken, he answers her, "No, queen,
I would not like to join Umayma-Het."
Anunitu
thrusts out her high breasts, rouged nipples like berries, and
says, “Prostrate yourself before me.”
He hesitates, then sinks to one knee. He sits back on his booted heel, head
down.
“No. I said prostrate yourself.”
He does not look at her. He
takes his time, lays prone before her in the dust.
She leaves him there, leveled
out for the faithful to regard. Laying there, feeling all eyes
on him, Bach-cha-mut opens a sluice in his mind, and floods it
with cold displeasure.
Anunitu rises, moves in a hiss
of beads and gold chain, and stands over
the warlock. Only he can hear her, the intimate, personal tone, “I
will ask you again now," she says, "my stallion: will you pledge
yourself to me forever? To me alone, as my consort? Only then
can
you join with the god Asmodeus and his power, when we bring him
through.” She glances across the cavern at the black idol of the
god and then back to the priest.
Bach-cha-mut says, “No. I will
not join you.”
Her eyes flare, she steps back,
“Why not?”
“I will not be enslaved you.”
She glances at the king, but
he's not paying attention, stares at the floor. She says to
Bach-cha-mut, “Are you saying you won’t share in the god’s power? I
can't believe it.”
Bach-cha-mut bites off each
word, says, “I don’t
share.”
The queen is
on the edge of panic.
She needs Bach-cha-mut's knowledge of black arts to bring the god through
into this universe. Her hands flutter to her chest, “All right,”
she says, “all right, warlock, keep to yourself then, but you will
help me bring the god through.”
“That was our bargain, queen;
and after that, I choose my own reward.”
Before the queen can speak, King Suleimon lifts
his head, opens his glazed, yellow eyes wide, and says to no
one, in a choked
voice, “It's time.”
Anunitu startles, looks at the
king and realizes he's finally gone mad, that his powers as a
demigod are nearly gone.
"Who are you?" She says to
Suleimon.
Slow, he turns to the sound of
her voice. He stares at her, his eyes wide, and says, "I don't
know; I was a king somewhere; I was powerful as a wave on
the sea; or, it was a dream." He looks around, "Where am I,
child?"
Panicky, Anunitu whirls to
Bach-cha-mut and says, “Get to your post, High Priest of Kthon,
Asmodeus must be born now or not at all.”
The sorcerer is already on his
feet, “Yes, Queen.”
Bach-cha-mut looks
at Suleimon and thinks, Hang on you demented, old bastard,
you can't fail now, you owe me, nothing will stop me, I'd
trade my soul for the power of Asmodeus.
Outside, above, in the black air over
Jerusalem, in the cold sky, thunder breaks like a vast, dirty bottle and the
divine storm pours down.
