Between the Rivers

4

“It is Sharur, the son of Ereshguna!” the Gibli gate guard exclaimed. He bowed to Sharur, who led the caravan as it returned to his home city. “Did you fare well in the Alashkurru Mountains, master merchant’s son?”

One of Sharur’s bushy eyebrows rose. His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I am back from the Alashkurru Mountains. I am back in Gibil. Is that not faring well, all by itself?”

The gate guard laughed. “Right you are, master merchant’s son. Not enough copper, not enough silver, not enough gold to make me want to visit those funny foreign places, not when I live in the finest city in Kudurru, which means the finest city in the world.” He stood aside. “Not that you want to hear me chattering, either, no indeed.” His voice rose to a shout: “Enter into Gibil, city of the great god Engibil, Sharur son of Ereshguna, you and all your comrades!”

Sharur would sooner have entered Gibil quietly, with no one knowing he was there until he came to his family’s house in the Street of Smiths. He had not got any of what he wished on this disastrous journey, and knew ahead of time he would not get to enjoy a quiet entrance, either.

Where the Zuabut were known throughout the land between the rivers for their nimble fingers, the men of Gibil were known for their nimble minds. They buzzed round the caravan as flies buzzed round a butcher shop, calling out greetings to Sharur and to the donkey handlers and guards they knew, and, most of all, calling out questions: “Did you make a profit?” “How big a profit did you make?” “How much copper did you bring back?” “Any of that finegrained red wood that smells good?” “Carved jewels, master merchant’s son?” “Are the Alashkurrut really ten feet tall?” “Did frozen water fall out of the sky on you?” It went on and on and on.

As Sharur had asked of them, the caravan crew said as little as they could. Giblut were also known throughout the land between the rivers for talking to excess, but neither Sharur nor the donkey handlers nor the guards lived up to that part of their reputation. That the men were to receive the last installment of their pay at Sharur’s home helped persuade them to hold their tongues.

Some of the Giblut assumed that quiet meant the caravan had not done so well as they would have expected. They were right, but Sharur gave no sign of it. Some assumed the quiet meant the caravan had done far better than expected. They were wrong, but Sharur gave no sign of that, either. Arguments broke out between pessimists and optimists, distracting both groups from the caravan.

Not everyone in Gibil used shouted questions to try to learn how much wealth the caravan had brought to the city. One of the fanciest Gibli courtesans simply pulled off her semitransparent shift and stood magnificently naked in the street, saying without words, If you can afford me, here I am. With his men, Sharur stared longingly and walked on.

Word of their return ran through the city ahead of them. By the time they reached the Street of Smiths, the workers in bronze had come forth from their smithies, sweat streaking through smoke stains on their torsos. Their questions were the same as those of the other Giblut, but more urgent, as the answers were more immediately important to them.

By then, Sharur had been answering questions by not answering them for so long, he had no trouble making the smiths believe he’d told them much more, and been much more encouraging, thair he actually had. But then Ningal came out of Dimgalabzu’s establishment and called to him, “Did you bring back my bride-price, Sharur?”

“I. .. will have to reckon up the accounts to make sure I have enough,” he answered. He fought for a smile, and managed to achieve one. “I hope so.”

The smile must have been better than he thought, for Ningal returned it. “I hope so, too,” she said, and went back indoors.

“You will be a lucky man, master merchant’s son,” Harharu said, “if that is your intended bride.”

“Yes,” Sharur said, hoping his voice didn’t sound too hollow. He was, in a way, glad the donkeymaster, not Mushezib, had come up to him. The guard captain would have phrased essentially the same comment in so pungent a way, Sharur might have felt he had to hit him. Had the caravan succeeded, he would have taken any and all chaffing in good part. Without Ningal’s bride-price here, he was ready to lash out at anyone and anything. Only realizing as much let him keep his temper from being even worse than it actually was.

At last, the donkeys plodded up to his own home. Standing in front of it in the narrow, muddy street were his father and his brother Tupsharru. Ereshguna folded him into an embrace, saying, “Welcome home, my eldest son. It is good to see your face once more.”

“Thank you, Father.” How would Ereshguna think it to see his face when he found out Sharur had returned to Gibil without a profit? Sharur knew he would learn that soon— too soon. For his family’s sake as well as his own, he wanted to keep the rest of Gibil from learning that too soon. He said, “Father, I should particularly like to commend the donkey handlers and caravan guards, who served better than we dared hope. Along with their last payments, which are due now, I suggest you give them bonuses in silver, to reward them for their loyalty.”

“What?” Tupsharru said. “We’ve never done anything like—Ow!” Without being too obtrusive about it, Sharur had contrived to step on his brother’s toes.

Ereshguna, fortunately, was quicker on the uptake than his younger son. If Sharur proposed an unprecedented bonus, he assumed Sharur had some good reason for proposing it. “Just as you say, so shall it be,” he said. “I had the final payments prepared and waiting inside, but I can add to them. I shall add to them.” He went back in to do just that.

Sharur addressed the caravan crew: “For your diligence, for your perseverance, for your courage, and for your discretion, you shall be rewarded over and above your final payments.”

A few muffled cheers arose. In a low voice, Mushezib told one of the guards, “That means keeping your mouth shut, you understand?”

Tupsharru noticed the most important word, too. “Why are we paying them above the usual to be discreet?” he asked, also quietly.

“Because we have reason above the usual to want them to be discreet,” Sharur replied, which was true and uninformative at the same time.

Ereshguna and a couple of the house slaves came out then. The slaves led the donkeys off the street and into the courtyard at the heart of the house. Ereshguna carried on a tray leather sacks full of scrap silver: smaller ones for the ordinary guards and donkey handlers, larger ones for Mushezib and Harharu, who had led them. On the tray also gleamed silver rings. “Every man take one over and above your final payment,” he said, “save the guard captain and donkeymaster, who are to take two.” He still asked no questions of his son. Later would be time enough for that.

And then, as the men of the caravan crew were taking their pay and their bonuses and offering up words of praise for the house of Ereshguna and for its generosity, the ghost of Sharur’s grandfather shouted in his ear: “Boy, when you led that caravan to the mountains, did you stand out in the sun too long without your hat? You’ve brought back all the stuff you set out with. No, you’ve brought back some of the stuff you set out with”—his grandfather’s ghost sniffed—“but nothing you set out to get.”

The ghost had not bothered to speak to him alone. By the way Tupsharru’s head came up in startlement, he could tell his brother had also heard the angry words. Sighing, Sharur murmured, “I will tell this tale presently, when I can tell it in more privacy.”

Some of the donkey handlers and guards were murmuring, too, as ghosts that had not left Gibil greeted those who remembered them on their return. Agum was shaking his head and talking vehemently under his breath. Sharur wondered if he was trying to explain why the ghost of his uncle had not returned with him.

He got only a moment to wonder, for his grandfather’s ghost shouted again: “Kimash the lugal will be angry at you for coming back with nothing you set out to get. He’s not so much of a much, Kimash, but for what he is, he’ll be angry at you. And Engibil—Engibil will be angry at you, too, for coming back with nothing you set out to get.”

