Between the Rivers

2

Past the haunted desert, three cities lay between Gibil and the Yarmuk River. In neither of the first two, both ruled by ensis, did the caravan encounter any difficulty with men or gods. Sharur still wondered why Enzuabu had seemed so hostile. Even the demon of the desolation had mocked Engibil. The omen struck Sharur as worrisome. “I wonder if the demon troubled the caravan out of Imhursag,” he said to Harharu.

“I doubt it,” the donkeymaster answered. “The Imhursagut have their heads so full of their god, there’s no room in them for anything else.”

“In that case, I am glad to be empty-headed,” Sharur said, and Harharu laughed. So did Sharur, though a moment later he wondered what was funny. If Enimhursag protected his people and Engibil did not protect his, which was the stronger god?

But a city’s strength, as Sharur well knew, depended on more than the strength of its god. It was the strengths of god and men together. Engibil might be weaker than some, but Gibil, as the metal merchant knew, was by no means to be despised. Where gods were weak, the strength of men could grow, as could their ability to act for themselves. He cherished what freedom he had: cherished it and wanted more.

Instead of going through the territory of Aggasher, the city that controlled the usual crossing point for the Yarmuk, Sharur swung the caravan north through the debatable land just to the east of it. Eniaggasher, the city’s goddess, ruled it in her own right. He found dealing with men who were hardly more than mouthpieces for their city’s deity tedious at any time. Now he also feared they would try to delay him or, worse, to help the cause of the caravan from Imhursag, whose men remained similarly in the hands of their god.

“I know what you’re doing,” Harharu said when Sharur ordered the turn. “This wouldn’t work in springtime, you know.”

“We’re not in springtime,” Sharur said with a smile. “The sun is high, and the river is low.”

A couple of herdsmen and a couple of peasants stared as the caravan came down to the Yarmuk. They were folk of Aggasher. One day, Eniaggasher would chance to look through their eyes when a caravan from Gibil used this ford to avoid crossing by the city. Then there might be trouble. But it had not happened yet. Eniaggasher paid little attention to these outliers under her control, in the same way that a man, under most circumstances, paid little attention to his toenails.

A goddess dwelt in the Yarmuk, too, of course. Before venturing into the river, Sharur walked up to the bank, a gleaming bronze bracelet inset with polished jet in his hands. “For thee, Eniyarmuk, to adorn thyself and make thyself more beautiful,” he said, and dropped the bracelet into the muddy water.

The sacrifice made, he took off his sandals, pulled down his kilt, and stepped naked into the Yarmuk to test the ford. The sand and mud of the river bottom squelched up between his toes. Little fish nibbled at his legs. The cool water seemed to caress his body as he advanced. He took that for a sign the river goddess had accepted his offering.

Up to his knees he went, up to his thighs, up to his waist and beyond. If the water got much deeper, the donkeys would have trouble crossing. “Let us be able to ford in safety, Eniyarmuk, and I will give thee another bracelet, like unto the first, when we reach thy farther bank,” he said, and pressed on across the river.

Before long, his navel, and then his privates, too, came out of the water. He kept on until, wet and dripping, he emerged on the western bank of the Yarmuk. From there, he waved back at the rest of the caravan. Guards and donkey handlers got out of their clothes. Rukagina thoughtfully picked up Sharur’s kilt and sandals and carried them above his head along with his own gear. The men led the donkeys into the river. .

As Sharur had prayed they would, they made the crossing without incident: almost without incident, at any rate, for a couple of men and a couple of donkeys came out of the water with leeches clinging to their legs. They had to start a fire there by the riverbank, and use burning twigs to make the worms’ heads let go. The guards cried out in disgust. One of the donkey handlers cried out, too, when a donkey kicked him. Despite the leeches, Sharur gave Eniyarmuk the second bracelet.

He went up and down the length of the caravan to see if the trip through the ford had damaged anything. A couple of bolts of red-dyed linen were soaked, but everything else seemed all right. He sighed. “Well, we’re not going to get much for those, not with the color running and stained with mud,” he said.

“For a fording, we did well,” Harharu said.

“I know that,” Sharur answered. “And we saved ourselves trouble from Eniaggasher, unless I miss my guess. But even so—” He scowled. He did not like anything to go wrong, and was still young enough to be easily aggrieved when perfection eluded him. He also begrudged the time spent going down small paths back to the main road.

West of the river, as far as canals took its waters and those of a couple of small tributaries, the land might as well have been part of Kudurru. The people were of the same stock. They spoke the same language, although with a rather singsong intonation. They worshiped the same great gods and lived in the same sort of reed-hut farming villages.

But they had no cities, and no city gods. None of the demons dwelling in this part of the world had been strong enough to consolidate any great number of people under his control. Like the spirit that haunted the waste west of Zuabu, the demons west of the Yarmuk might have had ambitions, but as yet lacked the power to make those ambitions real.

West of the Yarmuk, too, more and more stretches of ground were bare, dry wasteland: country that might have been fertile if water reached it, but that was too far from any stream or rose too high to be irrigated. The mountains of Alashkurru rose higher above the horizon here. Back in Gibil, they were visible only on the clearest days: a deep, mysterious smudge denting the edge of the sky. Not here. West of the Yarmuk, Sharur felt them looking down on him.

Two days after the caravan forded the river, irrigated land became the exception, dry, scrubby country the rule. There was enough forage for the donkeys; Sharur bartered some of the water-damaged linen for a couple of sheep from a herder driving his flock not far from the road. That night, he and the donkey handlers and guards ate roast mutton with wild garlic. -

The next morning, they caught up with the caravan from Imhursag.

Sharur had known they were gaining on the Imhursagut. Had he not taken the detour, they would.have caught them sooner... so long as everything went well at the main river crossing by Aggasher. He doubted that would have happened.

When the donkeys of the other caravan went from being hoofprints on the road to shapes in front of him, Sharur ordered the guards to don their helmets and carry weapons and shields. “You just can’t tell what the Imhursagut will do,” he told Mushezib. “If Enimhursag wants them to attack us, they will, even if we should outnumber them. A god does what he thinks best for himself first, and worries about his people only afterwards.”

“I’ve seen that myself, in the wars we’ve fought against Imhursag,” the guard captain said. “The Imhursagut would throw themselves away for no purpose anybody with even a bare keshlu of sense could see. But they think we’re crazy, because each one of us acts for himself instead of as a piece of our god’s plan. Goes to show, you ask me.”

Goes to show what? Sharur wondered. Instead of asking, he ran a finger along the edge of his bronze spearhead, then tapped the point He nodded to himself. It was as sharp as he could make it.

Up ahead, the Imhursagut were also arming themselves. Sharur saw shields, spears, swords, bows. The other caravan looked about the same size as his own. If the two crews came to blows, they were liable to wreck each other.

“It will be as I said in the land ruled by Zuabu,” Sharur declared. “We shall not begin the fight here. But if the Imhursagut begin it, let our cry be, ‘Engibil and no quarter!’ ” The guards nodded. Some of them looked eager to fight. Some did not. All of them looked ready.

Closer and closer the caravan drew to that from Imhursag. Soon they were within easy bowshot of the rearmost donkeys from the rival city. Almost all the Imhursagut had dropped back to the rear to defend the beasts against the men of Gibil.

