“I thank you, sir, that I do.” Sharur laid on the Zuabi accent like a peasant spreading manure thickly over his field.
“I would not have thought Zuabu could claim such skilled smiths.” The priest’s eyes moved back and forth, back and forth, from the blade he held in his hand to Sharur. Enimhursag was staring out of those eyes, too. “Tell me, if you will, whence came this blade. Tell me, if you know, where it was made.”
“He who traded it to me said it came from Aggasher,” Sharur answered. Not only was Aggasher farther from Imhursag than Zuabu, and so less likely to be intimately familiar to Enimhursag and his minion, it was also ruled by its goddess, and so more likely to be pleasing to the god and his priest.
“Aggasher, eh?” The priest felt of the knife. “Well, it could be. Metalworking makes the touch of a god hard to detect. Were it less useful, it would be banned. Perhaps, one day, it shall be banned anyway.” Was that Enimhursag, thinking aloud through the priest’s lips? Not all the sweat running down Sharur’s back sprang from the heat of the day. But then the priest went on, “I have need of a good blade, Zuabi. How much will you try to steal from me for it?”
Against him, Sharur did not bargain so hard as he might have. He did not care to risk drawing Enimhursag’s attention to himself. Even so, he wmld have been pleased in Gibil with the weight of silver he got for the dagger.
A man with a pot of beer strode through the market square, selling cups of his brew for bits of metal. Sharur gladly drank one. He did not think the beer was as good as they brewed in Gibil. He did not think anything in Imhursag was as good as its Gibli counterpart.
Not long after he gave the clay cup back to the beerseller so the man could refill it for his next customer, a couple of foreigners walked past his little display: Alashkurrut sweltering in their tunics. One of them was colored like a man of Kudurru; the other had lighter, ruddier skin and hair of a woody brown rather than the usual black.
“Good-looking blades there,” the fair one said to the other in their own language. Sharur stood still as a stone and looked stupid, not wanting them to know he understood. The man from the western mountains went on, “They might almost be Gibli work.”
His companion snorted. “Not in this city, Piluliumas,” he said. “This city is Gibil’s foe. No Giblut come here.”
“Piluliumas, I know Gibli blades when I see them,” Luwiyas said stubbornly. He turned to Sharur and spoke in the language of the land between the rivers: “You, trader. Where do these knives come from? What city do these swords call home?”
Bowing, Sharur answered, “I got these blades, knives and swords, in Zuabu. The man who traded them to me said they were made in Aggasher.” Having told that story to the priest, he had to stick by it. Enimhursag might be listening.
“There, you see?” Piluliumas said. “Aggasher, not Gibil.”
But Luwiyas said, “In Zuabu, they will sell you your own head and make a profit on it. In Zuabu, they will sell you someone else’s head and say it is your own and make you believe it. If the god of Zuabu were not a god of thieves himself, his people would steal the jewels from his earrings.” .
Sharur had to work hard to keep his face straight and pretend he did not follow the Alashkurri. Luwiyas’s opinion of Zuabut was identical to his own; the man must have had dealings with them. His friend said, “It could be so, I suppose. They do look like good blades. Shall we see what he wants for them?”
“Not now,” Luwiyas answered. “We have asked about them, so he will seek too much for them. Let us come back tomorrow, as if by chance, and trade as if we do not care. He is no master merchant, or he would have more goods. He will be glad enough to trade with us then.”
His companion bowed. “You are wise. It is good.”
Sharur thought Luwiyas was good, too, his one mistake being the assumption that a chance-met merchant in the market square would not speak his language. The two Alash- kurrut went off to disparage someone else’s goods. Sharur had already intended to stay overnight in Imhursag; indeed, to stay in the city whose god hated him until he found answers to the questions Kimash had set him. Now he dared hope he might gain some of those answers sooner than he had expected.
As far as Sharur was concerned, the inn he chose for the night would have been reckoned poor in Alashkurru, a disgrace in Gibil. It was dark and dirty. The food ranged from bad to worse. The room to which the innkeeper showed him was so tiny and smelly and full of bugs, he carried his sacks of trade goods out to the stables and bedded down in the straw beside his donkey.
