Ishtar's Blade

by Blackwood, Lisa

What could be so bad that he prayed for the gods’ protection and forgiveness?

  Iltani folded her hands in her lap and fought for greater patience. She even smoothed her frown into a more peaceful expression, fearing Burrukan would change his mind.

  At last, he pulled his hand from his pack. He held two small bundles of letters.

  Iltani’s eyebrows shot up. Those looked like…but no. It was impossible. She’d packed those letters in her own satchel just before she left the training island.

  She suppressed the urge to tear open her pack just to see if Burrukan had somehow removed them from hers without her knowing.

  He held out the letters. “What I did, I did for the good of our king.”

  Mystified, Iltani took the first bundle he offered. It was only then she realized these ones were pristine, not her much read and tattered, but still beloved, letters. Those ones were still in her pack, apparently.

  The royal seal and the handwriting, Ditanu’s elegant scrawl, were the same, though. She glanced down at them and shuffled through the bundle with growing unease and the first spark of anger.

  The oldest of the letters dated back four years, with the majority of them from the first year of Ditanu’s reign. There were far fewer from the second year of his rule. The newest letters being written almost a year ago by the date.

  Every last one had been addressed to her.

  Burrukan had been censoring the king’s correspondence. She’d half expected that some of her own letters might have gone astray.

  But the king’s?

  The facts were clear before her. Burrukan had withheld the king’s letters. That would be considered treasonous by some.

  “I merely promised that I would deliver our king’s letters to you. I did not specify when.”

  Iltani snapped her mouth closed. So these letters were the ‘treason’ he spoke of. She wasn’t sure if it wasn’t treason after all. For what harm could have come to the king had Burrukan delivered them as he was supposed to? She didn’t see how this fell into the grey area that allowed a Shadow to do whatever he must to oversee the king’s protection.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Burrukan scolded her. “I live to protect the king. Even from his own foolishness.”

  Frowning, she glanced between her mentor and the letters in her hand. “If whatever is written in these letters offers a threat to my king, why give them to me? Why not burn them?”

  “Because,” Burrukan said with conviction, “You need to find, acknowledge, and destroy anything that is a threat to our king. Even if it is something within yourself, an essential part of your very soul. If it is a danger to the line of the gryphon kings, you must grind it beneath your boot. If it goes against the king’s wishes, then so be it. One day you’ll learn the delicate balance between protecting the king and serving him. Until then, follow my teachings and my lead. Surely between the Head Shadow and Ishtar’s Blade, we can keep Ditanu safe.”

  Iltani’s grip tightened on the letters. “I understand.” And she did, but that didn’t mean she was happy about it. Keeping something from Ditanu just didn’t sit well with Iltani.

  For seventeen years before their separation, they’d been constant companions. She couldn’t remember one time—not even one event where she had done something that would constitute going against Ditanu’s wishes. How strange that was. Stranger still, she had never noticed that oddity. Yet it wasn’t that Ditanu intentionally dictated what they did as children. It was more like they simply thought with one mind.

  “Take these ones too,” Burrukan said and handed her another smaller bundle of letters. “You can give them to the king at some point should you wish—there is nothing in them that can harm the king now that you are finished your training.”

  She eyed the new letters—they were a selection she’d written to Ditanu over the years. “What, by the great goddess Ishtar, could I possibly have written that was dangerous for my king to read?”

  Burrukan started to laugh. “Ditanu has always been protective of you, and he missed you terribly in those early years. All he needed was one hint of your unhappiness and he’d make an idiot of himself. The crown has mellowed him a bit and he is growing into a wise and capable king, but in the first years, he would have acted before the first rational thought had a chance to catch up.”

  “But, Burrukan, how…why now?” When there was no time to read through all the letters before she was to meet with the king.

  “You will not read them this day. As you have probably guessed, there is no time. Later you will read them. Only then will you understand and uphold the reason for the deception.”

  Iltani wasn’t so sure. The betrayal was a bitter taste in her mouth. How could she lie to her king, even if duty demanded it?

