You climb to the mountains surveying the earth,
You suspend from the heavens the circle of the lands.
You care for all the peoples of the earth.
Whatever has breath you shepherd without exception.
Regularly and without cease you traverse the heavens,
Every day you pass over the broad earth. . . .
Shepherd of that beneath, keeper of that above,
You, Shamash, direct, you are the light of everything.
-From the Great Hymn to Shamash, translated by W. G. Lambert
Adam
Adam awoke after his first real night of sleep in five thousand years with a sore neck and a head full of incoherent, half-remembered dreams. The sun was just peeking through Shiruta's high towers, and Adrianna's family was silent and asleep. Adam padded carefully to the bathing room and tried the knobs and levers until he released a stream of water from a shining pipe in the ceiling. He rinsed his body in its cool rain, then washed his borrowed clothing as well. With a piece of thick, furry cloth tied around his waist, Adam went to the balcony to dry his clothes in the sun.
The morning was all gold and rose, the sun reflecting on the shining windows of all the towers, gilding the gentle waves to the South. A soft breeze came up from the sea. On mornings like this, Siduri used to sing prayers to the sun, her voice mingling with the morning birdsong. Adam would pretend to be asleep to listen to her longer, because he loved the way she sang when she thought no one else was listening. This morning, as Adam stood on the balcony and looked out toward the sea, he tried not to invoke a god even in his thoughts. Who knew if they were listening?
The previous afternoon, when Adrianna had left him to speak to someone through her little tablet, Adam had paced the ruined hall. His memories lay over reality like tissue-thin cotton, tearing at the edges. He sang with his father, shoulder to shoulder. He ran for the temple, and a soldier in a horned helm struck him across the face. His hand rested on the column, its once-bright carvings worn away by the unimaginable gulf between his memories and the present, where he stood in a dusty ruin, the only sounds Adrianna's murmuring voice and the ever-present growling of cars.
"Teth-Adam."
The voice came from behind him and he turned, wary. On the steps leading up to the ziggurat, where the priests would have welcomed the people, there stood a man. Tall and broad, he was silhouetted by bright sunlight that made it impossible to see his face. It occurred to Adam, with the disorienting feeling of realizing one was in a dream, that this was impossible. The beams of afternoon light filtering through the canvas above were coming from behind Adam, from the West, but front he East, behind the tall man, the pure light of a golden dawn unfolded like a pair of luminous wings.
"What is a king?"
The man's voice was deep and resonant, and despite how far away the man was standing, Adam heard him perfectly.
"Khandaq has no kings," he answered, mouth suddenly dry.
"Does it also have no gods?"
The man was suddenly closer, without having to cover the intervening distance. Framed by long, curling hair that fell to his shoulders, his broad face was a burnished brown. In that dark face, his teeth shone like ivory, and his eyes like beaten gold. Adam felt the force of those eyes like the heat from a potter's kiln.
"A king is said to be the shepherd of his people."
The man's clothes - a shirt and trousers like what Adrianna had found for Adam - were so white they glowed in that dim corridor under the canvas, and in his left hand, at his side, he held a long, toothed knife.
"When a lion stalks his flock, what does the shepherd do?"
It came to Adam all at once who this man was, and with knowledge came anger. When the people had fled to the temple, crying out for help, what had this man…this god... done for them?
"With you as his example," Adam growled. "He would stand by and do nothing."
The god was right in front of him, his presence indescribable. Adam felt like nothing so much as a deer before the wolf. He couldn't move, couldn't even blink. He was terribly aware of that jagged blade in the god's hand, could feel its power in the air. Strong enough to cut a mountain in half, fine enough to separate truth from lies.
"He seizes the beast by the jaw and kills it."
The god took Adam's chin, almost tenderly, and forced him to meet his terrible, golden eyes. He could hide nothing, not the darkest, most secret parts of himself, from that burning gaze.
"Which are you, Teth-Adam?" The god asked, his voice filling everything, the fire of his eyes an annihilating, searing blaze. "The shepherd, or the beast?
He did not know how long the god had held him there. It must have been moments, but it felt like an age, and left the inside of his head feeling like it had been scoured out with sand. When Adrianna had touched his arm, Adam had almost lept out of his skin. No. He would not sing to Shamash here.
Someone spoke behind him and Adam turned. It was Karim, curly hair disheveled from sleep, wearing a shabby, yellow robe. He pointed at his hand, which held a clay cup of something, steaming in the cool morning. Adam nodded and followed him inside, where Adrianna sat at table, drinking from her own cup.
"Did you sleep well?" she asked with a smile.
"Yes, thank you."
He sniffed his drink surreptitiously. It smelled…burnt. He put it back down without tasting it. Karim put a plate in front of him, holding a steaming flatbread that he topped with a lump of yellow butter. It smelled…delicious.
"We've been planning the route to Turkey." Adrianna had a finely-made map spread out in front of her on the table, tapping at it with her stylus. "There are few…hostile powers…between us."
