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When last Sharur had seen and spoken with Tarsiyas, the Alashkurri war god had not praised him. Tarsiyas had reviled him for seeking to seduce Huzziyas the wanax away from the path of obedience to the gods. Belligerence had fit Tarsiyas’s nature. Conciliation did not. A conciliatory Tarsiyas put Sharur in mind of a lion sitting down to a meal of bread and lettuce and dates.

Sharur realized he was thinking more clearly than he was used to doing in dreams. In his ordinary dreams, though, he did not talk with the great gods of the Alashkurrut. “Give back the thing of ours that you have,” Fasillar repeated. “Give it back, and all the women you bed shall bear you many sons and shall come through the pangs of childbirth safe and unharmed.”

“Give back the thing of ours that you have,” the rest of the Alashkurri gods said in blurry chorus. “Give it back, and all...” The chorus broke down, presumably because each god or goddess was making a different promise, one set in a domain over which that deity held power.

“What are your promises worth to me?” Sharur asked. “You are great gods. You are mighty gods. But you are the gods of the Alashkurrut. You are the gods of the Alashkurru Mountains. You are not the gods of the men who live between the rivers. You are not the gods of Kudurru. Your power rests in the mountains. You have no power here between the rivers.”

Tarsiyas glared at him. Now the Alashkurri war god looked and sounded fierce once more. “You are a mortal. You are only a mortal. Soon you will be a whining, carping ghost. Soon you will be gone, gone from this world, gone from memory in this world. Speak no words of who has power and who has not.”

“What you say is true, great god,” Sharur answered politely. “What you say is the way of the world, mighty god.” He had to keep on being polite. Any man who openly opposed a god was liable to come to grief. That, too, was the way of the world. But, though Sharur was only a mortal, where power lay here was not so obvious. He had the thing the great gods of the Alashkurrut wanted, and they were not the gods of this land. They would have to satisfy him before he even thought of satisfying them.

Fasillar must have recognized that, for she said, “What other boons might we grant you, man of Kudurru? What other favors might we give you, man of Gibil?”

Had Sharur chosen to ask the Alashkurri gods to lift their ban against his city’s merchants, he was sure they would have promised to do it. He wondered, though, whether he might not have at his disposal another way to lift the ban. All he said was, “I do not know”—a merchant’s canny answer.

“Send the thing of ours that you have back to the Alashkurru Mountains, and we shall grant you all the good fortune lying in our power,” Fasillar promised. “You shall be rich, you shall be beloved, you shall be healthy, your days in this world shall be long.”

“Keep the thing of ours that you have, send it not back to the Alashkurru Mountains, and we shall inflict on you all the ill fortune in our power,” Tarsiyas vowed. “You shall be poor, you shall be despised, you shall be sickly and puling, your days in this world shall be short and filled with torment.”

Had Tarsiyas not threatened him, Sharur’s dream self would have held its peace. As things were, though, he grew angry, as he would have grown angry while awake. He said, “Suppose, great gods of the Alashkurrut, that I do not send the thing of yours that I have back to the Alashkurru Mountains. Suppose, mighty gods of the Alashkurrut, that I do not keep the thing of yours that I have. Suppose, great gods, mighty gods, that I break the thing of yours that I have. What then?”

Tarsiyas gasped. Fasillar gasped. In the background, all the great gods of the Alashkurrut gasped. All the mighty gods of the Alashkurrut gasped.

Sharur gasped—and found himself awake on the roof of the house of Ereshguna, staring up at the stars. Unlike his fever dreams, this dream he would not forget, not to his dying day.

When morning came, Sharur intended to go straight to the house of Dimgalabzu to recover the cup he had left with Ningal. Before he finished his breakfast porridge of barley and salt fish, though, and before he finished the cup of beer he was drinking with it, Inadapa the steward of Kimash the lugal strode into the house of Ereshguna.

“I greet you, steward to the mighty Kimash,” Sharur said, rising from his stool to bow to Inadapa. “Will you eat porridge of barley and salt fish with me? Will you drink a cup of beer with me? While you eat, while you drink, will you tell me what brings you to the house of Ereshguna so early in the day?”

“I greet you, Sharur son of Ereshguna,” Inadapa said. “I have eaten, thank you. I breakfasted at first light of dawn, the better to serve the mighty Kimash through the whole of the day. But I will gladly drink a cup of beer with you, and I will tell you what brings me to the house of Ereshguna so early in the day, for it concerns you.”

Sharur dipped up a cup of beer with his own hands and gave it to Inadapa. “I listen,” he said, and spooned up more porridge.

Inadapa drank and nodded approval. “The house of Ereshguna brews good beer, as I have known for long and long. Kimash the mighty lugal has ordered me to bring you before him as soon as may be.”

“I obey the lugal. I obey the lugal’s steward.” Sharur ate one more mouthful of porridge, then rose from his stool again. “Let us go.”

“Kimash the mighty lugal will be glad for your obedience.” Inadapa hastily finished the beer Sharur had dipped up for him, smacked his lips, and echoed the younger merchant: “Aye, let us go.”

When they got to the lugal’s palace, it was as it had been on some of Sharur’s earlier visits: workmen swarmed everywhere, some with bricks, some with mortar, some building scaffolding of reeds to support brickwork already made or to support artisans running up new brickwork.

“Kimash the mighty lugal no longer stints himself, I see,” Sharur remarked. “It is good.” He meant what he said; the time when Kimash had gone easy because Engibil was reasserting himself had been difficult and alarming for all those in Gibil who favored the new and flourished because of it.

“Truly it is good.” Inadapa’s nod was emphatic. “The mighty lugal rejoices in his munificence and in his strength.” What that meant was that Kimash rejoiced in Engibil’s weakness and preoccupation, but his steward was far too canny to let himself say—probably far too canny even to let himself think—any such thing.

“For what purpose has the mighty lugal summoned me to his palace?” Sharur asked, as Inadapa led him through the maze of passages within the palace.

“Whatever the purpose may be, the mighty lugal did not see fit to enlighten his lowly servant as to its nature,” Inadapa answered. “Soon you shall come before him. Soon he shall tell you his purpose. Soon you shall hear it from his very lips.”

“Soon I shall hear it from his very lips,” Sharur agreed. Perhaps Inadapa was merely doing as he usually did when bringing men before the lugal. Perhaps Kimash did not want Sharur to know ahead of time why he had been summoned, in the hope that he would not be able to prepare plausible answers for the questions the lugal intended to put to him.

In the throne room, Kimash sat on the raised seat covered in gold leaf. Sharur went down on his face in the dust before him. “I am here at the mighty lugal’s command,” he said, not raising his head. “I have come at the mighty lugal’s order.”

“Rise,” Kimash said. “You are as obedient as you should be. You are as obedient as every Gibli should be.”

“I am pleased to obey the commands of the mighty lugal,” Sharur said as he got to his feet, better to obey your commands than those of the god, he thought He would not let himself say that, but it was there, and Kimash no doubt knew it was there.