Baghdad. The hidden Temple of Tiamat at Lagash is the center of their efforts.”
“I’m not going to Iraq.” He’d never flown before, but just the thought of spending hours trapped in a metal cylinder made him shudder. Demons, especially storm demons, didn’t react well in tight spaces. Things tended to burst apart when he felt claustrophobic. The last thing he needed was a free-fall from thirty-thousand feet. It wouldn’t kill him, but the injuries would take months to heal correctly. While he could fly on the winds in his demon form, it would require too much energy to travel so great a distance, and the last thing he needed was to have his image captured by a weather cam or satellite.
“I didn’t ask you to. I can handle things there.”
“Then what do you need from me? Compared to you, I’m just so much hired muscle.”
“Omar, you, my friend, are my contingency plan. I’ll clean up the mess in Lagash—”
“It hasn’t been called Lagash since ancient times; it’s called Tell al-Hiba now,” Omar interjected.
“—but if I can’t contain it in time, I need you to make sure she doesn’t get the Tablets.”
“The Tablets! If she rises, who cares about the bloody Tablets of Destiny?”
“You will and I will. If she rises, those Tablets are the only things that will keep her from regaining all of her powers and abilities. Tiamat mortal is bad enough, but at least she can be defeated. Tiamat at full strength with a complete compliment of abilities and followers….”
“I thought the Tablets of Destiny just listed prophesies and warnings. How can they renew her to her former glory?”
“Do you honestly think that Tiamat and the other gods would share truths like the secrets of the Tablets of Destiny with the monsters she created? To her you are nothing. A pawn in the pantheon’s power struggles. A foot soldier. A tool to be used.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m a nobody. Just answer the question.”
“The Tablets are less than prophesies, and more. They are possibilities. And hidden within those possibilities is the secret to a full resurrection.”
“And how am I supposed to make sure she doesn’t get a hold of the Tablets?”
“You simply have to keep them safe for me. Guard them. They have been in my possession for centuries uncounted. It would not occur to anyone that I’d hand them over to another. That way, if anyone is interested, they’ll follow me, especially since I’ll be going back to the scene of the crime, as it were.”
“From hired muscle to guard dog. Great. What makes you think you can trust me with it? I’m a demon, a monster. Why shouldn’t I use the Tablets to ensure the rise of Tiamat? After all, for all intents and purposes, she’s my mother; she created me. Maybe I’m tired of the way this world works. It could use a little chaos to shake things up.”
“You will not aid her,” Duke said. “You forget. You have as much to lose as I if she should break free, whole and powerful once more. I could not have destroyed her without your assistance.” His voice changed, became fuller. With an actor’s sense of timing and effect, he began to recite, “Marduk brought forth Imhullu the Evil Wind, the Whirl-wind, the Hurricane,/The Fourfold Wind, the Sevenfold Wind, the Cyclone, the Matchless Wind;/Then he sent forth the winds he had brought forth, the seven of them./To stir up the inside of Tiamat they rose up behind him.”
Omar flinched at the name Imhullu, and with every word, his skin prickled.
“The Enuma Elish.” Duke sipped from his glass of Scotch. “A pretty story, surprisingly accurate in a lot of ways. But it did get something wrong. It was not I that controlled the seven winds that day, was it, Imhullu?”