Noah watched the boat recede. Low black clouds advanced towards him, constricting the horizon, the spindrift shimmering in tendrils of white over the waves. The wind raised the stiffened mass of his hair, and tugged at his beard. This was not like the dry wind that had come off the desert weeks before. This wind was moist. There would be rain . He lurched over to a basket in the centre of the boat and drew a bleached animal skin over it, pressing it down to catch any rain that fell. As he did so, he saw the faded colours of a painting he had made on the skin: a mass of buildings, joined together with ladders on the rooftops, and behind them the triangular form of the pyramid his father had built; above that was the long-feathered figure of the bird spirit, and behind it the peaks of the volcano shaped like a bull’s horns, the place where Enlil and the others had walled up the spirit cave of their ancestors. He remembered his vision of twin peaks on the horizon ahead. He felt his cracked lips with his tongue, then drew his thumb again over the obsidian blade, bringing the wetness of blood to his lips. He looked at the emaciated body of Lamesh tied down in the front of the boat. Soon there would be more blood in the offing.
A violent gust tilted the boat, whining and howling over the sea, flattening the wave crests and streaking the water with foam. Lightning forked on the horizon, and he heard the dull rumble of thunder. Enlil’s boat was already far to the east, a speck on a foaming crest beneath racing clouds, and beyond that was the same wall of blackness. Noah twisted around. The blackness was on every side. His heart pounded. Shadowy streaks moved in the clouds at frightening speed, gyrating around him in one direction. Now he knew why there had been no ocean swelclass="underline" he was in the eye of a great storm. The waters that were surging round the horizon would soon reach him. It was a storm that had been set in motion when they had lured the malevolence from the deep, a storm that would encircle and engulf them like the ring of fire he had once lit around the altar of sacrifice, a fire that burned fiercely until all that was left of the bodies was the red-hot embers blown upwards by the exhalations of the underworld.
The boat lurched sideways, then pitched into the water with a mighty crash. A huge wave crest rose high above the trough, and the boat tilted and yawed. He saw another shape ahead, a great swell, sucking them along in its wake. Then the shape swung round, and he saw a giant fin cut the water. The shark rolled, its white belly upwards and its jaws gaping. In a flash, the huge rows of serrated teeth reared up at him, and he stared the monster in the eye. Then it was gone, sweeping the stern of the boat with its tail. He had seen it. He had taken in the spirit power of the beast. Now it was time. He turned quickly and reached into a jar beside Ishtar’s skull, taking out handfuls of red ochre powder and smearing it all over his face and body. He picked up a polished stone mace and lurched towards Lamesh. They had tied him on his back, over a shallow stone basin, his feet and hands lashed to the rails, and drugged him with the resin of the poppy. Noah saw the fin of the beast circling, menacingly. He raised the mace, but his arm was too weak. He dropped it, then picked up the obsidian knife and put both hands on the grip, holding it tight, shaking.
He remembered the last time he had held the knife like this. It had been in the spirit cave, where they had exposed the bodies of the dead for the hooked talons of the spirit birds to rip the flesh and take it to the world beyond. It was there that Noah had tied down the bulls and cut their hearts out, giving the meat to the people and letting the blood gush into the stone basins for the old shamans to gaze into the world beyond. But with their spears of copper, the new priests had forced the shamans to build a wall over the sacred cave, to block it off except for a small entrance to the mountain, and then to cut huge pillars in the quarry and struggle up with them, heaving them into a circle. They had chiselled their new symbols over the old. And then Enlil himself had ripped the plaster-covered skull of their ancestor Anu from the ground, gouging out the cowrie-shell eyes and placing it atop the first of the pillars; he had carved hands into the lintel of the pillar, while the others of the new priesthood, those with braided hair and beards, began to rub and chisel away the sacred paintings on the cave wall and hack off the ancient symbols of their ancestors, leaving only those that Enlil and Noah had incised on the wall that day their father had told them their shaman names.
And then the flood waters had begun to rise. Enlil and the new priesthood had assembled the people and blamed the shamans, ordering them to go to the cave to appease the spirits. But once inside, the shamans had been blocked in, Noah among them, sealed inside a flickering world of shadows and red embers from the fire that was always kept alive in the inner recess. The old shamans had tossed the sacred leaves on the fire and taken the milk of the poppy to ease them on their journey to the spirit world, but fear had tainted their visions. Those who had once floated in water in the dream voyages of the mind were now terrified of drowning. Their visions took them on a journey of horror, to darkness and fire coming from within the mountain. An old man seized with terror had carved an image on a pillar, a swirling face that seemed to be caught in a scream. Noah himself had been half crazed, seeing men and women tearing at their hair and tossing their heads around and around. And then they had asked him to bring out the knife, to do what only he could do. The basins had filled with blood once again.
He remembered what an old woman had said as she lay back over the basin, her eyes milky-white with blindness, her hand holding his and pressing the knife against her heart. You now have the bloodlust, Noah , she had whispered. You will never lose it, and you will doom all around you by your greed for it. In the times of our ancestors, when we were driven to seek the spirits on a river of human blood, he who spilled it was forced to kill himself to save the people from his bloodlust. You must kill yourself too, or be cast out forever from the world of men. Your brother Enlil knows this too, as I taught him the old ways. When she pulled the knife in, Noah had tasted the blood that spattered from her mouth, and he had felt the exultation course through him. She had been right. He had wanted more. They had come willingly, the men and the women and their children, the boy with the flute. The knife had plunged in over and over again, and the stone basins had filled with human blood, overflowing and smearing the skulls of the ancestors still embedded in the floor around them.
And then Enlil had broken through the wall and come for him, unable to leave his brother behind in that chamber of death. He had forced the others who remained alive to a dark recess in the cave and had rolled the boulder in front of them, even as they screamed for Noah to kill them too. Noah had gripped a basin and stared into the blood-filled pool. In his desperation to break the spell, Enlil had taken out the palladion from a pouch and dropped it into the basin, drenching Noah with blood. Noah had seen only the reflection of the pillar with the skull on top, advancing towards him in repeated visions, swirling round and round. He had fallen backwards, wide-eyed and panting, just as the first water from the sea had surged into the chamber. Enlil had pulled the palladion out of the basin and put it in his pouch, then held Noah upright and hissed in his ear: Atlantis is finished. We new priests will go to the four corners of the earth and found new cities. You, my brother, the last of the old, I will take beyond the Middle Sea to the place where earth and sky meld, to where you and your spirit ways will be beyond the world of men. Enlil had dragged him outside to the boats, but for days afterwards as they paddled away, Noah could hear the screams of the shamans in his mind, and see the blood he had been unable to wash from the cracks on his hands and under his fingernails.