Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12

by Between the Rivers (v2. 1)

  Kimash frowned. “The god uses you harshly,” he observed. The frown got deeper. “All the gods use Gibil harshly these days. Our merchants return empty-handed from their journeys; no merchants from other cities, no merchants from other lands, come into our market square to trade their wares for ours. Our city suffers.” He drew in a deep breath. “Did Engibil take it into his mind to cast me down from this high seat, many in Gibil would celebrate. Did the god take it into his mind to cast me out of this palace, many in the city would rejoice. Under Engibil’s rule, they would reckon, trade would return. Under the god’s rule, they would reckon, profit would grow.”

  “And they would become as the Imhursagut are,” Sharur said. “Who among us would care to live as the Imhursagut live, with Engibil speaking from our mouths as Enimhursag speaks through theirs?”

  “Who cares to live in a city without trade?” Kimash returned. “Who cares to live in a city without profit? Fewer men than you would suppose, son of Ereshguna.”

  “I would not care to live in a city without trade,” Sharur said. “I would not care to live in a city without profit. But still less would I care to live as the Imhursagut live.”

  “It is because this is so that I have summoned you,” the lugal told him. “Along with me, son of Ereshguna, you and your house stand to lose the most if Engibil should come to rule this city once more as well as reigning over it.”

  Sharur bowed his head. “What you say is true, mighty lugal. I have already lost, or nearly lost, a marriage my family, my intended’s family, and I myself want very much, as you know.”

  “Yes, I do know this,” Kimash said, nodding. “It is why I summoned you. It is why I give to you and to no other the task I hold in my mind.”

  “What task is that, mighty lugal?” Sharur asked.

  Kimash answered indirectly: “Son of Ereshguna, you were the first to bring back to Gibil word that men of other cities, men of other lands, would not treat with us. You were the first to bring back to Gibil word that gods of other cities, gods of other lands, were angry at us. I charge you with learning why this is so. I charge you with learning what we can do to make this so no longer.”

  “Mighty lugal—” Sharur hesitated.

  “Speak,” Kimash urged. “Give forth. Say what is in your heart.”

  “Very well. As you will have heard from me, mighty lugal, the gods of the Alashkurrut say they will not let the Alashkurrut trade with us because we are too much our own men and not enough men of our god. The only way to make this not so that I can see would be to become as the Imhursagut are.”

  “Yes, son of Ereshguna, I have heard this from your lips,” Kimash agreed. “But I have for you a question of my own: how are we more our own men this year than we were last year? How are we less men of our god this year than we were last year? Why could the Alashkurrut trade with us last year and not this year? What has changed in so short a time, to set the gods of the Alashkurrut—and some of the gods of Kudurru as well, it is not to be denied— against us?”

  Sharur stared at Kimash. Then, all unbidden, he prostrated himself before the lugal once more. His head against the ground, he said, “Truly, mighty lugal, these are questions that want answering. When the gods spoke to me, I took their words for truth, and did not look behind them. By the way they spoke,” he added, ‘‘I saw nothing but truth in their words.”

  “Rise, Sharur,” Kimash said. “I would not deny the gods of the Alashkurrut told you the truth. I do not deny the mountain gods spoke truly. But was the truth they told all of the truth? Do gods not speak the truth and speak in riddles at the same time?”

  “Mighty lugal, it is so,” Sharur said.

  “Of course it is so,” Kimash answered. “The gods created man in the misty depths of time, and no man yet has learned why, not from that day to this. There are truths within truths within truths, as in an onion there are layers within layers within layers. This is the task I set you, son of Ereshguna: bite into the onion of truth. Go past that first layer with the teeth of your wit. Learn what lies beneath it. Learn, and tell me what you have learned.”

  “It shall be as you say.” Sharur bowed to the lugal. “I will learn what I may as quickly as I may, and I will tell you what I have learned.” He hesitated. “I do not think I will be able to learn all I need within the walls of Gibil. I shall have to travel beyond the lands our city rules.”

  “Travel where you will,” Kimash told him. “I hope, though, that you will not need to return to the mountains of Alashkurru. I do not know if Gibil would be as it was when you returned from such a long voyage; I do not know if I would still sit on this high seat when you came back from such a great journey.”

