Abraham Allegiant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 4) (23 page)

A long thin plume of reddish smoke drifted up from a bonfire in the center of Kiriath-Arba. The hierodules Zula and Laliya had given Arba some special powder to throw in the fire to create the strange colored smoke. They did it once a day for several days until the other two hierodules, Zakita and Kulla, finally arrived to meet them on the raised plateau.

The four of them were now together and briefed on Abram’s location in the Oaks of Mamre. They planned their scheme that would require complete surprise in order to kidnap Abram without being discovered by the clan.

Arba told them not to worry about the red smoke being a warning to the Amorites. Arba explained that they often did such things in their funerals so Mamre would consider it part of their rituals.

The assassins waited until evening to set out for Mamre.

It was a full moon, the optimum conditions for their feline and avian senses.

They bathed and donned tight fitting dark clothes with their blades stored in scabbards and their bows and arrows on their backs.

They were virtually invisible, stealthy and lethal, and they were ready to capture their prey.

• • • • •

It was harvest time in the five cities of the plain. And that meant it was time for the Festival of the Burning God.

It was the biggest event of the year and it was held in the Valley of Siddim just south of the tar pits. It was a weeklong celebration where everyone was free from their employment to engage in non-stop orgies and a carnival of pleasures. Or a better term might be “circus of freaks,” as the participants would clothe themselves in outrageous costumes. Men would dress as women, women as men, some would parade themselves completely naked through the streets. Others walked about in bizarre wardrobe that defied gender — and good taste. Everything was acceptable, nothing was forbidden.

It was all part of Ashtart’s ongoing attack on El Shaddai by degrading humanity created in his image. Grotesque replaced normal, freakishness replaced beauty, madness replaced reason, vice replaced virtue.

At the end of the festival, a huge effigy of El Shaddai “the unseen god” was built out of wood and pelted with their excrement before being set aflame in a delirious drug-induced ecstasy courtesy of the city sorcerers. Sometimes they would trap captured El Shaddai followers in the effigy to burn alive.

As Lot walked through the festival, he felt the urge to vomit, it was so repulsive to him. He felt completely ineffectual in his campaign to instill a sense of righteousness in Sodom. He had tried to get citizens to boycott the event because of its wickedness, but to no avail. He had sought to pass laws that would protect traveling merchants from abuse, strangers in need of hospitality, the abandoned and sacrificed infants, and the followers of El Shaddai as victims of oppression, but the judges were all in league with the king and Ashtart. They had ruled that anyone who was not of the progressive Cities of Love and tolerance were to be treated with zero tolerance and deserved to be punished.

And now that progressive tolerance was assaulting his senses as he made his way to the meeting he was to have with the king of Sodom. Copulation pens blanketed the main thoroughfare. Every kind of sexual congress was being engaged in out in the open without walls or privacy. He passed orgies, same sex unions, sex with animals, sex between family members, sex with children, and even sex with inanimate objects.

The stench of refuse filled the air as he came upon a corridor of the arts. Another part of Ashtart’s plan of debasing the image of Elohim in mankind was to inspire an obsession with excrement in their art and sexuality. Urine and feces was celebrated in sculpture, wall and vase paintings, and public theatre in a kind of chic cynicism. As the saying went, “In the end, we are all just excrement.” Sexual partners would bathe in urine, rub their bodies with feces, and excrete on one another as a way of “becoming one” with each other and the earth. They called them “dung orgies.”

When Lot reached the king’s tent he was allowed in by the Nephilim guards at the entrance, and ushered up to the portable throne were sat King Bera of Sodom. He was an obese blob of a man, whose god was his stomach. He must have weighed close to three hundred pounds and had to have everything widened or extended for him: Doorways, chairs, bed, and chariot. He required a half dozen servants just to help him move from throne to chariot to dining table to bed.

He was a puppet of Ashtart, but she was not with him today. In her place was another man, dressed in royal armor and with a haughty look in his eye.

Bera said, “Lot! Welcome. You are familiar with our founding father, Canaan, son of Ham?”

Lot bowed toward Canaan, who returned him no response.

“He it is who, under the patronage of the illustrious Ashtart, has built our mighty pentapolis and seeded the population of this land named after his legacy.”

The legacy of the Seed of the Serpent,
thought Lot.

Bera got right down to business. “Lot, you have been causing a stir again amidst our fine citizens. I cannot have an elder of the gates crowing about ‘wickedness and judgment’ and other mean spirited condemnations. You are offending a lot of people with your hateful
rhetoric. We are the Cities of Love. Can you not be more discreet and keep your private beliefs to yourself?”

“Your majesty,” replied Lot. “My firstborn daughter died at the hands of these ‘citizens of love’ for helping a poor starving man.”