Sharur sighed again. “Yes, I know that,” he muttered. It hadn’t crossed Tupsharru’s mind; he stared toward Sharur. Ereshguna also looked in Sharur’s direction. Whatever he thought, he kept to himself.

Only after the men of the caravan crew departed, many of them praising the generosity of the house of Ereshguna, did the head of the house turn to his elder son and say, “Come into the house. Come into the shade. Come: we will drink beer together. And you will tell the tale of your journey to the Alashkurru Mountains.”

“Father, you will not rejoice to hear it,” Sharur said.

“I rejoice that you are here. I rejoice that, being here, you may tell it,” Ereshguna said. “Set against that, nothing else has the weight even of a single barleycorn. Whatever it may be, we have the chance to set it right.” '

“It will take a good deal of setting right,”, the ghost of Sharur’s grandfather said. “For what he brought back, he might as well have stayed home. In my day, caravans that went out to trade went out to trade, if you know what I mean.”

Ereshguna ignored the ghost’s complaints. He led both his sons into the house and called for beer. A slave fetched a jar of it, and three cups. After spilling out libations, after offering thanks to the deities of barley and brewing, Ereshguna and his sons drank. Only after the first cups were empty did Ereshguna turn to Sharur and ask, “We have less of profit, then, than we had hoped?”

“We have no profit,” Sharur said. “Father, I shall not dip this news in honey, though to speak of it is to put a bitter herb in my mouth. The gods of the Alashkurrut refused to let them trade with us, save only in small things such as swapping bread and beer for trinkets. But of refined copper I have none. Of copper ore I have none. Of fine timber I have none. Of jewels I have none. Of clever carvings I have none. Of the herbs and spices and drugs of the Alashkurru Mountains I have none. I have only what I took with me from Gibil, less what I traded for food and used for bribes that failed in the course of my journey.”

Ereshguna stared at his son. “You had better tell me this whole tale,” he said.

And Sharur did, starting with Enzuabu’s menacing stare and going on through the meeting with the Imhursagut, the encounter with the demon Illuyankas, the Alashkurri gods’ preventing Huzziyas the wanax from trading with him, his failure at Zalpuwas, his inability to get even Abzuwas the smith to deal with him, Eniyarmuk’s rejection of his crossing-offering, and the Zuabi thief’s attempt to rob the caravan at the command of his city god.

Ereshguna said not a word while Sharur detailed his misfortune. Once his son had finished, the trader let out a long sigh. He set a hand on Sharur’s thigh. “You did, I think, everything you could have done.”

“I did not do enough,” Sharur said. “It eats at me like a canker.”

“You did more than I would ever have thought to do,” Tupsharru said.

“Against the gods, a man fights openly in vain,” Ereshguna said. He took out his amulet to Engibil and covered its eyes. As Sharur and Tupsharru did the same, their father went on, “Only in secret and by stealth can a man hope to gain even a part of his way in the gods’ despite. Now, it seems, the gods beyond Gibil have awakened to the knowledge of how much we have gained over the years, how much we have gained over the generations. They wish to force us back into full subjection once more.”

“The caravan from Imhursag traded among the Alashkurrut,” Sharur said gloomily. “It came away with copper. It came away with copper ore. It came away with the other good things of the mountains. If the Imhursagut can trade and we cannot, Imhursag and Enimhursag shall be exalted among the cities and gods of Kudurru, and Gibil shall slide into slavery.”

“You speak of Gibil,” Tupsharru said. “You do not speak of Engibil.”

And Sharur realized he had not spoken of Engibil. His city counted for more in his heart than his city god. Everything of which the gods of other cities, the gods of other lands, had accused him was true. He did not feel shamed. He did not feel sorry. To the extent he could, he was glad to be his own man.

Ereshguna said, “The word you bring back to Gibil, my son, does not affect the house of Ereshguna alone. It affects the other merchants and the smiths. It affects the city as a whole. And it affects Kimash the lugal.”

“I know, Father.” Sharur hung his head. “I did not bring back rich offerings for Kimash to lay on the altar of Engibil. I was prevented.”

“Tomorrow,” Ereshguna said, “tomorrow we shall go to the palace of Kimash the lugal and make known to him what passed on your journey.” Ever so reluctantly, Sharur nodded. What choice had he?

At supper that evening, Betsilim and Nanadirat listened to Sharur tell his story all over again. His mother and sister exclaimed indignantly over the injustice he had suffered at the hands of the Alashkurri gods, and even more at the injustice he had suffered from gods dwelling closer to home.

“Eniyarmuk had no business rejecting your sacrifice for the crossing, none whatsoever,” Betsilim declared.

“I didn’t think so, either,” Sharur answered. He turned to the kitchen slave. “Bring me more roast mutton, and garlic cloves to rub on it.” She bowed and hurried away. The family had laid on a feast to celebrate his return, although, as far as he could see, only the fact that he had returned at all was worth celebrating.

His mother was not finished. “Had I been standing on the bank of the Yarmuk, I should have given the river goddess a piece of my mind,” she said.

Sharur believed her. “No wonder the foreign gods fear us Giblut,” he said, which made his father laugh.

Betsilim gave Ereshguna a sharp look, then resumed: “And Enzuabu! Enzuabu has no quarrel with Engibil. The Zuabut have no quarrel with the folk of Gibil. The Zuabut are thieves, surely, but how wicked for the god to set a thief on my son’s caravan.”

“Would it have been all right for the god to set a thief on the caravan of someone else’s son?” Ereshguna asked. His wife ignored him.

Nanadirat said, “Worst of all, though, is that the Imhursagut and Enimhursag got the chance to gloat because the Alashkurri gods were so foolish.” She clapped her hands together. “Slave, more date wine for me.”

“I obey,” the Imhursaggi war captive said softly. She held the strainer above the cup of Sharur’s sister and poured the wine through it.

Sharur also held out his cup to be refilled. The kitchen slave rinsed the strainer, then gave him what he wanted. He nodded to her. She did her best to pretend she did not see him.

After the feast was over, Sharur’s parents and brother and sister went up onto the roof to sleep. “I will join you in a while,” Sharur said. He walked back toward the kitchen. By the light of a couple of dim, flickering torches, the slave from Imhursag was scrubbing bowls and plates and cups clean with a rag and a jar of water. Sharur set his hands on her shoulders. “Let us go back to the blanket on which you sleep.”

With a small sigh, she set down the rag and dried her hands on her tunic. “I obey,” she said, as she had when Nanadirat asked her for more wine. But, as she and Sharur walked down the narrow hall to her hot, tiny, cramped cubicle, she said, “You have not required this of me for a long time.” .

“And now I do require it,” Sharur said. The kitchen slave sighed again and walked on.

Inside the cubicle, it was black as pitch, blacker than midnight. Linen rustled as the slave pulled her tunic off over her head. Sharur shed his kilt. He reached out. His hand closed on the firm round softness of the woman’s breast. He squeezed.

“Do you know why I do this?” he asked as they lay down together. In the darkness, he found her hand and guided it to his erection.

“Because you own me,” the slave answered. “Because you have been long away and you have no wife and you want a woman.”

He shook his head. “You know I came home without profit,” he said, and felt her nod. “In the mountains, far away, I met a caravan of Imhursagut. They mocked me. They said I was going home with tiny tail between my legs. I told them that, when I got home, I would thrust my tail between the legs of my Imhursaggi slave woman. And so”—he entered her—“I do.”

