"I should have destroyed the portals sooner," Teshub said, stricken. He looked away, the muscles of his jaw clenching, his chest rising and falling. "The fault for your suffering is mine, Arinna. All of it."
"No," Thoth said, firm, "it is mine. If I had never created the portals in the first place just to satisfy my curiosity--"
"Still," Arinna murmured, "I should not have gone out unguarded. How many times have I relived that day, that foolish decision--" She fell silent for several beats, before taking a tremulous breath and continuing, "Once he was immortal, it was not long before Marduk was able to capture all of our brothers and sisters. He forced us to serve him, and often humiliated us before his guests for his entertainment." She looked at Baalat. "Horus he made suffer more than any other.
"For a million years we endured, seeking a way to free ourselves whilst he remade the world to his liking, filling it with weapons and wonders; controlling everyone with fear and lies; granting his chosen few the use of his regeneration device--those men and women would do anything for him to keep using that thing." She shuddered. "Anything."
"But Marduk made one mistake," Thoth said into the silence in the wake of Arinna's words. "It amused him to make me pilot his pleasure ships. To fly them I had to learn a portion of his language to be able to read the instrument panel. From that small selection of symbols, I was eventually able to decipher his language. I found the flight manuals to all the other ships and memorized them. All of them.
"The night we escaped," Thoth continued, "Marduk commanded me to fetch Arinna and bring her to him." Thoth cut a wary look at Teshub, whose grip on Arinna's hand tightened. She bit her lip and looked away, her cheeks darkening. "I went to get her, but I didn't take the ship I usually used. I took the fastest one, collected Arinna, and made for Surru, our last hope."
He lifted an eyebrow. "I feared Marduk might have destroyed it to prevent others from becoming immortal, but it still stood within its beautiful, verdant glade, untouched and forgotten." He sighed. "Surru was my greatest triumph. My other portals only crossed the distances between the stars, but Surru crossed the boundary between universes. The energy required to keep it open was phenomenal, but I managed to extract exotic matter found in--" he stopped, catching the uncomprehending looks of his listeners. He cleared his throat. "Never mind. What matters is unlike the other portals--which by then only led to dead worlds--Surru led to a young, beautiful world, burgeoning with life. It was the perfect place to begin again. We hid, expecting Marduk to come looking for us, but he never arrived. Instead of destroying the portal and saving ourselves, we decided to go back and attempt to liberate as many of the other gods as we could." Thoth looked around the suite, rueful. "But as you can see, things didn't quite work out the way we planned."
Teshub opened his mouth to speak but Thoth held up his hand, cutting him off. "Wait." He went to the side table, and collected two cups and the wine pitcher. "A demonstration might help," he said as he came back and placed the pitcher on the table, setting the cups before it, side by side. He gestured at the pitcher. "This is Surru portal viewed from the other universe where Arinna and I took refuge. It leads back to this universe, but because our universe had been split into two, there are two exits." He pointed at the left hand cup. "This exit leads to where Marduk is immortal: the place Arinna and I escaped from." He moved to point at the right hand cup. "And this leads here: where Marduk is still mortal. Where we are now. Where I should not be."
"The split," Teshub breathed, staring at the cups. "So instead of going back to your world, you emerged in ours."
"Yes," Thoth said setting the pitcher and cups aside. "A very unfortunate turn of events, considering the harm my presence is doing to the threads holding this one together."
"Wait," Arinna said, looking at Teshub, sudden tears blooming in her eyes. "Then you are not my Teshub?"
"To me," Teshub answered, tight, "you will always be my Arinna, but to you, I am not the one you remember since you were captured by Marduk."
"So my Teshub is still there, suffering," Arinna whispered, a tear sliding free. With a quiet groan, Teshub took her into his arms and cradled her against him as she grieved for his other self.
"But," she murmured, pulling back, "what do you mean I will always be your Arinna? Is there not one of me here, just as there is another Thoth?"
Teshub brushed aside a tendril of her hair, tender. "Arinna, my love, after you disappeared I never found you again."
"Yes, but what--"
"He lost you," Thoth broke in, gentle. "In this world, you ceased to exist, consumed by Marduk's device. The corridor is where we go when we return to the Creator."
"Are you saying there is only one of me?" Arinna asked, stricken.
"What happened to you in the device," Thoth said, "whatever it was, was so powerful it caused you to cease to exist and exist at the same time. The only way the universe could accommodate such an outcome for a god was to split into two--a world where you are and one where you are not."
