Dragon Mage

by Andre Norton

  The others shook their heads at Kim.

  “Then why not look at the other end?” Kim suggested, lowering his voice when a Marduk priest and two elderly women stopped nearby at the bank. “Why not find where the water comes out in the Gardens, then try to backtrack and find our way in?”

  Nidintulugal patted Kim on the head, then pointed down a street. “What wisdom you bring from your faraway place.” He paused. “Take care, there will be more people in the Gardens than along this river.”

  Shilo had only seen the Hanging Gardens from the outside, and was unprepared for the intensity of the fragrances when she started up the steps behind Sigmund. The scent of the earth was strong because it was so damp, and the riot of flowers warred for her attention. She likened it to going into one of the big department stores in the mall and trying on all the perfumes at the cosmetic counter. At least it cuts my stink, she thought. Nidintulugal was in the lead, and they’d put both boys between them, wanting to keep a close watch on them. The priest had suggested leaving the boys in the room, but quickly discarded the notion, recalling how desperate Shilo got when looking for Kim.

  She had been to botanical gardens before, once when she was so young she barely remembered it, to some gardens in St. Louis. Shilo thought she might have been in the first or second grade, and that she’d had her picture taken with koi—a sea of color—as she stood on a little bridge in the Japanese section. She recalled the day because in the picture there was an ice cream stain on her pink shirt, and her mother had gotten very angry with her. Her mother’s tirade blotted out whatever fun she’d had in the park.

  The king must love his wife very much, she thought, shaking off the bad memory and focusing on the whorls in a thick trunk, the pattern looking like an owl. Nidintulugal had said Nebuchadnezzar’s bride came from a verdant land and missed it so terribly that he arranged for the construction of this place. It had pained him to see her so homesick, and she was brightened by the Hanging Gardens not so much because of their beauty, but that all the people of Babylon could enjoy something so marvelous.

  To be so loved would be amazing, Shilo thought.

  Some of the trees here were old, and Nidintulugal told her they had been brought by barge along the Euphrates from the north and south, and carefully planted here. Vines overhung the brick terraces, and more vines hung from the branches of the tallest trees.

  The green would have been overwhelming, but flowers interjected other colors here and there, as did flocks of parrots that Nidintulugal said came from the south. Occasionally one of the parrots would fly close and squawk, a blue and yellow one saying “Marduk” repeatedly.

  “You might think them magic birds, Shilo,” the priest said. “But there is no magic in their speech. Those birds with curved bills are capable of repeating our words.”

  “Parroting them,” Shilo said.

  She let herself truly relax for a few minutes and focus on everything around her. Despite the number of people going up and down the stairs, it was quiet. There was the soft “shushing” sound everyone’s sandals made against the bricks and the dirt paths that cut through the Gardens, and the chirps of parrots and other birds, the occasional screech of a monkey, but there was little talking.

  Toward the top, statues were placed between some of the trees, serving as anchors for small trunks. She recognized an image of Shamash, and she saw Nidintulugal bow to it, his lips working, she suspected, in prayer. Beyond the Shamash idol, between gaps in veils of leaves, a thin waterfall splashed. She touched Sigmund’s shoulder, startling him, and nodded to a trail that led away from the stairs and toward the waterfall. Sigmund, in turn, tugged on Kim’s robe, and Kim interrupted the priest’s prayer.

  As Shilo passed under the branches of something that resembled a weeping willow, she looked out and up. Light came through the leaves like light shining through a lacy window curtain, and she held up her dyed hands to see patterns on her skin. Shilo found no message in the play of sunlight, and wondered why Nidintulugal could possibly think Shamash was sending him messages here. But Shamash was the sun god, and so maybe the priest could read things in the light that others couldn’t see.

  Sigmund prodded her to move along, clearly uninterested in the light patterns. She turned her thoughts reluctantly away from the flowers and trees and the priest and back to business. Moments later, she was at the edge of the waterfall’s basin, looking up at the falls and keeping her distance so the water wouldn’t splash her and ruin her skin.