“Oh,” she said, and nodded again in the darkness. “You do this in fulfillment of a vow.”

“Yes,” he answered, drawing back and thrusting, drawing back and thrusting, forcing his way deeper each time even though she was dry.

“A vow should be fulfilled,” she said seriously. “It is a duty to your god.” She still thought like an Imhursaggi.

And then something strange happened. The other handful of times he had taken her, she’d simply lain there and let him do as he liked until he spent himself and left. Now, suddenly, unexpectedly, her legs rose from the blanket and clenched his flanks. Her arms wrapped around his back. Her mouth sought his. The way into her, which had been difficult, grew gloriously smooth, gloriously moist.

She made several small noises deep in her throat, and then, at the moment when pleasure almost blinded him, a mewling cry like a wild cat’s. He slid out of her and sat back on his knees. “You never did anything like that before,” he said, his voice almost accusing.

“Other times you have had me, it was only for your own pleasure,” she said. “This time, you made good your word to your god—and to mine.” Softly, under her breath, she murmured, “Oh, Enimhursag, how I long for thee.”

Sharur was a young man. One round took the edge off his lust, but did not fully sate it. When he heard the slave woman shift and start to rise, he set his hand on her chest, in the valley between her breasts. “No. Not yet. I will have you again.”

She lay back; a slave’s duty was to obey. He mounted her once more. Save that she breathed, she might have been dead beneath him. So it had been every time until this evening. So it was again. Eventually, his seed spurted from him.

As he groped for his kilt, he said, “I was no different the second time from the first. Yet you took pleasure—I know you took pleasure—the first, and none at all the second. How is this? Why is this?”

“I told you,” she answered. “I took pleasure in helping fulfill your vow: I am one who respects the gods, and I rejoice, when you Giblut do likewise. The second time, it was only you. The gods were far away.”

He pulled on the kilt, rose, and left the dark cubicle without another word. When he went up onto the roof, he found his parents were already sleeping. He lay down beside Tupsharru. “The Imhursaggi slave woman?” his brother asked.

“Twice,”’ Sharur said.

“Twice?” Tupsharru coughed. “My dear brother, you have been without a woman a long time. Once, of course; once is always sweet. But twice? Did having her fall asleep while you were at work make you want to go in again so you could see if she would stay awake all the way through the second time?”

“Surprises everywhere, my dear brother,” Sharur answered through a yawn. “Yes, surprises everywhere.”

When morning came, Sharur wanted to go to the house and smith of Dimgalabzu to discuss revising the arrangements for paying bride-price for Ningal. Ereshguna would not hear of it. “Everything in its own place, Sharur,” he said. “First we call on Kimash the lugal. He needs to know of the misfortune that befell you in the mountains of Alashkurru so he can decide what to do next.”

“Dimgalabzu also needs to know, because—” Sharur began.

Ereshguna folded his arms across his chest. “I am your father. I say we will go to Kimash. You shall obey me.”

“You are my father.” Sharur bowed his head. “We will go to Kimash. I will obey you.”

And so, instead of walking down the Street of Smiths to Dimgalabzu’s, Sharur and Ereshguna walked up the Street of Smiths to the lugal’s palace. As they passed, smiths and other metal merchants popped out of the buildings in which they worked to ask how Sharur’s journey had gone. None of them seemed unduly concerned; the bonuses Ereshguna had paid to the caravan crew must so far have persuaded the guards and donkey handlers not to say too much.

Nor did Sharur and Ereshguna say too much now to their colleagues. “We go. to speak of the caravan with Kimash the mighty lugal,” Ereshguna said several times. “Kimash deserves to hear first the news of what Sharur traded. The mighty lugal deserves to hear first the news of what Sharur brought back.”

That satisfied the smiths and the other metal merchants. It did not satisfy Sharur. What did I trade? Nothing, he thought bitterly. What did I bring back? What I set out with. And what would the smiths and the other metal merchants say if they heard that? What would the smiths and the other metal merchants do if they heard that? Sharur was glad he did not have to find out, not yet.

A procession of slaves and donkeys carrying costly baked bricks on their backs made Sharur and Ereshguna stand and ' wait outside Kimash’s palace. “See, he is building it larger again,” Ereshguna said. “Soon, I think, it will be larger than Engibil’s temple.”

“I think you are right, Father,” Sharur answered. Neither man said what he thought of that. Just for a moment, Sharur covered the eyes of the amulet he wore on his belt. He did not want Engibil looking at him then. He did not want Engibil looking into his heart then. He did not want Engibil seeing how he hoped the lugal’s palace would outdo the god’s temple.

When the last braying donkey and the last sweating slave had passed, Sharur and Ereshguna advanced to the doorway of the palace. Guards with spears and shields stood stolidly, enduring the building heat. Ereshguna bowed before them. He said, “When the mighty lugal Kimash should deign to Cast his eye upon us, we would go into his presence. When the mighty lugal Kimash should deign to hear us, we would have speech with him.”

“You are Ereshguna and Sharur,” one of the guards said. “I will tell Inadapa the steward you are come. Inadapa will tell Kimash the mighty lugal you are come.”

He hurried away. When he returned, Inadapa accompanied him: a bald, round-faced, round-bellied man with a beard going gray. “Kimash the mighty lugal bids you welcome,” the steward said. “Welcome you are, he says, and welcome, and thrice welcome. You will come with me.”

“We shall come with you,” Ereshguna and Sharur said together. Without another word, Inadapa turned on his heel and went back into the palace. They followed.

Sharur wondered how Inadapa found his way through the rabbits’ warren of corridors that made up the palace. The building had not grown up according to any unifying plan, but haphazardly, by fits and starts, as three generations of lugals decided again and again that they needed more room—and more rooms—to house all that was theirs, or to store away the old so that they might enjoy the new.

Here was a room full of stools and tables. Should Kimash decide to give a great feast, they might come forth once more. Meanwhile, they simply sat in twilight. In the next room, pretty young women brewed beer, chanting hymns to Ikribabu as they worked. The chamber after that was piled high with bales of wool; the powerful oily smell of sheep filled that stretch of the hall.

Jars and pots held wine, beer, grain, dates ... who could say what all? The stores in the palace might feed Gibil for a year, or so it seemed to Sharur.

Presently, Inadapa led his father and him past a chamber where more pretty young women were spinning wool into thread. As Sharur had in the brewing chamber, he noticed them because they were young and pretty. If Kimash summoned one of them, she would come, and, Sharur was sure, she would not lie beneath the lugal as if half a corpse. Kimash had opportunities for pleasure beyond those of an ordinary man.

Ereshguna noticed something else. To Inadapa, he said, “Steward to Kimash the mighty lugal, would these women not get more work done if the wool they spun were in the chamber next to theirs rather than halfway across the palace?”

Inadapa stopped in his tracks. “Master merchant,” he said slowly, “in days gone by, wool was stored in the room next to this one. For some reason or other, it was moved. No one ever thought either to move it back or to move the women closer to the chamber where it is now held. Perhaps someone should give thought to such things.” Shaking his head, he strode down the hallway once more.

