Ereshguna and Tupsharru were also looking this way and that. Ereshguna smiled sheepishly when his eyes met Sharur’s. He said, “I suppose it does not matter,” and Sharur had a very good notion of what it was.
“I suppose the same thing,” Sharur answered. “I truly hope it does not matter.”
“What are the two of you talking about?” Betsilim demanded.
“Nothing very important,” Sharur answered. He could not remember the last time he had lied to his mother, but he lied now without hesitation. He did not think he had ever lied to his mother in his father’s presence. Ereshguna heard him lie, and let it go without contradiction.
While Betsilim and Nanadirat went out, the Imhursaggi slave woman had labored in the kitchen. The returning men of the house of Ereshguna sat down to a feast: roast mutton, roast duck, a salad of onions and lettuce and radishes, fresh-baked bread with honey for dipping, and wine and beer to wash everything down. Sharur ate till just this side of bursting.
So did Tupsharru. Despite that, though, he eyed the slave woman in a marked manner. After a while, he and the slave disappeared. “He is intent on conquering Imhursag again,” Ereshguna said dryly.
Sharur laughed. Nanadirat giggled. Betsilim gave her husband a look that said she didn’t think the joke was funny, or maybe just that he had better not try to reconquer Imhursag in that particular way.
Presently, Nanadirat and Betsilim, both a little wobbly on their legs, went up to the roof to sleep. Tupsharru had not come back. He’d teased Sharur for taking the slave woman twice after coming home from his trading journey to the mountains of Alashkurru. Now, coming home from the war, Tupsharru seemed to be imitating his brother.
When Sharur got to his feet to go upstairs, too, Ereshguna held up a hand. “Wait,” he said. “The thing you left behind ... when do you plan to get it back from where you left it?”
He picked his words with obvious—and necessary—care, not wishing to draw Engibil’s attention to them in any way. Sharur answered with similar caution: “My father, I do not know. As I have said, and said truly, I do not know just where that thing is now. I will have to go to the person to whom I entrusted it to get it back.”
“I understand,” Ereshguna said. “That may not be so easy, not when others have returned to the house. But I hope you will do it as soon as you may. If we do not take it back into our hands, others may take it into theirs.”
“I shall attend to it,” Sharur promised. He yawned. “But not tonight.”
“No, not tonight,” Ereshguna agreed. He and Sharur both got to their feet and went up to the roof to sleep.
11
Sharur’s dreams were strange. He realized that he had not known anything nearly so peculiar since the delirium through which he had drifted after the fever demon breathed its foul breath into his mouth. He wondered if he was delirious again. He did not think so, nor had he been so very drunk when he went up to the roof and lay down on his sleeping mat.
Voices called to him from a vast distance, their words echoing and indistinct. Some were male, some female; some might have been either, or both at once ... or neither. He did not think they were speaking the language of Kudurru, but it was a language he understood, or should have understood. Maybe that was because he dreamt. Maybe ...
He needed a while, but finally recognized the tongue that dinned inside his head: it was the speech of the Alashkurru Mountains. With that recognition, he heard the voices more distinctly, as if the men and women using that speech had suddenly come closer.
Men and women? Not all the voices had fit into either category. Up until he realized what language they were speaking, Sharur had seen only blurry flashes of light and color, like a distant landscape fitfully illuminated with lightning bolts.
Now those flashes and colors came closer and closer, too. They and the voices surrounded Sharur, who seemed to be looking up from the bottom of a great bowl at shapes that slowly congealed into faces and bodies. The faces peered down at him as he peered up at them.
“He knows us,” one of them said: a woman—no, a goddess. As she spoke, her entire form became more plain to Sharur. She was nude, with enormously bulging breasts and, below them, an even more enormously bulging belly. Sharur did indeed know Fasillar; he had had dealings with the Alashkurri goddess of birth in the town of Zalpuwas. Now she went on, “He knows who we are.”
“You are the gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut,” Sharur said, or thought he said—in a dream, how could he be sure?
“We are the gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut.” The speaker this time had a man’s voice, a deep man’s voice. He wore copper armor and carried a bronze sword. Tarsiyas, the war god with whom Sharur had had dealings in the town of Tuwanas, spoke with touchy pride: “We are the great gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut.”
Sharur bowed low to him and to Fasillar and to the other deities, whom he still perceived less clearly. “I greet you, great gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut,” he said; even in a dream, politeness to gods was a good idea. “What do you want with me?” Being in a dream, he could at least feign ignorance.
“You have something of ours,” Fasillar said.
“You have something of ours,” Tarsiyas agreed. “The thing of ours that you have, you have secreted away in a dreadful place.”
“In a dreadful place you have secreted away the thing of ours that you have,” Fasillar echoed. “We tried to send a dream your way before. We could not send a dream your way before. We had not the power to send a dream your way before, not from out of that dreadful place. You were too far from us. Even now, when you are so close, we can barely send a dream your way.”
Tarsiyas nodded his fierce head. “You have met us face to face. Only because you have met us face to face can we send a dream your way at all. We have cried out to Engibihl, but Engibil hears us not. He is a god. He sleeps not. He has no dreams in which to hear us.”
“He has not met us face to face, as you have,” Fasillar said. “He is deaf to us. He hears us not.”
Hiding the Alashkurri cup in the house of Dimgalabzu had truly proved a good idea. The power of the gods was at a low ebb along the Street of Smiths, and lowest in the smithies. Though he knew he was but dreaming, Sharur did not smile. Instead, he asked his own question once more: “What do you want with me, great gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut?”
“Give back the thing of ours that you have.” Fasillar and Tarsiyas spoke together, echoed by the rest of the great gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut.
“Give back the thing of ours that you have, and we shall reward you,” Fasillar said.
“Fail to give back the thing of ours that you have, and we shall punish you,” Tarsiyas added, his grim features growing grimmer.
“What will you do to reward me?” Sharur asked. “What can you do to punish me? I am in Gibil. You are in the Alashkurru Mountains.”
“One day, you shall come again to the Alashkurru Mountains,” Fasillar answered. “Would you sooner be rewarded or punished when you do?”
“I would sooner be rewarded, great goddess,” Sharur answered. “I would sooner not be punished, mighty goddess.”
“There, you see?” Tarsiyas rumbled. “I knew this was a wise mortal. I knew this mortal would be able to tell where he would have bread and meat to eat, where he would have had only crumbs and bones.”