In his divine form, Adam could simply fly there with Adrianna in his arms. But he had the feeling his wounds wouldn't have healed if he changed back. From Adrianna's worried eyes, he thought she knew it too.
"We could go by boat to Iraq, but after that…oh, hello."
Amon slouched into the kitchen, grunted at them both, grabbed a flatbread, and slouched back out.
"I'm surprised,"Adrianna said, eyes following her son. "I thought he'd want to come along, but he hasn't even asked. It's suspicious."
Adam raised an eyebrow.
"Karim thinks he's found a girl," she continued. "He says an uncle knows these things."
At that Karim said something in a language that, in his human form, Adam could neither speak nor understand. He reflected that he had to learn it soon - he didn't like being so thoroughly at a disadvantage. Adrianna responded with a swat on Karim's arm and they laughed with the ease of family. It hurt a little, watching that from the outside.
"Mom," Amon called from the other room, that word at least Adam knew. And the tone. Urgency.
He followed Adrianna and Karim into the other room, where Amon was watching pictures move on one of those magic boxes - a different one, since Adam had exploded their old one. It showed a scene of disaster. A torrent of brown water rushed fiercely down a gulley. A gray stone bridge swayed, and leaned, and buckled, and then collapsed into the water without a trace. There was a cluster of cars and people stranded on the other side. The picture changed to a city, the water flooding down the street, as high as the windows. The force of the unleashed river tore the corner from a house, and it crumbled like sand. There were people on the roofs next to it, waving their hands. He couldn't hear them over the rush of the water, but he knew they were calling for help.
What is a king, Teth-Adam?
Adrianna saw him watching. "This is Gonur," she hurriedly explained. "A town in the north. A frozen lake in the mountains melted and burst its dam."
"This is happening now?" Adam asked. Hard to tell with these wizard boxes. From what he understood, they could show things that had never happened at all.
"Yes."
"I will go."
Amon cheered. Adrianna looked at the box, then back to him.
"Show me where it is," Adam said. "And I will go."
She hesitated for a moment, then grabbed her pack.
"Alright," she said as she hustled around the apartment, stuffing a few last things into it and putting on a jacket. "But I'm coming, too. We'll go to Göbekli Tepe from there."
Adam had only spoken the word of power twice before. Both times he had been almost dead, and the power of the name had brought him back to life. This time was different. He felt the wave of power - like taking a fresh breath of air after being locked in suffocating darkness - followed immediately by a wave of sickness that almost doubled him over. The wound had not healed while he was in human form.
The others were looking at him, each with a different emotion. Awe. Fear. And in Adrianna's face, concern. Adam took a breath, put the pain away. The people needed him, and hadn't he sworn to be their protector? He took Adrianna in his arms, and flew out the window at the speed of thought.
They reached Gonur in what felt like moments. Adam set Adrianna on a hillside safely away from the course of the flood, where he could still see the city. He'd never been so far from Shirtua back when he was a man, but there was no time to savor the moment. With Adrianna's eyes on him, Adam struggled to stand straight, to breathe slowly, even though pain spiked up from his leg to his side, like lightning. The water looked higher than it had before, on the box, and though Adam couldn't see or hear any better than a normal man, he saw the tiny figures on the rooftops, waiting for help. For him.
He looked at Adrianna. She nodded. And he lifted off.
He flew from housetop to housetop, small claps of thunder marking where he stopped, carrying people in ones and twos to the hillside where Adrianna waited. There were six on the hill, then twelve. Sweat was beading on his forehead, and his leg pulsed rapidly in time with his heart. Twenty-four. The people cheered him as he flew by, clung to him even as he tried to let them go. There were thirty on the hill. There were forty-eight. His whole left side was burning. Adam set his jaw, pushed the pain down. It was a lesson he had learned well, under the bite of the lash, the fist of the overseer. It was simple, though it wasn't easy. You just had to keep going. Step, after step, after step. Sixty people on the hill. Eighty-five. One-hundred and twenty.
Adam's breathing was raw in his chest and it felt like fire was running in his veins instead of blood. There, pinned to a gray stone column by the water, a car. And inside, someone beating on the window, screaming without sound. He swooped down at the car like an eagle on a mouse and plunged hip deep in the frigid water, filthy spray splashing his face, a shock to his fever-hot skin. Straining against the water, pain stabbing him with every move, he lifted the car above his head and flew the whole thing to the hill. As he went, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Standing on a mountaintop, but clear enough to see. A dark-skinned man in white, gone when he turned his head.
When he put the car down on the hillside, the crowd there rushed to it to help the driver out, a woman, nearly collapsing from fear.
Were there any more out there? Should he go house to house, just to make sure? He could hear the water roaring, even from here. It was still rising. He took a step, and found someone was holding his cape.
"Please." It was the woman from the car, her whole body shaking. "She's out there. You have to help her."
"Where?" He said, as gently as he could with his pain-raw throat.
