CHAPTER FOUR
Alad
We travel seven days to reach the cedar forest wherein the beast, Enkidu, the wild man, resides.
In those seven days, I do my best to remain apart from Karu.
Gil takes her every night. Every morning, she looks more hopeful.
This morning, when he planted her in the chariot before him, her expression turned smug, as if she believed he was tumbling to her obvious wiles.
What she wants is clear. I could tell her the truth: he’ll never make her his queen, nor even part of his harem.
He’s a man who believes in purity, and she’s a whore.
Hell, the Goddess Inanna could seek his bed and his hand in marriage, and he would only consent to a quick tumble.
I can see by the hard gleam in his eyes that he’s incensed Karu should have any designs upon him.
She’s treading further up a dangerous path with every duplicitous smile.
But I say nothing since my words would only entrench her into her useless fantasy, giving her something to prove to me. As it stands now, Gil will soon tire of his play and hand her to me, especially if he thinks to punish her for her presumption.
Because her disgust for me is as clear as my lust for her. And he’s not above punishing me, too, for daring to want what he’s taken from me.
I rub my paw over my chest where an ache centers. Gil used to be kind. Joyful. Careless, yes, but he never sought to hurt those around him. But he’s different now. If he’s capable of breaking his promise to me, he no longer deserves my sacrifices to keep him safe, and it's time I accept that.
It’s time for me to go. And maybe I’ll take Karu with me. I’ll take her back to her people. I’ll protect her tribe instead of Uruk’s throne. After all, the world is wide, time is long, and I…I need to move.
When Gilgamesh strolls up beside me, he wraps his hand around my leg, his touch a caress. “Sense anything?”
My entire body aches from the effort to hold my tongue around the words I want to say. Instead, I grunt in reply before turning abruptly to free myself of his unwanted touch. Let him give it to Karu. She’ll enjoy it… until she doesn’t.
“Don’t be like that, Alad,” he says softly. “It’s a king’s prerogative.”
And suddenly, it is all too much. “Everything to you is a king’s prerogative. You broke your word,” I snap, rounding on him. “You don’t even care about her.”
He shrugs, a careless gesture. “I’ve enjoyed her sweetness, but now it’s soured. Don’t fret. You won’t have to suffer her presence for much longer.”
“I don’t suff—what? What does that mean?” A sudden anxiety whips up inside me. What plans has he hatched, my friend, the all-powerful king?
“My goddess grandmother came to me in a dream last night. She advises that the best way to soothe the beast, Enkidu, is to send him a fragrant valley he might plow. Karu, who will hereto forth be renamed Shamhat, per my grandmother’s instructions, will soothe him with her sexual prowess.
When he’s weakened, we’ll strike, granting Enkidu the death he deserves. ”
I can’t speak. My mouth gapes wide, risking a lecture from my mother on catching flies. When I can finally extract civilized sound from the roar rising up through my maw, I snap. “Have you asked Karu if she’ll consent to this madness?”
“Shamhat. Don’t misname her again, or face my wrath.”
Willingly. But I grind my teeth together because my question hasn’t been answered yet.
Gil sighs. “I’ve just told her. She’s being prepared as we speak, though I’ve only the cooks to help her: bathed, perfumed, and dressed in elegant linen.”
“Is. She. Willing?” With each word, I step closer to him.
“She will do as her king demands. Of course.”
Meaning he’s laid a trail of false promises for her to follow, because he’ll never lie with her again, not after she’s fucked a monster. Gil shares well, but only those things that don’t deeply interest him.
“You promised her to me.” My breath takes my words, but he hears them. “Give her to me. Send another to the beast in her stead.”
“One beast or another, is that it?” Drawing up straight, he looks me in the eye. “And did I promise you, friend? Are you certain?”
“Yes. You’re an oath breaker.”
The breath hisses through his teeth. This insult, unlike all the others I’ve thrown at him over our years together, lands. Even the gods despise those who break promises. “How dare you?”
“How dare you?”
His jaw works. His eyes glitter. He looks like he’s about to haul back and square his knuckles into my nose. “You need to remember who I am, shedu. I’m your fucking king. I’m the grandson of Anu himself, and I deserve, no, I demand your fucking respect.”
“Then earn it.”
His chest heaves. His voice grows quiet, so quiet, I barely hear him. “Instead of whining all the time, why don’t you try a bit of obeisance? Might do you good.”
“Fuck. You.” I grit out the words, even though inside me, I’m shriveling up and dying.
Suddenly, he grabs my head and grinds his lips to mine. I jerk back, but his grip tightens. I try to keep my mouth shut against his tongue, but he’s an expert in the amatory arts and as strong as I am. He’s an expert in all things physical, and he overwhelms me.
His tongue is a wiggling worm filling my mouth. Bile rises, and when he rips away, panting, his eyes unnaturally glazed, sick spews from my lips to land on his sandals and toes.
“What the…?” His features twist before he calls for his servants to bathe him of the filth. While they do their work, he glares at me, silent, until they finish and scurry away. Neither of us moves a muscle. We’re both contracted, ready to spring.