  “Let’s try up there.” Sigmund referred to a narrow set of steps, each one a brick baked with straw in it, leading up to the terrace where the waterfall started.

  Shilo shook her head no, and pointed to another path that led higher, to where she spotted a bucket dumping water, part of the conveyor system Nidintulugal had mentioned.

  Sigmund either hadn’t seen her or wasn’t paying attention, and scrambled up the steps. Before she could call to him, Kim cut in front of her, following his friend while deftly avoiding tripping on the hem of his robe.

  “The dragon, perhaps, does not know the exuberance of youth,” Nidintulugal observed as he followed Kim.

  “I guess we’re going this way,” she said.

  Shilo stuck out her bottom lip and exhaled, cooling her face. She glanced around before heading up, wanting to make sure no one was paying them any undue attention. She supposed the four of them could have looked like a family on an early-morning outing.

  Shilo had managed to carry the heavy bolt of cloth down from the dragon’s cave to the village, so she supposed she could carry an egg down this mountain and to the stable where the ox and cart waited. The boys were young, but they looked as strong as her, maybe stronger. But there was the matter of finding the eggs first, and before that could be accomplished, they needed to find a way in. Backtrack to the river, Sigmund had suggested. At the time, Shilo had thought it a good idea. Now, however, she hoped to find a way in through the Gardens itself. She wanted this over and done with.

  But carrying the eggs out during the day would be a bad idea.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a young woman and a bare-chested man, perhaps her husband, embracing beneath a weeping veil of leaves.

  The king must love his queen very much to have built these Gardens for her, Shilo thought again.

  The waterfall was surprisingly loud for being so narrow. But the drop was a fair distance, and she found herself enjoying the roar of the water. She couldn’t hear the whispered conversation Sigmund and Kim were sharing, and she could barely hear herself call to get Nidintulugal’s attention. He’d been studying where the water originated—not from a stream or river, or any source such a feature would normally flow from. The waterfall was born out of a fissure in a rock, too narrow to fit through.

  Told you, she thought. We should be looking over there.

  Shilo pointed to the west, where from their higher vantage point it was easier to see the bucket and pulley mechanism that brought water up the man-made mountain and sent it down irrigation ditches and streams that fed all the plants. Kim saw her gesture and yanked on Sigmund’s robe. The two boys headed toward the machine.

  She and Nidintulugal sighed in unison and hurried to catch up. There were two men near the mechanism, but they moved on by the time the boys reached it. More people were interested in the trees and flowers than the device that watered them. The view from up here, the very top of the Hanging Gardens, caught Shilo’s breath.

  It was dizzying, looking down the slope at what was essentially a small rain forest. Babylon spread out below that, the city looking clean and impressive in the early-morning sun. The temples she could see, including the Temple of Shamash, shone in places where gold had been applied to cornices and columns. South of the Gardens, down a street Shilo had not walked, a statue of a rearing lion looked as if it were catching a beam of sunlight in its outstretched claws.

  Everything she’d thought bad about this place and her predicament vanished in that instant.
This magical journey that had made her feet and head ache and made her long for Wisconsin was suddenly all worth it. To see something so splendid as ancient Babylon, when the city was at its height, was worth everything she’d been through.

  “Wow.” Sigmund was taking it all in, too. “Double wow.” She heard the boy suck in a breath and hold it.

  She wanted to hold this moment in her heart forever, treasuring it and thanking God for this opportunity. This was Heaven, not Hades, and there was nothing more beautiful in the world than the panorama she couldn’t pull her eyes from.

  “Triple wow,” she mouthed.

  Shilo wasn’t sure how long she stood there, Sigmund at her side and neither blinking, scarcely breathing. Nidintulugal had been saying something to her, but the words were like the buzz of a cloud of gnats, an annoyance. Finally, he clamped a hand on her shoulder.

  “Shilo—”

  He broke the trance and she sadly turned toward him.

  “What?”

  “Kim has disappeared. I looked away from him for just an instant.”

