Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12

by Between the Rivers (v2. 1)

  Bigger than the palace the temple might have been. It was not more splendid. For one thing, much of it was old. Because it was built of baked bricks rather than sun-dried mud brick—nothing but the best for Engibil—that was not so obvious as it might have been otherwise. The temple was not crumbling to pieces. But the brickwork had a faded, sun- blasted look that said it had been standing for a long time. No additions were going up, as they constantly were at the lugal’s palace.

  Hangings of rich wool dyed crimson and the savor of burnt offerings went some way toward concealing the aging bones beneath, as paint would on a woman. And, as a woman heavy with paint might be a long time realizing she was no longer beautiful, so Engibil, lulled by Kimash’s splendid presents and those of the previous lugals, had not yet noticed he was less supreme in his city than had once been so.

  Some of his priests understood that far more completely than he. The younger men in the priesthood were Kimash’s creatures, more dedicated to lulling the god than to exalting him. The older servitors still revered him as they and then- predecessors had done back in the days when he ruled Gibil through an ensi, but year by year death cut through their ranks, as the scythe cut through rows of barley at harvest time.

  A younger priest, his head shaved like those of the priests of Enimhursag but his eyes clever and altogether his own, came up to the merchants in an outer courtyard. Bowing, he said, “I greet you in the name of Engibil, Ereshguna. In the name of Engibil I greet you, sons of Ereshguna. May the god’s blessings be upon you all.”

  ‘‘I greet you in the name of Engibil, Burshagga,” Ereshguna said, and bowed in turn.

  “In the name of Engibil we greet you, Burshagga,” Sharur and Tupsharru said together. They also bowed.

  “How good when men are gracious,” Burshagga said. “How pleasant when men are polite. How may this servant of Engibil also serve you?”

  Ereshguna pointed to that topmost chamber. “If he be not otherwise engaged, we would speak with the god. If he be not otherwise busy, we would have words with him.”

  The priest frowned. Plainly, he had not expected that. “On what matter would you speak with the lord of the city?”

  “On the matter that concerns Kimash the lugal,” Ereshguna answered, his voice as soft as lambswool.

  Burshagga’s eyes widened. Now his bow was not the polite bow of greeting but the deeper bending that acknowledged authority. “Master merchant, if you are concerned with that matter... Wait one moment, please.” He hurried away.

  An old priest cocked his head to one side and examined Sharur and Tupsharru and Ereshguna. His beard was not gray but snowy white. Surely he remembered the days before Igigi had taken the rule of Gibil out of Engibil’s hands and into his own. And, by the way he scowled at the three merchants, the men of the new, he remembered those days fondly, too.

  Burshagga came back at a brisk walk. “The god is pleasuring himself,” he reported. “That being completed, you may attend him. His eye fell on the white-bearded priest. “Have you nothing better to do than stand and stare, Ilakabkabu? Why don’t you take yourself off to the boneyard and save us the trouble?”

  “Because I am truly a man of Engibil,” Ilakabkabu said. “I remember the god first, not a mere man who will be dead and stinking soon enough, soon enough.” He drew himself up with a pride at the same time stubborn and impotent.

  “I am a priest of the great god Engibil, as you are,” Burshagga retorted. “I worship the great god Engibil, as you do. But I am not wedded to the past, as you are. I do not pant for the past as for a virgin bride, as you do. Go off to the boneyard, old fool; may your forgotten ghost go straight to the underworld.”

  “Engibil will temember my ghost,” Ilakabkabu said. “Engibil will cherish it.” He walked off at a stiff-jointed shuffle.

  “Old fool,” Burshagga repeated, this time to Ereshguna and his sons. “He would take us back to the days before lugals, to the days before metal, to the days before writing, if he had his way.”

  “Many things pull in that direction these days,” Sharur said. Burshagga nodded indignantly. He had his own kind of righteousness, different from Ilakabkabu’s.

  “His years, if not his thoughts, may deserve respect,” Ereshguna said mildly.

  “Bah!” Burshagga said. But, before the priest could begin an argument, one of his colleagues came trotting up and pointed toward the uppermost chamber in the temple. Seeing the gesture, Burshagga grew businesslike once more. “Engibil will grant you audience now. This is, I remind you, on the matter that concerns Kimash the lugal, Kimash the mighty lugal.”