When the innkeeper refused to give back any part of what he’d paid, he shouted at the man. “You gave me copper for a night’s food,” the Imhursaggi said. “You gave me copper for a night’s lodging. You have had food here. You have lodging here. Shall we go to the god? Shall we let Enim- hursag decide?”
“No,” Sharur said quickly. The innkeeper smirked, thinking that meant Sharur admitted justice lay with him. In fact, Sharur admitted nothing of the sort, but let himself be cheated to keep the god’s eye from falling on him.
And, as he drifted toward sleep, he decided that perhaps he was not being cheated after all. He was, in fact, more comfortable than he would have been in that nasty little cubicle. He looked over toward the donkey. Though still without any great love for the stubborn beast, he said, “You are better company than that jackass of an innkeeper.”
The donkey snorted. Sharur rolled over and fell asleep.
Some time later, his eyes came open, or, at least, he saw once more. Was he awake? Did he dream? He did not know. He could not tell. Normally, that alone would have told him he was dreaming. Everything he saw, though, everything he heard and felt and smelled, seemed too vivid, too real, for a dream. Everything seemed too coherent for a dream, too.
But neither was he in the world to which he usually awoke. He watched and marveled. Presently, he grew afraid.
He was moving through a green, growing field of barley. The stalks of grain, though, towered over his head as if they were the oaks and ashes and elms and other trees with peculiar names that grew in the mountain valleys of Alash- kurru. Had he grown tiny, or had the barley become huge? He could not tell. He knew only that he had to keep walking through it, for he was going toward ... going toward ... He could not remember what he was going toward, only that getting there was important.
Then he did remember something else. Something—he could not remember what—would try to stop him. Something, if it got the chance, would do worse than try to stop him.
No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than something—the something he did not know—stirred the tops of the barley stalks, shoving them aside so that the sun stabbed down into the green-tinged twilight through which he moved. He scurried away from that light, for he did not want it to pin him to the ground. Whatever was up there would find him then.
Glistening with sweat in the sunlight, a hand and arm groped toward him. Each finger on that hand was longer than he was; he could have stood and danced on that immense palm. But if those fingers and that palm closed on him, he did not think he would dance. He did not think he would dance ever again.
He realized then, as he had not realized before, that he was not the only manikin moving through the field of barley. Others also scurried along beneath the growing grain. That enormous hand closed around one of them and lifted him up toward the light. A thin wail of terror rose, and then cut off abruptly. Sharur dove into a hollow in the ground. A cockroach already sheltered there. It was not much smaller than he; for a moment, he thought it would fight him to hold its hiding place. But then it fled, hairy legs flailing.
That immense hand descended once more. Blood now stained palm and fingers. A drop fell on Sharur as the hand passed over him. It went after the cockroach, whose motion must have drawn attention away from his hiding place. Looking up through the shifting barley stalks, he saw an intent, serious face as big as the world. He shut his eyes as tight as he could, not so much to keep the eyes in that f
ace from seeing him as to keep himself from seeing them.
The hand groped after the cockroach. When it rose, though, it was empty; the scuttling bug had escaped. A great bellow of rage filled the sky, as if a thunderstorm cried out with the voice of a man.
Sharur woke in the stable to the sound of his donkey— indeed, all the donkeys in their narrow stalls—braying frantically. His chest was wet. Some of the straw around him was wet. His first thought was that the donkey, in its fright, had kicked over or broken the pot of water the stablehands had left for it.
But that was not so; the light from a guttering torch outside the stall showed him the bowl where it belonged. It also showed him the liquid that splashed him was dark, not clear. A hot, metallic smell rose from it.
“Blood!” he exclaimed, recognition and horror mingling in his voice. He snatched up unstained straw from the floor, dipped it into the donkey’s water pot, and washed himself as clean as he could.
While scrubbing at himself, he remembered the barley field. What had been hunting him through it, and what had that great hand caught instead of him? That it had wanted him he had no doubt.