Sharur strode out ahead of his lead donkey. “Gibil and Imhursag are not at war now!” he shouted. That was true. It was also the most that could be said for relations between the two cities.

One of the Imhursagut walked back toward him and held up a hand, not in peace but in warning' “Come no farther, Gibli!” he cried. “Halt your donkeys. Do not approach us until you have made known your desires to Enihihursag, the mighty god.”

“You also halt your donkeys, then,” Sharur said. “We will parley, you and I.” He suppressed a sigh. They would parley: Sharur and the man of Imhursag and Enimhursag himself. It was liable to take a while, for the god would have only a tiny part of his attention directed toward the caravan.

Sure enough, the Imhursaggi stood as if waiting for orders for several breaths before nodding jerkily and saying, “It shall be as you propose.” He turned back to the rest of the Imhursagut and ordered them to halt. Sharur waved for his followers to come no closer. Then the man from Imhursag demanded, “Why are you pursuing us? The god told us some time ago that you were following in our wake.”

“We are not pursuing you,” Sharur answered. “We are going our own way, down the same road as you are using, and we happen to be moving rather faster. Let us go by without fighting. You will breathe our dust for a little while, but then it shall be as if we never were.”

“It could be so,” the man of Imhursag said. But then, while he seemed on the point of adding something more, he suddenly shook his head. “No. Enimhursag does not believe you. You seek to get ahead of us to disrupt our trade with the Alashkurrut.”

Only the certain knowledge that laughing in a god’s face was dangerous made Sharur hold his mouth closed. The city gods of Kudurru were a provincial lot, Enimhursag more than most. Though his power touched his followers far beyond the land he ruled, he had no true conception of the size of the world and its constituent parts. “Alashkurru is a wide land,” Sharur said soberly. “We can trade in one part of it and you in another. Even if we get there first, it will not matter.”

“It could be so,” the Imhursaggi said again.

“If you are a merchant, you will have made the journey to the mountains of Alashkurru yourself,” Sharur said, speaking to the fellow as one man to another: always an uncertain proposition when dealing with folk from a god-ruled city. “You will know for yourself how wide the mountain country is—more like Kudurru as a whole than any one city within the land between the rivers. Your caravan and mine can both trade there.”

“It could be so,” the man of Imhursag repeated. Sharur started to be angry at him for his stupid obstinacy, but checked himself. He realized the Imhursaggi did not dare— or perhaps simply could not—come straight out and disagree with his god. That did not rouse anger in Sharur, but pity and fear.

“Let us past you without fighting,” he said gently. “In Engibil’s name, I swear my men will start no quarrel with yours as we go by.”

“How can you swear in your god’s name?” the Imhursaggi—or was it Enimhursag himself?—asked. “Engibil does not speak through the Giblut. We have seen this, to our cost. The words of the men of your city have only their own wind behind them, not the truth of the gods.”

For the first time, Sharur realized deep in his belly that he and the rest of the folk of Gibil were as strange and frightening to the Imhursagut as they were to him. “I speak only for myself,” he admitted, “but Engibil is still my god. If I lie in his name, he will punish me.”

“That has not always been so,” the man of Imhursag replied. But then, abruptly, his whole tone changed. He threw back his head and laughed. When he looked at Sharur, he seemed to look straight through him: Enimhursag was looking out through his eyes. Sharur shivered and reached for Engibil’s amulet. No assault came, though, neither against his body nor against his spirit. “Go on,” the Imhursaggi said, in a voice not quite his own. “Go on! Alashkurru is wide, you say. See if it is wide enough for you.” He laughed again, even less pleasantly than before.

As quickly as Enimhursag had taken full possession of him, the god released him once more. He staggered a little, then caught himself. Sharur wondered if he would remember what the god had said through him. He proved he did, turning to his own caravan crew and ordering them to move their donkeys to the side of the road to let Sharur and his companions pass. Men of Gibil would have argued. The Imhursagut, feeling the will of their god press on them, obeyed without a word.

To Sharur, the Imhursaggi spoke as himself once more:

“Go ahead. You Giblut are always so eager to go ahead, so eager to sniff out a keshlu’s weight of silver in the middle of a dungheap. Go ahead, and see what it profits you now.”

“What did your god tell you?” Sharur asked. “Why did he change his mind like that?”

“I do not know why,” the man of Imhursag answered. “I do not want to know why. I do not need to know why. It is not my place to know why.” He spoke with pride, where Sharur would have been furious at being kept in the dark. “As for what he told me, he told me no more than I told you.”

Was that true? Sharur wondered. But the Imhursaggi was less naive than some men from god-ruled cities with whom he’d dealt, and so he could not be sure. Muttering under his breath, Sharur went back to his own caravan. “Forward!” he told the guards and donkey handlers, adding, “I have sworn in Engibil’s name that we shall not be the first to start any fight. Be ready for trouble, but begin none yourselves, lest you leave me forsworn.”

“Do you hear that, you lugs?” Mushezib growled to the guards. He set down his spear for a moment so he could thump his chest with a big, hard fist. “Anybody who gets frisky when he shouldn’t have answers to me afterwards.” Warily, Sharur led his caravan past the one from Imhursag. The Imhursagut did not attack his men. He had not thought they would, not when Enimhursag, speaking through their leader, had agreed to let him by. They did jeer and hoot and make horrible faces: they obeyed their god, but their manner declared what they would have done had he given them leave.

Perhaps they were trying to make the Giblut lose their tempers and begin the fight. Wanting to prevent that, Sharur pointed to the Imhursagut and said, “See the trained monkeys? Aren’t they funny? Why don’t you throw them a few dates, if you’re carrying any in your belt pouches to munch on as we walk?”

As he’d hoped, the guards and donkey handlers laughed. A couple of them did toss dates to the Imhursagut. Their rivals plainly did not know whether to be glad of the food or angry at the way they received it: Enimhursag did not know, and had not told them. They were still waiting for their god to respond by the time the last of Sharur’s donkeys and the last of his men had passed them by. -

Harharu said, “That was well done, master merchant’s son. When men from a god-ruled city act in ways they have acted before, they are as quick and clever as we. Give them something new to chew on, even if it be only a date”—he and Sharur smiled at each other—“and they wave their legs in the air like a beetle on its back until their god decides what they should do.”

“I was hoping that would happen,” Sharur agreed. He raised his voice: “Well done, men. Now the Imhursagut will be breathing our dust and stepping in our donkey droppings all the way to Alashkurru. Let’s step it up for the rest of the day, so we can camp well apart from them.”

His followers cheered. They complained not at all about moving faster. The donkeys complained, but then the donkeys always complained.

Sharur picked his campsite that evening with great care. He would not be satisfied until he found a small rise the caravan crew could easily defend against an attack in the night and from which he could see a long way in all directions. “The Imhursagut won’t trouble us here,” Mushezib said, nodding vigorous approval. “They’ll be able to tell we’d give them lumps if they tried it. That’s the best way to keep someone from bothering you.”

“My thought exactly.” Sharur looked toward the east. He spied what had to be the Imhursaggi camp, fires twinkling like medium-bright stars, a surprising distance away. “We did walk them into the ground this afternoon.”