His young daughter, Paltith, simply gave food and water to a travelling merchant who had been beaten, stripped bare, and left for dead. When the mob that occupied Sodom’s marketplace found out, they burned her at the stake. Sodomites hated merchants who made money because Sodomites were slaves of the government, and they hated normal families because they were children of the city and of Ashtart.

Lot was fearful for the lives of his remaining twin daughters.

“Lot, I do not want to make light of your daughter, but you know the laws. The
government
is supposed to help the poor. Individual charity is forbidden.”

“Forgive my impertinence, your majesty. I will seek to uphold the law and affirm your rule.”

The fact of the matter was that Lot was not “crowing about wickedness and judgment,” with “hateful rhetoric.” That was all wicked rumors and hateful gossip. Lot had simply and quietly tried to petition for laws that protected the traditional family unit that had now been completely subverted by the legislation of the pentapolis. Every other form of union, from polygamous, to same sex, to bestiality and incest, had special rights and privileges not afforded to those who preferred one woman and one man devoted to each other with children. He only wanted normal families to be recognized as retaining the rights that all other legal unions and alternative couplings had been given by Ashtart.

He had failed to do so, and as a result of the constant oppression against his efforts, he became more withdrawn and kept his views to himself. It seemed an inevitable unstoppable juggernaut of evil. He just wanted some rest, some respite from the relentless hostility and
hate foisted against him. He had become tired of the death threats, sabotage of his work, and vandalism of his home. He stopped fighting for his “cause” and told himself he would just try to be a silent example of true love to his neighbors, hoping that they might eventually wonder what was different about him and ask him about his different god and different values.

But they never did.

So Lot was becoming a shell of the man he once was, defeated, depressed, and despairing. He had tried to change his society from within, but it had changed him, or rather collared him in suppression under the guise of “liberation from El Shaddai.” He felt completely helpless. He was oppressed, hated, and treated with bigoted intolerance, and the irony of it all was that
he
was the one being called oppressive, hateful, and bigoted.

Canaan watched Lot closely. His memory was stirred. There was something about the accent of Lot’s language and presence that reminded him of his past. He had studied the genealogies that Ashtart had used to discover his own identity as the cursed son of Noah’s Ham.

“Who is your father?” asked Canaan.

“Haran ben Terah,” said Lot.

“Terah of Ur? The once past prince of Nimrod’s host?”

Lot nodded his head weakly.

Canaan’s interest piqued.
That was the line of Shem
. Canaan had once been a slave of Nimrod before Ashtart liberated him and brought him to this new land. She named Canaan in his honor as the Seed of Nachash whom he was told would be the warring bloodline against the Seed of Eve.

And that Seed of Eve came through Shem.

“Did your father have siblings?”

“Nahor, my uncle. He lives in Haran.”

Canaan watched him like a hawk. He knew he was holding back.

“Any others?” said Canaan in a condescending singsong voice.

Lot hesitated. But he gave it up. He would not want the king to discover his dishonesty to this visiting dignitary and punish him later.

“Abram of Haran.”

“You are the nephew of Abram ben Terah,” mused Canaan. “Where is he now?”

“I do not know,” lied Lot. “I think back in Haran.”

That was far enough away to warrant giving up any kind of reconnaissance on his uncle without great cost and planning.

Because of Lot’s status as an elder, Canaan would not have the authority to take him away and torture him to find out the information he wanted. He would take note of this and keep it tucked away in his mind for a more opportune moment.

For now, he played Lot with a dismissive wave. “You may go. And please keep your prudish behavior and judgmental attitude to yourself. We are progressive not primitive. We want to promote love not hate.”

Lot bowed and left them.

Canaan smiled to himself with satisfaction. Today was indeed a profitable one. Now, it was time to go pour out his lusts on an emasculated bull.

Nimrod had been working for hours filing down a small piece of rock he had found in his prison cell. He was half delirious chained to a large block of stone. The kiln-fired brick walls were not durable enough for prisoner’s chains; so large stone blocks were imported. Nimrod had not eaten in who knows how long, and he was forced to sit in his own excrement and filth. He mumbled to himself absurd lyrics of poetic madness as he filed the rock down to a sharpened edge. His descent into the raging pit of blocked ambitions was about to be ended. He had lived a life of royalty and excess and ended up as world potentate, only to be demolished and dethroned, but kept alive for misery. He began to rebuild his kingdom but was once again held down in the muck by the hand of a king whom had once served him.

Now his only chance of escape was to take his life. The edge was sharp enough to cut his flesh now. He raised it with his manacled hands and pressed it to his throat. It was a difficult thing to cut one’s own throat. Pain can stop the force necessary to cut through a windpipe efficiently. It would have to be done quickly so as to coopt the natural bodily responses.