“How many other such cases are there in the palace, if only someone would look?” Ereshguna murmured under his breath to Sharur as they followed the steward.

“I wonder if any one man knows everything the palace holds,” Sharur whispered back.

Ereshguna shook his head. “Inadapa’s grandfather— maybe even his father—might have, but the palace was smaller in those days.”

Sharur started to answer, but just then the hallway opened out into Kimash’s audience chamber. The lugal sat on a chair with a back; its legs and arms were sheathed in gold leaf, and it rested on a platform of earth that raised Kimash above those who came before him. Inadapa went to his knees and then to his belly before Kimash. Sharur and Ereshguna imitated the steward’s action.

“Mighty lugal, I bring before you the master merchant Ereshguna and his son Sharur,” the steward said, his face in the dust of the rammed-earth floor.

“In my day,” Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost said with a scornful sniff, “in my day, I tell you, we only groveled in front of Engibil, not in front of some upstart man who thought he was as fancy as a god.”

“Not now, Grandfather,” Sharur whispered under his breath.

“Father, Kimash may be able to hear you,” Ereshguna added, also muttering into the dust. “He knew you well in life, recall.”

The ghost gave another loud sniff, but said no more. Kimash gave no sign of having heard. He probably heard a lot of ghosts; as lugal, and before that as lugal’s heir, he had come to know a great many Giblut. All he said was, “Rise, master merchant Ereshguna. Rise, Sharur son of Ereshguna.”

“We greet you, mighty lugal,” Sharur and Ereshguna said together as they got to their feet.

“And I greet you in turn,” Kimash said. “You are welcome here. You will drink beer with me.” He clapped his hands together. “Inadapa! They will drink beer with me.”

“Yes, mighty lugal.” Inadapa clapped his hands together. A lesser servant came running. Inadapa pointed to Sharur and Ereshguna. “They will drink beer with the mighty lugal.”

“Yes, steward.” The lesser servant hurried away. Soon a slave came in with a pot of beer and three cups.

After libations and thanks to the gods, Kimash, Sharur, and Ereshguna drank. Setting down his cup after a deep draught, Kimash said, “I am glad you have come home safe from the Alashkurru Mountains, son of Ereshguna; I am glad no harm befell you.”

“I thank you, mighty lugal,” Sharur said, less comfortably than he would have liked. He could see the track down which the caravan of this conversation was heading. A lion lurked at the end of the track. It would leap out and devour him unless he turned the conversation aside—and he could not turn it aside.

Kimash said, “I have not heard how your caravan fared in the distant mountains. With most caravans, I know this before they come into Gibil. But the house of Ereshguna holds its secrets close.” He smiled at Sharur’s father, more approvingly than otherwise.

Yes. There was the lion. Sharur could hear it roar. He could see it lash its tail. Very well. He would cast himself into its jaws. He said, “Mighty lugal, my father and I have come before you on account of what passed with the caravan in the mountains of Alashkurru.”

“Good.” Kimash leaned forward in his high seat. “What offerings have you that I can lay on the altar of Engibil? What strange things, what rare things, what beautiful things have you? The god has been restive of late; the god has been hungry. I must show Engibil I can sate him; I must show the god I can satisfy him. I do not wish to risk his anger.”

Feeling the lion’s teeth close on him, Sharur exchanged a glance of consternation with Ereshguna.dTis father nodded slightly. He knew what that meant: better to be eaten all at once than to have chunks bitten off him. His own thought had been the same. But oh, how bitter, oh, how empty was the truth: “Mighty lugal, I have no strange things, I have no rare things, I have no beautiful things for you to lay on the altar of Engibil. I have brought back no offerings for the god; I have brought back no profit for my father. The Alashkurrut would not treat with me, for their gods have come to hate and to fear the men of Gibil.”

Kimash scowled. “I feared it might be so.” His voice was heavy. “When a caravan returns successful to the city, it blares forth the news with trumpets. When a caravan returns with profit, it blares forth the word with drums. Failure is wreathed in silence. But so, sometimes, is success extraordinarily large. So, sometimes, is profit extraordinarily great. I hoped that might be so. Tell me now why it did not come to pass.”

As Sharur had for his father, he spun out the tale for the lugal. When he finished, he asked, “What are we to do? The gods are stronger than we men. If they will that we fail, fail we surely shall.”

“If all the gods will this together, and it stays in all their wills long enough, fail we surely shall,” Kimash replied. “But the gods are contentious, no less than men. How could it be otherwise, when we are created in their image? Therein lies our hope: to wait out this flood until their anger against us recedes within its banks and the sun shines on their quarrels once more.”

Ereshguna said, “Mighty lugal, your words are as pure as a nugget of gold. Great Kimash, your words shine like polished silver. From the anger of all the gods we may yet win free, as a hare may chew through the noose of a snare if the hunter is lazy and does not return soon enough to his trap. But Engibil presses on us always. How shall we escape the wrath of the city god?”

“I had hoped to ease his spirits with gifts from the Alashkurrut; I had hoped to soften his heart with presents from the men of the mountains,” the lugal answered. “Master merchant, you press on the wound where it is sore. Now I shall have to find some other way to appease Engibil. If I do not...” He let out a long, harsh sigh. “If I do not, things shall be as they were in the days of my great-grandfather, and of his great-grandfather before him.”

“May it not come to pass,” Sharur exclaimed. “May you rule us, mighty lugal. May Engibil remain content with worship and presents.”

“That is also my desire, I assure you.” Kimash’s voice was dry.

“It is the desire of all within Gibil, mighty lugal,” Ereshguna said, covering the eyes of his amulet to hinder Engibil’s senses. “We see the god-ruled cities around us, where men are toys or at best children, from whom obedience is required and who are punished without mercy when they obey not. You are a man. You know men. We would sooner have your judgment and your guidance.”

And Kimash the lugal inclined his head to Ereshguna. “For your generous words I thank you, master merchant. Generous they are, but not, I believe, altogether true. Merchants and artisans: yes, you would sooner a lugal or an ensi ruled you than a god. But the peasants? Who can say? A god gives certainty. A god gives not freedom of thought but freedom from thought, in the same way as does the beer pot. Have you never known men who found this desirable?”

“My heart is heavy within me, for I cannot deny what you say,” Ereshguna replied. “I wish I could show you speak falsely. Then my spirit would rejoice.”

“But what are we to do?” Sharur broke in. “How are we to keep Engibil content to rest lazily in his temple?”

Kimash cocked his head to one side. Then, to Sharur’s surprise, he smiled. “The ghost of Igigi my grandfather says he managed it when Engibil was less used to rest and more used to rule than he is now. My grandfather’s ghost says I had better manage it as well.”

“Your grandfather was a wise man, mighty lugal. No doubt his ghost remains wise,” Ereshguna said. “Does the ghost tell you how you are to accomplish,what you desire?”

“Oh, no.” Kimash smiled again, this time wryly. “He simply tells me what I must do, not how I must do it. Such is the usual way with ghosts in my family. Is it otherwise with yours?”

“No, mighty lugal,” Sharur and Ereshguna said together. Both of them were resigned to the way of ghosts.

“I heard that,” Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost said sharply. “I heard that! I don’t care for your tone of voice, not even a little bit I don’t.”

