HouseofCush(excerpt)

"I thought thou were dead." She said.

He patted up and down his body--pinched, his wrist.

If he was not dead, it was a miracle.

"Osiris." She said, teasingly.

He tilted his head up towards her voice and tried to concentrate. He couldn't recall anything else but he did remember her. Inanna. Her name is Inanna.

He was back from the dead, alright. At least he thought he was. He also thought he was awake. That was before he tried to think, and his mind tried to block his recall. He allowed it the temporary respite. But even as he closed his eyes to reality for a little while longer, he knew that sooner or later he would have to wake up and face what mindblowing thing had happened to him.

A day later he bolted upright in bed. A horrible thought abruptly struck him. He reached up and touched his face. The skin was still there, but there was a rough beard that told him he must have been unconscious for at least three days. Suddenly it dawned on him that he could not see. He reached up to examine his eyes and discovered they had been bandaged. Despite the mental block, he began to concentrate--to try to remember what happened to him, where he was, and how he got here. His senses told him immediately that he was at home in his own space. The wit--Inanna, must have brought him here.

Inanna. Did she bring him back to life? Did the witch call him back from the void? He remembered hearing her crying out to him as he passed into the black of eternal silence. She called him Osiris--one who rises from the dead. It was Sorcery. A naming. She had named him back to the living side of the divide between life and death, of the flesh.

Suddenly, breathtakingly, he remembered something else.

He reached up and snatched the bandages from his eyes. He still could not see, but that was not what brought the sting of salt to his damaged orbs, or the sobs of anguish from his trembling lips.

She must've heard his cries, because she came rushing to his side. He felt her presence and instantly fire welled up within him. He didn't know that she was still in his space. He had not sensed her. Surprise, caused the pure, unadulterated substance of her, to assault his senses. His love for her masked her true essence.

"Thou should not have taken these off. "

She touched him as she replaced the bandages, and he barely staved off the urge to engage her.

"Marduk," her voice was pure pain "Would thou, truly?"

"Ye knew! Thou were a part of it all"

Her beautiful, ebon face crumbled. She stumbled, as if the coldness in his tone had plunged like a dagger into her heart.

She fell/threw herself upon him "Slay me Marduk! Only for the sake of our love and all that I have risked for thee, allow me to expire in thy arms."

"Slay her?" The woman spoke energy very carelessly, and it was hard enough for him as it was, not to grab her neck.

"Think Thou I, of the same cloth as the monsters who will plot to destroy a world?" He shoved her off him with violence he had not intended.

She fell to the floor. When she spoke next, he never heard a voice more disconsolate, or sensed an essence-- that was not dying,--more faint.

"Thou hath slain me." She said, and he knew it was truth.

How could he kill her and not put an end to himself? Living without half his soul would be far harder than living without his eyes or his arms and legs.

It was more weakness than he could afford that gave life to his next words.

"Live witch. If it is my love that will resurrect thee, be thou unto me, now, and forever hence, Isis."

She scrambled to her feet and swayed above him.

"Thy riddling suspends me, Marduk! Tell me thy heart!"

He reached up and pulled her down to him. His big hands circled her slender neck. He squeezed.

"Doth this tell thee my heart?"

"No." She did not move or resist. Her voice was so soft and accepting, for a moment he thought it might do her a kindness to twist her head.

His hands relaxed and moved up, caressed her smooth cheeks. He tilted up his head and kissed her, lightly first, and then hard and deep.

He finally let her go.

"Doth that tell thee my heart?"

Tears were in her big brown eyes-- brown eyes that were, moments ago, as green as a daggercat's.

"Yes." She answered happily. She stood there, and he could tell that she desperately wanted a look from him, maybe a gesture. He looked at her for the first time with eyes of what he really wanted. She gasped; an involuntary sound that resounded like a million years of desperation. She leaned over him and reached for his center.

He embraced her and in their nakedness they became one.

Hours later, when he thought she was asleep and he would never know the peaceful bliss of it again, she spoke:

"Marduk, why do the triumph of thy love for me, over thy hatred for me, rename me?"

Being a Sorceress she knew the significance of names. A name always had a deeper purpose for a Magician than just a title.

"Because thy love has called me back from the wages of my sins."

"Then I am thy wife?"

"Doth thy know me?"

She propped herself up on an elbow and stared into his face. "Thou remember?"

"Doth thee?"

She nodded.

"When?" He asked.

"When I thought thou were..." She stopped. "When did thou remember?"

"From the moment I sensed thy essence"

"I'm so sorry." Tears rolled warm down his bare chest. "Thou will always despise me?"

"Shalt I love evil? What thou hath done to the Cushites of Atlan shall stain thee forever."

She turned away from him. Her loud sobs ended abruptly, as if she had instantly turned into a different person. She whispered something so softly he barely heard it. What he thought he heard her say once again, was, "slay me."

He laid his hand on her shoulder and coerced her to turn again towards him. His tone was impassioned.

"Why beloved? Surely thou art no gold hungry, hound of the perverted. What strong desire? For what gain, bindeth thou, thy soul to the legions of the hell bound? "

"Marduk, think thou of the tormented history of the children of the abds. Would thou ask them why, twenty years hence? Or would thy know?"

Tears again stung the big Magician's eyes. "If I had no other reason, I shall crush them all for little Inanna."

"No Milord, Inanna belongs to them. But Isis belongs to thee. Struggle not for Inanna Marduk, but Isis will forever be faithful, good, and true to love and righteousness."