Slowly, the donkeys calmed. As their racket subsided, Sharur heard more racket—the racket of men, outside the stable. He ran out into the night to find out what was going on.
“Lord Enimhursag!” people were shouting, and “The god!” and “The power of the god!” and “Who was the evil-doer the god chose to punish?”
People were running from the inn as Sharur came out of the stables. Some of them had the same sorts of questions as did he. Others knew more, or said they did. “Squashed him flat!” one of them shouted. “Squashed him flat as a cockroach!” (Sharur shuddered.)
“He must have had it coming,” someone else said—the innkeeper. He was carrying a torch. In its .light, his eyes were wide and glittering. Catching sight of Sharur, he said, “You’re a lucky bugger, Zuabi, and you had better believe it.”
“Why?” Sharur asked. “What happened?”
“When that room didn’t suit you—and curse me if I know why it didn’t—I put another traveler from your city into it,” the man answered. “The god only knows what crimes he’d committed—and the god made him pay for them.”
“Reached right through the roof and squashed him flat!” that first fellow repeated, in a voice suggesting he’d had enough beer and then some the night before.
“Enimhursag knows a man’s heart. Enimhursag sees a man’s soul,” the innkeeper said. “The god of our city is a just god. The god of our city is a righteous god. The god of our city is a mighty god.”
The god of your city is a stupid god, Sharur thought. The god of your city is a clumsy god. Enimhursag had discovered that one man in Imhursag claiming to be a Zuabi was not what he seemed. (That was anything but stupid, a point on which Sharur ehose not to dwell.) The god had tracked the false Zuabi to a particular inn. (That was anything but clumsy, another point Sharur would sooner have forgotten.) At the inn, though, Enimhursag had slain the wrong Zuabi, choosing the true instead of the false. (He might well have slain the right one, a point about which Sharur refused to think in any way whatever.)
“Was he kin of yours, this other fellow from your city?” the innkeeper asked.
Sharur thought for a moment before he answered. If he said yes, the innkeeper might let him look at or even take the effects of the other Zuabi, the true Zuabi, and who could guess what he might learn from them? But, on the other hand, if he said yes, he might draw Enimhursag’s notice back to himself where the god now, believed his troubles with Zuabut were over. That last consideration decided Sharur. “No,” he said.
“An honest Zuabi,” the innkeeper said. “Isn’t that funny? Next thing you know, we’ll be seeing a pious Gibli.” He laughed loudly at his own wit. Sharur thought he heard other laughter, deeper laughter, echoing through and around that of the innkeeper. He told himself he was imagining that other laughter, and wished he could have made himself believe it.
“If the excitement’s over, I’m going back to bed,” he said, and forced out a yawn. He was not sleepy anymore; the yawn was as artificial as any of the expressions he wore while haggling over the price of a spearhead. Like those artificial expressions, this one served its purpose.
Before he lay down again, he shifted the straw in the donkey’s stall to make sure he did not lie on any that was bloodstained. After he lay down, he sent a prayer in the direction of Enzuabu, apologizing that the god’s subject had been taken in his place. And after that, to his surprise, he slept.
When he woke the next morning, he saw he had not done such a good job of cleaning himself as he had thought. But what had escaped his eye in the night had also escaped the eyes of the innkeeper and the guests who had spilled out of the inn after Enimhursag visited it in his wrath. He did better before letting anyone see him by light of day.
The barley porridge the innkeeper gave him for breakfast was bland and watery. He gulped it down anyhow, and then loaded trade goods onto his donkey and hurried out to the market square.
Arriving not long after sunrise, he found a better place than that from which he had done business the day before. He set out knives and swords and pickled palm hearts and started crying for customers. Before long, as if by chance, the Alashkurrut with whom he’d talked the day before came by. It wasn’t chance, either on their part or on his: one of the reasons he reckoned the spot where he’d set up better than that which he’d had the day before was that it lay close to the display the men from the mountains had made for their own goods.
Bowing to them, Sharur said, “The gods give you a good day, my masters. How may I serve you?”
