Attired in a long, flowing white nightdress, Goldwyn gazed pensively down into a cradle as she rocked it gently to and fro. The many facetted gems encrusting the sides of the light oakwood cradle caught the light of the brass lamp burning above and sparkled, projecting rainbows around the room.

"I have come to see my son, Goldwyn."

"Yes, my lord," she murmured as she bent down to pick up the child, but hesitated. Looking up to him, she slowly shook her head. "I must first give you a token of my affection." Plucking a blooming purple hyacinth from betwixt her breasts, she extended the flower to him. "Accept this, my love; this is all that remains."

Sensing something was amiss, he smiled reassuringly as he accepted the blossom. "Now, I wish to hold my son."

"Aye, certainly," she replied woodenly. Reaching down, she lifted the infant and cradled it against her bosom. A small hand reached up and grasped for her breast.

"I would hold him, sweet golden lady." He was so pleased to have a healthy, well-formed son after poor Mindin, who was born with twisted hands and feet.

A loving smile upon her face, Goldwyn held the swaddled form over the cradle and placed him into his sire's outstretched arms.

"Why is he so still, my adored one?" Esarhaddon asked as he bent his head down to kiss the child.

"Because he is dead," she murmured in a strangely melodic voice. "Surely you knew? He is dead, just as I am."

Startled, Esarhaddon gaped at her, and then, denying her words, he pulled back the wrapping from the babe's face. His mouth upon the child's forehead, he saw his son's dark, curly hair. He drew back slightly, smiling as the baby cooed at him and reached a chubby finger towards his face. Holding the small, firm body, Esarhaddon felt that patriarchal pride and love that he always did when beholding one of his children for the first time.

"Goldwyn, you make cruel jest!" He scowled at her, but she only smiled at him serenely.

Esarhaddon turned back to the baby, but found that the small hand was folded across the chest, still, unmoving, the body stiff and cold. As his nostrils recoiled at the sickening stench of death, Esarhaddon discovered that he held a dead thing – dead and bloated. Maggots tunneled in the pulpy residue of dark, unseeing eyes. With a loud gasp of revulsion, his arms shook and trembled. The child slid out of his hands and dropped into the cradle, the small body shriveling into bones as black, reeking blood dripped down between Esarhaddon's fingers.

Goldwyn still smiled serenely as she held up the hem of her white nightdress, splattered by black blood. Her eyes turned to glittering rubies as she lifted the dress and showed him her torn, bleeding portal of birth. Backing away, he pressed his hands outward to ward off the evil before him. Before he fled from the room, howling in terror, his last sight was of a gruesome cradle of death, whose jewels now had transformed into bloody eyeballs trailed by throbbing umbilical cords. A tranquil smile still upon her face, Goldwyn rocked the hideous bed and hummed a lullaby.

A chill, drenching sweat pouring over his body, tears blinding his vision, Esarhaddon groped his way through a corridor that seemed to go on without end. Rooms opened into the hallway, and as he stumbled by them, all of his dead wives and children greeted him with mournful wailing and reaching hands.

The corridor led to a large, open chamber, its domed roof supported by stark white marble pillars. He could see no lamps hanging from the ceiling, but the room glimmered of its own accord. The chamber was rimmed by open doorways, each one leading into a shadowy tunnel. Realizing that it mattered not what approach he chose, he turned to a doorway upon his right and ran down its shadowy recesses. He slowed his pace until it seemed that he was not moving his legs at all, but still the walls raced by him at a frantic pace.

At last, the sides of the tunnel halted their incessant movements, and he found himself walking down a slanted incline. The walls of this passageway appeared to be translucent, their surfaces lit from some unknown light that shown through the walls. Coming to a landing, he saw small lights twinkling like fireflies on either side. The atmosphere, though, seemed heavy and oppressive and bore down upon him with a crushing weight. Putting his hand to his chest, he wondered if his heart had stopped in its course. He looked down below him into a yawning, gaping darkness, and when he turned to look behind him, the darkness had closed in like a doorway that led into infinity.

The only way to go was down, down into the darkness that waited before him. He moved forward and walked a few paces down the incline. This passage seemed an incredibly long one, and though the air did not seem quite so oppressive, he began to feel more apprehensive than he had when he was on the landing above. The lights continued to twinkle through the translucent walls, which now seemed like thin curtains or veils through which he could peer and see shadowy figures just on the other side.

Walking into another chamber, he found once again a large, open room and an almost endless selection of closed doorways. He decided to proceed ahead. He saw before him two great, dark oak doors, each one marked with the emblem of his house. He touched the wood, and it seemed warm and glowing, beckoning to him to open it and walk beyond.

