Ereshguna set a hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps it is not so bad as you think. Perhaps we may yet set it right.”
“But how, Father?” Sharur cried.
“Perhaps we can fulfill your oath to Engibil in another way,” Ereshguna said. “As I said before, you are but a part of the house of Ereshguna. Perhaps we shall lend you the bride-price for your intended. There will be other days; there will be other caravans; there will be other times to profit. You can restore what is lent to you to the house of Ereshguna. Thus you will have gained Ningal through the profit from a caravan.”
“But not through the profit from this caravan,” Sharur said.
“No, not through the profit from this caravan,” his father agreed. “But you will have the copper to give to Dimgalabzu for your intended. You will have the silver to give to the smith for his daughter. You will have the gold to give to him for Ningal. This will be good for the house of Ereshguna. This will be good for the house of Dimgalabzu.” Ereshguna smiled. “And, son, this will be good for you. I have seen—who living on the Street of Smiths has not seen?—how you look at her when she goes by, and she at you as well.”
Sharur bowed low before his father. “If you do this for me, I shall indeed repay you. You rescue me from my own pride; from my own foolishness you save me.”
“You are my son.” Ereshguna smiled again. “And you are a young man. The gods have never yet shaped a young man who did not need to be saved from his own foolishness now and again. Have we a bargain, then? I shall lend you the bride-price, and you shall repay it from profits yet to come.”
“Yes,” Sharur said joyfully.
No.
Had someone somehow cast a bronze bell twice as tall as a man, that one word might have tolled from it. The word echoed and reechoed inside Sharur’s head, till he staggered and almost fell under its impact. Beside him, he saw his father stagger, too. He wondered briefly'if Puzur the earthquake demon had chosen that moment to loose destruction on Gibil. But the tremor was inside him; the tremor was inside his father. Other men did not cry out, nor did the buildings on the Street of Smiths sway and topple.
No.
Again, the word rang through Sharur and Ereshguna. Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost heard it, too, though the ghost’s terrified screeching seemed tiny and lost among those great reverberations.
“It is the voice of the god,” Ereshguna gasped.
“Yes.” Sharur shivered, as with an ague. Men schemed, men maneuvered, men labored for generations to gain a tiny space of freedom from the gods. Gods did not need to scheme or maneuver against men. Gods had strength. When they noticed what men were doing... Oh, when they noticed ...
Engibil spoke once more, implanting his words in the minds of Sharur and Ereshguna: I hold in my hands the oath of Sharur son of Ereshguna. I hold in my heart the oath of Sharur son of Ereshguna. The oath shall not be avoided. The oath shall not be evaded. Sharur son of Ereshguna swore in my name to pay bride-price for Ningal daughter of Dimgalabzu with profit from the journey he has just completed. There was no profit. There can be no bride-price. I shall not be mocked among my fellow gods. No god shall say of me, “See, it is Engibil, whose name men take in vain. ” Hear me and obey, men of Gibil.
As abruptly as the god had seized Sharur and Ereshguna, so now he released them. They stared at each other, whitefaced and shaking. “In all my years,” Ereshguna said slowly, “in all my years, I say, I have never known Engibil to speak so.”
“I remember things like this,” Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost said shrilly, “and I remember my grandfather telling me they happened all the time in his day. I knew you clever people would get in trouble one fine day, I knew it, I knew it.” The ghost sounded horrified and glad at the same time.
Sharur said nothing. He found nothing he could say. He looked to his father. Ereshguna said nothing, either, not for some time. That alarmed Sharur more than anything. No: that alarmed Sharur more than anything save the resistless voice of the god pounding inside his head. Nothing could have been more alarming than that. But seeing his father at a loss for words frightened him, too, underscoring the magnitude of what had just happened. Though a man grown,
Sharur had never lost the notion that Ereshguna could solve larger, more complicated troubles than he could himself. That, after all, was what a father was for.
When Ereshguna did not speak and then still did not speak, Sharur forced words out through numb lips: “What do we do now?”
