Day of the False King

by Brad Geagley

  “Bitumen,” answered Marduk. “The bane of Babylonia’s farmers. It leaches up from the ground, like some pestilence from hell, spoiling the crops and poisoning the earth.”

  “Bitumen? I’ve seen statues and furniture carved from it. I thought it was a kind of stone.”

  “When it dries, yes, it’s amazingly hard. You see it now in its natural state, thick and greasy. The only good thing about it is that it can burn for hours.”

  Semerket plunged his finger in the passing water. It came back filmed in gooey black, smelling vaguely of sulfur. It was difficult to imagine this wet, sticky stuff aflame.

  “Is it a good source for lighting, then, or heat?”

  Marduk shrugged. “It throws off such a stinking cloud of soot we only use it when there’s no dried dung. If you ask me, that stuff is something the earth goddess has vomited up and wants buried again. But I know that the ladies of the gagu have taken out a license to exploit what they can find.”

  “The ‘gagu’?”

  “A convent of women whose religion is trade. As we get nearer to Babylon, you’ll probably see some of their caravans. You’ll know it’s them because all their drivers and guards are females.”

  “And women have found a use for this bitumen?”

  Marduk only shrugged again and fell silent.

  The river began to bend lazily to the east. Coming around a promontory, Semerket saw the distant walls of a city. Like Mari’s, they bore the scars of recent warfare, but he noted that they had not been breached. As in all Babylonian cities he had encountered, Semerket saw the gilded tip of a distant ziggurat thrusting up above the other buildings. As they drew nearer, the sounds of vital city life began to reach them. They soon came to a long, flat beach nestled against the city walls, where a superfluity of merchants was already encamped.

  “Where are we?” Semerket asked.

  “In the place where we will stay the night,” Marduk answered. “In the city of Is.”

  Semerket raised his head. “Is? As in ‘Isin’?”

  Marduk nodded. “Their ancestral home,” he said.

  THOUGH THE ELAMITES had laid siege to the city of Is the previous year, its defenders had repulsed them. This made Is a magnet for any rebel or dissident who hated the Elamites, and the city had in effect become the unofficial capital of the Babylonian resistance. Gangs of mercenaries and ragtag refugees continually streamed into it from the east and south. Any one of them might be an Elamite agent or Babylonian turncoat; consequently, Marduk told Semerket, trust was not in plentiful supply in Is.

  Shortly after they set up their camp on the riverbank and lit their dung fires, Semerket announced that he wanted to go inside the gates. “I mean to find an Isin mercenary,” he told Marduk. “Someone who knows of any recent attacks against…”

  He stopped. Attacks against whom? The only thing he really knew was that Naia and Rami had been employed in the Egyptian ambassador’s household. Surely if the ambassador had been assaulted, someone would have mentioned it to him before now. However, it was all he had from which to begin.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I’m going into the city.”

  Marduk instantly protested. “If you go blundering in there, asking questions about the resistance, you’ll last all of ten minutes before someone plunges a knife between your shoulder blades.”

  Semerket thrust out his chin obdurately, saying nothing.

  Marduk said that he would go inside the city himself. “It may be I know someone in there. Perhaps I’ll find someone you can speak with—someone who might know of any Isin raids.” He rose to his feet, brushing off his tunic. “Just don’t go in there by yourself. It’ll be your death if you do.”

  Though Semerket cared little for arranged meetings, always suspecting that much else had been arranged as well, he knew that Marduk was giving him good advice and—this time—he would take it. Semerket settled back against the city wall. His eyes smarted from the low-hanging cloud of fetid, brown smoke emitted from all the surrounding dung fires. He found it difficult to breathe and took himself to the river’s edge where the air was clearer. As the night passed, however, swarms of ferocious mosquitoes rose from the stagnant water to pester and bedevil him. Semerket kept up such a racket of slaps and curses that the wine merchant’s son took pity on him and brought him an evil-looking black balm, gesturing that he should apply it to himself. Semerket sniffed at it and the harsh scent of bitumen assaulted his nostrils. Apparently there was a good use for the stuff, after all, for after he had slathered it on his face and limbs, the mosquitoes were not quite so determined to leach him dry.

  But he became suddenly aware that water scorpions and long-limbed spiders of disgusting hairiness were glaring at him from the river’s edge. The scorpions clicked their foreclaws, advancing toward him stealthily. The insects in Babylonia were immense, he discovered—the largest he had ever seen. He looked around suddenly to find that a legion of spiders and beetles, mantids and other crawling things encircled him. He jumped to his feet with a small cry. At his movement, the insects skittered back a few paces, only to begin inching aggressively again in his direction as soon as he was still.

  Fighting down feelings of immense disquiet, he took himself back to the dung fires where the other merchants slept; the insects did not follow him to where the flames flickered. Nevertheless, he was uneasily aware of their flat, opaque eyes, staring at him from the grasses. As the night passed, Semerket made sure to move and flail his arms about from time to time, if only to convince the creatures that he was still awake.