He discovered that he was in his own bedroom. The room had been festooned with garlands of sweet-smelling flowers, and there were great urns upon the floor which held blooming lilies. Upon the low table, there were glass crystal vases and others of blue and green porcelain, all bearing his seal and emblem.

Nobo, tall, stately and dignified, was tending the charcoal fire in the brazier, the smell of sensual incense exuding from the flames. The chamberlain turned around and his face brightened with a smile.

"Master!" he exclaimed as he walked towards him, bowing from the waist in respect.

"Nobo!" Esarhaddon cried out in gratitude, thankful that something familiar still remained in his world.

"Master, Shumeeren and Anúrnissa await your pleasure."

"Excellent!" Esarhaddon praised him for his loyal service.

"Shall I stay and attend you, or shall I stand outside?"

"Nay, good Nobo. Return to the antechamber and there await until you are called."

"As Master wishes. Always have you been good to this old eunuch." Nobo lowered his head and bowed from the waist. When he straightened his body, Esarhaddon discovered to his horror that there were no eyes in the chamberlain's sockets.

"Nobo!" Esarhaddon took two backward steps. "What has happened to you?"

"Master," came the calm reply, "I died of the plague some days back."

"By every god that looks down from the spires of the heavens, what evil jest is this?"

"It is true, Master. I am a dead man, buried in the graveyard that rests atop the hill. Your wives, Master... have you forgotten them?" Nobo held up a decomposing hand and pointed to the bed. "They wait for you there. The incense and flowers I chose carefully, and I pray that my efforts will be found worthy. Always have I been faithful, even unto death."

Esarhaddon could not move. His legs felt as though they were rooted and growing in the carpeted floor.

"Master, I fear lest I offend you, so I will do according to your will and take my leave." Nobo backed away three paces and then bowed again.

When the chamberlain had departed, Esarhaddon hesitantly approached the bed, where his two wives awaited him. Much to his astonishment, the bellies of both women were huge and swollen, as though they were in their ninth month. When he looked to Shumeeren, his heart leapt with joy, for long had they tried to have a child together. As his gaze fell upon Anúrnissa, he felt a sense of hope and gratitude, as though fate had given them a second chance to have a child that was whole.

"How can this be?" he asked hoarsely, his features suffused with bewildered happiness.

"We have a most virile husband," Anúrnissa laughed, smiling.

"Come and join us, my lord," Shumeeren murmured, her voice low and seductive.

Rising from the bed, the two women glided over to their husband's side. Shumeeren lay her hand upon his sleeping spear and honed it until he felt that if he did not soon have relief, that the point would pierce his pantaloons. Although his hands fumbled with his caftan, he pulled it from his body, slipped off his slippers, and took off his pantaloons.

"Oh, my love!" Shumeeren purred. "You are so magnificent!"

Esarhaddon found himself soon between Shumeeren's thighs, and quickly he breeched her ramparts, driving in with one swift thrust. As she arched against him, he hovered over her, pounding and plummeting her corridor of passion. He felt his impending release quick upon him, but then the flames of his fervor turned to smoking embers as she screamed in agony. Frightened and confused, Esarhaddon's addled mind tried to find a reason for her pain.

"Shumeeren!" his deep voice whispered softly. "Do I hurt you?"

She screamed again, and he felt a great warm rush flowing out of her, sweeping away his strong timber as though it were driftwood upon the sea. He pulled back from her and looked at her in dread, finding that she was deep in labor. He screamed as he saw her birth canal open with a dark head appearing at the entrance. A grotesque, deformed thing slithered its way out of the torn, oozing tissues and thrashed wildly as it was birthed.

Anúrnissa was shrieking and bending over her sister wife, clutching her about the shoulders as the monstrosity that Esarhaddon had sired writhed in the torments of hell upon the bed. Then Anúrnissa screamed as a birth pang hit her, and she fell back thrashing upon the mattress. Shumeeren lay panting as she expelled the afterbirth and the macabre creature wriggled free at last.

Esarhaddon's tortured eyes were transfixed upon Anúrnissa as a serpentine form burst forth from her body. Snaking and twining, the ghastly creature crawled over the bed, dragging its afterbirth behind it. The scene blurred before his eyes, and when he opened them once again, both mothers cradled the monsters in their arms and offered their breasts to their unholy children. Esarhaddon watched, dazed, as the beasts sank long fangs into the nipples and gurgled and murmured as they drank blood and milk.