  More than anything else the lugal had said, that showed Sharur how deep his worry ran. If Kimash feared Engibil might take back the city before Sharur could return from the land of the Alashkurrut, the power of the lugal truly hung by a thread. “Mighty lugal,” Sharur said, the polite title reminding him as it was not intended to do of the limits to Kimash’s might, “I hear you. Mighty lugal, I obey you. I shall not go to the mountains of Alashkurru. I shall remain in the land between the rivers. I shall go to the city closest to ours, that I may spend as little time on the road as can be.”

  “It is well,” Kimash said. “It is very well.” By his expression, though, it was not well, nor would it be until and unless Sharur returned with the answers he needed. After coughing a couple of times, he went on, “May you have good fortune on your journey to Zuabu. May you learn what you seek in the city of thieves.”

  “Mighty lugal, you misunderstand me,” Sharur said. “I do not intend to go to Zuabu. I do not intend to travel to the city of thieves.”

  “What then?” the lugal asked. His eyes widened. “You do not intend to go to Imhursag? You do not intend to travel to the city drunk on its god?”

  Sharur nodded. “I do. The Imhursagut I met on the road knew I would have trouble in the mountains of Alashkurru. Enimhursag knew I would have no easy time among the Alashkurrut. If answers lie within the land between the rivers, they will lie in Imhursag. If answers are to be found within Kudurru, they will be found among the Imhursagut.”

  “You are bold. You are brave.” Kimash’s voice was troubled. “Even now, Engibil rests more than he acts. It is not so with Enimhursag. The god of Imhursag watches his city. If you cross from the land Gibil rules to the land w'here Enimhursag is lord, the god will know you for what you are. His eye will never leave you. His ear will always be bent your way. You shall not succeed.”

  “Mighty lugal...” Sharur paused. “Let me think. This thing needs doing; of that I am sure. How best to do it...” He paused again. After a bit, he brightened. “Have I your leave, mighty lugal, to spend a little more time on the road to Imhursag than I might otherwise?”

  “Imhursag is not so distant,” Kimash answered. “What is in your mind?”

  “Suppose, mighty lugal, that I do as you thought I would do: suppose I go to Zuabu, or to the land Zuabu rules. Zuabu and Imhursag are at peace; Enimhursag and Enzuabu have no quarrel. If I enter Imhursaggi land from Zuabu, to the eye and ear of Enimhursag I shall seem only another Zuabi myself. If he does not know me for what I am, he will take no special notice of me.”

  ‘‘This is a good notion—or as good as a notion can be in bad times,” Kimash said. “No, son of Ereshguna, I shall not begrudge you the time you take traveling to Imhursag by way of Zuabu. Instead, I shall hope that you are able to turn the time into profit for yourself, for me, and for Gibil.”

  He said not a word about profit for Engibil, which was one reason Sharur was so willing to do as he wished. The less the god interfered in Sharur’s life, the happier he would be. He was certain of that; when the god had interfered in his life, it had made him very unhappy indeed.

  “Do you require anything more of me, mighty lugal?” he asked.

  “I require that you succeed,” Kimash answered. “Gibil requires that you succeed. If we are not to return to what we
were in the days before we learned to put tin in with copper, if we are not to return to what we were in the days before we learned to set our records down on clay, if we are not to return to the days before we learned to think our own thoughts and act on our own purposes, we all require that you succeed.”

  Sharur took a deep breath. “Mighty lugal, you tie a heavy load onto my back. I hope I am a donkey strong enough to bear the burden.”

  “If you are not, where shall I find a stronger one?” Kimash asked.

  He did not put the question intending that it be answered, but Sharur answered it nonetheless, and without hesitation: “Ereshguna, my father.”

  The lugal pursed his lips as he considered that. “No,” he said at last. “In this, I would sooner have you. I speak not of donkeys but of rams: the young ram will go forward where the old ram would falter.” He chuckled under his breath. “The young ram will go forward where the old ram would think twice. Be my young ram, Sharur. Go forward for me. Go forward, and lead the city toward safety.”

