In the ruins, there was a chamber, such as it was. To the present day human eye -- to one who was not specifically entitled to be there, or one who perhaps had stumbled there by chance, but was not unwelcome, it was little more than a half fallen-in dusty hole, with a soft and somewhat strange glow in it. No one ever came here anyway who drew breath, and any who had over the millennia who weren't welcome had simply ceased to exist.
But if there had been one who was indeed welcome there, they'd find that it wasn't a dusty hole at all.
In the dark and richly adorned chamber in the keep, there was now a trio of individuals arrayed around the fuming little fire which allowed them to scry across space and time.
"So," one of the females said with a small nod, "the play is almost set to begin once more. This time, it is in our hands to guide if we wish. I only wonder how it was that you found these two, husband."
He shrugged with a smile from where he reclined on the pillows, lying spooned against the back of his second wife, who reached up and behind her to offer him a piece of fruit. He lifted his hand from where it had been a little busy caressing her cleft and reached to take the offering. Once it was in his mouth, he returned his hand to where it had been.
Anat shivered for a moment from the new coolness of his touch. It only lasted an instant and then she sighed with contentment once more.
"I have been searching for these two from before their births," he said, "knowing a little of how they would turn out. Once I'd found the bloodline, things grew easier, though with the number of descendants, it was busy for a time until I found a pair who were near to the same age and where the spirit showed itself in them. Working backward after that, I learned what had happened to the two."
"These will need help, as will the others," Anat said, as she got to her feet and kissed him on the way, before she stepped to the priestess' side and stood with her arm around her waist. "There is this unhappy fool, the first man of the witch who now carries half of the lock. He seeks to kill her. The lock will protect her to a degree, but his efforts will get in the road."
Nisi-ini-su nodded and stood a little closer to Anat. So many thousands of years and she still loved it when they stood side-by-side with their hips touching. It felt the same to her now as it had when they were young girls in the now featureless plain where the city of Ninab once stood, back when they were just young girls there, and long before they'd become lovers.
"There are others there in that place who hate our son's girl there out of their beliefs. It changes little, but she has property and it is too soon for her to dream of leaving it behind."
She smiled, "But these ones can help, if they can believe what lies before them on the road. I would ask Dimme to make another journey, but it is plain that this would hurt her heart even more, and I cannot ask this and feel good about it."
Lugalbanda stood up and stretched. "Then we will have to go ourselves," he said, "to send any others would only cause even more fright."
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"It feels good to be outside the walls," Nisi-ini-su said with a smile as she took the reins of her dead horse in one hand and tightened the leather bracer on her arm with the other one. Her companions nodded to her as the clatter of their horses' hooves rang along the causeway.
"It feels good only to have a reason to be." The warrior priest said as the last pair of sentries stood apart to give them room.
A little while later, three figures rode out of the last opening on the causeway before the mighty keep of the Jebel Bishri, leaving the Gated Bridge and the fortress behind on their way to the entrance of the road of the dead.
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"I wish we had some kind of idea what this is all about," Savannah said. "I mean, the sense of direction that I had in this was like something that I've never experienced before."
They walked across the hotel lobby headed for the elevator. "If it's alright with you," Hunter said as he pressed the button to call the elevator, "I've always found that when I'm facing something that's deep into weird to me, it helps if I just find a quiet place and write crap down to sort it out."
Savannah nodded as she looked at Hunter while they waited. There was something coming to her in all of this -- besides the insane way that she'd felt herself being dragged here. She knew what was about to happen between them. It didn't bother her a bit. She guessed that it was something that she must need on some level anyway.
But even as headstrong and driven as she could be -- and she knew full well what she was capable of -- this was out of the ordinary for her. She glanced at him again.
It seemed to be her new hobby, she smirked to herself.
He was gorgeous, though maybe not every woman's cup of red, juicy, 100% USFDA-approved-for-dietary-consumption, prime free-range beef, but she didn't care about every woman.
He was bright, really good-looking, and he was blonde with blue eyes, ones that you could lose yourself in. She almost grinned. That was almost enough right there. She knew that it would be for most girls like her. But she knew that she wasn't what every guy wanted herself.