  That’s what she sensed Burrukan wanted her to do.

  Just what did Ditanu write in those letters that could endanger his life? Why did he write it? Why to her?

  Iltani frowned down at the letters in her hand.

  Ditanu was wise enough to know that anything he wrote in a letter could find its way into the wrong hands. He would know better than to reveal things that could be used against him…

  Nevertheless, in the past, Ditanu had written many personal things to her before he enlightened others.

  It was in one of those letters she’d learned he’d taken a consort.

  That day, a year and a half into her training, Iltani had been waiting on the dock to greet Burrukan when she’d spotted the letter in his hand. She’d snatched it from him before he’d even disembarked from his skiff. Had she known then what she did now, she never would have opened that letter.

  But she had, and Ditanu’s flowing script told how he had taken a consort. Ahassunu was her name, a noble lady of ancient gryphon bloodlines.

  The news shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Even on the distant training island, she’d heard the rumors that the council was leaning hard for the king to take a mate. And well they should, the logical side of her mind knew, for Ditanu was the last of his line. Were he to die without an heir, much of the gryphon kingdom’s magic would perish with him.

  While her training demanded she remain on the island in seclusion, Ditanu had written to her on a fairly regular base in those first few months of his rule, sharing some of his day to day trials. She, in turn, shared hers as well, but not once had he hinted that he was caving to his councilors’ wishes.

  That lack had felt like deepest betrayal but she’d come to see and understand the price of duty. There was also another unhappy explanation, she supposed. Ditanu had always been passionate about everything, never doing anything by half. It was possible his fiery gryphon nature had found his perfect match in Ahassunu and they’d fallen in love with a swift, all-consuming passion.

  Iltani fidgeted at her sword harness’s buckle as she eyed the unopened letters. Or perhaps he had hinted at it and she’d just never gotten the letter, until now. It hardly mattered now. Neither outcome had softened the blow.

  At the time, she’d tried to reason with herself, thinking that as his friend, she should be happy for him and his consort.

  Iltani snorted with bitter humor. Logic never had had any effect on her obstinate heart’s desires.

  A few months after Ditanu had taken Ahassunu as his consort, another monumental letter had arrived. In it, he’d shared the news that his consort was carrying the first brood of royal cubs. The letter had gone on to say that he needed to share his great joy with his oldest friend, his Little Shadow, the only being to love him without reservation.

  Even though she didn’t exactly know what to make of that last admission on his part—for gryphons only took mates out of mutual love, respect, and a lengthy courtship, and there was no question his consort also loved him without reservation—his letter and the news it carried became Iltani’s turning point.

  While her new understanding still held a bittersweet tang to it, she also realized it didn’t matter what her king’s ambiguous phrase might mea
n, nor did it matter if Ditanu didn’t love her in return. As Ishtar’s Blade, she could remain at his side and her love would protect both him and his heirs always.

  She would serve and it would be enough.

  A smile touched her lips at the memory. In the months following that letter, Iltani’s youthful zealous ardor had mellowed from raging wildfire into more sustainable embers. It didn’t mean she loved him any less. None, not even a consort, was as close to the king as his Shadows or his Blade. Iltani planned to become the shadow that was ever at her king’s back.

  Glancing down at the pile of letters Burrukan had handed her, something occurred to her.

  Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that Burrukan had held back some of the king’s letters.

  When they were young, almost up until the moment of their separation, they had shared everything, every joy, fear, doubt, and guilty confession. Neither of them had living parents. The same group of assassins who had killed Ditanu’s mother had cut down Iltani’s parents when she was less than a year old.

  Ditanu’s two other siblings, a brother and sister of the same litter, were also killed that night. Later, the story was told that Ditanu, a cub not even two years old, had somehow managed to kill the single assassin sent to the nursery to kill him.

  The truth was somewhat different by the story Burrukan told her. When the surviving King’s Shadows made their way to the nursery, they found it blood drenched. Crimson covered the walls and floor and even dripped in sticky drops from the ceiling.