But just as he was about to pull the primitive cutting edge across his throat, he was stopped by the sound of the dungeon door opening. He placed the rock beneath the edge of the large stone to which he was anchored.

He looked up to see Marduk entering the cell with a goatskin flask. He thought he might be hallucinating, as he had not seen Marduk in years since the fall of Babel. He had assumed that Marduk was somehow constrained in the heavenlies for his rebellion.

Marduk held out the flask to him.

“It is wine,” said the god. “You need your strength.”

He handed him a loaf of freshly baked bread. Nimrod cautiously took the wine and bread and began consuming the loaf like a wild dog before it could be taken from him.

So it was not a hallucination.

Marduk said, “You were not the only one to suffer humiliation and loss at Babel. After the judgment, I sought to rehabilitate my status by joining the strongest ruler in the region who showed the most promise.”

Now it all made sense to Nimrod. “Chedorlaomer,” he said. “So that is how he knew all about my weakness and strategy.”

“King Chedorlaomer is not going to execute you,” said Marduk.

Nimrod stopped.

“I persuaded him to reinstall you as his vassal over Shinar, or Akkad, or whatever you are calling it these days.”

“Why?” said Nimrod. He was still seething with hatred for Marduk and self-loathing at the prospect of more humiliation.

“Because you are of use to the both of us. Elam is drawing together a force of armies to raid Canaan. The five cities of the plain that Chedorlaomer originally subdued for you have not paid their taxes for thirteen years. He is going to punish them. But the problem is that Ashtart, who was once Ishtar in our good land of Mesopotamia, controls the pentapolis.”

It started to dawn on Nimrod. That slut goddess that caused him so much trouble in the past was also Marduk’s arch nemesis. They had been at odds for many years and Nimrod knew there would be an eventual confrontation that would split the earth open.

“So what do you need me for?” said Nimrod.

“You are still a mighty general, Nimrod. Chedorlaomer needs you. All you need are trained forces. He can give them to you if you swear allegiance to him.”

More degradation and disgrace for Nimrod.

“Why would he trust me? He was my vassal for many years, and I did not treat him with trust.”

Marduk leaned in. “Because I persuaded him.”

Nimrod looked into Marduk’s powerful eyes. He was still the hypnotic and frighteningly powerful king of the gods, and he was still determined to achieve his plans.

Marduk whispered to him, “ Ashtart has been breeding giants in Canaan. They are her minions in various clans and villages and they control the King’s Highway. Chedorlaomer cannot afford to lose that trade route with its access to Egypt and up to Syria. It is an economic lifeline. So he is creating a coalition of three kings to accompany him and wipe out the giant clans to secure the area. You will be one of them, along with Arioch of Ellasar and Tidal, king of Goiim.”

Nimrod was going mad, but he had not yet lost his reason. “Wiping out the giants will wipe out Ashtart’s rise to power, securing your advantage.”

Marduk grinned. “You and I have always had an understanding in our mutual pursuits. I never forgot that.”

Nimrod was already planning on how he might commit suicide once he was freed. He did not want to be a tool of Marduk unless there was something in it for him. And there was nothing of interest to him in fighting other’s battles.

“And I never forgot what you have always wanted,” Marduk added.

Nimrod looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”

“The source of all your misery and pain, the one born to bring your downfall, and to bear the chosen seedline of El Shaddai resides in Canaan: Abram of Haran.”

Nimrod’s eyes came alive with a fire within. Suicide vanished from his mind. He now had a reason to live, a reason to abandon his failed pursuit of power and submit himself to another king: Revenge. He would be willing to debase himself as a servant to Chedorlaomer if it allowed him the opportunity to hunt down Abram and kill him.

Nimrod grinned through his rotting teeth and said, “I give you my word, mighty Marduk, king of the gods, that I will by a loyal vassal king of Shinar for Chedorlaomer.”

Marduk smiled. He knew it would work. Nimrod’s obsessive pursuit to kill Abram would benefit all of them.

Nimrod interrupted Marduk’s thoughts, “On one condition. I am allowed to change my name.”

“To what?” said Marduk.

“To King Amraphel of Shinar. Nimrod and his family are dead now.”

He had done it once before. He had changed his name when he was king of Uruk to start over with a new identity to create Babylon. Now he would be reborn without the negative baggage of his utter defeat and shame as Nimrod.

Marduk smiled in agreement. “A wise choice, King Amraphel.”

Chedorlaomer would have his renewed control of Canaan, Marduk would have his victory over Ashtart, Amraphel would have his revenge on Abram and El Shaddai, and the Seed of Eve would be choked to death for everyone.