The Alabaster Staff - Edward Bolme [3]
In the stunned silence that followed that crucial moment, Zimrilim heard the last breath rattle its way out of Gilgeam's divine breast.
Tiamat turned and roared her defiance at Ekur's approaching forces, then lurched her way back onto her feet. Using two of her heads to carry the unconscious head by the scruff, she retreated from the field, limping. She managed to get airborne before she reached the edge of the forest, her flight as ungainly as that of an aged albatross.
As the sounds of battle ceased, Zimrilim let his head fall back into the mud, coughed once, and waited as waves of despair washed over him until blessed darkness closed his eyes.
Fifteen years later…
CHAPTER ONE
In times of war, the gates of Messemprar closed each evening at sundown and did not open again until a sliver of the sun could be seen rising above the waves of the Alamber Sea. The guards strictly observed the rule in accordance with the city's extensive laws-a compilation of regulations, fiat, common sense, and bureaucratic whimsy all carefully inscribed in a huge aggregation of conflicting scrolls dutifully assembled and catalogued throughout the city's three-thousand, four-hundred-year history. Clever administrators occasionally "lost" a scroll filled with particularly troublesome requirements, but the bulk of the ancient papyrus still weighed upon the city's populace like a well-worn yoke, providing direction and security, if not freedom.
Outside the city, however, those time-honored directives offered little consolation, especially in mid-winter. A large crowd of pitiful refugees huddled in the lee of the city walls, poorly sheltered from the cold, moist easterly wind that blew in from the sea. It was bad enough that the sun was nearing the winter solstice and thus rose nearly as late as it ever did during the year, but, even worse, slate-colored clouds covered the midwinter sky. When the city guard could not see the sun rise to the east, they delayed opening the gate, just to ensure that the sun god Horus-Re had indeed ascended.
The refugees huddled like helpless sheep, an analogy that occurred to the guards who paced atop the walls, furled in heavy cloaks. Confident in the refugees' chill misery, they drew their chins deep within the folds of their cloaks, and, their minds turned to their own discomfort, they did not notice that one of the refugees, impatient for the gates to announce the dawn, stealthily climbed the city walls.
His name was Jaldi. He was small, but his clean and experienced movements showed that he'd put several rigorous adolescent years behind him. He scaled the wall easily, as the ancient stone offered many good holds for his strong, thin fingers. He made no more noise than a spider and climbed as rapidly as one, as well. Dressed in drab, ragged clothing and hidden in a shadowed angle of the weather-stained wall, he was nearly invisible.
The chill wind cut through his scant clothing, but Jaldi preferred to endure an extra bit of cold over sitting any longer in that rank and foul-mouthed crowd, waiting for the chance to enter Messemprar legally. There was also the simple fact that he had no coin to pay the entry fee and thus would have to try to dodge behind the gate guards yet again. Better to dodge them on his terms, atop a darkened wall, than on theirs, at a narrow and crowded gate.
As he neared