Silence fell. Urhi-Teshub glanced at Istara and took her hand again. He lifted an eyebrow, his question clear. She nodded. She understood. Enough, anyway. Two worlds: one with Marduk as an immortal, and one with him as a mortal. Arinna alive and dead at the same time, her strange dichotomy the reason for the split. Teshub reunited with his consort after a million years, and two of Thoth in one place meant the threads holding their world together were unraveling.
"So you came out of the portal into our world," Istara said, bringing the conversation back to how Arinna and Thoth had ended up in Marduk's palace. "And?"
"And as soon as we emerged I knew something was wrong," Thoth said, pouring himself a cup of wine. He took a sip. "We emerged onto a desolate island inside a cavern, surrounded by cold, dark waters, when we should have come out into a verdant glade. I was intrigued. The mathematician in me needed to study the discrepancy." He blinked, his eyes unfocusing for a heartbeat. "Worst mistake of my existence, because my curiosity cost us our immortal light. How could I have known this world wouldn't tolerate gods? Soon after our transformation into mortals, Marduk arrived--not our Marduk, the immortal one, but yours and--" Thoth's bony shoulders lifted and fell, "--since we were no longer gods, he couldn't use us to access the portal, so here we are." He glanced at Baalat. "I sense he has been keeping us as bait, hoping to draw out Horus."
"And how long have you been here?" Urhi-Teshub asked, quiet.
"It's hard to say," Thoth said, taking another, deeper sip of his wine. "Arinna has kept a record of sorts, based on the daily supplies we receive--it's the nearest thing we have to being able to count time."
Arinna met Urhi-Teshub's eyes. "Today marks the six-hundredth-twenty-second day since we arrived," she said. "I thought we would die here, but perhaps, now . . ." she looked back up at Teshub, hopeful. His grip tightened on her, protective.
"Six-hundred days," Istara repeated, slow, calculating backward. "That was when the weather in Kadesh first took an unnatural turn. Spring never came. It rained all the time. The crops rotted in the ground. Before the battle at Kadesh, I learned the change in weather was just the beginning of all manner of tragedies to follow and was told the end of civilization would fall upon all the empires apart from Egypt--it is the reason I went to Ramesses, to save the people."
Thoth sucked in his breath, the air hissing between his closed teeth. "Ah, well, it seems you were not given the whole story." He set aside his empty cup. "If I continue to remain here, no one is going to survive--god or mortal. It is only a matter of time until the threads holding the universe together unravel to the point where it becomes utterly uninhabitable."
"But," Istara protested, rising to her feet, panic clawing at her, "if what you say is true, and we are all meant to die, then everything we have gone through since the battle at Kadesh has been for nothing. Everything," she said, low, "has been meaningless." She looked at Baalat, who eyed her, bleak. "Why? Why would the gods give up their light and become mortal? Why would Sethi--" She stopped, thinking of Sethi's heart locked in the wooden cage, of the sacrifice he had made, his soul, lost. A tear slipped free. She brushed it away, desolate. Once, she had thought she was a token on the game board of men, then later, of gods, but now, it seemed she was a token of the Creator. A cruel, heartless being who cared only for the grand movements of a game she could never comprehend. She staggered. Urhi-Teshub caught her, steadying her. He eased her back down beside him, gentle.
"She has a point," Baalat said, taut. "Considering what Horus and I have lost, I would like to know why, too."
"Before I left the Immortal Realm," Teshub said, loosening his hold on Arinna. "Thoth managed to reawaken the vision pool." He paused and glanced at Baalat. "It showed us the future."
"The Immortal Realm," Thoth repeated, intrigued. "I admit I have been wondering where the gods were. And this 'vision pool' of yours," he said, leaning forward, "what did it predict?"
"It showed Marduk taking his ship through the only portal still left standing. Surru." Teshub said, tight.
"No," Thoth breathed, paling. "For him to be immortal in that world, to have control over a pristine universe. The things he is capable of--the destruction, the brutality, the death." He stood up, agitated. "We have to stop him."
"You must be mistaken," Baalat said, putting her hand on Thoth's arm. "Marduk needs a god to traverse a portal, and there are none, and there never will be considering how long we last here before we are transformed into mortals."
"Well," Teshub said, uneasy. "The vision pool showed him having one, restrained, inside his ship."
"Who?" Baalat asked, her doubt tangible.
"May the Creator forgive me," Teshub answered, low, "he had Horus."