The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  “She was found this morning, when she had already been dead many hours. It is believed she took her own life.”

  I thought of the priest, Rimani Ashur, who had read the entrails of the ginu and declared it the god’s will that my brother and not I should be king in the Land of Ashur. He, it was rumored, had been one of Shaditu’s lovers, and he had died by his own hand, hanging himself in the temple sanctuary, under the very eyes of the Lord Shamash.

  “How?”

  “Poison, My Lord. There was an empty wine cup beside her sleeping mat. They opened her belly and found her guts were black with henbane.”

  I did not believe it for an instant. Yes, certainly, if driven to it, Shaditu would have been perfectly capable of such an act—yet why now? Why just now?

  Because Shaditu had known a secret, one that some might prefer died with her. And the king was far away, and. . .

  What was Naq’ia preparing?

  “What should be done with the corpse, My Lord?”

  “Bury it,” I answered, my heart still cold from the shock. “Bury it before it rots—what else, throw it to the dogs? Bury the Lady Shaditu in the royal vault at Ashur, for she was a king’s daughter, and her father, the Lord Sennacherib, loved her.”

  “Yes, My Lord.”

  He bowed himself out of my presence and, one assumes, took horse back to Nineveh with the surprising news that there was to be no further investigation. No slaves were to be questioned under torture, no old lovers need fear for their guilty secrets, and the Lady Shaditu, who had been an evil woman and had died such a death as stinks in the nostrils of the gods, was to be laid to rest among her ancestors like some elderly virgin claimed at last by the accumulated infirmities of a harmless life.

  That night she came to me in my dreams. Yet I hardly thought it a dream, for it remains in my mind as substantial as the memory of a real event.

  She looked as she had in the days of our youth, clear-skinned and sleak, her breasts firm beneath her fine linen tunic. She smiled with mischief as she sat down beside me on a bench in our father’s garden in Nineveh—why there, I cannot begin to guess.

  “You raped me once,” she said, and the memory brought with it a ripple of throaty laughter. “You beat me like a tavern harlot and then forced yourself on me.”

  “As I recall, you didn’t require very much forcing.”

  This made her laugh again, and she shook her head so that I could hear the hair rustle like dry leaves.

  “I would tease you into doing it again, but there are no such embraces among the dead.” With her pink tongue she licked her nether lip and brought her face close to mine. I could feel her warm breath as she spoke. “Still, kiss me, Tiglath my brother, if only to show you have forgiven me.”

  “No, Shaditu. You are dead, remember? Even now, you are lying in your casket somewhere. Try to behave with appropriate dignity.”

  “You are unkind,” she said, pulling away as she dropped her eyes and pretended to pout. Then she looked up at me again and grinned, showing lovely, even, white teeth.

  “I will always love you, Tiglath, though you are a brute and do not deserve it. Who else could I ever have loved, for who else understood me as you did?”

  “Understood that you were a wanton slut? Many understood that.”

  “Not as you did.” Another rich little throb of laughter. “Still, it was sweet of you to let me be buried in the royal vault. I should have missed being near the family. Esarhaddon would probably have told them merely to dig a hole in the mud.”

  “What do you want, Shaditu?”

  “Only to warn you—and to be avenged.”

  She sat there, turned slightly toward me, her small hands resting on her thigh, and I could see a hardness come into her eyes, as if the pupils had turned to iron. Yes, of course. My sister would always insist on the final word, even in death.

  “It was Naq’ia, wasn’t it,” I said at last.

  “Yes, of course.” She shrugged her fine shoulders playfully. “Who else? My servants are all her spies, and at last she had one of them poison me. In recent years I have taken to drinking myself into a stupor amost every night, so I did not even notice the taste of henbane in my wine. Everyone thought I had killed myself, out of boredom I suppose. But not you, my clever brother.”

  The smile she turned on me was enough to freeze the blood.

  “I cannot have Naq’ia killed.”

  “There are many things worse than death. You will find a way to punish her.”

  “And the warning?”