“Perhaps, since we are here, we will look further at these blades of yours,” Piluliumas said, picking up one and hefting it. “I suppose I can say they are not the worst blades I have seen in the land between the rivers.”
‘‘You are generous to a small merchant.” Shariir bowed again.
Piluliumas’s companion plucked at the sleeve of his tunic. He spoke in the language of the Alashkurru Mountains: “I still say these blades look like Gibli work. What will our gods do to us if we bring back blades from Gibil?”
‘‘You worry too much, Luwiyas. Metal’s home is hard to tell,” Piluliumas answered in the same tongue. “Besides, he said they were from Aggasher.” The trader from the mountains shifted to the language of Kudurru: “You there, Zuabi—you said these swords were from Aggasher, not from Gibil?”
“Yes, I said that,” Sharur agreed. “I said it because it is so.”
Piluliumas looked happy. Luwiyas did not. “Will you swear in Enzuabu’s name that this is so?”
“In Enzuabu’s name I swear it,” Sharur said at once. Enzuabu was not his god. His only hesitation over the false oath was some small concern that Enzuabu might catch and punish him when he went back onto Zuabi territory. But, for one thing, Enzuabu would not hear an oath made in Imhursag, and, for another, Sharur, having escaped Enimhursag’s wrathful search in the night, thought he could escape Enzuabu, too.
Now Luwiyas bowed to him. “It is good. You have done us a favor. We will bargain with you for these blades.” Piluliumas nodded.
Sharur held up a hand. “A favor for a favor. Is this not right? Is this not just?” When the Alashkurrut looked alarmed, he smiled reassuringly. “Nothing great, my masters. You asked a question of me. I would ask a question of you. Is this not right? Is this not just?”
“Ah. A question for a question.” Piluliumas relaxed. “Yes, this is right. Yes, this is just. Ask your question, Zuabi.”
“I shall ask.” Sharur looked sly, as a Zuabi would in seeking information about a rival city. “Tell me, men of Alashkurru, why have your gods so harshly turned against the Giblut? Why do you need to be so sure that nothing you buy, nothing you trade for, comes from Gibil? I have seen this with other men from the mountains as well as with yourselves, my masters, but have never found the chance to ask about it till now.’’
&nbs
p; Luwiyas dropped back into his own tongue: “How much may we tell him?”
“We must tell him,” Piluliumas answered in the same language. “A favor for a favor, a question for a question.”
“Let the small gods speak, if they will.” Luwiyas still sounded worried. “They will know what may be said. They will know what must not be said.”
“They will know you are a man who runs from a lizard sitting on a rock,” Piluliumas said tartly. “But still, let it be as you say.” He returned to the language of Kudurru: “Trader from Zuabu, come see what we have brought to the land between the rivers. Trader from Zuabu, come hear the small gods we have brought from the mountains of Alashkurru. A favor for a favor, a question for a question: the small gods will answer you.”
“I will come,” Sharur said, hiding his worry. If the small gods the Alashkurrut had brought from the mountains recognized him as a man of Gibil, they would not tell him anything, or else they would tell him lies. If they, recognized him as a Gibli, they might do him far more harm than that.
Playing his role as a Zuabi to the hilt, he fussily packed up his own goods, muttering about thieves all the while. Luwiyas said, “Few steal in the market square of Imhursag. Few risk the anger of Enimhursag.”
“I am of Zuabu,” Sharur said. “I take nothing for granted.” The more he said he was from Zuabu, the more he made himself act like a Zuabi.
He convinced the two Alashkurrut. Laughing, Piluliumas spoke in the language of the mountains: “Zuabut will steal anywhere. They think their god protects all thefts. They may even be right.”
“He will not steal from us,” Luwiyas said, and set his hand on the hilt of his knife.
Sharur looked from one of them to the other, his face set in lines of blank incomprehension. Only when Luwiyas gestured for him to follow did he lead his complaining donkey after the two Alashkurrut. The men from the mountains had come down to Kudurru with guards and donkey handlers, as caravans from the land between the rivers went up to Alashkurru. .
Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12 Page 16