“Mighty lugal, I obey,” Inadapa said. Of course Inadapa obeys, Sharur thought. What else is he good for? The steward turned to him. “Son of Ereshguna, I will conduct you to your home once more.”
Sharur’s eyes filled with sudden tears when he stepped from the gloom of the palace out into bright sunshine once more. He said, “You need not come home with me, steward to the lugal. Believe me, I know the way.”
“Very well,” Inadapa said, rather to Sharur’s surprise: he had thought the steward would obey Kimash’s instructions in all particulars, simply because it was the lugal who had given them. Seeing Sharur startled, Inadapa explained, “The mighty lugal gives his servitors many duties. The gods, however, give them only so much time in which to do those duties.”
“Ah,” Sharur said; that did indeed make sense. “Go back to your duties, then, Inadapa.” But the steward had already gone.
Up the Street of Smiths Sharur trudged. Every step seemed harder than the one before, as if he were walking uphill, though the Street of Smiths lay on ground as level as any in Gibil. His father had told him to accept the word of the god. Kimash the lugal not only had told him to accept the word of the god but had sought to sweeten that with the promise of whatever woman in Gibil he wanted (save one woman only) and her bride-price as well.
Believe the god. Listen to the god! Sharur kicked at the dirt as he walked along. Gods could err just as men could. Enimhursag had slain a Zuabi—the wrong Zuabi—at the inn where Sharur stayed, thinking he was slaying a spy. Engibil could miss magic that was meant to the missed.
Or Engibil might simply lie, although Sharur could see no reason why he would.
But Sharur seemed to be the only one who considered those possibilities. He thought he understood Kimash’s reasons for neglecting them, just as Kimash thought he understood Sharur’s reasons for believing them. Ereshguna? Well, Sharur’s father had heard Engibil; he had not heard Mitas and Kessis. Sharur was the only one who had heard them, and what was his own word worth, against that of Engibil?
“No one believes me,” he muttered, and scuffed along with his head down.
He did not see the fever demon perched on a wall, not till too late. Batwings flapping furiously, the demon flew into his face. Its foul breath filled his mouth. He staggered back in horror and dismay. Only too late did he reach for the amulet with Engibil’s eyes he wore on his belt. Only too late did he drive the demon from him with the amulet. The demon fled, screeching, but triumphant laughter filled the screeches. The demon knew it had sickened him.
He knew it, too. His steps, already laggard, slowed still further. By the time he reached his father’s house, he was staggering. Ereshguna was dickering with a smith. On seeing Sharur, he broke off in alarm. “My son!” he exclaimed. “What has happened to you?”
“Fever demon.” Sharur got the words out through chattering teeth. Even in the heat of Gibil’s summer, he shivered.
“Have to be careful of those demons,” the smith said, clicking his tongue between his teeth. If was good advice. Like so much good advice, it came too late to do any good.
Ereshguna shouted for his slaves. Two men and the Imhursaggi woman with whom Sharur had lain came running at his summons. “Put Sharur on blankets,” he told them. “Put wet cloths on his head. A fever demon has breathed into his mouth.” The men helped support Sharur, who was wobbling on his feet, as he went into the courtyard and lay down in the shade of the southern wall.
“Fetch blankets, as the master said,” one of the men told the other. “He should not lie on the naked ground.” The second slave nodded and hurried off. So did the slave woman.
He came back, blankets in his arm, along with the woman, who carried rags and a pot of water. The two men raised Sharur, first at the shoulders, then at the hips, so they could get the blankets under him. ‘ ‘Is that not better, master’s son?” one of them asked with a slave’s solicitude, sticky as honey.
“Better,” he said vaguely. His wits were already wandering. He told himself over and over he was a fool for not having seen the fever demon sooner. A man could die of the sickness a demon breathed into him. Regardless of how often he repeated them, no thoughts wanted to stay in his mind. He drifted from thinking he was a fool for not having seen the fever demon to thinking he was a fool for believing Kessis and Mitas to thinking he was a fool for not having gladly accepted Kimash’s offer of one of his daughters and bride-price to boot to thinking he was a fool for worrying about women, considering how he felt.