As best they could, they both ignored him. Sharur said, “Mighty lugal, what are we to do? Do you know how to appease Engibil even without the strange things, the rare things, the beautiful things I should have brought back from the mountains of Alashkurru? Do you know how we Giblut can trade if the gods outside our city remain united against us in hatred?”

“I can appease Engibil a while longer, I think,” Kimash said. “It would have been easier, son of Ereshguna, had your caravan succeeded. You know this as I know this. But I can go on. To answer your second question, we Giblut cannot trade if the gods outside our city remain united in hatred against us. Our hope must be that they do not remain united in hatred against us. Our prayer must be that they cannot remain united in hatred against us.”

“Thank you, mighty lugal, for showing my son forbearance,” Ereshguna said. “Bless you, mighty lugal, for showing him kindness.”

“I know the worth of the house of Ereshguna,” Kimash replied. “He is your son, master merchant. Had he been able to do more, he would have done more. I wish he had done more, but against the gods a man contests in vain. Now let us all think on how we may yet profit ourselves and satisfy our city god.”

He nodded to Inadapa, signifying that the audience was over. The steward led Sharur and Ereshguna out of the palace through the maze of halls by which they had come to the lugal’s audience chamber. When Sharur reached the entranceway, the sudden strong sunlight made him squint and blink.

“Now,” he said, “to the house and to the smithy of Dimgalabzu, the father of my intended. He, too, must know what passed in the Alashkurru Mountains, though I would sooner sup with snakes and scorpions than have to tell him.”

As they walked back along the Street of Smiths toward the house of Dimgalabzu, Ereshguna said, “Son, do not fret over what the smith will do. Do not worry over what Dimgalabzu will say. His family wants this match between you and Ningal to go forward. Our family wants this wedding to take place. Where the will on both sides is good, a way will open.”

“But I cannot pay the bride-price to which we agreed,” Sharur said.

“You are but a part of the house of Ereshguna,” his father reminded him.

“I know that, Father, but I intended to pay the bride-price from the profit I would bring home to Gibil from the caravan to the mountains of Alashkurru.”

“You are but a part of the house of Ereshguna,” Ereshguna repeated. “For the sake of this match, the rest of the house will gladly aid you.”

“Father...” Sharur wished he did not have to go on, but saw no way around it. “Father, I do not know if Engibil will permit this. I do not know if the city god will let this be.”

Ereshguna stopped in the middle of the Street of Smiths, so suddenly that a man walking behind him and Sharur almost bumped into him. After the fellow had gone his way, muttering under his breath, the master merchant asked, “Why should Engibil care how you gain the bride-price for Ningal? Why should it matter to the city god how you are wed to Dimgalabzu’s daughter?”

“Because, Father,” Sharur answered niiserably, “I swore a great oath to Engibil before I set out for the mountains of Alashkurru, that I would pay Ningal’s bride-price out of the profit I made from this caravan.”

His father’s breath hissed out in a long sigh. “What ever possessed you to do such a thing, son? Did a demon take hold of your tongue?”

“Yes,” Sharur answered, “the demon of pride. I know that now. I did not know it then. All the caravans on which I had ever traveled had gone well. I never dreamt the gods of other lands would turn their backs on us. I never dreamt the men of other lands would refuse to treat with us.”

“The demon of pride,” Ereshguna repeated, his voice soft. “The men of the cities where gods still rule say this is the special demon of Gibil. The men of other lands where gods rule say the same.”

“I have heard this.” Sharur touched first one ear, then the other. “The Alashkurrut say we are so proud, we would sooner rule ourselves and put our god in the back part of our minds. I denied this all the time I was among them, but it holds some truth. When I swore the oath to Engibil, I did it not to affirm his power over me, as an Imhursaggi would have done, but to boast of my own power in the world. And now my oath brings me low.” He hung his head.

“In my time, we never would have thought such a thought.” The voice of his grandfather’s ghost was shrill and accusing in his ears. “In my day, we never would have done such a deed.”

“When I was a young man,” Ereshguna said, “I might have had a thought like yours, Sharur, but I do not think I would have sworn an oath like yours. You and your brother are more your own men than I was at your age. Anything outside yourselves has less power over you than was so for me.

“And, when I go astray, I go further astray than you would have done,” Sharur said.

Ereshguna set a hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps it is not so bad as you think. Perhaps we may yet set it right.”

“But how, Father?” Sharur cried.

“Perhaps we can fulfill your oath to Engibil in another way,” Ereshguna said. “As I said before, you are but a part of the house of Ereshguna. Perhaps we shall lend you the bride-price for your intended. There will be other days; there will be other caravans; there will be other times to profit. You can restore what is lent to you to the house of Ereshguna. Thus you will have gained Ningal through the profit from a caravan.”

“But not through the profit from this caravan,” Sharur said.

“No, not through the profit from this caravan,” his father agreed. “But you will have the copper to give to Dimgalabzu for your intended. You will have the silver to give to the smith for his daughter. You will have the gold to give to him for Ningal. This will be good for the house of Ereshguna. This will be good for the house of Dimgalabzu.” Ereshguna smiled. “And, son, this will be good for you. I have seen—who living on the Street of Smiths has not seen?—how you look at her when she goes by, and she at you as well.”

Sharur bowed low before his father. “If you do this for me, I shall indeed repay you. You rescue me from my own pride; from my own foolishness you save me.”

“You are my son.” Ereshguna smiled again. “And you are a young man. The gods have never yet shaped a young man who did not need to be saved from his own foolishness now and again. Have we a bargain, then? I shall lend you the bride-price, and you shall repay it from profits yet to come.”

“Yes,” Sharur said joyfully.

No.

Had someone somehow cast a bronze bell twice as tall as a man, that one word might have tolled from it. The word echoed and reechoed inside Sharur’s head, till he staggered and almost fell under its impact. Beside him, he saw his father stagger, too. He wondered briefly if Puzur the earthquake demon had chosen that moment to loose destruction on Gibil. But the tremor was inside him; the tremor was inside his father. Other men did not cry out, nor did the buildings on the Street of Smiths sway and topple.

No.

Again, the word rang through Sharur and Ereshguna. Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost heard it, too, though the ghost’s terrified screeching seemed tiny and lost among those great reverberations.

“It is the voice of the god,” Ereshguna gasped.

“Yes.” Sharur shivered, as with an ague. Men schemed, men maneuvered, men labored for generations to gain a tiny space of freedom from the gods. Gods did not need to scheme or maneuver against men. Gods had strength. When they noticed what men were doing... Oh, when they noticed ...

Engibil spoke once more, implanting his words in the minds of Sharur and Ereshguna: I hold in my hands the oath of Sharur son of Ereshguna. I hold in my heart the oath of Sharur son of Ereshguna. The oath shall not be avoided. The oath shall not be evaded. Sharur son of Ereshguna swore in my name to pay bride-price for Ningal daughter of Dimgalabzu with profit from the journey he has just completed. There was no profit. There can be no bride-price. I shall not be mocked among my fellow gods. No god shall say of me, “See, it is Engibil, whose name men take in vain. ” Hear me and obey, men of Gibil.