  “Do not try to change things,” she said, after a moment—it was almost as if she were delivering a message, for the words did not seem to be hers. “There is no place for you in a future which cannot be unwritten, and no labor of yours can avail against the god’s will. Do not step into the trap that awaits so many others.”

  “Only that?”

  “Only that.”

  “Shaditu, what did Rimani Ashur see when he examined the ginu?”

  “Can a man read another’s destiny in the entrails of a sacrificial goat?” She smiled her teasing smile, but even as she spoke her image faded. “You will know all in good time.”

  And then, of course, I woke up to find the sun streaming over my face. Yet the dream stayed in my mind.

  Not an hour later a rider came from Harran with news that the king had fallen ill.

  . . . . .

  “He has been ill almost since we left Calah. At first he only complained of stomach pains, and even when he could no longer travel it seemed to be nothing, yet now. . .

  “He is very bad. Six days ago, he could not even stand. His physicians do not know what is wrong, but the king himself believes he is dying. He insisted you be sent for, My Lord.”

  “Then I must go to him.”

  I did not trouble to appoint a deputy who would govern in my absence, since I knew all such arrangements would be in vain—if I left Calah, Naq’ia would rule, no matter what I did. The king had known as much, which was why I had not accompanied him on this campaign. He knew it now, lying on what might be his deathbed. Thus, if he called me to him, it was for no trivial reason.

  I gave orders that Ghost was to be bridled and waiting within the half hour. I sent no word to the royal garrison. There was no time left to squander if I wanted to see my brother alive, and I would travel faster without an escort. If Esarhaddon thought he was dying, I had to believe him.

  “Since I know you will not stop along the way to eat, this will keep you from starving,” Selana told me, putting a leather satchel into my arms. “It holds enough bread and dried meat to last two men four days. There is even a small jar of wine.”

  “Two men?”

  “Yes, two. You will take Enkidu with you, if only for your wife’s peace of mind. Will you send word of the king’s illness to the Lady Naq’ia?”

  “No. She will hear quickly enough. It would not surprise me if she knew already.”

  When I came down to the courtyard Enkidu was already waiting, mounted on his horse and ready. I kissed Selana and our son good-bye, the future a blank wall before us. She only smiled and said, “Take care.” She asked no questions because she knew I had no answers for her.

  The ride to Harran took six days. Horses must be rested and fed and watered, but otherwise we never stopped. For six days I hardly closed my eyes or looked at anything except the road ahead of us. I tried to force myself not to think, since the only idea my mind seemed able to contain was that Esarhaddon might even then be dead—I could not even think as far as what the world would hold for me and mine if Ashurbanipal became king. I simply did not want my brother to die in the presence of strangers, with no loving hand to close his eyes. It is therefore hardly surprising that the journey has left hardly any trace on my memory.

  We encountered outriders half a day from the city walls, and they gave us fresh horses. Others met us at the main gate, and I was taken directly to the provincial governor’s house, which, in this emergency, had bec
ome both army headquarters and royal palace. I had not even wiped the dust from my face when I was shown into the king’s presence.

  Esarhaddon was lying on a couch, asleep. His face was wasted and gray. From the way his lips worked it was clear his dreams tormented him. His officers and physicians stood about in silence—and among these I saw Menuas watching me with his small, frightened eyes.

  Sha Nabushu, the king’s turtanu, came up and touched me obsequiously on the arm, glancing down at his master’s tortured rest.

  “He is thus much of the time,” he said, this in a voice that just missed being a whisper. “Presently he will wake, and his mind will be clear enough. His strength is waning fast, however. He asks for you constantly.”

  I made no reply. I did not trust myself to speak.

  After perhaps an hour Esarhaddon woke up. His eyes wandered about the room and then fastened on my face and then widened with recognition. I believe he was too exhausted even to be surprised.

  Then he turned his gaze to Sha Nabushu.

  “Get out,” he said, breathing out the words. “Get out, all of you. I wish to speak to my brother alone.”

  When they were gone, he motioned to me to come and sit beside him.