Through it all, the one thing that did not change was that he thought himself a fool.
The Imhursaggi slave woman dropped a rag into the pot of water, then wrung it out and set it on his forehead. “It is cool,” she said in her quiet voice. “It will help make you cool.”
“I thank yop,” Sharur said. For a little while, when the damp linen first touched him, the demon’s fever fled, and he was himself again, or someone close to himself. But the fever was stronger than a cold compress. It quickly came back, and his wits went their own way once more.
“Will you watch him?” one of the men asked the woman. “Will you tend to him?”
“I will watch him,” she answered. “I will tend to him. It is easier workman most they might give me.” The men went away. The woman soaked another compress, wrung it out, and set it on Sharur’s forehead to replace the one that the heat of the day and the heat of his fever had dried. Her hands were cool and damp and deft. He noticed—as much as he noticed anything then. She sat beside him, humming a hymn to Enimhursag.
Somehow, he recognized it for what it was. Had his mind been fully under the control of his will, he would have known Enimhursag had no power here, not in the heart of the city of the god who was his rival. But he did not think of that. He had forgotten where he was. He thought of Enimhursag, and of Enimhursag’s hunt for him. He thought Enimhursag was hunting him again, or perhaps that Enimhursag had never stopped hunting him.
He moaned and writhed on the blankets. The wet rag fell off onto the ground beside him. The Imhursaggi slave stopped humming. “Lie easy,” she said, and put the compress back on his head. And, because he no longer heard the hymn, he did lie easy for a bit. But, seeing him relax, the Imhursaggi woman also relaxed, and began to hum once more. That brought fear flooding back, as melting mountain snow brought the Yarmuk’s flood every spring.
Before long, though, his mother and his sister came out into the courtyard, both of them exclaiming over him. They dismissed the slave woman and took over caring for him themselves. “There—do you see?” Betsilim said triumphantly to Nanadirat. “He is better already.”
His sister set a hand on his forehead. “He is still hot as a smelting fire,” she said, worry in her voice.
“The demon only just now breathed its foul breath into him,” his mother answered, sounding as if she was trying to reassure herself and Nanadirat both. “He will mend.”
“He had better.” Nanadirat stared fiercely down at Sharur. “I am so angry at him. How could he not spy a fever demon waiting to pounce?”
Betsilim wrung out a new compress and started to put it on Sharur, but he tried to roll away from her. “No, no,” she said, as she had when he was very small. “You have to hold still. You have to rest.”
He heard her and Nanadirat as if from very far away. Everything seemed very far away, his own body very much included. He had quieted for a moment when his mother and sister replaced the slave woman, but not because he preferred their touch to hers, only because he no longer heard her humming the hymn to Enimhursag. He tried to explain that to them, but forgot what he was going to say before the words could pass his lips.
His spirit drifted away from his body, almost as if he had become a ghost while still living. He wondered if ghosts were as confused as he was, then wondered what he had been wondering about, and then wondered if he had been wondering.
Huzziyas the wanax raised a cup to toast his health. An army of spearmen and donkey-drawn chariots drove an
other, identically equipped, army back against a canal, trapping it. Some men shouted Engibil’s name. Some shouted Enimhursag’s. Which were which? He could not tell. The army trapped against the canal broke like a shattered cup.
Ningal’s face drifted over him like a full moon. He reached up to touch it and it broke like a shattered cup. He started to cry. Suddenly, without warning, everything went white. I am dead, he thought. The fever has slain me. Now I am a ghost, as my grandfather is. I will hunt down that fever demon and pull off its wings. How it will wail!
He heard it wailing already, though he had not yet begun the hunt. Then he heard a woman’s voice—Ningal’s? No, it was another’s. “Fix that compress, Mother,” Nanadirat said. “I don’t think he wants it to cover his eyes. Did you hear him moan?”