  He had his own way of getting the last word. As he turned to lead the merchants up to the god’s audience chamber, Sharur studied him. Burshagga, too, was a man of the new. The old had been disagreeable and tyrannical. Burshagga looked to be proof that the new could also be disagreeable and tyrannical. Sharur shrugged. Even the gods had their weaknesses, their failings.

  “Ascend Engibil’s stairway!” the priest said. The stairway was one of four, one for each of the cardinal directions, that went up to the chamber of the god. It had one step for every day of the year. Despite being a man of the new, Sharur felt no small awe as he set his foot upon it. He had never gone up to an audience with Engibil before. Engibil had come to him—he remembered with a shiver the god’s voice beating through him on the Street of Smiths—but he had never gone to the god, not like this.

  Someone was coming down the long stairway as Sharur and Tupsharru and Ereshguna climbed it. A woman, Sharur saw; she was wearing tunic rather than kilt. As she drew closer, he recognized her: the beautiful courtesan who had stripped herself naked in the street for him and his caravan crew to admire when he came back to Gibil from the mountains.

  He laughed under his breath. His brother looked a question at him, but he did not explain. He would not say what was in his thoughts, not here, not in the house of the god. Kimash the lugal had said he had ways of pleasing Engibil even without strange things, rare things, beautiful things from the land of the Alashkurrut. Remembering the lush ripeness of the courtesan’s body, Sharur was certain she would have pleased him. No doubt she pleased the god, too.

  And, as he drew closer still, he saw the god had also pleased her. She walked with slightly unsteady step, as if she were on the edge of being drunk. Her smiling lips were swollen, bruised; but for the smile, all the muscles of her face had gone slack with pleasure. She stared through Sharur and Tupsharru and Ereshguna, the pupils of her eyes enormous as a wild cat’s at midnight.

  After she swayed past Tupsharru, he laughed softly, too. “She was not a duckling, but she quacked like one,” he murmured—a proverb about the sounds a truly kindled woman made in her ecstasy. Sharur nodded.

  By the time he reached the top of the stairway, sweat bathed him. A fat old priest who had to make that climb was liable to fall over dead. Sharur glanced toward his father. Ereshguna was neither fat nor very old, but he lived his life in the city these days instead of leading caravans to distant lands. He was panting, but otherwise seemed all right. Sharur was panting a little himself. He nodded to his father. Ereshguna nodded back.

  The god’s chamber was a cube of baked brick with a narrow walkway around it. A door led into it from each of the cardinal directions. It should have been dimmer in there than outside; the chamber had no windows. But light streamed out from the doors: the light of the god. Sharur shivered again.

  Enter. The word resounded inside Sharur’s head, and, no doubt, inside Tupsharru’s and Ereshguna’s as well. It was as loud as the god’s voice had been in the Street of Smiths, but not so terrifying. For one thing, here it was expected, as it had not been there. For another, here Engibil was inviting, not forbidding. .

  Sharur stood aside so his father and brother could precede him into the god’s chamber. His heart beating fast, he followed them.

  Engibil sat on a gold-sheathed chair like that of Kimash the lugal (after a moment, Sharur realized he had that backwards; surely the
lugal’s throne was copied from this one). The god was naked, perhaps because he had just had the courtesan, perhaps for no other reason than that it pleased him to be so. He had the form of a well-made man of about Ereshguna’s age, but with all human imperfections removed. Sharur got only a quick glimpse before he, like Ereshguna and Tupsharru, threw himself flat on the floor in front of the god.

  Rise. Again, the word filled the minds of the mortals who had come before Engibil. Rise, Ereshguna. Rise, Sharur and Tupsharru, the sons of Ereshguna. As the three men got to their feet, the god went on, now moving his lips as if he were a man, “Seek not to beseech me to give back your oath, Sharur son of Ereshguna. Seek not to buy your bride with profit that never was.”

  “Great god, mighty god, god who founded this city, god who made this town,” Sharur said through lips numb with fear, “that is not my purpose. That is not why I have come before you. Examine my spirit, great god. Look into my soul, mighty god. You will see I speak the truth. You will see I dare not lie before you.”