As abruptly as the god had seized Sharur and Ereshguna, so now he released them. They stared at each other, whitefaced and shaking. “In all my years,” Ereshguna said slowly, “in all my years, I say, I have never known Engibil to speak so.”

“I remember things like this,” Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost said shrilly, “and I remember my grandfather telling me they happened all the time in his day. I knew you clever people would get in trouble one fine day, I knew it, I knew it.” The ghost sounded horrified and glad at the same time.

Sharur said nothing. He found nothing he could say. He looked to his father. Ereshguna said nothing, either, not for some time. That alarmed Sharur more than anything. No: that alarmed Sharur more than anything save the resistless voice of the god pounding inside his head. Nothing could have been more alarming than that. But seeing his father at a loss for words frightened him, too, underscoring the magnitude of what had just happened. Though a man grown,

Sharur had never lost the notion that Ereshguna could solve larger, more complicated troubles than he could himself. That, after all, was what a father was for.

When Ereshguna did not speak and then still did not speak, Sharur forced words out through numb lips: “What do we do now?”

His father gathered himself. “We had better do what we were going to do anyhow—we had better speak with Dimgalabzu the smith.” He sighed and shuddered, still no more recovered than was Sharur from their encounter with Engibil. “Now, though, we shall have to give him a word we would sooner not speak, and also one he would sooner not hear.”

“Is there no help for it?” Sharur cried, setting a hand on his father’s thigh in appeal.

“I see none,” Ereshguna said. “Come.” Sharur saw none either, and so, all unwilling, he followed his father to the house of Dimgalabzu.

“Wait,” Dimgalabzu said. Sweating as he stood close by the fire, he lifted a clay crucible from it with long wooden tongs, then, moving quickly, poured molten bronze into three molds, one after another. He had calculated his work well; the last of the metal filled the last mold. Dimgalabzu wiped his dripping forehead. “There. It is accomplished. Now we shall drink beer.”

“Now we shall drink beer,” Ereshguna agreed. Here inside the smithy, he sounded stronger and more sure of himself than he had out in the street.

Sharur also felt his own spirit revive here. As at the smithy of Abzuwas son of Ahhiyawas in the Alashkurru Mountains, he no longer noted the brooding immanence of hostile gods. Metalworking had a power of its own; without such power, how could something hard as stone be made to run like water and then turn hard once more, this time in a shape the smith determined?

Dimgalabzu clapped his hands. “Beer!” he called. “Beer for Ereshguna the master merchant and Sharur his son. And let us have salt fish to eat with the beer.”

No slave brought the pot of beer, as Sharur had expected. No slave brought the bowl of salt fish, as he had looked for. Instead, Ningal fetched in beer; Ningal fetched in fish. Dimgalabzu did Sharur and Ereshguna honor, to let her serve them. She smiled at Sharur, saucily, over her shoulder as she went-out once more. The smile was a knife in his heart. He smiled back at her. That was twisting the knife.

After libations and invocations, he and his father and Dimgalabzu drank of the beer. They ate of the salt fish. Presently, Dimgalabzu said, “What news have you for me, master merchant, master merchant’s son?”

The smith smiled. His voice held no worry. He thought he knew what the word would be. He thought he knew the word would be good. Inside Sharur, the knife twisted again.

Ereshguna said, “My old friend, we come to you with troubled hearts. My old comrade, we come to you with troubled spirits. Hear what has befallen us.” He set forth the tale of Sharur’s failed caravan to the mountains of Alashkurru, of the oath Sharur had given to Engibil, and of Engibil’s awe-inspiring (“terrifying” was the word Sharur would have used, but maybe they amounted to the same thing in the end) refusal to let the oath be altered or circumvented.

Dimgalabzu’s lips skinned back from his teeth, farther and farther, as he listened, until at last he looked as if he were snarling. “This is a hard word you give me, master merchant, a hard word in many ways. That the god should bar the arrangement you had in mind ... that is hard. That the god should care enough to bar the arrangement you had in mind... that is very hard.” Like any smith of Gibil, he was used to quiet from Engibil, quiet in which he could conduct his own affairs.

“It is very hard indeed,” Ereshguna agreed. “This happened, as I say, while we were coming here from the palace of Kimash the lugal. Kimash will find it hard news as well.”

“Yes,” Dimgalabzu said. Even more than the smiths, the merchants, or the scribes, the lugal depended on quiet from Engibil. Dimgalabzu shook his head. “That you cannot pay the bride-price for my daughter... that is hardest of all. Without the bride-price, there can be no wedding.”

Sharur had known Dimgalabzu would say as much. Standing where Dimgalabzu stood, Sharur would have said as much. That did nothing to diminish his anguish at hearing Dimgalabzu say as much. He cried, “Could we not—?”

The smith held up a scarred, dirty hand. “Son of Ereshguna, do not let this question pass your lips. Not even the peasants in the villages far from Gibil, not even the herders in the fields so distant they cannot see the city’s walls, give up their daughters without bride-price. And Ningal is no peasant’s daughter. My daughter is no herder’s daughter. Without the bride-price, there can be no wedding.”

To make Sharur’s mortification complete, Ningal had come back into the room with a bowl of spicy relish for the fish. “Father—” she began.

“No.” Dimgalabzu’s voice was hard as stone. “Without the bride-price, there can be no wedding. My daughter shall not be the laughingstock of the Street of Smiths; my daughter shall not be a joke for the city. I have spoken.”

“Yes, Father,” Ningal whispered, and withdrew once more.

Desperately, Sharur said, “May I bargain with you, father of my intended?”

“I will hear your words,” Dimgalabzu said, “though I make no pledges past that. Say on.”

“If you cannot wed your daughter to me without bride-price, will you keep from pledging her to another, to give me time to see if I may not reverse Engibil’s ban?”

“Were you not Ereshguna’s son, I would say no.” Dimgalabzu plucked at his curly beard. “Were you not in my daughter’s heart to the point where that might trouble any future match, I would also say no.” He licked his lips as he thought. “Let it be as you say. For the space of one year, let it be as you say. No more. Past that, I shall do as I reckon best.”

Sharur bowed almost as low as he would have before Kimash the lugal. “Engibil’s blessings upon you, father of my intended.” Only after the words were out of his mouth and past recall did he wonder at the propriety of asking Engibil to bless Dimgalabzu when it was thanks to the god’s interference that he and Ningal could not join in marriage as they had long planned and as they had long hoped.

Ereshguna also bowed to Dimgalabzu. “You have my thanks also, old friend. Things do not always go as we would have them go.”

“There you speak the truth,” the smith said. “We are not gods. And, even if we were gods, we would not be free of strife.”

“How right you are.” Ereshguna bowed again. So did Sharur. They took their leave of Dimgalabzu. As he turned to go, Sharur looked down the hallway from which Ningal had brought beer and fish and relish, in the hope of catching one last glimpse of her. He saw only the hallway.

Day followed day. Sharur worked with his father and younger brother, trading to the smiths the copper and ore and tin they had on hand, and trading with others the goods they got from the smiths in exchange. They even made a profit on most of their dealings, but that did not reassure them. “What shall we do when our supplies of metal are gone?” Tupsharru asked. “What shall we do when we have no more ore to trade?”