"My daughter, Dania." The woman wept as she spoke. "She's in the hotel, there." The woman pointed out at a red and white building in the center of town. As Adam watched, he could see it start to shift, just the slightest bit. "Please…"
He was in flight before she finished speaking, bursting into the building through a low window a moment later. The first floor was almost entirely underwater. She was not there. The second floor was harder to check, full of small rooms, each with smaller rooms inside it. So many rooms. Where would a small girl hide?
The building was vibrating around him with the force of the torrent, and he was afraid to smash through too many walls lest he dislodge some important beam. The cool, flameless lamps that would have lit the building had all gone out. In some of the rooms, the glow of the bolt on his chest was the only illumination. He had reached the third floor when he felt the building grinding against itself. Faster. He had to be faster. He felt like his skull was shrinking around his brain, squeezing his eyes until he saw white spots. The third floor was empty. The fourth floor was one, large room, and Adam breathed a prayer of thanks, because there in the corner huddled a tiny shape.
Adam landed on the slanted floor and walked toward the cowering figure, who attempted to shrink away from him. No wonder, Adam thought, from her perspective he was a huge, hulking shadow. He leaned down and his golden lightning bolt illuminated the girl's face, round and soft, dusty and streaked with tears. He opened his mouth to speak, and the whole building lurched to one side, a crack running up the wall to the ceiling, where one of the heavy wooden beams came free and fell, taking a nest of rafters with it.
He caught them on his upraised left arm, and a lance of paint stabbed down his side, driving him to one knee. The girl! She had her hands up to cover her face, shaking like a cornered rabbit, her terrified wail almost lost in the noise of the building coming apart around them. The whole weight of the roof was on Adam's wounded side, and his arm began to tremble. He groaned through gritted teeth. If he dropped the beam, he wasn't sure he'd have time to get the girl before all the other beams came down and crushed her. She would have to come to him.
"Dania," he said, voice tight with strain he was trying his best to hide. "Your mother sent me. She's very worried."
The girl lowered her hands. She had stopped screaming, but was still breathing so fast Adam feared she might faint. The beam he held shifted and his body spasmed with effort of holding it up. He made his voice as gentle as he could, as he had done when he had soothed Hurut to sleep as a very small boy.
"She's waiting on a hill outside of town. I flew there with her. Would you like to fly, too?"
He held out his right hand and slowly, slowly, the girl unfolded and crawled to him over the rubble-strewn floor.
Just as she reached him, there was a grinding crash and Adam felt the floor fall away beneath him. In one movement, he threw the beam aside with his left arm, pressed the girl to his chest with his right, and flew out through the wall so fast she didn't have time to scream.
When he set Dania down next to her mother, the woman wept and kissed his hands. She wasn't the only one weeping. The people rushed him, touching his cape, cheering him, holding up their little tablets to him.
To the side, Adrianna was speaking into her own tablet, hard to hear over the clamor.
"The people will be going to Marhasi; I've told them to expect aid from the government there. Yes, I know…yes…because this is an excellent opportunity to win trust and demonstrate effectiveness, don't you think?…Well, you asked me to find him…"
A wave of pain washed over him and he clenched his hands to avoid crying out. He must have made some kind of noise, because Adrianna looked to him immediately, and put her tablet into her pack.
"Everyone, please!" She called. To Adam's surprise, they quieted. But then he supposed, while he was bringing them here, she'd had time to organize them. She seemed to take control of situations quickly, driving people like a shepherd drives a flock.
"I just got off the phone with the government in Shiruta," she continued, "and they will be sending aid to Marhasi for you." The people cheered again. "Yes, yes, thank you. The Champion needs to examine the lake, make sure there's no additional danger."
Someone who was probably an elder took over at that point, organizing the people for their walk down the ridgeline to Marhasi. Adrianna took Adam aside, eyes full of worry. Making sure his left side was out of view, she pulled back his cape, and hissed.
"Dear God."
Adam was almost afraid to look. The black veins had spread out from the wound in his thigh - and the largest had grown all the way up to the first cut in his side. The darkness was spreading in the wound like dye into a pool of water.
"Do you think you can fly?" Adrianna said, low and urgent, hand on his arm. "Should you change back?"
They both knew that wasn't an option, even though Adam was shaking and spent as if he'd run to Gonur instead of flying. They had to go to this ancient place, this Göbekli Tepe. They had to solve the riddle of the blade, or he would be useless to his people. Pain was nothing.
"We have to fly," he said softly. "I will not drop you, Adrianna."
Her dark eyes locked on his, full of a feeling he couldn't identify. "I know," she said.
She looped her arms around his neck, and together they rose into the sky.
And that's what happened to Adam while Adrianna was on the phone. He met (a) God. Fun fact, Shamash is iconographically depicted with a long, sawtoothed knife, a symbol of his divine justice. The town of Gonur is named after an archaeological site of the Oxus civilization, which is simply fascinating. It's Christmas right now, so have a happy Holiday, everyone who celebrates, and my best wishes to absolutely everybody who stops by to read this.