“I heard him,” Betsilim said. “The fever has sent him out of his head. But maybe you are right.” Color and shapes—swirling, floating shapes with no plain meaning— filled Sharur’s vision once more. Maybe he wasn’t dead after all. The demon would escape, to sicken other people.
“How is he?” a man’s voice asked. Huzziyas the wanax? Kimash the lugal? Engibil the god? Whoeyer it was, his voice sounded very much like that of Sharur’s brother Tup- sharru. But Tupsharru was not in the mountains of Alashkurru, was he? Sharur knew he was in the mountains, in the snowy mountains. How else could he have been so cold?
After a while, it started raining on him. So he thought at first, at any rate. Then he wondered whether the gods were angry at him or pleased with him, for it was raining beer. The gods talked among themselves. “Sit him up a little more, can’t you? It’s spilling all over him,” a goddess said.
“I’m sorry,” a god answered. “Here, try again.” More rain or beer or whatever it was spilled on Sharur’s face and chest.
“You have to drink, Sharur,” another goddess said.
Dimly, he wondered why the gods had voices so much like those of his mother and sister and brother. They were gods, though. They could do as they pleased. And if they ordered him to drink, he could only obey. Drink he did, even if he choked a little doing it.
“There, that’s better,” the goddess who sounded like his sister said.
He had pleased the gods. He took that thought with him as he spiraled down into the dark.
When Sharur woke, he wondered for a moment whether the mud bricks of the house in which he had lived his whole life had finally fallen down. More to the point, he wondered if they had fallen down on him. He certainly felt as if something large and heavy had collapsed on him.
Raising his head took all the strength he had. Sitting not far away from him was his father. “Sharur?” Ereshguna said softly. “My son?”
“Yes,” Sharur said—or rather, that was what he tried to say. Only a harsh, wordless croak passed his lips. Trying to speak made him feel how weak he was. Even holding his eyelids open took an effort.
But the croak seemed to satisfy his father. “You understand me!” Ereshguna exclaimed.
“Yes,” Sharur said. This time, it was a recognizable word. Sharur noticed his mouth tasted as if someone had spilled a chamberpot into it. He lay back down flat; holding his head up seemed more trouble than it was worth. Those few moments of it were making him pant as if he had run all the way from Imhursag to Gibil.
Ereshguna ran: out of the courtyard and into the house, crying, “Sharur has his wits about him again!”
Then he came running back to Sharur, followed closely by Tupsharru and Betsilim and Nanadirat, with the house slaves a little farther behind. His family hugged him and kissed him and made much of him. He lay there and accepted it; he had not the strength to do anything but lie there and accept it. His mother and sister both let tears stream down their cheeks. A little at a time, he realized he must have come very close to dying.
“I’m all right,” he whispered.
“You’re no such thing,” his mother said indignantly. “Don’t talk nonsense. Look at you.” He couldn’t look at himself; that would have meant lifting his head again, which was beyond him. But Betsilim was doing the looking for him: “You’re nothing but skin stretched over bones. I’ve seen starving beggars with more flesh on them.”
He tried to shrug. Even that wasn’t easy. Nanadirat asked, “If we give you bread and beer, can you chew and swallow?”
“I think so,” he answered. “It was raining beer on me not so long ago. The gods made it rain beer on me not so long ago. I remember.” He felt proud of remembering anything.
His mother and brother and sister seemed less impressed. With a distinct sniff in her voice, Nanadirat said, “That wasn’t the gods. That was us. And it wouldn’t have been raining beer on you if you’d drunk it the way you were supposed to.”
“Oh,” he said, feeling foolish. “I suppose a lot of the things I think happened didn’t really, then. Huzziyas the wanax didn’t come here to drink my health, did he? He raised the cup, and...”
Betsilim and Nanadirat were looking at each other. He recognized their expressions: they were trying not to laugh, and not succeeding very well. Betsilim said, “My son, I am surprised you remember anything at all of the past five days, even if you remember things that are not so.”
“Five ... days?” Sharur said slowly. “Was I out of my head for five days? It’s a wonder my spirit found its way back to my body.”
“We think so, too,” Betsilim said, and started to cry again. Nanadirat put an arm around her mother’s shoulder.