“We shall go hungry, by and by,” Sharur said. His brother smiled, reckoning it a joke. Sharur did not smile in return. He smiled less often these days than he had before his caravan came home from Gibil without having been able to trade.

Then other caravans started coming home to Gibil without having been able to trade. Merchants from other cities did not bring their wares to the market square in Gibil, even merchants who had come each year for longer than Sharur had been alive. Nor did merchants from beyond Kudurru enter the city, as they had done more and more often in recent years.

Coming back one day from the market square—a square where, increasingly, Giblut bought from and sold to and traded with other Giblut alone—Ereshguna said, “Commerce has long been the lifeblood of this city. Now all the blood seems to drain out of Gibil, and none comes in. How can we lead the land between the rivers if commerce goes elsewhere?”

“Zuabu prospers, I hear,” Sharur said. “Even Imhursag prospers, I hear. How can the Imhursagut prosper while we falter? Having their god bellowing in their ears all the time makes them stupid.”

“Our god may be bellowing more and more in our ears,” his father answered. “If Kimash the lugal cannot keep Engibil happy, the god will find a way to make himself happy. Then we and the Imhursagut shall be just alike.”

“May it not come to pass,” Sharur exclaimed. Engibil might make a better master than Enimhursag; as far as Sharur was concerned, Engibil could not possibly make a worse master than Enimhursag. But Sharur was used to being a free man, or a man as free as any in the land between the rivers. He did not want a god to rule his life.

Engibil did not care what he wanted. He had already seen that.

“May it not come to pass, indeed,” Ereshguna said. “You and I say this. We are men who know freedom. We are men who do not want Engibil twisting our lives with his hand. But another in Gibil says this louder than you or I. Another in Gibil says this louder than you and I together.”

“Kimash the lugal,” Sharur said.

“Kimash the lugal,” Ereshguna agreed. “We are men who do not want to be ruled. Kimash is a man who already rules. How would it be for him to have to give back to Engibil full mastery of this city?”

“It would be hard,” Sharur said.

“It would be hard, yes,” Ereshguna said. “And it might well be more than hard. It might well be dangerous. What will Engibil do, after three generations of lugals have kept him from full rule over Gibil? What will he do, after Kimash and Kimash’s father and Kimash’s grandfather have ruled in his place?”

“I do not know the answer,” Sharur said. “I am only a man, so I can not know the answer, not ahead of time. Even Kimash the lugal can not know the answer, not ahead of time. But I think, Father, that if I sat in Kimash the lugal’s high seat, I would be a worried man.”

“I think you are right, son, and I think Kimash the lugal is a worried man today,” Ereshguna replied. “What will he do? What can he do?” The master merchant plucked at his beard. “I do not know what he can do. I wonder if he knows himself what he can do.”

Inadapa stood in the doorway to Ereshguna’s establishment and waited to be noticed. As a man, he was not very noticeable. As a power in the city of Gibil, he was noticeable indeed. “It is the steward to Kimash the mighty lugal!” Ereshguna said, bowing himself almost double.

Sharur bowed, too. “The steward to Kimash the mighty lugal honors us by his presence,” he said. “In his name and through him we greet his mighty master.” He bowed again.

“Enter our dwelling, steward to the mighty lugal,” Ereshguna said. “Drink beer with us. Eat onions with us.” He clapped his hands. A slave came running. Ereshguna pointed to Inadapa. “Fetch a pot of beer for the steward’s refreshment. Fetch a basket of onions for the steward’s enjoyment.”

“You are generous to me,” Inadapa said, drinking sour beer. “You are gracious to me,” he added, eating a pungent onion. “By the honor you show to me, you also show honor to my master.”

“So we intended,” Sharur said, “for where you are, there also Kimash the mighty lugal is.”

Now Inadapa bowed. “You are well spoken, son of Ereshguna. You are polite, master merchant’s son. It is no wonder, then, that my master, the mighty lugal Kimash, ordered me to bring you with me back to the palace of the lugals, that he might have speech with you.” .

“Did he?” Sharur stole a quick glance at his father. “I obey the mighty lugal in this, as I obey him in all things. When you have drunk, when you have eaten, you will take me to him.”

“When I have drunk, when I have eaten, I will take you to him,” Inadapa agreed.

“Does the mighty lugal also desire speech with me?” Ereshguna asked.

Inadapa shook his bald head. “He spoke only of your son, master merchant.”

“He is the lugal,” Ereshguna said. “It shall be as he desires, as in all things here in Gibil.”

Inadapa said nothing to that. Neither did Sharur. Had everything in Gibil been as Kimash desired, the lugal would have had no need to summon him to the palace.

After finishing his beer and onions, Inadapa declined more of either. “Let us be off,” he said to Sharur. “I am glad to eat and drink with you, but I do not wish to make the mighty lugal anxious for my return.”

“By no means.” Sharur gulped down the last of his own beer and rose from the stool on which he sat. “Lead me to the palace. I am your slave, and the mighty lugal’s slave as well.” Better either of those than being Engibil’s slave, he thought. He would never, ever say that aloud.

Inadapa rose, too. “We go, then.” He bowled to Ereshguna. “Master merchant, your house is never to be faulted for hospitality.”

With the steward, Sharur walked up the Street of Smiths toward the lugal’s palace. As he walked, he sometimes got glimpses of Engibil’s temple. The temple was larger than the palace. Most of it was older, dating from the days when Engibil had ruled his city: before there were lugals, some of it from before there were even ensis. But Kimash, and his father and grandfather before him, had not altogether neglected the god’s house, either, though they gave more presents than they did building. Their hope had always been that greater luxury would compensate the god for losing power. For three generations, that hope had been realized. Now...

Now Sharur groveled in the dust before Kimash on his high seat sheathed in beaten gold. When he rose, the lugal asked, “Do I hear rightly that Engibil holds your oath tight to himself, and will not release you from it even to pay bride-price for your intended?”

“Mighty lugal, you do,” Sharur answered. Neither he nor his father nor, so far as he knew, his grandfather’s ghost had noised about the god’s command. If Dimgalabzu had spoken of it to the lugal, however, the smith would certainly have been within his rights.

Kimash frowned. “The god uses you harshly,” he observed. The frown got deeper. “All the gods use Gibil harshly these days. Our merchants return empty-handed from their journeys; no merchants from other cities, no merchants from other lands, come into our market square to trade their wares for ours. Our city suffers.” He drew in a deep breath. “Did Engibil take it into his mind to cast me down from this high seat, many in Gibil would celebrate. Did the god take it into his mind to cast me out of this palace, many in the city would rejoice. Under Engibil’s rule, they would reckon, trade would return. Under the god’s rule, they would reckon, profit would grow.”

“And they would become as the Imhursagut are,” Sharur said. “Who among us would care to live as the Imhursagut live, with Engibil speaking from our mouths as Enimhursag speaks through theirs?”

“Who cares to live in a city without trade?” Kimash returned. “Who cares to live in a city without profit? Fewer men than you would suppose, son of Ereshguna.”

“I would not care to live in a city without trade,” Sharur said. “I would not care to live in a city without profit. But still less would I care to live as the Imhursagut live.”

“It is because this is so that I have summoned you,” the lugal told him. “Along with me, son of Ereshguna, you and your house stand to lose the most if Engibil should come to rule this city once more as well as reigning over it.”

