by Marc Graham
I frowned. “Eliam claims he is aided by the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, even the demons of the Pit.”
Bilkis scoffed and gestured as though she were waving away a bothersome fly.
“Then why did you choose him?” I asked.
“I assure you, I did not,” Bilkis said, then swung her legs out of the litter. “The gods of this land have greatly blessed me, but the price of their goodness is that I must endure this mason. But no matter. Come, see my little tribute.”
I stepped out after her and felt a wonder greater even than when I’d stood before the ruins of lost Eram.
Blocks of polished stone sprang from the hilltop, straining, it seemed, to reach the very heavens. The neatly stacked walls surpassed the height of the tower house in Maryaba, and stretched so far and wide they might have enclosed my entire city. Scores of men sang in harmony as they moved around and upon the structure, hauling ropes or carrying burdens in a grand, chaotic dance.
Twin rails of heavy timber ran along the sides and front of the temple. Upon these rested great wooden creatures. Their long, spindly legs resembled those of a heron or some other water bird, and their necks reached even higher than the walls. Where the body would have been, there sat a spoked wheel, within which a pair of men animated the beast.
“Welcome, my lady,” said a gentle voice that rose above the singing.
I turned to see a young man dressed in a crisp white robe and turban. He bowed to Bilkis then turned to me.
“My sister,” Bilkis offered by way of introduction.
“Ah,” the lad said, and offered a polite bow. “You’re the one who has sparked so much wonder. I am Natan umm-Havah, priest of Yah and Havah. On behalf of our gods and our people, I thank you for your gifts.”
“The gods have more than repaid me by restoring my sister to me,” I said. “Though my gift seems a small thing compared to such a marvel as this.”
Natan glanced over his shoulder toward the nascent temple and gave a smile, an expression that seemed to come easily to him. The young priest began to speak, but was interrupted by a sharp crack that rang across the building site. Song turned to shouts as men dropped their burdens and scrambled away. I looked toward the commotion, to where workers shouted for one of their comrades to move. Heedless of their warnings, the man tugged on his rope, which was spooled about the base of one of the wooden birds. The machine reluctantly turned on its pivot and swung away from the temple wall.
Another crack drew my attention to the ropes that ran from the wheel, up the bird’s neck, then down to a large stone block. A pair of the braided cables had snapped, and the stone swayed drunkenly in its cradle.
A thunderous voice bellowed an order, and the men within the wheel began moving in the opposite direction, as though climbing down a ladder. A large man, stoutly built and bearing a wooden staff, shouted another order as he sprinted toward the worker who held the rope. He’d almost reached the other man when the last cable failed.
The stone plunged toward the earth with terrible speed. The worker beneath it finally released his line but fell as he tried to move away. Man and stone met the ground in the same instant. The man with the staff raced onward, then disappeared in the cloud of white dust that bloomed from the horror.
As if the man were one of my own people and without thought to the shouts behind me, I ran into the cloud. I coughed and stumbled my way through the blinding dust that clogged my nostrils, caked my throat, and stung my eyes. Following the deep voice that spoke now in softer tones, I moved farther into the cloud until I saw the man’s spectral outline. He must have noticed me as well as he pointed to one side.
“Be ready to pull him clear when I say.”
Without a word, I felt my way to the fallen man’s shoulders and rolled the fabric of his tunic into my fists. I settled my weight as I heard a sharp intake of breath and the groan of wood.
“Now,” a strained voice said.
I leaned back and pushed with my legs. The earth was reluctant to loosen its hold on the man, but at last relented. A finger’s breadth he moved, then three, then five more. I lost my balance and landed on my backside, dragging the man atop me.
The ground shuddered as the stone fell clear of the man’s legs. I slipped out from under him as gently as I could. His eyes were closed and the dust had painted his face with a deathly pallor, but his chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. I ran my eyes along the rest of his body.
My stomach twisted when I reached the mangled remains of his leg.