I speak first. “I’m not your lover, Gilgamesh. I was your friend. No longer. You’re dead to me.” I turn away.
“If you dare take another length of ground, you’ll be sorry.”
My head rotates towards him. “I’m already sorry. Sorry you’ve become such an asshole.” Because my heart, what’s left of it, is cracking into pieces.
This isn’t him. This isn’t who he is, who he’s meant to be. But without his father’s stabilizing influence, he’s becoming more and more like a god. And the gods are selfish, hateful beings insistent upon their own pride.
“You will not take another step.” He hisses his rage in quiet tones, but it’s all-encompassing. It fills the valley and bounces from the trees. And for the first time in our lives, his wrath is directed at me.
Too late, I realize that I’ve shunned him. By spewing my bile in response to his kiss, I’ve rejected him. By choosing a whore over a king, I’ve become a threat to everything he now stands for.
I should apologize. My mother would insist my pride has no place in the keeping of the peace. But when I begin to raise my paw in supplication, in distress at our disagreement, it reaches no higher than his knee before I drop it again.
My gaze travels around to those warriors and servants who remain a goodly distance away, in a circle, as if the king’s wrath might be contained within a wall of flesh. All of them look horrified. Terrified. They’ve never seen him like this.
I’ve never seen him like this.
I swallow hard before I can continue. “Remember who you are, Gil. You’re a good man…”
“I’m a fucking god, you imbecile.” He hisses the words, drawing close to me again.
“Only half a god, same as me.” I raise my paw, turning it into a hand so I can cup the back of his head and drag his forehead to mine.
“Since your father’s death, you’ve been losing your humanity.
You’re killing my friend, my brother, step by step, and I can’t watch it any longer. Please don’t make me leave you.”
He pulls back and slaps my hand away. “The loss of something weak and puling is no loss.”
For the first time I can remember, fear shrivels my veins. “How can you hate half of what you are?”
His teeth grit together. “We all have parts of our bloodline we disdain. Drunk uncle. Slattern mother. Hittite grandmother.” Suddenly, he shrugs.
“You and I have human forebearers. It’s the most shameful part of us, but unlike you, I refuse to grovel at the knees of my weakness.
I’m going to become greater than the sum of my parts. ”
“You already are great. Were great.”
But my words slide off him without touching his heart.
“I reject my human part. My mother’s fault in choosing to breed with Lugalbanda isn’t mine.
I’m going to do great deeds, Alad. I’m going to make the fucking gods worship me.
I’m going to make the greatest of them proud to be related to me.
And if you refuse to join me, then you stand against me. ”
An overwhelming sadness fills me. It slips into my darkest corners, weighing down my breaths. But behind the despair rises anger. This man isn’t fit to rule a nation of humans. “This is your mother’s influence.”
“Better to be influenced by a goddess than a whore.”
His words find my anger and whip it up to an inferno. With a roar rumbling up my throat, I whip my front leg around and catch him in the jaw, sending him sprawling back onto his ass.
No sooner do I strike than I regret my actions. Claw marks—my claw marks—rake in bloody lines across his face.
His eyes flatten to twin discs of feral green as he pops back up to his feet. He touches his jaw, but his whispered words are not for me. They’re against me. “Anu, give me your affection. I, your grandson, call to you for aid.”
“Gil, no.”
“The kingdom is in peril. Give me your magick.”
He can’t be serious. There’s no name for the horror filling me—that he would call down the gods against me.
“I shall lay great bounty in your temple. I call on you, Grandfather, answer me.” Gil raises his hands to the heavens.
Before I can formulate an argument, a sudden bolt of lightning crackles down and scores the ground between us.
The earth scorches. Blackens. The electric arcs spitting from the connection send me scurrying back three steps, but the mad king only throws back his head and laughs as sparks hit him.
In his eyes, I see my death. Not a trace of the affection we’ve shared remains.
Grass sizzles and bursts into flame, but Gil only steps into the fire. With a lift of his hand, he blows forth a cloud of the smoke haloing around his body. The fumes encompass me like incense in the temple, only this smells of char, ozone, and death rather than myrrh.
“You who were my friend, you whose heart I held in mine, are stone. You are stone, by the power of Anu, to remain until you are ground to dust…” He smiles. “…or your i?arum is stroked by a whore’s hand.”
His words are senseless until…
Unimaginable terror, horror, and disbelief fill me as I try to move toward him and can’t. My feet don’t obey my command. They’re cemented to the earth.
I try to bend my knees. They don’t respond. My arms, too, fail to obey. Even my head can’t turn. I’m faced forward, a statue like those of my mother carved around the gates. My gaze finds Karu in my direct line of sight. She wrings her hands and bites her bottom lip.
I could almost swear I see sadness in her expression, as if I might have had a chance to win her heart if only I could have lived a little longer.
And then it’s too late.
I feel nothing.
I see nothing.
I know nothing.
I am not.