To the Land of the Living by Robert Silverberg Page A

you not say?”
    “Who can tell, when demons are involved? But perhaps you were right to flee. And in any case it is a very strange story, yes, very strange, Enkidu.”
    “It is the strangest one that I can tell you, of all the things that befell me while I was wandering alone.”
    Gilgamesh nodded.
    “It is a very strange story,” he said again.
    “And you, brother? What did you do, in that time when we were apart from each other?”
    “I hunted,” said Gilgamesh. “By myself, seeking no company, though occasionally finding some, or rather being found. It was a cold time for me, brother.”
    “We should never have been apart.”
    “No,” said Gilgamesh. “Never. But we were. And now that time is over.”
    “It was demons that came between us,” Enkidu said. “It was demons that made us quarrel.”
    “Yes,” said Gilgamesh. “I think so too.”
    They fell silent yet again. Then Enkidu said, “Well, brother, where shall we go now? Is there any special path through this Outback that you follow?”
    “Only the path that my feet find for me, step by step by step.”
    “Ah. I understand. Well, that path will be my path, too,” said Enkidu.
    They made camp that night at a place where two dry rivers crossed in the flatlands, and jagged narrow mountains rose before them like blades, straight from the desert floor tobewildering heights. Enkidu chased a thing that was like a black gazelle, but with ropy green strands sprouting from the rim of its back and startling red horns that were curved like scimitars, and caught it and threw it down and slew it. They skinned it together, and roasted it by a fire that Gilgamesh made out of curious gray coals that were heaped in the riverbed; and afterward they sat quietly together, neither sleeping nor fully awake, saying very little. It was sufficient to be together again. From the first, from the time in lost ancient Uruk of the other world when they had met and wrestled and dropped at once into fast friendship, each had seen in the other an equal, a complement, a second half. They were nothing like each other in any way but size and strength, for Gilgamesh in that other life had been a king’s son, raised in luxury to inherit power, and huge shaggy Enkidu had been born in the wilderness, a wild thing himself who ran with beasts and spoke no tongue but the tongue of beasts until he reached manhood; but they had seen at first sight that each fitted the other like two parts of a single whole, and it had been like that ever since for them, except for this time of estrangement that now was at its end.
    In the moment just before first light, when souls hang suspended between eternity and oblivion, Gilgamesh sat suddenly upright, oppressed with the feeling that the sea was about to sweep down upon him with killing force. But they were far from the sea here, as far as they could possibly be.
    “Brother?” he said.
    “Listen!” said Enkidu, already alert.
    Gilgamesh nodded. He heard foul mocking chittering sounds, like those of dung-birds or grave-jackals. His hand went to his weapon and he leaped to his feet, taking a dancing stride forward and swinging around. Just then the thin strands of first sunlight came over the low ridge behind them, and with it came a dozen creatures of the darkness, creatures with the shape of men but horridly distorted, burly short-legged things with great dangling arms that seemed infinitely long in the pale red light of the newly risen sun.
    “Enki! Enlil!” Gilgamesh bellowed, and he and Enkidu went unhesitatingly toward them.
    With his first stroke he cut two in half, and Enkidu another. The sundered bodies went sprawling, spilling a thick golden fluid. Gilgamesh whirled, ready to face the next that came athim; but they were backing away, making cowardly little snuffling noises. Were they frightened off by this first slaughter? A deception, only: for six more came from the side, and at least as many from the other, flinging themselves on the