Like the wanax, the gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru dwelt in what was to Sharur’s eyes a citadeclass="underline" 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?
3
Donkeys brayed and complained. They’d got used to the soft life of the stables of Tuwanas, with nothing to do but eat and sleep. Now they had packs on their backs once more, and handlers making them go places. The world seemed as unjust to them as it did to Sharur.
“We go on,” he insisted. Bowing to his will, the caravan headed west along the narrow, winding path toward the next fortresslike town of Alashkurru.