  Engibil looked at him. Engibil looked into him, as if looking into his mind was as easy as looking into his body. For the god, it was. Sharur felt penetrated, as he had penetrated the Imhursaggi slave woman. Engibil could have learned much Sharur would not have had him know. But he was searching only for the one thing and, when he found it, he withdrew.

  “I see you speak the truth,” he said. “I see you dare not lie to me. Speak, then, of the reason you have come before me. Speak, then, of your purpose. Or shall I examine your spirit once more? Shall I look into your soul again?”

  “God who founded this city, I will speak,” Sharur said hastily. “God who made this town, I will answer.” Anything to keep the god from going through his mind as he went through clay tablets with writing on them.

  “Say on, then.” Engibil folded chiseled arms across massive chest.

  Sharur took a deep breath. “Great god, you will know that my caravan brought no copper home from the Alashkurru Mountains. Mighty god, you will know I brought no copper ore to Gibil from the land of the Alashkurrut. Great god, mighty god, you will know the Alashkurrut would trade me no strange things, no rare things, no beautiful things to lay before you for your pleasure, to set on your altar for your delight.”

  “Yes, I know this,” Engibil replied. “It does not please me. The copper is of but small concern. The copper ore is of no great moment. That I fail to get my due angers me.” His brows came down like thunder.

  Sharur’s eyes flicked to one side, toward his father. Ereshguna’s face was blank, as it would have been in a dicker with another merchant. Sharur did his best to keep his own features similarly impassive. Behind that mask, anger sparked. The god cared nothing for what made Gibil the city thrive. The god cared only for what pleased him. No wonder Kimash had sent him the courtesan.

  “Lord Engibil, I believe I know why the Alashkurrut would not treat with us,” Sharur said. “I believe I know why the gods of the Alashkurrut would not let them treat with us.”

  “You will tell me how this came to pass. You will tell me why this is so.”

  “Great god, I will.” And Sharur related what he had learned from Kessis and Mitas. He finished, “Mighty god, if this thing lies before you, we can give it back. Lord Engibil, if this thing is set on your altar, we can return it.” He did not—he made sure he did not—think about destroying it.

  Engibil’s perfect features took on a look of puzzlement. “I recall no such object coming before me.”

  “Great god, are you sure?” Sharur blurted. “Mighty god, are you certain?” Only when he saw his father and brother staring at him in alarm did he realize that his words, if Engibil chose to construe them so, might be blasphemous. Who save a blasphemer could doubt anything a god said?

  Engibil, fortunately, proved more interested in the riddle than in the possible affront. “I noted no great power trapped in any of the objects I received over this past year. I noted no great power trapped in any of the objects given to men of this city, and thus only indirectly to me, over the past year.”

  “Would you have noticed it, had you not been specially seeking it?” Sharur asked, affecting not to hear the god’s casual assumption of ownership over everything and everyone in Gibil. “The man who traded it had no notion of what he was sending out of the mountains.”

  “A man!” Engibil’s words dripped scorn. “What does a man know? What can a man know? A man beside a god is a mosquito, trying to suck the blood of time.”

  “But this is not a thing of men,” Sharur reminded the god. What Engibil said was true, but, with writing, men gained memory as secure and long-lasting as that of the gods. Again, Sharur did not speak of that. Instead, he continued, “This is a thing of gods. Could the gods of the mountains not have concealed their power within it, hiding that power from both men and gods?”

  Engibil frowned, not a frown of anger, but one showing Sharur had thought of something that had not crossed his mind. Engibil was immensely strong. Engibil knew a great deal. All the same, a truly blasphemous thought flicked into Sharur’s mind—and then out again, as fast as he could send it away: the god was not very bright.

  “I suppose it could be so,” Engibil said. “I did not closely examine my gifts to see if they might have this power embedded in them. Why would I do such a thing, when I saw no need? Now I see a need. Now I will closely examine my gifts. You will come with me, even if you are only men. Come.”

  He rose from his throne and set one hand on Sharur’s shoulder, one hand on Tupsharru’s, and one hand on Eresh- guna’s. He was a god: if he needed an extra hand, he had one. Against Sharur’s bare skin, the flesh of his hand did not feel like flesh, but like warm metal. Engibil’s eyes blazed. As if Sharur had looked into the sun, for a moment he could see nothing but the light that poured out from them.