  The moon was settling low over the horizon when Marduk reappeared. He tapped Semerket on the shoulder and nodded with his head in the direction of the gates. Semerket got to his feet and followed him silently into Is.

  Just off the main square, Marduk opened the door onto a small tavern. Its vaulted ceiling was black with the soot from centuries of unvented cooking fires, its ancient murals obscured by grease. Marduk led him to the rear of the tavern, where two men waited, their faces veiled by the black scarves that distinguished them as Isin rebels. Semerket sat on the bench opposite them, while Marduk took his place against a far wall.

  Semerket voiced his thanks for meeting him and signaled the tavern owner to bring some beer. Served in a large bowl, syrupy and unfiltered, it had a scum of fermenting husks floating on its foamy surface. The tavern-master brought them long flexible reeds so they could suck out the clearer liquid at the bowl’s bottom.

  “I’m Semerket,” he said after they drank.

  “We know who you are,” said the taller man curtly.

  “May I know your own names?” Semerket asked after a moment.

  “Why? So you can tell the Elamite usurper who we are?” asked the taller man with a sneer.

  “I’m sorry. I only meant—”

  The shorter man interrupted tersely. “Just what do you want?”

  “I’m looking for a woman and a young man, both Egyptians. I heard that Isins attacked them—that the boy was injured. I don’t know the woman’s condition. Can you tell me if you’ve made any raids recently?”

  “Not so often as the Elamites would have you believe,” answered the taller man carefully.

  “Not as many times as we’d like,” insisted his comrade.

  Semerket rapidly calculated in his head. “This one would have happened some ten or twelve weeks ago.”

  “Where?”

  “To the northwest of Babylon.”

  The men looked at one another. “No,” they said simultaneously.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because the Elamites retreated there, to protect the capital. It’s too dangerous to make raids with so many of them around—not worth the risk.”

  Semerket’s voice was suddenly harsh. “Have you ever killed women in your raids?”

  “Maybe,” said the taller man.

  “Elamite women,” the other clarified.

  “What about an Egyptian one?” Semerket asked.

&nbs
p; “Are we supposed to sort one from another, then, nice and tidy?” the taller man asked with a short laugh.

  “Besides, we have no quarrel with Egypt—that is, until we met you.”

  Semerket blinked. “Why? What have I done?”

  Hot words bubbled to the men’s lips. “We hear you bring Pharaoh’s greetings to Kutir. You’ll talk of treaties—”

  “And ‘friendship between nations’—”

  “Pharaoh will send him gold—”

  Semerket impatiently interrupted their litany of grudges. “The alliance between Babylon and Egypt has existed for centuries. Only good comes from it, whoever rules.”

  “Your pharaoh shouldn’t negotiate with an invading criminal,” said the taller warrior, slamming his fist down on the table.

  “Who should he negotiate with?”

  This question seemed to disconcert the two men, and they shot uneasy glances at one another. “With the Heir of Isin,” said the shorter one. “The real king here in Babylon.”

  “All right,” replied Semerket in a reasonable tone. “Take me to him. Show me his capital, that I can bow before his throne. Parade his armies before me, that I can measure his might with my own eyes.”

  The men would have spoken harsh words, but from the corner of his eye, Semerket saw Marduk slightly shake his head. The men swallowed their unuttered sentiments with difficulty.

  “There’ll come a time,” whispered the shorter man between clenched teeth, “when you will do exactly that.”

  “In the meantime,” replied Semerket, “it’s Kutir who’s the latest strong man in Babylon. That’s your word for king, isn’t it—‘strong man’? But we Egyptians are a practical people. When this Heir of Isin sits on the Gryphon Throne, I can guarantee that Pharaoh will negotiate with him. Until that time, however…”

  Realizing that this would be all the information he could get from them, Semerket rose to his feet, and waited at the door while Marduk spoke to the two men alone. The men shot dark glances in his direction. Semerket could hear the reassuring timbre of Marduk’s voice as he sought to calm them. Semerket went outside into the street to wait for his “slave.” When Marduk emerged into the dark a few moments later, they did not speak as they made their way back to the riverbank.

  THOUGH THEY WERE STILL a good fifteen leagues away from Babylon, the river soon became dense with little round ships all converging on the capital at once. When Semerket exclaimed at their number, Marduk remarked that the Euphrates seemed desolate to his eyes.

  “Trade hasn’t recovered since the invasion,” he told Semerket. “Merchants are still suspicious of the Elamites, and most have stayed home in their villages this year.”

  Semerket was skeptical, for hundreds of the round leather boats encircled them, laden with their disparate cargoes. A heap of furs lay piled in one boat, while another carried the skinned and fly-covered corpses of recently slaughtered sheep. Some bore sweet-smelling spices, or cut flowers, or mounds of seeds. Babylon and its surrounding cities were home to over a million persons, and their provisioning was a massive logistical effort.

  “No wonder the Elamites covet this land,” Semerket said, “if this is so ‘desolate’ a year for trade.”