“Of course we did.” Mushezib’s massive chest inflated further. “Master merchant’s son, if we can’t outdo the Imhursagut, we aren’t worth much. You tell me if that isn’t

“Well, of course it is.” Sharur had as much pride in his comrades, the men of his city, as did the guard captain. Walking back to the rest of the guards and the donkey handlers, he asked, “Does anyone have a ghost traveling with him?” He had never thought he would wish his bad- tempered grandfather had joined him on the caravan instead of staying back in Gibil, but he did now.

Agum the guard looked up from his supper of dried fish and dates. “I do, master merchant’s son. Uncle Buriash guarded a couple of caravans himself, so he likes traveling this road.”

“That is good. That is very good,” Sharur said. He had never known Agum’s uncle, who therefore might as well not have existed as far as his senses were concerned. “I want him to go back to the camp of the Imhursagut and listen to their talk for a while, to see if he can spy out why their leader—why their god—changed his mind and decided to let us pass. He should also see if he can learn why their leader mocked our chances for good trading in Alashkurru.” Agum cocked his head to one side, listening to the dead man’s voice only he could hear. “He says he’ll be glad to do that, master merchant’s son. He doesn’t like the Imhursagut any better than we do. In one of the wars we fought with them—I don’t quite know which—they stole all his sheep.”

“Thank you, Buriash, uncle to Agum,” Sharur said. Even if he could not hear the ghost, the ghost could hear him.

“He says he is leaving now,” Agum reported. “He says he will return with the word you need.”

Sharur was just sitting down to his own supper when Harharu came wandering over to him. The donkeymaster spat out a date pit, then said, “Sending the ghost out is well done, master merchant’s son. Not many would have thought of it, and it may bring us much profit.” He grimaced and chuckled wryly. “My own ghosts, I’m just as well pleased they’re back in the city far away.”

“I was thinking the same thing about my grandfather,” Sharur answered.

Harharu nodded. Because Sharur outranked him, he chose to come round to what he had in mind by easy stages. “Would we not be wise to wonder whether what we do, others might do as well?”

“Ah,” Sharur said around a mouthful of salt fish. He saw where Harharu was heading. “You may speak frankly with me, donkeymaster. I shall not be offended, I promise.”

“Many people say that. A few even mean it.” Harharu studied him. “Yes, you may be one of those few. Very well, then: if the Imhursagut think to send a ghost to spy on us, can we trap it?”

“I suppose we can try,” Sharur answered. “After tonight, it will not matter, for we shall be too far ahead of them for one of their ghosts to catch us up. And now it will be hard for us to tell an Imhursaggi ghost from a curious ghost of the countryside, just as Buriash may well seem such a ghost to them.”

“What you say is true, master merchant’s son,” Harharu agreed. “And yet—”

“And yet,” Sharur echoed. He tugged at his beard. “It might be done. A ghost from Imhursag will bear the scent, so to speak, of Enimhursag, where a ghost of the countryside will not.”

“It is so,” Harharu said. “If you can use this difference without offending the ghosts and demons and gods who make this land their home—”

“I shall take great care, donkeymaster—believe me in that regard,” Sharur said, and tugged at his beard again. “I think it can be done. You are right. I do not want to offend the unseen things here., I shall make a point of letting them know we do not claim this country forever, only for a night.”

“Ah, very good,” Harharu said. “Any man would know you for your father’s son by your resourcefulness.”

“You are kind to a young man.” Sharur inclined his head in polite gratitude.

Setting a small pot on the ground out where the light from the fires grew dim, he walked around the encampment, chanting, “Tonight, let the land in this circle belong to the men who follow Engibil. Until the rising of the sun, let the land in this circle belong to the men who follow Engibil. Tonight, let Engibil protect the land in this circle. Until the rising of the sun, let Engibil protect the land in this circle. Tonight, let Engibil ward off and drive away Enimhursag and the things of Enimhursag from the land in this circle. Until the rising of the sun, let Engibil ward off and drive away Enimhursag and the things of Enimhursag from the land in this circle.”

On he went, slowly, ceremoniously: “Before we, the men who follow Engibil, encamped here, the land in this circle belonged to the unseen things that dwell here always. After we, the men who follow Engibil, depart hence with the rising of the sun, the land in this circle shall again belong to the unseen things that dwell here always. We, the men who follow Engibil, seek only our god’s protection this one night for the land in this circle.”

He repeated his prayer and his promise the prayer was for the night only over and over again, until he approached the spot from which he had begun the circle. Continuing to chant, he peered around and finally spied the pot he had used to mark his beginning point. With a sigh of relief, he stepped over it and walked on for a few more paces, making certain the circle was complete.

“That is a good magic, master merchant’s son,” Mushezib said when Sharur walked back to the fires. “May we have much profit from it.”

“May it be so,” Sharur said. His own prayer was that the magic would prove altogether unnecessary, that the Imhursagut would never think to send a ghostly spy to his camp. He would not know one way or the other, for he could hardly hope to sense the spirit of a man or woman with whom he had not been acquainted in life.

He turned to Agum. “Has the ghost of your Uncle Buriash returned from the Imhursaggi camp?”

“No, master merchant’s son,” the guard replied. “But he wouldn’t be back yet anyhow. He has to go there from here, and then here from there, and he’ll want to listen a good long while in between times. I don’t expect him till after I go to sleep.” He grinned at Sharur. “He’ll yell in my ear then, never fear.”

Sharur nodded. “He sounds like my grandfather. Good enough. When he does come back, you wake me. I shall want to know what he says as soon as he says it. Why did Enimhursag change his caravan leader’s mind?”

“I shall obey you like a father,” Agum promised.

But Sharur woke only with morning twilight the next day. Angrily, he hurried over to Agum. The guard was already up and about, with a worried expression on his face. “I would have wakened you, master merchant’s son, of course I would,” he said. “But Uncle Buriash never came back. I finally went to sleep myself, sure he’d wake me when he returned, but he never did.”

“Where is he, then? Where can he be?” Sharur uneasily looked eastward, back toward the camp of the Imhursagut.

“I thought—I was hoping—the circle you made last night might have kept him away,” Agum said.

Sharur frowned. “I don’t see why it should have. Your uncle’s ghost is no enemy to Engibil, no friend to Enimhursag.” .

“No, of course not,” Agum said. “Still, I did not want to go beyond the circle and maybe break it to find out if he was waiting there. If he is, I’ll hear about it soon enough.” His chuckle sounded nervous. “First time in a while I’ll be glad to have the old vulture yelling at me, let me tell you.”

“I know what you mean.” Sharur slapped the guard on the back. “The circle will break of itself when Shumukin brings the sun up into the sky. Then Buriash can harangue you to his heart’s content.”

The sun rose. The caravan headed off toward the west once more. But Uncle Buriash did not return to Agum when the circle of magic was broken. Agum never heard Uncle Buriash’s voice again. All that day, and for days to come, Sharur kept looking back in the direction of the caravan from Imhursag. What he felt was something uncommonly like fear.

The land rose and, rising, grew rough. Streams dwindled. Near them, a few farmers scratched out a meager living. The land a little farther from them could have been brought under the plow, too, had anyone dug canals out to it Not enough people lived along the streams to make the work worthwhile.