Sharur bowed his head. “What you say is true, mighty lugal. I have already lost, or nearly lost, a marriage my family, my intended’s family, and I myself want very much, as you know.”

“Yes, I do know this,” Kimash said, nodding. “It is why I summoned you. It is why I give to you and to no other the task I hold in my mind.”

“What task is that, mighty lugal?” Sharur asked.

Kimash answered indirectly: “Son of Ereshguna, you were the first to bring back to Gibil word that men of other cities, men of other lands, would not treat with us. You were the first to bring back to Gibil word that gods of other cities, gods of other lands, were angry at us. I charge you with learning why this is so. I charge you with learning what we can do to make this so no longer.”

“Mighty lugal—” Sharur hesitated.

“Speak,” Kimash urged. “Give forth. Say what is in your heart.”

“Very well. As you will have heard from me, mighty lugal, the gods of the Alashkurrut say they will not let the Alashkurrut trade with us because we are too much our own men and not enough men of our god. The only way to make this not so that I can see would be to become as the Imhursagut are.”

“Yes, son of Ereshguna, I have heard this from your lips,” Kimash agreed. “But I have for you a question of my own: how are we more our own men this year than we were last year? How are we less men of our god this year than we were last year? Why could the Alashkurrut trade with us last year and not this year? What has changed in so short a time, to set the gods of the Alashkurrut—and some of the gods of Kudurru as well, it is not to be denied— against us?”

Sharur stared at Kimash. Then, all unbidden, he prostrated himself before the lugal once more. His head against the ground, he said, “Truly, mighty lugal, these are questions that want answering. When the gods spoke to me, I took their words for truth, and did not look behind them. By the way they spoke,” he added, “I saw nothing but truth in their words.”

“Rise, Sharur,” Kimash said. “I would not deny the gods of the Alashkurrut told you the truth. I do not deny the mountain gods spoke truly. But was the truth they told all of the truth? Do gods not speak the truth and speak in riddles at the same time?”

“Mighty lugal, it is so,” Sharur said.

“Of course it is so,” Kimash answered. “The gods created man in the misty depths of time, and no man yet has learned why, not from that day to this. There are truths within truths within truths, as in an onion there are layers within layers within layers. This is the task I set you, son of Ereshguna: bite into the onion of truth. Go past that first layer with the teeth of your wit. Learn what lies beneath it. Learn, and tell me what you have learned.”

“It shall be as you say.” Sharur bowed to the lugal. “I will learn what I may as quickly as I may, and I will tell you what I have learned.” He hesitated. “I do not think I will be able to learn all I need within the walls of Gibil. I shall have to travel beyond the lands our city rules.”

“Travel where you will,” Kimash told him. “I hope, though, that you will not need to return to the mountains of Alashkurru. I do not know if Gibil would be as it was when you returned from such a long voyage; I do not know if I would still sit on this high seat when you came back from such a great journey.”

More than anything else the lugal had said, that showed Sharur how deep his worry ran. If Kimash feared Engibil might take back the city before Sharur could return from the land of the Alashkurrut, the power of the lugal truly hung by a thread. “Mighty lugal,” Sharur said, the polite title reminding him as it was not intended to do of the limits to Kimash’s might, “I hear you. Mighty lugal, I obey you. I shall not go to the mountains of Alashkurru. I shall remain in the land between the rivers. I shall go to the city closest to ours, that I may spend as little time on the road as can be.”

“It is well,” Kimash said. “It is very well.” By his expression, though, it was not well, nor would it be until and unless Sharur returned with the answers he needed. After coughing a couple of times, he went on, “May you have good fortune on your journey to Zuabu. May you learn what you seek in the city of thieves.”

“Mighty lugal, you misunderstand me,” Sharur said. “I do not intend to go to Zuabu. I do not intend to travel to the city of thieves.”

“What then?” the lugal asked. His eyes widened. “You do not intend to go to Imhursag? You do not intend to travel to the city drunk on its god?”

Sharur nodded. “I do. The Imhursagut I met on the road knew I would have trouble in the mountains of Alashkurru. Enimhursag knew I would have no easy time among the Alashkurrut. If answers lie within the land between the rivers, they will lie in Imhursag. If answers are to be found within Kudurru, they will be found among the Imhursagut.”

“You are bold. You are brave.” Kimash’s voice was troubled. “Even now, Engibil rests more than he acts. It is not so with Enimhursag. The god of Imhursag watches his city. If you cross from the land Gibil rules to the land w'here Enimhursag is lord, the god will know you for what you are. His eye will never leave you. His ear will always be bent your way. You shall not succeed.”

“Mighty lugal...” Sharur paused. “Let me think. This thing needs doing; of that I am sure. How best to do it...” He paused again. After a bit, he brightened. “Have I your leave, mighty lugal, to spend a little more time on the road to Imhursag than I might otherwise?”

“Imhursag is not so distant,” Kimash answered. “What is in your mind?”

“Suppose, mighty lugal, that I do as you thought I would do: suppose I go to Zuabu, or to the land Zuabu rules. Zuabu and Imhursag are at peace; Enimhursag and Enzuabu have no quarrel. If I enter Imhursaggi land from Zuabu, to the eye and ear of Enimhursag I shall seem only another Zuabi myself. If he does not know me for what I am, he will take no special notice of me.”

“This is a good notion—or as good as a notion can be in bad times,” Kimash said. “No, son of Ereshguna, I shall not begrudge you the time you take traveling to Imhursag by way of Zuabu. Instead, I shall hope that you are able to turn the time into profit for yourself, for me, and for Gibil.”

He said not a word about profit for Engibil, which was one reason Sharur was so willing to do as he wished. The less the god interfered in Sharur’s life, the happier he would be. He was certain of that; when the god had interfered in his life, it had made him very unhappy indeed.

“Do you require anything more of me, mighty lugal?” he asked.

“I require that you succeed,” Kimash answered. “Gibil requires that you succeed. If we are not to return to what we were in the days before we learned to put tin in with copper, if we are not to return to what we were in the days before we learned to set our records down on clay, if we are not to return to the days before we learned to think our own thoughts and act on our own purposes, we all require that you succeed.”

Sharur took a deep breath. “Mighty lugal, you tie a heavy load onto my back. I hope I am a donkey strong enough to bear the burden.”

“If you are not, where shall I find a stronger one?” Kimash asked.

He did not put the question intending that it be answered, but Sharur answered it nonetheless, and without hesitation: “Ereshguna, my father.”

The lugal pursed his lips as he considered that. “No,” he said at last. “In this, I would sooner have you. I speak not of donkeys but of rams: the young ram will go forward where the old ram would falter.” He chuckled under his breath. “The young ram will go forward where the old ram would think twice. Be my young ram, Sharur. Go forward for me. Go forward, and lead the city toward safety.”

“Mighty lugal, you may trust in me!” Sharur exclaimed.

“I do,” Kimash said simply. “Go now. Go for me. Go for Gibil.”

“I shall go now,” Sharur said. “I shall go for you, mighty lugal. I shall go for the Giblut.” I shall go for myself, and for the sake of Ningal. He did not say that aloud. Only later did he realize it was likely the chiefest reason for which Kimash sent him forth.