The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  I could only hope that it was Ashurbanipal’s, and that he was wise enough to realize how weak his position might be.

  I rode across the empty field that separated our camp from the city walls, letting Ghost keep his own pace, as I was in no hurry for whatever awaited me within. There was an unearthly silence. Calah seemed deserted—I looked up and could not even make out the faces of the guards looking down from the watchtowers.

  And then, as I passed under the shadow of the great gate, I saw them. The whole city seemed to be crowded into the main street. At first they merely stood there, staring at me stupidly, as if a man on horseback was something beyond their comprehension.

  No one spoke. There were soldiers mixed in with the crowd, but the expression on all their faces was just the same. I had seen it before, on the faces of the conquered, that mixture of doubt and hope, the uncertainty that afflicts people when suddenly the next few hours of their lives come to seem like a wilderness in which anything might happen.

  Here and there, someone to the front of the crowd would drop to his knees, then a few more, then many. Sometimes there were tears in their eyes. Some reached out their hands to touch me as I passed. The unnatural silence persisted.

  When it began, it seemed at first to come from some distance, muffled and indistinct, almost like an echo. Yet quickly it grew in strength, and I recognized my own name, shouted by a thousand voices so that the walls themselves seemed to tremble.

  “Tiglath! Tiglath! TigLATH! TigLATH!”

  The crowd surged around me so that both my horse and I seemed carried forward more by their collective will than by our own motion. It was like being at the center of a boiling caldron, and the shouting never stopped so that it seemed to beat against me in waves.

  “TigLATH! TigLATH! TigLATH! TigLATH!”

  Thus it was, every step of the way, until I found myself in the great square before the king’s palace. Then, once more, there was silence.

  The crowd withdrew to a respectful distance, and I was allowed to dismount. A royal groom took the reins from my hand. I glanced up at the palace doors, half expecting to see Ashurbanipal waiting for me at the top of the staircase, but he was not there.

  “Good,” I remember thinking. “He is either too proud or too clever to associate himself with the favor of an undisciplined mob. Whatever the reason, it is the kingly way to mark a distinction between ruler and ruled.”

  I mounted the great central stairway alone. The doors opened to receive me and then closed behind my back, and I felt myself enclosed in a separate reality. I was no more the popular hero. I had become another kind of man entirely, the subject and servant of my king.

  At least, that was the impression Ashurbanipal was striving hard to create. Had Esarhaddon never made his deathbed confession, and had this king been other than my own son—a thing known to me but perhaps not to him—it might even have succeeded.

  I waited several minutes, quite alone, in the great hall of the palace. At last a chamberlain approached me.

  “The king will receive you in his garden,” he said, as if he hardly had enough air in his lungs to pronounce the words—he was an elderly eunuch who had been in the royal service even during my father’s lifetime, and the grandeur of his position so near the throne seemed to have made an early and indelible impression on him.

  “Thank you. I know the way.”

  Ashurbanipal sat on a stone bench next to a pool that had probably contained fish during the summer months but was now drained. It was a cold morning, but he did not seem to notice. He was reading a clay tablet, from which he looked up when I approached, acknowledging my bow with a slight nod.

  “Well, Uncle,” he said, “I could hear the tumult in the street, even from here. It seems we are all delivered over to your mercy.”

  Only then did I notice that the tablet he had been reading, and which he still held cradled in his hand, was the one I had sent to Naq’ia.

  “If that is the case, Lord, I would venture you have little enough to fear.”

  “But is it the case?”

  “No.”

  He smiled thinly. I had to remind myself that I was speaking with a fifteen-year-old boy, for he was tall and had already acquired a remarkable self-possession.

  “Grandmother, I gather, is in a terrible state,” he said, as if he merely wanted to change the subject. “She has retired to her rooms and refuses to see anyone, so that at last the garrison commander was forced to come to me. Poor man—if he hadn’t grown so accustomed to taking his orders from Grandmother he might have thought to declare himself turtanu and carry on without her. My youth, you see, Uncle, puts me at a disadvantage. Everyone assumes they should act for me.”

  He paused for a moment and glanced at me speculatively, perhaps wondering if I believed him. But of course it did not matter if I believed him, because I did not care whether he was telling the truth or not. He had dissociated himself from the rebellion, and that was enough. It freed me from any suggestion of treason.

  “Who was the man?” he asked finally.

  “What man?”

  “The man whose skin. . . Oh, do pardon me, Uncle. I am being rude—please sit down.”

  I sat down next to him on the bench, although I would have preferred to stand. I would have preferred to be inside, drinking wine in front of a brazier, but Ashurbanipal looked quite comfortable where he was. I found myself wondering what point he was attempting to make by receiving me here.

  “The man was the Lady Naq’ia’s physician. He poisoned the king.”

  “Ah, well, then perhaps the less said. . . Is that the ‘secret’ to which you refer?” To indicate his reference, he balanced the tablet in his hand as if trying to guess its weight.

  “No, it is not.”

  “And this secret, whatever it is—you intend to keep it?”

  “I think that is best.”