Instead, herders drove large flocks of cattle and sheep— larger than any in crowded Kudurru—through the grass and brush that grew without irrigation. Lean, rough-looking men, they watched the caravan with hungry eyes. Guards and donkey handlers and Sharur himself always went armed. TJianks to Mushezib, the guards acted as tough and swaggering as the herdsmen, and so had no trouble with them.

“You can’t let them think you’re afraid of ’em,” Mushezib said to Sharur one evening. “If they get that idea into their heads, they’ll jump on you like a lion on a lame donkey.”

“Yes, I’ve seen that,” Sharur said. “The Alashkurrut are the same way.” His eyes went to the west This country blended almost seamlessly with the foothills of the Alashkurru Mountains. He sighed. “Another few days of traveling and only a few folk, the folk who make a habit of trading with us, will speak our language. The rest will use the words of the Alashkurrut.”

Mushezib used a word of the Alashkurrut, a rude word. He laughed a loud, booming laugh. “A guard doesn’t need to know much more. ‘Beer.’ ‘Woman.’ ‘Bread,’ maybe. ‘How much?’ ‘No, too much.’ Those do the job.”

“I suppose so.” Almost, Sharur wished he could live a life as simple as Mushezib’s. When all went well, the guard captain had little more to do than walk all day and, when evening came, have someone give him food and beer and silver besides, so he could buy a woman’s company for the night or whatever else he happened to want. To a peasant living in drudgery the whole year through, that would seem a fine life indeed. It had seemed so to Mushezib, who had made it real for himself, just as at the beginning of days the great gods had made the world real from the thought in their minds.

For Sharur, though, the reality Mushezib had made from his thought was not enough. The guard captain cared about no one past himself, about nothing more than getting through one day after another. When he died, his ghost would not remain long upon the earth, for who would remember him well enough for the spirit’s voice to linger in his ears?

Sharur walked down to the edge of the little nameless stream (nameless to him, anyhow; whatever god or goddess dwelt in it had never drawn his notice) and scooped up a handful of muddy clay. Mushezib followed, saying, “What are you doing, master merchant’s son? Oh, I see—making a tablet. What have you found here that you need to write?”

“I’m practicing, that’s all,” Sharur answered. “I practice with the spear, I practice with the sword, and I practice with the stylus, too.” So speaking, he took the stylus from his belt and incised on the soft clay the three complex squiggles that made up Mushezib’s name. The guard captain, who could neither read nor write, watched without comprehension.

Hear me, all gods and demons of this land, Sharur thought. I mean no harm to the man whose name 1 erase. He crumbled the tablet in his hands, then washed them clean of mud in the running water.

“Didn’t the writing come out the way you wanted it?” Mushezib asked.

“It was not everything it could have been,” Sharur replied. Mushezib’s life was like that: a tablet that would crumble and weather and be gone all too soon after writing covered its surface. Sharur wanted the tablet of his life to go through the fire after it was done, to deserve to be baked hard as kiln-dried brick and so to have the writing on it preserved forever in the memories of Gibil and the Giblut.

Mushezib had his own ideas about that, though. Laughing again, he said, “What is everything it could be?” Sharur, to his own embarrassment, found no good reply for the guard captain.

The demon sprawled in the roadway. It looked like a large wild cat with wings. Its eyes glowed with green fire. It lashed its tail, as if to suggest it had a sting there like a scorpion’s.

At the sight of it, Harharu had halted the caravan. He did nothing more. Doing more was not his responsibility but Sharur’s. Sharur approached until he was almost—but, he made sure, not quite—within reach of that lashing tail. Bowing, he spoke in the language of the mountains: “You are not a demon of the land of Kudurru. You are not a demon of the land between the rivers. You are a demon of Alashkurru. You are a demon of the high country. I know you, demon of the high country.”

“I am a demon of the high country.” The demon sprang into the air and turned a backwards somersault, for all the world like a playful kitten. “You are one of the new people, the people from afar, the people who travel, the people who bring strange things to Alashkurru.”

“I am one of those people,” Sharur agreed. Men from Kudurru had been trading with the Alashkurrut for generations. To the demon, though, they were the new people. They would likely be the new people five hundred years hence as well. The demon showed no sign of moving aside. It lolled in the sunlight, stretching bonelessly. “Why do you block our path?” Sharur asked. “Why do you not let us travel? Why do you not let us bring our new things”—he would not call them strange things—“to Alashkurru?”

“You are the new people,” the demon repeated. It cocked its head to one side and studied Sharur. “You are one of the new people even among the new people. You listen to your own voice. You do not listen to your god’s voice.”

“That is not true,” Sharur replied. “Engibil is my god. Engibil is my city’s god. All in Gibil worship Engibil and set fine offerings in his temple.”

“You play with words.” The demon’s tail sprang out, like a snake. Sharur was glad he had kept his distance from it. “Your own self is in the front of your spirit. Your god’s voice is in the back of your spirit. You are one of the new people even among the new people.” By its tone, the demon might have accused him of lying with his mother.

“I do not understand all you say.” Sharur was lying. He knew he was lying. The demon laid the same charge against him and his fellow Giblut as Enimhursag had done. He took a deep breath, then went on, “It does not matter. We come to Alashkurru to trade. We come in peace. We have always come in peace. The wanakes, the chieftains, of Alashkurru profit by our coming. Let us pass.”

Lash, lash, lash went the demon’s tail. “You trade more than you know, man of the new people even among the new people. When you talk with the wanakes, the chieftains, of Alashkurru, you infect them with your new ways, as an unclean whore infects a man with a disease of the private parts. There are wanakes, chieftains, of Alashkurru who have spoke with great wickedness, saying, ‘Let us put our own selves in the front of our spirits. Let us put our gods’ voices in the back of our spirits. The gods of Alashkurru grow angry at hearing such talk, at hearing such thoughts.”

“I trade metal. I trade cloth. I trade medicine. I trade wine,” Sharur said stolidly. Under the hot sun, the sweat that ran from his armpits and down his back was cold as the snow atop the highest mountains of Alashkurru. “If I speak of Engibil to the wanakes, the chieftains, of Alashkurru, it is only to praise his greatness. Let us pass.”

“It shall not be,” the demon said. “The gods of Alashkurru are angry. The men of Alashkurru are angry. Go back, man of the new people even among the new people. You shall do nothing here. You shall gain nothing here. Go back. Go back. Go back.”

Sharur licked his lips. “I will not hear these words from a demon in the road. I will hear them from the lips of the wanakes, the chieftains, of Alashkurru.” The demon sprang into the air again, this time with a screech of rage. Sharur spoke quickly: “I will not hear these words from a demon in the road. I know you, demon of the high country. Illuyankas, I know your name.” He hated to try to compel a foreign spirit, but saw no other choice.

The demon Illuyankas let out another screech, this one a bubbling cry of dismay. Off it flew, as fast as its wings could take it. Knowing its name, Sharur could have worked great harm on it.

The donkey handlers and caravan guards clapped their hands and shouted in delight at the way their leader had routed the demon. ‘‘Well done, master merchant’s son,” Mushezib said. ‘‘That ugly thing will trouble us no more.”

“No, I suppose not,” Sharur said absently. He noticed that Harharu seemed less jubilant than the rest of the caravan crew, and asked him, “Donkeymaster, do you not speak the language of the Alashkurrut?”

