The bone-chilling noise of its feeding follows us up a steep gradient. When the sounds finally quit, I glance back. Gate and guardian have disappeared.
“Why is the landscape always changing?” I ask. “Where does it disappear to?”
“Nowhere. The Void is empty unless it is not.”
I cannot puzzle out the fire-god’s meaning. Omnipotent nonsense, I suppose.
Enlil ascends the slope. I drag behind, my legs twinging and my side aching. The long stretches of sleeplessness have dwindled my stamina. Enlil notices my sluggishness and pauses. I almost overtake him, and he climbs on. He does this again and again without a word of encouragement. Cala is still, but I sense her near, like a person breathing in my ear.
He scales to the top and waits. The din of gushing water increases as I crest the rise. I bend over, wheezing. A wooden rope bridge spans a sheer divide and, far below, a river. Rapids tear at its surface, sending up an almighty roar. The flimsy bridge has no handrails. The planks have rotted-out holes, and the gaps between them are irregular, some wider than our feet.
Enlil passes me a mango. “Eat and recover your strength.”
I gobble the fruit in record time. My fatigue goes away, as does the pinch in my side.
Enlil sidesteps down the gravel slope to the flat grade where the rope bridge connects to the cliff by double posts. His footing unlooses stones that roll off the edge and plummet into the choppy river.
He motions to me. I clamp his fingers and descend to him. I survey the cliff for another crossing. This rickety bridge is our only path to the other side.
“We must cross one at a time,” he says. “I will go first.”
Holding his spear across his chest for balance, Enlil ventures onto the first plank. The bridge swings from his weight and the ropes tauten. He hazards another narrow plank and glances back at me.
“Face forward!” I yell.
He grins and straddles another gap.
Gods, what a pest.
Enlil navigates the planks in succession, evading the rotten sections. At the center of the bridge, a portion of the plank creaks. He readjusts his footing. As he waves to let me know he is well, the wood beneath him snaps and he drops.
“Enlil!” I fall to my knees at the ledge.
He hits the river and goes under. His spear surfaces, then him. The rapids sweep him along.
“Oh, gods, gods, gods, gods.” I stumble along the cliff, surveying for a trail down to the river.
Enlil floats downstream. Soon he will be out of sight. I will be alone, lost without a guide, and with no means of freeing Deven.
I still cannot find a trail. There is only one way down.
“Please. Please. Please.” Gazing up, as if I can somehow see Anu in the Beyond, I leap.
A scream wrenches out of me as I fall. My feet collide with the icy water first. I submerge and resurface into rapids. Gasping and kicking, I spin and bob downriver. On the next surge, I grab sight of land and lose it again. Another swell drags me under. I am heaved up and pushed into a boulder. The strap of my prosthesis loosens, and my wooden hand is swept in one direction, me another. It is swiftly lost in the torrent of waves. I gulp down water, only it is thicker and heavier than what I know.
Enlil’s words return about Irkalla casting a plague on the under realm and turning the water to blood.
I gag up the dampness. More wetness splashes up my nose and into my mouth. I am going to drown, choking on blood in this godless river.
A beam of light glows in front of me. The current throws me directly into the radiance. I hug the end of Enlil’s spear. He tows me to a shallow bank, and I flop on a bed of pebbles. Blood smears our skin and clothes. A slash on my side bleeds from where I struck the boulder, mingling with the rest. My stomach buckles. I retch on the hard-packed shore and flop onto my back.
Enlil glowers down at me. “You stupid, stupid woman. How many times must I watch you bleed?”
“How. Many. Times . . . ?” I trail off.
Cala shoves into my thoughts. Remember.
I flinch at the power of her hold. If she were physically present, her demand would bruise.
Remember what?
Remember who we are!
Her mandate smashes into my consciousness. A murky splotch charges across my vision and hauls me into the chasm of her being.
Thunderous cheers echo throughout the amphitheater. I hurl my urumi blades. My nearest opponent yields, gashes seeping across her chest. I reel around and slash. The whiplike blades strike another competitor, cutting her down. She howls wildly. I hardly hear her over my inner gong ringing, pushing me to end this match.
One final time, I slice at my rival. My blades slit her throat and put her suffering to rest. She falls onto the stacks of bodies around me. They are blood-spattered messes of ripped limbs, gushing wounds, and silent mouths. No other opponents rush me. She was the last woman, last competitor, standing.
No. I am.
The spectators packing the rows of the amphitheater pound their feet and pump their fists. “Hundred, hundred, hundred,” they chant.
I thrust my blood-streaked urumi above my head. “Father Anu and Mother Ki—it is finished.”
From overhead, descending from a divide in the rolling white clouds, a burning chariot pulled by horses of flame blazes a trail of fire. As the chariot appears, the audience hushes. I drop my urumi. Blood speckles my heavy armor. My lower body is bathed in it, and my own blood flows from a cut near my hip. I tuck my elbow against the wound to slow the bleeding.
The fiery chariot circles the oval arena. I squint into the glory of the horses and their rider. The fire-god radiates vivacity, outshining that of his mounts. His magnificence comes into focus. Flowing hair, wavy yet tamed. Bare chest sculpted from marble. Acres of bronze skin. Hypnotizing cinder eyes. A full mouth drawn out like a bow and a clean-shaven jawline.
He lands his chariot across the length of the arena. A sarong covers his upper thighs and groin, leaving toned legs wound by strappy leather sandals. He does not carry his lightning spear but a necklace. The hushed spectators bow as he steps off the chariot and strides to me. My gaze holds his, trapped in the aliveness of its color. Swirling golds and reds and oranges, a peek into the living flame within him. He stops and lifts the medallion.
“My champion!” He slips the necklace over my head. The weight lies against my collarbone; the surface is engraved with the gods’ quad emblem.
I start to bow, but he halts me.
“You do not bow to me. My heart, my champion.” The fire-god lowers to one knee and presents a crown, a delicate arrangement of gold-plated lotus flowers. “You shall be my hundredth queen.”
I remove my helmet and drop it in the dirt. The dead surround us, so many I question the sanctity of my soul. But these women tried to separate us. They died so that we might be one.
I place the crown and fall into him.
He cradles the back of my head. “Will you forgive me this trial?”
“You need never ask for forgiveness. I did this for us, and I would do it again.”
His eyes flash at the implication of another tournament, another trial standing between our love. “Nothing will separate us. You and I will be united forevermore.”
The fire-god lowers his nose to mine, tipping our foreheads together. As our lips skim, Cala releases me from her clutches.
Now you remember.
My eardrums pulsate against my skull. I can still feel Enlil’s kiss and smell the misty clouds on his skin. As I reorient myself, he wipes the bloody river water from my cheeks.
Tarek cannot have been right. During my rank tournament, he told our people I was the reincarnated soul of a legend, the greatest tournament champion of all time, who gained the favor of a god. This warrior battled Enlil’s wives and courtesans to secure her place as his one hundredth wife, and, in doing so, brought down an army of women.
She had no name, no fate of her own, except the destiny that bound her to the fire-god. She is simply known as Enlil’s hundredth rani.