“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,