“I do, master merchant’s son,” Harharu said. “I do not speak so elegantly as your distinguished self, but I understand and make myself understood.”

“Then you understood what the demon Illuyankas, the demon of ill omen, and I had to say to each other,” Sharur persisted. At the donkeymaster’s nod, he went on, “The demon’s warning comes close to what the men of Imhursag told us.” Harharu nodded once more, even less happily than he had the first time. Sharur said, “If the men and gods of Alashkurru will not treat with us, what shall we do?”

“Here I have no answer, master merchant’s son,” Harharu said. “I have never heard of the Alashkurrut refusing trade. This I will tell you:, they have never refused trade before, not in all the years Gibil has sent caravans to their country.”

“I have not heard of their doing so, either,” Sharur said. “Perhaps it is a ploy to force us to lower our prices.”

“Perhaps it is,” Harharu said. Neither of them sounded as if he believed it.

Tuwanas was the first Alashkurri mining center to which the caravan came. By that time, Sharur’s spirits had revived. The peasants on the road to Tuwanas had been friendly enough. None of them had refused to trade bread or pork—it was a good swine-raising country—or beer to him and his men. Their gods, whose little outdoor wooden shrines were nothing like the great brick temples of the gods of Kudurru, had not cried out in protest. Sharur took that as a good omen.

He led the caravan up to Tuwanas in the midst of a rainstorm. The guards who were making their first journey into the Alashkurru Mountains looked up into the heavens with fearful eyes, muttering to themselves at what seemed the unnatural spectacle of rain in summer.

Sharur reassured them, saying, “I have seen this before. It is the way of the gods in this part of the world. See— even though Tuwanas lies by a stream, the folk here have dug but few canals to bring water from the stream to the fields. They know they will get rain to keep their crops alive.”

“Rain in summertime.” Agum shook his head, which made some of the summertime rain fly out from his beard, as if from a wet dog’s coat, and more drip off the end of his nose. “No stranger than anything else around these parts, I suppose.” He pointed ahead to Tuwanas. “If this isn’t the funniest-looking place I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what is.”

There Sharur was inclined to agree with^him. By the standards of Kudurru, it was neither a village nor a proper city. The best word for it, Sharur supposed, was “fortress.” He would not have wanted to take the place, not when its wall was built of great gray blocks of stone so huge, he wondered if they had been set in place by gods, not men.

Sighing, Harharu said, “The Alashkurrut are lucky to have so much fine stone with which to build. Mud brick would be nothing but mud in this climate.”

“I see,” Agum said. “Even the peasants live in stone houses here. Does the straw they put on the roofs really keep out the rain?”

“Better than you’d think,” Sharur told him. “The peasants and the potters and the leatherworkers and the smiths and such live outside the walls, as you see. They take shelter inside when the other Alashkurrut raid Tuwanas.”

“The smiths,” Harharu murmured.

“Yes,” Sharur said. No matter what Enimhursag and the demon Illuyankas had told him, he had hope for the smiths. In Alashkurru no less than in Kudurru, they were men of the new, full of the power control over metal gave them, a power so raw it was not yet divine.

“Who lives inside the walls of Tuwanas, then?” Agum asked.

“The Alashkurri gods, of course,” Sharur answered, and the caravan guard nodded. “A few merchants have their houses in there, too. But most of the space the gods don’t use goes to Huzziyas the wanax and his soldiers.”

“Wanax.” Agum shaped the foreign word, then laughed. “It has a funny sound.”

“It has a funny meaning, too,” Sharur said. “There is no word in our speech that means just the same thing. It’s halfway between ‘ensi’—because the Alashkurri gods do speak through the wanakes—and ‘bandit chief.’ A wanax will use his soldiers to rob his neighbors—”

“—And his own peasants,” Harharu put in.

“Yes, and his own peasants,” Sharur agreed. “He’ll use his soldiers, as I say, to make himself rich. Sometimes I think a wanax would sooner steal one keshlu’s weight of gold than put the same amount of trouble into getting two by honest work.”

Agum clutched his spear more tightly. “I see why you have guards along, master merchant’s son.”

“Huzziyas has more soldiers than you could fight,” Sharur said. “So does every other wanax. Sometimes, though, when the wanakes aren’t robbing one another, a band of soldiers will get bored and start robbing on their own. That is why I have guards in the Alashkurru Mountains.”

As they talked, they squelched up the narrow track between thatch-roofed stone huts toward the one gate in Tuwanas’ frowning wall. Most of the men were out in the fields—rain made weeding easy—but women and children stood in doorways and stared at the newcomers, as did artisans who labored inside their homes.

In looks, they were most of them not far removed from the folk of Kudurru. Men here, though, did not curl their beards, but let them grow long and unkempt. Men and women put on more clothes than they would have done in Kudurru, men wearing knee-length tunics of wool or leather and the women draping themselves in lengths of cloth that reminded Sharur of nothing so much as oversized blankets.

And, now and again, more than clothes and hairstyles reminded the caravan crew they were in a foreign land. Sharur heard one of the donkey handlers wonder aloud if a striking woman with coppery hair was truly a woman or a demon. “Don’t say that in a language she can understand,” the caravanmaster remarked, “or you’re liable to find out.”

The guards at the gateway leading into the fortress of Tuwanas stood under the overhang to stay out of the rain. But for their wild, shaggy beards, they would have fit in well enough among Kimash the lugal’s guardsmen. Sharur recognized a couple who spoke the language of Kudurru. One of those guards recognized him at about the same time. “It is Sharur son of Ereshguna, from the city between the rivers called Gibil,” he said.

“It is,” Sharur agreed. “It is Nenassas son of Nerikkas, of Tuwanas. I greet you, Nenassas son of Nerikkas.” Nenassas hadn’t greeted him, merely acknowledged his existence. He did not take that as a good sign.

Nenassas still did not greet him, but asked, “What do you bring to Tuwanas, Sharur son of Ereshguna?”

“I bring swords and knives and spearheads of finest bronze,” Sharur said, pointedly adding, “such have always delighted the heart of Huzziyas son of Wamnas, the mighty wanax of Tuwanas. I bring also wine of dates, to delight the heart of Huzziyas in a different way; strong medicines”— he gestured toward Rukagina—“and many other fine things.”

Nenassas and the other guards put their heads together and talked in low voices in their own language. Sharur caught only a couple of phrases, enough to understand they were trying to figure out what to do with him, and with the caravan. Their attitude alone would have told him that much. He kept his face an impassive mask. Behind it, he worried. They should have been delighted to greet a caravan from Kudurru.

He got the idea they would have been delighted to greet most caravans from Kudurru. A caravan from Gibil, however ...

At last, Nenassas said, “What you tell me is true, Sharur son of Ereshguna. Your wares have delighted the heart of mighty Huzziyas. Still, that was in the days before our gods spoke to us of the city between the rivers called Gibil.”

“I do not seek to trade my swords and knives and spearheads with the gods of Tuwanas,” Sharur replied. “I seek to trade them with the mighty wanax of Tuwanas, and with his clever merchants.”

“See!” one of the other Alashkurri guards exclaimed in his own language. “This is what the gods warned us against. He cares nothing for them.”