His father gathered himself. “We had better do what we were going to do anyhow—we had better speak with Dimgalabzu the smith.” He sighed and shuddered, still no more recovered than was Sharur from their encounter with Engibil. “Now, though, we shall have to give him a word we would sooner not speak, and also one he would sooner not hear.”
“Is there no help for it?” Sharur cried, setting a hand on his father’s thigh in appeal.
“I see none,” Ereshguna said. “Come.” Sharur saw none either, and so, all unwilling, he followed his father to the house of Dimgalabzu.
“Wait,” Dimgalabzu said. Sweating as he stood close by the fire, he lifted a clay crucible from it with long wooden tongs, then, moving quickly, poured molten bronze into three molds, one after another. He had calculated his work well; the last of the metal filled the last mold. Dimgalabzu wiped his dripping forehead. “There. It is accomplished. Now we shall drink beer.”
“Now we shall drink beer,” Ereshguna agreed. Here inside the smithy, he sounded stronger and more sure of himself than he had out in the street.
Sharur also felt his own spirit revive here. As at the smithy of Abzuwas son of Ahhiyawas in the Alashkurru Mountains, he no longer noted the brooding immanence of hostile gods. Metalworking had a power of its own; without such power, how could something hard as stone be made to run like water and then turn hard once more, this time in a shape the smith determined?
Dimgalabzu clapped his hands. “Beer!” he called. “Beer for Ereshguna the master merchant and Sharur his son. And let us have salt fish to eat with the beer.”
No slave brought the pot of beer, as Sharur had expected. No slave brought the bowl of salt fish, as he had looked for. Instead, Ningal fetched in beer; Ningal fetched in fish. Dimgalabzu did Sharur and Ereshguna honor, to let her serve them. She smiled at Sharur, saucily, over her shoulder as she went-out once more. The smile was a knife in his heart. He smiled back at her. That was twisting the knife.
After libations and invocations, he and his father and Dimgalabzu drank of the beer. They ate of the salt fish. Presently, Dimgalabzu said, ‘‘What news have you for me, master merchant, master merchant’s son?”
The smith smiled. His voice held no worry. He thought he knew what the word would be. He thought he knew the word would be good. Inside Sharur, the knife twisted again.
Ereshguna said, “My old friend, we come to you with troubled hearts. My old comrade, we come to you with troubled spirits. Hear what has befallen us.” He set forth the tale of Sharur’s failed caravan to the mountains of Alashkurru, of the oath Sharur had given to Engibil, and of Engibil’s awe-inspiring (“terrifying” was the word Sharur would have used, but maybe they amounted to the same thing in the end) refusal to let the oath be altered or circumvented.
Dimgalabzu’s lips skinned back from his teeth, farther and farther, as he listened, until at last he looked as if he were snarling. “This is a hard word you give me, master merchant, a hard word in many ways. That the god should bar the arrangement you had in mind ... that is hard. That the god should care enough to bar the arrangement you had in mind... that is very hard.” Like any smith of Gibil, he was used to quiet from Engibil, quiet in which he could conduct his own affairs.
“It is very hard indeed,” Ereshguna agreed. “This happened, as I say, while we were coming here from the palace of Kimash the lugal. Kimash will find it hard news as well.”
“Yes,” Dimgalabzu said. Even more than the smiths, the merchants, or the scribes, the lugal depended
on quiet from Engibil. Dimgalabzu shook his head. “That you cannot pay the bride-price for my daughter... that is hardest of all. Without the bride-price, there can be no wedding.”
Sharur had known Dimgalabzu would say as much. Standing where Dimgalabzu stood, Sharur would have said as much. That did nothing to diminish his anguish at hearing Dimgalabzu say as much. He cried, “Could we not—?”
The smith held up a scarred, dirty hand. “Son of Ereshguna, do not let this question pass your lips. Not even the peasants in the villages far from Gibil, not even the herders in the fields so distant they cannot see the city’s walls, give up their daughters without bride-price. And Ningal is no peasant’s daughter. My daughter is no herder’s daughter. Without the bride-price, there can be no wedding.”
To make Sharur’s mortification complete, Ningal had come back into the room with a bowl of spicy relish for the fish. “Father—” she began.