“Come away, my lady,” I heard through the drumming of my heartbeat in my ears. Gentle hands raised me by my shoulders, while men moved in to tend their comrade. I tore my eyes from the carnage and looked down to see it was Yahtadua’s young wives who guided me away.
“Oh, my sister,” Bilkis said when we reached her, “what were you thinking? You might have been hurt. And you look a mess.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Just like that fool to endanger his men, giving them cheap ropes while he puts gold in his purse. Come,” Bilkis said, and led the way to the litter. “I’ll not stand here to watch more men die.”
“He lives still,” I said as the girls helped me into the carrying platform behind Bilkis, “but one leg was shattered.”
“All the more shame.” Bilkis leaned back upon her cushions and stifled a yawn. “The gods would have been more merciful to carry him to Sheol. As it is, he’ll most likely land among the beggars at the gate.”
I glanced back toward the temple where the man with the staff—the temple-builder himself, I reasoned—joined three other men in raising the newly made cripple upon a litter. Anger welled within me at the thought of a poor man brought to ruin by his master’s greed.
Yahtadua pulled the curtain closed, and the litter lurched as the servants raised it to their shoulders. I silently denounced abi-Huram to my gods, this man who would, for a few scraps of gold, sell the well-being of those entrusted to him. I begged Athtar to rain dust and ruin upon abi-Huram’s head, as the builder had brought them upon the heads of I knew not how many others.
I shivered as a coldness I’d never known settled over me. As waters turned to ice in the distant northlands, so my heart became as stone. I had hoped to find a builder for my dam, to secure the future of my people. I could not, however, entrust that future to one who so little regarded those in his care. The gods, I decided, would have to show me another way.
59
Yetzer
“Whose mark was on the rope?” Yetzer demanded of Elhoreb, trying and failing to keep his voice level.
“I don’t know, Master,” the priest-turned-scribe said.
“Who attested to the ropes having been replaced?”
“I don’t know, Master.”
“Then find out,” Yetzer barked. “One of my men, a life entrusted to me, almost lost that life. As the gods live, he will surely lose his leg. If the rope was new, I would know who wove it. If it was old, I would know why it was still in use.”
“As you say,” Elhoreb replied, “but it will take some time to find the records.”
“Then start looking.” The words grated against Yetzer’s throat. He made an effort to quell the rage that boiled within him. “And draw up a transfer for some of my lands in Naftali. If Pelti cannot work, I shall at least see that he and his family can eat. Three yokes should do. No, make it six.”
“So much?” Elhoreb asked. “He has but three children—”
The scribe ended his protest when Yetzer glowered at him.
“It shall be even as you say, Master.”
Yetzer gave a curt nod then ducked beneath the lintel of his scribe’s house. He absently accepted words of comfort and good will as he passed his men and their families on the way to Pelti’s little cottage. He’d left the man unconscious with a wailing wife, sobbing children, and a butcher he’d promised a purse of silver if he could cleanly remove the leg.
When Yetzer reached the house, wa
ils no longer filled the air, rather the reek of hot pitch and scorched flesh. He knocked on the doorpost and stooped to enter.
Pelti lay on his mat, eyes closed, face drawn and wan. His blanket seemed misshapen as it covered one leg whole, the other foreshortened. Still, the man breathed steadily. His children huddled about him, the youngest in the lap of their mother who sang a song of the ancestors.
“It went well?” Yetzer asked the bloody-aproned butcher.
The man grunted and finished wiping down his grisly tools. “Well as can be. The bone was whole just below the knee, so I was able to take it at the joint.” He nodded toward a bucket covered by a scarlet-stained cloth.
“I’ll take you at your word,” Yetzer said. He little doubted the leg would find its way into a pigsty that evening and made a silent vow to refrain from pork for a time. Yetzer offered a pouch to the butcher.
“For your good care.”
The man weighed the purse in his meaty hand and smiled. He threw it in with his tools and gathered them up along with the bucket.
“Why me?” he asked Yetzer before he left. “Why not call for a priest of Havah or of Hadad?”