“That is not so,” Sharur said in the same tongue. “I respect the gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru. But, Udas son of Ussas, they are not my gods. My god is Engibil, and after him the other gods of Kudurru.”

Udas seemed disconcerted at being understood. The guards put their heads together again. Sharur heard one phrase that pleased him very much: “Those swords do delight the heart of the wanax.” More argument followed. A couple of times, the guards hefted the spears they were carrying, as if about to use them on one another. Finally, Nenassas said, “You and your caravan may pass into Tuwanas, Sharur son of Ereshguna. This matter is too great for us to decide. Let it be in the hands of the mighty wanax and the gods.”

“For this I thank you, Nenassas son of Nerikkas, though it grieves me to enter this place without your greeting,” Sharur replied. But he got no greeting from Nenassas, only a brusque wave ahead. Scowling, Sharur led his men and donkeys into Tuwanas.

“See what I have here.” Sharur set out a row of swords on top of a wooden table. In the torchlight, the polished bronze gleamed almost as red as blood. “These are all of fine, hard metal, made strong with the tin we of Gibil bring in at great risk and great expense. They will cut notches in the blade of a copper sword until it is better used as a saw than as a weapon. Alashkurru is a land of warriors, a land of heroes. No one will want to be without such fine swords. Is it not so, Sitawandas son of Anawandas, my friend, my colleague?”

Sitawandas put Sharur in mind of an Alashkurri version of his own father—a large, solid man who knew his own mind and who was intent on wringing the most he could from any deal. He picked up one of the swords Sharur had taken from their woolen wrappings. His grip, his stance, showed he knew how to handle it.

“This is a fine blade to hold, Sharur son of Ereshguna,” he said. “I would have looked for nothing less from you.” Gently, he set down the sword * and took from his wrist a copper bracelet. “May I test the hardness of the metal, to be certain it is as you say?”

Sharur bowed again. “I am your slave. If the buyer is not pleased and satisfied in all regards, how can there be a sale?”

Sitawandas took up the sword once more, using the edge against the bracelet as if he were slicing bread. He stared at the groove he had cut in the copper and said, “Yes, man of Gibil, this bronze is as fine as any I have ever seen.”

“Many warriors will want swords like these,” Sharur said. “They will give you silver and gold for them. Do I ask silver and gold for them? No—only copper and copper ore, as you well know.”

“I know the terms on which we have dealt, yes.” Sita- . wandas put down the sword again, as carefully as he had before. “And you speak truly, Sharur son of Ereshguna: a warrior of Alashkurru would be proud to carry such a blade in his sheath.” He let out a long, deep sigh. Sharur thought he saw tears in his eyes. “Truly I am sorry, man of Gibil. It is as you say. I could gain gold and silver for such swords. I have copper and copper ore in plenty in my storehouse, to pay to the man who could give such swords to me. But it shall not be. It can not be.”

Sharur’s heart sank. “I understand the words you say, Sitawandas son of Anawandas, but not the meaning concealed within them.” He did not, he would not, let the Alashkurri merchant see his dismay.

“For myself, I would like to gain these swords,” Sitawandas said. “I am forbidden from trading with you, however. I am forbidden from trading with any man of Gibil.”

“Who forbids you? Is it Huzziyas, the mighty wanax of Tuwanas?” Sharur set a finger by the side of his nose and winked. “Let one blade, two blades, three blades come into the hands of Huzziyas for no gold, for no silver, and surely you shall be able to do as you please with the rest of them.”

Sitawandas sighed again. “Huzziyas the mighty wanax would be proud to have such blades. This cannot be denied.” The guards at the gates of Tuwanas had said the same thing. Sitawandas went, on, “But, Sharur son of Ereshguna, Huzziyas the mighty wanax is no less forbidden than I from trading with you. I pray I shall not be punished even for speaking to you as I do, though that has never been formally prohibited for us.”

“Once a sword is set in the hands of a warrior, he will not care whence it first came,” Sharur said. “Once a knife is set in a sheath on the belt of a warrior, he will not care whence it first came. Once a spearhead is mounted on a shaft, he will not care whence it first came. If you have these things, Sitawandas son of Anawandas, you can trade them to your countrymen at a profit. No one will ask, ‘Is this a blade of Gibil, Sitawandas, or is this a blade of Imhursag?’ The only question you will hear is, ‘Will this blade help me slay my enemies, Sitawandas?’ ”

The Alashkurri merchant licked his lips. “You tempt me, man of Gibil, as a honeycomb lying forgotten on a table tempts a small boy who is hungry and wants something sweet. But what happens to a small boy when he snatches up that honeycomb?”

“Nothing, often enough,” Sharur answered with a grin. “Did you never steal honeycomb when you were a boy?”

“As often as I thought I could get away with it,” Sitawandas said, also smiling. “But sometimes my father was watching, or my grandfather, or a family ghost, though I knew it not. And when that was so, I ate no honeycomb, but got a beating instead, or ate of it and got a beating afterwards. And sometimes the honeycomb lay on the table and I spied my father or my grandfather standing close by, or a family ghost spoke to me of some other thing. And when that befell, I stole no honeycomb that day, for fear of the beating I would surely earn.”

“I do not understand,” Sharur said, though he did, only too well.

Sitawandas said, “You are not a fool, Sharur son of Ereshguna. You are not a blind man.” Sharur said nothing. Sitawandas sighed. “Very well. Let it be as you wish. I shall explain for you. Huzziyas the mighty wanax stands here for my father. If I gain these blades from you, he will chastise me. The gods of Alashkurru stand here for my grandfather, or for a family ghost. If I gain these blades from you, they may see without my knowing, and they will chastise me.”

There it was. Sharur could not fail to understand that, no matter how much he might wish to do so. “Why does the wanax, mighty Huzziyas, hate me?” he cried. “Why do the gods of Alashkurru hate me?”

Sitawandas set a hand on his thigh. “I do not think mighty Huzziyas the wanax hates you, Sharur son of Ereshguna. I think he would have these things of you, if only he could. But, just as a father chastises a small boy, so also may a grandfather chastise a father.”

“You say the gods of Alashkurru will chastise Huzziyas, the mighty wanax, if he gains the swords and spearheads with which to defeat his enemies?” Sharur asked. “Do your gods then hate Huzziyas?”

“Never let that be said,” Sitawandas exclaimed, and made a sign the Alashkurrut used when a man of Kudurru would have covered the eyes of his god’s amulet to keep the deity from seeing. “But the gods fear the wanax will walk the path you men of Gibil have taken. When the gods declare a thing shall not be, the man who stands against them will not stand long.”

That was true. Sharur knew it was true. Kimash the lugal ruled in Gibil not by opposing Engibil but by appeasing him, by bribing him to look the other way and flattering him so he thought his power was as great as it had ever been. No man could directly oppose a god.

Indirectly, though—“Suppose—merely suppose, mind— I were to lose some of these swords at such-and-such a place: suppose a donkey handler were careless, for instance, so they fell off the beast. And suppose again, a few days later, that you were careless enough to lose some ingots of copper at some other place. If I chanced to find them there, I do not think I would ever tell you about it.”

