“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.