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.