“No, eh?” Sitawandas licked his lips. He knew what Sharur was saying, sure enough. Sharur made himself stand calm, stand easy, as if, since they were discussing things that might not be, those things were unimportant. Sweat sprang out on Sitawandas’s forehead. He was tempted to do business by not seeming to do business; Sharur could see as much. But at last, convulsively, the Alashkurri merchant shook his head. “I cannot do this thing, Sharur son of Ereshguna. I dare not do this thing. Should my gods take notice of the doing—No.” He shook his head again.

“However you like.” Sharur spoke carelessly. “If you do not care what might be found in out-of-the-way places—”

“I do not care?” Sitawandas broke in. “Never let that be said, either.” He let out a long, shuddering sigh. “Treating with you here, man of Gibil, I understand better and better why the gods of my people have come to fear you so.”

“Is it so?” Sharur shrugged, outwardly careless still. “Men are always wise to fear gods. I cannot see how gods, with their power, are wise to fear men.”

“There—do you see? You can speak well, when you care to. But, when you care to, you can also speak in ways that frighten men and gods alike.” Sitawandas brushed the sweat from his face with a hairy forearm. “Most frightening of all is that you have no notion how frightening you are.”

“Now you speak in riddles, Sitawandas son of Anawandas.” Sharur made as if to start re wrapping the weapons he had displayed, then paused one last time. “Are you sure you will not trade with me?”

“It is not that I will not.” Sitawandas paced back and forth across the stone-enclosed chamber. “It is that I dare not.”

“Then who may?” Sharur demanded. “Has Huzziyas, mighty wanax of Tuwanas, the power to do with me as his people and mine have done with each other in peace and for common profit for generations?”

Sitawandas said, “Sharur son of Ereshguna, I do not know.”

Even being allowed to go into Huzziyas’s palace and see the wanax took longer and cost more than Sharur had expected. The longer he stayed in Tuwanas doing no real business, the more he begrudged every bangle, every broken bit of silver he paid out for nothing better than living from day to day. Paying to gain access to a man who should have been glad to see him—who had been glad to see him the year before—galled him even more.

In the end, with patience and bribery, he did obtain an audience with Huzziyas. As he strode up to the massive doorway to the palace, he reflected that that was not the ideal name for the building. Just as Tuwanas was more nearly fortress than city, so the wanax’s residence was more nearly citadel than palace. The stone^ walls were strong and thick, the only windows slits better suited to archery than vision, the roof sheathed with slates on which fire would not catch.

Many of Huzziyas’s guardsmen carried bronze swords Sharur knew they had got from him. They wore copper greaves and breastplates and caps, and had their shields faced with copper, too. Copper was softer than bronze, but easily available here in Alashkurru. Huzziyas’s men used armor far more lavishly than did Sharur’s, or even Kimash’s guards back in Gibil.

Some of the guardsmen greeted Sharur like an old friend, remembering the fine weapons he and his family had brought to Tuwanas over the years. Some would not speak to him at all, remembering the admonitions of their gods. Two of the silent ones led him through the narrow halls of the palace and up to the high seat of the wanax.

Sharur thought he would have been likelier to meet Huzziyas in a roadside ambuscade than as wanax of Tuwanas. Tuwanas’ ruler below the gods was a tough fifty-five, gray thatching his hair and shaggy beard but his arms and chest still thick with muscle. Scars seamed those arms, and the bits of leg showing between tunic hem and boot top, and his rugged, big-nosed face. One of them barely missed his left eye.

After the bows and the polite phrases required of him were done, Sharur spoke as bluntly as he dared: “Mighty wanax, what have I done to offend, that you and yours will not buy what I have to sell even when buying it works more to your advantage than mine?”

“Understand, Sharur son of Ereshguna, you have not offended me personally,” Huzziyas replied. They both used the tongue of Kudurru, in which the wanax was fluent. “Had you offended me personally, you would not be treating with me now. You would be lying dead in a ditch, the dogs and the kites and the ravens quarreling over your bones.” He sounded more like a bandit chieftain than the ruler of a city, too.

“Do I understand you rightly, mighty wanax?” Sharur asked. “Do you say I have not offended? If I have not offended, what keeps you from trading for the fine wares I have brought from the land between the rivers?”

Huzziyas’s eyes glinted. “I did not say you had not offended, man of Kudurru, man of Gibil.” He made that last into an insult. “I said you had not offended me. Were I the only one who spoke for Tuwanas, we would trade, you and I. But you and your city have ...” He paused, looking for the right words.

“Angered your gods?” Sharur suggested bitterly.

“No.” The wanax shook his head. “You and your city have done something worse. You and your city have frightened the gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru. Unless my ears mistake me, you and your city have frightened the gods of Kudurru, the gods of the land between the Yarmuk and the Diyala.”

“The gods of my country are no concern to you, mighty wanax,” Sharur said. “And I, mortal worm that I am, I should be of no concern to the gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru. Neither I nor my city is a foe to Tuwanas, to Alashkurru. I want only to trade in peace and to return in peace to my city.” ,

Huzziyas looked now this way, now that. Sharur could not help looking this way and that, too. He saw nothing. He wondered what Huzziyas saw, or what he looked to see. The wanax said, “For myself, I am fain to believe you. My gods still fear you lie. They fear I will become like you, a liar before the gods.” .

He glanced around again. Now Sharur understood what he was doing: he was trying to find out whether his gods were paying close attention to him at this particular moment. Sharur smiled. If Huzziyas had not yet become what the gods of Alashkurru feared, he was on the edge of it. He wanted the swords and spearheads and knives Sharur could trade to him. Unless Sharur misread him as if he were an unfamiliar sign pressed into clay, he would not be overfussy about how he got them, either.

“I am not a liar before the gods,” Sharur declared, as he had to do. As he had so often on this journey, he declared his loyalty to Engibil. The more emphatic his declarations got, the less truth they seemed to hold.

“As I say, I am fain to believe you,” Huzziyas answered. “But if my gods will not believe, what can I do? My hands are tied.” His mouth twisted. His gods still held him in the palm of their hands. He wanted to slip free, but had not found a way. So Igigi’s father must have felt—he had been ensi to Engibil, but had not managed to become lugal, to rule in his own right

Casually, as if it had just occurred to him, Sharur proposed to Huzziyas what he had proposed to Sitawandas: trading as if by accident. The wanax of Tuwanas sucked in his breath. Sharur watched the torchlight sparkle in his eyes. Sitawandas had lacked the nerve to thwart the will of the gods of Alashkurru. Huzziyas, now ...

Huzziyas twitched on the high seat. He looked surprised, then grimaced, and then, as if he had given up resisting whatever new force filled him, his face went blank and still. Only his lips moved: “Man of Gibil, what you say cannot be. Man of Gibil, what you say shall not be. The gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru have declared the men of Tuwanas, the men of Alashkurru shall not trade with you. The men of Tuwanas, the men of Alashkurru shall heed what their gods have declared. I, Huzziyas, mighty wanax of Tuwanas, have spoken.”

But it was not Huzziyas who had spoken, or not altogether Huzziyas. The hair on Sharur’s arms and at the back of his neck prickled up in awe. The wanax had been wise to wonder whether his gods were watching him. They were, and had kept him from breaking free of their will. Back in Gibil, Engibil had been content to let Igigi and his son and grandson rule for themselves alone. The gods here intended to stay unchallenged lords of this land.