“If I want someone to tend a man’s shade or read entrails, I’ll call a priest. If I want someone to tend to the body, I’d sooner have one who knows how a body is put together.”
The man shook his head as he left. Yetzer spoke briefly with Pelti’s wife, a plain creature with eyes and nose like a hawk’s. He gave her another purse, this one filled with gold, and assured her they could stay in the workers’ town as long as they wished. Their land would be waiting. Yetzer accepted a hug from the woman, intoned a blessing upon Pelti and the children, then left the little family in peace.
The sun had begun to creep behind the hills, and the streets grew quiet as people gathered in their homes for the evening meal. Yetzer started toward Elhoreb’s house to help his scribe search the records, when a lone figure caught his glance.
A woman, lean of figure and dark of complexion, wandered among the houses, a woven basket balanced atop her head.
“Are you lost?” Yetzer asked as he found himself standing before her.
The woman looked up, and Yetzer’s heartbeat trebled. Eyes like liquid gold bored into him. A long nose and proud cheekbones sat above slightly parted lips that revealed straight, white teeth. Recognition dawned in those remarkable eyes, and the lips pursed together.
“You,” the woman hissed at him. Freckles stood out on her dark skin as blood coursed into her cheeks. The basket shifted on her head, and Yetzer reached out to help her steady it and lower it to the ground. The woman jerked her hand back from where Yetzer’s touched hers on the handle.
“You would do well to see to the care of those in your trust, rather than lining your purse with their sweat and blood.” She poked a slender finger against his chest before continuing. “To be raised over a people, to hold their fortunes in your hands is a sacred trust, not a means to enrich yourself.”
Warm, dry air rolled over Yetzer’s lips as his mouth fell open in silent reply. The woman glared at him and he had a feeling, if the stories of mashitim shooting fire from their eyes were true, she would have burned him down where he stood. The angry, beautiful, avenging angel stooped to take up her basket, then disappeared through Pelti’s doorway.
Yetzer stood there, silent as a lamb before its shearer. Few people ever spoke to him in such a manner. The only women to do so were his mother and the queen. For this stranger to lash out at him with such righteous fury was as startling as it was undeserved. He needed no lessons, yet this woman would teach him the proper treatment of his own people? Outrageous.
The temple-builder turned away—and a smile crept along his lips.
60
Makeda
I wandered slowly down the hillside. I was lost, confused, and not by the foreign landscape. The workman’s wife had accepted my token of olibanum, the trade of which should feed the little family for two years or more.
“What merciful gods,” the woman had said, “to heap such blessings atop sorrow.”
She’d gone on to describe how the Master Builder had bestowed enough gold and lands to tend to her great-grandchildren.
It was a poor miser who would enrich himself at his people’s expense only to give away his wealth to ease the pain he’d caused. Either this Yetzer abi-Huram was a king of fools, or Bilkis had told me wrong. I saw no reason for my sister to mislead me, but the accounting she’d given of her temple-builder now seemed unjust.
The half moon lit my way to the bottom of Urusalim’s western hill. The sound of a rolling pebble made me turn and look back, but I saw nothing more than the stark landscape cloaked in night’s embrace. I followed the cart path across a narrow valley, then began the short climb up to the royal city.
The smell of beggars grew stronger as I neared the gate. I chided myself for not bringing food, but Bilkis must surely provide for them.
“What do you want, little sister?” asked a gruff voice in a thickly accented slur. The guardsman at the gate swayed a little and leaned upon his spear as he might a walking staff. His companion stood against the wall and lowered a wineskin from his lips as I approached.
“Gates are closed,” the second man said after wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Come back tomorrow to ply your trade.”
“I’m not—” I began, but the first guard spoke over me.
“Of course, for a sampling of your wares we could let you in.” He stood up straight—straighter, in any case—and lumbered toward me. “But you’d have to open your gates to us first.”
“I have no wares,” I said, and backed away a few steps. “I wish only to go to the palace.”