  At that moment, another of the river ships pulled alongside their own. The craft held ten or twelve huge clay jars, with dark stains of honey running down their sides. The honey’s spicy tang floated to him, vaguely reminiscent of wildflowers. So strong was the scent that it bordered on the pungent, and Semerket imagined that he could taste the honey’s sweetness in the very air. From the corner of his eye, he saw Marduk and the wine merchant bow their heads and make a holy sign. Then he noted the strange priestly robes that the boat’s pilots wore.

  “Is that the costume of your beekeepers?” asked Semerket.

  “What did you say?” asked Marduk with a short, disbelieving laugh.

  “There, on that boat that just passed?”

  “They’re embalmers, Semerket,” Marduk explained. “Each of those jars contains someone who’s died—probably on their way to be placed into their family crypts.”

  Semerket had heard that honey preserved flesh almost as well as Egypt’s natron, but had never imagined the bizarre burial customs that accompanied the notion. A sudden chill ran up his spine, and he shuddered. Despite his resolve never to allow himself to imagine such things—for by thinking them he might give the thoughts existence—he could not stop the sudden onrush of images that blazed in the recesses of his mind…

  Would he find Naia’s body, or Rami’s, in such a jar? He could imagine how it felt to reach into the jar’s dark ooze, how the honey’s cool stickiness would close around his fingers, clinging to his arm as he searched for a clump of slimed hair…how he would seize it in his fingers, pulling the body into the light…seeing the honey running down her forehead—

  Semerket cried out, wincing.

  The others in the boat gazed at him with concern, but he did not see them, too horrified by his vision. Fiercely he commanded himself to put the images from his mind. Naia was alive. If she were dead, he would have sensed it. He would not, not find her in one of those terrible jars. Pain abruptly radiated from his forehead. His viscera churned and bile rose in the back of his throat. Marduk held him as he vomited weakly into the Euphrates.

  A touch of river fever, Marduk said soothingly, a common affliction for foreigners visiting Babylon. Semerket accepted a dose of stomach-cleansing elixir that the wine merchant produced from his pack. But Semerket knew that it was not his fever but the horrifying vision looming so suddenly before his eyes that had caused him to retch. He prayed silently to all the Egyptian gods, hoping that he had not glimpsed the future.

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON the ramparts of Babylon came into sight. For hours, they had seen a cloud of smoke growing on the horizon, so thick that it blanketed the city from their view. At first Semerket thought the smoke was from war, that Babylon was in ruins, and he raised a fearful finger, pointing. But Marduk assured him that what he saw were only the emissions of a hundred thousand hearths and altars.

  “Babylon will never be destroyed,” Marduk muttered resentfully. “She survives as she always has.”

  Semerket looked at him, surprised to hear the sudden acidity in Marduk’s usually calm voice. But Marduk did not notice his glance, and continued speaking in the same low, sour tone.

  “Babylon the withered strumpet, opening her skirts to every swaggering invader. This time the Elamites think they’ve conquered her. But they’ll only end up as soft and vitiated as the Kassites. You wish to know the real reason Babylon’s walls are intact, Semerket? She gives herself freely to anybody with an army. She alone will prevail in the end.”

  “You sound like a spurned lover,” Semerket said.

  “Do I?”

  “What is it, Marduk? Are you bitter because you have no armies of your own? Tell me what I don’t know.”

  Marduk’s voice was withering. “Some moonlit night in front of the campfire, perhaps,” he said.

  The smoke and haze thinned as they drew closer to Babylon, and Semerket discovered that the Euphrates actually flowed through the center of the city. On the right side of the river, as tall as a pyramid, the ziggurat called Etemenanki dominated the flat landscape from all perspectives. Seeing Semerket’s expression of awe, Marduk regained some of his good humor and explained that the name Etemenanki actually meant “the cornerstone of heaven.” The tower was not in reality a temple, he said, but an observatory dedicated to all the sixty thousand gods in the Babylonian pantheon.

  “I thought the ziggurat belonged to Bel-Marduk,” Semerket said.

  “The Lord’s temple is actually on the other side of the river. See there—the building covered in gilded tiles? That’s where he’s worshipped. But it’s true the Golden One sleeps every night in a room at the very top of Etemenanki.”

  Semerket craned his head to squint at the distant level to which Marduk pointed. The highest tier, painted a shimmering a
zure, seemed impossibly far away, melting without effort into the sky above. It was no wonder that the Lord of the Universe chose to sleep there, for it seemed the exact place where earth became heaven.

  “It’s where he couples every night with a different virgin,” Marduk added casually.

  Semerket tore his eyes away from the ziggurat to look at Marduk in shock. In Egypt, the invisible gods were colossal figures, many cubits tall—the reason why the Egyptians, in fact, constructed their temples on so grand a scale.

  “And the maidens survive such an ordeal?” Semerket was incredulous.

  Marduk regarded him quizzically. “Of course. They’re considered very lucky women for a man to marry. But, then, they’re very beautiful, too, as you can imagine; only the best are chosen for the Golden One.”