  He was still just young enough to be unable to conceal completely the fact that he was relieved.

  “Do you suppose, Uncle, there are many families with as many secrets as ours?”

  “For the peace of mankind, let us hope not.”

  For just an instant, as our eyes met, I was quite sure he knew everything. Then the impression weakened and I was no longer sure. I would never be sure.

  “What are we to do, Uncle?”

  “We are to decide whether you can yet be trusted to be king.”

  He was proud, and he did not care for this answer, but he was also shrewd and therefore did not say so.

  “You have a price, Uncle?”

  “Yes, I have a price.”

  “And that is. . ?”

  “The Lady Naq’ia—you must put her aside. She must never again be allowed to meddle in the affairs of this house.”

  “I thought for a moment you were requiring that she be put to death.”

  “For her, that will be worse than death.”

  He seemed to consider the matter for a few seconds, but I knew at once that he had already made up his mind, perhaps even before I spoke. Perhaps, in trying to rule this boy as she had her son, Naq’ia had at last overreached herself.

  “Very well,” he said finally. “Let her be sent into a luxurious exile in Babylon. We must not be too cruel—let her torment my brother Shamash Shumukin with her advice.”

  “Even this may one day prove to have been not far enough, but let it be as the king of Ashur wills.”

  He smiled another of his pale smiles, which was all the acknowledgment this victory of his was to receive.

  “Yet Grandmother is not the only one who must go into retirement, Uncle, for a king is not a king if there is one among his subjects more mighty than he, whose voice alone can humble the crown to dust.”

  I could not account for the shock I felt at these words, since I had expected something of the sort. He was right, of course. This boy and I could never share the same world—as he had pointed out himself, there were simply too many secrets in our family.

  Yet
the prospect of another exile, from which, this time, there would be no return, was no easier for that.

  “I understand,” I said, after a pause no longer than the time required for drawing breath. “You wish to rule alone, and that you cannot do as long as I. . .”

  “Uncle, while Prince Tiglath Ashur is at my side, all eyes are drawn to him alone. Every soldier in my army worships you almost as one of the bright gods. Common people cheer you in the street, and peasants in the remotest villages give their male children your name and tell the stories of your wars and your magic courage. In their hearts, you are the king they would have. I cannot hope to stand against the measure of such glory—not yet. I must have my chance to try.”

  I could feel the tears standing in my eyes, unshed but blinding. For the first time I felt a father’s love for this boy whom I must never own as mine. It was bitter to lose a son even in the instant of finding him, yet I knew that the only father’s blessing I could ever give him was the one for which he now entreated me.

  “Yes, I really do understand.” I put my hand on his arm, allowing myself that one gesture of affection, and his pride did not impel him to pull away, so perhaps he comprehended something of what was in my heart. “I will go. And not to some distant garrison town where, even against my will, I would always be a focus of resistance to your rule. I shall seem to disappear, and forever. It shall be as if I had died.”

  “As if you had never lived,” he answered, a strange hardness coming into his voice.

  And I knew what he would do, for this king would not share his crown even with a shadow. And so, like kings before him, he would cause the histories of my father’s and my brother’s reigns to be rewritten, lest they seem more glorious than his own. My very name would vanish from the annals, which in any case is only a collection of triumphant lies. He meant to destroy the past—or, at least, my past.

  And even this, I knew, was for the best. He had a sliver of ice through the heart, this son of mine, and that is not a bad thing for a king, although in other men it stands as a fault. Esarhaddon had not had it, and only knew to be cruel where he should have been merely ruthless. It was perhaps what I also lacked, and why the Lord Ashur at last saw fit to deny me the throne of my fathers. I did not regret the lack in myself, but I was glad for Ashurbanipal.

  “As if I had never lived.”

  . . . . .

  We spoke then of many things, for even a king is willing to share his thoughts with a ghost. He promised that no one on either side would suffer for his part in the late rebellion, and I knew he was wise enough to keep his word.

  “I will reconquer Egypt,” he said. “Not this year, but as soon as the floods are past I will assemble an army and drive this Taharqa so far up the Nile that he will never find his way back. It is a matter of prestige now, so I have no choice.”

  “A war of conquest is not a bad way to begin a reign,” I told him. “But invade through the Delta—do not attempt another desert crossing, because Taharqa will expect that. And do not underestimate him, for he is brave and clever.”

  “Yet once the war is won, I think it best to collect tribute for a few years and then let the matter tactfully drop. Egypt is a broken reed. She will never trouble us again, so why waste soldiers trying to hold her?”

  “This is wise. And remember, My King, as yet you have no knowledge of war, so listen to your commanders and follow their advice. The men who took Egypt once can take her again, if only you will let them. There will be enough glory for everyone.”

  “It shall be as you say, Uncle.”

  When I left the city, by a side gate leading from the palace compound, it was already the middle of the afternoon. I rode back to camp both pleased and sorrowful, and these in about equal measure, for I had accomplished all that I had set myself to do, but now the future had no place for me. Not here, at least.