  “Mighty lugal, you may trust in me!” Sharur exclaimed.

  “I do,” Kimash said simply. “Go now. Go for me. Go for Gibil.”

  “I shall go now,” Sharur said. “I shall go for you, mighty lugal. I shall go for the Giblut.” I shall go for myself, and for the sake ofNingal. He did not say that aloud. Only later did he realize it was likely the chiefest reason for which Kimash sent him forth.

  5

  Sharur tugged at the donkey’s lead rope. “Demons eat you!” he shouted in the best Zuabi accent he could assume. “Devils flay the hide off your bones! There lies the city, just ahead. If you want to rest, you can rest inside it.”

  The donkey brayed and looked stubborn and set its feet and would not go forward. A man with a couple of pots full of grain strapped to his back strode around Sharur as he went back to the animal and got it moving with a direct brutality of which Harharu would have disapproved. The others on the road to Imhursag—the road the donkey was doing its best to block—did not complain; on the contrary.

  “You stupid thing,” Sharur said, as the donkey resentfully started going once more. “You stupid, ugly thing. Under the shadow of the walls, you want to stop. I tell you, it shall not be.” The donkey brayed, but kept walking.

  In Sharur’s view, the walls of Imhursag were not nearly so fine as those of his own city. They were not so high as Gibil’s walls, nor did they compass round so broad an area. Much of the brickwork was old, and in imperfect repair. But that only made the temple of Enimhursag, thrusting step by narrowing step into the sky above the top of the wall, seem more massive and imposing by comparison. This was the god’s city first, with men and their needs an afterthought.

  Guards at the gate looked Sharur and the donkey over without much interest. “Where from?” one of them asked.

  “Zuabu,” he answered, and pointed southwest.

  “What’s the beast carrying?” the guard inquired.

  Was Enimhursag looking out through the bored man’s eyes? Was the god of Imhursag speaking through the bored man’s lips? Sharur did not think so, but knowing was hard. Still, having succeeded with the lie—no, the half-truth, for the guard had pot asked his home city—about his origin, he had not intended to speak anything but the truth here: “Bronze and bracelets and beads and pickled palm hearts.”

  “Where’d you come by all that stuff?” the Imhursaggi asked. He and his companions chuckled at that. The Imhursagut were men like any others... when Enimhursag let them be so.

  As if his dignity had been affronted, Sharur drew himself up straight. “I traded for it—of course.”

  The guards laughed out loud. “Of course, Zuabi,” their leader said. They didn’t believe him. None of Zuabu’s neighbors believed Zuabut when they proclaimed their honesty. The guard went on, “Just remember, friend, your lightfingered god won’t protect you if you step out of line here. Enimhursag, the great lord, the mighty lord, loves thieves not.”

  His voice grew deeper, more rolling, more imposing when he mentioned his god—or was it the god delivering a warning through him? “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sharur said in tones too arch to be taken seriously. Laughing once more, the guards waved him into Imhursag.

  As he passed through the gateway into the city rival to his own, Sharur felt, or thought he felt, a tingle run through him. The hair on his arms and chest stood out from his body for a moment, as if lightning had struck not too far away. Then the feeling faded, and he might have been in any city of Kudurru.

  Most of the Imhursagut, to look at them, were not much different from other folk of the land between the rivers. Peasants gaped at the number and size of the buildings Imhursag held. Potters shouted their wares. Customers shouted derision at them. A drunken woman slept in the shade of a mud-brick wall. Her tunic had hiked up to show her secret place. A small boy pointed and giggled. A dog lapped up what was left of the beer in the pot beside her, then lifted its leg against the wall. The small boy giggled louder.

  Here and there, though, Enimhursag’s priests—the god’s eyes, the god’s spies—strode through the streets. They shaved their heads. They shaved their beards. Sharur wondered if they ever blinked. He didn’t think so. Whenever he saw one of them, he kept his own eyes cast down to the dirt of the street so as to draw no notice. He did his best not to imagine what would happen if Enimhursag realized a Gibli had sneaked into his city.