  There had been many assassins—not just one.

  It was whispered among the Shadows that the great goddess Ishtar, the Queen of the Night, danced in that room, and loosed her rage upon those who would dare harm a child of her blood.

  It was in that room where a much younger Burrukan found the cub Ditanu covered in blood, but none of it his own. Under the curve of one wing, an equally blood-drenched baby snuggled against the cub’s side. The baby slept peacefully as if unaware of all the violence and heartache visited upon Nineveh that night.

  Burrukan told Iltani that when he reached for her to check her for injuries, he came close to losing a few fingers to Ditanu that day. He’d managed to separate baby and cub long enough to see the birthmark denoting Ishtar’s Blade, glowing with power at the nape of the baby’s neck.

  That event had forged a special bond between her young self and the child-king.

  The adult Ditanu may have felt compelled, even unwisely, to share things with her that were safer not expressed. If that was the case, and those things were, in turn, a danger to the king’s welfare, then Iltani understood why Burrukan might have withheld the letters.

  She didn’t like it, but she thought she understood his underlying reasoning.

  “Iltani?” Burrukan’s voice brought her back from the past.

  Mentioning her thoughts aloud could also be dangerous to Ditanu if his enemies overheard what she and Burrukan discussed, so she told a half truth.

  “I was remembering back to when Ditanu and I were little. We were always so close until he sent me away. Do you still remember the story you told me about how you found Ditanu and I after the assassination?” It was common knowledge that she and Ditanu had been together in the nursery that night. Iltani’s parents had been two of the Shadows killed in the battle, so the strange bond between her and the king brought about by their shared tragedy was not unknown, but no one knew she was also marked by the great goddess Ishtar to become Her Blade.

  With a bark of laughter, Burrukan flexed his fingers as he made a show of counting them. “He was such a fierce little cub, so protective of you. The years have not changed that.” He sobered and then continued. “It’s a miracle I was able to pry you from his clasp long enough to finish your training.”

  “It was you? I always thought Ditanu sent me away.” She’d blamed herself, though. The night of the king’s coronation she’d gotten drunk out of her mind and been…an idiot.

  As she’d grown, so too had her feelings for Ditanu. She’d craved more than just friendship between them. Blessedly, she didn’t remember much of that night, but Ditanu had sent her away the next day so it couldn’t have gone as she’d planned. Old embarrassment heated her cheeks.

  Burrukan grunted, and then said barely above a whisper, “Ditanu needed to learn to be a king, and you, my young warrior, needed to become Ishtar’s Blade. That was best done in secret, far from the watchful eyes of our enemies. Besides Ditanu, myself, and High Priestess Kammani, only one other knows your secret.”

  Iltani’s eyes widened slightly at that confession. She’d always assumed the council and many of the other Shadows knew her secret, yet it seemed Burrukan or Ditanu were keeping that knowledge close. “Who?”

  Burrukan laughed at her directness. “Consort Ahassunu.”

  So Ditanu’s consort knew that she would become Ishtar’s Blade. That wasn’t surprising, newly mated gryphons never kept secrets from each other. “Just the four of you, then?”

  “Yes,” Burrukan said, “Ditanu didn’t want to share that information with Ahassunu at first.”

  Iltani’s eyebrows threatened to climb into her hairline. “Why ever not?”

  “Ditanu is even more paranoid and overprotective of you than I am?” Burrukan grinned and shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

  Was that need to protect her why Ditanu allowed Burrukan to send her away, to protect her secret until she was fully grown, her magic matured enough that she wouldn’t be vulnerable to the political and physical attacks that might target anyone who could help secure Ditanu’s legacy?

  After shoving the king’s letters into her pack, Iltani took a steadying breath, and then slipped past Burrukan and made her way up the steps. Once there, she turned and glanced back. When their eyes were level, she whispered, “I promise to do nothing rash. You have taught me well. I know my duty.”