Marduk, the reluctant Sorcerer stiffened in his bones and he felt blood speed to his heart.

"Why hath thou spoken magic? Did thou misspeak a word?"

"Ye know I hath not."

"The unknowable One hath visited me."

"I know."

"But how?"

"Because when they speak thy name in the Guild, strong Sorcerers tremble and weak Sorcerers gnash their teeth."

"It is urgent then that I leave this place now, for they hath given me up. But there are things I have to do first. Will ye help me?"

"I have already commanded my abds....Marduk, take them with thee."

"I shall secure all the surviving Cushites of course."

"Please, Marduk. Do not vex me with worthless speech. I lose too much. My abds will be waiting for thee and ready to go at a moment's notice. They have murdered themselves at my command unless ye get them away before it is discovered. To try to save all the Igigis, is to doom them all."

"But they are all that is left of the WoMans of Atlan. I cannot---"

"Marduk, I have released my Igigis, but the others are bound to the Guild. They will rise up against thee. Risk all, not for the toadies, but ye have been ordained on behalf of an Universe. There are plans, Milord--powerful magic being invoked...words being spoken that will condemn the whole earth to an eternity of sorrow and pain. It is beyond the scope of what even ye can imagine. I have instructed my Igigis to counter speech with speech but thou are in a losing race Marduk."

"Beloved Inanna, that thou will betray such secrets; that thou will do such works against thy own security, surely condemns my measure of thy aura as a lie."

"No Milord, never doubt thy sense, for it is thy strength and shield. One who speaks to thee now is Isis, not Inanna."

"Then thou cannot be released?"

"I will be released after thou defeat me."

"Ye, beloved?"

"I am they and I am thee."

"What will they do to thee when they discover what thou hath done?"

"They will do naught to me because a house divided cannot stand. They know that their only hope to survive ye is to stand as one."

"Doth thou even now seek to deceive me? I have seen thee devour amongst thy toadies, one against the other. Thou are restricted by naught in what thy do to deceive."

'Tis true Marduk, with the lesser people, but not amongst the Sorcerers of Sumeria. They--we--hate one another but we know we need to stand united if we are not to perish by the destiny of the son of the sun.

"It is my destiny to break thee in two."

"Then it is mine to be broken."

"Give thou, then, the victory unto me before there is even a battle?"

"There can be no battle against the great Will of creation--only the delusional flailing of fools who have long lost all perception of reality. Fools, who in their psychoses believe moments to be Ages and themselves to be long-lived, when the unknowable One, has never yet blinked an eye and seen them."

"Isis---"

"--Turn thou, away from me now, Marduk. They call and I must go to them. When next we meet it shall be in battle. But hearten beloved, because the unknowable One has been merciful. In the end, when all evil lay broken to pieces at thy feet, I shall be made whole again in oneness with the son of all that is Just. In the end, thou will turn again to me. This is the strength that allows me to send thee on thy way, even tho' with thee goes all that is of me that is not now loathsome to my soul."

First tell me why hath I never seen thee before three weeks ago? Thou sit among the Sorcerers like thy had been on council forever."

She stopped moving away and turned to him. "Thou hath not seen me before because I am half Igigi. I was born to an abd, and raised by one. Because I could not hide my powers as a child, my high born father hath claimed me. I have long been among the Sorcerers but they kept me out of sight because I am a last Generation Halfling. Today, they are afraid and desperate because of thee and thou Father's love for thee. They need me, and so they no longer ostracize me."

She finished answering his question and took one last, long look at him. Then she turned and exited his presence.

He watched her leave, hoping with all his might that she was right in all she predicted.

He knew they were pure evil. He knew they were depraved. He knew they were without consciences and after the destruction of Atlan he now know they are insane. But...

The Atlantean word for the most high One is "Atom," or "Atum." Surely, not even the diseased minds of the Sumerian Sorcerers could be so delusional as to think they could aim their black magic at the very seat of the apex of creation. Incredulous! But even though the thought of their hubris struck him as insanely incredulous, he knew SHE did not lie. They truly intended to use black magic to challenge creation.

They plan to set themselves up as "gods" and enslave the entire universe to their version of reality; a reality that makes war, genocide, starvation, oppression, perversion, elitism, WoMan sacrifice, and slavery the normality, when it is an aberration that all creation would vomit out of Itself if the distortion induced by black magic did not drug the collective psyche, rendering it not only incapable of hating the wrong, the unjust, the abomination--but actually developing a lust for every iniquity.

They seek to create anew, their world reality-- where the Tyrant is worshiped as a hero, and the destroyers are glorified as Saviors. A world where slaughter raises up Empires, and the bloody sacrifice of living creatures, multiplies riches. A world where the divide is loved and unity is hated; where to do good is derided as weakness and to do evil is praised as strength. A world where to respect, love and be kind to all is despised, and to denigrate, debase, and harden the heart to the poor and powerless is lauded.

This is the same reality they had created in Atlantis, and now that they have destroyed Atlan, they seek to mold again the great will of creation after the designs of their own monstrous hearts.

But if they will be gods, he will be avenging angel; if they will be day, he will be night. And he will break them on every hill and in every valley. Into every dark, hidden, crevice he shall pursue them. When they overturn a stone he shall overturn a pebble. When they speak a curse, he shall speak a blessing. When they create a slave he shall create a free man. And when they lay low a woman he shall raise one up.

So swear he, the one chosen by the most high One, because he has loathed injustice.

He is Marduk.