Shumeeren and Anúrnissa looked to Esarhaddon, love and devotion radiating from their faces. "Oh, my lord, we wanted to give you children, and now we have succeeded!" The two grotesque abominations turned their heads around and looked at him. Opening their mouths, they exhibited their fangs, dripping with blood.

"Father," they hissed. "We love you! You know that we do!"

"I have done this!" Esarhaddon gasped in a hoarse voice and closed his eyes tightly. When he opened them and looked again, he found a dagger in his hand, poised over his strident appendage. "I will end this forever!" he exclaimed, all senses leaving him.

"No!" the two wives shrieked as Shumeeren tore the dagger from his hand and dropped it into the mouth of one of his children. Crunching the metal, the hideous thing had soon devoured it. "Never do that again, oh, please, my lord, for we love you! Can we ever tell you how much?"

"No, no!" Esarhaddon screamed as he leaped from the bed. "I never meant to do any of this, for I love all of my women! You are my adored treasures!"

They looked to him with crushing hurt in their eyes. His dark spawn kissed each of their mothers' nipples tenderly and then turned to look at him with glittering eyes. "We love you, father. You know that we do."

"It was a difficult labor and birth, but we each did it for you," Anúrnissa told him. "We knew how you wanted sons, and we have both given you fine ones."

"They are monsters!" Esarhaddon shrieked. "Loathsome beasts spawned in the pits of despondency!"

Anúrnissa burst out into tears, and Shumeeren gave him a reproachful look. "But we sacrificed our lives for you, so that we could give you stout, healthy sons, and now we present them to you!"

"What do you mean?" His voice was a rasping whisper.

"We are both dead now, my love. We died in the agony of our miscarriages." Shumeeren smiled sadly at him, and for the first time, he noticed that her gums had receded from her teeth, making them appear far longer than they had been in life. The paper-thin skin which stretched over her bony skull was ashen, and he knew that he was looking at a corpse. Blood trailing down their thighs and dripping to the rich carpet, the two women rose to their feet and embraced him, and he was helpless to resist.

"It is time to rest now," they murmured as each one took one of his hands and began leading him to the door which led into the garden. His children crept and slithered past them.

"Where are you taking me?" he demanded. "If I am to sleep, why can it not be upon my own bed?"

"Your bed is covered with blood, dearest, and you already have a much finer one."

"Where is it?" He trembled to hear his own voice that sounded like a wailing moan.

"It is right beside ours, in the beautiful garden with the blooming rosebushes, and all the flowers and trees that blossom in the springtime."

"Then take me to it," he returned with resignation.

"It is just ahead."

He screamed when he beheld the tall bier which had been built into the center of the garden. Atop it rested his dead form, clad in his finest garments, his hands resting serenely over the golden pennant that lay upon his chest. All around him lay the corpses of his dead wives and children. There was Ninashme, his first bride, who had died from a serpent's bite on the journey to Nurn; beside her lay her daughter Uzalla, who had succumbed to illness at the tender age of nine. Then there were the two sisters, Tiranna and Kulianna. Cradled in their arms were the two children who had died of miscarriage and stillbirth. Abaru, Kabtu, and Mindin lay nearby, along with Goldwyn and her nameless child. They were all there, surrounding him – his wives, his children, the servants of his household, all joined with him in this final reunion of death. All of his dead family lay silent and still around him – all save the two youngest, the sons of Shumeeren and Anúrnissa – who purred and coiled around their father's feet.

"What happened?" he gasped.

"Oh, Father, do you not remember?" inquired Mindin, who had inexplicably acquired the ability to speak. "Some were taken by disease, others by childbirth; a few perished from misadventure. Here we all are, and so we shall remain together throughout all eternity!"

"Oh, my beloved husband," Shumeeren gasped as she flung her arms around him, "we love you!"

Esarhaddon woke up shaking violently, his body covered in perspiration, his teeth chattering, his skin like ice and clammy. When he recovered sufficiently, he rose from his bed, poured water from a pitcher into a basin and cleansed his face and hands. Then, prostrating himself beside his bed, he called out to every god of which he had ever heard, asking for absolution for his errors and imploring forgiveness if there should be any gods whom he did not know. Then he sat down upon his bed and called Yar to bring him an earthenware bowl filled with wine.

"Go and fetch the physician and make all haste," he told his valet after he had drunk long and deep. "I fear that I am grievously ill." He saw the frightened eyes of the servant before he quickly turned from him and dashed away down the hall. Then he slumped onto his couch, resting against the pillows, as the mists began to rage about him again.