  “He does that,” Sigmund said. “I suppose we’d better start looking for him.” His shoulders slumped, sad that he couldn’t stare out at the city anymore. “Can’t find the eggs until we find Kim.” He brightened slightly. “Hey, Niddy, which came first, the Kimmy or the egg?”

  24

  Under the Gardens

  Nidintulugal found the way below. There was a gap between buckets that were affixed to a primitive conveyor belt of leather and metal links. He saw that Shilo and Sigmund were watching him, and that there appeared to be cover. Without a word, he clambered onto the belt and disappeared into the mountain, grateful no guards had been posted next to the machine.

  Sigmund was quick to follow him, grinning broadly as if this was all a big adventure.

  Shilo hesitated. She was worried someone was watching them and would alert the city’s guards. There could be laws against this, she thought. Too, she was afraid Kim hadn’t taken this route and that he had wandered off elsewhere. If they guessed wrong about Kim’s path, they might never see him again.

  “But I can’t spend all of my time chasing him,” she said. “There’s a world to save.” After another quick glance to see if anyone was nearby or paying attention to her, she grabbed the chain between buckets with a hand, held her breath, and jumped into the hole.

  It felt like her arm was pulling out of the socket, but she held tight with aching fingers and gritted her teeth so she wouldn’t whimper. Her side banged against the chain and a bucket, and she set all the buckets nearby to clanking and thunking, and spilling the water out of some of the ones coming up the other side. Her feet dangled free, and she flailed about with them, trying to find a bucket lip to stand on or a way to hook her knees around the chain. She couldn’t manage either, as her robe was too long and kept tangling around her legs.

  How had the others done this without making so much noise? Was she that clumsy? Just last week Meemaw had suggested dance lessons, and now Shilo wondered if she should have agreed.

  She reached up with her free hand and grabbed on to the chain. The extra feeling of security helped, and though her right arm still throbbed, it no longer felt like it was going to pull out.

  She looked up while she continued her ride down. The only light came from the hole above her, streaming around the buckets and chain, bright in her eyes and making her blink.

  She couldn’t hear herself, though she knew she was breathing raggedly. The groaning of the chain moving along whatever mechanism drove it, and the clunking of the buckets, echoed in the shaft. Too, there was the gurgle of water. From somewhere below she heard the plash of bucket after bucket striking the water supply, and the slosh of the water as it was drawn up on the other side of the belt, passing her by on its trip to the top.

  Shilo hadn’t thought ancient people capable of such an engineering feat, but then they had managed the magnificent Ishtar Gate and the towering temples she’d walked by, the glazed bricks displaying bulls, lions, and the Ishtar dragon, and no doubt many other marvels she’d not yet seen. The Hanging Gardens themselves were perhaps the most amazing. Were the circumstances different, she thought she might like to hang around in Babylon a while longer, and see more of the city and all its wonders and discover what other fascinating things these people had crafted.

  But as she descended farther into the mountain, she discovered that the only thing she really wanted to do was find her way back out and get home. She worried that if Kim hadn’t gone down this conveyor belt, he’d be on his own and would have to find his own way home, which she doubted was possible without the dragon’s help.

  Suddenly hands clamped around her waist, and she squealed in surprise, released her grip, and found herself pulled away from the belt. A hand pressed firmly over her mouth.

  “Hush, Shilo, there are men below and they might hear us.”

  It was Nidintulugal.

  He released her, and she sagged back against him, blinking furiously and trying to see her surroundings in the dim light.

  “Shhhhh.” This came from Kim.

  So he had come down here! She wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him, tell him not to run off ever again. Instead, she just stood there, her vision adjusting and separating the shadows. Sigmund was next to Kim, shaking a stern finger at him. Great minds think alike, Shilo mused. It must run in the family.