“The palace, is it?” the other guard said as he moved to flank me. “And what business would a little duck like you have at the palace?”
“I’m the queen’s sister,” I said, making an effort to put authority in my voice even as I backed away a few more steps.
The guards followed my retreat, and I found myself moving deeper into a shadowed corner of the gatehouse.
“Her sister, eh?” the first guard retorted. “Why, I’m brother to the Prince of Subartu. That makes us royal relations. Come, sweet one, and give your cousin a kiss.”
The guards closed in on me. I tried to cry out, but one of them covered my mouth with his. The men pinned my arms against the wall. One roughly fondled my breasts, while the other tried to raise my skirts.
A whistling sound sliced through the air, followed by a sickening crack. One of the attackers released me and slid to the ground. A hand emerged from the sleeve of a black cloak, then clamped beneath the remaining guard’s chin and jerked him away from me.
The guard alternately tore at the hands and beat at the arms of this cloaked savior. His assault became more frantic as the figure lifted him from the ground by his throat.
“Shall I kill him?” a man asked in a deep, incongruously soft tone.
I adjusted my robe and wiped the guard’s saliva from my mouth.
“No,” I said, my voice tight. “There’s no real harm done.”
“As you wish,” the man replied.
He threw his captive to the ground. The guard called out in strangled tones, and his cry turned to a scream as the tall figure raised his staff and brought it down between the man’s legs.
“Perhaps that will teach you to treat women with respect.”
Another voice shouted a challenge from atop the wall. An arrow sprouted from the ground with a hiss. My rescuer took me firmly but gently by the wrist.
“Let us away,” he said. “They’ll more likely kill us than bother to learn what’s happened.”
I nodded and pulled close to the man as another arrow whistled past. His body was firm, his cloak smelled of olibanum. He wrapped a stout arm about my shoulders and guided me through the press of curious beggars.
Keeping to the moon-cast shadows, we followed a track to the edge of the city wall, crossed a sha
llow ditch, then started up the slope of the northern hill. When the brush and trees hid us from view of the palace, my guide led me beneath the boughs of a thick-trunked tree and released his hold.
I sank to my knees as the fear that had filled my veins drained away. The night air fell cold across my shoulders where the man’s arm had been, and I fought the urge to draw nearer to him as he knelt before me.
“Are you hurt?” he asked as he pulled back the hood of his cloak.
“No. I’m—”
The words dashed against my teeth as moonlight revealed the face of Yetzer abi-Huram. A scarf covered the left side of his face, and wan light bounced off the embroidered eye there. His natural one shone with concern.
“I’m all right,” I stammered. “Thank you.”
“I should thank you,” he said with a smile that drove away the shadows. “Your kindness to Pelti and his family was—” He seemed to struggle to find the word. “Unexpected. My name is Yetzer abi-Huram.”
Of course, it was, I thought before it dawned on me I hadn’t given him the chance to introduce himself earlier.
“I’m Makeda umm-Ayana,” I said, then frowned as the light flickered out in Yetzer’s eye.
61
Yetzer
“Makeda?” Yetzer said. “Queen of Saba?”
Bitterness squeezed his heart. He’d thought this woman a mashit, an angel of mercy and righteousness. She was just another lady of high birth—the very sister of Bilkis, if Natan’s gossip was true. As he studied her features, the moonlight gave truth to the rumor. What he’d mistaken for generosity had clearly been some means for Bilkis to gain advantage.
“Yes,” Makeda replied, “but—”
“My apologies, Lady,” Yetzer interrupted. “I’ll see you back to the palace.”
“What about the guards?” Makeda asked, her tone that of a child denied a treat.
Yetzer considered that. He’d happily face the Pelesti arrows to rid himself of this royal nuisance. Fear, however, seemed to creep in with the petulance in the queen’s eyes. He silently cursed himself as the weaker part of his nature, that part he feared would ever put a woman’s pleas above his better judgment, did just that.