“No.” Dimgalabzu’s voice was hard as stone. “Without the bride-price, there can be no wedding. My daughter shall not be the laughingstock of the Street of Smiths; my daughter shall not be a joke for the city. I have spoken.”
“Yes, Father,” Ningal whispered, and withdrew once more. ,
Desperately, Sharur said, “May I bargain with you, father of my intended?”
“I will hear your words,” Dimgalabzu said, “though I make no pledges past that. Say on.”
“If you cannot wed your daughter to me without bride-price, will you keep from pledging her to another, to give me time to see if I may not reverse Engibil’s ban?”
“Were you not Ereshguna’s son, I would say no.” Dimgalabzu plucked at his curly beard. “Were you not in my daughter’s heart to the point where that might trouble any future match, I would also say no.” He licked his lips as he thought. “Let it be as you say. For the space of one year, let it be as you say. No more. Past that, I shall do as I reckon best.”
Sharur bowed almost as low as he would have before Kimash the lugal. “Engibil’s blessings upon you, father of my intended.” Only after the words were out of his mouth and past recall did he wonder at the propriety of asking Engibil to bless Dimgalabzu when it was thanks to the god’s interference that he and Ningal could not join in marriage as they had long planned and as they had long hoped.
Ereshguna also bowed to Dimgalabzu. ‘‘You have my thanks also, old friend. Things do not always go as we would have them go.”
‘‘There you speak the truth,” the smith said. ‘‘We are not gods. And, even if we were gods, we would not be free of strife.”
‘‘How right you are.” Ereshguna bowed again. So did Sharur. They took their leave of Dimgalabzu. As he turned to go, Sharur looked down the hallway from which Ningal had brought beer and fish and relish, in the hope of catching one last glimpse of her. He saw only the hallway.
Day followed day. Sharur worked with his father and younger brother, trading to the smiths the copper and ore and tin they had on hand, and trading with others the goods they got from the smiths in exchange. They even made a profit on most of their dealings, but that did not reassure them. ‘‘What shall we do when our supplies of metal are gone?” Tupsharru asked. “What shall we do when we have no more ore to trade?”
“We shall go hungry, by and by,” Sharur said. His brother smiled, reckoning it a joke. Sharur did not smile in return. He smiled less often these days than he had before his caravan came home from Gibil without having been able to trade.
Then other caravans started coming home to Gibil without having been able to trade. Merchants from other cities did not bring their wares to the market square in Gibil, even merchants who had come each year for longer than Sharur had been alive. Nor did merchants from beyond Kudurru enter the city, as they had done more and more often in recent years.
Coming back one day from the market square—a square where, increasingly, Giblut bought from and sold to and traded with other Giblut alone—Ereshguna said, “Commerce has long been the lifeblood of this city. Now all the blood seems to drain out of Gibil, and none comes in. How can we lead the land between the rivers if commerce goes elsewhere?”
“Zuabu prospers, I hear,” Sharur said. “Even Imhursag prospers, I hear. How can the Imhursagut prosper while we falter? Having their god bellowing in their ears all the time makes them stupid.”
“Our god may be bellowing more and more in our ears,” his father answered. “If Kimash the lugal cannot keep Engibil happy, the god will find a way to make himself happy. Then we and the Imhursagut shall be just alike.”
“May it not come to pass,” Sharur exclaimed. Engibil might make a better master than Enimhursag; as far as Sharur was concerned, Engibil could not possibly make a worse master than Enimhursag. But Sharur was used to being a free man, or a man as free as any in the land between the rivers. He did not want a god to rule his life.
Engibil did not care what he wanted. He had already seen that.
“May it not come to pass, indeed,” Ereshguna said. “You and I say this. We are men who know freedom. We are men who do not want Engibil twisting our lives with his hand. But another in Gibil says this louder than you or I. Another in Gibil says this louder than'yoq and I together.”
“Kimash the lugal,” Sharur said.
“Kimash the lugal,” Ereshguna agreed. “We are men who do not want to be ruled. Kimash is a man who already rules. How would it be for him to have to give back to Engibil full mastery of this city?”
“It would be hard,” Sharur said.