  When his vision cleared, he found that his father and his brother and Engibil and he were no longer in the audience chamber at the top of the temple, but in a storeroom like the storerooms that made up so much of Kimash’s palace. They proved not to be alone in the storeroom. A priest and a courtesan—not nearly so fine a courtesan as had ministered to Engibil’s pleasure—had been about to lie down together. They both squeaked in astonished dismay.

  Laughter rolled from Engibil in great waves. “Elsewhere!” he boomed. “Elsewhere, elsewhere.” The priest and the courtesan fled. Sharur would have fled, too. The storeroom had a higher ceiling than that of the audience chamber. Here, instead of being man-sized, Engibil was half again as tall and all the more awe-inspiring.

  Despite that, Sharur’s first thought, one the god luckily did not read, was What a lot of junk. That was not completely fair, and he knew it. Many of Engibil’s treasures were of gold and silver and precious stones. Those glowed in the light that poured out of the god. The lugals of Gibil, and the ensis before them, had given of the best they had.

  But they had also literally followed the dictum strange things, rare things, beautiful things. The beautiful things were beautiful. The rare things were rare: Sharur gaped to see a necklace of huge, shimmering pearls. Caravans to distant Laravanglal would sometimes bring back from the east, along with the tin that hardened copper into bronze, a pearl or two, having paid enormous amounts of metal to gain them. Pearls as large as these, so many all together, each perfectly matched to its neighbors—Sharur had never known nor imagined the like. .

  And the strange things were ... strange. Why any lugal would have chosen to give Engibil a piece of pottery shaped like a spider and painted with alarming realism was beyond Sharur. And the basketwork dog standing on its hind legs to display a large erection might have been funny the first time someone saw it, but after that?

  Engibil said, “Where is this thing jnto which the gods of the Alashkurrut are said to have poured their power? Do you see it? Do you know which of my many treasures it is?”

  “Great god, I do not know where it is,” Sharur answered, looking to his father in consternation. “Migh
ty god, I do not know which of your many treasures it is.” His eyes went now here, now there. So many pieces in the treasury were, or could have been, of Alashkurri work. He felt no special power in any of them. How could he? He was only a man.

  Tupsharru spoke: “Lord Engibil, now that you are among your treasures, can you not feel the power poured into one of them?”

  Engibil frowned again. He turned in all directions inside the treasure room, to the north, to the east, to the south, and last of all to the west. He reached out his hands—and in the reaching he had as many hands as he wanted—to the shelves and tables set against each wall, as if feeling of the objects set on each one. The frown deepened. At last, Engibil turned back toward Sharur and Tupsharru and Ereshguna. “I do not know what this thing is,” the god said. “I do not know where it may be. I can feel nothing of it. Son of Ereshguna, are you sure the Alashkurri small gods were not playing a trick on you?’ ’ .

  “I am sure,” Sharur said. Seeing his father give him a doubtful look hurt worse than having the god disbelieve him. “I am sure,” he repeated.

  “Maybe this thing is elsewhere in the city,” Engibil said, “although, as I told you, I sensed it nowhere. Maybe the great gods of the Alashkurrut were playing tricks on their small gods.”

  “Tricks are all very well, great god,” Sharur said. “But, mighty god, if not for the reason Kessis and Mitas gave me, why have the great gods of Alashkurru come to hate the people of Gibil? Why have even the gods of Kudurru come to despise the people of Gibil?”

  “I have told you what I know,” Engibil replied. “I have told you what I do not know. It is enough.” He reached out and once more took hold of Sharur and Ereshguna and Tupsharru by the shoulder. In an instant, the three men and the god were back in the audience chamber atop the temple. “I dismiss you,” Engibil said. “Go on about your lawful occasions, and seek no longer to circumvent my will.”

  His words beat against Sharur’s mind like a windstorm. The young merchant had all he could do to nerve himself to ask the god whether he might speak. When he did, Engibil’s eyes burned into his own until he had to struggle to hold his own gaze steady* At last, Engibil dipped his head in brusque assent. “I thank you, great god,” Sharur gasped as the pressure of the god’s will eased. “You are generous, mighty god. Here is what I would ask you: have I your leave to go on searching for this thing of which Kessis and Mitas told me?”