These days, Savannah Smith was all about feeling alive -- and that had nothing whatsoever to do with surrounding herself with creature comforts. She'd left the last of that shit behind her when she'd walked away from her marriage. She'd never been all that much drawn in that direction anyway and she knew that about herself.
Her Daddy had wanted a boy. He hadn't been that fixated on it, he'd just thought that his firstborn ought to be a male, though he was prepared to love any child, really. The kind of love that he'd had with Savannah's mother had to be worth at least a Hollywood screenplay or five all by itself, since there was a lot of dreamy romance to it.
But though modern medicine had advanced and evolved and new miracles were being developed almost every day it seemed, there just hadn't been enough tricks up any of the surgeon's sleeves to stop the hemorrhaging, and her father had watched the love of his life slip away before his eyes.
Savannah had no way to know, of course, but she'd been told by her grandmother that he'd been changed by it. When it was over and he'd stood leaning in tears against the wall in the operating room that they'd wheeled his wife right into as soon as they'd seen what they were facing, he'd changed.
They'd tried to get him out of there, but he knew what was happening, and he calmly told the nurses that he'd kill anyone who tried to hustle him out of there before she was gone. He'd said that he'd face whatever consequences his threats would set into motion later. There was no way that he'd leave his rapidly weakening wife. It tore the heart out of him, but at least he'd gotten the chance to say goodbye.
Little Savannah went home with only one parent.
Her father had never sought anyone for himself ever again and raised her alone. Even for a man with a lot of money, it hadn't been all that easy, but he'd done it. Savannah could have had whatever sort of toys and playthings that her little heart had desired, but it had come naturally to her to try to emulate her father, since they were the very same in their temperament. To him, she was his willful little kitten from the time that she was a little thing, and that was fine.
As she got a little older, whatever tendencies that she might have naturally had to be a tomboy came to her, but like anything else about Savannah, she'd put her own stamp on it and owned it plain and simple. She turned 'tomboy' into 'tomcat' in a female sense for a time, but that had been only a transitional phase for her. Around the time that she'd turned nineteen, she'd come into her own and the word for that was wildcat.
Physical things came easily to her -- they always had, and there wasn't much that she'd ever shied away from, taking no crap from anyone along the way. She'd always loved martial arts and excelled at several styles. When it came time for a summer job, her friends all had the usual ones.
Savannah had been a smoke jumper, fighting forest fires under contract just for the feeling of the adrenaline and the work of it. When the season was over, she hadn't even taken any time to heal up her bruises; she'd just walked into a Marine Corps recruiting office and told the astonished recruiters that they needed her.
After trying to break her, her training platoon sergeant had just fallen in love with her, as though he was her father away from home, and she became like the daughter that he'd never had. When she'd shipped out for her first posting, he'd stood there with proud tears on his face, threatening to beat the first man to death who even so much as grinned at him with their own arm -- right after he'd ripped it off for the purpose.
Savannah spent one cruise in the Marine contingent of a Navy aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, fending off the advances of men from regular sailors to officers, including most of the jet jockeys. They seemed to like a challenge, so she gave it to them, telling them that they might have her if they could go three rounds with her in the ring in the gym, or as long as it took to get past a split decision. A lot of money changed hands, but Savannah's little toy remained the inviolate Holy Grail to the ship's company and they all loved her for it.
That wasn't to say that she'd exactly been a total non-player, but any woman on a ship with several thousand people on it has to be at least a little careful about her indiscretions.
She'd done her tour in Iraq then, coming home with the beginnings of a chestful of medals, not that they were all that important to her. She'd only done what was needed. After that, it was the American embassy. Most of that had been spent in readiness drills and working out new measures for being prepared.
All of that had left her a little jaded, though. She was more ripped than most men her age, and she knew of only a handful of females who had a body like hers. They were all body-builders and were more buffed than she was, but that had never held her interest, since she found that pursuit to be a lot of time in a gym with a bored brain, and a bored brain inside Savannah's head was never a good thing.
She liked her body and worked at keeping it, though she knew that there were a lot of guys that didn't like a woman's body quite as hard as hers. Savannah didn't care, though after a while, she'd fallen for Brendan.