  They stood on a wide ledge that ringed the shaft. She got a better look at the conveyor mechanism by watching the buckets pass by at eye level. The chain was big, the links thick, like those she’d seen attached to drawbridges in pictures of castles. She didn’t know the people of ancient Babylon had forges, but they had knives and spears, and she’d seen metal plates in the guards’ armor, so there had to be blacksmiths or something like them.… But the links looked more complicated than fashioning something flat like weapons. They all looked so uniform, like they had been poured in molds.

  The buckets were wood, held together with metal bands and things that looked like rivets, the handles thick leather straps, and lined in either leather or cloth—she wasn’t certain which. They were affixed to the chain with a link extending from a metal bar, which kept the buckets from spilling until they got to the top and were tipped by another mechanism, causing them to spill their contents into a trough. From there the water would flow down the mountain and into various parts of the Gardens.

  “Pretty amazing, huh?” Sigmund whispered. “I hadn’t thought people this long ago were capable of something like this. It seems way too modern. I gotta get me some history books when I get home.”

  Shilo didn’t see the curious look Nidintulugal gave Sigmund.

  “Look down there.” Sigmund stabbed a finger over the edge.

  Shilo steadied herself against Nidintulugal and peered over the ledge. The shaft continued down into darkness. “I don’t see anything.” She kept her voice low.

  “Just keep watching.”

  She did, and a moment later she saw a light flicker below, moving in a circle, then passing out of sight. She caught a glimpse of a bare arm and a head, then nothing.

  “See, there’s someone down there,” Sigmund continued. “Niddy heard ’em first.” His whispers echoed off the shaft wall across from them. “Wonder what they’re doing? Think they’re making all these buckets move? I bet they operate this whole contraption.”

  Shilo shrugged. “No, don’t you dare.” She grabbed at Kim. He was reaching for the chain, obviously intending to go down farther. “Don’t be an idiot.”

  The boy looked hurt and confused. “I thought we were—”

  “Hush,” Nidintulugal said. “All of you hush.” He edged away from Shilo, circling the shaft with his back to the wall. He made an exaggerated beckoning motion so they could see him in the dim light. There was a slash in the wall behind him, and he ducked inside.

  Shilo kept a hold of Kim. “Listen, you.” She kept herself from being too nasty as she whispered, “This mi
ssion we’re on … it’s more important than you. This isn’t just about you. If you paid attention to Nidin last night, you’d know it’s about our future, about a whole lot of people’s futures. We need your help, your hands and strength. We don’t need you running off again.”

  She felt him tremble under her grip.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  She couldn’t see his expression, his face tipped down, but she was pretty sure he’d stay in line now.

  “I really am sorry,” he said. “I guess I just got … I dunno … excited.”

  Shilo couldn’t stay mad at him; he was only eleven years old and filled with a youthful fascination for what was essentially an unknown world. She doubted that he knew to be afraid. He hadn’t been pursued by guards and wanted by a rich man who knew about Georgia, or at least about the United States. He hadn’t come face-to-face with a dragon. Or had he? He’d traveled because of the puzzle before. But his dragon couldn’t have been as big as Ulbanu.

  Nothing living was as big as Ulbanu.

  “We should catch up with them, Shilo. They’re gonna get too far ahead.” Kim whispered softly, and he cast his gaze even farther down so he wouldn’t have to look her in the eyes. “Don’t want to lose them, do we?”

  “No running off,” she repeated, raising her voice ever so slightly. Then she nudged Kim toward the slash in the shaft, wishing she had a leash to put around his neck, just to be certain he didn’t stray again.

  “Can’t see where I’m going.” Kim had stopped in front of her.

  She squeezed by him. “Hold on to my robe,” she told him. “And don’t…”

  “I know, don’t let go.”

  Shilo cursed herself for not immediately following Nidintulugal. Maybe a priest of the sun god had better vision, and so could find his way in the dark. She raised her hands and found the wall on each side of her, making this tunnel, she guessed, about a yard or so wide. She ran her fingertips along it, discovering a mix of earth and bricks that had straw baked in them. A man-made tunnel then, she knew. She went slow, too slow for Kim she could tell, as he bumped into her a couple of times.