The Imhursaggi slave woman, who had gone into the house, came out once more carrying a tray. “Here is bread,” she said. “Here is beer.” She set the tray on the ground in front of Betsilim.
Tupsharru came up and supported Sharur in a half-sitting position. A god with his voice had done that while Sharur lay sick. No. Sharur laughed at himself. That had been— that must have been—his wits wandering again.
He looked down at himself, now that he could. He had indeed lost flesh, although he was not so thin as his mother made him out to be. Nanadirat held a cup up to his mouth. He took a sip of sour beer, then swallowed. That felt wonderful, like rain for a flower after a long dry spell.
But Nanadirat did not merely want to rain on him, to make him bloom. By the way she tried to pour beer into him, she wanted to flood him. Like a canal that had fallen into disrepair, he could not take in as much as she wanted to give him. To keep himself from drowning, he raised his arm. That did more than he had intended:, not only did it stop her from giving him the beer, it knocked the cup from her hand. The cup flew against the wall that shaded him and shattered.
“Maybe he has not got his wits about him after all,” Tupsharru said. But he sounded more amused than annoyed.
“I’m sorry,” Sharur said, feeling very foolish as he stared at the shards of the broken cup. He remembered ... But no, that had surely been nonsense, too.
“You need not be sorry,” Betsilim said. “Your sister tried to give you too much too fast.” She turned to the slave woman. “Fetch another cup.”
“I obey,” the slave said, as she had when Sharur ordered her to lie with him. She hurried back into the house.
“Bread, please?” Sharur said.
Betsilim tore off a piece of bread from the loaf that sat on the tray. Sharur reached out to take it. Instead of handing it to him, his mother put it straight into his mouth, as if he were a baby. Had he felt a little stronger, that might have made him angry. As things were, he chewed and swallowed without complaint. “Is it good?” his mother asked, again as she might have done when he was very small.
He nodded. “More?” he said hopefully, and Betsilim fed him again.
The Imhursaggi slave woman came out with a new cup to replace the one Sharur had broken. Nanadirat filled it with the dipper and offered it to him. This time, he drank without spilling any. It made him feel very strong. “Another cup?” he said.
“Yes, but this will be your last for now,” his sister Said. “Too much all at once after too long without much w
ill make you sick again.”
“I know how we’ll be able to tell when he’s truly better,” Tupsharru said, mischief in his voice.
Betsilim was so glad for the words, she did not hear the mischief. “How?” she asked.
Tupsharru grinned. “When he wants the slave woman, not bread and beer.”
Betsilim and Nanadirat both made faces at him. The slave woman looked down at the ground, no expression at all on her face. Sharur watched the byplay without caring much about it. He recalled desire, but it was the last thing on his mind.
He yawned. Maybe the beer was making him sleepy. Maybe it was nothing but his own weakness. “Let me down,” he said to Tupsharru. He yawned again as his brother eased him to the blanket. He thought he stayed awake long enough for his head to touch it,*but was never quite sure afterwards.
His sleep, this time, was deep and restful, with none of the fever dreams and visions that had troubled his illness. He woke in darkness, only pale moonlight illuminating the courtyard. He felt stronger. Without even thinking about it, he sat up by himself. That proved he was stronger.
He got to his feet. He wobbled a little, but had no trouble staying upright. A chamberpot sat on the ground not far from where he’d lain. He walked over and made water into it, then lay back down on the blanket. He hoped sleep would come again for him, but it did not. Mosquitoes buzzed. One landed on his chest; he felt it walking through the hair there. .He slapped at it, and hoped he’d killed it.
His grandfather’s ghost spoke in his ear: “You are like an owl, awake while others sleep. You are like a cat, prowling through the night.”
“Hardly prowling,” Sharur said with a low-voiced laugh. More often than not, his grandfather’s ghost was a nuisance, bothering him when he would sooner have paid it no attention. Now, for once, he was glad of its company. Still speaking quietly, he went on, “I greet you. Is it well with you?”
Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12 Page 20