  “Would it pain you so very much to give up a husband who is a prince of Ashur for one who is merely a Sicilian farmer?” I asked Selana, even as a groom took my horse away.

  “Are we going back?” she asked, and I knew from the light in her eyes that it was all she wanted.

  “Yes—and this time forever.”

  “Then I shall try to bear it,” she said, and laughed.

  . . . . .

  But mine was not to be an abrupt departure, for it could not be allowed to seem that the king was driving me out. I stayed in Calah for over a month, retaining the title and power of turtanu, and I helped in the planning of the next Egyptian campaign, approving the commanders who would be its real leaders. The king and I appeared together in public, and he distinguished me with many signs of favor. At the same time I made it known to the leaders of the army that I planned to return to my place of exile, far beyond the shores of the Northern Sea.

  “Why must you go?” they asked. “The king is only a boy, and it was the Lord Esarhaddon’s will that you should hold power as turtanu.”

  “I am weary of power—now I seek only obscurity and peace of mind. I came back only because it was the king my brother’s will, and now I have permission to return. Trust the new king. He is young, but his mind is quick and he knows how to listen. He will do quite well without me.”

  I do not know if they believed these assurances, but at last they came to accept that I left by my own wish.

  And ten days after our first conversation, Ashurbanipal sealed the agreement between us by sending the Lady Naq’ia into exile. I saw her depart the city, in a wagon drawn by royal oxen, as if she were already a corpse on her way to burial.

  We did not speak, but I have not forgotten the expression on her face. She knew she would never be back, and that a lifetime of treachery and murder had ended in failure. She looked as if she envied her victims.

  I could not find it in my heart to pity her.

  And at last it was time for me too to leave. The king made me many presents of gold and silver, but great wealth would be of little use to the man I was to become, so most of these I distributed among the bodyguard chosen to conduct me to the northern border. Lushakin insisted on commanding my escort himself.

  My last night in Calah, I summoned a scribe and resigned to the king’s possession most of my property, my houses and my great estates, arranging that the document be delivered into his hands only after I had departed. These things belonged to Prince Tiglath Ashur, and I was not he. Let the king find favorites of his own to make rich, I thought. He will need them.

  The one exception was to be the estate at Three Lions, which I would give to Qurdi, my overseer there, and his wife Naiba. I would not deny myself the pleasure of raising them to unimagined prosperity.

  A man’s final journey out of the land that nurtured him always follows a long road. We did not stop in the cities, but from a distance, windswept and already dusted with snow, I saw the walls of Nineveh, where I had been born, where I had once imagined I would live in glory, leaving her only to fill a royal tomb in Ashur, and I remembered the warning I had heard as a youth: “Look to Nineveh, Tiglath Ashur. Its streets will become the hunting ground of foxes, and owls will make their nests in the palace of the great king. Do not think that happiness and glory await you here, Prince, for the god reserves you to another way. Here all things will be bitter—love, power, friendship. Sweet at first, but, in the end, bitter.”

  . . . . .

  He was waiting for me, sitting by the marker stone at Three Lions. I had known I would see him once more, and I left Selana and my escort at a distance and rode to meet him.

  If a man is mortal, time must wear him away like a stone left in running water, but the maxxu, the holy one of Ashur, was unchanged from the first time I had seen him, more than twenty years before. The same gaunt, sun-darkened face, the same prominent brow, the same white hair and beard, the same dead and sightless eyes that seemed to look past one and into some hidden reality.

  “You have come at last,” he said. “One of us has had a long wait.”

  “And this, I think, w
ill be our final meeting.”

  “Yes, Tiglath Ashur—our final meeting. You have served the god’s purposes well, and now he is finished with you. Find your reward.”

  “Have the prophecies then been fulfilled, Holy One?”

  “Not yet, Tiglath Ashur, but you will know when they have.”

  “And what is to come now?”

  He smiled, mocking me, as if to ask, Do you really wish to know?

  “What of my son, Holy One? What of the king?”

  “Oh, him.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Ashurbanipal will have the glorious reign that should have been yours, but after him the empire of your fathers will wither and rot away like an apple left in the sun. In time all will disappear, leaving hardly a trace upon the wind-swept earth. The gods will depart. The splendid cities will vanish until they are not even a memory. Their very names will perish from the tongues of men. Nothing will remain except silence. Such is Sacred Ashur’s judgment against the land and its people.”

  “You speak of dark things,” I said. “Holy One, you fill me with darkness.”

  “Do I?” He smiled at me, as if at a child who is frightened of his own shadow. “Then know that the sun spreads its light to many places, and there is always another dawn. Go now, Tiglath Ashur, whom the god loves. Go and live your life.”

  I turned my horse and rode away, for I had heard enough.

  . . . . .

  At last we reached the banks of the Bohtan River. When I crossed it, I would be out of the Land of Ashur. I said good-bye to Lushakin, embracing him like a brother. Then I tied Ghost the the back of the wagon that carried Selana and our child and drove it into the water. Waiting on the other side was Tabiti, headman of the Sacan, grinning like a cat.

  “My scouts have been following you for days,” he shouted. “You have made slow progress.”