  A gang of slaves was knocking down a mud-brick building. Only a single overseer watched them, and was paying more attention to a harlot sauntering along the street than to the workmen. Nonetheless, they labored steadily and diligently. In Gibil, a gang supervised with such laxness would have accomplished nothing.

  One of the slaves, seeing the overseer’s eyes following the rolling buttocks of the harlot, did lean on his copper-shod digging stick for a breather. After a moment, though, the slave stiffened and began breaking up mud brick once more. “I pray your pardon, mighty lord,” he muttered as he worked. ‘‘I am but a lazy dung fly, unworthy of your notice. I am but a lowly worm, not deserving of your attention.” How the chunks flew from the brick!

  Sharur shivered. No wonder the overseer could turn his gaze toward a whore’s backside rather than keeping it firmly fixed on the work gang. Enimhursag watched the slaves, and held them to their tasks more thoroughly than the man might have done with lash and shouted curses. Sharur wondered if Enimhursag was keeping special watch on this gang because the building that would replace the one they were demolishing was to serve his cult, or whether the god simply surveyed all the slaves in his city.

  The less Sharur spoke, the less chance he had of betraying himself to the people or to their vigilant god. He had hoped to be able to find the market square without talking to any of the Imhursagut. But the streets of Imhursag were like those of Gibil. They were like those of any other city in the land between the rivers. They bent and twisted back on themselves in ways no one viio had not lived in Imhursag since birth—or no one wiiom Enimhursag did not guide— could hope to understand.

  .After passing the gang of sweating slaves and their inattentive human overseer for the second time, Sharer realized he might wander till nightfall without stumbling upon what he sought. No help for it, then, but to ask an Imhursaggi. He put the question to a graybeard carrying a large bundle of palm fronds.

  “Not from here, eh?” the old man said. “No, I can tell you ain't, I can. You talk funny, you do. Well, from here you go...” His voice trailed away. Was he reviewing the plan of the city he carried in his mind? Or wns he asking Enimhursag for the answer—and receiving it? Sharnr did not inquire. Sharnr would sooner not have known. The old man resumed: “Second left, third right, first left, and you're there.”

  “Second left, third right, first left,” Sharnr repeated. “I thank you. May your god bless you for your kindness.”

  “Oh, he does, lad, he does.” The old Imhursaggi’s smile was broad and happy. He liked living in a city where the god
ruled directly; Sharnr did not understand, but he did not argue, either. Thanking the man again, he led the donkey down the street.

  The directions, whatever their source, were good. Imhursag's market square proved neither so large nor so noisy as that of Gibil. No, after a moment Sharnr revised that first impression: Imhursag's market square might be small, but at the moment it wns a great deal noisier than that of Gibil. Merchants from all over Kudurru and the surrounding lands thronged here, where the Giblut traded among themselves and large stretches of the square of Gibil wore nothing but bare dirt and blowing dust. Seeing Imhursagut profit while his own people had to do without infuriated Sharer.

  He found a tiny open area in the square of Imhursag, tethered the donkey to a stake driven into the ground not far away, and set out his own trade goods on cloths. That done, he began loudly crying their virtues.

  Imhursagut and merchants from other cities and other lands wandered through the market square. Sharur quickly sold several pots of pickled palm hearts to an Imhursaggi tavern keeper. The man said, “Come to my place—I am Elulu—on the Street of Enimhursag’s Elbow, just past the bend. My wife cooks palm hearts in many tasty ways.”

  “If I can come, I will come,” Sharur said, bowing. The lie was as smooth as he could make it; he had no intention of going into a street named for any part of Imhursag’s city god.

  A couple of women traded him broken bits of bronze and copper for his beads. So did a couple of men, buying for their womenfolk. In such small dealings, the Imhursagut seemed little different from the people of Gibil. Without the eyes of the god on them, they were indeed simply people. They were also rather simple people; Sharur got more for the ornaments from them, and with less haggling, than he would have from Giblut.

  Then one of the shaven-headed priests stopped in front of him. The man picked up a knife. He handled it like one knowledgeable of weapons. “This is fine metalwork,” he observed.