“It would be hard, yes,” Ereshguna said. “And it might well be more than hard. It might well be dangerous. What will Engibil do, after three generations of lugals have kept him from full rule over Gibil? What will he do, after Kimash and Kimash’s father and Kimash’s grandfather have ruled in his place?”
“I do not know the answer,” Sharur said. “I am only a man, so I can not know the answer, not ahead of time. Even Kimash the lugal can not know the answer, not ahead of time. But I think, Father, that if I sat in Kimash the lugal’s high seat, I would be a worried man.”
“I think you are right, son, and I think Kimash the lugal is a worried man today,” Ereshguna replied. “What will he do? What can he do?” The master merchant plucked at his beard. “I do not know what he can do. I wonder if he knows himself what he can do.”
Inadapa stood in the doorway to Ereshguna’s establishment and waited to be noticed. As a man, he was not very noticeable. As a power in the city of Gibil, he was noticeable indeed. “It is the steward to Kimash the mighty lugal!” Ereshguna said, bowing himself almost double.
Sharur bowed, too. “The steward to Kimash the mighty lugal honors us by his presence,” he said. “In his name and through him we greet his mighty master.” He bowed again.
“Enter our dwelling, steward to the mighty lugal,” Ereshguna said. “Drink beer with us. Eat onions with us.” He clapped his hands. A slave came running. Ereshguna pointed to Inadapa. “Fetch a pot of beer for the steward’s refreshment. Fetch a basket of onions for the steward’s enjoyment.”
“You are generous to me,” Inadapa said, drinking sour beer. “You are gracious to me,” he added, eating a pungent onion. “By the honor you show to me, you also show honor to my master.”
“So we intended,” Sharur said, “for where you are, there also Kimash the mighty lugal is.”
Now Inadapa bowed. “You are well spoken, son of Ereshguna. You are polite, master merchant’s son. It is no wonder, then, that my master, the mighty lugal Kimash, ordered me to bring you with me back to the palace of the lugals, that he might have speech with you.” .
“Did he?” Sharur stole a quick glance at his father. “I obey the mighty lugal in this, as I obey him in all things. When you have drunk, when you have eaten, you will take me to him.”
“When I have drunk, when I have eaten, I will take you to him,” Inadapa agreed.
“Does the mighty lugal also desire speech with me?” Ereshguna asked.
Inadapa sho
ok his bald head. “He spoke only of your son, master merchant.”
“He is the lugal,” Ereshguna said. “It shall be as he desires, as in all things here in Gibil.”
Inadapa said nothing to that. Neither did Sharur. Had everything in Gibil been as Kimash desired, the lugal would have had no need to summon him to the palace.
After finishing his beer and onions, Inadapa declined more of either. “Let us be off,” he said to Sharur. “I am glad to eat and drink with you, but I do not wish to make the mighty lugal anxious for my return.”
“By no means.” Sharur gulped down the last of his own beer and rose from the stool on which he sat. “Lead me to the palace. I am your slave, and the mighty lugal’s slave as well.” Better either of those than being Engibil’s slave, he thought. He would never, ever say that aloud.
Inadapa rose, too. “We go, then.” He bowled to Ereshguna. “Master merchant, your house is never to be faulted for hospitality.”
With the steward, Sharur walked up the Street of Smiths toward the lugal’s palace. As he walked, he sometimes got glimpses of Engibil’s temple. The temple was larger than the palace. Most of it was older, dating from the days when Engibil had ruled his city: before there were lugals, some of it from before there were even ensis. But Kimash, and his father and grandfather before him, had not altogether neglected the god’s house, either, though they gave more presents than they did building. Their hope had always been that greater luxury would compensate the god for losing power. For three generations, that hope had been realized. Now...
Now Sharur groveled in the dust before Kimash on his high seat sheathed in beaten gold. When he rose, the lugal asked, “Do I hear rightly that Engibil holds your oath tight to himself, and will not release you from it even to pay bride-price for your intended?”
“Mighty lugal, you do,” Sharur answered. Neither he nor his father nor, so far as he knew, his grandfather’s ghost had noised about the god’s command. If Dimgalabzu had spoken of it to the lugal, however, the smith would certainly have been within his rights.
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