  “I haven’t come very far, have I,” he said. “I suppose this means we will lose Egypt, and it will all have been for nothing. Ah well.”

  Yes—I could believe he was dying. If he could give up his dearest wish so easily. . .

  With what seemed a great effort, he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again they seemed almost drained of life.

  “I may not have much time.” Esarhaddon moved his hand enough to lay it on my arm. “There is something I must tell you.”

  “It can wait, brother. You will recover and can tell me then.”

  He shook his head—he knew that I was merely being a coward, that I did not want to hear whatever secret burdened his heart.

  “Sometimes the gods are merciful and give a man warning,” he said. “I will not recover, Tiglath, and you must know the truth or you will not be able to save yourself after I am gone. I know you, and your conscience will paralyze you.”

  His fingers slipped down and grasped my wrist, turning my hand over. The mark I had carried there on the palm all my life glowed like a drop of fresh blood.

  “When Rimani Ashur read the omens to know if it was the god’s will that I should be king, he found a blemish on the ginu.” Even as he spoke, Esarhaddon’s eyes widened with horror. “A hemorrhage, just under the surface, stained the goat’s liver. It had the shape of a bloody star.”

  . . . . .

  He told me the whole story, some of which I had already guessed. Shaditu had seduced Rimani Ashur, and Naq’ia, who knew of it, had threatened to tell the king if her son was not confirmed as marsarru. The chief priest feared for his life—everyone knew of the doting love the Lord Sennacherib lavished on his daughter, how he was blind to her wickedness—and so he concealed the truth and proclaimed it the will of heaven that Esarhaddon should rule as the next king. But Rimani Ashur was a pious man, for all that he was weak in his flesh, and in the end his remorse drove him to take his own life.

  “There could be but one interpretation to so fearful an omen, for the god had marked you in the same way, in the hour of your birth, when our grandfather Sargon was finding his simtu at the hands of savages and heaven mourned the death of so great a king by burning the night sky with a star the color of blood. Once more, Tiglath my brother, you were favored over me. It was the Lord Ashur’s will that you and not I should succeed our father as king.”

  I could guess what it cost Esarhaddon to tell me these things.

  “I knew nothing,” he told me. “I promise you I had no inkling, not until I returned from the campaign against Abdimilkutte. Naq’ia wanted to stop me from giving the order to call you back from exile. That was the one thing she feared—not the judgment of the gods, not my pitiful anger, only your return. She had failed in her attempts to have you murdered, and she could no longer harden my heart against you, so she told me the truth, thinking it would tie me to her even more closely.”

  “Yet you called me back.”

  “Yes. You do not know how I missed you, Tiglath, even from the moment I banished you. I would have called you back when we met at Sidon, but you were so stiff-necked and taunting. . . I was still too proud to humble myself, yet I knew, even before I got back to Nineveh, that I had no one else in the world to trust except you. Then Naq’ia told me about the omen, but the story had the opposite effect from what she had intended—I was terrified. By the grace of the Lord Shamash, I had never wanted to be king, and I understood then why the gods had blighted my reign. I needed you to save me from their vengeance, and my mother.”

  “You could have abdicated.”

  “No.” He shook his head slowly, like a man resigned to fate. “I did not dare, for who would believe that I had not been a party to Naq’ia’s plottings? So I thought to bring you home and make it all up to you, heaping you with power and honor—except that you seemed to have lost your taste for power and honor. And I would make it up to the gods by conquering Egypt. I would lay a kingdom at Ashur’s feet in atonement for my unwitting sin against his will. The offering, it appears, has not been accepted. Egypt is lost, and I remain unforgiven. Tiglath my brother, do you, at least, forgive me?”

  “I forgave you long ago. We have both suffered through Naq’ia’s treachery—you, I think, more than I. Esarhaddon my brother, you are not to blame because you have an evil mother.”

  We both wept and embraced each other, and it seemed we had found once more the perfect love and trust we had felt for each other as boys. Our long estrangement was at last at an end.

