Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel

Author:John Peel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1991-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Ishtar regarded the fragments on the table in front of her with interest and wary curiosity. They were all the scraps that the guards had been able to find from the wreckage of the device that had caused the damage to the temple rooms.

‘An explosive of some kind,’ she mused, her tail swishing back and forth on the hard stone floor. ‘Bits of aluminium, and a nitrogen-based compound.’ She switched off her analyzing scanners, and swept the pieces to the floor with her hand. ‘Quite obviously beyond the abilities or imaginations of you primitive humans,’ she told Dumuzi. He was waiting, servile as ever, just inside the doorway. She spun about to glare in his direction again. ‘Yet, I do not think either the man or the woman you saw were from Utnapishtim’s coven of cowards.’ She forced his mind to return to the images of the pair.

‘The girl…’ said Ishtar, thoughtfully. ‘Now, she could be from my world. She looks considerably more lively and interesting than your pallid race, Dumuzi. She would make me a fine servant—or a tasty feast.’ She brought the image of the man to the front of the high priest’s mind next. ‘Strange clothing, strange manners,’ she said, softly. ‘And he somehow managed to resist the effects of the drug he was given. He cannot be one of Utnapishtim’s lackeys—they would not have the ability he displayed.’

‘Lady?’ asked Dumuzi, grimacing in pain as the memories were ripped from his mind. ‘I do not understand. Did you not say that no one from your home was left alive after you poured out your wrath upon them?’

She released the link almost contemptuously. ‘I do not expect you to understand. I expect you only to obey.’ She glared at him. ‘And there may have been a few who survived my wrath—it is nothing to you.’

Recovering from the attack, he managed a short bow. ‘This—Utnapishtim that you speak of. He is your foe?’

Laughing in derision, Ishtar stared down at her priest. ‘Dumuzi, never forget that I can read your every little thought. Oh, don’t be afraid—I shan’t punish you for daring to hope that Utnapishtim might come to destroy me and free you. Leaving you the dream and desires for freedom amuses me.’ She glanced inwards. ‘But even if Utnapishtim lives, he believes me dead, little man. And by the time he discovers otherwise, I shall be far too strong for him to defeat. No, place no hopes in him.’ She smiled again, and raised his chin with her metal hand. Her red eyes burning directly into his. ‘I’ll tell you what—if you want to maintain those foolish fantasies about getting free of me, try placing them in the hands of that stranger who was here, I tell you this, Dumuzi—he has a better chance of defeating me than Utnapishtim. That worm is dead, or if he lives I will crush him when it suits me. This other, though—he is an unknown force. He clearly has unusual powers.

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