“I am sorry, mighty wanax,” Sharur said softly.

Little by little, Huzziyas came back to himself. “It cannot be, Sharur son of Ereshguna,” he said, echoing the words the god had spoken through him. “You see why it cannot be.” The gesture he began might have been one of apology. If it was, he never finished it. He looked angry: the gods were still watching what he did, what he said. He sighed. He was not a lugal, free—even if only narrowly free—to chart his own course. With the gods of his country so watchful, he would never be a lugal.

Sharur did not care about that, not for its own sake. He cared about trading. “Mighty wanax, will your gods hearken to me if I speak to them face to face, to show them my wares and to show them I am not dangerous to them?” Huzziyas cocked his head to one side, listening to the gods of Tuwanas, to the gods of the Alashkurru Mountains. Sharur felt the power in the chamber, pressing down on him as if with great weight. Then it lifted. The wanax said, “They think you brave. They think you a fool. They will hear you.” After a moment, he seemed to speak for himself rather than the gods: “They will not listen to you.”

Like the wanax, the gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru dwelt in what was to Sharur’s eyes a citadel: a formidable tower of gray stone. He had visited that temple on his previous journeys to Tuwanas, to offer the gods incense in thanks for successful trade. He had jio success for which to thank them now, and did not know what to offer to gain one.

Huzziyas accompanied him to the temple. The wanax looked nervous. True, the gods spoke to him and through him. But they also knew he pined for the freedom Sharur and the rest of the men of Gibil enjoyed. The priests who served the temple and the temple alone looked at Huzziyas from the comers of their eyes. What had the gods said of him to them? By those glances, nothing good.

Tuwanas had no single tutelary deity who ruled its territory as his own, as did the cities of the land between the rivers. All the Alashkurri gods were present here, though one of them, Tarsiyas, spoke with the loudest voice. His stone statue was armored in copper and held a bronze sword, making him look as much like a bandit as any of the humans who reverenced him.

Sharur bowed before that clumsy but fierce-looking image. “Tarsiyas, great god of this town, great god of this land, hear the words of Sharur son of Ereshguna, a foreigner, a man who has traveled long to come to Tuwanas, a man who wishes the folk of this land and the gods of this land only good.”

The stone lips of the statue moved. “Say what you will, Sharur son of Ereshguna. We have said we will hear you.” The words resounded inside Sharur’s head. He did not think he was hearing them with his ears, but directly with his mind, as if the god had set them there.

He said, “You are generous, great god.” Had Tarsiyas truly been generous, Sharur would not have had to beseech him so. But Sharur assumed the god was, like most gods of his acquaintance, vain. Like all gods, Tarsiyas was powerful. That was what made him a god. He had to be handled more carefully than a poisonous serpent, for he was more deadly. Sharur pointed to the sword in Tarsiyas’s right hand. “Is that not a fine blade, great god of this town, great god of this land?”

“It is a fine blade,” Tarsiyas agreed. “It is better than the blade I bore before. Huzziyas the wanax gave it to me.” The stone eyes of the statue fixed Huzziyas with a stare Sharur was glad to see aimed at someone other than himself.

“I delight in giving the gods rich presents,” Huzziyas said. Sharur almost burst out laughing. The wanax sounded like Kimash the lugal, and no doubt wished his hypocrisy were as successful as Kimash’s.

“Tarsiyas, great god of this town, great god of this land, do you know whence this sword first came?” Sharur asked.

“I do not, nor care,” the god replied. “Huzziyas gained it; Huzziyas gave it. It is enough. I am well pleased.”

Again, Sharur fought to keep his face straight. Tarsiyas and the other gods of the Alashkurru Mountains might work to keep the men of Alashkurru under their rule, but they were no less greedy about receiving presents from those men than was Engibil, back in the land between the rivers. Sharur said, “Great god of this town, great god of this land, the sword with which you are well pleased, with which I am glad you are well pleased, is a sword the smiths of the city of Gibil have made, a sword the men of Gibil traded to Huzziyas the mighty wanax. And now you say—”

He got no further than that. His head filled with a roar as of a thousand wild beasts of a hundred different kinds all bellowing at once. The din in Huzziyas’s head must have been worse; he groaned and clapped his hands to his ears. At last, the god’s cry of rage boiled back down to words the two mortals could understand: ‘‘Wretch! Fool! You gave me a gift from the hands of men who set their gods at naught?”

“We do not set our gods at naught,” Sharur insisted stubbornly.

And Huzziyas added, “Tarsiyas, great god of this town, great god of this land, my master, when I gave you this sword, you had not said you did not want such work. No other god said he did not want such work. No other goddess said she did not want such work. The work being proper for giving, I gave with both hands. I did not stint. I gave of the finest I had.”

Tarsiyas’s voice swelled to an unintelligible shout of fury once more. The god clasped the sword in both stone hands and, in a motion too quick for Sharur’s eyes to follow, broke it over his stone knee. He hurled both pieces of the blade away from him; they clanged off stone with bell-like notes.

“I reject this!” he cried, as those clatterings drew priests who stared in wonder and terror at his unwonted activity.

“I reject all gifts from Gibil. Let them be taken from my treasury. Let those of metal be melted. Let those not of metal be broken. I have spoken. As I have spoken, it shall be. I, a god, will it.”

This was worse than anything Sharur had imagined. He wished he had never come to the temple. “Tarsiyas, great god of this town, great god of this land, may I speak?” he asked.

“Speak,” the god said, an earthquake rumble of doom in his voice. “Tell your lies.”

“I tell no lies, great god of this town, great god of this land,” Sharur said. “The gift Huzziyas the mighty wanax set in your hand pleased you. If the gift be good, how can the giver who gave it with both hands, who gave it with open heart, be wicked? How can the smiths who made it with clever eye, with skilled fingers, be wicked?”

“They made it of themselves, with no thought for the gods,” Tarsiyas replied.

“Smithery has no god, not yet; it is too young,” Sharur said. “This is so in Kudurru, and it is so here.”

Huzziyas gave him a horrible look. After a moment, he understood why: the gods of Alashkurru were liable to try to forbid their men from working in metal at all. But that did not seem to be Tarsiyas’s most urgent concern. The god said, “You take no thought for the gods your land does have.”

“That is not so,” Sharur insisted. “The weavers of fine cloth reverence the goddess of the loom and the god of dyeing. The winemakers worship Aglibabu, who makes dates become a brew to gladden the heart. The—”

“They are the small gods,” Tarsiyas said. Scorn filled the divine voice. “Even here, they have let themselves become men’s servants as much as men’s masters. But you men of Gibil would reduce your great gods to small gods, your small gods to demons, your demons to ghosts that chitter and flitter and are in a generation forgotten. The riches you gain in this world tempt you to forget the other world. You shall lead no one here astray. You shall lead no one here away from the path of the gods. As I have spoken, it shall be. I, a god, will it.”

“But—” Sharur began.

Huzziyas took him by the arm and pulled him away from Tarsiyas’s image. “Come,” the wanax said. “You have made trouble enough already.” Trouble for himself, his glare said he meant. With his gods watching him so closely, how could he escape them, as the men of Gibil had begun to do? But Sharur had troubles of his own. Without the profits from this caravan, how was he to pay Ninga’s bride-price?