  “I am weary,” he said at last. “By the Sixty Great Gods, I think I can sleep quietly now. Stay with me, brother, and when I am awake again we will talk more.”

  He drifted off, as easily as any child. And I sat beside him, holding his hand.

  I did not want my brother to die. Now less than ever did I want him to be gathered into the Lady Ereshkigal’s cruel arms. What was it that worked against his life with such slow cruelty?

  I thought perhaps I could guess. I had guessed even in Egypt, but had allowed myself to dismiss the suspicion when Esarhaddon seemed to recover. I had been a fool. . .

  “You are a king’s son and live surrounded by enemies,” Kephalos had told me once. “If your dreams of greatness are to be fulfilled, and if you would survive to be mighty and prosperous, you must learn to keep yourself out of harm’s reach.”

  He had then proceeded to teach me everything he knew of the poisoner’s art, and that turned out to be a great deal.

  “The Greeks are less gifted in these matters than the eastern peoples,” he said. “Yet I have traveled widely, both in the pursuit of knowledge and through the vicissitudes of fortune, and I have learned much from the physicians of many nations. Believe me, Lord, when I say there is little safety in the world. A man may cut an apple in half and share it with you. You will die while he will live, because only one side of the knife’s blade was coated with venom.”

  Esarhaddon’s health had been declining for some time—since that episode in Egypt, in fact. Had someone been weakening him, little by little, for so long a period?

  “Poisons vary in their effects,” Kephalos had explained. “Some are more subtle than others, but each leaves its characteristic mark. One has only to look for it.”

  I did not have to look very far. I found it on the hand I held in mine. Obscure but visible, showing through the fingernails, tiny flecks of pale brown, like traces of long-dried blood.

  “Aphantos. Little known and difficult to obtain in sufficient quantities. It comes from the seeds of a drab little flower called the Philozoös, found in only a few places in the world because it needs heavy brine to thrive—even the sea is not rich enough in salt to sustain it.

  “It is not an efficient poison, for it must accumulate in the body o
ver a long period, and thus its administration is a tedious business. Yet it has the virtue of being indetectable, save for those spots under the nails, which hardly anyone would even notice.”

  Esarhaddon’s sleep was deep and untroubled. I left him for a moment and stepped out into the hallway, where a guard was posted. I called him to me with a silent gesture.

  “The king’s physician, the Urartian Menuas. Do you know where he is at this moment?”

  “Yes, Rab Shaqe. Shall I send for him?”

  “No. Have him placed under close arrest. Take him by surprise, and be sure he has nothing secreted on his person—I will hold you responsible for his life, so be sure he has no opportunity to take it himself. Have his medicine box brought to me.”

  I went back to the couch where Esarhaddon slept and sat down again, having decided to say nothing to him until I was sure, and perhaps not even then. I did not entertain much hope.

  Salt-laden water where the Philozoös might grow—how many such places were there in the world? The Bitter Lakes in the Sinai, at the threshold of Egypt. The Great Salt Lake, called the Dead Sea by the Moabites. And, greatest of all, the Shaking Sea in the kingdom of the Urartians—I had been there, and the waters were as harsh as death.

  Who would know better of the properties of the Philozoös flower than a physician from Tushpah? Who indeed.

  When Esarhaddon woke up, we spoke again and he was able to eat a little something. Then he drifted back to sleep. I took the opportunity to bathe and catch a few hours’ rest. I would leave Menuas to sweat at least that long. He would be all the better for the wait.

  When I awoke it was already late into the night. The physician’s medicine box was on a table in my room. It contained a collection of surgical instruments, carefully wrapped in linen, and several small pottery jars sealed with waxed and with the name of the substance each contained scratched on the side. Some of these I could identify, others not. One jar was marked “Siburu,” which I knew from Kephalos, who used it on himself as a treatment for thinning hair, a dark powder taken in beer or sweet milk. Yet the powder in the jar was a pale brown—almost precisely the color of the flecks in Esarhaddon’s nailbeds. I tried a little on my tongue and found it tasteless. Siburu is almost unpalatable.