  Relief flickered in his dark gaze and Burrukan gave her a sharp nod. Her mentor waved her aside while he had a private word with the three Shadows waiting at the gate house.

  Chapter Two

  As Iltani followed Burrukan, she trailed her fingers along the glazed brick of the wall to her right, touching the familiar decadence. Her eyes followed the Processional Way as it wound its way up through the many levels of the terraced city. Other roads intersected the city’s main artery, diverging off in other directions, each marked by archways and walls decorated by their own glazed brick motifs or figures carved directly out of the stone of Nineveh’s rocky bones.

  Burrukan turned down a side road, leaving the bull and dragon motifs behind. This passageway was decorated with carved figures of tribute-bearers carrying offerings for the gods. Ahead, a mid-sized ziggurat rose up above the other city buildings. Lovingly tended gardens graced each level of the step pyramid and water cascaded down either side of the main stairway.

  Stone genies, with their dual layered wings, braided hair and beards, and long flowing robes, stood guard at each corner of the ziggurat as human and gryphon worshipers made their way up the cut stone stairs and into the temple’s heart for morning worship.

  The stone genies, like the sphinx and the lamassu that guarded the royal palace, were far more than decoration and would wake to defend the city if they sensed danger coming to Nineveh’s shores. A worrisome thought occurred to Iltani. “How long since the statues were last anointed with royal blood?”

  “Too long,” came Burrukan’s solemn reply. “King Ditanu and Priestess Kammani do what they can, but ten island city-states are far too many for just the two of them to properly maintain. Ditanu’s distant cousins have not the strength of magic needed to maintain, let alone wake the spirits sleeping within.”

  Iltani glanced up at one of the genies with its wide, blank eyes. The stone of its body was smooth, unmarked by cracks or salt damage.

  “Burrukan,” Iltani asked once they outpaced another group heading for the temple. “What of my blood? I’m not royal, but my blood is thick with magic,
now. I’ve read every ancient text I could get my hands on, and while I never encountered a passage about other Blades performing these rituals, there are references of them creating many of the ancient defenses.”

  “Quick minded as always. Yes, I am confident that will become one of your roles. Fear not, you will have more tasks to complete than you will have time to accomplish them.”

  They walked along the base of the pyramid temple, its first terrace reaching three body lengths above her head. Images depicting the history of the gods were skillfully carved into the stone and lovingly painted in vivid colors. The first series showed Ishtar’s descent into the netherworld when she’d gone to challenge her sister Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld. Ishtar had gone with the intention of lengthening the earth’s growing seasons, demanding her sister forfeit the dying time when the earth rested and no crops would grow.

  To reach her sister’s realm, Ishtar had had to shed a portion of her power at each of the gates leading into the underworld. By the time Ishtar had completed her descent, naked and powerless, she’d confronted the Queen of the Underworld. Ereshkigal, affronted at her sister’s audacity, ordered her dead on the spot.

  Legend had it that all across the earth, lovers drifted apart, wombs turned barren and life stalled, for Ishtar was more than a battle goddess, she was also the source of fertility and desire. Seeing this, the other gods intervened. Tammuz, the god of the harvest, Ishtar’s own husband, offered himself in her place. Had Ereshkigal not accepted Tammuz’s offer, all life would have ended.

  Iltani always wondered why Ereshkigal had accepted Tammuz’s offer—it couldn’t have been out of concern for the living, the Queen of the Underworld had none.

  To cause Ishtar greater pain?

  Perhaps.

  Iltani wasn’t likely to ever learn the answer to that question. She did pity Ishtar, though. Not being with the man she loved was a high cost for Ishtar to pay for her rashness.

  Speaking of the cost of impulsive behavior, Iltani wondered if the last four years of her own life might have been different if she hadn’t gotten drunk the night of Ditanu’s coronation and foolishly tried to seduce him. He might not have agreed with Burrukan that she needed to be kept at arm’s length until her magic matured.